THE INTRODUCTION.
Novara--Examination of Passports--Dawn--Monks prefer Dim Light to
Clear--Battle of Novara, and its Results--The
Ticino--Croats--Austrian Frontier and Dogana--Examination of Books
and Baggage--Grandeur of the Alps from this Point--Contrast betwixt
the Rivers and the Governments of Italy--Proof from thence of the
Fall--Providence "from seeming Evil educing Good"--Rich but
Monotonous Scenery of the Plain--Youth of the Alps, and Decay of
the Lombard nations--The only Remedy--An Expelled Democrat--First
View of Milan.
Novara, of course, like all decent towns in Lombardy and elsewhere, at
four in the morning was a-bed, and our heavy vehicle, as its harsh
echoes broke roughly on the silent streets, sounded strangely loud. We
were driven right into a courtyard, to have our passports examined. We
had left Turin the evening before, with a clean bill of political
health, duly certified by three legations,--the Sardinian, the English,
and the Austrian; and in so short a journey--not to speak of the flood
and fire we had passed through--it was scarce possible that we could
have contracted fresh pollution. We were examined anew, however, lest
the plague-spot should have broken out upon us. All was found right, and
we were let go to a neighbouring restaurant, where we swallowed a cup of
coffee,--our only meal betwixt Turin and Milan. After a full hour's
halt, we re-mounted the _diligence_, and set forth.
On emerging from the streets of the city, I found the east in the glow
of dawn. Still, and pure, and calm broke the light; and under its ray
the rich plain awoke into beauty, forgetful of the fiery bolts which had
smitten it, and the darkness and destruction which had so lately passed
across it. "Hail, holy light!" exclaims the bard of "Paradise." Yes,
light is holy. It is undefiled and pure, as when "God saw the light that
it was good." Man has ravaged the earth and reddened the seas; but light
has escaped his contaminating touch, and is still as God made it,
unless, indeed, when man imprisons it within the stained glass of the
cathedral, and then obligingly helps its dimness by lighting a score or
so of tapers. Did no monk ever think of putting a stained window in the
east, and compelling the sun to ogle the world through spectacles? "The
light is good," said He who created it, as He saw it darting its first
pure beam across creation. Not so, says the Puseyite; it is not good
unless it is coloured.
I looked with interest on the plains around Novara; for there, albeit no
trace of the bloody fray remains, the army of Charles Albert in 1848 met
the host of Radetzky; and there the fate of the campaign for Italian
independence was decided. The battle which was fought on these plains
led to the destruction of King Charles Albert, but not to the
destruction of his kingdom of Sardinia,--though why Radetzky did not
follow up his victory by a march on Turin, is to this hour a mystery.
Nay, though it sounds a little paradoxical, it is probable that this
battle, by destroying the king, saved the kingdom. Had Charles Albert
survived till the re-action set in 1849 and 1850, there is too much
reason to fear, from his antecedents, that he would have thrown himself
into the current with the rest of the Italian rulers; and so Sardinia
would have missed the path of constitutional liberty and material
development which it has since, under King Victor Emanuel, so happily
pursued. Had that happened, the horizon of Italy, dark as it is at this
hour, would have been still darker, and the peninsula, from the Alps to
Sicily, would not have contained a single spot where the hunted friends
of liberty could have found asylum.
We soon approached the Ticino, the boundary between Sardinia and
Austrian Lombardy. The Ticino is a majestic river, here spanned by one
of the finest bridges in Italy. It contains eleven arches; is of the
granite of Mount Torfano; and, like almost all the great modern works in
Italy, was commenced by Napoleon, though finished only after his fall.
Here, then, was the gate of Austria; and seated at that gate I saw three
Croats,--fit keepers of Austrian order.
I was not ignorant of the hand these men had had in the suppression of
the revolution of 1848, and of the ruthless tragedies they were said to
have enacted in Milan and other cities of Lombardy; and I rode up to
them in the eager desire of scrutinizing their features, and reading
there the signs of that ferocity which had given them such wide-spread
but evil renown. They sat basking themselves on a bench in front of the
Dogana, with their muskets and bayonets glittering in the sun. They were
lads of about eighteen, of decidedly low stature, of square build, and
strongly muscular. They looked in capital condition, and gave every sign
that the air of Lombardy agreed with them, and that they had had their
own share at least of its corn and wine. They wore blue caps, gray
duffle greatcoats like those used by our Highlanders, light blue
pantaloons fitting closely their thick short leg, and boots which rose
above the ankle, and laced in front. The prevailing expression on their
broad swarthy faces was not ferocity, but stolidity. Their eyes were
dull, and contrasted strikingly with the dark fiery glances of the
children of the land. They seemed men of appetites rather than passions;
and, if guilty of cruel deeds, were likely to be so from the dull, cold,
unreflecting ferocity of the bull-dog, rather than from the warm
impulsive instincts of the nobler animals. In stature and feature they
were very much the barbarian, and were admirably fitted for being what
they were,--the tools of the despot. No wonder that the _ideal_ Italian
abominates the _Croat_.
The Dogana! So soon! 'Twas but a few miles on the other side of the
Ticino that we passed through this ordeal. But perhaps the river,
glorious as it looks, flowing from the democratic hills of the Swiss,
may have infected us with political pravity; so here again we must
undergo the search, and that not a mere _pro forma_ one. The _diligence_
vomits forth, at all its mouths, trunks, carpet-bags, and packages,
encased, some in velvet, some in fir-deals, and some in brown paper. The
multifarious heap was carried into the Dogana, and its various articles
unroped, unlocked, and their contents scattered about. One might have
thought that a great fair was about to begin, or that a great Industrial
Exhibition was to be opened on the banks of the Ticino. The hunt was
especially for books,--bad books, which England will perversely print,
and Englishmen perversely read. My little stock was collected, bound
together with a cord, and sent in to the chief douanier, who sat,
Radamanthus-like, in an inner apartment, to judge books, papers, and
persons. There is nothing there, thought I, to which even an Austrian
official can take exception. Soon I was summoned to follow my little
library. The man examined the collection volume by volume. At last he
lighted on a number of the _Gazetta del Popolo_,--the same which I have
already mentioned as given me by the editors in Turin. This, thought I,
will prove the dead fly in my box of ointment. The sheet was opened and
examined. "Have you," said the official, "any more?" I could reply with
a clear conscience that I had not. To my surprise, the paper was
returned to me. He next took up my note-book. Now, said I to myself,
this is a worse scrape than the other. What a blockhead I am not to have
put the book into my pocket; for, except in extreme cases, the
traveller's person is never searched. The man opened the thin volume,
and found it inscribed with mysterious and strange characters. It was
written in short-hand. He turned over the leaves; on every page the same
unreadable signs met the eye. He held it by the top, and next by the
bottom: it was equally inscrutable either way. He shut it, and examined
its exterior, but there was nothing on the outside to afford a key to
the mystic characters within. He then turned to me for an explanation of
the suspicious little book. Affecting all the unconcern I could, I told
him that it contained only a few commonplace jottings of my journey. He
opened the book; took one other leisurely survey of it; then looked at
me, and back again at the book; and, after a considerable pause, big
with the fate of my book, he made me a bland bow, and handed me the
volume. I was equally polite on my part, inly resolving, that
henceforward Austrian douanier should not lay finger on my note-book.
The halt here was one of from two to three hours, which were spent in
unlading the _diligence_, opening and locking trunks,--for in Austria
nothing is done in a hurry, save the trial and execution of Mazzinists.
But the long halt was nothing to me: I could not possibly lose time, and
I could scarce be stopped at the wrong place; and certainly the bridge
of the Ticino is the very spot one would select for such a halt, were
the matter left in one's own choice. It commands the finest assemblage
of grand objects, in a ride abounding in magnificent objects throughout.
Having been pronounced, in passport phrase, "good to enter
Austria,"--for my carpet-bag was clean, though doubtless my mind was
foul with all sorts of notions which, in the latitude of Austria, are
rankly heretical,--(and, by the way, of what use is it to search trunks,
and leave breasts unexplored? Here is an imperfection in the system,
which I wonder the Jesuits don't correct)--having, I say, had the
Croat-guarded gates of Austria opened to me till I should find it
convenient to enter, I retraced the few paces which divided the Dogana
from the bridge, and stood above the rolling floods of the Ticino.
Refreshing it verily was to turn from the petty tyrannies of an Austrian
custom-house, to the free, joyous, and glorious face of nature. Before
me were the Alps, just shaking the cold night mists from their shaggy
pine-clad sides, as might a lion the dew-drops from his mane. Here rose
Monte Rosa in a robe of never-fading glory and beauty; and there stood
Mont Blanc, with his diadem of dazzling snows. The giant had planted his
feet deep amid rolling hills, covered with villages, and pine-forests,
and rich pastures. Anywhere else these would have been mountains; but,
dwarfed by the majestic form in whose presence they stood, they looked
like small eminences, scattered gracefully at his base, as pebbles at
the foot of some lofty pile. On his breast floated the fleecy clouds of
morn, while his summit rose high above these clouds, and stood, in the
calm of the firmament, a stupendous pile of ice and snow. Never had I
seen the Alps to such advantage. The level plain ran quite up to them,
and allowed the eye to take their full height from their flower-girt
base to their icy summit. Hundreds and hundreds of peaks ran along the
sky, conical, serrated, needle-shaped, jagged, some flaming like the
ruby in the morning ray, others dazzlingly white as the alabaster.
As I bent over the parapet, gazing on the flood that rolled beneath, I
could not help contrasting the bounty of nature with the oppression of
man. Here had this river been flowing through the long centuries,
dispensing its blessings without stop or grudge. Day and night, summer
and winter, it had rolled gladsomely onwards, bringing verdure to the
field, fruitage to the bough, and plenty to the peasant's cot. Now it
laved the flower on its brink,--now it fed the umbrageous sycamore and
the tall poplar on the plain,--and now it sent off a crystal streamlet
to meander through corn-field and meadow-land. It exacted nothing of man
for the blessings it so unweariedly dispensed. It gave all freely.
Whether, said I to myself, does Italy owe most to its rivers or to its
Governments? Its rivers give it corn and wine: its Governments give it
chains and prisons. They load the patient Lombard with burdens that
press him down into toil and poverty; or they lead him away to shed his
blood and lay his bones in a foreign soil. Why is it that all the
functions of nature are beneficent? Even the storms that rage around
Mont Blanc, the ice of its eternal winter, yield only good. Here they
come, a river of crystal water, decking with living green this
far-spreading plain. But the institutions of man are not so. From their
frozen summits have too oft, alas! descended, not the peaceful river,
but the thundering avalanche, burying in irretrievable ruin, man, with
his labours and hopes. I suspect, however, that this is a narrow as well
as a sombre philosophy. Doubtless the great fact of the Fall is written
on the face of life. Nevertheless, we have a strong belief that the
mighty schemes of Providence, like the arrangements of external nature,
will all in the end become dispensers of good; that those evil systems
which have burdened the earth, like those mountains of ice and snow
which rise on its surface, have their uses, though as yet we stand too
near them, and too much within the sphere of their tempests and their
avalanches, fully to comprehend these uses. We must descend into the
low-lying plains of the future, and contemplate them afar off; and then
the glaciers and tempests of these moral Mont Blancs may dissolve into
tender showers and crystal rivers, which will fructify and gladden the
world.
In a few minutes I must leave the bridge of the Ticino. Could I, when
far away,--in the seclusion of my own library, for instance,--bid the
Alps rise before me, in stupendous magnificence, as now? I turned round,
and fixed my gaze on the tamer objects of the plain; then back again to
the mountains; but every time I did so, I felt the scene as new. Its
glory burst on me as if seen for the first time. Alas! thought I, if
this majestic image has so faded in the interval of a few moments, what
will it be years after? A scene like this, it is true, can never be
forgotten; but it is but a dwarfed picture that lives in the memory; and
it is well, perhaps, it should be so; for were one to see always the
Alps, with what eyes would one look upon the tamer though still romantic
hills of his own country! And we may extend the principle. There are
times when great truths--eternal verities--flash upon the soul in Alpine
magnitude. It is a new world that discloses itself, and we are thrilled
by its glory; but for the effective discharge of ordinary duties, it is
better, perhaps, that these stupendous objects should be seen "as
through a glass darkly," though still seen.
All too soon was the _diligence_ ready to start. From the bridge of the
Ticino the scenery was decidedly tamer. The Alps fell more into the
background, and with their white peaks disappeared the chief glory of
the scene. The plain was so level, and its woods of mulberry and walnut
so luxuriant, that little could be seen save the broad road, with its
white lines of curb-stones running on and on, and losing itself in the
deep foliage of the plain. Its windings and turnings, though coming only
at an interval of many miles, were a pleasant relief from the sameness
of the journey. Occasionally side views of great fertility opened upon
us. There were the small farms of the Lombard; and there was the tall
Lombard himself, striding across his fields. If the farms were small,
amends was made by the largeness of the farm-house. There was no great
air of comfort about it, however. It wanted its little garden, and its
over-arching vine-bough, which one sees in the happier cantons of
Switzerland; and the furrowed and care-shaded face of the owner bespoke
greater acquaintance with hard labour than with the dainties which the
bounteous earth so freely yields. The Lombard plants, but another eats.
We could see, too, how extensively and thoroughly irrigated was the
plain. Numerous canals, brim-full of water, the gift of the Alps,
traversed it in all directions; and by means of a system of sluices and
aqueducts the surrounding fields could be flooded at pleasure. The plain
enjoys thus the elements of a boundless fertility, and is the seat of an
almost eternal summer.
Hic Ver perpetuum, atque alienis mensibus Aestas.
But the little towns we passed looked so very old and tottering, and the
inhabitants, too, appeared as much oppressed with years or cares as the
heavy dilapidated architecture amid which they dwelt, and out of which
they crept as we passed by, that one's heart grew sad. How evident was
it that the immortal spirit was withered, and that the land, despite its
images of grandeur and sublimity, nourished a stricken race! The Alps
were still young, but the men that lived within their shadow had grown
very old. Their ears had too long been familiar with the clank of
chains, and their hearts were too sad to catch up the utterances of
freedom which came from their mountains. The human soul was dying, and
will die, unless new fire from a celestial source descend to rekindle
it. Architecture, music, new constitutions, the ever glorious face of
nature itself, will not prevent the approaching death of the continental
nations. There is but one book in the world that can do it,--the Book of
Life. Unfold its pages, and a more blessed and glorious effulgence than
that which lights up the Alps at sunrise will break upon the nations;
but, alas! this cannot be so long as the Jesuit and the Croat are there.
We saw, too, on our journey, other things that did not tend to put us
into better spirits. As we approached Milan, we met a couple of
gensdarmes leading away a poor foot-sore revolutionist to the frontier.
Ah! said I inly, could the Jesuits look into my breast, they would find
there ideas more dangerous to their power, in all probability, than
those that this man entertains; and yet, while he is expelled, I am
admitted. No thanks to them, however. I rode onwards. League followed
league of the richest but the most unvaried scenery. Campanile and
hamlet came and went: still Milan came not. I strained my eyes in the
direction in which I expected its roofs and towers to appear, but all to
no purpose. At length there rose over the green woods that covered the
plain, as if evoked by enchantment, a vision of surpassing beauty. I
gazed entranced. The lovely creation before me was white as the Alpine
snows, and shot up in a glorious cluster of towers, spires, and
pinnacles, which flashed back the splendours of the mid-day sun. It
looked as if it had sprung from under the chisel but yesterday. Indeed,
one could hardly believe that human hands had fashioned so fair a
structure. It was so delicate, and graceful, and aerial, and unsullied,
that I thought of the city which burst upon the pilgrims when they had
got over the river, or that which a prophet saw descending out of
heaven. Milan, hid in rich woods, was before me, and this was its
renowned Cathedral.