MILAN TO BRESCIA.
Biblioteca Ambrosiana--A Lamp in a Sepulchre--The
Palimpsests--Labours of the Monks in the Cause of
Knowledge--Cardinal Mai--He recovers many valuable Manuscripts of
the Ancients which the Monks had Mutilated--Ulfila's Bible--The War
against Knowledge--The Brazent Serpent at Sant' Ambrogio--Passport
Office--Last Visit to the Duomo and the Arco Della Pace--The Alps
apostrophized--Dinner at a Restaurant--Leave Milan--Procession of
the Alps--Treviglio--The River Adda--The Postilion--Evening, with
dreamy, decaying Borgos--Caravaggio--Supper at
Chiari--Brescia--Arnold of Brescia.
The morning of my last day in Milan was passed in the Biblioteca
Ambrosiana. This justly renowned library was founded in 1609 by Cardinal
Borromeo, the cousin of that Borromeo whose mummy lies so gorgeously
enshrined in the subterranean chapel of the Duomo. This prelate was at
vast care and expense to bring together in this library the most
precious manuscripts extant. For this purpose he sent learned men into
every part of Europe, with instructions to buy whatever of value they
might be fortunate enough to discover, and to copy such writings as
their owners might be unwilling to part with. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana
is worth a visit, were it only to see the first public library
established in Europe. There were earlier libraries, and some not
inconsiderable ones, but only in connection with cathedrals and
colleges; and access to them was refused to all save to the members of
these establishments. This, on the contrary, was opened to the public;
and, with a liberality rare in those days, writing materials were freely
supplied to all who frequented it. The library buildings form a
quadrangle of massive masonry, with a grave, venerable look, becoming
its name. The collection is upwards of 80,000 volumes; but, what is not
very complimentary to the literary tastes of the prefetto and honorary
canons of Sant' Ambrogio, the curators of the library, they are
arranged, not according to their subjects, but according to their sizes.
This library reminded me of a lamp in an Etrurian tomb. There was light
enough in that hall to illuminate the whole duchy of the Milanese, could
it but find an outlet. As it is, I fear a few straggling rays are all
that are able to escape. There is no catalogue of the books, save some
very imperfect lists; and I was told that there is a pontifical bull
against making any such. I saw a few visitors in its halls, attracted,
like myself, by its curiosities; but I saw no one who had come to
restore volumes they had read, and receive others in their room. The
modern inhabitant of Milan gives his days and nights to the cafe and the
club,--not to the library. He lives and dies unpolluted by the printing
press,--an execrable invention of the fifteenth century, from which a
paternal Government and an infallible Church employ their utmost
energies to shield him. The works of dead authors he dare not read; the
productions of living ones he dare not print; and the only compositions
to which he has access are the decrees of the Austrian police, and the
Catechism of the Jesuit. He fully appreciates, of course, the care taken
to preserve the purity of his political and religious faith, and will
one day show the extent of his gratitude.
I saw in this library the famous _Palimpsests_. My readers know, of
course, what these are. The _Palimpsests_ are little books of vellum,
from which an original and ancient writing has been erased, to make room
for the productions of later ages and of other pens. These pages bore
originally the thoughts of Virgil and Livy, and, in short, of almost all
the great writers of pagan, antiquity; but the monks, who did not relish
their pagan notions, thought the vellum would be much better bestowed if
filled with their own homilies. The good fathers conceived the project
of enlightening and evangelizing the world by purging of its paganism
all the vellum in Europe; and, being much intent on their object, they
succeeded in it to an amazing extent.
"A second deluge learning did o'errun,
And the monks finished what the Goths begun."
Our readers have often seen with what rapidity a fog swallows up a
landscape. They have marked, with a feeling of despair, golden peak and
emerald valley sinking hopelessly in the dank drizzle. So the classics
went down before the monks. The ancients were set a-trudging through the
world in a monk's cowl and a friar's frock. On the same page from which
Cicero had thundered, a monk now discoursed. Where Livy's pictured
narrative had been, you found only a dull wearisome legend. Where the
thunder of Homer's lyre or the sweet notes of Virgil's muse had
resounded, you heard now a dismal croak or a lugubrious chant. Such was
the strange metamorphosis which the ancients were compelled to endure at
the hands of the' monks; and such was the way in which they strove to
earn the gratitude of succeeding ages by the benefits they conferred on
learning.
It gives us pleasure to say that Cardinal Mai was amongst the most
distinguished of those who undertook the task of setting free the
imprisoned ancients,--of stripping them of the monk's hood and the
friar's habit, and presenting them to the world in their own form. He
laboured in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and succeeded in exhuming from
darkness and dust the treasures which neglect and superstition had
buried there. In the number of the works which the monks had
palimpsested, and which Mai rescued from destruction, we may cite some
fragments of Homer, with a great number of paintings equally ancient,
and of which the subjects are taken from the works of this great poet;
the unpublished writings of Cornelius Fronto; the unpublished letters of
Antoninus Pius, of Marcus Aurelius, of Lucius Verus, and of Appian; some
fragments of discourses of Aurelius Symmachus; the Roman Antiquities of
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which were up to that time imperfect;
unpublished fragments of Plautus, of Isaeus, of Themistius; an
unpublished work of the philosopher Porphyrius; some writings of the Jew
Philo; the ancient interpreters of Virgil; two books of the Chronicles
of Eusebius Pamphilus; the VI. and XIV. Sibylline Books; and the six
books of the Republic of Cicero. I saw, too, in the Biblioteca
Ambrosiana, fragments of the version of the Bible made in the middle of
the fourth century, by Ulfila, bishop of the Maesogoths. The labours of
the bishop underwent a strange dispersion. The gospels are at Upsala;
the epistles were found at Wolfenbuttel; while a portion of the Acts of
the Apostles and of the Old Testament were extracted from the
palimpsests. The original writing--the superincumbent rubbish being
removed--looked out in a bold, well defined character, in as fresh a
black, in some places, as when newly written; in others, in a dim, rusty
colour, which a practised eye only could decipher. Thus the war against
knowledge has gone on. The Caliph Omer burnt the Alexandrine library.
Next came the little busy creatures the monks, who, mothlike, ate up the
ancient manuscripts. Last of all appeared the Pope, with his Index
Expurgatorius, to put under lock and key what the Caliph had spared, and
the monks had not been able to devour. The torch, the sponge, the
anathema, have been tried each in its turn. Still the light spreads.
I cannot enter on the other curious manuscripts which this library
contains; nor have I anything to say of the numerous beautiful portraits
and pictures with which its walls are adorned. The _Cenacolo_, or "Last
Supper," by Leonardo da Vinci, in the refectory of the Dominican
convent, is fast perishing. It has not yet "lost all its original
brightness," and is mightier in its decay than most other pictures are
in the bloom and vigour of their youth. I recollect the great Scottish
painter Harvey saying to me, that he was more affected by "that ruin,"
than he was by all the other works of art which he saw in Italy. The
grandeur of the central head has never been approached in any copy. One
thing I regret,--I did not visit the Sant' Ambrogio, and so missed
seeing the famous brazen serpent which is to hiss just before the world
comes to an end. This serpent is the same that Moses made in the
wilderness, and which Hezekiah afterwards brake in pieces: at least it
would be heresy in Milan not to believe this. It must be comfortable to
a busy age, which has so many things to think of without troubling
itself about how or when the world is to end, to know that, if it must
end, due warning will be given of that catastrophe. The vineyards of
Lombardy are good, and monks, like other men, occasionally get thirsty;
and it might spoil the good fathers' digestion were the brazen serpent
of Sant' Ambrogio to hiss after dinner. But doubtless it will be
discreet on this head. There is said to be in some one of the
graveyards of Orkney, a tombstone on which an angel may be seen blowing
a great trumpet with all his might, while the dead man below is made to
say, "When I hear this, I will rise." The stone-trumpet will be heard to
blow, we daresay, about the same time that the serpent of Sant' Ambrogio
will be heard to hiss.
I was now to bid farewell to Milan, and turn my face towards the blue
Adriatic. But one unpleasant preliminary must first be gone through. The
police had opened the gates of Milan to admit me, and the same
authorities must open them for my departure. I walked to the passport
office, where the officials received me with great politeness, and bade
me be seated while my passport was being got ready. This interesting
process was only a few minutes in doing; and, on payment of the
customary fee, was handed me "all right" for Venice, bating the
innumerable intermediate inspections and _vises_ by the way; for a
passport, like a chronometer, must be continually compared with the
meridian, and put right. I put my passport into my pocket; but on
opening it afterwards, I got a surprise. Its pages were getting covered
all over with little creatures with wings, and, as my fancy suggested,
with stings,--the black eagles of Austria. How was I to carry in my
pocket such a cage of imps? How was I to sleep at night in their
company? Should they take it into their head to creep out of my book,
and buzz round my bed, would it not give me unpleasant dreams? And yet
part with them I could not. These black, impish creatures must be my
pioneers to Venice.
I now made haste to take my last look of the several objects which had
endeared themselves to me during my short stay. I felt towards them as
friends,--long known and beloved friends; and never should I turn and
look on the track of my past existence without seeing their forms of
beauty, dim and indistinct, it might be, as the haze of lapsed time
should gather over them; still, always visible,--never altogether
blotted out. I walked round the Cathedral for the last time. There it
stood,--beauty, like an eternal halo, sitting rainbow-like upon its
towers and pinnacles. Its thousand statues and cherubs stood silent and
entranced, tranquil as ever, all unmoved by the city's din, reminding
one of dwellers in some region of deep and unbroken bliss. "Glorious
pile!" said I, apostrophizing it, "I am but a pilgrim, a shadow; so are
all who now look on thee,--shadows. But you will continue to delight the
ages to come, as you have done those that are past." I had a run, too,
to the _Piazza di Armi_, to see Beauty incarnate, if I may so express
myself, in the form of the Arco della Pace. It is a gem, the brightest
of its kind that earth contains. The faultless grace of its form is
finely set off by the overwhelming Alpine masses in the distance, which
seemed as if raised on purpose to defend it, and which rise, piled one
above another, in furrowed, jagged, unchiselled, fearful sublimity.
I came round by the boulevard of the Porte Orientale, on my way back to
the city. It is a noble promenade. Above are the boughs of the
over-arching elms; on this hand are the city domes and cathedral spires,
with their sweet chimes continually falling on the ear; and on that are
the suburban gardens, with the poplars and campaniles rising in stately
grace beyond. The glorious perspective is terminated by the Alps. As the
breezes from their flashing summits stirred the leaves overhead, they
seemed to speak of liberty. I wonder the Croat don't impose silence on
them. What right have they, by their glowing peaks, and their free play
of light and shade, and their storms, and their far-darting lightnings,
to stir the immortal aspirations in man's bosom? These white hills are
great, unconquerable democrats. They will continually be singing hymns
in praise of liberty. Yet why they should, I know not. Milan is deaf.
Why preach liberty to men in chains? Surely the Alps,--the free and
joyous Alps,--which scatter corn and wine from their horn of plenty so
unweariedly, have no delight in tormenting the enslaved nations at their
feet. Why do ye not, ye glorious mountains, put on sackcloth, and mourn
with the mourning nations beneath you? How can ye look down on these
dungeons, on these groaning victims, on the tears of so many widows and
orphans, and yet wear these robes of beauty, and sing your song of
gladness at sunrise? Or do ye descry from afar the coming of a better
era? and is the glory that mantles your summits the kindling of an
inward joy at the prospect of coming freedom? and are these whisperings
of liberty the first utterances of that shout with which you will
welcome the opening of the tomb and the rising of the nations?
The formidable process of loading the _diligence_ was not yet completed.
There was a perfect Mont Blanc of luggage to transfer from the courtyard
to the top of the _diligence_, not in a hurry, but calmly and
deliberately. The articles were to be selected one by one, and put upon
the top, and taken down again, and laid in the courtyard, and put up a
second time, and perhaps a third time; and after repeated attempts and
failures, and a reasonable amount of vociferation and emphatic
ejaculations on the part of postilions and commissionaires, the thing
was to be declared completed, and finally roped down, and the great
leathern cover drawn over all. Still the process would be got through
before the hour of table d'hote at the Albergo de Reale. I must needs
therefore dine at a restaurant. I betook me to one of these
establishments hard by the _diligence_ office, and took my place at a
small table, with its white napery, small bottle of wine, and roll of
Lombardy bread, in the same room with some thirty or so of the merchants
and citizens of Milan. I intimated my wish to dine _a la carte_; and
instantly the waiter placed the tariff before me, with its list of
dishes and prices. I selected what dishes I pleased, marking, at the
same time, what I should have to pay for each. I dined well, having
respect to the journey of two days and a night I was about to begin, and
knowing, too, that an Italian _diligence_ halts only at long intervals.
The reckoning, I thought, could be no dubious or difficult matter. I
knew the dishes I had eaten, and I saw the prices affixed, and I
concluded that a simple arithmetical process would infallibly conduct me
to the aggregate cost. But when my bill was handed me (a formality
dispensed with in the case of those beside me), I found that my
reckoning and that of "mine host" differed materially. The sum total on
his showing was three times greater than on mine. I was curious to
discover the source of this rather startling discrepancy in so small a
sum. I went over again the list of eaten dishes, and once more went
through the simple arithmetical process which gave the sum total of
their cost, but with no difference in the result. It was plain that
there was some mysterious quality in the arithmetic, or some nice
distinctions in the cookery, which I had not taken into account, which
disturbed my calculations. I became but the more anxious to have the
riddle explained. In my perplexity I applied to the waiter, who referred
me to his master. The day was hot; and boiling, stewing, and roasting,
is hot work; and this may account for the passion into which my simple
interrogatory put "mine host." "It was a just bill, and must be paid." I
hinted that I did not impugn its justice, but simply craved some
explanation about its items. Whereupon mine host, becoming cooler,
condescended to inform me that I had not dined exactly according to the
_carte_; that certain additions had been made to certain dishes; and
that it did not become an Englishman to inquire farther into the matter.
If not so satisfactory as might be wished, this defence was better than
I had expected; so, paying my debts to Boniface, I departed, consoling
myself with the reflection, that if I had three times more to pay than
my neighbours, having fared neither better nor worse than they, I had,
unlike these poor men, eaten my dinner without fetters on my hands.
This time the _banquette_ of the _diligence_, with all its rich views,
was bespoke, so I had to content myself with the _interieur_. It was
roomy, however; there were but four of us, and its window admitted, I
found, ample views of meadow and mountain. We drove to the station of
the Venice railway, pleasantly situated amid orchards and extra-mural
albergos. The horses were taken out, and the immense vehicle was lifted
up,--wheels, baggage, passengers and all,--and put upon a truck. Away
went the long line of carriages,--away went the _diligence_, standing up
like a huge leathern castle upon its truck; while the engine whistled,
snorted, screeched, groaned, and uttered all sorts of irreverent and
every-day sounds, just as if the Alps had not been looking down upon it,
and classic towns ever and anon starting up beside its path: a glorious
vision of fresh meadows, bordered with little canals, brimful of water,
and barred with the long shadows of campanile and sycamore,--for the sun
was westering,--shot past us. The Alps came on with more slow and
majestic pace. As peak after peak passed by, it seemed as if the whole
community of hills had commenced a general march on Monte Viso, with all
their crags, glaciers, and pine-forests. One might have thought that
Sovran Blanc had summoned the nobles and high princes of his kingdom to
meet him in his hall of audience, to debate some weighty point of Alpine
government. An august assembly as ever graced monarch's court, in their
robes of white and their cornets of eternal ice, would these tall and
proud forms present.
Treviglio, beyond which the railway has not yet been opened, was reached
in less than two hours. When near the town, the vast mirror of the blue
Como, spread out amid the dark overhanging mountains, burst upon us.
From it flowed forth the Adda, which we crossed. As its mighty stream,
burning in the sunset, rolled along, it spangled with glory the green
plain, as the milky-way the firmament. There is nothing in nature like
these Alpine rivers. They fill their banks with such a wasteful
prodigality of water, and they go on their way with a conscious might,
as if they felt that behind them is an eternally exhaustless source. Let
the sun smite them with his fiercest ray; they dread him not. Others may
shrink and dry up under his beam: their fountains are the snows of a
thousand winters.
On reaching the station, our _diligence_,--including passengers, and all
that pertained to them,--was lifted from its truck and put on wheels,
and once more stood ready to move, in virtue of its own inherent power,
that is, so soon as the horses should be attached. This operation was
performed in the calm eve, amid the glancing casements of the little
town, on which the purple hills and the tall silent poplars looked
complacently down.
Away we rumbled, the declining light still resting sweetly on the woods
and hamlets. There are no postilions in the world, I believe, who can
handle their whip like those of Italy. In very pride and joy our
postilion cracked his whip, till the woods rang again. He took a
peculiar delight in startling the echoes of the old villages, and the
ears of the old villagers. Each report was like that of a
twelve-pounder. This continual thunder, kept up above their heads, did
not in the least affright the horses: they rather seemed proud of a
master who could handle his whip in so workmanlike a fashion. He could
so time the strokes as to make not much worse melody than that of some
music-bells I have heard. He could play a tune on his whip.
We passed, as the evening thickened its shadows, several ancient
_borgos_. Gray they were, and drowsy, as if the sleep of a century
weighed them down. They seemed to love the quiet, dying light of eve;
and as they drew its soft mantle around them, they appeared most willing
to forget a world which had forgotten them. They had not always led so
quiet a life. Their youth had been passed amid the bustle of commerce;
their manhood amid the alarms and rude shocks of war; and now, in their
old age, they bore plainly the marks of the many shrewd brushes they had
had to sustain when young. The houses were tall and roomy, and their
architecture of a most substantial kind; but they had come to know
strange tenants, that is, those of them that _had_ tenants, for not a
few seemed empty. At the doors of others, dark withered faces looked
out, as if wondering at the unusual din. I felt as if it were cruel to
rouse these quiet slumber-loving towns, by dragging through their
streets so noisy a vehicle as a _diligence_.
We passed Caravaggio, famous as the birthplace of the two great painters
who have both taken their name from their city,--the Caravacchi. We
passed, too, the little Mozonnica, that is, all of it which the
calamities of the middle ages have left. Darkness then fell upon us,--if
a firmament begemmed with large lustrous stars could be called dark.
The night wore on, varied only by two events of moment. The first was
supper, for which we halted at about eleven o'clock, in the town of
Chiari. At eleven at night people should think of sleeping,--not of
eating. Not so in Italy, where supper is still the meal of the day. An
Italian _diligence_ never breakfasts, unless a small cup of coffee,
hurriedly snatched while the horses are being put to, can be called
such. Sometimes it does not even dine; but it never omits to sup. The
supper chamber in Chiari was most sumptuously laid out,--vermicelli
soup, flesh, fowls, cheese, pastry, wine,--every viand, in short, that
could tempt the appetite. But at midnight I refused to be tempted,
though most of the other guests partook abundantly. I was much struck,
on leaving the town, with the massive architecture of the houses, the
strength of the gates, and other monuments of former greatness. Imagine
Edinburgh grown old and half-ruined, and you have a picture of the towns
of Italy, which was a land of elegant stone-built cities at a time when
the capitals of northern Europe were little better than collections of
wooden sheds half-buried in mire.
There followed a long ride. Sleep, benignant goddess, looked in upon us,
and helped to shorten the way. What surprised me not a little was, how
soundly my companions snoozed, considering how they had supped. The
stages passed slowly and wearily. At length there came a long, a very
long halt. I roused myself, and stepped out. I was in a spacious street,
with the cold biting wind blowing through it. The horses were away; the
postilions had disappeared; some of the passengers were perambulating
the pavement, and the rest were fast asleep in the _diligence_, which
stood on the causeway, like a stranded vessel on the beach. On
consulting my watch, I found it was three in the morning, and in answer
to my inquiries I was told that I was in Brescia,--a famous city; but I
should have preferred to visit it at a more seasonable hour. "The best
feelings," says the poet, "must have victual," and the most classic
towns must have sleep; so Brescia, forgetful that famous geographers who
lived well-nigh two thousand years ago had mentioned its name, and that
famous poets had sung its streams, and that it still contains
innumerable relics of its high antiquity, slept on much as a Scotch
village would have done at the same hour.
Time is of no value on the south of the Alps. This long halt at this
unseasonable hour was simply to set down an honest woman who had come
with us from Milan. She was as big well-nigh as the _diligence_ itself;
but what caused all our trouble was, not herself, but her trunk. It lay
at the bottom of an immense pile of baggage, which rose on the top of
the vehicle; and before it could be got at, every article had to be
taken down, and put on the pavement. Of course, the baggage had to be
put back, and the operation was gone through most deliberately and
leisurely. A full hour and a half was consumed in the process; and the
passengers, having no place to retire to, did their best to withstand
the chill night air by a quick march on the street.
So, these silent midnight streets I was treading were those of
Brescia,--Brescia, within whose walls had met the valour of the
mountains and the arts of the plain. I was now treading where pagan
temples had once stood, where Christian sanctuaries had next arisen, and
where there had been disciples not a few when the light of the
Reformation broke on northern Italy. I remembered, too, that this was
the city of "Arnold of Brescia," one of the reformers before the
Reformation. Arnold was a man of great learning, an intrepid champion
of the Church's purity, and the founder of the "Arnoldists," who
inherited the zeal and intrepidity of their master.
On the death of Innocent II., in the middle of the twelfth century,
Arnold, finding Rome much agitated from the contests between the Pope
and the Emperor, urged the Romans to throw off the yoke of a priest, and
strike for their independence. The Romans lacked spirit to do so; and
when, seven centuries afterwards, they came to make the attempt under
Pius IX., they failed. Arnold was taken and crucified, his body reduced
to ashes, and it was left to time, with its tragedies, to vindicate the
wisdom of his advice, and avenge his blood; but to this hour no such
opportunity of freeing themselves from thraldom as that which the
Brescians then missed has presented itself.
"Time flows,--nor winds,
Nor stagnates, nor precipitates his course;
But many a benefit borne upon his breast
For human-kind sinks out of sight, is gone,
No one knows how; nor seldom is put forth
An angry arm that snatches good away,
Never perhaps to re-appear."