FROM VERONA TO VENICE.
Interior of Verona--End of World seemingly near in Italy--The Monks
and the Classics--A Cast-Iron Revolutionist--A Beautiful
Glimpse--Railway Carriages--Railway Company--Tyrolese Alps--Dante's
Patmos--Vicenza--Padua--The Lagunes--The Omnibus or
Gondola--Silence of City--Sail through the Canals--Charon and his
Boat--Piazza of Saint Mark.
The gates of Verona opened, and the enchantment was gone. He who would
carry away the idea of a magnificent city, which the exterior of Verona
suggests, must go round it, not through it. The first step within its
walls is like the stroke of an enchanter's wand. The villa-begemmed
city, with its ramparts and its cypress-trees, takes flight, and there
rises before the traveller an old ruinous town, with dirty streets and a
ragged and lazy population. It reminds one of what he meets in tales of
eastern romance, where young and beautiful princesses are all at once
transformed by malignant genuises into old and withered hags.
In truth, on entering an Italian town one feels as if the last trumpet
were about to sound. The world, and all that is in it, seems old--very
old. Man is old, his dwellings are old, his works are old, and the very
earth seems old. All seems to betoken that it is the last age, and that
the world is winding up its business, preparatory to the final closing
of the drama. Commerce, the arts, empire,--all have taken their
departure, and have left behind only the vestiges of their former
presence. The Italians, living in a land which is but a sort of
sepulchre, look as if they had voted that the world cannot outlast the
present century, and that it is but a waste of labour to rebuild
anything or repair anything. Accordingly, all is allowed to go to
decay,--roads, bridges, castles, palaces; and the only thing which is in
any degree cared for are their churches. Why make provision for
posterity, when there is to be none? Why erect new houses, when those
already built will last their time and the world's? Why repair their
mouldering dwellings, or renew the falling fences of their fields, or
replace their dying olives with young trees, or even patch their own
ragged garments? The crack of doom will soon be upon them, and all will
perish in the great conflagration. They account it the part of wisdom,
then, to pass the interval in the least fatiguing and most agreeable
manner possible. They sip their coffee, and take their stroll, and watch
the shadows as they fall eastward from their purple hills. Why should
they incur the toil of labouring or thinking in a world that is soon to
pass away, and which is as good as ended already?
Of Verona I can say but little. My stay there, which was not much over
the hour, afforded me no opportunity for observation. Its famous
Amphitheatre, coeval with the great Coliseum at Rome, and the best
preserved Roman Amphitheatre in the world, I had not time to visit. Its
numerous churches, with their frescoes and paintings, I less regret not
having seen. Its _Biblioteca Capitolare_, which is said to be an
unwrought quarry of historic and patristic lore, I should have liked to
visit. There, too, the monks of the middle ages were caught tripping.
"Sophocles or Tacitus," in the words of Gibbon, "had been compelled to
resign the parchment to missals, homilies, and the golden legend." The
"Institutes of Caius," which were the foundation of the Institutes of
Justinian, were discovered in this library palimpsested. A rumour had
been spread that the author of the Pandects had reduced the "Institutes
of Caius" to ashes, that posterity might not discover the source of his
own great work. Gibbon ventured to contradict the scandal, and to point
to the monks as the probable devastators. His sagacity was justified
when Niebuhr discovered in the Biblioteca Capitolare of Verona these
very Institutes beneath the homilies of St. Jerome. Verona yet retains
one grand feature untouched by decay or time,--the river Adige,--which,
passing underneath the walls, dashes through the city in a magnificent
torrent, spanned by several noble bridges of ancient architecture, and
turns in its course several large floating mills, which are anchored
across the stream. The market-place, a large square, was profusely
covered with the produce of the neighbouring plains. I purchased a roll
of bread and a magnificent cluster of grapes, and lunched in fine style.
At Verona the railway resumes, and runs all the way to Venice. What a
transition from the _diligence_--the lumbering, snail-paced
_diligence_--to the rail. It is like passing by a single leap from the
dark ages to modern times. Then only do you feel what you owe to Watt.
In my humble opinion, the Pope should have put the steam-engine into the
Index Expurgatorius. His priests in France have attended at the opening
of railways, and blessed the engines. What! bless the steam-engine!
Sprinkle holy water on the heads of Mazzini and Gavazzi. For what are
these engines, but so many cast-iron Mazzinis and Gavazzis. The Pope
should have anathematized the steam-engine. He should have cursed it
after the approved pontifical fashion, in standing and in running, in
watering and in coaling. He should have cursed it in the whole structure
of its machinery,--in its funnel, in its boiler, in its piston, in its
cranks, and in its stopcocks. I can see a hundred things which are sure
to be crushed beneath its ponderous wheels. I can see it tearing
ruthlessly onwards, and dashing through prejudices, opinions, usages,
and time-honoured and venerated institutions, and sweeping all away like
so many cobwebs. Was the Argus of the Vatican asleep when this wolf
broke into the fold? But _in_ he is, and the Pope's bulls will have
enough to do to drive him out. But more of this anon.
The station of the railway is on the east of the town, in a spot of
enchanting loveliness. It was the first and almost the only spot that
realized the Italy of my dreams. It was in a style of beauty such as I
had not before seen, and was perfect in its kind. The low lovely hills
were ranged in crescent form, and were as faultless as if Grace herself
had moulded them on her lathe. Their clothing was a deep rich purple.
White villas, like pearls, sparkled upon them; and they were dotted with
the cypress, which stood on their sides in silent, meditative, ethereal
grace. The scene possessed not the sublime grandeur of Switzerland, nor
the rugged picturesqueness of Scotland: its characteristic was the
finished, spiritualized, voluptuous beauty of Italy. But hark! the
railway-bell rings out its summons.
The carriages on the Verona and Venice Railway are not those
strong-looking, crib-like machines which we have in England, and which
seem built, as our jails and bridewells are, in anticipation that the
inmates will do their best to get out. They are roomy and elegant
saloons (though strong in their build), of about forty feet in length,
and may contain two hundred passengers a-piece. They are fitted up with
a tier of cushioned seats running round the carriage, and two sofa-seats
running lengthways in the middle. At each end is a door by which the
guard enters and departs, and passes along the whole train, as if it
were a suit of apartments. So far as I could make out, I was the only
_Englese_ in the carriage, which was completely filled with the citizens
and peasantry of the towns and rural districts which lay on our
route,--the mountaineer of the Tyrol, the native of the plain, the
inhabitant of the city of Verona, of Vicenza, of Venice. There was a
greater amount of talk, and of vehement and eloquent gesture, than would
have been seen in the same circumstances in England. The costume was
varied and picturesque, and so too, but in a less degree, the
countenance. There were in the carriage tall athletic forms, reared amid
the breezes and vines of the Tyrol; and there were noble faces,--faces
with rich complexions, and dark fiery eyes, which could gleam in love or
burn in battle, and which bore the still farther appendage of moustache
and beard, in which the wearer evidently took no little pride, and on
which he bestowed no little pains. The company had somewhat the air of a
masquerade. There was the Umbrian cloak, the cone-shaped beaver, the
vest with its party-coloured lacings. There were the long loose robe and
low-crowned hat of the priest, with its enormous brim, as if to shade
the workings of his face beneath. There was the brown cloak of the
friar; and there were hats and coats of the ordinary Frank fashion. The
Leghorn bonnet is there unknown, as almost all over the Continent,
unless among the young girls of Switzerland; and the head-gear of the
women mostly was a plain cotton napkin, folded on the brow and pinned
below the chin,--a custom positively ugly, which may become a mummy or a
shaven head, but not for those who have ringlets to show. Some with
better taste had discarded the napkin, and wore a smart cap. On the
persons of not a few of the females was displayed a considerable amount
of value, in the shape of gold chains, rings, and jewellery. This is an
indication, not of wealth, but of poverty and stagnant trade. It was a
custom much in use among oriental ladies before banks were established.
The plains eastward of Verona on the right were amazingly rich, and the
uplands and heights on the left were crowned with fine castles and
beautiful little temples. Yet the beauty and richness of the region
could not soothe Dante for his lost Florence. For here was his "Patmos,"
if we may venture on imagery borrowed from the history of a greater
seer; and here the visions of the Purgatorio had passed before his eye.
After a few hours' riding, the fine hills of the Tyrolese Alps came
quite up to us, disclosing, as they filed past, a continuous succession
of charming views. When the twilight began to gather, and they stood in
their rich drapery of purple shadows, their beauty became a thing
indescribable. We saw Vicenza, where, of all the spots in Italy, the
Reformation found the largest number of adherents, and where Palladio
arose in the sixteenth century, to arrest for a while, by his genius,
the decay of the architectural arts in Italy. We saw, too, the gray
Padua looking at us through the sombre shadows of its own and the day's
decline. We continued our course over the flat but rich country beyond;
and as night fell we reached the edge of the Lagunes.
I looked out into the watery waste with the aid of the faint light, but
I could see no city, and nothing whereon a city could stand. All was
sea; and it seemed idle to seek a city, or any habitation of man, in the
midst of these waters. But the engine with its great red eye could see
farther into the dark; and it dashed fearlessly forward, and entered on
the long bridge which I saw stretching on and away over the flood, till
its farther end, like that of the bridge which Mirza saw in vision, was
lost in a cloud. I could see, as we rode on, on the bosom of the flood
beneath us, twinkling lights, which were probably lighthouses, and black
dots, which we took for boats. After a five miles' run through scenery
of this novel character, the train stopped, and we found that we had
arrived, not in a cloud or in a quicksand, as there seemed some reason
to fear, but in a spacious and elegant station, brilliantly lighted with
gas, and reminding one, from its sudden apparition and its strange site,
of the fabled palace of the Sicilian Fairy Queen, only not built, like
hers, of sunshine and sea-mist. We were marched in file past, first the
tribunal of the searchers, and next the tribunal of the passport
officials; and then an Austrian gendarme opening to each, as he passed
this ordeal, the door of the station-house, I stepped out, to have my
first sight, as I hoped, of the Queen of the Adriatic.
I found myself in the midst of the sea, standing on a little platform of
land, with a cloudy mass floating before me, resembling, in the
uncertain light, the towers and domes of a spectral city. It was now for
the first time that I realized the peculiar position of Venice. I had
often read of the city whose streets were canals and whose chariots were
gondolas; but I had failed to lay hold of it as a reality, and had
unconsciously placed Venice in the region of fable. There was no missing
the fact now. I was hemmed in on all sides by the ocean, and could not
move a step without the certainty of being drowned. What was I to do? In
answer to my inquiries, I was told that I must proceed to my hotel in
an omnibus. This sounded of the earth, and I looked eagerly round to see
the desired vehicle; but horses, carriage, wheels, I could see none. I
could no more conceive of an omnibus that could swim on the sea, than
the Venetians could of a gondola that could move on the dry land. I was
shown a large gondola, to which the name of omnibus was given, which lay
at the bottom of the stairs waiting for passengers. I descended into it,
and was followed by some thirty more. We were men of various nations and
various tongues, and we took our seats in silence. We pushed off, and
were soon gliding along on the Grand Canal. Not a word was spoken.
Although we had been a storming party sent to surprise an enemy's fort
by night, we could not have conducted our proceedings in profounder
quiet. There reigned as unbroken a stillness around us, as if, instead
of the midst of a city, we had been in the solitude of the high seas. No
foot-fall re-echoed through that strange abode. Sound of chariot-wheel
there was none. Nothing was audible but the soft dip of the oar, and the
startled shout of an occasional gondolier, who feared, perhaps, that our
heavier craft might send his slim skiff to the bottom. In about a
quarter of an hour we turned out of the Grand Canal, and began threading
our way amid those innumerable narrow channels which traverse Venice in
all directions. Then it was that the dismal silence of the city fell
upon my heart. The canals we were now navigating were not over three
yards in width. They were long and gloomy; and tall, massive palaces,
sombre and spectral in the gloom, rose out of the sea on either hand.
There were columns at their entrances, with occasional pieces of
statuary, for which time had woven a garland of weeds. Their lower
windows were heavily grated; their marble steps were laved by the idle
tide; and their warehouse doors, through which had passed, in their
time, the merchandise of every clime, had long been unopened, and were
rotting from age. As we pursued our way, we passed under low-browed
arches, from which uncouth faces, cut in the stone, looked down upon us,
and grinned our welcome. The voice of man, the light of a candle, the
sound of a millstone, was not there. It seemed a city of the dead. The
inhabitants had lived and died ages ago, and had left their palaces to
be tenanted by the mermaids and spirits of the deep, for other occupants
I could see none. Spectral fancies began to haunt my imagination. I
conceived of the canal we were traversing as the Styx, our gondola as
the boat of Charon, and ourselves as a company of ghosts, who had passed
from earth, and were now on our silent way to the inexorable bar of
Rhadamanthus. A more spectral procession we could not have made, with
our spectral boat gliding noiselessly through the water, with its
spectral steersman, and its crowd of spectral passengers, though my
fancy, instead of being a fancy, had been a reality. All things around
me were sombre, shadowy, silent, as Hades itself.
Suddenly our gondola made a rapid sweep round a tall corner. Then it was
that the Queen of the Adriatic, in all her glory, burst upon us,--
"Looking a sea Cybele, fresh from ocean,
Rising with her tiara of proud towers."
We were flung right in front of the great square of St. Mark. It was
like the instantaneous raising of the curtain from some glorious vision,
or like the sudden parting of the clouds around Mont Blanc; or, if I may
use such a simile, like the unfolding of the gates of a better world to
the spirit, after passing through the shadows of the tomb. The spacious
piazza, bounded on all sides with noble structures in every style of
architecture, reflected the splendour of a thousand lamps. There was
the palace of the Doge, which I knew not as yet; and there, on its lofty
column, was the winged lion of St Mark, which it was impossible not to
know; and, crowding the piazza, and walking to and fro on its marble
floor, was a countless multitude of men in all the costumes of the
world. With the deep hum of voices was softly blended the sound of the
Italian lute. A few strokes of the oar brought us to the Hotel dell'
Europa. I made a spring from the gondola, and alighted on the steps of
the hotel.