FROM LEGHORN TO ROME.
First Sight of the Mediterranean--Embark at Leghorn--Elba--Italian
Coast--Civita Vecchia--Passport Offices--Aspect and Population of
Civita Vecchia--Papal Dungeons--Start for Rome--First View of the
Campagna--Its Desolation--Changed Times--The Postilion--The
Road--The Milestones--First Sight of the Eternal City--The
Gate--Desolate Look of the City by Night--The Pope's Custom-House
and Custom-House Officer.
I rose early next morning, and walked down to the harbour, to have my
first sight of the Mediterranean,--that renowned sea, on whose shores
the classic nations of antiquity dwelt, and art and letters arose,--on
whose waters the commerce of the ancient world was carried on, and the
battles of ancient times fought,--whose scenery had often inspired the
Greek and Latin poets,--and the grandeur of whose storms Inspiration
itself had celebrated. A stiff breeze was blowing, and a white curl
crested the wave, and freckled the deep blue of the waters. The
Mediterranean looked young and joyous in the morning sun, as when it
bore the fleets of Tyre, or heard the victorious shouts of Rome, albeit
it is now edged with mouldering cities, and listens only to the clank of
chains and the sigh of enslaved nations.
Early in the forenoon I waited on the Rev. Dr Stewart, the accomplished
minister of the Free Church in Leghorn. He opened freely to me his ample
stores of information on the subject of Tuscany, and the work in
progress in that country. We called afterwards on Mr Thomas Henderson, a
native of Scotland, but long settled in Leghorn as a merchant. This kind
and Christian man has since, alas! gone to his grave; but the future
historian of the Reformation in Italy will rank him with those pious
merchants in our own land who in former days consecrated their energy
and wealth to the work of furthering the Gospel, and of sheltering its
poor persecuted disciples. After sojourning so long among strange faces
and strange tongues, it was truly pleasant to meet two such
friends,--for friends I felt them to be, though never till that day had
I seen their faces.
At four of the afternoon I embarked in the steamer for Civita Vecchia,
the port of Rome. The vessel I did not like at first: it was dirty,
crowded, and, from some fault in the loading, lurched over while a stiff
breeze was rising. By and by we got properly under weigh, and swept
gallantly over the waves, along the coast, whose precipices and
headlands were getting indistinct in the fading twilight. I walked the
deck till past midnight, watching the moon as she rode high amid the
scud overhead, and the beacon-lights of the island of Elba, as they
gleamed full and bright astern. "What of the night?" I asked the
helmsman. "Buono notte, Signore," was the reply. I descended to my
berth.
I awoke at four of the morning, and found the steamer labouring in a
rolling sea. The sirocco was blowing, and a huge black wave rolled up
before it from the south. The distant coast stretched along on the left,
naked and iron-bound, with the high lands of Etruria rising behind it. I
wondered whether that coast had looked as unkindly to Aeneas, when first
he cast anchor on it after long ploughing the deep? We drew towards that
silent shore, where signs of man and his labours we could discover none;
and in an hour or so a small bay opened under the vessel's bows. The
swell was rising every moment, and the steamer made some magnificent
bounds in taking the entrance to the harbour. We entered the port of
Civita Vecchia at six, passing between the two round towers, with their
tiers of guns looking down upon us; and cast anchor in the ample basin,
protected by the lofty walls of the forts, over which the green-topped
waves occasionally looked as if enraged at missing their prey. Here we
were, but not a man of us could land till first our passports had been
submitted to the authorities on shore. The passengers, who were of all
classes, from the English nobleman with his equipage and horses, down to
the lazzaroni of Naples, crowded the deck promiscuously; and amongst
them I was happy to meet again my two Russian friends, with whom I had
shared the same bed-room among the Apennines. In about an hour and a
half we were boarded by a police-officer. Forming us into a row on deck,
and calling our names one by one, this functionary handed to each a
billet, permitting the holder to go ashore, on condition of an instant
compearance at the pontifical police-office. An examination of the
baggage followed. This done, I leaped into one of the small boats which
lay alongside the steamer, and was rowed to the quay at a few strokes,
but for which service I had to recompense the boatman with about as many
pauls. No sooner had I set foot on shore, than the everlasting passport
bother began. The "apostolic consul" at Florence had certified me as
"good for Rome;" the governor of Leghorn had but the day before done the
same; but here were I know not how many officials, all assuring me that
without their signatures in addition, Rome I should never see. First
came the English consul, who graciously gave me--what Lord Palmerston
had already given--permission to travel in the Papal States, charging me
at the same time five pauls. I could not help saying, that it was all
very well for nations that made no pretensions to liberty to sell to
their subjects the right of moving over the earth, but that it appeared
to me to be somewhat inconsistent in Britain to do so. The consul looked
as if he could not bring himself to believe that he had heard aright.
The number of my visa told me that I was the 4318th Englishman who had
entered the port of Civita Vecchia that season. I next took my way to
the French consulate in the town-hall. I found the ante-chamber filled
with Etrurian antiquities, in which the district adjoining Civita
Vecchia on the north is particularly rich; and the sight of these was
more than worth the moderate charge of one paul, which was made for my
visee. At length I got this business off my hand; and, having secured my
seat in the _diligence_ for Rome, I had leisure to take a stroll through
the town.
Civita Vecchia, though the port of Rome, and raised thus above its
original insignificance, is but a poor place. A black hill leans over it
on the north, and a naked beach, dreary and silent, runs off from it on
the south. A small square, overlooked by stately mansions, emblazoned
with the arms of the consuls of the various nations, forms its nucleus,
from which numerous narrow and wriggling streets run out, much like the
claws of a crab, from its round bulby body. It smells rankly of garlic
and other garbage, and would be much the better would the Mediterranean
give it a thorough cleansing once a-week. Its population is a motley and
worshipful assemblage of priests, monks, French soldiers, facini, and
beggars; and it would be hard to say which is the idlest, or which is
the dirtiest. They seemed to be gathered promiscuously into the
caffes,--priests, facini, and all,--rattling the dice and sipping
coffee. Every one you come in contact with has some pretext or other for
demanding a paulo of you. The Arabs of the desert are not more greedy of
_backsheish_. A gentleman, as well dressed as I was at least, made up to
me when I had taken my seat in the _diligence_, and, after talking five
minutes on indifferent subjects, ended by demanding a paulo. "For what?"
I asked, with some little surprise. "For entertaining Signore," he
replied. Yet why blame these poor people? What can they do but beg?
Trade, husbandry, books,--all have fled from that doomed shore.
There are three conspicuous buildings in Civita Vecchia. Two of these
are hotels; the third and largest is a prison. This is one of the State
prisons of the Pope. Rising story above story, and meeting the traveller
on the very threshold of the country, it thrusts somewhat too
prominently upon his notice the Pope's peculiar method of propagating
Christianity,--namely, by building dungeons and hiring French bayonets.
But to do the Pope justice, he is most unwearied in Christianizing his
subjects after his own fashion. His prisons are well-nigh as numerous as
his churches; and if the latter are but thinly attended, the former are
crowded. He is a man "instant in season and out of season," as a good
shepherd ought to be: he watches while others sleep; for it is at night
that his sbirri are most active, running about in the darkness, and
carrying tenderly to a safe fold those lambs which are in danger of
being devoured by the Mazzinian wolves, or ensnared by Bible heretics.
But to be serious,--when one finds as many prisons as churches in a
territory ruled over by a minister of the Gospel, he begins to feel that
there is something frightfully wrong somewhere.
When I passed the fortress of Civita Vecchia, many a noble heart lay
pining within its walls. No fewer, I was assured, than two thousand
Romans were there shut up as galley-slaves, their only crime being, that
they had sought to substitute a lay for a sacerdotal Government,--the
regime of constitutionalism for that of infallibility. In this prison
the renowned brigand Gasperoni, the uncle of the prime minister of the
Pope, Antonelli, had been confined; but, being too much in the way of
English travellers, he was removed farther inland. This man was wont to
complain loudly to those who visited him, of the cruel injustice which
the world had done his fair fame. "I have been held up," he was used to
say, "as a person who has murdered hundreds. It is a foul calumny. I
never cut more than thirty throats in my life." He had had, moreover, to
carry on his profession at a large outlay, having to pay the Pope's
police an hundred scudi a-month for information.
At last mid-day came, and off we started for Rome. We trundled down the
street at a tolerable pace; and one could not help feeling that every
revolution of the wheel brought him nearer the Eternal City. Suddenly
our course was brought to an unexpected stop. Another examination of
passports and baggage at the gate! not, I verily believe, in the hope of
finding contraband wares, but of having a pretext to exact a few more
pauls. The half-hour wore through, though wearily. The gate was flung
open; and there lay before us a blackened expanse, stretching far and
wide, dreary and death-like, terminated here by the sea, and there by
the horizon,--the Campagna di Roma. I turned for relief to the ocean,
all angry with tempest as it was; and felt that its struggling billows
were a more agreeable sight than the tomb-like stillness of the plain.
The sirocco was still blowing; and the largest breakers I ever saw were
tumbling on the beach. The only bright and pleasant thing in the
picture was the shining, sandy coast, with its margin of white foam. It
ran off in a noble crescent of fifty miles, and was seen in the far
distance terminating in the low sandy promontory of Fumacina, where the
Tiber falls into the sea. Alas! what vicissitudes had that coast been
witness to! There, where the idle wave was now rolling, rode in other
days the galleys of Rome; and there, where the stifling sirocco was
sweeping the herbless plain, rose the villas of her senators, amid the
bloom and fragrance of the orange and the olive. To that coast Caesar had
loved to come, to inhale its breezes, and to pass, in the society of his
select friends, those hours which ambition left unoccupied. But what a
change now! There was no sail on that sea; there was no dwelling on that
shore: the scene was lonely and desolate, as if keel had never ploughed
the one, nor human foot trodden the other.
I had seated myself in front of the vehicle, in the hope of catching the
first glimpse of St Peter's, as its dome should emerge above the plain;
but so wretched were our cattle, that though we started at mid-day, and
had only fifty miles of road, night fell long before we reached the
gates of the Eternal City. I saw the country well, however, so long as
daylight lasted. We kept in sight of the shore for twenty-five miles;
and glad I was of it; for the waves, with their crest of snow and voice
of thunder, seemed old friends, and I shuddered to think of plunging
into that black silent wilderness on the left. At the gate of Civita
Vecchia the desolation begins; and such desolation! I had often read
that the Campagna was desolate; I had come there expecting to find it
desolate; but when I saw that desolation I was confounded. I cannot
describe it; it must be seen to be conceived of. It is not that it is
silent;--the Highlands of Scotland are so. It is not that it is
barren;--the sands of Arabia are so. They are as they were and should
be. But not so the Campagna. There is something frightfully unnatural
about its desolation. A statue is as still, as silent, and as cold, as
the corpse; but then it never had life; and while you love to gaze on
the one, the other chills you to the heart. So is it with the Campagna.
While the sands of the desert exhilarate you, and the silence of the
Swiss or Scottish Highlands is felt to be sublime, the desolation of the
Campagna is felt to be unnatural: it overawes and terrifies you. Such a
void in the heart of Europe, and that, too, in a land which was the home
of art,--where war accumulated her spoils, and wealth her
treasures,--and which gave letters and laws to the surrounding
world,--is unspeakably confounding. One's faith is staggered in the past
history of the country. The first glance of the blackened bosom of the
Campagna makes one feel as if he had retrograded to the barbarous ages,
or had been carried thousands and thousands of miles from home, and set
down in a savage country, where the arts had not yet been invented, or
civilization dawned. Its surface is rough and uneven, as if it had been
tumbled about at some former period; it is dotted with wild bushes; and
here and there lonely mounds rise to diversify it. There are no houses
on it, save the post-houses, which are square, tower-like buildings,
having the stables below and the dwellings above. It has its patches of
grass, on which herds depasture, followed by men clothed in sheepskins
and goatskins, and looking as savage almost as the animals they tend. It
is, in short, a wilderness, and more frightful than the other
wildernesses of the earth, because the traveller feels that here there
is the hand of doom. The land lies scathed and blackened under the curse
of the Almighty. To Rome the words of the prophet are as applicable as
to Babylon, whom she resembled in sin, and with whom she is now joined
in punishment: "Because of the wrath of the Lord, it shall not be
inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate. Every one that goeth by
Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues. Cut off the
sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of
harvest. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of
water. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, shall be as when God
overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: it shall never be inhabited, neither dwelt
in from generation to generation; but wild beasts of the deserts shall
lie there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls
shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there."
About half-way to Rome the road parted company with the shore, and we
turned inland over the plain. The night came on with drifting showers,
which descended in torrents, lashing the naked plain, and battering our
vehicle with the force and noise of a waterspout. And though at length
the moon rose, and looked out at times from the cloud, she had nothing
to show us but houseless, treeless desolation; and, as if scared at what
she saw, she instantly hid her face in another mass of vapour. The
stages were short, and the halts long; for which the postilion had but
too good excuse, in the tangled web of thong and cord which formed the
harnessings of his horses. The harnessing of an Italian _diligence_ is a
mystery to all but an Italian postilion. The postilion, on arriving at a
stage, has to get down, shake himself, stride into the post to announce
his arrival, unharness his horses, lead them deliberately into the
stable, bring out the fresh ones, transfer the same harness to their
backs, put them to, gulp down his glass of brandy, address a few more
last observations to the loiterers, and, finally, light his cigar. He
then mounts with a flourish of his whip; but his wretched nags are not
able to proceed at a quicker trot than from three to four miles an
hour. He meets very probably a brother of the trade, who has been at
Rome, and is returning with his horses. He dismounts on the road,
inquires the news, and mounts again at his pleasure. In short, you are
completely in the postilion's power; and he is quite as much an autocrat
in his way as the Czar himself. He sings, it may be, but his song is the
very soul of melancholy,--
"Roma, Roma, Roma, non e piu,
Come prima era."
It needed but a glance at that pale moon, and drifting cloud, and naked
plain, to tell me that "Rome was not now as in her first age."
As the night grew late, the inquiries became more frequent, "Are we not
yet at Rome?" We were not yet at Rome; but we did all that men could
with four, and sometimes six, half-starved animals, bestrode by drowsy
postilions, to reach it. Now we were labouring in deep roads,--now
fording impetuous torrents,--and now jolting along on the hard pavement
of the Via Aurelia. By the glimpses of the moon we could see the
milestones by the roadside, with "ROME" upon them. Seldom has writing
thrilled me so. To find a name which fills history, and which for thirty
centuries has extorted the homage of the world, and still awes it,
written thus upon a common milestone, and standing there amid the
tempest on the roadside, had in it something of the sublime. Was it then
a reality, and not a dream? and should I in a very short time be in Rome
itself,--that city which had been the theatre of so many events of
world-wide influence, and which for so many ages had borne sway over all
the kings and kingdoms of the earth? Meanwhile the night became darker,
and the torrents of rain more frequent and more heavy.
Towards midnight we began to climb a low hill. We could see that there
was cultivation upon it, and, unless we were mistaken, a few villas. We
had passed its summit, and were already engaged in the descent, when a
terrific flash of lightning broke through the darkness, and tipped with
a fiery radiance every object around us. On the left was the old hoary
wall, with a whitish bulby mass hanging inside of it. On the right was a
steep bank, with a few straggling vines dripping wet. The road between,
on which we were winding downwards, was deep and worn. I had had my
first view of Rome; but in how strange a way! In a few minutes we were
standing at the gate.
Some little delay took place in opening it. The moments which one passes
on the threshold of Rome are moments he never can forget. While waiting
there till it should please the guard to open that old gate, the whole
history of the wonderful city on whose threshold I now stood seemed to
pass before my mind,--her kings, her consuls, her emperors,--her
legislators, her orators, her poets,--her popes,--all seemed to stalk
solemnly past, one after one. There was the great Romulus; there was the
proud Tarquin; there was Scylla with his laurel, and Livy with his page,
and Virgil with his lay, and Caesar with his diadem, and Brutus with his
dagger; there was the lordly Augustus, the cruel Nero, the beastly
Caligula, the warlike Trajan, the philosophic Antoninus, the stern
Hildebrand, the infamous Borgia, the terrible Innocent; and last of all,
and closing this long procession of shades, came one, with shuffling
gait and cringing figure, who is not yet a shade,--Pio Nono. The creak
of the old gate, as the sentinel undid its bolt and threw back its
ponderous doors, awoke me from my reverie.
We were stopped the moment we had entered the gate, and desired to
mount to the guard-room. In a small chamber on the city-wall, seated at
a table, on which a lamp was burning, we found a little tight-made
brusque French officer, busied in overhauling the passports. Declaring
himself satisfied after a slight survey, he hinted pretty plainly that a
few pauls would be acceptable. "Did you ever," whispered my Russian
friend, "see such a people?" We were remounting our vehicle, when a
soldier climbed up, with musket and fixed bayonet, and forced himself in
between my companion and myself, to see us all right to the
custom-house, and to take care that we dropped no counterband goods by
the way. Away we trundled; but the Campagna itself was not more solitary
than that rain-battered and half-flooded street. No ray streamed out
from window; no sound or voice of man broke the stillness; no one was
abroad; the wind moaned; and the big drops fell heavily upon the plashy
lava-paved causeway; but, with these exceptions, the silence was
unbroken; and, to add to the dreariness, the city was in well-nigh total
darkness.
I intently scrutinized the various objects, as the glare of our lamps
brought them successively into view. First there came a range of massive
columns, which stalked past us, wearing in the sombre night an air of
Egyptian grandeur. They came on and on, and I thought they should never
have passed. Little did I dream that this was the piazza of St Peter's,
and that the bulb I had seen by favour of the lightning was the dome of
that renowned edifice. Next we found ourselves in a street of low, mean,
mouldering houses; and in a few moments thereafter we were riding under
the walls of an immense fortress, which rose above us, till its
battlements were lost in the darkness. Then turning at right angles, we
crossed a long bridge, with shade-like statues looking down upon us from
either parapet, and a dark silent river flowing underneath. I could
guess what river that was. We then plunged into a labyrinth of streets
of a rather better description than the one already traversed, but
equally dreary and deserted. We kept winding and turning, till, as I
supposed, we had got to the heart of the city. In all that way we had
not met a human being, or seen aught from which we could infer that
there was a living creature in Rome. At last we found ourselves in a
small square,--the site of the Forum of Antoninus, though I knew it not
then,--in one of the sides of which was an iron gate, which opened to
receive us, _diligence_ and all, and which was instantly closed and
locked behind us; while two soldiers, with fixed bayonets, took their
stand as sentinels outside. It was a vast barn-looking, cavern-like
place, with mouldering Corinthian columns built into its massive wall,
and its roof hung so high as to be scarce visible in the darkness. It
had been a temple of Antoninus Pius, and was now converted into the
Pope's dogana or custom-house.
In a few minutes there entered a dapper, mild-faced, gentle-mannered,
stealthy-paced man, with a thick long cloak thrown over his shoulders,
to protect him from the night air. The Pope's dogana-master stood before
us. He paced to and fro in the most unconcerned way possible; and though
it was past midnight, and trunks and carpet-bags were all open and
ready, he seemed reluctant to begin the search. Nevertheless the baggage
was disappearing, and its owners departing at the iron gate,--a mystery
I could not solve. At length this most affable of dogana-masters drew up
to me, and in a quiet way, as if wishing to conceal the interest he felt
in me, he shook me warmly by the hand. I felt greatly obliged to him for
this welcome to Rome, but would have felt more so if, instead of this
salute, he had opened the gate and let me go. In about five minutes he
again came round to where I stood, and, grasping my hand a second time,
gave it a yet heartier squeeze. I was at a loss to explain this sudden
friendship; for I was pretty sure this exceedingly agreeable gentleman
had never seen me till that moment. How long this might have lasted I
know not, had not a person in the dogana, compassionating my dullness,
stepped up to me, and whispered into my ear to give the searcher a few
paulos. I was a little scandalized at this proposal to bribe his
Holiness's servant; but I could see no chance otherwise of having the
iron gate opened. Accordingly, I got ready the requisite douceur; and,
waiting his return, which soon happened, took care to drop the few pauls
into his palm at the next squeeze. On the instant the gate opened.
But alas! I was in a worse plight than ever. There was no commissario to
be had at that hour. I was in total darkness; not a door was open; nor
was there an individual in the street; and, recollecting the reputation
Rome had of late acquired for midnight assassinations, I began to grow a
little apprehensive. After wandering about for some time, I lighted on a
French sentry, who obligingly led me to a caffe hard by, which is kept
open all night. There I found a young German, an artist evidently, who,
having finished his coffee, politely volunteered to conduct me to the
Hotel d'Angleterre.