journal of the Reaectionist type is issued, because there is no demand
for one. The only division of political sentiment is that which
separates the more impetuous Progressives, or avowed Democrats, from the
larger number (apparently) who believe it wiser and safer to hold fast
by King and Constitution, especially since the Monarch is among the most
zealous and active in the cause of Progress and Reform. I think these
are right, though their opponents have ample justification in History,
even the most recent, for their distrust of the liberal professions and
seemings of Royalty. But were the King and all his House to abdicate and
leave the country to-morrow, I believe that would be a disastrous step
for Sardinia and for Human Liberty. For this kingdom is almost walled in
by enemies--Austria, Tuscany, Rome (alas!) and Naples--all intensely
hating it and seeking its downfall because of the Light and Hope which
its policy and its example are diffusing among the nations. With the
Pope it is directly at variance, on questions of contested jurisdiction
deemed vital alike by the Spiritual and the Temporal power; and repeated
efforts at adjustment have only resulted in repeated failures. This feud
is of itself a source of weakness, since ninety-nine in every hundred of
the population are at least nominally Roman Catholic, and the great mass
of the Peasantry intensely so, while the Priesthood naturally side with
the Ecclesiastical as against the Political contestant. And behind
Austria, notoriously hostile to the present policy of Sardinia, stands
the black, colossal shadow of the Autocrat, with no power east of the
Rhine and the Adriatic able or willing to resist him, and only waiting
for an excuse to pour his legions over the sunny plains of Southern
Europe. A Democratic Revolution in Sardinia, no matter how peacefully
effected, would inevitably, while France is crippled as at present, be
the signal (as with Naples and Spain successively some twenty-five to
thirty years ago) for overwhelming invasion in the interest and by the
forces of utter Despotism. Well-informed men believe that if the present
King were to abdicate to-morrow, he would immediately be chosen
President by an immense majority of the People.
Yet there is an earnest, outspoken Democratic party in Sardinia, and
this city is its focus. Genoa, in fact, has never been reconciled to the
decree which arbitrarily merged her political existence in that of the
present Kingdom. She fondly cherishes the recollection of her ancient
opulence, power and glory, and remembers that in her day of greatness
she was the center and soul of a Republic. Hence her Revolutionary
struggle in 1848; hence the activity and boldness of her Republican
propaganda now. To see Italy a Federal Republic, whereof Piedmont,
Savoy, Genoa and Sardinia should be separate and sovereign States, along
with Venice, Lombardy, Tuscany, Rome, Naples, &c., would best satisfy
her essential aspirations.
Yet Genoa is clearly benefited by her present political connection. From
her lovely bay, she looks out over the Mediterranean, Corsica, Sardinia,
Africa and the Levant, but has scarcely a glimpse of the continent of
Italy. No river bears its products to her expectant wharves; only the
most insignificant mill-streams brawl idly down to her harbor and the
adjacent shore; steep, naked mountains rise abruptly behind her,
scarcely allowing room for her lofty edifices and narrow streets; while
from only a few miles back the waters are hurrying to join the Po and be
borne away by that rapid, unnavigable stream to the furthest limit of
Italy. No commercial City was ever more hardly dealt with by Nature on
the land side than Genoa; no one ever stood more in need of intimate
political connections suggestive of and cemented by works of Internal
improvement. These she is now on the point of securing. A very tolerable
Railroad has already been constructed from Turin to Arquata, some
seventy miles on the way to Genoa, and the remaining thirty odd miles
are now under contract, to be completed in 1852. The portion
constructed was easy, while the residue is exceedingly difficult,
following the valleys of impetuous mountain torrents, which to-day
discharge each minute five gallons and to-morrow five thousand
hogsheads. These valleys (or rather clefts) are quite commonly so narrow
and their sides so steep and rock-bound that the Railroad track has to
be raised several feet on solid masonry to preserve it from being washed
away by the floods which follow every violent or protracted rain.
Expensive arches to admit the passage of the streams whenever crossed,
and of the roads, are also numerous, so that these thirty miles, in
spite of the abundance and cheapness of Labor here, will cost at least
Three Millions of Dollars. Yet the road will pay when in full operation,
and will prove a new day-spring of prosperity to Genoa. From Turin,
branches or feeders will run to the Alps in various directions,
benefiting that city considerably, but Genoa infinitely more, since
nine-tenths of the produce even of Piedmont will run past Turin, without
unloading, to find purchasers and exporters here. A coal-mine of promise
has just been discovered at Aosta, at the foot of the Alps, to which one
of these branches is to be constructed. Genoa is now jealous of Turin's
political ascendency, which is just as sensible as would be jealousy of
Albany on the part of New-York. Even already, though it has not come
near her, the Railroad is sensibly improving her trade and industry; and
whenever it shall have reached her wharves every mile added to its
extent or to that of any of its branches will add directly and largely
to the commerce and wealth of this city. In time this Road will connect
with those of France and Germany, by a tunnel through some one of the
Alps (Mount Cenis is now under consideration), but, even without that,
whenever it shall have reached the immediate base of the Alps on this
side and been responded to by similar extensions of the French and
Rhine-valley Railroads on the other, Genoa will supplant Marseilles
while continuing preferable to Trieste as the point of embarkation for
Cairo and Suez on the direct route from England and Paris for India,
China and Southern Asia generally, and can only be superseded in that
preeminence by a railroad running hence or from Lake Maggiore and Milan
direct to Naples or Salerno--a work of whose construction through so
many petty and benighted principalities there is no present probability.
Still, Sardinia has very much before her unaccomplished. She needs first
of all things an efficient and comprehensive system of Popular
Education. With the enormous superabundance of Sixty Thousand Priests
and other Ecclesiastics to a generally poor population of Four Millions,
she has not to-day five thousand teachers, good, bad and indifferent, of
elementary and secular knowledge. These black-coated gentry fairly
overshadow the land with their shovel hats, so that Corn has no fair
chance of sunshine. The Churches of this City alone must have cost Ten
Millions of Dollars--for you cannot walk a hundred steps without passing
one; and the wealth lavished in their construction and adornment exceeds
all belief--while all the common school-houses in Genoa would not bring
fifty thousand dollars. The best minds of the country are now pondering
the urgent necessity of speedily establishing a system of efficient
Popular Education.
But the Nation is deeply in debt, and laboring under heavy burdens. Its
Industry is inefficient, its Commerce meager, its Revenues slender,
while the imminent peril of Austrian invasion compels the keeping up of
an Army of Fifty Thousand effective men ready to take the field at a
moment's warming. But for the notorious and active hostility of
three-fourths of Continental Europe to the liberal policy of its rulers,
Sardinia might dispense with three-fourths of this force and save its
heavy cost for Education and Internal Improvement. As things are, women
must toil in the fields while Physical and Mental Improvement must wait
in order that the Nation may sustain in virtual idleness Fifty Thousand
Soldiers and Sixty Thousand Priests.
Yet mighty are the blessings of Freedom, even under the greatest
disadvantages. Turin is now increasing in Industry and Population with a
rapidity unknown to its former history. Looking only at the new
buildings just erected or now in progress, you might mistake it for an
American city. Unless checked by future wars, Turin will double its
population between 1850 and 1860. Genoa has but recently and partially
felt the new impulse, yet even here the march of improvement is visible.
Three years more of peace will witness the substitution for its long
period of stagnation and decay of an activity surpassed by that of no
city in Europe.
Turin is eligibly located and well built, most of the houses being
large, tall, and the walls of decided strength and thickness; but Genoa
is even superior in most respects if not in all. I never saw so many
churches so admirably constructed and so gorgeously, laboriously
ornamented as the half dozen I visited yesterday and this morning. My
guide says there are sixty churches in Genoa (a city about the size of
Boston, though with fewer houses and a much smaller area than Brooklyn),
and that they are nearly all built and adorned with similar if not equal
disregard of cost. A modest, graceful monument to Christopher Columbus,
the Genoese discoverer of America, was one of the first structures that
met my eye on entering the city, and an eating-house in the square of
the chief theater is styled "Cafe Restaurant a l'Immortel Chr. Columbo,"
or something very near that. I never before saw so many admirable
specimens of costly and graceful architecture as have arrested my
attention in wandering through the streets of Genoa. At least half the
houses were constructed for the private residences of "merchant princes"
in the palmy days of "Genoa the Superb," and their wealth would seem to
have been practically boundless. The "Hotel de Londres," in which I
write, was originally a convent, and no house in New-York can vie with
it in the massiveness of its walls, the hight of its ceilings, &c. My
bed-room, appropriately furnished, would shame almost any American
parlor or drawing-room. All around me testifies of the greatness that
has been; who shall say that it is not soon to return? The narrow
streets (very few of them passable by carriages) and uneven ground-plot
are the chief drawbacks on this magnificence; but the city rises so
regularly and gracefully from the harbor as to seem like a glorious
amphitheater, and the inequality, so wearisome to the legs, is a beauty
and a pleasure to the eye. It gives, besides, opportunity for the finest
Architectural triumphs. The Carignani Church is approached by a massive
bridge thrown across a ravine, from which you look down on the tops of
seven-story houses, and I walked this morning in a public garden which
looks down into a private one some sixty feet below it. The
perpendicular stone wall which separates these gardens is at least five
feet thick at the top, and must have cost an immense sum; but in fact
the whole city has been three times completely walled in, and the latest
and most extensive of these walls is still in good condition, and was
successfully defended by Massena in the siege of 1800, until Famine
compelled him to surrender. May that stand recorded to the end of human
history as the last siege of Genoa!
XXII.
[This letter, written and mailed at Leghorn on the 24th, has never come
to hand, having been entrusted to the tender mercies of the _French_
mail which was to leave Leghorn next day by steamer for Marseilles, and
thence be taken, via Paris, to Havre, and by steamship to this city. The
wretched old apology for a steamship whereon I had reached Leghorn (80
miles) in eighteen hours from Genoa may not yet have completed her
return passage between those ports, though I think she has; but whether
her officers know enough to receive and deliver a Mail-bag is
exceedingly doubtful. If they did, I see not how my letter can have been
stopped this side of Marseilles. I remember that it did particular
justice to French Government steamships in the Mediterranean and to
American Consuls in Italy, showing how our traveling countrymen are
crucified between the worthlessness of the former and the rapacity of
the latter. Our Consuls may well rejoice that said Letter XXII. comes up
missing, and perhaps the Tuscan Police has cause to join in their
exultation.
This letter also gave some account of Leghorn, a well-built modern city,
the only port of Tuscany, situated on a flat or marsh scarcely raised
above the surface of the Mediterranean, and containing some 80,000
inhabitants. It has few or no antiquities, and not much to attract a
traveler's attention.
Some thirty miles inland in a north-easterly direction, is _Pisa_, once
a very wealthy and powerful emporium of commerce, now a decaying inland
town of no political importance, with perhaps 30,000 inhabitants. It
lies on both sides of the Arno, several miles from the sea, and I
presume the river-bed has been considerably filled or choked up by
sediment and rains since the days of Pisa's glory and power. Her
wonderful Leaning Tower is worthy of all the fame it has acquired. It is
a beautiful structure, though owing its dignity, doubtless, to some
defect in its foundation or construction. The Cathedral of Pisa is a
beautiful edifice, most gorgeous in its adornments, and with by far the
finest galleries I ever saw. Near these two structures is an extensive
burial-place full of sculptures and inscriptions in memory of the dead,
some of them 2500 years old, and thence reaching down to the present
day. Had I not extended my trip to Rome, I should have brought home far
more vivid and lasting impressions of Pisa, which has nevertheless an
abiding niche in my memory.
The day before my visit was the anniversary of the Patron Saint of Pisa,
which is celebrated every fourth year with extraordinary pomp and
festivity. This time, I was informed, the fire-works exploded at the
public charge, in honor of this festival, cost over $100,000, though
Pisa _cannot afford_ to sustain Free Common Schools, or make any
provision for the Education of her Children. Of course, she can afford
to die, or is certain to do it, whether she can afford it or not. Pisa
is located on a beautiful and fertile plain, and is surrounded by
gardens, with fruit and ornamental trees; but much of the soil between
it and Leghorn is the property of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who keeps
it entirely in grass, affording subsistence to extensive and beautiful
herds of Cattle, whence he derives a large income, being the chief
milk-seller in his own dominions. So, at least, I was informed.]
XXIII.
FIRST DAY IN THE PAPAL STATES.
ROME, Thursday, June 26, 1851.
I left Leghorn night before last in the French steamer Languedoc, which
could not obtain passengers in America, but is accounted one of the best
boats on the Mediterranean. The fare to Civita Vecchia (125 miles) was
40 francs, but 4 added for dinner (without saying "By your leave") made
it $825. There were perhaps twenty-five passengers, mainly for Naples,
but eight or ten for Civita Vecchia and Rome, although it is everywhere
said that "Nobody goes to Rome at this season," meaning nobody that is
anybody--none who can afford to go when they would choose. The night was
fair; the sea calm; we left Leghorn at 6 (nominally 5) and reached
Civita Vecchia about 5 next morning; but were kept on board waiting the
pleasure of the Police until about 7, when we were graciously permitted
to land, our Passports having been previously sent on shore for
inspection. No steamboat in these waters is allowed to come alongside of
the wharf; so we paid a franc each for being rowed ashore; then as much
more to the porters who carried our baggage on their backs to the
custom-house, where a weary hour was spent in overhauling and sealing
it, so that it need not be overhauled again on entering the gate of
Rome. For this service a trifle only was exacted from each. Meantime a
"commissionaire" had gone after our Passports, for which we paid first
the charge of the Papal Police, which I think was about three francs;
then for the _vise_ of our several Consuls, we Americans a dollar each,
which (though but half what is charged by our Consuls at other Italian
ports) is more than is charged by those of any other nation. Then came
the charge of our "commissionaire" for his services. We took breakfast;
but that, though a severe, was not a protracted infliction; hired places
in the Diligence (13 francs in the _coupe_, 10 in the body of the
stage), and at half-past 10 were to have been on our way to Rome. But
the start was rather late, and on reaching the gates of that wretched
village, which seems to subsist mainly on such petty swindles as I have
hastily described, our Passports, which had been thrice scrutinized that
morning within sixty rods, had to run the gauntlet again. I do not
remember paying for this, but while detained by it the ostlers from the
stables of our Diligence were all upon us, clamoring for money. I think
they got little. But we changed horses thrice on the way to Rome, and
each postillion was down upon us for money, and out of all patience with
those passengers who attempted to put him off with copper.
Aside from those engaged in fleecing us as aforesaid, I saw but three
sorts of men in Civita Vecchia--or rather, men pursuing three several
avocations--those of Priests, Soldiers and Beggars. Some united two of
these callings. A number of brown, bare-headed, wretched-looking women
were washing clothes in the hot sun of the sea-side, but I saw no trace
of masculine industry other than what I have described. The place is
said to contain 7,000 inhabitants, but I think there is scarcely a
garden outside its walls.
Half the way thence to Rome, the road runs along the shore of the
Mediterranean, through a naturally fertile and beautiful champaign
country, once densely peopled and covered with elegant structures, the
homes of intelligence, refinement and luxury. Now there is not a garden,
scarcely a tree, and not above ten barns and thirty human habitations in
sight throughout the whole twenty-five miles. Such utter desolation and
waste, in a region so eligibly situated, can with difficulty be realized
without seeing it. I should say it can hardly here be unhealthy, with
the pure Mediterranean directly on one side, the rugged hills but two to
five miles distant on the other, and the plain between very much less
marshy than the corresponding district of New-Jersey stretching along
the coast from New-York to Perth Amboy. A few large herds of neat cattle
are fed on these plains, considerable grass is cut, and some summer
grain; but stables for post-horses at intervals of five or six miles,
with perhaps as many dilapidated stone dwellings and a few wretched
herdsmen's huts of straw or rubbish, are all the structures in sight,
save the bridges of the noble "Via Aurelia" which we traversed, the
ruins of some of the stately edifices once so abundant here, and the
mile-stones. There is not even one tavern of the half dozen pretenders
to the name between Civita Vecchia and Rome which would be considered
tolerable in the least civilized portion of Arkansas or Texas.
Half way to Rome, the road strikes off from the sea, and there is
henceforth more cultivation, more grain, better crops (though all this
land produces excellently both of Wheat and Barley, and of Indian Corn
also where the cultivation is not utterly suicidal), but still there are
very few houses and those generally poor, the wretchedest caricatures of
taverns on one of the great highways of the world, no gardens nor other
evidences of aspiration for comfort and natural beauty, few and ragged
trees, and the very few inhabitants are so squalid, so abject, so
beggarly, that it seems a pity they were not fewer. And this state
continues, except that the grain-crops grow larger and better, up to
within a mile or two of the gates of Rome, which thus seems another
Palmyra in the Desert, only that this is a desert of man's making. I
presume the twenty-five or thirty miles at this end is unhealthy, even
for natives, but it surely need not be so. All this Campagna, with the
more pestilent Pontine Marshes on the south, which are now scourging
Rome with their deadly malaria and threaten to render it ultimately
uninhabitable, were once salubrious and delightful, and might readily be
made so again. If they were in England, Old or New, near a city of the
size of this, they would be trenched, dyked, drained, and reconverted
into gardens, orchards and model-farms within two years, and covered
with dwellings, mansions, country-seats, and a busy, energetic, thrifty
population before 1860. A tenth part of the energy and devotedness
displayed in the attempts to wrest Jerusalem from the Infidels would
rescue Rome from a fate not less appalling.
We ought by contract to have arrived here at half past six last evening;
we actually reached the gates at half past eight or a little later.
There our Passports were taken from us, and carried into the proper
office; but word came back that all was not right; we must go in
personally. We did so, and found that what was wanted to make all right
was money. There was not the smallest pretext for this--no Barbary
pirate ever had less--as we were not to get our Passports, but must wait
their approval by a higher authority and then go and pay for it. We
submitted to the swindle, however, for we were tired, the hour late, we
had lodgings yet to seek, and the night-air here is said to be very
unwholesome for strangers. This difficulty obviated, another presented
itself. The Custom-House stood on the other side of the street, and word
came that we were wanted there also, though our slender carpet-bags had
been regularly searched and sealed by the Roman functionaries at Civita
Vecchia expressly to obviate any pretext for scrutiny or delay here. No
use--money. By this time, change and patience were getting scarce in our
company. We tried to get off cheap; but it wouldn't do. Finally, rather
than stay out till midnight in the malaria, I put down a
five-franc-piece, which was accepted and we were let go. Still for
form's sake, our baggage was fumbled over, but not opened, and one or
two more heads looked in at the window for "_qualche cosa_," but we gave
nothing, and soon got away.
We had paid thirteen francs each for a ride of fifty miles over a
capital road, where horses and feed are abundant, and must be cheap; but
now our postillion came down upon us for more money for taking us to a
hotel; and as we could do no better, we agreed to give him four francs
to set down four of us (all the Americans and English he had) at one
hotel. He drove by the Diligence Office, however, and there three or
four rough customers jumped unbidden on the vehicle, and, when we
reached our hotel, made themselves busy with our little luggage, which
we would have thanked them to let alone. Having obtained it, we settled
with the postillion, who grumbled and scolded though we paid him more
than his four francs. Then came the leader of our volunteer aids, to be
paid for taking down the luggage. I had not a penny of change left, but
others of our company scraped their pockets of a handful of coppers,
which the "_facchini_" rejected with scorn, throwing them after us up
stairs (I hope they did not pick them up afterwards), and I heard their
imprecations until I had reached my room, but a blessed ignorance of
Italian shielded me from any insult in the premises. Soon my two light
carpet-bags, which I was not allowed to carry, came up with a fresh
demand for porterage. "Don't you belong to the hotel?" "Yes." "Then
vanish instantly!" I shut the door in his face, and let him growl to his
heart's content; and thus closed my first day in the more especial
dominions of His Holiness Pius IX.
XXIV.
THE ETERNAL CITY.
ROME, Friday, June 27, 1851.