America, on account (I casually heard) of sickness in his family. But I
obtained admission to his studio in Florence, and saw there the unfinished
group on which he is employed by order of Congress, to adorn one of the
yet empty niches in the Capitol. His execution is not yet sufficiently
advanced to be judged, but the design is happy and most expressive.
I saw something of three younger American Sculptors now studying and
working at Florence--HART of Kentucky, GALT of Virginia, and ROGERS of
New-York. (IVES is absent--at Rome, I believe, though I did not meet him
there.) I believe all are preparing to do credit to their country. HART
has been hindered by a loss of models at sea from proceeding with the
Statue of HENRY CLAY which he is commissioned by the Ladies of Virginia
to fashion and construct; but he is wisely devoting much of his time to
careful study and to the modeling of the Ideal before proceeding to commit
himself irrevocably by the great work which must fix his position among
Sculptors and make or mar his destiny. I have great confidence that what
he has already carefully and excellently done is but a foretaste of what
he is yet to achieve, and that his seeming hesitation will prove the
surest and truest efficiency.
I think there are but few American painters in Florence. I met none but
PAGE, who is fully employed and expects to spend some time in Italy. His
health is better than during his last year in New-York.
* * * * *
The strong necessity of moving on compelled me to tear myself away from
a pleasant party of Americans assembled at dinner in Florence last
evening to celebrate the 76th Anniversary of American Independence, and
take the Diligence at 8 o'clock for this place on the road to Venice,
though no other American nor even an Englishman came along. I have found
by experience that I cannot await the motions of others, nor can I find
a party ready to take post-horses and so travel at rational hours. The
Diligence or stage-coach traveling in Italy appears to be organized on
purpose to afford the least possible accommodation at the most
exorbitant cost. This city, for example, is 63 miles from Florence on
the way to Padua and Venice, and the Diligence leaves Florence for
Bologna at no other hour than 8 P. M. arriving here at 1 1/2 o'clock next
day; fare 40 to 45 Tuscan pauls or $4.45 to $5. But when you reach
Bologna at midday, after an all-night ride, you find no conveyance for
any point beyond this until ten o'clock next morning, so that you must
wait here twenty-one hours; and the Diligence might far better, so far
as the travelers' convenience and comfort is concerned, have remained in
Florence till an early hour in the morning, making the passage over the
Apennines by day and saving their nights' rest. Three or four travelers
may break over this absurd tyranny by taking post-horses; a single one
has no choice but to submit. And, having reached Bologna, I tried to
gain time, or at least avoid another night-ride, by taking a private
carriage (_vetturino_) this afternoon for Ferrara, thirty miles further
on, sleep there to-night, and catch a Diligence or Mail-Coach to-morrow
morning, so as to reach Padua in the evening: but no--there is no coach
out of Padua Venice-ward till 4 to-morrow afternoon, and I should gain
nothing but extra fatigue and expense by taking a carriage to Ferrara,
so I give it up. I must make most of the journey from Ferrara to Padua
by night, and yet take as much time as though I traveled only by
day,--for I am in Italy.
The valley of the Arno, especially for some miles on either side of
Florence, is among the most fertile portions of this prolific land, and
is laboriously though not efficiently cultivated. All the Grains grow
luxuriantly throughout Italy, though Indian Corn is so thickly planted
and so viciously cultivated that it has no chance to ear or fill well.
There is enough labor performed on the average to insure sixty bushels
of shelled grain to the acre, but the actual yield will hardly exceed
twenty-five. And I have not had the first morsel of food prepared from
this grain offered me since I reached the shores of Europe. Wheat is the
favorite grain here, and, requiring less depth of soil than Indian corn,
and having been much longer cultivated here, yields very fairly. Barley
and Oats are grown, but to a limited extent; of Rye, still less. The
Potato is planted very sparingly south of Piedmont, and not so commonly
there as in Savoy. The Vine is a universal favorite, and rarely out of
view; while it often seems to cover half the ground in sight. But it is
not grown here in close hills as in France and around Cincinnati, but
usually in rows some twenty or thirty feet apart, and trained on trees
kept down to a hight of eight to twelve feet. Around Rome, a species of
Cane is grown wherewith to support the vines after the manner of
bean-poles, which, after serving a year or two in this capacity, is used
for fuel, and new stalks of cane replace those which have been enfeebled
by exposure and decay. The plan of training the vines on dwarfed trees
(which seems to me by far the most natural) prevails here as well as on
the other side of the Apennines; so that the vine-stalks are large and
may be hundreds of years old, instead of being (apparently) fresh from
the ground every year or two. The space between the vine-rows is usually
sown with Wheat, but sometimes planted with Corn or laid down to Grass,
and a moderate crop realized.
Crossing the Apennines mainly in the night, they seemed a little higher
than the Green Mountains of Vermont, but lacking the thrifty forests of
which I apprehend the proximity of Railroads is about to despoil that
noble range. But the Apennines, though cultivated wherever they can be,
are far more precipitous and sterile than their American counterpart,
and seem to be in good degree composed of a whitish clay or marl which
every rain is washing away, rendering the Arno after a storm one of the
muddiest streams I ever saw. I presume, therefore, that the Apennines
are, as a whole, less lofty and difficult now than they were in the days
of Romulus, of Hannibal, or even of Constantine.
We crossed the summit about daylight, and began rapidly to descend,
following down the course of one of the streams which find the Adriatic
together near the mouth of the Po. At 5 A. M. we passed the boundary of
Tuscany and entered the Papal territory, so that our baggage had to be
all taken down and searched, and our Passports re-scrutinized--two
processes to which I am becoming more accustomed than any live eel ever
was to being skinned. The time consumed was but an hour and the
pecuniary swindle trifling. But though the hour was early and there were
few habitations in sight, there soon gathered around us a swarm of most
importunate beggars--brown, withered old women spinning on distaffs held
in the hand (a process I fancied the world had outgrown), and stopping
every moment to hold out a dirty claw, with a most disgusting grimace
and whine--"For the love of God, Signor"--with ditto old men, and
children of various sizes, the youngest who could walk seeming as apt at
beggary as their grandames who have followed it, "off and on," for
seventy or eighty years. If the ancient Romans had equaled their living
progeny in begging, they need not have dared and suffered so much to
achieve the mastery of the world--they might have begged it, and saved
an infinity of needless slaughter. These people have no proper pride, no
manly shame, because they have no hope. Untaught, unskilled in industry,
owning nothing, their government an absolute despotism, their labor only
required at certain seasons, and deemed amply rewarded with a York
shilling or eighteen pence per day, and themselves the virtual serfs of
great landholders who live in Rome or Bologna and whom they rarely or
never see--is it a wonder that they stoop to plead and whine for coppers
around every carriage that traverses their country? That they fare
miserably, their scanty rags and pinched faces sufficiently attest; that
they are indolent and improvident I can very well believe: for when were
uneducated, unskilled, hopeless vassals anything else? Italy, beautiful,
bounteous land! is everywhere haggard with want and wretchedness, but
these seem nowhere so general and chronic as in the Papal territories.
Every political division of Italy but this has at least some section of
Railroad in operation; Rome, though in the heart of all and the great
focus of attraction for travelers, has not the first mile and no
prospect of any, though it would seem a good speculation to build one if
it were to be used only in transporting hither the Foreign troops
absolutely essential here to keep the people quiet in their chains. "And
this, too, shall pass away!"
XXVIII.
EASTERN ITALY--THE PO.
VENICE, Tuesday, July 8.
I never saw and cannot hope to see hereafter a region more blessed by
Nature than the great plain of Upper Italy, whereof the Po is the
life-blood. It is very fertile and beautiful where I first traversed it
near its head, from the foot of Mount Cenis by Turin to Alessandria and
Novi, on my way down to Genoa; yet it is richer and lovelier still where
I have just recrossed it from the foot of the Apennines by Bologna,
Ferrara, Rovigo and Padua on my way from Florence to Venice. Irrigation,
which might easily be almost universal in Piedmont, seems there but an
occasional expedient, while here it is the breath of life. From Bologna
to Rovigo (and I presume on to Padua, though there night and drowsiness
prevented my observing clearly), the whole country seems completely
intersected by Canals constructed in the palmier days of Italy on
purpose to distribute the fertilizing waters of the Po and the Adige
over the entire face of the country and dispense them to every field and
meadow. The great highway generally runs along the bank of one of these
Canals, which are filled from the rivers when they have just been raised
by rains and are thus surcharged with fertilizing matter, and drawn off
from day to day thereafter to refresh and enrich the remarkably level
plain they traverse. Thus not only the plain and the glades lying nearer
the sources of the rivers, but the sterile, rugged crests of the Alps
and Apennines which enclose this great basin are made to contribute
evermore to the fruitfulness of its soil, so that Despotism, Ignorance,
Stolidity, Indolence and Unthrift of all kinds vainly strive to render
it other than the Garden of Europe. The banks of the Canals and the
sides of the highways are generally lined with trees, rows of which also
traverse many if not most of the fields, so that from certain points the
whole country seems one vast, low forest or "timbered opening" of
Poplar, Willow, Mulberry, Locust, &c. There are a few Oaks, more Elms,
and some species I did not recognize, and the Vine through all this
region is trained on dwarfed or shortened trees, sometimes along the
roadside, but oftener in rows through one-fourth of the fields, while in
a few instances it is allowed thus to obtain an altitude of thirty or
forty feet. Of Fruit, I have seen only the Apricot and the Cherry in
abundance, but there are some Pears, while the Orange and Lemon are very
plentiful in the towns, though I think they are generally brought from
Naples and the Mediterranean coast. But finer crops of Wheat, Grass,
Hemp, &c., can grow nowhere than throughout this country, while the
Indian Corn which is abundantly planted, would yield as amply if the
people knew how to cultivate it. Ohio has no better soil nor climate for
this grain. Of Potatoes or other edible roots I have seen very little.
Hemp is extensively cultivated, and grows most luxuriantly. Man is the
only product of this prolific land which seems stunted and shriveled.
Were Italy once more a Nation, under one wise and liberal government,
with a single tariff, coinage, mail-post, &c., a thorough system of
common school education, a small navy, but no passports, and a public
policy which looked to the fostering and diversifying of her industry,
she might easily sustain and enrich a population of sixty millions. As
it is, one-half of her twenty-five millions are in rags, and are pinched
by hunger, while inhabiting the best wheat country in Europe, from which
food is constantly and largely exported. There are at least one hundred
millions of dollars locked up in useless decorations of churches, and
not one common school-house from Savoy to Sicily. A little education,
after a fashion, is fitfully dispensed by certain religious and
charitable foundations, so that the child lucky enough to be an orphan
or illegitimate has a chance to be taught to read and write; but any
such thing as a practical recognition of the right to education, or as a
public and general provision for imparting it, is utterly unknown here.
Grand and beautiful structures are crowded in every city, and are
crumbling to dust on every side; a single township dotted at proper
intervals with eight or ten school-houses would be worth them all. With
infinite water power, cheaper labor, and cheaper food than almost any
other country in the civilized world, and millions of children at once
naked and idle because no one will employ them at even six-pence a day,
she has not one cotton or woolen factory that I have yet seen, and can
hardly have one at all, though her mountains afford vast and excellent
sheep-walks, and Naples can grow cotton if she will. England and Germany
manufacture nearly all the few fabrics of cotton or wool worn here,
because those who should lead, instruct, and employ this people, are
blind to their duty or recreant to its obligations. Italy, once the
light of the world, is dying of aristocratic torpor and popular
ignorance, whence come indolence, superstition, and wide-spread
demoralization and misery.
Bologna is a walled city of Seventy Thousand inhabitants, with about as
much trade and business of all kinds as an American village of ten to
twenty thousand people. I doubt that thirty persons per day are carried
into or brought out of it by all public conveyances whatever. It is well
built on narrow streets, like nearly all Italian cities, and manifests
considerable activity in the way of watching gates and _vise_ing
Passports. Though in the Papal territory, it is under Austrian
guardianship; an Austrian sentinel constantly paced the court-yard of
the "Hotel Brun" where I stopped. Though the second town in the Pope's
temporal dominions, strongly walled, it has no Military strength, being
commanded by a hill a short mile south of it--the last hill I remember
having seen till I reached Venice and looked across over the lagoons to
the Euganian hills on the main land to south-west. The most notable
thing I saw in Bologna was an awning of sheeting or calico spread over
the centre of the main street on a level with the roofs of the houses
for a distance of half a mile or so. I should distrust its standing a
strong gust, but if it would, the idea is worth borrowing.
After a night-ride over the Apennines from Florence, and a detention of
twenty-one hours at Bologna, I did hope that our next start would be
"for good"--that there would be no more halt till we reached Padua. But
I did not yet adequately appreciate Italian management. A Yankee
stage-coach running but once a day between two such cities as Bologna
and Ferrara would start at daylight and so connect at the latter place
as to set down its passengers beside the Railroad in Padua (86 to 90
miles of the best possible staging from Bologna) in the evening of the
same day. We left Bologna at 10 A. M., drove to Ferrara, arrived
there a little past 2; and then came a halt of _four hours_--till six
P. M. when the stage started for a night-trip to Padua--none
running during the day. But a Yankee stage would have one man for
manager, driver, &c., who would very likely be the owner also of the
horses and a partner in the line; we started from a grand office with
two book-keepers and a platoon of lackeys and baggage-smashers, with a
"guard" on the box, and two "postillions" riding respectively the nigh
horses of the two teams, there being always three horses at the pole and
sometimes three on the lead also, at others only two. We had half a
dozen passengers to Ferrara; for the rest of the way, I had this
extensive traveling establishment to myself. I do not think the average
number of passengers on a corresponding route in our country could be so
few as twenty. Such are some of the points of difference between America
and Italy.
We crossed the Po an hour after leaving Ferrara, and here passed out of
the Papal into the unequivocally Austrian territory--the Kingdom of
Venice and Lombardy. There were of course soldiers on each side (though
all of a piece), police officers, a Passport scrutiny and a fresh look
into my carpet-bags, mainly (I understand) for Tobacco! When any
tide-waiter finds more of that about me than the chronic ill breeding of
traveling smokers compels me to carry in my clothes, he is welcome to
confiscate all I possess. But they found nothing here to cavil at, and I
passed on.
There is no town where we crossed the Po, only a small village on either
side, and we followed down the left bank in a north-easterly direction
for several miles without seeing any considerable place. The river has
here, as through nearly its whole course, a strong, rapid current, and
was swollen and rendered turbid by recent rains. I judge that its
surface was decidedly above the level of the adjacent country, which is
protected from inundation (like the region of the Lower Mississippi) by
strong embankments or levees, at first natural doubtless--the product of
the successive overflows of centuries but subsequently strengthened and
perfected by human labor. The force of the current being strongest in
the center of the river, there is either stillness or an eddy near the
banks, so that the sediment with which the current is charged tends
constantly to deposition on or against the banks. When the river rises
so as to overflow those banks, the downward current is entirely unfelt
there and the deposition becomes still more rapid, the proportion of
earthy matter to that of water being much greater then than at other
times. Thus great, rapid rivers running through vast plains like these
gradually form levees in the course of many centuries, their channels
being defined and narrowed by their own deposits until the surface of
their waters, at least in times of flood, is raised above the level of
the surrounding country, often several feet. When the great swamps of
Louisiana shall have been drained and cultivated for ages, they too will
doubtless be fertilized and irrigated by canals, as the great plain
traversed by the Po now is. And here too, though the acres are generally
well cared for, I saw tracts of considerable extent which, from original
defect or unskillful management, stand below the water level of the
country, and so are given over to flags, bogs and miasma, when only a
foot or two of elevation is needed to render them salubrious and most
productive.
There are many more good dwellings on this plain than in the rural
portion of Lower Italy. These are generally built of brick, covered with
stucco or cement and white-washed, and, being nearly square in form, two
stories high, and without the long, sloping roofs common with us, are
rather symmetrical and graceful, in appearance. Their roofs are tiled
with a long, cylindrical brick, of which a first course is laid with the
hollow upward, and another over the joints of this with the hollow down,
conducting the water into the troughs made by the former and so off the
house. The peasants' cottages are thatched with flags or straw, and
often built of the latter material. Of barns there are relatively few,
most of the wheat being stacked when harvested, and trodden out by oxen
on floors under the open sky. I have not seen a good harness nor a
respectable ox-yoke in Italy, most of the oxen having yokes which a
Berkshire hog of any pretensions to good breeding would disdain to look
through. These yokes merely hold the meek animals together, having no
adaptation to draft, which is obtained by a cobbling filigree of ropes
around the head, bringing the heaviest of the work upon the horns! The
gear is a little better than this--as little as you please--while for
Carts and Waggons there are few school-boys of twelve to fifteen in
America who would not beat the average of all I have seen in Italy.
Their clumsiness and stupidity are so atrocious that the owners do well
in employing asses to draw them: no man of feeling or spirit could
endure the horse-laughs they must extort from any animal of tolerable
sagacity. To see a stout, two-handed man coming home with his
donkey-load of fuel from a distant shrubbery, half a day of the two
having been spent in getting as much as would make one good
kitchen-fire, is enough to try the patience of Job.
Although the Po must be navigable and has been navigated by steamboats
for many miles above this point, until obstructed by rapids, yet nothing
like a steamboat was visible. The only craft I saw attempting to stem
its current was a rude sort of ark, like a wider canal-boat, drawn by
three horses traveling on a wide, irregular tow-path along the levee or
bank. I presume this path does not extend many miles without meeting
impediments. Quite a number of ruinous old rookeries were anchored in
the river at intervals, usually three to six abreast, which I found to
be grist-mills, propelled by the strong current, and receiving their
grain from the shore and returning the flour by means of small boats.
Our ferry-boat was impelled by what is termed (I think) a "rope
ferry"--a series of ropes and boats made fast to some anchorage in the
stream above, and moving it vigorously and expeditiously from one bank
to the other by the mere force of the current. It is quite evident that
modern Italy did not originate this contrivance, nor even the idea that
a rapid river could be induced to move a large boat obliquely up its
stream as well as down it. I should say the Po is here rather more than
half a mile wide.
Three hours later, we crossed in like manner at Rovigo the Adige, a much
smaller but still a large river, about the size of the Connecticut at
Hartford. It has its source exclusively in the Tyrolean Alps, but for
the last hundred miles of its course runs parallel with the Po, through
the same plain, at a medium distance of about twenty miles, and has the
same general characteristics. It was quite high and muddy when we
crossed it.