fearful extent, the Italian People. Those who would rather beg, or
extort, or pander to others' vices, than honestly work for a living,
will never do anything for Freedom; and such are deplorably abundant in
Italy. Then, like most nations debased by ages of Slavery, these people
have little faith in each other. The proverb that "No Italian has two
friends" is of Italian origin. Every one fears that his confederate may
prove a traitor, and if one is heard openly cursing the Government as
oppressive and intolerable in a cafe or other public resort, though the
sentiment is heartily responded to, the utterer is suspected and avoided
as a Police stool-pigeon and spy. Such mutual distrust necessarily
creates or accompanies a lack of moral courage. There are brave and
noble Italians, but the majority are neither brave nor noble. There were
gallant spirits who joyfully poured out their blood for Freedom in
1848-9, but nine-tenths of those who wished well to the Liberal cause
took precious good care to keep their carcases out of the reach of
Austrian or French bullets. Even in Rome, where, next to Venice, the
most creditable resistance was made to Despotism, the greater part of
the actual fighting was done by Italians indeed, but refugees from
Lombardy, Tuscany and other parts of Italy. Had the Romans who heartily
desired the maintenance of the Republic shown their faith by their
works, Naples would have been promptly revolutionized and the French
driven back to their ships. On this point, I have the testimony of
eye-witnesses of diverse sentiments and of unimpeachable character. Rome
is heartily Republican to-day; but I doubt whether three effective
regiments could be raised from her large native population to fight a
single fair battle which was to decide the fate of Italy. So with the
whole country except Piedmont, and perhaps Genoa and Venice. I wish the
fact were otherwise; but there can be no use in disguising or
mis-stating it. Italy is not merely enslaved but debased, and not till
after years of Freedom will the mass of her people evince consistently
the spirit or the bearing of Freemen. She must be freed through the
progress of Liberal ideas in France and Germany--not by her own inherent
energies. Not till her masses have learned to look more coolly down the
throats of loaded and hostile cannon in fair daylight and be a little
less handy with their knives in the dark, can they be relied on to do
anything for the general cause of Freedom.
THE AUSTRIANS.
I have not been able to dislike the Austrians personally. Their simple
presence in Italy is a grievous wrong and mischief, since, so long as
they hold the Italians in subjection, the latter can hardly begin the
education which is to fit them for Freedom. Yet it is none the less true
that the portion of Italy unequivocally Austrian is better governed and
enjoys, not more Liberty, for there is none in either, but a milder form
of Slavery, than that which prevails in Naples, Rome, Tuscany, and the
paltrier native despotisms. I can now understand, though I by no means
concur in, the wish of a _quasi_ Liberal friend who prays that Austria
may just take possession of the whole Peninsula, and abolish the dozen
diverse Tariffs, Coinages, Mails, Armies, Courts, &c. &c., which now
scourge this natural Paradise. He thinks that such an absorption only
can prepare Italy for Liberty and true Unity; I, on the contrary, fear
that it would fix her in a more hopeless Slavery. Yet it certainly would
render the country more agreeable to strangers, whether sojourners or
mere travelers.
The Austrian soldiers, regarded as mere fighting machines, are certainly
well got up. They are palpably the superiors, moral and physical, of the
French who garrison Rome, and they are less heartily detested by the
People whom they are here to hold in subjection. Their discipline is
admirable, but their natural disposition is likewise quiet and
inoffensive. I have not heard of a case of any one being personally
insulted by an Austrian since I have been in Italy.--Knowing themselves
to be intensely disliked in Italy and yet its uncontrolled masters, it
would seem but natural that they should evince something of bravado and
haughtiness, but I have observed or heard of nothing of the kind. In
fact, the bearing of the Austrians, whether officers or soldiers, has
seemed to evince a quiet consciousness of strength, and to say, in the
least offensive manner possible--"We are masters here by virtue of our
good swords--if you dispute the right, look well that you have a sharper
weapon and a vigorous arm to wield it!" To a rule which thus answers all
remonstrances against its existence by a quiet telling off of its ranks
and a faultless marching of its determined columns, what further
argument can be opposed but that of bayonet to bayonet? I really cannot
see how the despot-governed, Press-shackled, uneducated Nations are ever
to be liberated under the guidance of Peace Societies and their World's
Conventions; and, horrible as all War is and ever must be, I deem a few
battles a lesser evil than the perpetuity of such mental and physical
bondage as is now endured by Twenty Millions of Italians. When the Peace
Society shall have persuaded the Emperor Nicholas or Francis-Joseph to
disband his armies and rely for the support of his government on its
intrinsic justice and inherent moral force, I shall be ready to enter
its ranks; but while Despotism, Fraud and Wrong are triumphantly upheld
by Force, I do not see how Freedom, Justice and Progress can safely
disclaim and repudiate the only weapons that tyrants fear--the only
arguments they regard.
LEAVING ITALY.
I have not been long in Italy, yet I have gone over a good share of its
surface, and seen nearly all that I much desired to see, except Naples
and its vicinity, with the Papal territory on the Perugia route from
Rome to Florence. I should have liked more time in Genoa, Rome, Florence
and Venice; but sight-seeing was never a passion with me, and I soon
tire of wandering from ruin to ruin, church to church, and gallery to
gallery. Yet when I stop gazing the next impulse is to move on; for if I
have time to rest anywhere, why not at home? Hotel life among total
strangers was never agreeable to me--(was it to any one?)--and I do not
like that of Italy so well as I at first thought I should. The
attendance is well enough, and as to food, I make a point of never
quarreling with that I have; though meals far simpler than those served
at the regular hotel dinners here would suit me much better. The charges
in general are quite reasonable, though I have paid one or two absurd
bills. It was at first right pleasant to lodge in what was once a
palace, and I still deem a large, high, airy sleeping-room, such as we
seldom have in American hotels, but are common here, a genuine luxury.
But when with such rooms you have doors that don't shut so as to stay,
windows that won't open, locks that won't hold, bolts that won't slide
and fleas that won't--ah! _won't_ they bite!--the case is somewhat
altered. I should not like to end my days in Italy.
As to the People, if I shall seem to have spoken of them disparagingly,
it has not been unkindly. I cherish an earnest desire for their
well-being. They do not need flattery, and do not, as a body, deserve
praise. Of what are sometimes called the "better classes" (though I
believe they are here _no_ better), I have seen little, and have not
spoken specially. Of the great majority who, here, as everywhere, must
exert themselves to live, whether by working, or begging, or petty
swindling, I have seen something, and of these certain leading
characteristics are quite unmistakable. An Italian Picture-Gallery seems
to me a pretty fair type of the Italian mind and character. The habitual
commingling of the awful with the paltry--the sacred and the
sensual--Madonna and Circe--Christ on the Cross and Venus in the
Bath--which is exhibited in all the Italian galleries, seems an
expression of the National genius. Am I wrong in the feeling that the
perpetual (and often execrable) representation of such awful scenes as
the Crucifixion is calculated first to shock but ultimately to weaken
the religious sentiment? Of the hundreds of pictures of the infant
Jesus I have seen in Italy, there are not five which did not strike me
as utterly unworthy of the subject, allowing that it ought to be
represented at all. "Men of Athens!" said the straight-forward Paul, "I
perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious." I think the
Italians, quite apart from what is essential to their creed, have this
very failing, and that it exerts a debilitating influence on their
National character. They need to be cured of it, as well as of the vices
I have already indicated, in order that their magnificent country may
resume its proper place among great and powerful Nations. I trust I am
not warring on the faith of their Church, when I urge that "To do
justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than
sacrifice"--that no man can be truly devout who is not strictly upright
and manly--and that one living purpose of diffusive, practical
well-doing, is more precious in the sight of Heaven, than the bones of
all the dead Saints in Christendom.
Farewell, trampled, soul-crushed Italy!
XXXI.
SWITZERLAND.
LUCERNE, July 12, 1851.
I left Milan at 5 o'clock, on the morning of the 10th, via Railroad to
Como, at the foot of the Lake of like name, which we reached in an hour
and a half, thence taking the Swiss Government Diligence for this place,
via the pass of St. Gothard. Even before reaching Como (only some twenty
miles from Milan), the spurs of the Alps had begun to gather around us,
and the little Lake itself is completely embosomed by them. Barely
skirting its southern border, we crossed the Swiss frontier and bade
adieu to the Passport swindle for a season, crossed a ridge into the
valley of Lake Lugano, which we skirted for two-thirds its length,
crossing it by a fine stone bridge near its center. (All the Swiss lakes
I have seen are very narrow for a good part of their length, of a
greenish blue color, derived from the mountain snows, very irregular in
their form, being shut in, narrowed and distorted by the bold cliffs
which crowd them on one side or on both, often reducing them to a
crooked strait, resembling the passage of the Highlands by the Hudson.)
Threading the narrow streets of the pleasant village of Lugano, we
struck boldly up the hill to the east, and over it into the valley of
the little river Ticino, which we reached at Bellinzona, a smart town of
some five to ten thousand inhabitants, and followed the river thence to
its source in the eternal snows of Mount St. Gothard. All this is, I
believe, in the Canton of Ticino, in which Italian is the common
language, and of which Bellinzona is the chief town.
Although in Switzerland, shut in by steep mountains, often snow-crowned,
which leave it an average width of less than half a mile, this valley is
Italian in many of its natural characteristics. For two-thirds of its
length, Wheat, Indian Corn and the Vine are the chief objects of
attention, and every little patch of level ground, save the rocky bed of
the impetuous mountain torrent, is laboriously, carefully cultivated.
Such mere scraps of earth do not admit of efficient husbandry, but are
made to produce liberally by dint of patient effort. I should judge that
a peck of corn is about the average product of a day's work through all
this region. There is some pasturage, mainly on the less abrupt
declivities far up the mountains, but not one acre in fifty of the
Canton yields aught but it may be a little fuel for the sustenance of
man. Nature is here a rugged mother, exacting incessant toil of her
children as the price of the most frugal subsistence; but under such
skies, in the presence of so much magnificence, and in a land of
equality and freedom, mere life is _worth_ working for, and the
condition is accepted with a hearty alacrity. Men and women work
together, and almost equally, in the fields; and here, where the
necessity is so palpably of Nature's creation, not Man's, the spectacle
is far less revolting than on the fertile plains of Piedmont or
Lombardy. The little patch of Wheat is so carefully reaped that scarcely
a grain is left, and children bear the sheaves on their backs to the
allotted shelter, while mothers and maidens are digging up the soil with
the spade, and often pulling up the stubble with their hands,
preparatory to another crop. Switzerland could not afford to be a
Kingdom,--the expense of a Court and Royal Family would famish half her
people. Yet everywhere are the signs of frugal thrift and homely
content. I met only two beggars in that long day's ride through sterile
Switzerland, while in a similar ride through the fertile plains of
Italy I should have encountered hundreds, though there each day's labor
produces as much as three days' do here. If the Swiss only _could_ live
at home, by the utmost industry and economy, I think they would very
seldom be found elsewhere; but in truth the land has long been peopled
to the extent of its capacity for subsisting, and the steady increase
which their pure morals and simple habits ensure must drive off
thousands in search of the bread of honest toil. Hence their presence
elsewhere, in spite of their passionate attachment to their free native
hills.
Most of the dwellings through all this region are built of stone--those
of the poor very rudely, of the roughest boulders, commonly laid up with
little or no mortar. The roofs are often of split stone. The houses of
the more fortunate class are generally of hewn or at least tolerably
square-edged stone, laid up in mortar, often plastered and whitened on
the outside, so as to present a very neat appearance. Barns are few, and
generally of stone also. The Vine is quite extensively cultivated, and
often trained on a rude frame-work of stakes and poles, so as completely
to cover the ground and forbid all other cultivation. Elsewhere it is
trained to stakes--rarely to dwarf trees as in Italy. The Mulberry holds
its ground for two-thirds of the way up the valley, giving out a little
after the Vine and before Indian Corn does so. Wheat gives place to Rye
about the same time, and the Potato, at first comparatively rare,
becomes universal. As the Mulberry gives out the Chestnut comes in, and
flourishes nobly for some ten or twenty miles about midway from
Bellinzona to Airolo. I suspect, from the evident care taken of it, that
its product is considerably relied on for food. Finally, as we gradually
ascend, this also disappears, leaving Rye and the Potato to struggle a
while longer, until at Airolo, at the foot of St. Gothard, where we
stopped at 10 o'clock for the night, though the valley forks and is
consequently of some width, there remain only a few slender
potato-stalks, in shivering expectation of untimely frost, a patch or
two of headless oats, with grass on the slopes, still tender and green
from the lately sheltering snows, and a dwarfish hemlock clinging to the
steep acclivities and hiding from the fierce winds in the deep ravines
which run up the mountains. Snow is in sight on every side, and seems
but a mile or so distant. Yet here are two petty villages and thirty or
forty scattered dwellings, whose inhabitants keep as many small cows and
goats as they can find grass for, and for the rest must live mainly by
serving in the hotels, or as postillions, road-makers, &c. Yet no hand
was held out to me in beggary at or around Airolo.
ST. GOTHARD.
We did not start till after 9 next morning, and meantime some more
Diligences had come up, so that we formed a procession of one large and
heavy, followed by three smaller and more fit carriages, when we moved
out of the little village, and, leaving the larger branch of our creek,
now a scanty mill-stream at best, to bend away to the left, we followed
the smaller and charged boldly up the mountain. The ascent is of course
made by zig-zags, no other mode being practicable for carriages, so
that, when we had traveled three toilsome miles, Airolo still lay in
sight, hardly a mile below us. I judge the whole ascent, which with a
light carriage and three hard-driven horses occupied two hours and a
half, was about eight miles, though a straight line might have taken us
to the summit in three miles. The rise in this distance must have been
near five thousand feet.
For a time, the Hemlocks held on, but at length they gave up, before we
reached any snow, and only a little weak young Grass,--nourished rather
by the perpetual mists or rains than by the cold, sour earth which
clung to the less precipitous rocks,--remained to keep us company. Soon
the snow began to appear beside us, at first timidly, on the north side
of cliffs, and in deep chasms, where it was doubtless drifted to the
depth of thirty feet during the Winter, and has been gradually thawing
out since May. At length it stood forth unabashed beside our road, often
a solid mass six or seven feet thick, on either side of the narrow pass
which had been cut and worn through it for and by the passage of
travelers. Meantime, the drizzling rain, which had commenced soon after
we started, had changed to a spitting, watery sleet, and at length to
snow, a little before we reached the summit of the pass, where we found
a young Nova Zembla. An extensive cloud-manufactory was in full blast
all around us, shutting out from view even the nearest cliffs, while the
snow and wind--I being on the outside and somewhat wet already--made our
short halt there anything but comfortable. The ground was covered with
snow to an average depth of two or three feet; the brooks ran over beds
of ice and under large heaps of drifted and frozen snow, and all was
sullen and cheerless. Here were the sources (in part) of the Po and of
the Rhine, but I was rather in haste to bid the former good-bye.
We reduced our three-horse establishment to two, and began to descend
the Rhineward zig-zags at a rattling pace, our driver (and all the
drivers) hurrying all the way. We reached the first village (where there
was considerable Grass again, and some Hemlock, but scarcely any
attempts at cultivation), in fifty minutes, and I think the distance was
nearly five miles. "Jehu, the son of Nimshi," could not have done the
distance in five minutes less.
We changed horses and drivers at this village, but proceeded at a
similar pace down through the most hideous chasm for the next two or
three miles that I ever saw. I doubt whether a night-mare ever beat it.
The descent of the stream must have been fully 1,500 feet to the mile
for a good part of this distance, while the mountains rose naked and
almost perpendicular on each side from its very bed to hights of one to
two thousand feet, without a shrub, and hardly a resting-place even for
snow. Down this chasm our road wound, first on one side of the rivulet,
then on the other, crossing by narrow stone bridges, often at the
sharpest angle with the road, making zig-zags wherever space could be
found or made for them, now passing through a tunnel cut through the
solid rock, and then under a long archway built over it to protect it
from avalanches at the crossing of a raving cataract down the mountain
side. And still the staving pace at which we started was kept up by
those on the lead, and imitated by the boy driving our carriage, which
was hindmost of all. I was just thinking that, though every one should
know his own business best, yet if _I_ were to drive down a steep
mountain in that way I should expect to break my neck, and suspect I
deserved it, when, as we turned a sharp zig-zag on a steep grade at a
stiff trot, our carriage tilted, and over she went in a twinkling.
Our horses behaved admirably, which in an upset is always half the
battle. Had they started, the Diligence managers could only have
rendered a Flemish account of _that_ load. As it was, they stopped, and
the driver, barely scratched, had them in hand in a minute.
I was on the box-seat with him, and fell under him, catching a bad
sprain of the left wrist, on which I came down, which disables that hand
for a few days--nothing broken and no great harm done--only a few
liberal rents and trifling bruises. But I should judge that our heads
lay about three feet from the side of the road, which was a precipice of
not more than twenty feet, but the rocks below looked particularly
jagged and uninviting.
Our four inside passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the
concussion, but soon began to emerge _seriatim_ from the side door
which in the fall came uppermost--only one of them much hurt, and he by
a bruise or gash on the head nowise dangerous. Each, as his or her head
protruded through the aperture, began to "let in" on the driver, whose
real fault was that of following bad examples. I was a little riled at
first myself, but the second and last lady who came out put me in
excellent humor. She was not hurt, but had her new silk umbrella broken
square in two, and she flashed the pieces before the delinquent's eyes
and reeled off the High Dutch to him with vehement volubility. I wished
I could have understood her more precisely. Though not more than
eighteen, she developed a tongue that would have done credit to forty.
The drivers ahead stopped and came back, helped right the stage, and
each took a shy at the unlucky charioteer, though in fact they were as
much in fault as he, only more fortunate. I suspected before that this
trotting down zig-zags was not the thing, and now I know it, and shall
remember it, at least for one week. And I have given this tedious detail
to urge and embolden others to remonstrate against it. The vice is
universal--at least it was just as bad at Mount Cenis as here, and here
were four carriages all going at the same reckless pace. The truth is,
it is not safe to trot down such mountains and hardly to ride down them
at all. We passed scores of places where any such unavoidable accident
as the breaking of a reach or a hold-back must have sent the whole
concern over a precipice where all that reached the bottom would hardly
be worth picking up. Who has a right to risk his life in this fool-hardy
manner?
The next time I cross the Alps, I will take my seat for the
stopping-place at the nearer foot, and thence walk leisurely over, with
a long staff and a water-proof coat, sending on my baggage by the coach
to the hotel on the other side. If I can get an hour's start, I can (by
straightening the zig-zags) nearly double it going up; if not, I will
wait on the other side for the next stage. If it were not for the
cowardly fear of being thought timid, there would be more care used in
such matters. Hitherto, I have not given the subject much consideration,
but I turn over a new leaf from the date of this adventure.
We came down the rest of the mountain more carefully, though still a
great deal too fast. A girl of twelve or thirteen breaking stone by the
road-side in a lonely place was among the note-worthy features of the
wilder upper region. Trees, Potato-patches, Grain-fields were welcome
sights as we neared them successively, though the Vine and the Chestnut
did not and Indian Corn barely did reaeppear on this side, which is much
colder than the other and grows little but Grass. At the foot of the
pass, the valley widened a little, though still with steep, snow-capped
cliffs crowding it on either side. Five hours from the summit and less
than two from the base, we reached the pretty town of Altorf, having
perhaps five thousand inhabitants, with a mile width of valley and
grassy slopes on the surrounding mountains. A few minutes more brought
us to the petty port of Fluellen on Lake Lucerne, where a little
steamboat was waiting to bring us to this city. I would not just then
have traded off that steamboat for several square miles of snow-capped
sublimity.
Lake Lucerne is a mere cleft in the mountains, narrow and most irregular
in form, with square cliffs like our Palisades, only many times higher,
rising sheer out of its depths and hardly a stone's throw apart. Mount
Pilatte and The Rhigi are the most celebrated of those seen from its
breast. After making two or three short turns among the hights, it
finally opens to a width of some miles on a softer scene, with green
pastures and pleasant woods sweeping down the hills nearly or quite to
its verge. Lucerne City lies at or near its outlet, and seems a pleasant
place, though I have had no time to spend upon it, as I arrived at 8 1/2 P.
M. too weary even to write if I had been able to sleep. I leave for
Basle by Diligence at eight this morning.
XXXII.
LUCERNE TO BASLE.
BASLE, July 13, 1851.
Very striking is the contrast between all of Switzerland I had
traversed, before reaching Lucerne, and the route thence to this place.
From Como to the middle of Lake Lucerne is something over a hundred
miles, and in all that distance there was never so much as one-tenth of
the land in sight that could, by any possibility, be cultivated. The
narrow valleys, when not _too_ narrow, were arable and generally
fertile; but they were shut in on every side by dizzy precipices, by
lofty mountains, often snow-crowned, and either wholly barren or with
only a few shrubs and stunted trees clinging to their clefts and
inequalities, because nothing else could cling there. A fortieth part of
these mountain sides may have been so moderately steep that soil could
gather and lie on them, in which case they yielded fair pasturage for
cattle, or at least for goats: but nine-tenths of their superficies were
utterly unproductive and inhospitable. On the mountain-tops, indeed,
there is sometimes a level space, but the snow generally monopolizes
that. Such is Switzerland from the Italian frontier, where I crossed it,
to the immediate vicinity of Lucerne.