Ancona.
Ancona is said to have been founded by Syracusans who had fled from the
tyranny of Dionysius. The town originally was built upon a hill, but
the houses have been gradually extended down the face of the eminence,
towards the sea. The cathedral stands on the highest part; from whence
there is a most advantageous view of the town, the country, and the
sea. This church is supposed to be placed on the spot where a temple,
dedicated to Venus, formerly stood; the same mentioned by Juvenal, when
he speaks of a large turbot caught on this coast, and presented to the
Emperor Domitian.
Incidit Adriaci spatium admirabile rhombi,
Ante domum Veneris, quam Dorica sustinet Ancon.
The ascents and descents, and great inequality of the ground, will
prevent this from being a beautiful town, but it has much the appearance
of becoming a rich one. Some of the nobility have the firmness and good
sense to despise an ancient prejudice, and avowedly prosecute commerce.
New houses are daily building, and the streets are animated with the
bustle of trade. I met with several English traders on the Change, which
seemed crowded with sea-faring men, and merchants, from Dalmatia, Greece,
and many parts of Europe. There are great numbers of Jews established
in this city. I know not whether this race of men contribute greatly to
the prosperity of a country; but it is generally remarked, that those
places are in a thriving condition to which they resort. They have a
synagogue here, and although all religions are tolerated, theirs is the
only foreign worship allowed to be publicly exercised. The commerce of
Ancona has increased very rapidly of late years; and it is evident, that
the Popes who first thought of making it a free port, of encouraging
manufactures, and of building a mole, to render the harbour more safe,
have injured Venice in a more sensible manner, than those who thundered
bulls against that republic; but it is much to be questioned, whether the
former, by their encouragements to commerce, have augmented their own
spiritual importance in the same proportion they have the temporal riches
of their subjects.
Men who have received a liberal education, and have adopted liberal
sentiments previous to their engaging in any particular profession, will
carry these sentiments along with them through life: and, perhaps, there
is no profession in which they can be exercised with more advantage
and utility, than in that of a merchant. In this profession, a man of
the character above described, while he is augmenting his own private
fortune, will enjoy the agreeable reflection, that he is likewise
increasing the riches and power of his country, and giving bread to
thousands of his industrious countrymen. Of all professions, his is in
its nature the most independent: the merchant does not, like the soldier,
receive wages from his sovereign; nor, like the lawyer and physician,
from his fellow-subjects. His wealth often flows from foreign sources,
and he is under no obligation to those from whom it is derived. The habit
which he is in, of circulating millions, makes him lay less stress on a
few guineas, than the proprietors of the largest estates; and we daily
see, particularly in countries where this profession is not considered
as degrading, the commercial part of the inhabitants giving the most
exalted proofs of generosity and public spirit. But in countries where
nobody, who has the smallest claim to the title of a gentleman, can
engage in commerce without being thought to have demeaned himself, fewer
examples of this nature will be found: and in every country, it must be
acknowledged, that those who have not had the advantage of a liberal
education; who have been bred from their infancy to trade; who have been
taught to consider money as the most valuable of all things, and to value
themselves, and others, in proportion to the quantity they possess; who
are continually revolving in their minds, to the exclusion of all other
ideas, the various means of increasing their stock; to such people, money
becomes a more immediate and direct object of attention, than to any
other class of men; it swells in their imagination, is rated beyond its
real worth, and, at length, by an inversion of the Christian precept,
it is considered as the one thing needful, to be sought with the most
unremitting ardour, that all other things may be added thereunto.
In commercial towns, where every body finds employment, and is agitated
by the bustle of business, the minds of the inhabitants are apt to be
so much engrossed with the affairs of this world, as almost to forget
that there is another; and neither the true religion nor false ones, have
such hold of their minds, as in places where there is more poverty, and
less worldly occupation. In the first, they consider the remonstrances of
priests and confessors as interruptions to business; and, without daring
to despise the ceremonies of religion, like the speculative Sceptic or
Infidel, the hurried trader huddles them over as fast as possible, that
he may return to occupations more congenial with the habit of his mind.
The preachers may cry aloud, and spare not; they may lift up their voices
like trumpets, proclaiming the nothingness of this world, and all which
it contains; it is in vain. Men who have been trained to the pursuit of
money from their childhood, who have bestowed infinite pains to acquire
it, and who derive all their importance from it, must naturally have
a partiality for this world, where riches procure so many flattering
distinctions; and a prejudice against _that_ in which they procure none:
but in towns where there is little trade, and great numbers of poor
people, where they have much spare time, and small comfort in this world,
the clergy have an easier task, if they are tolerably assiduous, in
turning the attention of the inhabitants to the other. In Roman Catholic
towns of this description, we see the people continually pacing up and
down the streets, with wax tapers in their hands. They listen, with fond
attention, to all the priest relates concerning that invisible country,
that Land of Promise, where their hopes are placed; they ruminate, with
complacency, on the happy period when _they_ also shall have their good
things; they bear their present rags with patience, in expectation of the
white raiment and crowns of gold, which, they are told, await them; they
languish for the happiness of being promoted to that lofty situation,
from whence they may look down, with scorn, on those to whom they now
look up with envy, and where they shall retaliate on their wealthy
neighbours, whose riches, at present, they imagine, insult their own
poverty.
This town being exposed, by the nature of its commerce with Turkey, to
the contagious diseases which prevail in that country, Clement XII., as
soon as he determined to make it a free port, erected a lazzaretto. It
advances a little way into the sea, is in the form of a pentagon, and is
a very noble, as well as useful, edifice. He afterwards began a work, as
necessary, and still more expensive; I mean the Mole built in the sea, to
screen the vessels in the harbour from the winds, which frequently blow
from the opposite shore of the Adriatic with great violence. This was
carried on with redoubled spirit by Benedict XIV. after his quarrel with
Venice, has been continued by the succeeding Popes, and is now almost
finished. This building was founded in the ruins of the ancient Mole,
raised by the Emperor Trajan. The stone of Istria was used at first, till
the exportation of it was prohibited by the republic of Venice, who had
no reason to wish well to this work. But a quarry of excellent stone was
afterwards found near Ancona, as fit for the purpose; and a kind of sand,
which, when mixed with lime, forms a composition as hard as any stone,
is brought from the neighbourhood of Rome; and no other is used for
this building, which is above two thousand feet in length, one hundred
in breadth, and about sixty in depth, from the surface of the sea. A
stupendous work, more analogous to the power and revenues of ancient,
than of modern, Rome.
Near to this stands the Triumphal Arch, as it is called, of Trajan. This
is an honorary monument, erected in gratitude to that Emperor, for the
improvements he made in this harbour at his own expence. Next to the
Maison Quarrée at Nîmes, it is the most beautiful and the most entire
monument of Roman taste and magnificence I have yet seen. The fluted
Corinthian pillars on the two sides are of the finest proportions; and
the Parian marble of which they are composed, instead of having acquired
a black colour, like the Ducal palace of Venice, and other buildings
of marble, is preserved, by the sea vapour, as white and shining as
if it were fresh polished from the rock. I viewed this charming piece
of antiquity with sentiments of pleasure and admiration, which sprang
from a recollection of the elegant taste of the artist who planned this
work, the humane amiable virtues of the great man to whose honour it was
raised, and the grandeur and policy of the people who, by such rewards,
prompted their Princes to wise and beneficent undertakings.