Having here had my hunger stilled, and something more, I wandered

onwards. As I descended into the vale of Luri, the region around me,

I found, had become a paradise. Luri is the loveliest valley in Cape

Corso, and also the largest, though it is only ten kilometres long,

and five broad.[G] Inland it is terminated by beautiful hills, on the

highest of which stands a black tower. This is the tower of Seneca,

so called because, according to the popular tradition, it was here

that Seneca spent his eight years of Corsican exile. Towards the

sea, the valley slopes gently down to the marina of Luri. A copious

stream waters the whole dale, and is led in canals through the

gardens. Here lie the communes which form the pieve of Luri, rich,

and comfortable-looking, with their tall churches, cloisters, and

towers, in the midst of a vegetation of tropical luxuriance. I have

seen many a beautiful valley in Italy, but I remember none that wore

a look so laughing and winsome as that fair vale of Luri. It is full

of vineyards, covered with oranges and lemons, rich in fruit-trees of

every kind, in melons, and all sorts of garden produce, and the higher

you ascend, the denser become the groves of chestnuts, walnuts, figs,

almonds, and olives.

CHAPTER III.

PINO.

A good road leads upwards from the marina of Luri. You move in one

continual garden--in an atmosphere of balsamic fragrance. Cottages

approaching the elegant style of Italian villas indicate wealth. How

happy must the people be here, if their own passions deal as gently

with them as the elements. A man who was dressing his vineyard saw

me passing along, and beckoned me to come in, and I needed no second

bidding. Here is the place for swinging the thyrsus-staff; no grape

disease here--everywhere luscious maturity and joyous plenty. The

wine of Luri is beautiful, and the citrons of this valley are said

to be the finest produced in the countries of the Mediterranean. It

is the thick-skinned species of citrons called _cedri_ which is here

cultivated; they are also produced in abundance all along the west

coast, but more especially in Centuri. The tree, which is extremely

tender, demands the utmost attention. It thrives only in the warmest

exposures, and in the valleys which are sheltered from the Libeccio.

Cape Corso is the very Elysium of this precious tree of the Hesperides.

I now began to cross the Serra towards Pino, which lies at its base

on the western side. My path lay for a long time through woods of

walnut-trees, the fruit of which was already ripe; and I must here

confirm what I had heard, that the nut-trees of Corsica will not

readily find their equals. Fig-trees, olives, chestnuts, afford variety

at intervals. It is pleasant to wander through the deep shades of a

northern forest of beeches, oaks, or firs, but the forests of the south

are no less glorious; walking beneath these trees one feels himself in

noble company. I ascended towards the Tower of Fondali, which lies near

the little village of the same name, quite overshadowed with trees, and

finely relieving their rich deep green. From its battlements you look

down over the beautiful valley to the blue sea, and above you rise the

green hills, summit over summit, with forsaken black cloisters on them;

on the highest rock of the Serra is seen the Tower of Seneca, which,

like a stoic standing wrapt in deep thought, looks darkly down over

land and sea. The many towers that stand here--for I counted numbers

of them--indicate that this valley of Luri was richly cultivated, even

in earlier times; they were doubtless built for its protection. Even

Ptolemy is acquainted with the Vale of Luri, and in his Geography calls

it Lurinon.

I climbed through a shady wood and blooming wilderness of trailing

plants to the ridge of the Serra, close beneath the foot of the cone

on which the Tower of Seneca stands. From this point both seas are

visible, to the right and to the left. I now descended towards Pino,

where I was expected by some Carrarese statuaries. The view of the

western coast with its red reefs and little rocky zig-zag coves, and

of the richly wooded pieve of Pino, came upon me with a most agreeable

surprise. Pino has some large turreted mansions lying in beautiful

parks; they might well serve for the residence of any Roman Duca:--for

Corsica has its _millionnaires_. On the Cape live about two hundred

families of large means--some of these possessed of quite enormous

wealth, gained either by themselves or by relations, in the Antilles,

Mexico, and Brazil.

One fortunate Crœsus of Pino inherited from an uncle of his in St.

Thomas a fortune of ten millions of francs. Uncles are most excellent

individuals. To have an uncle is to have a constant stake in the

lottery. Uncles can make anything of their nephews--_millionnaires_,

immortal historical personages. The nephew of Pino has rewarded his

meritorious relative with a mausoleum of Corsican marble--a pretty

Moorish family tomb on a hill by the sea. It was on this building my

Carrarese friends were engaged.

In the evening we paid a visit to the Curato. We found him walking

before his beautifully-situated parsonage, in the common brown

Corsican jacket, and with the Phrygian cap of liberty on his head.

The hospitable gentleman led us into his parlour. He seated himself in

his arm-chair, ordered the Donna to bring wine, and, when the glasses

came in, reached his cithern from the wall. Then he began with all

the heartiness in the world to play and sing the Paoli march. The

Corsican clergy were always patriotic men, and in many battles fought

in the ranks with their parishioners. The parson of Pino now put his

Mithras-cap to rights, and began a serenade to the beautiful Marie. I

shook him heartily by the hand, thanked him for wine and song, and went

away to the paese where I was to lodge for the night. Next morning we

proposed wandering a while longer in Pino, and then to visit Seneca in

his tower.

On this western coast of Cape Corso, below Pino, lies the fifth and

last pieve of the Cape, called Nonza. Near Nonza stands the tower

which I mentioned in the History of the Corsicans, when recording an

act of heroic patriotism. There is another intrepid deed connected

with it. In the year 1768 it was garrisoned by a handful of militia,

under the command of an old captain, named Casella. The French were

already in possession of the Cape, all the other captains having

capitulated. Casella refused to follow their example. The tower mounted

one cannon; they had plenty of ammunition, and the militia had their

muskets. This was sufficient, said the old captain, to defend the

place against a whole army; and if matters came to the worst, then you

could blow yourself up. The militia knew their man, and that he was

in the habit of doing what he said. They accordingly took themselves

off during the night, leaving their muskets, and the old captain found

himself alone. He concluded, therefore, to defend the tower himself.

The cannon was already loaded; he charged all the pieces, distributed

them over the various shot-holes, and awaited the French. They came,

under the command of General Grand-Maison. As soon as they were within

range, Casella first discharged the cannon at them, and then made a

diabolical din with the muskets. The French sent a flag of truce to

the tower, with the information that the entire Cape had surrendered,

and summoning the commandant to do the same with all his garrison,

and save needless bloodshed. Hereupon Casella replied that he would

hold a council of war, and retired. After some time he reappeared and

announced that the garrison of Nonza would capitulate under condition

that it should be allowed to retire with the honours of war, and with

all its baggage and artillery, for which the French were to furnish

conveyances. The conditions were agreed to. The French had drawn up

before the tower, and were now ready to receive the garrison, when

old Casella issued, with his firelock, his pistols, and his sabre.

The French waited for the garrison, and, surprised that the men did

not make their appearance, the officer in command asked why they were

so long in coming out. "They _have_ come out," answered the Corsican;

"for I am the garrison of the Tower of Nonza." The duped officer became

furious, and rushed upon Casella. The old man drew his sword, and

stood on the defensive. In the meantime, Grand-Maison himself hastened

up, and, having heard the story, was sufficiently astonished. He

instantly put his officer under strict arrest, and not only fulfilled

every stipulation of Casella's to the letter, but sent him with a

guard of honour, and a letter expressive of his admiration, to Paoli's

head-quarters.

Above Pino extends the canton of Rogliano, with Ersa and Centuri--a

district of remarkable fertility in wine, oil, and lemons, and

rivalling Luri in cultivation. The five pievi of the entire

Cape--Brando, Martino, Luri, Rogliano, and Nonza--contain twenty-one

communes, and about 19,000 inhabitants; almost as many, therefore,

as the island of Elba. Going northwards, from Rogliano over Ersa, you

reach the extreme northern point of Corsica, opposite to which, with a

lighthouse on it, lies the little island of Girolata.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TOWER OF SENECA.

"Melius latebam procul ab invidiæ malis

Remotus inter Corsici rupes maris."

_Roman Tragedy of Octavia._

The Tower of Seneca can be seen at sea, and from a distance of many

miles. It stands on a gigantic, quite naked mass of granite, which

rises isolated from the mountain-ridge, and bears on its summit

the black weather-beaten pile. The ruin consists of a single round

tower--lonely and melancholy it stands there, hung with hovering mists,

all around bleak heath-covered hills, the sea on both sides deep below.

If, as imaginative tradition affirms, the banished stoic spent eight

years of exile here, throning among the clouds, in the silent rocky

wilds--then he had found a place not ill adapted for a philosopher

disposed to make wise reflections on the world and fate; and to

contemplate with wonder and reverence the workings of the eternal

elements of nature. The genius of Solitude is the wise man's best

instructor; in still night hours he may have given Seneca insight

into the world's transitoriness, and shown him the vanity of great

Rome, when the exile was inclined to bewail his lot. After Seneca

returned from his banishment to Rome, he sometimes, perhaps, among

the abominations of the court of Nero, longed for the solitary days of

Corsica. There is an old Roman tragedy called _Octavia_, the subject of

which is the tragic fate of Nero's first empress.[H] In this tragedy

Seneca appears as the moralizing figure, and on one occasion delivers

himself as follows:--

"O Lady Fortune, with the flattering smile

On thy deceitful face, why hast thou raised

One so contented with his humble lot

To height so giddy? Wheresoe'er I look,

Terrors around me threaten, and at last

The deeper fall is sure. Ah, happier far--

Safe from the ills of envy once I hid--

Among the rocks of sea-girt Corsica.

I was my own; my soul was free from care,

In studious leisure lightly sped the hours.

Oh, it was joy,--for in the mighty round

Of Nature's works is nothing more divine,--

To look upon the heavens, the sacred sun,

With all the motions of the universe,

The seasonable change of morn and eve,

The orb of Phœbe and the attendant stars,

Filling the night with splendour far and wide.

All this, when it grows old, shall rush again

Back to blind chaos; yea, even now the day,

The last dread day is near, and the world's wreck

Shall crush this impious race."

A rude sheep-track led us up the mountain over shattered rocks.

Half-way up to the tower, completely hidden among crags and bushes,

lies a forsaken Franciscan cloister. The shepherds and the wild

fig-tree now dwell in its halls, and the raven croaks the _de

profundis_. But the morning and the evening still come there to

hold their silent devotions, and kindle incense of myrtle, mint, and

cytisus. What a fragrant breath of herbs is about us! what morning

stillness on the mountains and the sea!

We stood on the Tower of Seneca. We had clambered on hands and feet

to reach its walls. By holding fast to projecting ledges and hanging

perilously over the abyss, you can gain a window. There is no other

entrance into the tower; its outer works are destroyed, but the remains

show that a castle, either of the seigniors of Cape Corso or of the

Genoese, stood here. The tower is built of astonishingly firm material;

its battlements, however, are rent and dilapidated. It is unlikely that

Seneca lived on this Aornos, this height forsaken by the very birds,

and certainly too lofty a flight for moral philosophers--a race that

love the levels. Seneca probably lived in one of the Roman colonies,

Aleria or Mariana, where the stoic, accustomed to the conveniences of

Roman city life, may have established himself comfortably in some house

near the sea; so that the favourite mullet and tunny had not far to

travel from the strand to his table.

A picture from the fearfully beautiful world of imperial Rome passed

before me as I sat on Seneca's tower. Who can say he rightly and

altogether comprehends this world? It often seems to me as if it were

Hades, and as if the whole human race of the period were holding in

its obscure twilight a great diabolic carnival of fools, dancing a

gigantic, universal ballet before the Emperor's throne, while the

Emperor sits there gloomy as Pluto, only breaking out now and then into

insane laughter; for it is the maddest carnival this; old Seneca plays

in it too, among the Pulcinellos, and appears in character with his

bathing-tub.

Even a Seneca may have something tragi-comic about him, if we think

of him, for example, in the pitiably ludicrous shape in which he is

represented in the old statue that bears his name. He stands there

naked, a cloth about his loins, in the bath in which he means to die, a

sight heart-rending to behold, with his meagre form so tremulous about

the knees, and his face so unutterably wo-begone. He resembles one of

the old pictures of St. Jerome, or some starveling devotee attenuated

by penance; he is tragi-comic, provocative of laughter no less than

pity, as many of the representations of the old martyrs are, the form

of their suffering being usually so whimsical.

Seneca was born, B.C. 3, at Cordova, in Spain, of equestrian family.

His mother, Helvia, was a woman of unusual ability; his father, Lucius

Annæus, a rhetorician of note, who removed with his family to Rome. In

the time of Caligula, Seneca the younger distinguished himself as an

orator, and Stoic philosopher of extraordinary learning. A remarkably

good memory had been of service to him. He himself relates that after

hearing two thousand names once repeated, he could repeat them again

in the same order, and that he had no difficulty in doing the same with

two hundred verses.

In favour at the court of Claudius, he owed his fall to Messalina.

She accused him of an intrigue with the notorious Julia, the daughter

of Germanicus, and the most profligate woman in Rome. The imputation

is doubly comical, as coming from a Messalina, and because it makes

us think of Seneca the moralist as a Don Juan. It is hard to say how

much truth there is in the scandalous story, but Rome was a strange

place, and nothing can be more bizarre than some of the characters

it produced. Julia was got out of the way, and Don Juan Seneca sent

into banishment among the barbarians of Corsica. The philosopher now

therefore became, without straining the word, a Corsican bandit.

There was in those days no more terrible punishment than that of exile,

because expulsion from Rome was banishment from the world. Eight long

years Seneca lived on the wild island. I cannot forgive my old friend,

therefore, for recording nothing about its nature, about the history

and condition of its inhabitants, at that period. A single chapter from

the pen of Seneca on these subjects, would now be of great value to us.

But to have said nothing about the barbarous country of his exile, was

very consistent with his character as Roman. Haughty, limited, void

of sympathetic feeling for his kind, was the man of those times. How

different is the relation in which we now stand to nature and history!

For the banished Seneca the island was merely a prison that he

detested. The little that he says about it in his book _De Consolatione

ad Matrem Helviam_, shows how little he knew of it. For though it was

no doubt still more rude and uncultivated than at present, its natural

grandeur was the same. He composed the following epigrams on Corsica,

which are to be found in his poetical works:--

"Corsican isle, where his town the Phocæan colonist planted,

Corsica, called by the Greeks Cyrnus in earlier days,

Corsica, less than thy sister Sardinia, longer than Elba,

Corsica, traversed by streams--streams that the fisherman

loves,

Corsica, dreadful land! when thy summer's suns are returning,

Scorch'd more cruelly still, when the fierce Sirius shines;

Spare the sad exile--spare, I mean, the hopelessly buried--

Over his living remains, Corsica, light lie thy dust."

The second has been said to be spurious, but I do not see why our

heart-broken exile should not have been its author, as well as any of

his contemporaries or successors in Corsican banishment.

"Rugged the steeps that enclose the barbarous Corsican

island,

Savage on every side stretches the solitude vast;

Autumn ripens no fruits, nor summer prepares here a harvest.

Winter, hoary and chill, wants the Palladian gift;[I]

Never rejoices the spring in the coolness of shadowy verdure,

Here not a blade of grass pierces the desolate plain,

Water is none, nor bread, nor a funeral-pile for the

stranger--

Two are there here, and no more--the Exile alone with his

Wo."[J]

The Corsicans have not failed to take revenge on Seneca. Since he

gives them and their country such a disgraceful character, they have

connected a scandalous story with his name. Popular tradition has

preserved only a single incident from the period of his residence in

Corsica, and it is as follows:--As Seneca sat in his tower and looked

down into the frightful island, he saw the Corsican virgins, that they

were fair. Thereupon the philosopher descended, and he dallied with

the daughters of the land. One comely shepherdess did he honour with

his embrace; but the kinsfolk of the maiden came upon him suddenly, and

took him, and scourged the philosopher with nettles.

Ever since, the nettle grows profusely and ineradicably round the Tower

of Seneca, as a warning to moral philosophers. The Corsicans call it

_Ortica de Seneca_.

Unhappy Seneca! He is always getting into tragi-comic situations.

A Corsican said to me: "You have read what Seneca says of us? _ma

era un birbone_--but he was a great rascal." _Seneca morale_, says

Dante,--_Seneca birbone_, says the Corsican--another instance of his

love for his country.

Other sighs of exile did the unfortunate philosopher breathe out in

verse--some epigrams to his friends, one on his native city of Cordova.

If Seneca wrote any of the tragedies which bear his name in Corsica,

it must certainly have been the Medea. Where could he have found

a locality more likely to have inspired him to write on a subject

connected with the Argonauts, than this sea-girt island? Here he

might well make his chorus sing those remarkable verses which predict

Columbus:--

"A time shall come

In the late ages,

When Ocean shall loosen

The bonds of things;

Open and vast

Then lies the earth;

Then shall Tiphys

New worlds disclose.

And Thule no more

Be the farthest land."

Now the great navigator Columbus was born in the Genoese territory, not

far from Corsica. The Corsicans will have it that he was born in Calvi,

in Corsica itself, and they maintain this till the present day.

CHAPTER V.

SENECA MORALE.

----"e vidi Orfeo

Tullio, e Livio, e Seneca morale."--DANTE.

Fair fruits grew for Seneca in his exile; and perhaps he owed some of

his exalted philosophy rather to his Corsican solitude than to the

teachings of an Attalus or a Socio. In the Letter of Consolation to

his mother, he writes thus at the close:--You must believe me happy

and cheerful, as when in prosperity. That is true prosperity when

the mind devotes itself to its pursuits without disturbing thoughts,

and, now pleasing itself with lighter studies, now thirsting after

truth, elevates itself to the contemplation of its own nature and of

that of the universe. First, it investigates the countries and their

situations, then the nature of the circumfluent sea, and its changes of

ebb and flow; then it contemplates the terrible powers that lie between

heaven and earth--the thunder, lightnings, winds, rain, snow and

hail, that disquiet this space; at last, when it has wandered through

the lower regions, it takes its flight to the highest, and enjoys

the beautiful spectacle of celestial things, and, mindful of its own

eternity, enters into all which has been and shall be to all eternity.

When I took up Seneca's Letter of Consolation to his mother, I was not

a little curious to see how he would console her. How would one of the

thousand cultivated exiles scattered over the world at the present time

console _his_ mother? Seneca's letter is a quite methodically arranged

treatise, consisting of seventeen chapters. It is a more than usually

instructive contribution to the psychology of these old Stoics. The

son is not so particularly anxious to console his mother as to write

an excellent and elegant treatise, the logic and style of which shall

procure him admiration. He is quite proud that his treatise will be a

species of composition hitherto unknown in the world of letters. The

vain man writes to his mother like an author to a critic with whom he

is coolly discussing the _pros_ and _cons_ of his subject. I have, says

he, consulted all the works of the great geniuses who have written upon

the methods of moderating grief, but I have found no example of any

one's consoling his friends when it was himself they were lamenting. In

this new case, therefore, in which I found myself, I was embarrassed,

and feared lest I might open the wounds instead of healing them.

Must not a man who raises his head from the funeral-pile itself to

comfort his relatives, need new words, such as the common language of

daily life does not supply him with? Every great and unusual sorrow

must make its own selection of words, if it does not refuse itself

language altogether. I shall venture to write to you, therefore, not in

confidence on my talent, but because I myself, the consoler, am here to

serve as the most effectual consolation. For your son's sake, to whom

you can deny nothing, you will not, as I trust (though all grief is

stubborn), refuse to permit bounds to be set to your grief.

He now begins to console after his new fashion, reckoning up to his

mother all that she has already suffered, and drawing the conclusion

that she must by this time have become callous. Throughout the whole

treatise you hear the skeleton of the arrangement rattling. Firstly,

his mother is not to grieve on his account; secondly, his mother is not

to grieve on her own account. The letter is full of the most beautiful

stoical contempt of the world.

"Yet it is a terrible thing to be deprived of one's country." What is

to be said to this?--Mother, consider the vast multitude of people in

Rome; the greater number of them have congregated there from all parts

of the world. One is driven from home by ambition, another by business

of state, by an embassy, by the quest of luxury, by vice, by the wish

to study, by the desire of seeing the spectacles, by friendship, by

speculation, by eloquence, by beauty. Then, leaving Rome out of view,

which indeed is to be considered the mother-city of them all, go to

other cities, go to islands, come here to Corsica--everywhere are more

strangers than natives. "For to man is given a desire of movement and

of change, because he is moved by the celestial Spirit; consider the

heavenly luminaries that give light to the world--none of them remains

fixed--they wander ceaselessly on their path, and change perpetually

their place." His poetic vein gave Seneca this fine thought. Our

well-known wanderer's song has the words--

"Fix'd in the heavens the sun does not stand,

He travels o'er sea, he travels o'er land."[K]

"Varro, the most learned of the Romans," continues Seneca, "considers

it the best compensation for the change of dwelling-place, that

the nature of things is everywhere the same. Marcus Brutus finds

sufficient consolation in the fact that he who goes into exile can

take all that he has of truly good with him. Is not what we lose a

mere trifle? Wherever we turn, two glorious things go with us--Nature

that is everywhere, and Virtue that is our own. Let us travel through

all possible countries, and we shall find no part of the earth which

man cannot make his home. Everywhere the eye can rise to heaven, and

all the divine worlds are at an equal distance from all the earthly.

So long, therefore, as my eyes are not debarred that spectacle,

with seeing which they are never satisfied; so long as I can behold

moon and sun; so long as my gaze can rest on the other celestial

luminaries; so long as I can inquire into their rising and setting,

their courses, and the causes of their moving faster or slower; so

long as I can contemplate the countless stars of night, and mark how

some are immoveable--how others, not hastening through large spaces,

circle in their own path, how many beam forth with a sudden brightness,

many blind the eye with a stream of fire as if they fell, others pass

along the sky in a long train of light; so long as I am with these,

and dwell, as much as it is allowed to mortals, in heaven; so long as I

can maintain my soul, which strives after the contemplation of natures

related to it, in the pure ether, of what importance to me is the soil

on which my foot treads? This island bears no fruitful nor pleasant

trees; it is not watered by broad and navigable streams; it produces

nothing that other nations can desire; it is hardly fertile enough to

supply the necessities of the inhabitants; no precious stone is here

hewn (_non pretiosus lapis hic cæditur_); no veins of gold or silver

are here brought to light; but the soul is narrow that delights itself

with what is earthly. It must be guided to that which is everywhere the

same, and nowhere loses its splendour."

Had I Humboldt's _Cosmos_ at hand, I should look whether the great

natural philosopher has taken notice of these lofty periods of Seneca,

where he treats of the sense of the ancients for natural beauty.

This, too, is a spirited passage:--"The longer they build their

colonnades, the higher they raise their towers, the broader they

stretch their streets, the deeper they dig their summer grottos,

the more massively they pile their banqueting-halls--all the more

effectually they cover themselves from the sky.--Brutus relates in his

book on virtue, that he saw Marcellus in exile in Mitylene, and that he

lived, as far as it was possible for human nature, in the enjoyment of

the greatest happiness, and never was more devoted to literature than

then. Hence, adds he, as he was to return without him, it seemed to him

that he was rather himself going into exile than leaving the other in

banishment behind him."

Now follows a panegyric on poverty and moderation, as contrasted with

the luxurious gluttony of the rich, who ransack heaven and earth to

tickle their palates, bring game from Phasis, and fowls from Parthia,

who vomit in order to eat, and eat in order to vomit. "The Emperor

Caligula," says Seneca, "whom Nature seems to me to have produced to

show what the most degrading vice could do in the highest station, ate

a dinner one day, that cost ten million sesterces; and although I have

had the aid of the most ingenious men, still I have hardly been able

to make out how the tribute of three provinces could be transformed

into a single meal." Like Rousseau, Seneca preaches the return of men

to the state of nature. The times of the two moralists were alike; they

themselves resemble each other in weakness of character, though Seneca,

as compared with Rousseau, was a Roman and a hero.

Scipio's daughters received their dowries from the public treasury,

because their father left nothing behind him. "O happy husbands of

such maidens," cries Seneca; "husbands to whom the Roman people was

father-in-law! Are they to be held happier whose ballet-dancers bring

with them a million sesterces as dowry?"

After Seneca has comforted his mother in regard to his own sufferings,

he proceeds to comfort her with reference to herself. "You must not

imitate the example," he writes to her, "of women whose grief, when

it had once mastered them, ended only with death. You know many, who,

after the loss of their sons, never more laid off the robe of mourning

that they had put on. But your nature has ever been stronger than

this, and imposes upon you a nobler course. The excuse of the weakness

of the sex cannot avail for her who is far removed from all female

frailties. The most prevailing evil of the present time--unchastity,

has not ranked you with the common crowd; neither precious stones nor

pearls have had power over you, and wealth, accounted the highest of

human blessings, has not dazzled you. The example of the bad, which

is dangerous even to the virtuous, has not contaminated you--the

strictly educated daughter of an ancient and severe house. You were

never ashamed of the number of your children, as if they made you old

before your time; you never--like some whose beautiful form is their

only recommendation--concealed your fruitfulness, as if the burden were

unseemly; nor did you ever destroy the hope of children that had been

conceived in your bosom. You never disfigured your face with spangles

or with paint; and never did a garment please you, that had been made

only to show nakedness. Modesty appeared to you the alone ornament--the

highest and never-fading beauty!" So writes the son to his mother, and

it seems to me there is a most philosophical want of affectation in his

style.

He alludes to Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi; but he does not

conceal from himself that grief is a disobedient thing. Traitorous

tears, he knows, will appear on the face of assumed serenity.

"Sometimes," says Seneca, "we entangle the soul in games and

gladiator-shows; but even in the midst of such spectacles, the

remembrance of its loss steals softly upon it. Therefore is it better

to overcome than to deceive. For when the heart has either been cheated

by pleasure, or diverted by business, it rebels again, and derives

from repose itself the force for new disquiet; but it is lastingly

still if it has yielded to reason." A wise man's voice enunciates here

simply and beautifully the alone right, but the bitterly difficult

rules for the art of life. Seneca, accordingly, counsels his mother

not to use the ordinary means for overcoming her grief--a picturesque

tour, or employment in household affairs; he advises mental occupation,

lamenting, at the same time, that his father--an excellent man, but too

much attached to the customs of the ancients--never could prevail upon

himself to give her philosophical cultivation. Here we have an amusing

glimpse of the old Seneca, I mean of the father. We know now how he

looked. When the fashionable literary ladies and gentlemen in Cordova,

who had picked up ideas about the rights of woman, and the elevation

of her social position, from the _Republic_ of Plato, represented to

the old gentleman, that it were well if his young wife attended the

lectures of some philosophers, he growled out: "Absurd nonsense; my

wife shall not have her head turned with your high-flying notions, nor

be one of your silly blue-stockings; cook shall she, bear children,

and bring up children!" So said the worthy gentleman, and added, in

excellent Spanish, "Basta!"

Seneca now speaks at considerable length of the magnanimity of which

woman is capable, having no idea then that he was yet, when dying,

to experience the truth of what he said, in the case of his own

wife, Paulina. A noble man, therefore, a stoic of exalted virtue,

has addressed this Letter of Consolation to Helvia. Is it possible

that precisely the same man can think and write like a crawling

parasite--like the basest flatterer?

CHAPTER VI.

SENECA BIRBONE.

"Magni pectoris est inter secunda moderatio."--SENECA.

Here is a second Letter of Consolation, which Seneca wrote in the

second or third year of his Corsican exile, to Polybius, the freedman

of Claudius, a courtier of the ordinary stamp. Polybius served the

over-learned Claudius as literary adviser, and tormented himself with

a Latin translation of Homer and a Greek one of Virgil. The loss of

his talented brother occasioned Seneca's consolatory epistle to the

courtier. He wrote the treatise with the full consciousness that

Polybius would read it to the Emperor, and, not to miss the opportunity

of appeasing the wrath of Claudius, he made it a model of low flattery

of princes and their influential favourites. When we read it, we must

not forget what sort of men Claudius and Polybius were.

"O destiny," cries the flatterer, "how cunningly hast thou sought out

the vulnerable spot! What was there to rob such a man of? Money? He has

always despised it. Life? His genius makes him immortal. He has himself

provided that his better part shall endure, for his glorious rhetorical

works cannot fail to rescue him from the ordinary lot of mortals. So

long as literature is held in honour, so long as the Latin language

retains its vigour, or the Greek its grace, so long shall he live

with the greatest men, whose genius his own equals, or, if his modesty

would object to that, at least approaches.--Unworthy outrage! Polybius

mourns, Polybius has an affliction, and the Emperor is gracious to him!

By this, inexorable destiny, thou wouldst, without doubt, show that

none can be shielded from thee, no, not even by the Emperor! Yet, why

does Polybius weep? Has he not his beloved Emperor, who is dearer to

him than life? So long as it is well with him, then is it well with

all who are yours, then have you lost nothing, then must your eyes be

not only dry, but bright with joy. The Emperor is everything to you, in

him you have all that you can desire. To him, your divinity, you must

therefore raise your glance, and grief will have no power over your

soul.

"Destiny, withhold thy hand from the Emperor, and show thy power

only in blessing, letting him remain as a physician to mankind, who

have suffered now so long, that he may again order and adjust what

the madness of his predecessor destroyed. May this star, which has

arisen in its brightness on a world plunged into abysses of darkness,

shine evermore! May he subdue Germany, open up Britain, and celebrate

ancestral victories and new triumphs, of which his clemency, which

takes the first place among his virtues, makes me hope that I too shall

be a witness. For he did not so cast me down, that he shall not again

raise me up: no, it was not even he who overthrew me; but when destiny

gave me the thrust, and I was falling, he broke my fall, and, gently

intervening with godlike hand, bore me to a place of safety. He raised

his voice for me in the senate, and not only gave me, but petitioned

for, my life. He will himself see how he has to judge my cause; either

his justice will recognise it as good, or his clemency will make it so.

The benefit will still be the same, whether he perceives, or whether

he wills, that I am innocent. Meanwhile, it is a great consolation to

me, in my wretchedness, to see how his compassion travels through the

whole world; and as he has again brought back to the light, from this

corner in which I am buried, many who lay sunk in the oblivion of a

long banishment, I do not fear that he will forget me. But he himself

knows best the time for helping each. Nothing shall be wanting on my

part that he may not blush to come at length to me. All hail to thy

clemency, Cæsar! thanks to which, exiles live more peacefully under

thee than the noblest of the people under Caius. They do not tremble,

they do not hourly expect the sword, they do not shudder to see a ship

coming. Through thee they have at once a goal to their cruel fate,

and the hope of a better future, and a peaceful present. Surely the

thunderbolts are altogether righteous which even those worship whom

they strike."

O nettles, more nettles, noble Corsicans,--_era un birbone!_

The epistle concludes in these terms: "I have written this to you

as well as I could, with a mind grown languid and dull through long

inactivity; if it appears to you not worthy of your genius, or to

supply medicine too slight for your sorrow, consider that the Latin

word flows but reluctantly to his pen, in whose ear the barbarians have

long been dinning their confused and clumsy jargon."

His flattery did not avail the sorrow-laden exile, but changes in the

Roman court ended his banishment. The head of Polybius had fallen.

Messalina had been executed. So stupid was Claudius, that he forgot

the execution of his wife, and some days after asked at supper why

Messalina did not come to table. Thus, all these horrors are dashed

with the tragi-comic. The best of comforters, the Corsican bandit,

returns. Agrippina, the new empress of Claudius, wishes him to

educate her son Nero, now eleven years old. Can there be anything

more tragi-comic than Seneca as tutor to Nero? He came, thanking the

gods that they had laid upon him such a task as that of educating a

boy to be Emperor of the world. He expected now to fill the whole

earth with his own philosophy by infusing it into the young Nero.

What an undertaking--at once tragical and ridiculous--to bring up a

young tiger-cub on the principles of the Stoics! For the rest, Seneca

found in his hopeful pupil the materials of the future man totally

unspoiled by bungling scholastic methods; for he had grown up in a most

divine ignorance, and, till his twelfth year, had enjoyed the tender

friendship of a barber, a coachman, and a rope-dancer. From such hands

did Seneca receive the boy who was destined to rule over gods and men.

As Seneca was banished to Corsica in the first year of the reign

of Claudius, and returned in the eighth, he was privileged to enjoy

this "divinity and celestial star" for more than five years. One day,

however, Claudius died, for Agrippina gave him poison in a pumpkin

which served as drinking-cup. The notorious Locusta had mixed the

potion. The death of Claudius furnished Seneca with the ardently longed

for opportunity of venting his revenge. Terribly did the philosopher

make the Emperor's memory suffer for that eight years' banishment; he

wrote on the dead man the satire, called the Apokolokyntosis--a pasquil

of astonishing wit and almost incredible coarseness, equalling the

writings of Lucian in sparkle and cleverness. The title is happy. The

word, invented for the nonce, parodies the notion of the apotheosis

of the Emperors, or their reception among the gods; and would be

literally translated Pumpkinification, or reception of Claudius among

the pumpkins. This satire should be read. It is highly characteristic

of the period of Roman history in which it was written--a period when

an utterly limitless despotism nevertheless allowed of a man's using

such daring freedom of speech, and when an Emperor just dead could be

publicly ridiculed by his successor, his own family, and the people,

as a jack-pudding, without compromising the imperial dignity. In this

Roman world, all is ironic accident, fools' carnival, tragi-comic, and

bizarre.

Seneca speaks with all the freedom of a mask and as Roman Pasquino,

and thus commences--"What happened on the 13th of October, in the

consulship of Asinius Marcellus and Acilius Aviola, in the first year

of the new Emperor, at the beginning of the period of blessing from

heaven, I shall now deliver to memory. And in what I have to say,

neither my vengeance nor my gratitude shall speak a word. If any one

asks me where I got such accurate information about everything, I shall

in the meantime not answer, if I don't choose. Who shall compel me? Do

I not know that I have become a free man, since a certain person took

his leave, who verified the proverb--One must either be born a king

or a fool? And if I choose to answer, I shall say the first thing that

comes into my head." Seneca now affirms, sneeringly, that he heard what

he is about to relate from the senator who saw Drusilla [sister and

mistress of Caligula] ascend to heaven from the Appian Way.[L] The same

man had now, according to the philosopher, been a witness of all that

had happened to Claudius on occasion of _his_ ascension.

I shall be better understood, continued Seneca, if I say it was

on the 13th of October; the hour I am unable exactly to fix, for

there is still greater variance between the clocks than between the

philosophers. It was, however, between the sixth and the seventh

hour--Claudius was just gasping for a little breath, and couldn't find

any. Hereupon Mercury, who had always been delighted with the genius of

the man, took one of the three Parcæ aside, and said--"Cruel woman, why

do you let the poor mortal torment himself so long, since he has not

deserved it? He has been gasping for breath for sixty-four years now.

What ails you at him? Allow the mathematicians to be right at last,

who, ever since he became Emperor, have been assuring us of his death

every year, nay, every month. And yet it is no wonder if they make

mistakes. Nobody knows the man's hour--for nobody has ever looked on

him as born. Do your duty,

Give him to death,

And let a better fill his empty throne."

Atropos now cuts Claudius's thread of life; but Lachesis spins

another--a glittering thread, that of Nero; while Phœbus plays upon

his lyre. In well-turned, unprincipled verses, Seneca flatters his

young pupil, his new sun--

"Phœbus the god hath said it; he shall pass

Victoriously his mortal life, like me

In countenance, and like me in my beauty;

In song my rival, and in suasive speech.

A happier age he bringeth to the weary,

For he will break the silence of the laws.

Like Phosphor when he scares the flying stars,

Like Hesper rising, when the stars return;

Or as, when rosy night-dissolving dawn

Leads in the day, the bright sun looks abroad,

And bids the barriers of the darkness yield

Before the beaming chariot of the morn,--

So Cæsar shines, and thus shall Rome behold

Her Nero; mild the lustre of his face,

And neck so fair with loosely-flowing curls."

Claudius meanwhile pumped out the air-bubble of his soul, and

thereafter, as a phantasma, ceased to be visible. "He expired while

he was listening to the comedians; so that, you perceive, I have good

reason for dreading these people." His last words were--"_Vae me, puto

concavi me_."

Claudius is dead, then. It is announced to Jupiter, that a tall

personage, rather gray, has arrived; that he threatens nobody knows

what, shakes his head perpetually, and limps with his right leg;

that the language he speaks is unintelligible, being neither that of

the Greeks nor that of the Romans, nor the tongue of any known race.

Jupiter now orders Hercules, since he has vagabondized through all

the nations of the world, and is likely to know, to see what kind of

mortal this may be. When Hercules, who had seen too many monsters to be

easily frightened, set eyes on this portentous face, and strange gait,

and heard a voice, not like the voice of any terrestial creature, but

like some sea-monster's--hoarse, bellowing, confused, he was at first

somewhat discomposed, and thought that a thirteenth labour had arrived

for him. On closer examination, however, he thought the portent had

some resemblance to a man. He therefore asked, in Homer's Greek--

"Who art thou, of what race, and where thy city?"

Claudius was mightily rejoiced to meet with philologers in heaven, and

hoped he might find occasion of referring to his own histories. [He had

written twenty books of Tyrrhenian, and eight of Carthaginian history,

in Greek.] He immediately answers from Homer also, sillily quoting the

line--

"From Troy the wind has brought me to the Cicons."

Fever, who alone of all the Roman gods has accompanied Claudius

to heaven, gives him the lie, and affirms him to be a Gaul. "And

therefore, since as Gaul he could not omit it, he took Rome." [While

I write down this sentence of the old Roman's here in Rome, and hear

at the same moment Gallic trumpets blowing, its correctness becomes

very plain to me.] Claudius immediately gives orders to cut off

Fever's head. He prevails on Hercules to bring him into the assembly

of the gods. But the god Janus proposes, that from this time forward

none of those who "eat the fruits of the field" shall be deified; and

Augustus reads his opinion from a written paper, recommending that

Claudius should be made to quit Olympus within three days. The gods

assent, and Mercury hereupon drags off the Emperor to the infernal

regions. On the Via Sacra they fall in with the funeral procession of

Claudius, which is thus described: "It was a magnificent funeral, and

such expense had been lavished on it, that you could very well see a

god was being buried. There were flute-players, horn-blowers, and such

crowds of players on brazen instruments, and such a din, that even

Claudius could hear it. Everybody was merry and pleased; the Populus

Romanus was walking about as if it were a free people. Agatho only,

and a few pleaders, wept, and that evidently with all their heart.

The jurisconsults were emerging from their obscure retreats--pale,

emaciated, gasping for breath, like persons newly recalled to life.

One of these noticing how the pleaders laid their heads together and

bewailed their misfortunes, came up to them and said: 'I told you your

Saturnalia would not last always!'" When Claudius saw his own funeral,

he perceived that he was dead; for, with great sound and fury, they

were singing the anapæstic nænia:--

Floods of tears pouring,

Beating the bosom,

Sorrow's mask wearing,

Wail till the forum

Echo your dirge.

Ah! he has fallen,

Wisest and noblest,

Bravest of mortals!

He in the race could

Vanquish the swiftest;

He the rebellious

Parthians routed;

With his light arrows

Follow'd the Persian;

Stoutly his right hand

Stretching the bowstring,

Small wound but deadly

Dealt to the headlong

Fugitive foe,

Piercing the painted

Back of the Mede.

He the wild Britons,

Far on the unknown

Shores of the ocean,

And the blue-shielded,

Restless Brigantes,

Forced to surrender

Their necks to the slavish

Chains of the Romans.

Even old Ocean

Trembled, and owned the new

Sway of the axes

And Fasces of Rome.

Weep, weep for the man

Who, with such speed as

Never another

Causes decided,

Heard he but one side,

Heard he e'en no side.

Who now will judge us?

All the year over

List to our lawsuits?

Now shall give way to thee,

Quit his tribunal,

He who gives law in the

Empire of silence,

Prince of Cretan

Cities a hundred.

Beat, beat your breasts now,

Wound them in sorrow,

All ye pleaders

Crooked and venal;

Newly-fledged poets

Swell the lament;

More than all others,

Lift your sad voices,

Ye who made fortunes,

Rattling the dice-box.

When Claudius arrives in the nether regions, a choir of singers hasten

towards him, crying: "He is found!--joy! joy!" [This was the cry of the

Egyptians when they found the ox Apis.] He is now surrounded by those

whom he had caused to be put to death, Polybius and his other freedmen

appearing among the rest. Æacus, as judge, examines into the actions

of his life, and finds that he has murdered thirty senators, three

hundred and fifteen knights, and citizens as the sands of the sea. He

thereupon pronounces sentence on Claudius, and dooms him to cast dice

eternally from a box with holes in it. Suddenly Caligula appears, and

claims him as his slave. He produces witnesses, who prove that he had

frequently beat, boxed, and horsewhipped his uncle Claudius; and as

nobody seems able to dispute this, Claudius is handed over to Caligula.

Caligula presents him to his freedman Menander, whom he is now to help

in drawing out law-papers.

Such is a sketch of this remarkable "Apokolokyntosis of Claudius."

Seneca, who had basely flattered the Emperor while alive, was also

mean enough to drag him through the mire after he was dead. A noble

soul does not take revenge on the corpse of its foe, even though that

foe may have been but the parody of a man, and as detestable as he

was ridiculous. The insults of the coward alone are here in place. The

Apokolokyntosis faithfully reflects the degenerate baseness of Imperial

Rome.

CHAPTER VII.

SENECA EROE.

"Alto morire ogni misfatto amenda."--ALFIERI.

Pasquino Seneca now transforms himself in a twinkling into the

dignified moralist; he writes his treatise "Concerning Clemency, to the

Emperor Nero"--a pleasantly contradictory title, Nero and clemency. It

is well enough known, however, that the young Emperor, like all his

predecessors, governed without cruelty during the first years of his

reign. This work of Seneca's is of high merit, wise, and full of noble

sentiment.

Nero loaded his teacher with riches; and the author of the panegyric on

poverty possessed a princely fortune, gardens, lands, palaces, villas

outside the Porta Nomentana, in Baiæ, on the Alban Mount, upwards of

six millions in value. He lent money at usurious rates of interest in

Italy and in the provinces, greedily scraped and hoarded, fawned like

a hound upon Agrippina and her son--till times changed with him.

In four years Nero had thrown off every restraint. The murder of

his mother had met with no resistance from the timid Seneca. The

high-minded Tacitus makes reproachful allusion to him. At length

Nero began to find the philosopher inconvenient. He had already put

his prefect Burrhus to death, and Seneca had hastened to put all

his wealth at the disposal of the furious monarch; he now lived in

complete retirement. But his enemies accused him of being privy to

the conspiracy of Calpurnius Piso; and his nephew, the well-known poet

Lucan, was, not without ground, affirmed to be similarly implicated.

The conduct of Lucan in the matter was incredibly base. He made a

pusillanimous confession; condescended to the most unmanly entreaties;

and, sheltering himself behind the illustrious example set by Nero in

his matricide, he denounced his innocent mother as a participant in

the conspiracy. This abominable proceeding did not save him; he was

condemned to voluntary death, went home, wrote to his father Annæus

Mela Seneca about some emendations of his poems, dined luxuriously, and

with the greatest equanimity opened his veins. So self-contradictory

are these Roman characters.

Seneca is noble, great, and dignified in his end; he dies with an

almost Socratic cheerfulness, with a tranquillity worthy of Cato. He

chose bleeding as the means of his death, and consented that his heroic

wife Paulina should die in the same way. The two were at that time in

a country-house four miles from Rome. Nero kept restlessly despatching

tribunes to the villa to see how matters were going on. Word was

brought him in haste that Paulina, too, had had her veins opened. Nero

instantly sent off an order to prevent her death. The slaves bind the

lady's wounds, staunch the bleeding, and Paulina is rescued against her

will. She lived some years longer. Meanwhile, the blood flowed from the

aged Seneca but sparingly, and with an agonizing slowness. He asked

Statius Annæus for poison, and took it, but without success; he then

had himself put in a warm bath. He sprinkled the surrounding slaves

with water, saying; "I make this libation to Zeus the Liberator." As he

still could not die here, he was carried into a vapour bath, and there

was suffocated. He was in his sixty-eighth year.

Reader, let us not be too hard on this philosopher, who, after all,

was a man of his degenerate time, and whose nature is a combination

of splendid talent, love of truth, and love of wisdom, with the

most despicable weaknesses. His writings exercised great influence

throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, and have purified many a soul

from vicious passion, and guided it in nobler paths. Seneca, let us

part friends.

CHAPTER VIII.

THOUGHTS OF A BRIDE.

"The wedding-day is near, when thou must wear

Fair garments, and fair gifts present to all

The youths that lead thee home; for of such things

The rumour travels far, and brings us honour,

Cheering thy father's heart, and loving

mother's."--_Odyssey._

Every valley or pieve of Cape Corso has its marina, its little port,

and anything more lonely and sequestered than these hamlets on the

quiet shore, it would be difficult to find. It was sultry noon when

I reached the strand of Luri, the hour when Pan is wont to sleep. The

people in the house where I was to wait for the little coasting-vessel,

which was to convey me to Bastia, sat all as if in slumber. A lovely

girl, seated at the open window, was sewing as if in dream upon a

fazoletto, with a mysterious faint smile on her face, and absorbed,

plainly, in all sorts of secret, pretty thoughts of her own. She was

embroidering something on the handkerchief; and this something, I could

see, was a little poem which her happy heart was making on her near

marriage. The blue sea laughed through the window behind her back; it

knew the story, for the fisher-maiden had made it full confession.

The girl had on a sea-green dress, a flowered vest, and the mandile

neatly wound about her hair; the mandile was snow-white, checked

with triple rows of fine red stripes. To me, too, did Maria Benvenuta

make confession of her open mystery, with copious prattle about winds

and waves, and the beautiful music and dancing there would be at the

wedding, up in the vale of Luri. For after some months will come the

marriage festival, and as fine a one it will be as ever was held in

Corsica.

On the morning of the day on which Benvenuta is to leave her mother's

house, a splendid _trovata_ will stand at the entrance of her village,

a green triumphal arch with many-coloured ribbons. The friends, the

neighbours, the kinsfolk, will assemble on the Piazzetta to form

the _corteo_--the bridal procession. Then a youth will go up to the

gaily-dressed bride, and complain that she is leaving the place where

she was so well cared for in her childhood, and where she never wanted

for corals, nor flowers, nor friends. But since now she is resolved

to go, he, with all his heart, in the name of her friends, wishes her

happiness and prosperity, and bids her farewell. Then Maria Benvenuta

bursts into tears, and she gives the youth a present, as a keepsake for

the commune. A horse, finely decorated, is brought before the house,

the bride mounts it, young men fully armed ride beside her, their hats

wreathed with flowers and ribbons, and so the _corteo_ moves onwards

through the triumphal arch. One youth bears the _freno_--the symbol of

fruitfulness, a distaff encircled at its top with spindles, and decked

with ribbons. A handkerchief waves from it as flag. This freno in his

hand, the _freniere_ rides proudly at the head of the procession.

The _cortège_ approaches Campo, where the bridegroom lives, and into

his house the bride is now to be conducted. At the entrance of Campo

stands another magnificent trovata. A youth steps forward, holding

high in his hand an olive-twig streaming with ribbons. This, with wise

old-fashioned sayings, he puts into the hand of the bride. Here two

of the young men of the bride's _corteo_ gallop off in furious haste

towards the bridegroom's house; they are riding for the _vanto_, that

is, the honour of being the first to bring the bride the key of the

bridegroom's house. A flower is the symbol of the key. The fastest

rider has won it, and exultingly holding it in his hand, he gallops

back to the bride, to present to her the symbol. The procession is now

moving towards the house. Women and girls crowd the balconies, and

strew upon the bride, flowers, rice, grains of wheat, and throw the

fruits that are in season among the procession with merry shoutings,

and wishes of joy. This is called _Le Grazie_. Ceaseless is the din of

muskets, mandolines, and the cornamusa, or bagpipe. Such jubilation

as there is in Campo, such shooting, and huzzaing, and twanging, and

fiddling! Such a joyous stir as there is in the air of spring-swallows,

lark-songs, flying flowers, wheat-grains, ribbons--and all about this

little Maria Benvenuta, who sits here at the window, and embroiders the

whole story on the fazoletto.

But now the old father-in-law issues from the house, and thus

gravely addresses the Corteo of strangers:--"Who are you, men thus

armed?--friends or foes? Are you conductors of this _donna gentile_,

or have you carried her off, although to appearance you are noble and

valiant men?" The bridesman answers, "We are your friends and guests,

and we escort this fair and worthy maiden, the pledge of our new

friendship. We plucked the fairest flower of the strand of Luri, to

bring it as a gift to Campo."

"Welcome, then, my friends and guests, enter my house, and refresh

you at the feast;" thus replies again the bridegroom's father, lifts

the maiden from her horse, embraces her, and leads her into the house.

There the happy bridegroom folds her in his arms, and this is done to

quite a reckless amount of merriment on the sixteen-stringed cithern,

and the cornamusa.

Now we go into the church, where the tapers are already lit, and the

myrtles profusely strewn. And when the pair have been joined, and again

enter the bridegroom's house, they see, standing in the guest-chamber,

two stools; on these the happy couple seat themselves, and now comes a

woman, roguishly smiling, with a little child in swaddling clothes in

her arms. She lays the child in the arm of the bride. The little Maria

Benvenuta does not blush by any means, but takes the baby and kisses

and fondles it right heartily. Then she puts on his head a little

Phrygian cap, richly decked with particoloured ribbons. When this part

of the ceremony has been gone through, the kinsfolk embrace the pair,

and each wishes the good old wish:--

"Dio vi dia buona fortuna,

Tre di maschi e femmin' una:"

--that is, God give you good luck, three sons and a daughter. The bride

now distributes little gifts to her husband's relatives; the nearest

relation receives a small coin. Then follow the feast and the balls,

at which they will dance the _cerca_, and the _marsiliana_, and the

_tarantella_.

Whether they will observe the rest of the old usages, as they are given

in the chronicle, I do not know. But in former times it was the custom

that a young relation of the bride should precede her into the nuptial

chamber. Here he jumped and rolled several times over the bridal-bed,

then, the bride sitting down on it, he untied the ribbons on her shoes,

as respectfully as we see upon the old sculptures Anchises unloosing

the sandals of Venus, as she sits upon her couch. The bride now moved

her little feet prettily till the shoes slipped to the ground; and to

the youth who had untied them, she gave a present of money. To make

a long story short, they will have a merry time of it at Benvenuta's

wedding, and when long years have gone by, they will still remember it

in the Valley of Campo.

All this we gossiped over very gravely in the boatman's little house

at Luri; and I know the cradle-song too with which Maria Benvenuta will

hush her little son to sleep--

"Ninniná, my darling, my doated-on!

Ninniná, my one only good!

Thou art a little ship dancing along,

Dancing along on an azure flood,

Fearing not the waves' rough glee,

Nor the winds that sweep the sea

Sweet sleep now get--sleep, mother's pet,

I'll sing thee _ninni nani_.

"Little ship laden with pearls, my precious one,

Laden with silks and with damasks so gay,

With sails of brocade that have wafted it on

From an Indian port, far, far away;

And a rudder all of gold,

Wrought with skill to worth untold.

Sound sleep now get--sleep, mother's pet,

I'll sing thee _ninni nani_.

"When thou wast born, thou darling one,

To the holy font they bore thee soon.

God-papa to thee the sun,

And thy god-mamma the moon;

And the baby stars that shine on high,

Rock'd their gold cradles joyfully.

Soft sleep now get--sleep, mother's pet,

I'll sing thee _ninni nani_.

"Darling of darlings--brighter the heaven,

Deeper its blue as it smiled on thee;

Even the stately planets seven,

Brought thee presents rich and free;

And the mountain shepherds all,

Kept an eight-days' festival!

Sweet sleep now get--sleep, mother's pet,

I'll sing thee _ninni nani_.

"Nothing was heard but the cithern, my beauty,

Nothing but dancing on every side,

In the sweet vale of Cuscioni

Through the country far and wide

Boccanera and Falconi

Echoed with their wonted glee.

Sound sleep now get--sleep, mother's pet,

I'll sing thee _ninni nani_.

"Darling, when thou art taller grown,

Free thou shalt wander through meadows fair,

Every flower shall be newly-blown,

Oil shall shine 'stead of dewdrops there,

And the water in the sea

Changed to rarest balsam be.

Soft sleep now get--sleep, mother's pet,

I'll sing thee _ninni nani_.

"Then the mountains shall rise before baby's eyes,

All cover'd with lambs as white as snow;

And the Chamois wild shall bound after the child,

And the playful fawn and gentle doe;

But the hawk so fierce and the fox so sly,

Away from this valley far must hie.

Sweet sleep now get--sleep, mother's pet,

I'll sing thee _ninni nani_.

"Darling--earliest blossom mine,

Beauteous thou, beyond compare;

In Bavella born to shine,

And in Cuscioni fair,

Fourfold trefoil leaf so bright,

Kids would nibble--if they might!

Sweet sleep now get--sleep, mother's pet,

I'll sing thee _ninni nani_."

Should, perhaps, the child be too much excited by such a fanciful

song, the mother will sing him this little nanna, whereupon he will

immediately fall asleep--

"Ninni, ninni, ninni nanna,

Ninni, ninni, ninni nolu,

Allegrezza di la mamma

Addormentati, O figliuolu."

CHAPTER IX.

CORSICAN SUPERSTITIONS.

In the meantime, voices from the shore had announced the arrival of the

boatmen; I therefore took my leave of the pretty Benvenuta, wished her

all sorts of pleasant things, and stepped into the boat. We kept always

as close as possible in shore. At Porticcioli, a little town with a

Dogana, we ran in to have the names of our four passengers registered.

A few sailing vessels were anchored here. The ripe figs on the trees,

and the beautiful grapes in the gardens, tempted us; we had half a

vineyard of the finest muscatel grapes, with the most delicious figs,

brought us for a few pence.

Continuing our voyage in the evening, the beauty of the moonlit sea,

and the singular forms of the rocky coast, served to beguile the way

pleasantly. I saw a great many towers on the rocks, here and there a

ruin, a church, or cloister. As we sailed past the old Church of St.

Catherine of Sicco, which stands high and stately on the shore, the

weather seemed going "to desolate itself," as they say in Italian,

and threatened a storm. The old steersman, as we came opposite St.

Catherine, doffed his baretto, and prayed aloud: "Holy Mother of God,

Maria, we are sailing to Bastia; grant that we get safely into port!"

The boatmen all took off their baretti, and devoutly made the sign

of the cross. The moonlight breaking on the water from heavy black

clouds; the fear of a storm; the grim, spectrally-lighted shore; and

finally, St. Catherine,--suddenly brought over our entire company one

of those moods which seek relief in ghost-stories. The boatmen began to

tell them, in all varieties of the horrible and incredible. One of the

passengers, meanwhile, anxious that at least not all Corsicans should

seem, in the strangers' eyes, to be superstitious, kept incessantly

shrugging his shoulders, indignant, as a person of enlightenment, that

I should hear such nonsense; while another constantly supported his

own and the boatmen's opinion, by the asseveration: "I have never seen

witches with my own eyes, but that there is such a thing as the black

art is undoubted." I, for my part, affirmed that I confidently believed

in witches and sorceresses, and that I had had the honour of knowing

some very fine specimens. The partisan of the black art, an inhabitant

of Luri, had, I may mention, allowed me an interesting glimpse into his

mysterious studies, when, in the course of a conversation about London,

he very naïvely threw out the question, whether that great city was

French or not.

The Corsicans call the witch _strega_. Her _penchant_ is to suck, as

vampire, the blood of children. One of the boatmen described to me

how she looked, when he surprised her once in his father's house; she

is black as pitch on the breast, and can transform herself from a cat

into a beautiful girl, and from a beautiful girl into a cat. These

sorceresses torment the children, make frightful faces at them, and

all sorts of _fattura_. They can bewitch muskets, too, and make them

miss fire. In this case, you must make a cross over the trigger, and,

in general, you may be sure the cross is the best protection against

sorcery. It is a very safe thing, too, to carry relics and amulets.

Some of these will turn off a bullet, and are good against the bite of

the venomous spider--the _malmignatto_.

Among these amulets they had formerly in Corsica a "travelling-stone,"

such as is frequently mentioned in the Scandinavian legends. It was

found at the Tower of Seneca only--was four-cornered, and contained

iron. Whoever tied such a stone over his knee made a safe and easy

journey.

Many of the pagan usages of ancient Corsica have been lost, many

still exist, particularly in the highland pasture-country of Niolo.

Among these, the practice of soothsaying by bones is remarkable.

The fortune-teller takes the shoulder-blade (_scapula_) of a goat

or sheep, gives its surface a polish as of a mirror, and reads from

it the history of the person concerned. But it must be the left

shoulder-blade, for, according to the old proverb--_la destra spalla

sfalla_--the right one deceives. Many famous Corsicans are said to

have had their fortunes predicted by soothsayers. It is told that, as

Sampiero sat with his friends at table, the evening before his death,

an owl was heard to scream upon the house-top, where it sat hooting the

whole night; and that, when a soothsayer hereupon read the scapula, to

the horror of all, he found Sampiero's death written in it.

Napoleon's fortunes, too, were foretold from a _spalla_. An old

herdsman of Ghidazzo, renowned for reading shoulder-blades, inspected

the scapula one day, when Napoleon was still a child, and saw thereon,

plainly represented, a tree rising with many branches high into the

heavens, but having few and feeble roots. From this the herdsman saw

that a Corsican would become ruler of the world, but only for a short

time. The story of this prediction is very common in Corsica; it has

a remarkable affinity with the dream of Mandane, in which she saw the

tree interpreted to mean her son Cyrus.

Many superstitious beliefs of the Corsicans, with a great deal of

poetic fancy in them, relate to death--the true genius of the Corsican

popular poetry; since on this island of the Vendetta, death has

so peculiarly his mythic abode; Corsica might be called the Island

of Death, as other islands were called of Apollo, of Venus, or of

Jupiter. When any one is about to die, a pale light upon the house-top

frequently announces what is to happen. The owl screeches the whole

night, the dog howls, and often a little drum is heard, which a ghost

beats. If any one's death is near, sometimes the dead people come at

night to his house, and make it known. They are dressed exactly like

the Brothers of Death, in the long white mantles, with the pointed

hoods in which are the spectral eye-holes; and they imitate all the

gestures of the Brothers of Death, who place themselves round the bier,

lift it, bear it, and go before it. This is their dismal pastime all

night till the cock crows. When the cock crows, they slip away, some to

the churchyard, some into their graves in the church.

The dead people are fond of each other's company; you will see them

coming out of the graves if you go to the churchyard at night; then

make quickly the sign of the cross over the trigger of your gun, that

the ghost-shot may go off well. For a full shot has power over the

spectres; and when you shoot among them, they disperse, and not till

ten years after such a shot can they meet again.

Sometimes the dead come to the bedside of those who have survived,

and say, "Now lament for me no more, and cease weeping, for I have the

certainty that I shall yet be among the blessed."

In the silent night-hours, when you sit upon your bed, and your sad

heart will not let you sleep, often the dead call you by name: "O

Marì!--O Josè!" For your life do not answer, though they cry ever so

mournfully, and your heart be like to break. Answer not! if you answer,

you must die.

"Andate! andate! the storm is coming! Look at the tromba there, as it

drives past Elba!" And vast and dark swept the mighty storm-spectre

over the sea, a sight of terrific beauty; the moon was hid, and sea

and shore lay wan in the glare of lightning.--God be praised! we are at

the Tower of Bastia. The holy Mother of God _had_ helped us, and as we

stepped on land, the storm began in furious earnest. We, however, were

in port.

[G] A kilometre is 1093·633 yards.

[H] Usually given along with Seneca's Tragedies; but believed

to be of later origin--_Tr._

[I] The olive.

[J] It may be worth while to notice a contradiction between

this epigram and the preceding, in order that no more insults

to Corsica may be fathered on Seneca than he is probably

the author of. It is not quite easy to imagine that the

writer who, in one epigram, had characterized Corsica as

"traversed by fish-abounding streams"--_piscosis pervia

fluminibus_--would in another deny that it afforded a draught

of water--_non haustus aquæ_. Such an expression as _piscosis

pervia fluminibus_ guarantees to a considerable extent both

quantity and quality of water.--_Tr._

[K] "Die Sonne sie bleibet am Himmel nicht stehen,

Es treibt sie durch Meere und Länder zu gehen."

[L] For this unblushing assertion, Livius Geminus had

actually received from Caligula a reward of 250,000 denarii.

BOOK V.--WANDERINGS IN CORSICA.

CHAPTER I.

VESCOVATO AND THE CORSICAN HISTORIANS.

Some miles to the southwards of Bastia, on the heights of the east

coast, lies Vescovato, a spot celebrated in Corsican history. Leaving

the coast-road at the tower of Buttafuoco, you turn upwards into the

hills, the way leading through magnificent forests of chestnuts, which

cover the heights on every side. The general name for this beautiful

little district is Casinca; and the region round Vescovato is honoured

with the special appellation of Castagniccia, or the land of chestnuts.

I was curious to see this Corsican paese, in which Count Matteo

Buttafuoco once offered Rousseau an asylum; I expected to find

a village such as I had already seen frequently enough among the

mountains. I was astonished, therefore, when I saw Vescovato before

me, lost in the green hills among magnificent groves of chestnuts,

oranges, vines, fruit-trees of every kind, a mountain brook gushing

down through it, the houses of primitive Corsican cast, yet here and

there not without indications of architectural taste. I now could

not but own to myself that of all the retreats that a misanthropic

philosopher might select, the worst was by no means Vescovato. It is

a mountain hermitage, in the greenest, shadiest solitude, with the

loveliest walks, where you can dream undisturbed, now among the rocks

by the wild stream, now under a blossom-laden bush of erica beside an

ivy-hung cloister, or you are on the brow of a hill from which the eye

looks down upon the plain of the Golo, rich and beautiful as a nook of

paradise, and upon the sea.

A bishop built the place; and the bishops of the old town of Mariana,

which lay below in the plain, latterly lived here.

Historic names and associations cluster thickly round Vescovato;

especially is it honoured by its connexion with three Corsican

historians of the sixteenth century--Ceccaldi, Monteggiani, and

Filippini. Their memory is still as fresh as their houses are well

preserved. The Curato of the place conducted me to Filippini's house, a

mean peasant's cottage. I could not repress a smile when I was shown a

stone taken from the wall, on which the most celebrated of the Corsican

historians had in the fulness of his heart engraved the following

inscription:--_Has Ædes ad suum et amicorum usum in commodiorem Formam

redegit anno_ MDLXXV., _cal. Decemb. A. Petrus Philippinus Archid.

Marian._ In sooth, the pretensions of these worthy men were extremely

humble. Another stone exhibits Filippini's coat of arms--his house,

with a horse tied to a tree. It was the custom of the archdeacon to

write his history in his vineyard, which they still show in Vescovato.

After riding up from Mariana, he fastened his horse under a pine,

and sat down to meditate or to write, protected by the high walls of

his garden--for his life was in constant danger from the balls of his

enemies. He thus wrote the history of the Corsicans under impressions

highly exciting and dramatic.

Filippini's book is the leading work on Corsican history, and is of

a thoroughly national character. The Corsicans may well be proud of

it. It is an organic growth from the popular mind of the country;

songs, traditions, chronicles, and, latterly, professed and conscious

historical writing, go to constitute the work as it now lies before us.

The first who wrought upon it was Giovanni della Grossa, lieutenant

and secretary of the brave Vincentello d'Istria. He collected the

old legends and traditions, and proceeded as Paul Diaconus did in his

history. He brought down the history of Corsica to the year 1464. His

scholar, Monteggiani, continued it to the year 1525,--but this part of

the history is meagre; then came Ceccaldi, who continued it to the year

1559; and Filippini, who brought it as far as 1594. Of the thirteen

books composing the whole, he has, therefore, written only the last

four; but he edited and gave form to the entire work, so that it now

bears his name. The _editio princeps_ appeared in Tournon in France, in

1594, in Italian, under the following title:--

"The History of Corsica, in which all things are recorded that have

happened from the time that it began to be inhabited up till the year

1594. With a general description of the entire Island; divided into

thirteen books, and commenced by Giovanni della Grossa, who wrote the

first nine thereof, which were continued by Pier Antonio Monteggiani,

and afterwards by Marc' Antonio Ceccaldi, and were collected and

enlarged by the Very Reverend Antonpietro Filippini, Archidiaconus of

Mariana, the last four being composed by himself. Diligently revised

and given to the light by the same Archidiaconus. In Tournon. In the

printing-house of Claudio Michael, Printer to the University, 1594."

Although an opponent of Sampiero, and though, from timidity, or from

deliberate intent to falsify, frequently guilty of suppressing or

perverting facts, he, nevertheless, told the Genoese so many bitter

truths in his book, that the Republic did everything in its power to

prevent its circulation. It had become extremely scarce when Pozzo di

Borgo did his country the signal service of having it edited anew. The

learned Corsican, Gregori, was the new editor, and he furnished the

work with an excellent introduction; it appeared, as edited by Gregori,

at Pisa, in the year 1827, in five volumes. The Corsicans are certainly

worthy to have the documentary monuments of their history well attended

to. Their modern historians blame Filippini severely for incorporating

in his history all the traditions and fables of Grossa. For my part,

I have nothing but praise to give him for this; his history must not

be judged according to strict scientific rules; it possesses, as we

have it, the high value of bearing the undisguised impress of the

popular mind. I have equally little sympathy with the fault-finders in

their depreciation of Filippini's talent. He is somewhat prolix, but

his vein is rich; and a sound philosophic morality, based on accurate

observation of life, pervades his writings. The man is to be held

in honour; he has done his people justice, though no adherent of the

popular cause, but a partisan of Genoa. Without Filippini, a great part

of Corsican history would by this time have been buried in obscurity.

He dedicated his work to Alfonso d'Ornano, Sampiero's son, in token of

his satisfaction at the young hero's reconciling himself to Genoa, and

even visiting that city.

"When I undertook to write the History," he says, "I trusted more to

the gifts which I enjoy from nature, than to that acquired skill and

polish which is expected in those who make similar attempts. I thought

to myself that I should stand excused in the eyes of those who should

read me, if they considered how great the want of all provision for

such an undertaking is in this island (in which I must live, since it

has pleased God to cast my lot here); so that scientific pursuits, of

whatever kind, are totally impossible, not to speak of writing a pure

and quite faultless style." There are other passages in Filippini,

in which he complains with equal bitterness of the ignorance of the

Corsicans, and their total want of cultivation in any shape. He does

not even except the clergy, "among whom," says he, "there are hardly a

dozen who have learned grammar; while among the Franciscans, although

they have five-and-twenty convents, there are scarcely so many as eight

lettered men; and thus the whole nation grows up in ignorance."

He never conceals the faults of his countrymen. "Besides their

ignorance," he remarks, "one can find no words to express the laziness

of the islanders where the tilling of the ground is concerned. Even

the fairest plain in the world--the plain that extends from Aleria

to Mariana--lies desolate; and they will not so much as drive away

the fowls. But when it chances that they have become masters of a

single carlino, they imagine that it is impossible now that they can

ever want, and so sink into complete idleness."--This is a strikingly

apt characterization of the Corsicans of the present day. "Why does

no one prop the numberless wild oleasters?" asks Filippini; "why not

the chestnuts? But they do nothing, and therefore are they all poor.

Poverty leads to crime; and daily we hear of robberies. They also

swear false oaths. Their feuds and their hatred, their little love

and their little faithfulness, are quite endless; hence that proverb

is true which we are wont to hear: 'The Corsican never forgives.' And

hence arises all that calumniating, and all that backbiting, that we

see perpetually. The people of Corsica (as Braccellio has written)

are, beyond other nations, rebellious, and given to change; many

are addicted to a certain superstition which they call Magonie, and

thereto they use the men as women. There prevails here also a kind

of soothsaying, which they practise with the shoulder-bones of dead

animals."

Such is the dark side of the picture which the Corsican historian draws

of his countrymen; and he here spares them so little, that, in fact,

he merely reproduces what Seneca is said to have written of them in the

lines--

"Prima est ulcisi lex, altera vivere raptu,

Tertia mentiri, quarta negare Deos."

On the other hand, in the dedication to Alfonso, he defends most

zealously the virtues of his people against Tomaso Porcacchi Aretino

da Castiglione, who had attacked them in his "Description of the most

famous Islands of the World." "This man," says Filippini, "speaks of

the Corsicans as assassins, which makes me wonder at him with no small

astonishment, for there will be found, I may well venture to say, no

people in the world among whom strangers are more lovingly handled, and

among whom they can travel with more safety; for throughout all Corsica

they meet with the utmost hospitality and courteousness, without having

ever to expend the smallest coin for their maintenance." This is true;

a stranger here corroborates the Corsican historian, after a lapse of

three hundred years.

As in Vescovato we are standing on the sacred ground of Corsican

historiography, I may mention a few more of the Corsican historians.

An insular people, with a past so rich in striking events, heroic

struggles, and great men, and characterized by a patriotism so

unparalleled, might also be expected to be rich in writers of the class

referred to; and certainly their numbers, as compared with the small

population, are astonishing. I give only the more prominent names.

Next to Filippini, the most note-worthy of the Corsican

historiographers is Petrus Cyrnæus, Archdeacon of Aleria, the other

ancient Roman colony. He lived in the fifteenth century, and wrote,

besides his _Commentarium de Bello Ferrariensi_, a History of Corsica

extending down to the year 1482, in Latin, with the title, _Petri

Cyrnæi de rebus Corsicis libri quatuor_. His Latin is as classical as

that of the best authors of his time; breadth and vigour characterize

his style, which has a resemblance to that of Sallust or Tacitus; but

his treatment of his materials is thoroughly unartistic. He dwells

longest on the siege of Bonifazio by Alfonso of Arragon, and on the

incidents of his own life. Filippini did not know, and therefore could

not use the work of Cyrnæus; it existed only in manuscript till brought

to light from the library of Louis XV., and incorporated in Muratori's

large work in the year 1738. The excellent edition (Paris, 1834) which

we now possess we owe to the munificence of Pozzo di Borgo, and the

literary ability of Gregori, who has added an Italian translation of

the Latin text.

This author's estimate of the Corsicans is still more characteristic

and intelligent than that of Filippini. Let us hear what he has to

say, that we may see whether the present Corsicans have retained much

or little of the nature of their forefathers who lived in those early

times:--

"They are eager to avenge an injury, and it is reckoned disgraceful not

to take vengeance. When they cannot reach him who has done the murder,

then they punish one of his relations. On this account, as soon as a

murder has taken place, all the relatives of the murderer instantly arm

themselves in their own defence. Only children and women are spared."

He describes the arms of the Corsicans of his time as follows: "They

wear pointed helms, called cerbelleras; others also round ones; further

daggers, spears four ells long, of which each man has two. On the left

side rests the sword, on the right the dagger.

"In their own country, they are at discord; out of it, they hold

fast to each other. Their souls are ready for death (_animi ad mortem

parati_). They are universally poor, and despise trade. They are greedy

of renown; gold and silver they scarcely use at all. Drunkenness they

think a great disgrace. They seldom learn to read and write; few of

them hear the orators or the poets; but in disputation they exercise

themselves so continually, that when a cause has to be decided, you

would think them all very admirable pleaders. Among the Corsicans, I

never saw a head that was bald. The Corsicans are of all men the most

hospitable. Their own wives cook their victuals for the highest men

in the land. They are by nature inclined to silence--made rather for

acting than for speaking. They are also the most religious of mortals.

"It is the custom to separate the men from the women, more especially

at table. The wives and daughters fetch the water from the well;

for the Corsicans have almost no menials. The Corsican women are

industrious: you may see them, as they go to the fountain, bearing the

pitcher on their head, leading the horse, if they have one, by a halter

over their arm, and at the same time turning the spindle. They are also

very chaste, and are not long sleepers.

"The Corsicans inter their dead expensively; for they bury them not

without exequies, without laments, without panegyric, without dirges,

without prayer. For their funeral solemnities are very similar to those

of the Romans. One of the neighbours raises the cry, and calls to the

nearest village: 'Ho there! cry to the other village, for such a one

is just dead.' Then they assemble according to their villages, their

towns, and their communities, walking one by one in a long line--first

the men and then the women. When these arrive, all raise a great

wailing, and the wife and brothers tear the clothes upon their breast.

The women, disfigured with weeping, smite themselves on the bosom,

lacerate the face, and tear out the hair.--All Corsicans are free."

The reader will have found that this picture of the Corsicans resembles

in many points the description Tacitus gives us of the ancient Germans.

Corsican historiography has at no time flourished more than during

the heroic fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; it was silent during

the seventeenth, because at that period the entire people lay in a

state of death-like exhaustion; in the eighteenth, participating in

the renewed vitality of the age, it again became active, and we have

Natali's treatise _Disinganno sulla guerra di Corsica_, and Salvini's

_Giustificazione dell' Insurrezione_--useful books, but of no great

literary merit.

Dr. Limperani wrote a History of Corsica to the end of the seventeenth

century, a work full of valuable materials, but prosy and long-winded.

Very serviceable--in fact, from the documents it contains,

indispensable--is the History of the Corsicans, by Cambiaggi, in four

quarto volumes. Cambiaggi dedicated his work to Frederick the Great,

the admirer of Pasquale Paoli and Corsican heroism.

Now that the Corsican people have lost their freedom, the learned

patriots of Corsica--and Filippini would no longer have to complain

of the dearth of literary cultivation among his countrymen--have

devoted themselves with praiseworthy zeal to the history of their

country. These men are generally advocates. We have, for example,

Pompei's book, _L'Etat actuel de la Corse_; Gregori edited Filippini

and Peter Cyrnæus, and made a collection of the Corsican Statutes--a

highly meritorious work. These laws originated in the old traditionary

jurisprudence of the Corsicans, which the democracy of Sampiero

adopted, giving it a more definite and comprehensive form. They

underwent further additions and improvements during the supremacy of

the Genoese, who finally, in the sixteenth century, collected them

into a code. They had become extremely scarce. The new edition is a

splendid monument of Corsican history, and the codex itself does the

Genoese much credit. Renucci, another talented Corsican, has written a

_Storia di Corsica_, in two volumes, published at Bastia in 1833, which

gives an abridgment of the earlier history, and a detailed account

of events during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up to 1830.

The work is rich in material, but as a historical composition feeble.

Arrighi wrote biographies of Sampiero and Pasquale Paoli. Jacobi's

work in two volumes is the History of Corsica in most general use. It

extends down to the end of the war of independence under Paoli, and is

to be completed in a third volume. Jacobi's merit consists in having

written a systematically developed history of the Corsicans, using

all the available sources; his book is indispensable, but defective

in critical acumen, and far from sufficiently objective. The latest

book on Corsican history, is an excellent little compendium by Camillo

Friess, keeper of the Archives in Ajaccio, who told me he proposed

writing at greater length on the same subject. He has my best wishes

for the success of such an undertaking, for he is a man of original

and vigorous intellect. It is to be hoped he will not, like Jacobi,

write his work in French, but, as he is bound in duty to his people, in

Italian.

CHAPTER II.

ROUSSEAU AND THE CORSICANS.

I did not neglect to visit the house of Count Matteo Buttafuoco,

which was at one time to have been the domicile of Rousseau. It is a

structure of considerable pretensions, the stateliest in Vescovato.

Part of it is at present occupied by Marshal Sebastiani, whose family

belongs to the neighbouring village of Porta.

This Count Buttafuoco is the same man against whom Napoleon wrote an

energetic pamphlet, when a fiery young democrat in Ajaccio. The Count

was an officer in the French army when he invited Jean Jacques Rousseau

to Vescovato. The philosopher of Geneva had, in his _Contrat Social_,

written and prophesied as follows with regard to Corsica: "There is

still one country in Europe susceptible of legislation--the island of

Corsica. The vigour and perseverance displayed by the Corsicans, in

gaining and defending their freedom, are such as entitle them to claim

the aid of some wise man to teach them how to preserve it. I have an

idea that this little island will one day astonish Europe." When the

French were sending out their last and decisive expedition against

Corsica, Rousseau wrote: "It must be confessed that your French are a

very servile race, a people easily bought by despotism, and shamefully

cruel to the unfortunate; if they knew of a free man at the other end

of the world, I believe they would march all the way thither, for the

mere pleasure of exterminating him."

I shall not affirm that this was a second prophecy of Rousseau's, but

the first has certainly been fulfilled, for the day has come in which

the Corsicans _have_ astonished Europe.

The favourable opinion of the Corsican people, thus expressed by

Rousseau, induced Paoli to invite him to Corsica in 1764, that he

might escape from the persecution of his enemies in Switzerland.

Voltaire, always enviously and derisively inclined towards Rousseau,

had spread the malicious report that this offer of an asylum in Corsica

was merely a ridiculous trick some one was playing on him. Upon this,

Paoli had himself written the invitation. Buttafuoco had gone further;

he had called upon the philosopher--of whom the Poles also begged a

constitution--to compose a code of laws for the Corsicans. Paoli does

not seem to have opposed the scheme, perhaps because he considered

such a work, though useless for its intended purpose, still as, in one

point of view, likely to increase the reputation of the Corsicans.

The vain misanthrope thus saw himself in the flattering position of

a Pythagoras, and joyfully wrote, in answer, that the simple idea of

occupying himself with such a task elevated and inspired his soul;

and that he should consider the remainder of his unhappy days nobly

and virtuously spent, if he could spend them to the advantage of the

brave Corsicans. He now, with all seriousness, asked for materials.

The endless petty annoyances in which he was involved, prevented him

ever producing the work. But what would have been its value if he had?

What were the Corsicans to do with a theory, when they had already

given themselves a constitution of practical efficiency, thoroughly

popular, because formed on the material basis of their traditions and

necessities?

Circumstances prevented Rousseau's going to Corsica--pity! He might

have made trial of his theories there--for the island seems the

realized Utopia of his views of that normal condition of society which

he so lauds in his treatise on the question--Whether or not the arts

and sciences have been beneficial to the human race? In Corsica, he

would have had what he wanted, in plenty--primitive mortals in woollen

blouses, living on goat's-milk and a few chestnuts, neither science

nor art--equality, bravery, hospitality--and revenge to the death!

I believe the warlike Corsicans would have laughed heartily to have

seen Rousseau wandering about under the chestnuts, with his cat on

his arm, or plaiting his basket-work. But Vendetta! vendetta! bawled

once or twice, with a few shots of the fusil, would very soon have

frightened poor Jacques away again. Nevertheless Rousseau's connexion

with Corsica is memorable, and stands in intimate relation with the

most characteristic features of his history.

In the letter in which he notifies to Count Buttafuoco his inability to

accept his invitation, Rousseau writes: "I have not lost the sincere

desire of living in your country; but the complete exhaustion of my

energies, the anxieties I should incur, and the fatigues I should

undergo, with other hindrances arising from my position, compel

me, at least for the present, to relinquish my resolution; though,

notwithstanding these difficulties, I find I cannot reconcile myself to

the thought of utterly abandoning it. I am growing old; I am growing

frail; my powers are leaving me; my wishes tempt me on, and yet my

hopes grow dim. Whatever the issue may be, receive, and render to

Signor Paoli, my liveliest, my heartfelt thanks, for the asylum which

he has done me the honour to offer me. Brave and hospitable people! I

shall never forget it so long as I live, that your hearts, your arms,

were opened to me, at a time when there was hardly another asylum left

for me in Europe. If it should not be my good fortune to leave my ashes

in your island, I shall at least endeavour to leave there a monument of

my gratitude; and I shall do myself honour, in the eyes of the whole

world, when I call you my hosts and protectors. What I hereby promise

to you, and what you may henceforth rely on, is this, that I shall

occupy the rest of my life only with myself or with Corsica; all other

interests are completely banished from my soul."

The concluding words promise largely; but they are in Rousseau's usual

glowing and rhetorical vein. How singularly such a style, and the

entire Rousseau nature, contrast with the austere taciturnity, the

manly vigour, the wild and impetuous energy of the Corsican! Rousseau

and Corsican seem ideas standing at an infinite distance apart--natures

the very antipodes of each other, and yet they touch each other like

corporeal and incorporeal, united in time and thought. It is strange

to hear, amid the prophetic dreams of a universal democracy predicted

by Rousseau, the wild clanging of that Corybantian war-dance of the

Corsicans under Paoli, proclaiming the new era which their heroic

struggle began. It is as if they would deafen, with the clangour of

their arms, the old despotic gods, while the new divinity is being born

upon their island, Jupiter--Napoleon, the revolutionary god of the iron

age.

CHAPTER III.

THE MORESCA--ARMED DANCE OF THE CORSICANS.

The Corsicans, like other brave peoples of fiery and imaginative

temperament, have a war-dance, called the Moresca. Its origin is

matter of dispute--some asserting it to be Moorish and others Greek.

The Greeks called these dances of warlike youths, armed with sword

and shield, Pyrrhic dances; and ascribed their invention to Minerva,

and Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. It is uncertain how they spread

themselves over the more western countries; but, ever since the

struggles of the Christians and Moors, they have been called Moresca;

and it appears that they are everywhere practised where the people

are rich in traditions of that old gigantic, world-historical contest

between Christian and Pagan, Europe and Asia,--as among the Albanians

in Greece, among the Servians, the Montenegrins, the Spaniards, and

other nations.

I do not know what significance is elsewhere attached to the Moresca,

as I have only once, in Genoa, witnessed this magnificent dance;

but in Corsica it has all along preserved peculiarities attaching to

the period of the Crusades, the Moresca there always representing a

conflict between Saracens and Christians; the deliverance of Jerusalem,

perhaps, or the conquest of Granada, or the taking of the Corsican

cities Aleria and Mariana, by Hugo Count Colonna. The Moresca has thus

assumed a half religious, half profane character, and has received from

its historical relations a distinctive and national impress.

The Corsicans have at all times produced the spectacle of this dance,

particularly in times of popular excitement and struggle, when a

national armed sport of this kind was likely of itself to inflame the

beholders, while at the same time it reminded them of the great deeds

of their forefathers. I know of no nobler pleasure for a free and manly

people, than the spectacle of the Moresca, the flower and poetry of the

mood that prompts to and exults in fight. It is the only national drama

the Corsicans have; as they were without other amusement, they had the

heroic deeds of their ancestors represented to them in dance, on the

same soil that they had steeped in their blood. It might frequently

happen that they rose from the Moresca to rush into battle.

Vescovato, as Filippini mentions, was often the theatre of the Moresca.

The people still remember that it was danced there in honour of

Sampiero; it was also produced in Vescovato in the time of Paoli. The

most recent performance is that of the year 1817.

The representation of the conquest of Mariana, by Hugo Colonna, was

that most in favour. A village was supposed to represent the town.

The stage was a piece of open ground, the green hills served as

amphitheatre, and on their sides lay thousands and thousands, gathered

from all parts of the island. Let the reader picture to himself such

a public as this--rude, fierce men, all in arms, grouped under the

chestnuts, with look, voice, and gesture accompanying the clanging

hero-dance. The actors, sometimes two hundred in number, are in two

separate troops; all wear the Roman toga. Each dancer holds in his

right hand a sword, in his left a dagger; the colour of the plume and

the breastplate alone distinguish Moors from Christians. The fiddle-bow

of a single violin-player rules the Moresca.

It begins. A Moorish astrologer issues from Mariana dressed in the

caftan, and with a long white beard; he looks to the sky and consults

the heavenly luminaries, and in dismay he predicts misfortune. With

gestures of alarm he hastens back within the gate. And see! yonder

comes a Moorish messenger, headlong terror in look and movement,

rushing towards Mariana with the news that the Christians have already

taken Aleria and Corte, and are marching on Mariana. Just as the

messenger vanishes within the city, horns blow, and enter Hugo Colonna

with the Christian army. Exulting shouts greet him from the hills.

Hugo, Hugo, Count Colonna,

O how gloriously he dances!

Dances like the kingly tiger

Leaping o'er the desert rocks.

High his sword lifts Count Colonna,

On its hilt the cross he kisses,

Then unto his valiant warriors

Thus he speaks, the Christian knight:

On in storm for Christ and country!

Up the walls of Mariana

Dancing, lead to-day the Moorish

Infidels a dance of death!

Know that all who fall in battle,

For the good cause fighting bravely,

Shall to-day in heaven mingle

With the blessed angel-choirs.

The Christians take their position. Flourish of horns. The Moorish

king, Nugalone, and his host issue from Mariana.

Nugalone, O how lightly,

O how gloriously he dances!

Like the tawny spotted panther,

When he dances from his lair.

With his left hand, Nugalone

Curls his moustache, dark and glossy:

Then unto his Paynim warriors

Thus he speaks, the haughty Moor:

Forward! in the name of Allah!

Dance them down, the dogs of Christians!

Show them, as we dance to victory,

Allah is the only God!

Know that all who fall in battle,

Shall to-day in Eden's garden

With the fair immortal maidens

Dance the rapturous houri-dance.

The two armies now file off--the Moorish king gives the signal for

battle, and the figures of the dance begin; there are twelve of them.

Louder music, sharper, clearer!

Nugalone and Colonna

Onward to the charge are springing,

Onward dance their charging hosts.

Lightly to the ruling music

Youthful limbs are rising, falling,

Swaying, bending, like the flower-stalks,

To the music of the breeze.

Now they meet, now gleam the weapons,

Lightly swung, and lightly parried;

Are they swords, or are they sunbeams--

Sunbeams glittering in their hands?

Tones of viol, bolder, fuller!--

Clash and clang of crossing weapons,

Varied tramp of changing movement,

Backward, forward, fast and slow.

Now they dance in circle wheeling,

Moor and Christian intermingled;--

See, the chain of swords is broken,

And in crescents they retire!

Wilder, wilder, the Moresca--

Furious now the sounding onset,

Like the rush of mad sea-billows,

To the music of the storm.

Quit thee bravely, stout Colonna,

Drive the Paynim crew before thee;

We must win our country's freedom

In the battle-dance to-day.

Thus we'll dance down all our tyrants--

Thus we'll dance thy routed armies

Down the hills of Vescovato,

Heaven-accurséd Genoa!

--still new evolutions, till at length they dance the last figure,

called the _resa_, and the Saracen yields.

When I saw the Moresca in Genoa, it was being performed in honour of

the Sardinian constitution, on its anniversary day, May the 9th; for

the beautiful dance has in Italy a revolutionary significance, and

is everywhere forbidden except where the government is liberal. The

people in their picturesque costumes, particularly the women in their

long white veils, covering the esplanade at the quay, presented a

magnificent spectacle. About thirty young men, all in a white dress

fitting tightly to the body; one party with green, the other with red

scarfs round the waist, danced the Moresca to an accompaniment of horns

and trumpets. They all had rapiers in each hand; and as they danced

the various movements, they struck the weapons against each other. This

Moresca appeared to have no historical reference.

The Corsicans, like the Spaniards, have also preserved the old

theatrical representations of the sufferings of our Saviour; they are

now, however, seldom given. In the year 1808, a spectacle of this kind

was produced in Orezza, before ten thousand people. Tents represented

the houses of Pilate, Herod, and Caiaphas. There were angels, and

there were devils who ascended through a trap-door. Pilate's wife was

a young fellow of twenty-three, with a coal-black beard. The commander

of the Roman soldiery wore the uniform of the French national guards,

with a colonel's epaulettes of gold and silver; the officer second in

command wore an infantry uniform, and both had the cross of the Legion

of Honour on their breast. A priest, the curato of Carcheto, played the

part of Judas. As the piece was commencing, a disturbance arose from

some unknown cause among the spectators, who bombarded each other with

pieces of rock, with which they supplied themselves from the natural

amphitheatre.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

JOACHIM MURAT.

"Espada nunca vencida!

Esfuerço de esfuerço estava."--_Romanza Durandarte._

There is still a third very remarkable house in Vescovato--the house

of the Ceccaldi family, from which two illustrious Corsicans have

sprung; the historian already mentioned, and the brave General Andrew

Colonna Ceccaldi, in his day one of the leading patriots of Corsica,

and Triumvir along with Giafferi and Hyacinth Paoli.

But the house has other associations of still greater interest. It is

the house of General Franceschetti, or rather of his wife Catharina

Ceccaldi, and it was here that the unfortunate King Joachim Murat

was hospitably received when he landed in Corsica on his flight from

Provence; and here that he formed the plan for re-conquering his

beautiful realm of Naples, by a chivalrous _coup de main_.

Once more, therefore, the history of a bold caballero passes in review

before us on this strange enchanted island, where kings' crowns hang

upon the trees, like golden apples in the Gardens of the Hesperides.

Murat's end is more touching than that of almost any other of those

men who have careered for a while with meteoric splendour through the

world, and then had a sudden and lamentable fall.

After his last rash and ill-conducted war in Italy, Murat had sought

refuge in France. In peril of his life, wandering about in the

vineyards and woods, he concealed himself for some time in the vicinity

of Toulon; to an old grenadier he owed his rescue from death by hunger.

The same Marquis of Rivière who had so generously protected Murat after

the conspiracy of George Cadoudal and Pichegru, sent out soldiers after

the fugitive, with orders to take him, alive or dead. In this frightful

extremity, Joachim resolved to claim hospitality in the neighbouring

island of Corsica. He hoped to find protection among a noble people, in

whose eyes the person of a guest is sacred.

He accordingly left his lurking-place, reached the shore in safety,

and obtained a vessel which, braving a fearful storm and imminent

danger of wreck, brought him safely to Corsica. He landed at Bastia

on the 25th of August 1815, and hearing that General Franceschetti,

who had formerly served in his guard at Naples, was at that time in

Vescovato, he immediately proceeded thither. He knocked at the door of

the house of the Maire Colonna Ceccaldi, father-in-law of the general,

and asked to see the latter. In the _Mémoires_ he has written on

Murat's residence in Corsica, and his attempt on Naples, Franceschetti

says:--"A man presents himself to me muffled in a cloak, his head

buried in a cap of black silk, with a bushy beard, in pantaloons, in

the gaiters and shoes of a common soldier, haggard with privation

and anxiety. What was my amazement to detect under this coarse and

common disguise King Joachim--a prince but lately the centre of such

a brilliant court! A cry of astonishment escapes me, and I fall at his

knees."

The news that the King of Naples had landed occasioned some excitement

in Bastia, and many Corsican officers hastened to Vescovato to offer

him their services. The commandant of Bastia, Colonel Verrière,

became alarmed. He sent an officer with a detachment of gendarmes to

Vescovato, with orders to make themselves masters of Joachim's person.

But the people of Vescovato instantly ran to arms, and prepared to

defend the sacred laws of hospitality and their guest. The troop

of gendarmes returned without accomplishing their object. When the

report spread that King Murat had appealed to the hospitality of the

Corsicans, and that his person was threatened, the people flocked in

arms from all the villages in the neighbourhood, and formed a camp at

Vescovato for the protection of their guest, so that on the following

day Murat saw himself at the head of a small army. Poor Joachim was

enchanted with the _evvivas_ of the Corsicans. It rested entirely with

himself whether he should assume the crown of Corsica, but he thought

only of his beautiful Naples. The sight of a huzzaing crowd made him

once more feel like a king. "And if these Corsicans," said he, "who owe

me nothing in the world, exhibit such generous kindness, how will my

Neapolitans receive me, on whom I have conferred so many benefits?"

His determination to regain Naples became immoveably firm; the fate

of Napoleon, after leaving the neighbouring Elba, and landing as

adventurer on the coast of France, did not deter him. The son of

fortune was resolved to try his last throw, and play for a kingdom or

death.

Great numbers of officers and gentlemen meanwhile visited the house of

the Ceccaldi from far and near, desirous of seeing and serving Murat.

He had formed his plan. He summoned from Elba the Baron Barbarà, one of

his old officers of Marine, a Maltese who had fled to Porto Longone,

in order to take definite measures with the advice of one who was

intimately acquainted with the Calabrian coast. He secretly despatched

a Corsican to Naples, to form connexions and procure money there.

He purchased three sailing-vessels in Bastia, which were to take him

and his followers on board at Mariana, but it came to the ears of the

French, and they laid an embargo on them. In vain did men of prudence

and insight warn Murat to desist from the foolhardy undertaking. He had

conceived the idea--and nothing could convince him of his mistake--that

the Neapolitans were warmly attached to him, that he only needed to

set foot on the Calabrian coast, in order to be conducted in triumph to

his castle; and he was encouraged in this belief by men who came to him

from Naples, and told him that King Ferdinand was hated there, and that

people longed for nothing so ardently as to have Murat again for their

king.

Two English officers appeared in Bastia, from Genoa; they came to

Vescovato, and made offer to King Joachim of a safe conduct to England.

But Murat indignantly refused the offer, remembering how England had

treated Napoleon.

Meanwhile his position in Vescovato became more and more dangerous, and

his generous hosts Ceccaldi and Franceschetti were now also seriously

menaced, as the Bourbonist commandant had issued a proclamation

which declared all those who attached themselves to Joachim Murat, or

received him into their houses, enemies and traitors to their country.

Murat, therefore, concluded to leave Vescovato as soon as possible. He

still negotiated for the restoration of his sequestrated vessels; he

had recourse to Antonio Galloni, commandant of Balagna, whose brother

he had formerly loaded with kindnesses. Galloni sent him back the

answer, that he could do nothing in the matter; that, on the contrary,

he had received orders from Verrière to march on the following day with

six hundred men to Vescovato, and take him prisoner; that, however, out

of consideration for his misfortunes, he would wait four days, pledging

himself not to molest him, provided he left Vescovato within that time.