We passed through Mantua the 18th of June, where nothing much attracted
my notice, except a female figure in the street, veiled from head to
foot, and covered wholly in black; she walked backward and forward
along the same portion of the same street, from one to three o’clock,
in the heat of the burning sun; her hand held out; but when I, more
from curiosity than any better motive put money in it, she threw it
silently away, and the beggars picked it up, while she held her hand
again as before. This conduct, in any town of England, would be deemed
madness or mischief; the woman would be carried before a magistrate to
give an account of herself, should the mob forbear to uncase her till
they came; or some charitable person would seize and carry her home,
fill her pockets with money, and coax her out of the anecdotes of her
past life to put in the Magazine; her print would be published, and many
engravers struggle for its profits; the name at bottom, _Annabella, or
the Sable Matron_; while novels would be written without end, and the
circulating libraries would lend them out all the live-long day. Things
are differently carried on however at Mantua: I asked one shopkeeper,
and she gravely replied, “_per divozione_,” and took no further notice:
another (to my inquiries, which appeared to him far odder than the
woman’s conduct) said, The lady was possibly doing a little penance;
that he had not minded her till I spoke, but that perhaps it might be
some woman of fashion, who having refused a poor person roughly on some
occasion, was condemned by her confessor to try for a couple of hours
what begging _was_, and learn humanity from experience of evil. The idea
charmed me; while the man coolly said, all this was only his conjecture;
but that such things were done too often to attract attention; and hoped
such virtue was not rare enough to excite wonder. My just applause of
such sentiments was stopt by the _laquais de place_ calling me to dinner;
when he informed me, that he had asked about the person whose behaviour
struck me so, and could now tell me all there was to be known; she was
a lady of quality, he said, who had lost a dear friend on that day some
years past, and that she wore black for two hours ever since upon its
anniversary; but that she would now change her dress, and I should see
her in the evening at the opera. My recollecting that if _this_ were her
case, I ought to have been keeping her company (as no one ever lost a
friend so dear to them as was my incomparable mother, who likewise left
me to mourn her loss on this day thirteen years), spoiled my appetite,
and took from me all power of meeting the lady at the theatre.
We went again however to see Virgil’s field, and recollected that _tenet
nunc Parthenope_; congratulated the giants on their superiority over
Pietro de Cortona’s paltry creatures, in one of the Roman palaces; and
drove forward to Parma, through bad roads enough.
This Mantua is a very disagreeable town; nor was Romeo wrong in lamenting
his banishment to it; for though I will not say with him that--
There is no world without Verona’s walls;
yet it must be allowed that few places do unite such various
excellencies, and that the contrast is very striking between that city
and this.
Parma exhibits an appearance somewhat different from all the rest;
yet we should scarcely have visited it but for the sake of the four
surprising pictures it contains: the _Madona della Scodella_ is nature
itself; and St. Girolamo exhibits such a proof of fancy and fervour, as
are almost inconceivable; the general effect, and the difficulty one has
to take one’s eye off it, afford conviction of its superior merit, and
greatly compensate for that taste, character, and expression, which are
found only in the Caraccis and their school. Corregio was perhaps one
of the most powerful geniusses that has appeared on earth; destitute
of knowledge, or of the means of acquiring it, he has left glorious
proofs of what uninstructed man may do, and is perhaps a greater honour
to the human species, than those who, from fermenting erudition of
various kinds, produce performances of more complicated worth. The Fatal
Curiosity, and Pilgrim’s Progress, will live as long as the Prince of
Abyssinia, or _Les Avantures de Telemaque_, perhaps: and who shall dare
say, that Lillo, Bunyan, and Antonio Corregio, were not _naturally_ equal
to Johnson, Michael Angelo, and the Archbishop of Cambray?--Have I said
enough, or can enough be ever said in praise of a painter, whose works
the great Annibale Caracci delighted to study, to copy, and to praise?
Piacenza we found to offer us few objects of attention: an
_improvisatore_, and not a very bad one, amused that time which would
otherwise have been passed in lamenting our paucity of entertainment;
while his artful praises of England put me in good humour, spite of
the weather, which is too hot to bear. With all our lamentations about
the heat however, here is no _cicala_ on the trees, or _lucciola_ in
the hedges, as at Florence; the days are a little longer too, and the
crepuscule less abrupt in its departure. How often, upon the _Ponte
della Trinitá_, have I secretly regretted the long-drawn evenings of an
English summer; when the dewy night-fall refreshes the air, and silent
dusk brings on a train of meditations uninspired by Italian skies! In
this decided country all that is not broad day is dark night; all that
is not loud mirth, is penitence and grief; when the rain falls, it falls
in a torrent; when the sun shines, it glows like a burning-glass; where
the people are rich, they stick gems in their very walls, and make their
chimneys of amethyst; where they are poor, they clasp your knees in
an agony of pinching want, and display diseases which cannot be a day
survived!
Talking on about Italy in which there is no mediocrity, and of England
in which there is nothing else, we arrived at Lodi; where I began to
rejoice in hearing the people cry _no’ cor’ altr’_ again, in reply to
our commands; because we were now once more returned to the district and
dialect of dear Milan, where we have cool apartments and warm friends;
and where, after an absence of fifteen months, we shall again see
those acquaintance with whom we lived much before; a sensation always
delightfully soothing, even when one returns to less amiable scenes,
and less productive of innocent pleasure than these have been to me.
The consciousness of having, while at a distance, seen few people more
agreeable than those one left behind; the natural thankfulness of one’s
heart to God, for having preserved one’s life so as to see them again,
expands philanthropy; and gives unaffected comfort in the restored
society of companions long concealed from one by accident or distance.