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[Illustration: THE PARTHENON]
SEEING EUROPE
WITH FAMOUS
AUTHORS
SELECTED AND EDITED
WITH
INTRODUCTIONS, ETC.
BY
FRANCIS W. HALSEY
_Editor of "Great Epochs in American History"
Associate Editor of "The World's Famous Orations"
and of "The Best of the World's Classics," etc._
IN TEN
VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED
Vol. VIII
ITALY, SICILY, AND GREECE
PART TWO
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[_Printed in the United States of America_]
CONTENTS OF VOLUME VIII
Italy, Sicily, and Greece--Part Two
IV. THREE FAMOUS CITIES
PAGE
IN THE STREETS OF GENOA--By Charles Dickens 1
MILAN CATHEDRAL--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 4
PISA'S FOUR GLORIES--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 7
THE WALLS AND "SKYSCRAPERS" OF PISA--By Janet Ross and
Nelly Erichson 11
V. NAPLES AND ITS ENVIRONS
IN AND ABOUT NAPLES--By Charles Dickens 18
THE TOMB OF VIRGIL--By Augustus J. C. Hare 24
TWO ASCENTS OF VESUVIUS--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 26
ANOTHER ASCENT--By Charles Dickens 31
CASTELLAMARE AND SORRENTO--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 37
CAPRI--By Augustus J. C. Hare 42
POMPEII--By Percy Bysshe Shelley 45
VI. OTHER ITALIAN SCENES
VERONA--By Charles Dickens 52
PADUA--By Theophile Gautier 55
FERRARA--By Theophile Gautier 59
LAKE LUGANO--By Victor Tissot 62
LAKE COMO--By Percy Bysshe Shelley 64
BELLAGIO ON LAKE COMO--By W. D. M'Crackan 66
THE REPUBLIC OF SAN MARINO--By Joseph Addison 69
PERUGIA--By Nathaniel Hawthorne 73
SIENA---By Mr. and Mrs. Edwin H. Blashfield 75
THE ASSISSI OF ST. FRANCIS--By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine 78
RAVENNA--By Edward A. Freeman 80
BENEDICTINE SUBIACO--By Augustus J. C. Hare 83
ETRUSCAN VOLTERRA--By William Cullen Bryant 86
THE PAESTUM OF THE GREEKS--By Edward A. Freeman 88
VII. SICILIAN SCENES
PALERMO--By Will S. Monroe 91
GIRGENTI--By Edward A. Freeman 93
SEGESTE--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 97
TAORMINA--By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 99
MOUNT ÆTNA--By Will S. Monroe 101
SYRACUSE--By Rufus B. Richardson 104
MALTA--By Theophile Gautier 107
VIII. THE MAINLAND OF GREECE
ARRIVING IN ATHENS--THE ACROPOLIS--By J. P. Mahaffy 112
A WINTER IN ATHENS HALF A CENTURY AGO--By Bayard Taylor 119
THE ACROPOLIS AS IT WAS--By Pausanias 122
THE ELGIN MARBLES--By J. P. Mahaffy 127
THE THEATER OF DIONYSUS--By J. P. Mahaffy 130
WHERE ST. PAUL PREACHED--By J. P. Mahaffy 134
FROM ATHENS TO DELPHI ON HORSEBACK--By Bayard Taylor 136
CORINTH--By J. P. Mahaffy 140
OLYMPIA--By Philip S. Marden 143
THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA AS IT WAS--By Pausanias 146
THERMOPYLÆ--By Rufus B. Richardson 152
SALONICA--By Charles Dudley Warner 155
FROM THE PIERIAN PLAIN TO MARATHON--By Charles Dudley Warner 157
SPARTA AND MAINA--By Bayard Taylor 160
MESSENIA--By Bayard Taylor 164
TIRYNS AND MYCENÆ--By J. P. Mahaffy 169
IX. THE GREEK ISLANDS
A TOUR OF CRETE--By Bayard Taylor 175
THE COLOSSAL RUINS AT CNOSSOS--By Philip S. Marden 179
CORFU--By Edward A. Freeman 182
RHODES--By Charles Dudley Warner 185
MT. ATHOS--By Charles Dudley Warner 189
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME VIII
FRONTISPIECE
THE PARTHENON
PRECEDING PAGE 1
VENICE: SANTA MARIA DEL SALUTE
FEEDING THE DOVES IN FRONT OF ST. MARK'S
VENICE: STATUE OF COLLEONI
PALACE IN ST. MARK'S PLACE
GONDOLA ON THE GRAND CANAL
GENERAL VIEW OF FLORENCE
PALACE OF THE DUKES OF ESTE, FERRARA
LAKE LUGANO
TITIAN'S BIRTHPLACE AT CADORE
THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS
VERONA: TOMB OF THE SCALIGERS
MILAN CATHEDRAL
BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL, AND LEANING TOWER OF PISA
FOLLOWING PAGE 96
CITY AND BAY OF NAPLES WITH VESUVIUS
IN THE DISTANCE
TEMPLE OF THESEUS AT ATHENS
PALERMO, SICILY, FROM THE SEA
GREEK THEATER, SEGESTA, SICILY
TEMPLE OF CONCORD, GIRGENTI, SICILY
TEMPLE OF JUNO, GIRGENTI, SICILY
AMPHITHEATER AT SYRACUSE, SICILY
GREEK TEMPLE AT SEGESTA, SICILY
HARBOR OF SYRACUSE, SICILY
THE SO-CALLED "SHIP OF ULYSSES," OFF CORFU
TEMPLE OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS AT ATHENS
THE PLAIN BELOW DELPHI
THE ROAD NEAR DELPHI
ENTRANCE TO THE STADIUM AT OLYMPIA
THRONE OF MINOS IN CRETE
[Illustration: VENICE: SANTA MARIA DEL SALUTE]
[Illustration: FEEDING THE DOVES IN FRONT OF ST. MARK'S
(See Vol. VII for article on these doves)]
[Illustration: VENICE: STATUE OF COLLEONI
Courtesy John C. Winston Co.]
[Illustration: PALACE IN ST. MARK'S PLACE, VENICE
(Base of the old Campanile at the right)]
[Illustration: GONDOLA ON THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE]
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF FLORENCE]
[Illustration: PALACE OF THE DUKES OF ESTE. FERRARA]
[Illustration: LAKE LUGANO]
[Illustration: TITIAN'S BIRTHPLACE AT CADORE
(Cadore is in the Italian part of the Dolomites)]
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, VENICE]
[Illustration: TOMB OF THE SCALÍGERS AT VERONA]
[Illustration: MILAN CATHEDRAL
(See Vol. VII for article on Milan Cathedral)]
[Illustration: BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL, AND LEANING TOWER OF PISA
(See Vol. VII for article on Pisa)]
IV
THREE FAMOUS CITIES
IN THE STREETS OF GENOA[1]
BY CHARLES DICKENS
The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any thoroughfare can
well be, where people (even Italian people) are supposed to live and
walk about; being mere lanes, with here and there a kind of well, or
breathing-place. The houses are immensely high, painted in all sorts of
colors, and are in every stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of
repair. They are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses
in the old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris....
When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova and the
Strada Baldi! The endless details of these rich palaces; the walls of
some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The great,
heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over tier; with here
and there, one larger than the rest, towering high up--a huge marble
platform; the doorless vestibules, massively barred lower windows,
immense public staircases, thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like
arches, and dreary, dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers; among which the
eye wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is succeeded by
another--the terrace gardens between house and house, with green arches
of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, and blushing oleander in full
bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above the street--the painted halls,
moldering and blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still
shining out in beautiful colors and voluptuous designs, where the walls
are dry--the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding
wreaths, and crowns, and flying upward, and downward, and standing in
niches, and here and there looking fainter and more feeble than
elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little Cupids, who on a more
recently decorated portion of the front, are stretching out what seems
to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial--the steep,
steep, up-hill streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all
that), with marble terraces looking down into close by-ways--the
magnificent and innumerable churches; and the rapid passage from a
street of stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming
with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children and
whole worlds of dirty people--make up, altogether, such a scene of
wonder; so lively, and yet so dead; so noisy, and yet so quiet; so
obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering; so wide-awake, and yet so fast
asleep; that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to walk on, and
on, and on, and look about him. A bewildering phantasmagoria, with all
the inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain and all the pleasure of
an extravagant reality!...
In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of great size
notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are very dirty; quite
undrained, if my nose be at all reliable; and emit a peculiar fragrance,
like the smell of very bad cheese, kept in very hot blankets.
Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there would seem to have been
a lack of room in the city, for new houses are thrust in everywhere.
Wherever it has been possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a
crack or corner, in it has gone. If there be a nook or angle in the wall
of a church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any sort, there you
are sure to find some kind of habitation; looking as if it had grown
there, like a fungus. Against the Government House, against the old
Senate House, round about any large building, little shops stick close,
like parasite vermin to the great carcass. And for all this, look where
you may; up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere; there are irregular
houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning against their
neighbors, crippling themselves or their friends by some means or other,
until one, more irregular than the rest, chokes up the way, and you
can't see any further.
MILAN CATHEDRAL[2]
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
The cathedral, at the first sight, is bewildering. Gothic art,
transported entire into Italy at the close of the Middle Ages,[3]
attains at once its triumph and its extravagance. Never had it been seen
so pointed, so highly embroidered, so complex, so overcharged, so
strongly resembling a piece of jewelry; and as, instead of coarse and
lifeless stone, it here takes for its material the beautiful lustrous
Italian marble, it becomes a pure chased gem as precious through its
substance as through the labor bestowed on it. The whole church seems to
be a colossal and magnificent crystallization, so splendidly do its
forests of spires, its intersections of moldings, its population of
statues, its fringes of fretted, hollowed, embroidered and open
marblework, ascend in multiple and interminable bright forms against the
pure blue sky.
Truly is it the mystic candelabra of visions and legends, with a hundred
thousand branches bristling and overflowing with sorrowing thorns and
ecstatic roses, with angels, virgins, and martyrs upon every flower and
on every thorn, with infinite myriads of the triumphant Church springing
from the ground pyramidically even into the azure, with its millions of
blended and vibrating voices mounting upward in a single shout,
hosannah!...
We enter, and the impression deepens. What a difference between the
religious power of such a church and that of St. Peter's at Rome! One
exclaims to himself, this is the true Christian temple! Four rows of
enormous eight-sided pillars, close together, seem like a serried hedge
of gigantic oaks. Their strange capitals, bristling with a fantastic
vegetation of pinnacles, canopies, foliated niches and statues, are like
venerable trunks crowned with delicate and pendent mosses. They spread
out in great branches meeting in the vault overhead, the intervals of
the arches being filled with an inextricable network of foliage, thorny
sprigs and light branches, twining and intertwining, and figuring the
aerial dome of a mighty forest. As in a great wood, the lateral aisles
are almost equal in height to that of the center, and, on all sides, at
equal distances apart, one sees ascending around him the secular
colonnades.
Here truly is the ancient Germanic forest, as if a reminiscence of the
religious groves of Irmensul. Light pours in transformed by green,
yellow and purple panes, as if through the red and orange tints of
autumnal leaves. This, certainly, is a complete architecture like that
of Greece, having, like that of Greece, its root in vegetable forms. The
Greek takes the trunk of the tree, drest, for his type; the German the
entire tree with all its leaves and branches. True architecture,
perhaps, always springs out of vegetal nature, and each zone may have
its own edifices as well as plants; in this way oriental architectures
might be comprehended--the vague idea of the slender palm and of its
bouquet of leaves with the Arabs, and the vague idea of the colossal,
prolific, dilated and bristling vegetation of India.
In any event I have never seen a church in which the aspect of northern
forests was more striking, or where one more involuntarily imagines long
alleys of trunks terminating in glimpses of daylight, curved branches
meeting in acute angles, domes of irregular and commingling foliage,
universal shade scattered with lights through colored and diaphanous
leaves. Sometimes a section of yellow panes, through which the sun
darts, launches into the obscurity its shower of rays and a portion of
the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a
window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the
tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in
which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting
radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall,
exposes an infinity of intersecting moldings similar to the delicate
meshes of some marvelous twining and climbing plant. A day might be
passed here as in a forest, in the presence of grandeurs as solemn as
those of nature, before caprices as fascinating, amid the same
intermingling of sublime monotony and inexhaustible fecundity, before
contrasts and metamorphoses of light as rich and as unexpected. A mystic
reverie, combined with a fresh sentiment of northern nature, such is the
source of Gothic architecture.
PISA'S FOUR GLORIES[4]
BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
There are two Pisas--one in which people have lapsed into ennui, and
live from hand to mouth since the decadence, which is in fact the entire
city, except a remote corner; the other is this corner, a marble
sepulcher where the Duomo, Baptistery, Leaning Tower and Campo-Santo
silently repose like beautiful dead beings. This is the genuine Pisa,
and in these relics of a departed life, one beholds a world.
In 1083 in order to honor the Virgin, who had given them a victory over
the Saracens of Sardignia, they [the Pisans] laid the foundations of
their Duomo. This edifice is almost a Roman basilica, that is to say a
temple surmounted by another temple, or, if you prefer it, a house
having a gable for its façade which gable is cut off at the peak to
support another house of smaller dimensions. Five stories of columns
entirely cover the façade with their superposed porticos. Two by two
they stand coupled together to support small arcades; all these pretty
shapes of white marble under their dark arcades form an aerial
population of the utmost grace and novelty. Nowhere here are we
conscious of the dolorous reverie of the medieval north; it is the fête
of a young nation which is awakening, and, in the gladness of its recent
prosperity, honoring its gods. It has collected capitals, ornaments,
entire columns obtained on the distant shores to which its wars and its
commerce have led it, and these ancient fragments enter into its work
without incongruity; for it is instinctively cast in the ancient mold,
and only developed with a tinge of fancy on the side of finesse and the
pleasing. Every antique form reappears, but reshaped in the same sense
by a fresh and original impulse.
The outer columns of the Greek temple are reduced, multiplied and
uplifted in the air, and from a support have become an ornament. The
Roman or Byzantine dome is elongated and its natural heaviness
diminished under a crown of slender columns with a miter ornament, which
girds it midway with its delicate promenade. On the two sides of the
great door two Corinthian columns are enveloped with luxurious foliage,
calyxes and twining or blooming acanthus; and from the threshold we see
the church with its files of intersecting columns, its alternate courses
of black and white marble and its multitude of slender and brilliant
forms, rising upward like an altar of candelabra. A new spirit appears
here, a more delicate sensibility; it is not excessive and disordered as
in the north, and yet it is not satisfied with the grave simplicity, the
robust nudity of antique architecture. It is the daughter of the pagan
mother, healthy and gay, but more womanly than its mother.
She is not yet an adult, sure in all her steps--she is somewhat awkward.
The lateral façades on the exterior are monotonous; the cupola within
is a reversed funnel of a peculiar and disagreeable form. The junction
of the two arms of the cross is unsatisfactory and so many modernized
chapels dispel the charm due to purity, as at Sienna. At the second
glance however all this is forgotten, and we again regard it as a
complete whole. Four rows of Corinthian columns, surmounted with
arcades, divide the church into five naves, and form a forest. A second
passage, as richly crowded, traverses the former crosswise, and, above
the beautiful grove, files of still smaller columns prolong and
intersect each other in order to uphold in the air the prolongation and
intersection of the quadruple gallery. The ceiling is flat; the windows
are small, and for the most part, without sashes; they allow the walls
to retain the grandeur of their mass and the solidity of their position;
and among these long, straight and simple lines, in this natural light,
the innumerable shafts glow with the serenity of an antique temple....
Nothing more can be added in relation to the Baptistery or the Leaning
Tower; the same ideas prevail in these, the same taste, the same style.
The former is a simple, isolated dome, the latter a cylinder, and each
has an outward dress of small columns. And yet each has its own distinct
and expressive physiognomy; but description and writing consume too much
time, and too many technical terms are requisite to define their
differences. I note, simply, the inclination of the Tower. Some suppose
that, when half constructed, the tower sank in the earth on one side,
and that the architects continued on; seeing that they did continue
this deflection was only a partial obstacle to them. In any event, there
are other leaning towers in Italy, at Bologna, for example; voluntarily
or involuntarily this feeling for oddness, this love of paradox, this
yielding to fancy is one of the characteristics of the Middle Ages.
In the center of the Baptistery stands a superb font with eight panels;
each panel is incrusted with a rich complicated flower in full bloom,
and each flower is different. Around it a circle of large Corinthian
columns supports round-arch arcades; most of them are antique and are
ornamented with antique bas-reliefs; Meleager with his barking dogs, and
the nude torsos of his companions in attendance on Christian mysteries.
On the left stands a pulpit similar to that of Sienna, the first work of
Nicholas of Pisa (1260), a simple marble coffer supported by marble
columns and covered with sculptures. The sentiment of force and of
antique nudity comes out here in striking features. The sculptor
comprehended the postures and torsions of bodies. His figures, somewhat
massive, are grand and simple; he frequently reproduces the tunics and
folds of the Roman costume; one of his nude personages, a sort of
Hercules bearing a young lion on his shoulders, has the broad breast and
muscular tension which the sculptors of the sixteenth century admired.
The last of these edifices, the Campo-Santo, is a cemetery, the soil of
which, brought from Palestine, is holy ground. Four high walls of
polished marble surround it with their white and crowded panels.
Inside, a square gallery forms a promenade opening into the court
through arcades trellised with ogive windows. It is filled with funereal
monuments, busts, inscriptions and statues of every form and of every
age. Nothing could be simpler and nobler. A framework of dark wood
supports the arch overhead, and the crest of the roof cuts sharp against
the crystal sky. At the angles are four rustling cypress trees,
tranquilly swayed by the breeze. Grass is growing in the court with a
wild freshness and luxuriance. Here and there a climbing flower twined
around a column, a small rosebush, or a shrub glows beneath a gleam of
sunshine. There is no noise; this quarter is deserted; only now and then
is heard the voice of some promenader which reverberates as under the
vault of a church. It is the veritable cemetery of a free and Christian
city; here, before the tombs of the great, people might well reflect
over death and public affairs.
THE WALLS AND "SKYSCRAPERS" OF PISA[5]
BY JANET ROSS AND NELLY ERICHSON
Few cities have preserved their medieval walls with such loving care as
Pisa. The circuit is complete save where the traveler enters the city;
and there, alas, a wide breach has been made by the restless spirit of
modernity. But once past the paltry barrier and the banal square, with
its inevitable statue of Victor Emanuel, that take the place of the old
Porta Romana, one quickly perceives that the city is a walled one.
Glimpses of battlements close the vistas of the streets, and green
fields peep through the open gates, marking that abrupt transition
between town and country peculiar to a fortified city.
The walls are best seen from without. An admirable impression of them
can be had on leaving the city by the Porta Lucchese. Turning to the
left, after passing a crucifix overshadowed by cypresses, we come to the
edge of a stretch of level marshy meadows, gaily pied in spring with
orchids and grape hyacinths. Above our heads the high air vibrates with
the song of larks. Before us is the long line of the city walls. Strong,
grim and gray, they look with nothing to break the outline of square
battlements against the sky, but that majestic groups of domes and
towers for whose defense they were built. At the angle of the wall to
the right is a square watch-tower, backed by groups of cypresses that
rise into the air like dark flames. Its little windows command the flat
plain as far as the horizon. How easy to imagine the warning blast of
the warder's trumpet as he caught sight of a distant enemy, and the wall
springing into life at the sound. Armed men buckling on their harness
would swarm up ladders to the battlements, the catapult groan and squeak
as its lever was forced backward, and at the sharp word of command the
first flight of arrows would be loosed.
But the dream fades, and we pass on to the angle of the wall where the
cypresses stand. From the picturesque Jews' cemetery, to which access is
easy, the structure of the walls can be studied in detail because the
hand of the restorer has been perforce withheld within its gates. The
wall is some forty feet high, built of stone from the Pisan hills,
weathered for the most part to a grayish hue. The masonry of the lower
half is good. The blocks of stone are large and well laid. Those of the
upper half are smaller and the masonry is in places careless and
irregular. The red brick battlements are square. At short intervals
there are walled-up gateways, round-headed or ogival in form, and the
whole surface is rent and patched. Centuries of war and earthquakes,
rain and fire, have given it a pleasant irregularity, the record of
violent and troublous times.
The city can be reentered by the Porta Nuova, only a few yards to the
left of the cemetery. So venerable do these battered walls look that we
need the full evidence of history to realize that they had more than one
predecessor. The memory even of the first walls of Pisa, an ancient city
when Rome was young, has been lost. The earliest record of which we know
anything appears on a map of the ninth century drawn by one Bonanno; a
map, we should rather say professing to be of the ninth century, for
churches of the thirteenth century are marked upon it, so it must either
have been made, or the churches inserted, then....
The ancient walls were practically swept away by the prosperity of Pisa.
Beside the Balearic Islands she had conquered Carthage, the Lipari
Islands, Elba, Corsica, and Palermo, and her galleys poured their spoils
into the Pisan port. She traded with the East, and was successful in
commerce as in war. Her inhabitants increased rapidly. They could no
longer be penned within the narrow limits of the old wall, but
overflowed in all directions beyond it. Not only was the Borgo thickly
populated, but a whole new region called Forisportae, sprang up.
So masked was the wall by houses, built into it and huddling against it
both on the outside and the inside, that it seems to have been actually
invisible. So much so that contemporary chroniclers spoke of Pisa as
without walls, and attributed her safety to the valor of her citizens
and the multitude of her towers. The ancient wall was evidently so
hidden and decayed that Pisa must be regarded as a defenseless city in
the twelfth century. It is curious that her citizens should have
neglected their own safety at a time when they were masters of
fortification and defense; when their fame in these arts had reached as
far as Egypt and Syria, and when the Milanese came to them to beg for
engineers....
The external appearance of an Italian city in the twelfth century was so
unlike anything we are accustomed to in modern times that a strong
effort of the imagination is needed to conceive it. Seen from a distance
the walls enclosed, not houses, but a forest of tall square shafts,
rising into the sky like the crowded chimney stacks in a manufacturing
town but far more thickly set together. The city appeared, to use a
graphic contemporary metaphor, like a sheaf of corn bound together by
its walls.
[Illustration: PANEL IN THE CATHEDRAL, SHOWING PART OF THE MEDIEVAL WALL
AND TOWERS OF PISA]
San Gimignano, tho most of its towers have perished long ago, helps us
to imagine faintly what Italian towns were like in the days of Frederick
Barbarossa or his grandson Frederick II. For most of the houses were
actually towers, long rectangular columns, vying with each other in
height and crowded close together on either side of the narrow, airless,
darkened streets. Sometimes they were connected with one another by
wooden bridges, and all were furnished with wooden balconies used in
defensive and offensive warfare with their neighbors.
Cities full of towers were common all over southern France and central
Italy, but Tuscany had more than any other state, and those of Pisa were
the most famous of all. The habit of building and dwelling in towers
rather than in houses may have arisen from the difficulty of expanding
laterally within an enclosed city; but a stronger reason may be found in
the dangers and uncertainty of life in a period when a man might be
attacked at any moment by his fellow-citizen, as well as by the enemy of
the state. It was a distinct military advantage to overlook one's
neighbor, who might be an enemy; and towers rose higher and higher. The
spirit of emulation entered, and rich nobles gloried in adding tower to
tower and in looking down on all rivals.
But whatever the cause of their existence, they were picturesque, and
must have presented a gallant sight on the eve of a high festival. The
tall shafts were tinged with gold by the western sun, their battlements
crowned with three fluttering banners--the eagle of the Emperor, the
white cross of the Commune, and the device of the People--looking as tho
a cloud of many-colored butterflies were hovering over the city.
Again, how dramatic the scene when the city was rent by one of the
perpetually recurring faction-fights. Light bridges with grappling-irons
were thrown from tower to tower, doors and windows were barricaded,
balconies and battlements lined with men in shining mail, bearing the
fantastic device of their leader on helm and shield. Mangonels, or
catapults, huge engines stationed on the roofs of the towers, sent
masses of stone hurtling through the air, whistling arbelast bolts and
clothyard shafts flew in thick showers, boiling oil or lead rained down
on the heads of those who ventured down to attack the doors, and arrows,
with Greek fire attached, were shot with nice aim into the wooden
balconies and bridges. Vile insults were hurled where missiles failed to
strike. The shouts and shrieks of the combatants were mingled with the
crash of a falling tower or with the hissing of a fire-arrow. Where
those struck, a red glow arose and a thick cloud of smoke enveloped the
defenders.
Altho it is evident that towers were very numerous in Pisa, it is
difficult to arrive at their precise number. The chroniclers differ
greatly in their estimates. Benjamin da Tudela, for instance, says that
there were 10,000 in the twelfth century; while Marangone puts the
number at 15,000 and Tronci at 16,000. These are round numbers such as
the medieval mind loved, but we have abundant evidence that they are not
much exaggerated. An intarsia panel in the Duomo, shows how closely the
towers were packed together, while the mass of legislation relating to
them was directed against abuses that could only have arisen if their
number was very large.
V
NAPLES AND ITS ENVIRONS
IN AND ABOUT THE CITY[6]
BY CHARLES DICKENS
So we go, rattling down-hill, into Naples. A funeral is coming up the
street, toward us. The body, on an open bier, borne on a kind of
palanquin, covered with a gay cloth of crimson and gold. The mourners,
in white gowns and masks. If there be death abroad, life is well
represented too, for all Naples would seem to be out of doors, and
tearing to and fro in carriages. Some of these, the common Vetturino
vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast, decked with smart trappings
and great abundance of brazen ornament, and always going very fast. Not
that their loads are light; for the smallest of them has at least six
people inside, four in front, four or five more hanging behind, and two
or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie
half-suffocated with mud and dust.
Exhibitors of Punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry,
reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and
showmen, drums, and trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders
within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist the whirl and
bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels;
the gentry, gaily drest, are dashing up and down in carriages on the
Chiaja, or walking in the Public Gardens; and quiet letter-writers,
perched behind their little desks and inkstands under the Portico of the
Great Theater of San Carlo, in the public street, are waiting for
clients.
Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right hands,
when you look at them? Everything is done in pantomime in Naples, and
that is the conventional sign for hunger. A man who is quarreling with
another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand on the back of his
left, and shakes the two thumbs--expressive of a donkey's ears--whereat
his adversary is goaded to desperation. Two people bargaining for fish,
the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is told the
price, and walks away without a word, having thoroughly conveyed to the
seller that he considers it too dear. Two people in carriages, meeting,
one touches his lips, twice or thrice, holding up the five fingers of
his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the palm. The
other nods briskly, and goes his way. He has been invited to a friendly
dinner at half-past five o'clock, and will certainly come.
All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist, with
the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative--the only negative
beggars will ever understand. But, in Naples, those five fingers are a
copious language. All this, and every other kind of out-door life and
stir, and maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long,
and begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the
bright sea-shore, where the waves of the Bay sparkle merrily....
Capri--once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius--Ischia, Procida,
and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the blue sea
yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a day; now close
at hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest country in the world, is
spread about us. Whether we turn toward the Miseno shore of the splendid
watery amphitheater, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del
Cane and away to Baiae, or take the other way, toward Vesuvius and
Sorrento, it is one succession of delights. In the last-named direction,
where, over doors and archways, there are countless little images of San
Gennaro, with this Canute's hand stretched out, to check the fury of the
burning Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the
beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the
ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a
hundred years; and past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and maccaroni
manufacturies; to Castellamare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by
fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks.
Here, the railroad terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken
succession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the
highest summit of Saint Angelo, the highest neighboring mountain, down
to the water's edge--among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges
and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills--and by
the bases of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with
handsome, dark-haired women at the doors--and pass delicious summer
villas--to Sorrento, where the poet Tasso drew his inspiration from the
beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb the heights above
Castellamare, and looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the
crisp water glistening in the sun; and clusters of white houses in
distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to
dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset; with
the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain (Vesuvius), with
its smoke and flame, upon the other, is a sublime conclusion to the
glory of the day.
That church by the Porta Capuna--near the old fisher-market in the
dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of Masaniello
began--is memorable for having been the scene of one of his earliest
proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing
else, unless it be its waxen and bejeweled Saint in a glass case, with
two odd hands; or the enormous number of beggars who are constantly
rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral
with the beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian granite
that once ornamented the temple of Apollo, contains the famous sacred
blood of San Gennaro or Januarius, which is preserved in two phials in a
silver tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies three times a year, to the
great admiration of the people. At the same moment, the stone (distant
some miles) where the Saint suffered martyrdom, becomes faintly red. It
is said that the officiating priests turn faintly red also, sometimes,
when these miracles occur.
The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these ancient
catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be
buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal
Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these old
specters totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of
death--as unconcerned as if they were immortal. They were used as
burying-places for three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit
full of skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a great
mortality occasioned by a plague. In the rest, there is nothing but
dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide corridors and labyrinths,
hewn out of the rock. At the end of some of these long passages, are
unexpected glimpses of the daylight, shining down from above. It looks
as ghastly and as strange; among the torches, and the dust, and the dark
vaults; as if it, too, were dead and buried.
The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between the city and
Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo with its three hundred and sixty-five
pits, is only used for those who die in hospitals, and prisons, and are
unclaimed by their friends. The graceful new cemetery, at no great
distance from it, tho yet unfinished, has already many graves among its
shrubs and flowers, and airy colonnades. It might be reasonably objected
elsewhere, that some of the tombs are meretricious and too fanciful; but
the general brightness seems to justify it here; and Mount Vesuvius,
separated from them by a lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens the
scene.
If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, with its dark
smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more awful and impressive is
it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii!
Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look up
the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, over
the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, away to
Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance; and lose all
count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy
sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making this quiet
picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the little
familiar tokens of human habitation and everyday pursuits, the chafing
of the bucket-rope in the stone rim of the exhausted well; the track of
carriage-wheels in the pavement of the street; the marks of
drinking-vessels on the stone counter of the wine-shop; the amphoræ in
private cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago, and undisturbed
to this hour--all rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the
place, ten thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury,
had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea.
THE TOMB OF VIRGIL[7]
BY AUGUSTUS J. C. HARE
A road to the right at the end of the Chiaja, leads to the mouth of the
Grotto of Posilipo, above which those who do not wish to leave their
carriages may see, high on the left, close above the grotto, the ruined
columbarium known as the Tomb of Virgil. A door in the wall, on the left
of the approach to the grotto, and a very steep staircase, lead to the
columbarium, which is situated in a pretty fruit-garden.
Virgil desired that his body should be brought to Naples from
Brundusium, where he died, B.C. 19, and there is every probability that
he was buried on this spot, which was visited as Virgil's burial-place
little more than a century after his death by the poet Statius, who was
born at Naples, and who describes composing his own poems while seated
in the shadow of the tomb. If further confirmation were needed of the
story that Virgil was laid here, it would be found in the fact that
Silius Italicus, who lived at the same time with Statius, purchased the
tomb of Virgil, restored it from the neglect into which it had fallen,
and celebrated funeral rites before it.
The tomb was originally shaded by a gigantic bay-tree, which is said to
have died on the death of Dante. Petrarch, who was brought hither by
King Robert, planted another, which existed in the time of Sannazaro,
but was destroyed by relic-collectors in the last century. A branch was
sent to Frederick the Great by the Margravine of Baireuth, with some
verses by Voltaire. If from no other cause, the tomb would be
interesting from its visitors; here Boccaccio renounced the career of a
merchant for that of a poet, and a well-known legend, that St. Paul
visited the sepulcher of Virgil at Naples, was long commemorated in the
verse of a hymn used in the service for St. Paul's Day at Mantua.
The tomb is a small, square, vaulted chamber with three windows. Early
in the sixteenth century a funeral urn, containing the ashes of the
poet, stood in the center, supported by nine little marble pillars. Some
say that Robert of Anjou removed it, in 1326, for security to the Castel
Nuovo, others that it was given by the Government to a cardinal from
Mantua, who died at Genoa on his way home. In either event the urn is
now lost.
It is just beneath the tomb that the road to Pozzuoli enters the famous
Grotto of Posilipo, a tunnel about half a mile long, in breadth from 25
to 30 feet, and varying from about 90 feet in height near the entrance,
to little more than 20 feet at points of the interior. Petronius and
Seneca mention its narrow gloomy passage with horror, in the reign of
Nero, when it was so low that it could only be used for foot-passengers,
who were obliged to stoop in passing through.
In the fifteenth century King Alphonso I. gave it height by lowering the
floor, which was paved by Don Pedro di Toledo a hundred years later. In
the Middle Ages the grotto was ascribed to the magic arts of Virgil. In
recent years it has been the chief means of communication between Naples
and Baiae, and is at all times filled with dust and noise, the
flickering lights and resounding echoes giving it a most weird effect.
However much one may abuse Neapolitans, we may consider in their favor,
as Swinburne observes, "what a terror this dark grotto would be in
London!"
TWO ASCENTS OF VESUVIUS[8]
BY JOHANN WOLGANG VON GOETHE
At the foot of the steep ascent, we were received by two guides, one
old, the other young, but both active fellows. The first pulled me up
the path, the other Tischbein[9]--pulled I say, for these guides are
girded round the waist with a leathern belt, which the traveler takes
hold of, and being drawn up by his guide, makes his way the easier with
foot and staff. In this manner we reached the flat from which the cone
rises; toward the north lay the ruins of the summit.
A glance westward over the country beneath us, removed, as well as a
bath could, all feeling of exhaustion and fatigue, and we now went round
the ever-smoking cone, as it threw out its stones and ashes. Wherever
the space allowed of our viewing it at a sufficient distance, it
appeared a grand and elevating spectacle. In the first place, a violent
thundering toned forth from its deepest abyss, then stones of larger and
smaller sizes were showered into the air by thousands, and enveloped by
clouds of ashes. The greatest part fell again into the gorge; the rest
of the fragments, receiving a lateral inclination, and falling on the
outside of the crater, made a marvelous rumbling noise. First of all the
larger masses plumped against the side, and rebounded with a dull heavy
sound; then the smaller came rattling down; and last of all, drizzled a
shower of ashes. All this took place at regular intervals, which by
slowly counting, we were able to measure pretty accurately.
Between the summit, however, and the cone the space is narrow enough;
moreover, several stones fell around us, and made the circuit anything
but agreeable. Tischbein now felt more disgusted than ever with
Vesuvius, as the monster, not content with being hateful, showed an
inclination to become mischievous also.
As, however, the presence of danger generally exercises on man a kind of
attraction, and calls forth a spirit of opposition in the human breast
to defy it, I bethought myself that, in the interval of the eruptions,
it would be possible to climb up the cone to the crater, and to get back
before it broke out again. I held a council on this point with our
guides under one of the overhanging rocks of the summit, where, encamped
in safety, we refreshed ourselves with the provisions we had brought
with us. The younger guide was willing to run the risk with me; we
stuffed our hats full of linen and silk handkerchiefs, and, staff in
hand, we prepared to start, I holding on to his girdle.
The little stones were yet rattling around us, and the ashes still
drizzling, as the stalwart youth hurried forth with me across the hot
glowing rubble. We soon stood on the brink of the vast chasm, the smoke
of which, altho a gentle air was bearing it away from us, unfortunately
veiled the interior of the crater, which smoked all round from a
thousand crannies. At intervals, however, we caught sight through the
smoke of the cracked walls of the rock. The view was neither instructive
nor delightful; but for the very reason that one saw nothing, one
lingered in the hope of catching a glimpse of something more; and so we
forgot our slow counting. We were standing on a narrow ridge of the
vast abyss; of a sudden the thunder pealed aloud; we ducked our heads
involuntarily, as if that would have rescued us from the precipitated
masses. The smaller stones soon rattled, and without considering that we
had again an interval of cessation before us, and only too much rejoiced
to have outstood the danger, we rushed down and reached the foot of the
hill together with the drizzling ashes, which pretty thickly covered
our heads and shoulders....
The news [two weeks later] that an eruption of lava had just commenced,
which, taking the direction of Ottajano, was invisible at Naples,
tempted me to visit Vesuvius for the third time. Scarcely had I jumped
out of my cabriolet at the foot of the mountain, when immediately
appeared the two guides who had accompanied us on our previous ascent. I
had no wish to do without either, but took one out of gratitude and
custom, the other for reliance on his judgment--and the two for the
greater convenience. Having ascended the summit, the older guide
remained with our cloaks and refreshment, while the younger followed me,
and we boldly went straight toward a dense volume of smoke, which broke
forth from the bottom of the funnel; then we quickly went downward by
the side of it, till at last, under the clear heaven, we distinctly saw
the lava emitted from the rolling clouds of smoke.
We may hear an object spoken of a thousand times, but its peculiar
features will never be caught till we see it with our own eyes. The
stream of lava was small, not broader perhaps than ten feet, but the way
in which it flowed down a gentle and tolerably smooth plain was
remarkable. As it flowed along, it cooled both on the sides and on the
surface, so that it formed a sort of canal, the bed of which was
continually raised in consequence of the molten mass congealing even
beneath the fiery stream, which, with uniform action, precipitated right
and left the scoria which were floating on its surface. In this way a
regular dam was at length thrown up, in which the glowing stream flowed
on as quietly as any mill-stream. We passed along the tolerably high
dam, while the scoria rolled regularly off the sides at our feet. Some
cracks in the canal afforded opportunity of looking at the living
stream, from below, and as it rushed onward, we observed it from above.
A very bright sun made the glowing lava look dull; but a moderate steam
rose from it into the pure air. I felt a great desire to go nearer to
the point where it broke out from the mountain; there my guide averred,
it at once formed vaults and roofs above itself, on which he had often
stood. To see and experience this phenomenon, we again ascended the
hill, in order to come from behind to this point. Fortunately at this
moment the place was cleared by a pretty strong wind, but not entirely,
for all round it the smoke eddied from a thousand crannies; and now at
last we stood on the top of the solid roof (which looked like a hardened
mass of twisted dough), but which, however, projected so far outward,
that it was impossible to see the welling lava.
We ventured about twenty steps further, but the ground on which we stept
became hotter and hotter, while around us rolled an oppressive steam,
which obscured and hid the sun; the guide, who was a few steps in
advance of me, presently turned back, and seizing hold of me, hurried
out of this Stygian exhalation.