fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures, loaded with
sculptures, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. This
was the excellence of the ancients. Their private expenses were
comparatively moderate; the dwelling of one of the chief senators of
Pompeii is elegant indeed, and adorned with most beautiful specimens of
art, but small. But their public buildings are everywhere marked by the
bold and grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In the little town
of Pompeii (it contained about twenty thousand inhabitants), it is
wonderful to see the number and the grandeur of their public buildings.
Another advantage, too, is that, in the present case, the glorious
scenery around is not shut out, and that, unlike the inhabitants of the
Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeiians could
contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon rise
high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with an
atmosphere of golden vapor, between Inarime and Misenum.
We next saw the temples. Of the temples of Aesculapius little remains
but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the scales
of a serpent. His statue, in terra-cotta, was found in the cell. The
temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted
columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many ceppi for
statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the
most exquisite proportion; its panels are adorned with figures in
bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of a workmanship the most delicate
and perfect that can be conceived.
They are Egyptian subjects, executed by a Greek artist, who has
harmonized all the unnatural extravagances of the original conception
into the supernatural loveliness of his country's genius. They scarcely
touch the ground with their feet, and their wind-uplifted robes seem in
the place of wings. The temple in the midst raised on a high platform,
and approached by steps, was decorated with exquisite paintings, some of
which we saw in the museum at Portici. It is small, of the same
materials as the chapel, with a pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic
columns of white stucco, so white that it dazzles you to look at it.
Thence through the other porticos and labyrinths of walls and columns
(for I can not hope to detail everything to you), we came to the Forum.
This is a large square, surrounded by lofty porticos of fluted columns,
some broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under them. The
temple of Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the
Hall of Public Justice, with their forest of lofty columns, surround the
Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size (for, whether they
supported equestrian statues, or were the altars of the temple of Venus,
before which they stand, the guide could not tell), occupy the lower end
of the Forum. At the upper end, supported on an elevated platform,
stands the temple of Jupiter. Under the colonnade of its portico we sat
and pulled out our oranges, and figs, and bread, and medlars (sorry
fare, you will say), and rested to eat.
Here was a magnificent spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous
shafts of the sun-shining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the
purple heaven of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its line
the dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue inexpressibly deep, and
tinged toward their summits with streaks of new-fallen snow. Between was
one small green island. To the right was Capreae, Inarime, Prochyta, and
Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius, rolling forth volumes
of thick white smoke, whose foam-like column was sometimes darted into
the clear dark sky, and fell in little streaks along the wind. Between
Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through a chasm, was seen the main
line of the loftiest Apennines, to the east.
The day was radiant and warm. Every now and then we heard the
subterranean thunder of Vesuvius; its distant deep peals seemed to shake
the very air and light of day, which interpenetrated our frames with the
sullen and tremendous sound. This sound was what the Greeks beheld
(Pompeii, you know, was a Greek city). They lived in harmony with
nature; and the interstices of their incomparable columns were portals,
as it were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious
universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii, what was
Athens? What scene was exhibited from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and
the temples of Hercules, and Theseus, and the Winds? The island and the
Ægean sea, the mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus and
Olympus, and the darkness of the Boeotian forests interspersed?
From the Forum we went to another public place; a triangular portico,
half enclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on the edge
of the hill overlooking the sea. That black point is the temple. In the
apex of the triangle stands an altar and a fountain, and before the
altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico. Returning
hence, and following the consular road, we came to the eastern gate of
the city. The walls are of an enormous strength, and enclose a space of
three miles. On each side of the road beyond the gate are built the
tombs. How unlike ours! They seem not so much hiding-places for that
which must decay, as voluptuous chambers for immortal spirits. They are
of marble, radiantly white; and two, especially beautiful, are loaded
with exquisite bas-reliefs. On the stucco-wall that encloses them are
little emblematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of dead and
dying animals, and little winged genii, and female forms bending in
groups in some funereal office. The high reliefs represent, one a
nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one.
Within the cell stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more.
It is said that paintings were found within, which are now, as has been
everything movable in Pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal
museums. These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild
woods surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the
paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver
and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were, like the
step of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the
dead, the white freshness of the scarcely-finished marble, the
impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them,
contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were
living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them.
I have forgotten the amphitheater, which is of great magnitude, tho much
inferior to the Coliseum. I now understand why the Greeks were such
great poets; and, above all, I can account, it seems to me, for the
harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence, of all their
works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature,
and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their theaters
were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their columns, the ideal
types of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery, admitted
the light and wind; the odor and the freshness of the country penetrated
the cities. Their temples were mostly upaithric; and the flying clouds,
the stars, or the deep sky, were seen above.
VI
OTHER ITALIAN SCENES
VERONA[15]
BY CHARLES DICKENS
I had been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put me out
of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. But, I was no sooner come into the old
Market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint,
and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraordinary and rich
variety of fantastic buildings, that there could be nothing better at
the core of even this romantic town; scene of one of the most romantic
and beautiful of stories.
It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place, to the
House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn.
Noisy vetturini and muddy market-carts were disputing possession of the
yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and
bespattered geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting
in a doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment
he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those
times. The orchard fell into other hands, and was parted off many years
ago; but there used to be one attached to the house--or at all events
there may have been--and the Hat (Cappello), the ancient cognizance of
the family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the gateway of the
yard. The geese, the market-carts, their drivers, and the dog, were
somewhat in the way of the story, it must be confessed; and it would
have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to have been
able to walk through the disused rooms. But the Hat was unspeakably
comfortable; and the place where the garden used to be, hardly less so.
Besides, the house is a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one would
desire to see, tho of a very moderate size. So I was quite satisfied
with it, as the veritable mansion of old Capulet, and was
correspondingly grateful in my acknowledgments to an extremely
unsentimental middle-aged lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was
lounging on the threshold looking at the geese.
From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as natural to the
visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proudest Juliet that ever
has taught the torches to burn bright in any time. So, I went off, with
a guide, to an old, old garden, once belonging to an old, old convent, I
suppose; and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a bright-eyed woman
who was washing clothes, went down some walks where fresh plants and
young flowers were prettily growing among fragments of old wall, and
ivy-covered mounds; and was shown a little tank, or water-trough, which
the bright-eyed woman--drying her arms upon her 'kerchief--called "La
tomba di Giulietta la sfortunáta." With the best disposition in the
world to believe, I could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed
woman believed; so I gave her that much credit, and her customary fee in
ready money. It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that
Juliet's resting-place was forgotten. However consolatory it may have
been to Yorick's Ghost, to hear the feet upon the pavement overhead,
and, twenty times a day, the repetition of his name, it is better for
Juliet to lie out of the track of tourists, and to have no visitors but
such as come to graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine.
Pleasant Verona! With its beautiful old palaces, and charming country in
the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately, balustraded
galleries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the fair street, and
casting, on the sunlight of to-day, the shade of fifteen hundred years
ago. With its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich architecture,
and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, where shouts of Montagues and
Capulets once resounded.
And made Verona's ancient citizens
Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments,
To wield old partisans.
With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great castle,
waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so cheerful! Pleasant
Verona! In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Brá--a spirit of old time
among the familiar realities of the passing hour--is the great Roman
Amphitheater. So well preserved, and carefully maintained, that every
row of seats is there, unbroken. Over certain of the arches, the old
Roman numerals may yet be seen; and there are corridors, and staircases,
and subterranean passages for beasts, and winding ways, above ground and
below, as when the fierce thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the
bloody shows of the arena. Nestling in some of the shadows and hollow
places of the walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small
dealers of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and leaves, and
grass, upon the parapet. But little else is greatly changed.
When I had traversed all about it, with great interest, and had gone up
to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely panorama
closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed
to lie before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of plaited straw,
with an enormously broad brim and a shallow crown; the plaits being
represented by the four-and-forty rows of seats. The comparison is a
homely and fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but it was
irresistibly suggested at the moment, nevertheless.
PADUA[16]
BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Padua is an ancient city and exhibits a rather respectable appearance
against the horizon with its bell-turrets, its domes, and its old walls
upon which myriads of lizards run and frisk in the sun. Situated near a
center which attracts life to itself, Padua is a dead city with an
almost deserted air. Its streets, bordered by two rows of low arcades,
in nowise recall the elegant and charming architecture of Venice. The
heavy, massive structures have a serious, somewhat crabbed aspect, and
its somber porticos in the lower stories of the houses resemble black
mouths which yawn with ennui.
We were conducted to a big inn, established probably in some ancient
palace, and whose great halls, dishonored by vulgar uses, had formerly
seen better company. It was a real journey to go from the vestibule to
our room by a host of stairways and corridors; a map of Ariadne's thread
would have been needed to find one's way back. Our windows opened upon a
very pleasant view; a river flows at the foot of the wall--the Brenta or
the Bacchiglione, I know not which, for both water Padua. The banks of
this watercourse were adorned with old houses and long walls, and trees,
too, overhung the banks; some rather picturesque rows of piles, from
which the fishermen cast their lines with that patience characteristic
of them in all countries; huts with nets and linen hanging from the
windows to dry, formed under the sun's rays a very pretty subject for a
water-color.
After dinner we went to the Café Pedrocchi, celebrated throughout all
Italy for its magnificence. Nothing could be more monumentally classic.
There are nothing but pillars, columnets, ovolos, and palm leaves of the
Percier and Fontain kind, the whole very fine and lavish of marble.
What was most curious was some immense maps forming a tapestry and
representing the different divisions of the world on an enormous scale.
This somewhat pedantic decoration gives to the hall an academic air; and
one is surprized not to see a chair in place of the bar, with a
professor in his gown in place of a dispenser of lemonade.
The University of Padua was formerly famous. In the thirteenth century
eighteen thousand young men, a whole people of scholars, followed the
lessons of the learned professors, among whom later Galileo figured, one
of whose bones is preserved there as a relic, a relic of a martyr who
suffered for the truth. The façade of the University is very beautiful;
four Doric columns give it a severe and monumental air; but solitude
reigns in the class-rooms where to-day scarcely a thousand students can
be reckoned....
We paid a visit to the Cathedral dedicated to Saint Anthony, who enjoys
at Padua the same reputation as Saint Januarius at Naples. He is the
"genius loci," the Saint venerated above all others. He used to perform
not less than thirty miracles each day, if Casanova[17] is to be
believed. Such a performance fairly earned for him his surname of
Thaumaturge, but this prodigious zeal has fallen off greatly.
Nevertheless, the reputation of the saint has not suffered, and so many
masses are paid for at his altar that the number of the priests of the
cathedral and of days in the year are not sufficient. To liquidate the
accounts, the Pope has granted permission, at the end of the year, for
masses to be said, each, one of which is of the value of a thousand; in
this fashion Saint Anthony is saved from being bankrupt to his faithful
devotees.
On the place which adjoins the cathedral, a beautiful equestrian statue
by Donatello, in bronze, rises to view, the first which had been cast
since the days of antiquity, representing a leader of banditti:
Gattamelata, a brigand who surely did not deserve that honor. But the
artist has given him a superb bearing and a spirited figure with his
baton of a Roman emperor, and it is entirely sufficient....
One thing which must not be neglected in passing through Padua is a
visit to the old Church of the Arena, situated at the rear of a garden
of luxuriant vegetation, where it would certainly not be conjectured to
be located unless one were advised of the fact. It is entirely painted
in its interior by Giotto. Not a single column, not a single rib, nor
architectural division interrupts that vast tapestry of frescoes. The
general aspect is soft, azure, starry, like a beautiful, calm sky;
ultramarine dominates; thirty compartments of large dimensions,
indicated by simple lines, contain the life of the Virgin and of her
Divine Son in all their details; they might be called illustrations in
miniature of a gigantic missal. The personages, by naïve anachronisms
very precious for history, are clothed in the mode of the times in which
Giotto painted.
Below these compositions of the purest religious feeling, a painted
plinth shows the seven deadly sins symbolized in an ingenious manner,
and other allegorical figures of a very good style; a Paradise and a
Hell, subjects which greatly imprest the minds of the artists of that
epoch, complete this marvelous whole. There are in these paintings weird
and touching details; children issue from their little coffins to mount
to Paradise with a joyous ardor, and launch themselves forth to go to
play upon the blossoming turf of the celestial garden; others stretch
forth their hands to their half-resurrected mothers. The remark may also
be made that all the devils and vices are obese, while the angels and
virtues are thin and slender. The painter wishes to mark the
preponderance of matter in the one class and of spirit in the other.
FERRARA[18]
BY THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Ferrara rises solitary in the midst of a flat country more rich than
picturesque. When one enters it by the broad street which leads to the
square, the aspect of the city is imposing and monumental. A palace with
a grand staircase occupies a corner of this vast square; it might be a
court-house or a town hall, for people of all classes were entering and
departing through its wide doors....
The castle of the ancient dukes of Ferrara, which is to be found a
little farther on, has a fine feudal aspect. It is a vast collection of
towers joined together by high walls crowned with a battlement forming
a cornice, and which emerge from a great moat full of water, over which
one enters by a protected bridge. The castle, built wholly of brick or
of stones reddened by the sun, has a vermilion tint which deprives it of
its imposing effect. It is too much like a decoration of a melodrama.
It was in this castle that the famous Lucretia Borgia lived, whom Victor
Hugo has made such a monster for us, and whom Ariosto depicts as a model
of chastity, grace and virtue; that blonde Lucretia who wrote letters
breathing the purest love, and some of whose hair, fine as silk and
shining as gold, Byron possest. It was there that the dramas of Tasso
and Ariosto and Guarini were played; there that those brilliant orgies
took place, mingled with poisonings and assassinations, which
characterized that learned and artistic, refined and criminal, period of
Italy.
It is the custom to pay a pious visit to the problematical dungeon in
which Tasso, mad with love and grief, passed so many years, according to
the poetic legend which grew up concerning his misfortune. We did not
have time to spare and we regretted it very little. This dungeon, a
perfectly correct sketch of which we have before our eyes, consists only
of four walls, ceiled by a low arch. At the back is to be seen a window
grated by heavy bars and a door with big bolts. It is quite unlikely
that in this obscure hole, tapestried with cobwebs, Tasso could have
worked and retouched his poem, composed sonnets, and occupied himself
with small details of toilet, such as the quality of the velvet of his
cap and the silk of his stockings, and with kitchen details, such as
with what kind of sugar he ought to powder his salad, that which he had
not being fine enough for his liking. Neither did we see the house of
Ariosto, another required pilgrimage. Not to speak of the little faith
which one should place in these unauthenticated traditions, in these
relics without character, we prefer to seek Ariosto in the "Orlando
Furioso," and Tasso in the "Jerusalem Délivrée" or in the fine drama of
Goethe.
The life of Ferrara is concentrated on the Plaza Nuova, in front of the
church and in the neighborhood of the castle. Life has not yet abandoned
this heart of the city; but in proportion as one moves away from it, it
becomes more feeble, paralysis begins, death gains; silence, solitude,
and grass invade the streets; one feels that one is wandering about a
Thebes peopled with ghosts of the past and from which the living have
evaporated like water which has dried up. There is nothing more sad than
to see the corpse of a dead city slowly falling into dust in the sun and
rain. One at least buries human bodies.
LAKE LUGANO[19]
BY VICTOR TISSOT
On emerging from the second tunnel,[20] beyond a wild and narrow gorge,
there lies suddenly before us, as in a gorgeous fairyland or in the
landscape of a dream, the blue expanse of Lake Lugano, with its setting
of green meadows and purple mountains, with the many-colored village
spires, and the great white fronts of the hotels and villas. Oh, what a
wonderful picture!
We feel as if we were going down into an enchanted garden that has been
hidden by the great snowy walls of the Alps. The air is full of the
perfume of roses and jessamine. The hedges are in flower, butterflies
are dancing, insects are humming, birds are singing. Up above, in the
mountain, is snow, ice, winter, and silence; here there is sunshine,
life, joy, love--all the living delights of spring and summer. Golden
harvests are shining on the plains, and the lake in the distance is like
a piece of the sky brought down to earth.
Lugano is already Italy, not only because of the richness of the soil
and the magnificence of the vegetation, but also as regards the
language, the manners, and the picturesque costumes. In each valley the
dress is different; in one place the women wear a short skirt, an apron
held in by a girdle, and a bright colored bodice; in another they wear a
cap above which is a large shady hat; in the Val Maroblio they have a
woolen dress not very different from that of the Capuchins.
The men have not the square figure, the slow, heavy walk of the people
of Basle and Lucerne; they are brisk, vigorous, easy; and the women have
something of the wavy suppleness of vine branches twining among the
trees. These people have the happy, childlike joyousness, the frank
good-nature, of those who live in the open air, who do not shut
themselves up in their houses, but grow freely like the flowers under
the strong, glowing sunshine.
At every street corner sellers are sitting behind baskets of
extraordinary vegetables and magnificent fruit; and under the arcades
that run along the houses, big grocers in shirt sleeves come at
intervals to their shop doors to take breath, like hippopotami coming
out of the water for the same purpose. In this town, ultramontane in its
piety, the bells of churches and convents are sounding all day long, and
women are seen going to make their evening prayer together in the
nearest chapel.