A glance at Turin in 1858—The progress of Sardinia—Exhibition
of national industry—Productions of Piedmont—Appearance of
the Piedmontese—Railway enterprise—Progress in machinery.
Artistically considered, Turin is the least interesting of all the
Italian capitals. It boasts of no Roman antiquities, of but few
mediæval monuments, and its museums and picture galleries, however
creditable to the liberality of the sovereigns by whom they were
founded or enlarged, can bear no comparison with the Vatican or the
Uffizj. Though its position is singularly grand, with the Alps for a
background, and the Po, the father of Italian rivers, circling round
its base,—an absence of variety in the landscape, of the picturesque in
the population and accessories, in whatever regards costume, colouring,
and form, serves to complete its dissimilarity to Italy in all that has
hitherto constituted Italy's sources of attraction.
But for those who love to mark a nation's struggles, progress, and
development, this city has interest of another kind; and its contrast
of life and energy with the decay so long familiar to me during my
residence in the Papal States never struck me more forcibly than
last summer, when, with a view to your edification and entertainment,
reader, and to gather fresh impressions and revive former ones, the
_Signorine forestiere_—a staid Signora now—paid a visit to Turin. Its
outward characteristics are soon delineated. Broad, level, well-paved
streets, intersecting each other at right angles, terminating towards
the north and west by a noble panorama of the snow-capped Alps, on the
east by the verdant Collina, a range of undulating hills studded with
country seats, while southwards stretch the fertile plains of Piedmont;
large, regularly-built squares, handsome, thriving shops; private
carriages, omnibuses, and citadines dashing about in every direction;
soldiers, gay and debonair; and a busy, plain, but honest-looking
population.
According to the last census of 1858, Turin contains one hundred
and eighty thousand inhabitants; an increase of forty thousand since
1848. This one fact serves to give some idea of the country's rapid
development under a liberal Government. The same policy which has
attracted refugees from all parts of Italy to swell the population
of the State, has wrought a corresponding expansion in its material
and intellectual resources. It is scarcely possible to overrate all
that Sardinia has gained in the last ten years. An Englishman, unless
thoroughly acquainted with the condition of the rest of the Peninsula,
cannot appreciate the extent of these improvements. Measuring
everything by the gauge of home perfection, he remarks that there is
still much left to do;—while the Lombard, or Modenese, or any other
subject of the various Italian States, compares all he sees with what
he has left perhaps only a few miles behind him, and is filled with
rapture and astonishment.
Another class of my countrymen, looking on Italy as the special
province of the antiquarian and the tourist, think these changes
are dearly purchased. Piedmont, they declare, thanks to her boasted
reforms, is fast losing all that rendered her worth seeing! Under the
united influences of the constitution, railroads, and a free press,
this consummation may not in truth be very distant. The country has
undeniably degenerated from the characteristics formerly possessed
in common with her Italian sisters. Politics, judicial reforms, vast
public works, schemes more gigantic still of national emancipation,
now hold, in the thoughts and conversation of the majority of the
Piedmontese, the place which elsewhere in the Peninsula is assigned to
the _début_ of a promising singer, or the apotheosis of a new saint.
In lieu of grass-grown streets and decaying palaces, new quarters
are springing up in every town; and the busy hammer of the workman
is almost too ready to efface the inroads of time, to modernize and
repair, to snatch from the treasures of the past whatever may be
pressed into the service of the eager present. Those wonderful studies
of mendicity, infantile beauty and dirt, and barefooted friars, so dear
to the artist's eye,—hitherto considered as inseparable from Italy as
the blue sky or the cicada's summer chirp,—in the Sardinian States are
fast disappearing also. The beggars are placed in asylums, the children
are sent to school, and the friars are being suppressed.
And all this is the work of ten years! It is not necessary to be
old to remember when, in political and religious intolerance, and in
opposition to any of the novelties of the age, the Sardinian Government
ranked amongst the most despotic and conservative of Europe.
Hence it is that the events which led to these changes, the men by whom
they have been worked out, and the struggles of opposing parties, are
so bound up with Piedmontese life that any attempt at describing it
involves frequent reference to these topics. Like Molière's Monsieur
Jourdain, “_Qui faisait de la prose sans le savoir_,” people in this
country, without being exactly conscious of it, are living in history,
and living very fast too. Blame me not therefore, if, carried away by
the influences surrounding me, I should occasionally _write_ it!
The great object of public attention at the time of my visit was
the decennial exhibition of National Industry, comprehending every
branch of native produce or manufacture, held in the palace of the
Valentino, on the outskirts of the city. As a sumptuous relic of the
seventeenth century, when the Duchess Regent Christina, daughter of
Henri Quatre, had introduced into Piedmont a taste for the French
style of architecture and magnificence in decoration, the Valentino for
itself alone is well worth an inspection; and a stranger could not have
seen it to greater advantage than in the blaze, glory, and animation
of those summer days. Approached by a wide avenue of noble trees, its
peaked roofs stood out in glittering clearness against the deep blue
sky, and the unwonted stir around and within its precincts, recalled
the descriptions of the revelries in which the regent was wont to seek
solace from the toils of state or the loneliness of widowhood.
Under the colonnades that form a semi-circle on either side of the
piazza in front of the palace, in shady walks laid out with the
dignified precision of the Louvre, in long ranges of apartments on the
ground floor, and in the grand suite of state-rooms upon the first,
were arranged the varied specimens of industry, perseverance, and
improvement furnished by the different provinces of the Sub-Alpine
kingdom; Savoy, Piedmont, Genoa, Nice, and the island of Sardinia.
Agricultural and farming implements of all kinds, ploughs,
wine-presses, butter-churns, honey, wax, beehives, and cheeses of every
description, from the twin-brother of the piquant Parmesan to the rich
Gorgonzola or the mottled Mont Cenis. Wheat, Indian corn, beans, rice,
barley, beet-roots for the production of sugar, hops, wines, beer,
_liqueurs_, sausages, hams. The fine _paste_ in which Genoa especially
excels; maccaroni, vermicelli, rings, stars, balls; every imaginable
variety of shape, some white, some saffron-coloured. Chocolate,
dried and preserved fruits, others crystallized in sugar; bonbons and
confectionery, which rival any that Paris can produce. Steam-engines,
models of shipping, hydraulic and sewing machines, iron stoves,
balconies, winding staircases, beds, surgical instruments, clocks,
watches, plate, jewelry, gold and silver filigree, and coral variously
wrought; church ornaments, crucifixes, chalices, candelabras; cannons,
mortars, fire-arms; lead and silver from the mountains of Savoy, rich
samples of copper ore from Aosta and Pignerol, and iron from the island
of Sardinia, disclosing a source of wealth long dormant in the country,
but now rendered available through the activity of the Government in
resuming the working of mines almost wholly abandoned, and directing
the exploration of new ones, coupled with the generosity of King
Victor Emmanuel in throwing open to national enterprise what had
hitherto been a crown monopoly. Numerous chemical products, composition
candles, soap, starch, colours, and varnishes. Glass and earthenware.
Silk in every stage, from the cocoon to the flowered damask of Turin,
the gauze of Chambéry, or the three-piled velvet of Genoa. Woollen
stuffs, broad-cloth, carpets, and cotton fabrics, in the manufacture
of all which, through the removal of the duties on the raw material, a
wonderful advance is of late discernible. Paper, hemp and cordage, flax
and linen, saddlery, valises, travelling bags; carriages and harness;
wigs, gloves, hair-brushes, paint-brushes, &c. Ready-made clothing;
magnificent church vestments, worked in gold and silver or coloured
silks; embroidery and lace from Genoa; artificial flowers. And lastly,
all those articles of luxury in which Piedmont used to be almost wholly
dependent upon France: ornamental furniture, worked up to the highest
finish, inlaid, carved, or gilded; mirrors and musical instruments.
With an evident eye to harmony in arrangement, the nature of the
articles displayed was adapted to the rooms in which they were placed,
so that the state apartments were the recipients of all the costliest
specimens, and from their loftiness, gilded and painted ceilings, and
richly-sculptured doorways, gave additional effect to the glittering
objects crowded within them. It was long since the halls of the
Valentino had worn so gay an aspect, or been trodden by so many feet.
In every quarter you encountered a pleased, quiet throng, chiefly
of the middle and lower classes, for the whole thing was rather too
utilitarian to be quite to the taste of the high world of Turin, which
gave one ample facilities for the study of national physiognomy.
The women of Piedmont are not in general well-favoured; they are
undersized and angular in figure, with a weather-beaten complexion,
and flat noses. This struck me doubly, coming from Genoa, where female
grace and attractiveness are proverbial; the transparent white veil
or _pezzotto_ worn by the Genoese is here also poorly replaced by
caps tawdrily trimmed with coloured ribbons or artificial flowers. A
good many peasants were amongst the crowd, but except the women of the
environs of Vercelli, who had a curious headgear of silver pins, the
rest wore straw hats, not white, large, and flowing like the Tuscans,
but dark in hue and heavy in texture, tied under the chin with some
ill-assorted ribbon. It was easy to see you were in a country which had
never produced any great painters.
To the men nature has been more bountiful. Though fine features are,
comparatively speaking, rare, tall, well-set figures, a frank and manly
bearing, might be encountered at every turning. A Piedmontese can
be told at once by his open, brave, but not over-intellectual face,
in which you look in vain for the chiselled contour, the thoughtful
brow, and quick, restless eyes of central and southern Italy. It was
interesting at the Valentino to compare the different Italian races,
for every country in the Peninsula was there represented. The political
freedom enjoyed in Piedmont, the exceeding liberality shown towards
those who have sought in it a refuge from the persecution of their
own Governments, have made it the resort of scores of thousands, many
of whom are now naturalized as Sardinian subjects. Romans, Lombards,
Neapolitans, Sicilians, have here all found a home; and in their
affection towards the land of their adoption seem completely to have
laid aside those miserable international jealousies which have hitherto
been the bane of Italy. The evidences of the country's prosperity
arrayed before them, appeared as much a subject of congratulation to
the _emigrati_ as to the natives, all former rivalries being merged
into the dominant feeling of satisfaction that, in Sardinia at least, a
centre of Italian civilization had been preserved.
Regarded as the fruits of ten years' enlightened and fostering
administration, this exhibition was well entitled to be classed as
a national success. It is to Count Cavour, the celebrated statesman
at the head of the cabinet of Turin, that this development is owing;
ever since his entrance into the ministry, in the autumn of 1850, he
has laboured indefatigably in promoting every department of industry,
commerce, and public works. Not many months before he came into power,
only seventeen _kilomètres_[21] of railway were open to public traffic
in the Sardinian States. At the end of 1858, one thousand _kilomètres_
were completed, besides other lines in progress, the chief of which,
that destined to connect Savoy with Piedmont by piercing through Mont
Cenis, will be a wonder of the world. To appreciate the activity of
the Government, no less than the public spirit of the population in
submitting to the heavy taxation these works entailed, it must be
borne in mind that they have been carried out by a State with only five
millions of inhabitants, already burthened with the expenses of the two
disastrous campaigns against the Austrians in 1848-49, and the part it
had been called upon to take in the Crimean war in 1855. The progress
of the Piedmontese in machinery has kept pace with the spread of their
railroads. Formerly entirely dependent upon England for steam-engines,
the lines which intersect the country are now traversed by locomotives
of native construction.
In all these pursuits, Count Cavour has met with little support from
the aristocracy, which has not yet reconciled itself to the change
from an absolute monarchy, under which it monopolized every channel to
power and distinction, to a representative form of government, where
absence of title is no barrier to advancement. Except where fighting is
concerned, the Piedmontese noble systematically opposes whatever Cavour
proposes, and thinks it due to his caste to throw as many impediments
in the way of reform as he can devise. The innovations of the day are
mourned over by fully three-fourths of the old families of Turin, as if
the precursors of the downfall of order and religion; the subjects upon
which the country at large feels most enthusiasm, being precisely those
regarded by these ultra-conservatives with the greatest indifference or
aversion.