The squire was one of those persons who generally give audible notice of
their approach as soon as they enter their house, or pass through from
one part of it to another; and our two heroes heard him, whilst in the
act of ascending the stairs, bawling out to the ladies above that it was
high time for them to be up and moving; and hammering away at the first
door he came to, he called out--"Come, come, young ladies, wake up, wake
up--chase away your balmy slumbers, and kick Morpheus out of bed without
further ceremony.
'Come Miss Mary,
[_"Her loved name!" exclaimed
Vernon within._
All contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells,
And cockle shells
And cockles all of a row.'
"Nothing like early rising for planting the roses in your cheeks--and
if that argument," said he to himself, "won't make a young woman bundle
herself from under the bed-clothes, I don't know what will." And then he
walked on to the room in which Frank had slept, and which was the
adjoining one to Vernon's, he began to drum away upon the door there;
calling out, at the same time--"Come, Frank--Mr Trevelyan--if you intend
to have a view of the sea before breakfast, as you proposed last
evening, it's high time you should be up and stirring."
"I'm up and stirred already, sir," said Frank, popping his head out of
the adjoining room door.
"Yes; you're up to any thing, I see," said the squire, good-humouredly
extending his hand to his guest, as he entered the room; "and how's my
patient this morning?" he continued, advancing towards the bed. "Ah!" he
said, having felt Vernon's pulse, "just as I hoped, and indeed fully
expected--you couldn't possibly be doing better; a little--very little
care for a day or two, is all you seem to require. I looked in before
this morning to see how you were getting on, and found you snoring away
so comfortably, that, judging all was as it should be, I wouldn't
disturb you with my inquiries."
"Snoring!" repeated Vernon, in alarmed surprise, looking exceedingly
disconcerted, and doubting almost whether he had heard aright.
"Ay, snoring," resumed the squire; "but never mind that, my hearty
fellow--the best men snore sometimes, take my word for it; and, I dare
say, it wasn't loud enough to disturb the young ladies. It was pretty
loud, though, I must confess; but still I think it could hardly reach so
far, particularly when your door was shut."
"But I found it wide open," observed Frank, by no means ill-amused to
see how annoyed his companion was at the conviction of having snored,
and the possibility of such sounds having reached the ears of one _so
lovely_. Oh, how Vernon longed to hurl his pillow, or even any harder
missile within his reach, at the saucy little fellow's head who was
looking so provokingly pleased with his distress, and which the presence
of the squire alone restrained him from making a left-handed attempt at,
for his right was, as we before mentioned, disabled for the present by
his late accident. But Vernon was too good a judge to attempt any thing
of the kind, or show any exhibition of displeasure before his kind
entertainer who, telling him he must act as his doctor, having, as he
said, been bred to, and practised for several years in the medical
profession, examined into the state of his sprains and bruises, and told
him he would soon be all right again, but that he must be content to
spend a few hours longer in bed, where his breakfast of gruel should be
sent up to him; and then, accompanied by Frank, he took his departure.
The old gentleman, however, gave the ladies a fresh hail as he passed by
their bedroom door, to which two or three voices replied simultaneously,
but in tones far less musical than Frank expected; and it seemed to him
very different from what he had heard from the fair equestrians of the
preceding day, when they kindly expressed their hopes that the sprawling
poet had received no injury from his tumble.
"Ah! I see how it is," thought he to himself; "these pretty creatures,
like too many of their sex, have a couple of tones to their voices--one
for home, and the other for company. There's one-half of my admiration
gone already." But wishing, at the same time, to put the best
construction he could upon the matter, he tried to persuade himself that
they must have taken cold, poor things! in consequence of having been
caught in the heavy shower of the preceding day; and this it was which
had caused the hoarseness of their voices. "I have known it have that
effect before now on other people," he thought, "and why might not the
same happen to these fair damsels; who, though lovely as angels, can
scarcely escape from 'all the ills that flesh is heir to,' amongst which
a cold, attended with hoarseness, can hardly be reckoned the worst?"
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Any collection of houses, or even a single farm-house, is termed a
town in Cornwall.
[39] In Cornwall, any number beyond two is termed a pair.
[40] "Bal" signifies a mine.
A PEEP INTO THE WHIG PENNY POST-BAG.
MY DEAR MEMBER--I send you a powerful petition,
For absolute, instant, entire abolition.
This question our Chamber is taking a lead in
Composed, as you know, of the Flowers of Dunedin,
Intelligent Druggists, rhetorical Quakers,
Broad acres--a few--but no want of wiseacres.
All are perfectly clear that these horrid restrictions
Are the proximate cause of our present afflictions,
Obstructing the bowels, as 'twere, of the nation,
And entirely deranging our whole circulation.
To expel these bad humours, we earnestly urge
A dose, night and morning, of Russell's _new_ Purge;
Not the old wishy-washy affair of the _fixture_,
But the new out-and-out Morisonian mixture.
In the mean time 'tis well that the Noble concoctor
Has succeeded in ousting the family Doctor.
Peel's a perfect old wife--twaddles on about diet,
About exercise, air, mild aperients, and quiet;
Would leave Nature alone to her vigour elastic,
And never exhibit a drug that is drastic.
Doctor Russell's the man for a good searching pill,
Or a true thorough drench that will cure or will kill.
For bleeding and blistering, and easy bravado,
(Not to speak of hot water,) he passes Sangrado.
He stickles at nothing, from simple phlebotomy,
As our friend Sidney said, to a case of lithotomy:
And I'll venture to say, that this latest specific,
When taken, will prove to be no soporific.
Might I just hint how happy 'twould make me to be
Sole Agent down here for the great Patentee?
_Entre nous_, what can mean these unpleasant surmises?
I scarce know what prognosis to form of the crisis:
And our friends, quite perplex'd at this puzzling delay,
Can't imagine how scruples should stand in the way.
Must the grand Opus Magnum be brought to a fix,
Because some jarring drugs are unwilling to mix?
His lordship, I'm certain, would cut the thing shorter,
If he'd borrow a touch of my pestle and mortar.
Ere we part, I must give you a hint of the truth:
We Free Churchmen can't stomach your views of Maynooth.
If you value your seat, as a friend I would urge ye,
Steer clear of endowing the Catholic Clergy;
A bolus (or bonus) so very unhallow'd
Would in Scotland, I'm sure, not be easily swallow'd.
By an early reply we should all be elated,
And 'twould tell if from Windsor again it were dated.
DEAR DRUGGIST---You've open'd your jocular vein,
And I fain would reply in the same pleasant strain;
But let those laugh who win--I have only to say,
That we are--_as we were:_ and all done by Lord Grey--
The most arrogant, wayward, capricious of men,
(Though this last little sketch must not seem from my pen.)
Only think of objecting that Palmerston's name
In a fortnight would set East and West in a flame:
About mere peace or war a commotion to make,
When the Party's existence was plainly at stake!
When office was offer'd, to cast it behind,
And to talk of such trash as the good of mankind!
It is clear, my good friend, such a crotchety prig
Has but little pretence to the title of Whig.
On the part I have played in this luckless transaction,
I confess I look back with unmix'd satisfaction.
From the first I said _this_--and 'tis pleasant to feel
Thus at ease with one's self--"I'm for total repeal.
Stick to that, my Lord John, and all scruples I stifle:
Any office, or none, is to me a mere trifle;"
(Though, of course, my dear Mac, for the purest of ends,
I was willing to help both myself and my friends.)
"Any office I'll take, that can give you relief--
From the Whip of the House to Commander-in-chief."
Oh! If all of the party had acted as I did,
In how noble a band would Lord John have presided!
But--"'tis best as it is:" we may grieve, yet we shouldn't:
Peel can carry the measure--'tis certain we couldn't:
Though we hoped, if our reign was once fairly begun,
It might last till--we did what was not to be done.
I think, (though thus leaving old views in the lurch,)
We should _not_ have establish'd the Catholic Church.
To speak for my colleagues, in me would be vanity:
They might differ; but I should have thought it insanity.
In the hope that our friends in Auld Reeky are "brawly,"
I remain yours, in confidence, T. B. Mac----y.
EAST AND WEST.
Sweet is the song, whose radiant tissue glows
With many a colour of the orient sky;
Rich with a theme to gladden ear and eye--
The love-tale of the Nightingale and Rose.
Nor speeds the lay less surely to the mark
That paints in homely hues two neighbours sweet,
Born on our own bleak fields, companions meet,
The modest Mountain-daisy and the Lark.
The fond attachments of a flower and bird!
That things so fair a mutual bond obey,
And gladly bask in love's delightful ray,
Who would deny, and doubt the poet's word?
Or who would limit love's and fancy's reign?
Their hardy growth here springs as fresh and fair,
Far from the sun and summer gale, as there
Where Gul for Bulbul decks her gay domain.
'Tis poesy, whose hands with kindly art,
Of kindred feelings weaves this mystic band,
To knit the Scottish to the Iranian strand,
And reach wherever beats a human heart.
AN APOLOGY FOR A REVIEW.
It is not our general practice to review books of travels; nor, in
truth, in noticing these little volumes, do we introduce any exception
to that general rule. Under what precise category in literature they may
fall, would admit, as Sir Thomas Browne observes as to the song sung by
the Sirens, of a wide solution. Plainly, however, in the ordinary sense
of the term, travels they are not. They will form no substitute for
Murray's admirable hand-books; for on the merits or demerits of
competing hostelries, which Mr Murray justly regards as a question of
vital importance--the very be-all, and often end-all of a tour--these
volumes throw no light. In statistics they are barren enough. To the
gentlemen of the rule and square, who think that the essential spirit of
architecture can be fathomed by measurement, they will be found a blank.
And though abounding in allusions, which betray, without obtruding, an
intimate acquaintance with ancient literature, and sufficient in
congenial minds to awaken a train of memories, classic or romantic,
medieval or modern; they contain few dates, no dissertations, no
discussion of vexed questions as to the ownership of statues, baths,
temples, or circuses; or the other disputed points which have so long
been the subject of strife in the antiquarian arena. And, really, when
we consider the way in which, in the course of a century, all the old
landmarks on the antiquarian map have been broken up, and the monuments
of antiquity made to change hands; how Nibbi supersedes Winckelman, only
to be superseded in turn; how a temple is converted into a senate-house;
one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to
make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to
make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches,
gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of
transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the
conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent save that which
was fugitive--namely, old Tiber himself; we rather feel grateful to the
tourist who is content to take up the last theory without further
discussion, and to spare us the grounds on which the last change of
title has been adopted. What, indeed, matters it, in so far as the
imagination is concerned, by what emperor, consul, or dictator, these
mighty remains were reared or ruined? Whether these Titanian halls first
echoed to the voices of Pagan or the chant of Christian priests? Whether
this inexplicable labyrinth of vaults and cells, and buried gardens
which overrun the Esquiline, where the work of art and nature is so
strangely melted and fused together by "the alchymy of vegetation,"
really formed part of the golden house of the monstrous Nero; or of the
baths of him, the gentlest of the Caesars, who, when he had gone to rest
without doing a good action, regretted that he had lost a day? Equally
they remain monuments of the grandeur of the minds which gave them
birth; mysterious, suggestive--perhaps the more suggestive, the more
awakening curiosity and interest, from the very obscurity in which their
origin, purposes, or fortunes are shrouded. And if individual
associations become dim or doubtful, they merge in the clear light which
these gigantic fragments, betraying, even in ruin, their original beauty
of proportion and grandeur of conception, throw upon the lofty and
enduring character of the Roman people.
* * * * *
These volumes, then, as we have said, will neither replace Murray, nor
form a substitute for Eustace. Neither is their interest mainly owing to
mere vivid or literal portraiture; by painting in words, as an artist
would do by forms and colours, and enrolling before us a visible
panorama, such as might present a clear image of the scenes described
here to those who had never witnessed them. Their charm--for a charm, we
trust, they will have to a considerable number of readers--arises simply
from the truth with which they seize, and the happy expression in which
they embody, _the spirit of the spot_; marking, by a few expressive
touches, the moral as well as the physical aspect of the scene, and
awakening in the reader a train of associations often novel in
conception, as well as felicitous in expression; but which appear in
general so congenial and appropriate, that we are willing to persuade
ourselves they are a reproduction of thoughts, and dreams, and fancies,
which had occurred to ourselves in contemplating the same objects. Hence
it is to those, who have already witnessed the scenes described, that
these volumes address themselves. They do not paint pictures, but revive
impressions; they call up or steady imperfectly defined images; bring
forward into light struggling memories;--and, by a union of brief
description, classic or historical allusions, picturesque and
significant epithets, and reflections hinted at, rather than wrought
out, they very successfully accomplish their object--that of realizing
to the eye of the mind that distinctive and prevailing expression which
each aspect of nature, like each movement of the human face, wears in
itself, and is calculated to awaken in others--cheerful, sombre,
majestic, or awe-inspiring, according to the nature of the scene, the
associations past and present with which it is surrounded, and the
conditions, or, as a painter would term it, accidents under which it has
been viewed.
While we say that Mr Whyte has generally been very successful in his
aim, we must not be understood to express by any means an unqualified
probation of the taste in which these volumes are conceived, or the plan
on which they are constructed. The train of reflection is _sometimes_
too obviously an afterthought--not spontaneously evoked at the moment by
the influences of the scene, but evidently devised and wrought up into
point and _apparent_ application by a subsequent process. We have dreams
which were never dreamt, and reveries which are any thing but
involuntary. There are too many Tristram Shandy transitions, sundry
cockneyisms in expression, (we use the word in a wide sense,) and one or
two jokes which make the blood run cold. Lastly, we are compelled to say
that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in
architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no
feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while
the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by
Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his
mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes
that we can attribute the slender success with which the volumes have
been attended; for at this moment we do not recollect having seen them
noticed by any of those who assume to themselves the right of
distributing the rewards and punishments of criticism.
Let us now look at one or two of Mr Whyte's sketches of Rome, or rather
of the train of thought called up by wanderings among its ruins, tracing
the broken sweep of its ancient walls, or wandering among the stately
aqueducts and nameless tombs of its dreary Campagna.
_Fragments of Italy and the Rhineland._ London: 1841._
_A Pilgrim's Reliquary._ By the REV. T. H. WHYTE, M.A. London:
1845.
THE WALLS OF ROME.
"I wonder whether it be the fault of mine own inattention, or the
absence of good taste in others, that I have heard and read so
little of the Walls of Rome! To me they rank among the few, out of
all the Wonders of the Eternal City that have exceeded my
expectations. Solitude, their peculiar characteristic, has great
charms for a companionless enthusiast like myself: it is, moreover,
a description of solitude, the very reverse of melancholy. Mile
after mile have I repeatedly roamed along the outer Pomoerium of
those solitary rampires, and encountered perhaps a goatherd and his
pretty flock, the tinkle of whose bells formed the only
accompaniment to the honey notes of the blackbird:--or, perhaps, in
sonorous solemnity, some great Bell would suddenly boom upon the
silence, and be taken up in various tones from a hundred quarters,
no vestige, mean time, of Minster or Monastery being visible;
nothing but that enormous Adamantine Circlet rearing itself into
the sky on one side, and the gateways and walls of villas and
vineyards occupying the other. You might fancy those tolling chimes
belonging to some City hidden by Enchantment.
"Still, as I have proceeded in my mood, half enjoying, half
moralizing the scene, those hundred towers, like Titan warders
placed around the Seven Hills, would each after each look down upon
me from their high and silent stations; till, as I came to know
them, they seemed to meet my gaze with the sedate and pleasant
welcome of a venerable friend. They were the incessant associates
of my solitude, and I was never wearied of them. Of a surety their
vast Circuit (fifteen miles) gives ample time and space enough for
rumination!
"Their colossal cubits are the most perfect exemplar of
Architectural sublimity. Their dismantled Battlements have no
Watchman but Antiquity, no Herald but Tradition, and hear no
clamour louder than the Church or Convent bells, or the dirge which
the wind wails over them through the melancholy Cypress and the
moaning Pine. The broad old belt of short flowery turf at the base,
the Violet, the Gilliflower, and the vermilion spotted Mignonette,
on their breast, and the chaplet of wilding shrubs upon their
brows, give them a charm in the most common-place observation. With
me, truant as I have been to the Classic page, it seemed a natural
process of my desultory mind, to revert from a contemplation of
such pensive dreamy realities of waking enjoyment as I have
described, to visions, startling in their august grandeur, of the
everlasting past,--visions of their great Architect, Aurelian; of
their greater Restorer, Belisarius!
"These monstrous walls! I cannot divest myself of a certain awe and
fascination, as if of a supernatural appearance, which attracts and
detains me about them; not even the Colosseum more. There seems
something so ghastly, so spectral, in the mockery of their
unnecessary circuit, their impregnable strength, their countless
towers, arrogating to themselves the circumference of a day's
journey--and all for what? To guard a city, which, once dropsied
with grandeur, has now shrunk with the disease into comparative
atrophy; a city, which, having boastfully demanded their aid, has
now abandoned them for miles. It is as though one should wrap a
triumphal robe about a corpse, or place a giant's helmet upon a
skeleton's skull. It is no poetical figure to look upon them as an
eternal satire upon the great littleness of empire. The melancholy
pride of their dimensions needs not the hollow wind, which howls
around their towers, or the wondering sun, which lingers over their
shrubby ramparts, to proclaim in the ears of thrones and senates
the warning of Rome's ambition, the moral of Rome's downfall! It is
but a poor recompense to their present unhonoured solitude, that
their melancholy battlements are emblazed at intervals with the
pontifical escutcheons. Those triple tiaras and cross keys, so
perpetually recurring, do not half so much consecrate as they are
themselves consecrated by the lonely bulwarks of this desolated
city of the Caesars!"
THE VILLA BORGHESE.
"With the exception of an ostentatious parade of paltry equipages,
tarnished liveries, and wretched horses on the Corso, and a frantic
attempt at an opera, Rome, in May, is a picturesque receptacle for
monks, and goatherds, and nightingales, and bells. Like some
haunted place, it appears to be beloved and frequented only by the
apparitions of an obsolete race. Yet many minds will find it
infinitely more congenial thus, than amidst all the popular
splendours of its holy week.
"Her tranquillity, nay, her very desolation, is enchanting. The
summer's-day circuit of the Seven Hills seems all your own. You
wander whither you will, meeting few, and disturbed by none. In
short, the very antiquity of the place is one perpetual novelty,
and its grave monotony a serene recreation. I write this in the
Villa Borghese, beneath groves of acacias, redolent with odours,
and booming with myriads of bees, the yellow hay in aromatic
quiles, pitched like pavilions below the old red walls of Rome, and
nightingales and blackbirds contending in gushes of ecstatic song!
"Though not new to me, I had little conception of the intrinsic
loveliness of the Villa Borghese till to-day. Picture to yourself a
large village of the most variegated and romantic character;
Church, casino, albergo, and farm, scattered amidst the turfy
glades of a forest; and that forest composed of such trees as the
beech, the elm, the ilex, and, above all, the sovereign pinaster,
whose enormous trunks seem to have _condescended_ to arrange
themselves into avenues; the most charmingly artificial glades of
the glossiest verdure, and vistas haunted by legions of dim waning
statues; hero or demigod, nymph or faun, for ever intermingling but
never interfering with each other; their various places of
rendezvous emblazed with flowers of a thousand colours, and
flashing with fountains of the most graceful fancies possible;
while every vista discloses some antique portico, or rotunda, or
vestibule of those gems that men call temples! Picture these scenes
on some such May-day as this,
'When God hath shower'd the earth;'
the dark evergreens rejoicing in the rain-drops, and the new-born
leaves of silky green, transparent with the moisture, which had
reluctantly ceased to shine on their delicate tapestries. Crown all
this with a country palace, of lofty Italian magnificence, a
treasure-house of antiquity, painting, and sculpture, disclosing
the statues, frescoes, and gilding, of its noble facade and massive
campaniles, at the extremity of its darkest grove of evergreens,
glittering in this rainbow sunlight, and you may have some
impression of the Villa Borghese.
"Such silence and solemnity, that you would never dream you were
near the busy haunt of men, were it not, that a long linked
diapason of bells, modulated by every possible inflection of their
lofty language, convinced you that you were basking amidst all this
voluptuous quiet, beneath the walls of a concealed city, and that
city--ROME!"
THE RUINS.--THE CAMPAGNA.
"This afternoon we drove along the Via Appia Nova. The sun, rolling
his chariot amidst a cavalcade of wild clouds, along the ruddy
array of shattered arches, variegating the grassy plain with its
uncouth palatial and sepulchral ruins, in ebony and gold,
illuminated the purple and green recesses of the Sabine hills, and
caressing with capricious fleetness their woody towers and towns,
bequeathed to the north a calm blue vault, wherein, as in some
regal hall of state, the dome of St Peter's, the rotunda of the
Colosseum, the vast basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore, and San
Giovanni Laterana, that embattled sepulchre of Cecilia, and those
lofty masses of the Pamfilipine, which hovered in the horizon like
a feathery vapour, proclaim the illustrious domicile of Rome.
"The Temple of the Divus Rediculus (or whatever other title it may
rejoice in) is one of those lovely little phantasies of
architecture that one might imagine a London citizen would have
coveted for a summer-house. The brilliant contrast between its
vermilion pilasters and its pale yellow wall, the delicate moulding
of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration,
not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising
from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely
fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest
spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much
less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact,
the whole appearance of this wide dull tract seems eminently
adapted to sepulchral piles. It is most melancholy, most funereal;
and even that glorious sun, and those majestic aqueducts, soaring,
as they do, to salute his lustre, and to emulate his glory, cannot
efface the feeling, that such a scene, and such memorials, should
be visited only in the gloom of a sad and stormy sky; either amidst
the sympathetic moans of an autumnal tempest, or the waning and
mournful glimpses of an autumnal twilight."
THE COLOSSEUM.
"It was the twilight, that brief, that exquisite interval, which
flings its purporoseate veil between the palace gates of day and
night. You might have fancied it the car of Diana rolling on to
some Olympian festival, and preceded by Venus, the only other
planet visible in the sky. What a canopy!--Not the gaudiest
velabrum that the ostentatious munificence of her Caesars extended
above its gilded cordage, ever equalled the empyrean pomp of this
soft sky. Never could the artificial rains of perfumed water
surpass the dewy fragrance that steals around from evening's
thousand urns.
"I say it was the twilight when we entered these gloomy corridors,
whose solemn circuit uncoils its colonnades around the lordly pile;
but before we had traversed half their extent night began her
reign, and when we entered the arena it was difficult to say
whether those faintly flushed skies, that single sparkling star, or
the pallid hectic of the youthful moon produced the pathetic light
that illuminated this enormous architecture.
"As it now stands, the Colosseum is _indeed_ a wreck, rendered
absolutely frightful by repair; and whether by sunlight or
moonlight, compels you to lament the 'melancholy activity' which,
utterly inadequate to the restoration of its pristine glory, has
deprived it of all those adventitious ornaments, trees, and
herbage, and a thousand beautiful flowers, which, if they could not
conceal, at least served to soften its injuries, and which
mitigated the desolation they were unable to repair.
"Of course a thousand imaginations and memories hunt each other
through one's head and heart in such a place and at such an hour as
this, but to-night there were realities, which, where they do not
dispel, must always reinforce such phantasies.
"Before the steps of the great cross in the centre, garnished with
all the emblems of the passion, knelt a respectably dressed group,
apparently father, mother, and daughter, absorbed in a rapture of
devotion. The lamps were lighted before the fourteen shrines, which
Benedict the Fourteenth erected around the arena, and flung a dusky
light upon the successive stagioni of our Saviour's sufferings, by
which each is distinguished; and we saw a solitary peasant, in the
dark costume of his country, evidently faint and toil-worn, rise
from his oraisons at _one_ shrine, only to sink upon his knees
before _another_.
"Ah! it was at once a simple and sagacious stroke of that priestly
sovereign, who, in these prophaned ruins, planted the Cross, and,
by a mightier spell than the magician's wand, arrested the rapacity
of its patrician plunderers!"
Do not sketches such as these revive for us all those feelings which
Rome awakened in ourselves, bringing back the clime, the sky, the
loneliness, the mingled feeling of grandeur and situation--the gentle
melancholy with which the eternal city impresses even the least
imaginative mind? To us they appear to embody more of the poetry of
travel than many a work which figures under the mask of poesy.
How much has been written on Venice, from Schiller and Radcliffe to
Madame de Stael and Madame Dudevant! and yet we hardly know if any one,
with the exception of the last, has more completely imbued his mind with
the peculiar spirit of Venice, or reflected its impressions with more
truth than Mr Whyte. Schiller, indeed, and Mrs Radcliffe, had never
witnessed the scenes they described; their portraiture is the result
merely of reading and description, warmed and vivified by the glow of
their own imagination. Hence the glimpses of Venice conveyed in
Schiller's beautiful fragment of the _Armenian_, are mere general
outlines--true enough so far as they go, but faintly drawn, and
destitute, as we might say, of local colour. Mrs Radcliffe's moonlight
landscapes--masques and music--exhibit with great beauty one aspect of
the city, but only one.
Very different are the Venetian _Sketches_ of Madame Dudevant. She has
drunk in the inspiration of Venice on the spot, has penetrated the very
heart of its mystery, and reproduces the impressions which an intimacy
with its peculiarities produces, with a degree of truth, force, and
poetical feeling, that impart the most captivating charm to her Venetian
_Letters_. Mr Whyte's _Fragments_ exhibit much of the same sensibility,
the same just perception of the spirit of Venice; and though they have
not that brilliancy of style which the pictures of the French authoress
possess, there is often even in this respect great beauty both of
thought and expression. Mr Whyte, indeed, took the right course to
enable him thoroughly to understand and appreciate Venice. Instead of
confining himself to the stately vision of the Grand Canal, or the
wizard magnificence of St Mark's, he seems to have habitually traced all
the lesser canals; the little Rii, which, like small veins, shoot off
from the great arteries of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca, carrying
the circulation of the Adriatic through this unique city; exploring
their high, dark, and narrow recesses, pondering on the strange
contrasts of misery and magnificence, squalid filth and luxurious
ornament, which they present side by side; and heightening the
impression thus created, by selecting all varieties of aspects, from the
bright flashing sunshine pouring down into these dark chasms, as into a
well, to the shadowy evening, the magic contrasts of moonlight, the
gloom of wind and rain howling through the balconies, driving the ocean
wave impetuously through these water-ways, and beating against their
thousand bridges; or those thunder-storms--nowhere more magnificent
than at Venice--where the gleam of the lightning forms so fearful a
contrast with the Cimmerian gloom of the canal, and the peals are
reverberated with such magnificence from those piles of masonry with
which they are lined. There is, indeed, no spectacle that can be
conceived, more impressive than some of these smaller canals,
particularly if you enter them towards sundown. You glide into a gulf of
buildings, rising high on each side--almost meeting above your
head--most of them ruinous and dilapidated, sinking by piecemeal into
the green element which they have displaced for centuries, but which,
through the slow agency of the sap and mine, is visibly resuming his
oozy empire. You pass some church with its unfinished marble face.
Again, a set of poor rickety and mean edifices follow; when suddenly you
come upon some pile of massy grandeur, looming gigantic in the twilight,
in whose colossal, but beautiful proportions, you can trace the hand of
Sammichele or Sansovino. You come nearer, and perceive the fretted
windows broken, stuffed with rags, and patched with paper; rough boards
nailed up against the gilded beams; grand portals, of which the doors
have disappeared, allowing the eye to penetrate into a dark perspective
within: perhaps a sign-board over-tops a glorious cornice of grim masks
or armorial bearings; and from latticed windows, on which Palladio had
lavished all the delicate beauty of his architecture, some flaunting and
gaudy rags are hung out to dry. You enquire what is the building, and to
whom it belongs, and you are answered: It is the palace of one of the
classic nobility of ancient Venice--now tenanted by a Hebrew, who lets
out the apartments at so many _lire_ a month!
But let Mr Whyte speak for himself.
THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
"The Canal Orfano, the Ponte di Sospiri! what a day to behold these
long pictured images of darknes and terror, for the first time!
Such a blaze of May sunshine, such a soothing repose broken by a
few distant bells or the nearer laugh of the gay Gondoliers. I
looked upon the narrow, immured waters under the Bridge of Sighs,
then to the high arch that like the heavy embossed clasp of some
old solemn book united its decorated Gothic Piles (those volumes of
bloody Story) on either side, and instead of shuddering at
inquisitions and racks, and Piombi and Pozzi, as in common decency
I ought, away fled my intractable thoughts to merry England's old
Sabbath Chimes, her village spires, village greens, village elm
lanes, and decent peasantry.
"Yet those high and antique abodes of venerable crime, those wild
barbaric piles, in which old age palliates and almost hallows
infamy! giving it somewhat the same prescriptive sanctuary as
Milton bestows on the Palace of his Pandemonium! That cruel
slinking flood, the only firmament the stone vaulted pits below
were conscious of! Each looked as malignant and dangerous as they
could, beneath the triumph of such a glorious sun; that light to
which their aspect once was hateful, and their deeds untold.
"My gondolier dipt his oar into the canal just under the Bridge of
Sighs, and at half its length it was arrested by a hollow substance
which he told me was the marble roof of the Pozzi, whose
unfathomable tiers of dungeons stretched one under another beneath
this dreadful water gallery. It was not here, however, that the
secret midnight drownings took place, (as I had fancied,) but in
that widest, deepest portion of the Canal Orfano, far out in the
Lagoons situated between the towery Isola Servilio and the lovely
groves and monastery of San Grazia. This murder-hole of the
Adriatic is called Marani, and to this day it is forbidden to fish
in its accursed depth. To-day it looks not only innocent, but
gloriously bright.
"I was out in the Lagoons this evening, for the purpose of visiting
by twilight that solitary Isle of St Clements, where Monks exchange
the voluntary seclusion for penal dungeons, (l'un vaut bien
l'autre!) the sky glowing with its last light, lingered over its
tall belfry and few old trees, and a sea as smooth as a crystal
pavement slept at the base of its grim walls, all in vain;
Campanile, Convent, Grove, and that pyramidal Powder Magazine,
looked obdurately sullen enough to tell their own uses, had I not
known their chronicle."
THE SMALL CANALS.
"I thence directed my gondolier to row under the Bridge of Sighs,
through the intricacies of the interior canals; and if ever a man
wished to be fed to the full with solemn, ay, appalling gloom, he
may be gratified by following my example. From the weltering
surface of a labyrinth of channels, let him look up till it wearies
him, to the awful roofs of the mansions, whose walls of
immeasurable height, and scarfed with black masses of shadow and
glaring moonlight, seem to close over his head and to barricade his
path, as they interlace and confound each other in endless
circuits; and he will have quite enough to kindle the torch of his
darker imagination, even if he did not know those tremendous gulfs
of masonry to be Venice, and those heart-sinking portals and
windows of barbaric sculpture, the homes of her inexorable
oligarchy. Yes, you may anticipate Naples, you may picture to
yourself Rome, and Florence may have fulfilled much of your
previous fancies; but no conception can prepare you for Venice.
"What enchantment lingers still about every stone of this mourning
city! My affection for her dismantled palaces is almost morbid.
'Like an unrighteous and an unburied ghost,'
do I nightly haunt that Tartarus of antique masonry, the interior
canals of Venice, uniformly entering or departing from them by the
Bridge of Sighs. To me their hideous height, their appalling gloom,
(for the meridian cannot touch their waters, and the moon glides
like a spectre over their huge parapets,) their bewildering
intricacies, their joyless weltering floods, the countless bridges,
each with its sculptured monster-heads yawning as if to swallow up
the silently sweeping gondola in its arch of shadow; their deep
dead silence only broken by the sullen plash of the oar, the dreary
word of warning uttered by the gondoliers before turning a sharp
angle, or the shrill rattling creak of innumerable crickets; but
principally those old Gothic posterns with deep-ribbed archways,
like rat-holes in proportion to the enormous piles, and their
thresholds level with the water, some blockaded with ponderous
doors, others developing their long withdrawn passage by a lamp,
that not only makes darkness _visible_, but _frightful_; while
others (as in the Martinengo palace to-night) disclose wide
pillared halls, and stately staircases, and moonlight courts --to
me, I say, all these attributes of the interior of Venice are
irresistible. Were you to see these old porticos by a summer's
daylight, you would not fail to find an old fig tree in broad leaf
and full of fruit, or a lattice-work of vine, most pleasantly green
in its deep court, where sun and shadow hold divided reign; while
the hundred shaped windows of those gloomy walls are variegated
with geranium and carnation, and perhaps a sweet dark eye fairer
than either.
"They are so obviously the symbols of her hollow oligarchy itself,
which to the world and to the sun in heaven, (like the brave
palaces on her chief canal,) displayed a gallant guise, at once
sublime, glittering, and august; while, within, its tortuous policy
was twisted into murky and inextricable labyrinths, of which
Necessity, Secresy, and Suspicion, formed the keystone; where
Danger lurked at every winding, and whose darkling portals were
watched by Mystery, and Stratagem, and Disgrace, and Fate!
"It is impossible to scrutinize these dread abysms of mansions,
without experiencing that strange mixture of repugnance and
attraction which certain spectacles are wont to call forth in
animated nature. It is impossible to mark their melancholy and
downfallen, yet portentous aspect, without deeming them at once the
theatre and monument of those 'secret, black, and midnight crimes,'
which history and tradition ascribe to the domestic, as well as to
the state policy, of this Gehenna of fourteen centuries dominion.
'Visendus Ater flumine languido
Cocytus errans.'
"Perhaps it would be difficult to conceive any thing more abhorrent
to the soul and body of man, than the time, manner, and place, of
death, distinguishing those executions which have rendered the
gulfs of the Canal Orfano immemorably infamous.
"To me, the element, in its most serene and smiling state, wears a
look of furtive menace; and I am free to confess, that even when
gliding on a mid-summer night over that sweetest Lake of
Derwentwater, beneath the shadows of its moonlit isles and fair
pavilions, I have not been without a certain sensation of
uncomfortable awe. But what must have been the feelings of the
victim, whether criminal or innocent, who, from this accurst
Maranna, cast around him his last straining look of agony, and
uttered his last cry of supplication or despair! The conviction
that his family, parent, wife, or son, were at that hour of horror
in profound ignorance _sometimes_ of his very absence, _often_ of
its cause, or at least, only perplexed with conjecture, and
_always_ unconscious of its horrible event, must have constituted
no trifling pang in that mortal hour. Then that old familiar,
though melancholy, water, more terrible to his feelings than the
dreariest wilderness of ocean! For, girdling the dusky horizon,
could he not see the domes and campaniles of Venice, perhaps the
very lamps in his own palace windows, from whose festal saloons he
had just been decoyed; just distant enough to be beyond the reach
of help? but too, too near for that despairing gaze that recognized
and bade adieu for ever at the same glance? There too were not
those nestling lovely islands, each with its convent tower gleaming
to the moon, and from which the sonorous bells were tolling, the
sacred Anthems swelling for the last time on his ear! Alas! those
chaunted masses were not for _his_ conflicting soul; yea, it would
have a strange comfort to feel that passing bell was proclaiming to
the world that his spirit was parting from its scarcely worn weeds!
But no! even that miserable solace was prohibited to _him_; he was
to be obliterated from society, and his inexorable judges had
decreed that society was not to know that he was gone. No grave for
his dust; no monument for his name, to palliate his faults and
perpetuate his virtues. The ghastly element that moaned and
shuddered under the Gondola, as if remorseful for its own
involuntary cruelties, was to spread its weltering pall over his
hearseless bones."
THE BELLS OF VENICE.
"The islands constituting the Venetian Archipelago are about fifty
in number, of various size and extremely picturesque. They were
each of them the seat of a monastery or nunnery, till Napoleon
came, who overthrew these saintly receptacles, converting them into
forts, mills, public gardens, &c. In short, these islands are among
the most beautiful contingents of this magic scene. Each has its
graceful campanile, and its various structures of castle, convent,
mill, or summer-house; each its due girdle of blue sea, fenced by
walls that rise round its margent, and embroidered with groves and
arbours of the most delightful green.
"This evening I cruised past many of them in my gondola after
sunset; and was particularly struck with the beauty of the large
Isle of Murano, and its attendant San Michaele (the latter one
entire cemetery,) whose thin tall campaniles throw up their slender
figures in fine relief against the long wavy purple of the
Acharnean Hills in the west, at the head of the Adriatic.
"Night gathered round, as we floated under that prodigious monument
of the departed majesty of the Republic, the arsenal, whose
ramparts high and endless, and as ugly as either, lay weltering
many a rood upon their wooden piles. Every bell in the city was
tolling for Nones, and sang aloud to the surrounding islands, whose
campaniles replied with sympathetic thunder, a solemn diapason of
Corybantine brass, to my taste, wonderfully in unison with the
funeral mole of the defunct Arsenal, the repose of the purple
mountains, and the fainting splendour of that twinned vault and
pavement, the opal sea and sky, smooth, soft, and bright enough for
Juno and Amphitrite to hold a gossip, each from her own imperial
element.
"Probably it is to the peculiarity of its situation, that one may
attribute the sweetly solemn melodies produced by the bells of
Venice. Flinging their prolonged notes down those immense hollows
of architecture, sweeping round their narrow streets, and floating
over their liquid pavement, they derive every advantage from that
element which always so fondly detains and dallies with music, in
addition to the depth and power with which they are endowed, by
those pillared and winding concaves, that, like the tubes of some
vast organ, receive and redouble the airy strain.
"Whatever be the case, I never felt any thing so fully coming up to
my idea, of 'most musical, most melancholy.'"
We bid Mr Whyte adieu, in the hope that, if a second edition of these
volumes be called for, he will subject them to a very thorough
revision--connecting together many passages, which, though relating to
the same subject, are at present unnaturally disjoined--omitting much,
which, instead of heightening, interferes with the effect which it is
his object to produce--and, above all, eschewing the indulgence of
pleasantries which certainly produces no corresponding impression on his
readers.
_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._