Moubrays treatise on domestic fowls, have informed us that the hens near
the fountain of Vaucluse are peculiarly prolific in fine eggs, and so
on. For my own part, I may as well honestly confess that I am more
partial to the memory of Petrarch as a philosopher, a patriot, and
reviver of ancient learning, than as the Werter of Troubadours, though
in the latter capacity he has stood unrivalled for five hundred years. I
must own, also, that the hermitage whither he retired to stifle his
rebellious passion for the wife of another, however melancholy and
impressive the ideas may be which it would of itself excite, is
poisoned, in my mind, by the pestilent frivolities with which the
mawkish of all ages have defaced its sombre features, in violation of
truth and sound feeling. What syllables of dolour the forgotten
Della-Cruscan school may have yelled out on the subject, is not worth
ascertaining, and probably recollected by few or none. The French, who
with all their ingenuity, are not very apt at comprehending the madness
of contemplative minds, have caricatured the shade of poor Petrarch most
woefully, and[35] the Abbe Delille (peace to his ashes!) has teazed the
innocent trees of Vaucluse with embarrassing questions, fitter for the
mouths of Susanna's elders. Under such blighting influence, the stern
rocks of Vaucluse are transformed into a sentimental tea-garden, the
high-minded and melancholy Petrarch into a more ingenious Piercie
Shafton, and the virtuous Laura, who probably never saw the place, into
a starched Gloriana of the old school, paraded and gallanted round it
with all due form. It is, perhaps, a judgment on Petrarch's adulterous
Platonism, that it has laid him open to impertinences like these, which
would torture his sensitive ghost almost as keenly as oblivion itself,
and which very strongly remind one of Punch's intrusion at a tragedy.
Such ideas cannot be engrafted on the [36]Nonwenwerder, or the [36]Pena
de los Enamorados, spots on which a simple and obscure legend has thrown
an interest which Vaucluse cannot really possess, though embellished by
every thing which poetry can do for it.
[Footnote 35: See the Quarterly Review, to which I am obliged for the
Abbe's remark.]
[Footnote 36: See Campbell's ballad of "The Brave Roland," in one of the
numbers of the New Monthly Magazine; and Southey's tale of Manuel and
Leila, in his early productions.]
It were to be wished, that the shade of Petrarch could return to his
former haunts, to frighten away frivolous visitors, and read a lesson to
the thinking. Instead of rejoicing at the posthumous fame which his
poetical talents have earned, he would probably dwell on the
insufficiency of the highest mental endowments without conduct and
self-command. He would also probably describe his passion as fostered by
the pedantic and high-flown gallantry of the age, and the applauses
bestowed on his verses; as increasing and strengthening, after the
marriage of Laura had rendered it criminal, without any purpose which
his better conscience dared avow, till his eyes at length opened
themselves too late to its culpable nature. His mind, of that
high-wrought and desponding tone which often characterizes extraordinary
genius, and too sincere to trifle with impunity, struggled then
fruitlessly against a fatality formerly imagined, but become real; and
the flower of his life was passed amid illusions and conflicts, in
alternate self-deception and self-reproach, in wild and beautiful
visions from which he awoke to sickness of heart and weariness of
himself and all things, like the victim of a powerful opiate.
Compromising weakly between his passion and his conscience, he would
say, he secluded himself at Vaucluse from a society which had become
dangerous to him, and by the verses which he composed as a vent to his
feelings, fixed the illusion too deep to be eradicated by lapse of time,
or the indifference of Laura. Such voluntary mental martyrdom resembles
the punishment inflicted by some tyrant of history on his prisoners,
whom he commanded to embrace his Apega, a beautiful automaton so
constructed as to plunge a concealed dagger into their hearts.
The better feelings of Petrarch's readers will dwell with the least
alloy on the period after the death of Laura, when he contemplated her
as beyond the reach of human ties, affections, or jealousies, and
sought only to rescue from oblivion the virtues and purity which had
strengthened and refined his passion, while they rendered it hopeless.
There is a beautiful passage in Campbell which appears exactly written
to express his state of mind at this time, and the retrospective glance
which he must have often cast on his past life.
"And yet, methinks, when wisdom shall assuage
The griefs and passions of our greener age,
Though dull the close of life, and far away,
Each flower that hailed the dawning of our day,
Yet o'er her lovely hopes that once were dear,
The time-taught spirit, pensive, not severe,
With milder griefs her aged eye shall fill,
And weep their falsehood, though she love them still!"
The private memorandum,[37] written in the manuscript Virgil, of this
extraordinary man, which is shown in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, may
be considered as expressing his most undisguised feelings, as excited by
an event which dissolves trifling attachments, while it gives permanence
to those of a genuine nature. It was probably intended for no eye but
his own. I annex as literal a translation as possible, and from the
beauty and ease of their latinity, have been tempted to precede it with
the original words.
[Footnote 37: I had procured this document from Milan, and translated it
for the press, previous to reading the version of it which is given in
the Quarterly.]
"Laura, propriis virtutibus illustris, et meis longum celebrata
carminibus, primum oculis meis apparuit sub primum adolescentiae meae
tempus, anno Domini 1327, die 6 mensis Aprilis, in ecclesia sanctae Clarae
Avinioni, hora matutina. Et in eadem civitate, eodem mense Aprilis,
eodem die 6, eadem hora prima, anno autem Domini 1348, ab hac luce lux
illa subtracta est, cum ego forte Veronae essem, heu fati mei nescius!
Rumor autem infelix, per literas Ludovici mei, me Parmae reperit, anno
eodem, mense Maii, die mane.
"Corpus illud castissimum ac pulcherrimum in loco Fratrum Minorum
repositum est ipsa die mortis ad vesperam. Animam quidem ejus, ut de
Africano ait Seneca, in coelum, unde erat, rediisse, mihi persuadeo.
"Haec autem, ad acerbam rei memoriam, amara quadam dulcedine scribere
visum est; hoc potissimum loco, qui saepe sub oculis meis redit, ut
cogitem nihil esse debere quod amplius mihi placeat in hac vita, et
effracto majori laqueo, tempus esse de Babylone fugiendi, crebra horum
inspectione, ac fugacissimae aetatis aestimatione, commonear. Quod, praevia
Dei gratia, facile erit, praeteriti temporis curas supervacuas, spes
inanes, et inexpectatos exitus acriter ac viriliter cogitanti."
"Laura, illustrious for her own virtues, and long celebrated by my
verses, first appeared to my eyes, in the time of my early youth, on the
morning of the sixth day of April, in the year of our Lord 1327, in the
church of St. Clare at Avignon; and in the same month of April, on the
same first hour of the morning, in the year of our Lord 1348, that light
was removed from this light of day, while I by chance was at Verona,
unconscious, alas! of my fate. The unhappy news, however, reached me at
Parma, in a letter from my friend Ludovico, on the morning of the 19th
of May.
"Her most chaste and fair body was buried in the evening of the day of
her death, in the convent of the Fratres Minores; but her soul, as
Seneca saith of the soul of Africanus, hath returned, I am persuaded, to
the heaven from whence it came.
"I have felt a kind of bitter pleasure in writing the memorial of this
mournful event, the rather in this place, which so often meets my eyes,
to the end that I may consider there is nothing left which ought to
delight me in this world; and that I may be reminded by the frequent
sight of these words, and the due appreciation of this fleeting life,
that my principal tie to the world being broken, it is time for me to
fly from this Babylon; which, through the preventing grace of God, will
be an easy task, when I reflect deeply and manfully on the superfluous
cares, the vain hopes, and the unlooked for events of the time past."
This simple and affecting tribute, written, as it evidently seems, under
such solemn impressions, clears the memory of Laura from the imputation
of any thing trifling or criminal, while it sufficiently establishes the
identity of "a nymph," according to Gibbon, "so shadowy, that her
existence has been questioned."
May 14.--We left Avignon this morning, with a more favourable impression
of its cleanliness and comfort than any other town had as yet left on
our minds. The road to Nismes, winding up a hill on the opposite side of
the river, above Fort Villeneuve, is remarkably adapted also to display
its numerous spires, and the grand Gothic mass of the legate's palace,
to the utmost advantage: and we watched with something like regret the
disappearance of these objects over the brow of the hill which we had
ascended, more especially as on this spot the eye takes leave, for some
time, of every thing agreeable. The view here consists of a high dull
flat, with hardly a tree, and the road of rolling stones and dust; and a
high wind prevailed, which seemed a combination of the Bise and Mistral,
aided by all the bottled stores of a Lapland witch, and very nearly blew
poor Durand off his box. After passing Fouzay and Demazan, two Little
villages, adorned each a la Provencale, with a ruined castle, we turned
out of the road to Nismes at Remoulin, where the features of the country
somewhat improve. Another mile and a half brought us to an indifferent
inn within a ten minutes' walk of the Pont du Gard. It is adapted for
nothing more than a baiting-place for a few hours, and not at all of
that description which so well-known a ruin would be in most cases
capable of maintaining. The landlord, however, "a sallow, sublime sort
of Werter-faced man," was civil, and inclined to do his best, and
gathered us some double yellow roses, of a sort we had never seen
before, to season his bad fare.
The Pont du Gard, which we were not long in visiting, is seen to the
greatest advantage on the side on which we approached it from the inn.
The deep mountain glen, inhabited only by goats, whose entrance it
crosses from cliff to cliff, forms a striking back-ground, and serves as
a measure to the height of the colossal arches which appear to grow
naturally, as it were, out of the gray rocks on which they rest.[38]
There is certainly something more poetical in the stern and simple style
of architecture of which this noble aqueduct is a specimen, than in the
more florid and graceful school of art. The latter speaks more to the
eye, but the former to the mind, possessing a superiority analogous to
that which the great style of painting (as it is termed) boasts over the
florid and ornamental Venetian school. Our own Stonehenge is too much,
perhaps, in the rude extreme of this branch of architecture to be quoted
as a favourable instance of it; but few persons can come suddenly in
sight of Stonehenge on a misty day without being struck by its peculiar
effect; and the Pont du Gard, placed in as lonely a situation, exhibits
materials almost as gigantic in detail, and knit into a towering mass
which seems to require no less force than an earthquake, or a battery of
cannon, to change the position of a single stone. A large and solid
bridge which has been built against it by the states of Languedoc,
appears by comparison to shrink into insignificance, and shelter itself
behind the old Roman arches, the lower tier of which, eleven in number,
overtop it in height by about three-fifths. The span of the largest arch
is about 78 feet; of the other ten, 66 each: and they are surmounted by
a row of thirty-five smaller arches. With the exception of two or three
of these last, the whole fabric is complete, and, if unmolested, appears
likely to witness more changes of language and dynasty than it has
already done. I do not know that the mind is ever more impressed with
the idea of Roman power and greatness, than by contemplating such
structures as these, erected for subordinate purposes at a distance from
the main seat of empire. It is like discovering a broken hand or foot of
the Colossus of Rhodes, and estimating in imagination the height and
bulk of the whole statue from the size of its enormous extremities.
[Footnote 38: Vide Cooke's Views.]
From the Pont du Gard the road to Nismes has little to recommend it
excepting the high state of cultivation of the country, and this is not
of a nature to gratify an eye accustomed to English verdure.
Olive-groves, it is true, have been naturalized in poetry as conveying
an image of beauty and freshness; but in reality nothing can be more
opposed to the oaks and elms of an English hedge-row, than the pale
shining gray of this stunted tree, which has more of a metallic than a
vegetable appearance. Nor does a perpetual succession of corn-fields,
however rich in reality, present the same appearance of luxuriant
vegetation as an English pasture. There is, besides, nothing in the
nearer approach to Nismes, which reminds one of the environs of an
opulent commercial town, and its precincts would cut a poor figure when
compared with those of Leeds or Bristol. The transition is immediate,
from a dull range of corn-fields, without a gentleman's house, to a long
dirty suburb. On emerging, however, from the latter into the better and
more central part of the town, one is surprised to find wide and elegant
streets well watered and planted, and public buildings, whose beauty and
good taste show that the citizens of Nismes have made a good use of the
fine architectural models afforded by the ancient Nemausis. The Palais
de Justice deserves to be particularly remarked for its classical
elegance, and contrasts well with the black solid arches of the Arenes,
near which it is placed.
"_Monsieour!_ les antiquites!--_Heou! Monsieour!_ les
Arenes!--Commissionaire pour voir la Maison Carree!--_Heou--ou!
Monsieour!_ decrotteur, s'il vous plait!--Le Temple de Diane,
_Monsieour!_" are the cries with which every third or fourth ragamuffin
at Nismes salutes you, enforcing his application by a peculiar yell, of
which no combination of letters can give an idea uncouth enough. As it
is hardly possible to walk in the central part of Nismes without seeing
its antiquities before you, it is best to avoid a troublesome live
appendage of this sort, by appearing totally deaf. The Arenes are nearly
in front of the Hotel du Louvre, and the Maison Carree is within two or
three minutes' walk of it: the Temple of Diana and the Baths are
situated in the most conspicuous spot in the public gardens, whither a
perpetual concourse of people may be seen thronging; and the Pharos
overlooks them from the summit of a small precipitous hill, which may be
ascended in five minutes by a good walker. Every thing therefore lies
within the compass of an evening's stroll.
The Maison Carree is a beautiful bijou, better known than any other of
the curiosities of Nismes. I believe the opinion of Mons. Seguier
(formed from a laborious examination of the nail-holes belonging to its
last bronze inscription) is generally adopted; viz. that it was a temple
dedicated to Caius and Lucius Caesar, grandsons of Augustus. A perfect
copy of it, built from actual measurement, may be found in the Temple of
Victory and Concord, in the Duke of Buckingham's gardens at Stowe. So
admirable is the preservation of the original in every part, owing to
the dry and pure air of Languedoc, as almost to operate as a
disadvantage. Its freshness and compactness suggest rather too much the
idea of a modern pavilion of twenty or thirty years standing, instead of
that of a temple; and if I may venture to say so, the same want of the
aerugo of age, which renders it more valuable as an architectural relic,
produces an incongruous and unpoetical effect on the imagination. Age,
in fact, has its own characteristic branch of beauty. An old man with
curly hair and a fresh smooth complexion, like Godwin's Struldbrugg, St.
Leon, would be an unpleasant and unnatural object. There is a masculine
and imposing medium between youthful vigour and decay, in which the
leading features of the former man may be distinctly traced; as in
Wordsworth's beautiful description of the old knight of Rylstone, and
Sir Walter Scott's fine portraiture of Archibald Bell-the-Cat: and I
think the analogy holds good in classical remains. Somewhat should be
decayed for effect's sake; and those parts only left which are
strikingly beautiful, or of a leading and important nature. The Arena,
which we next visited, is perhaps more consonant to this standard than
the Maison Carree. Its structure is similar to that of the Colosseum at
Rome, of which, however, it falls infinitely short in size and grandeur,
while at the same time it so far exceeds it in perfectness, as to give a
complete idea to an inexperienced eye of its original figure and
arrangement, and of the admirable system of accommodation which such
places possessed. It has just enough of the graceful decay of age to
render it picturesque, and enough of freshness to answer the questions
of the antiquarian: and neither too much nor too little is left to the
imagination. Mr. Albanis Beaumont, in his work on the Maritime Alps,
calculates the number of persons which this building must have held at
16,599, and the spectators in the Colosseum at 34,000. He also states
the widest interior circumference of the Arena, as 1110-1/2 feet. The
plate engraved in his work, dated 1795, represents two square towers
over the principal entrance, erected perhaps by Charles Martel, when he
converted the building into a citadel; they have however been since
destroyed, and the work of clearing away the houses which defaced both
its inside and outside, commenced originally by Louis XVI., has been
completed. It now stands in a broad open space, adapted to set off its
full height and proportions.
The public garden also presents a well-arranged group of interesting
objects; but to behold them to any advantage, it is necessary to turn
your back upon a pert little cafe, roofed with party-coloured tiles like
the scales of a fancy fish, which glares from under the shade of the
trees. From hence you look over a handsome balustrade into a large
excavated space adorned with stone steps, which collects the waters of a
fine fountain, and in which the foundations of the ancient Baths are
still visible. On the summit of the opposite cliff, from whence these
waters issue, the ruined Pharos, which forms the principal landmark of
Nismes, rises with great majesty, and at its foot, immediately to the
left of the fountain, the ruined temple of Diana, though not
individually striking, combines admirably with the general group. From
the fountain arises a beautifully clear stream, which is distributed in
wide and deep stone channels through some of the principal streets at
Nismes, and greatly contributes to the ornament and cleanliness of the
town. The Pharos, or Tour Magne, to which I scrambled from the Baths,
fully answers to its distant appearance. There is a peculiar dignity and
solidity in a figure approaching to the pyramidical, when placed on the
top of a rock; and independent of its height, which is between eighty
and ninety feet, the Pharos has this recommendation also. Its interior
appears a curious work of masonry. A high wide conical vault, without
pillar or buttress, constitutes almost the whole internal space,
admitting just light sufficient to render "the darkness visible," and
give additional solemnity to a mere shell of brickwork.
We found the Hotel du Louvre (to which we had been recommended in
preference to the Hermite's inn, the Hotel du Luxembourg) excellent in
every respect. The two hotels adjoin one another so closely, be it
observed, and are so similar in appearance, that one may walk into the
wrong salle-a-manger, and only discover the mistake through the
difference of the waiter's faces.
May 15.--Seventeen miles to New Lunel, where we breakfasted
indifferently enough, not liking French customs sufficiently to qualify
the bad coffee with a glass of the brandy of this place, which is as
celebrated as its wine. New Lunel, which has grown on the back of the
old town, in consequence of a branch of the Languedoc canal which runs
close to it, is a neat and thriving place, but possesses no feature
worthy of remark. The country is of the same character as the town, a
dull rich flat, over which one may sleep with the soothing consciousness
that every thing is going on well with its trade and agriculture. To
Montpelier eighteen miles. Within the last league or two, the country
begins rather to improve, and rise into somewhat of an undulating form;
but no romantic or interesting feature marks the approach to this
celebrated town.
"How I envy you the sight of that delightful Montpelier, of which one
reads and hears so much!" exclaims many an untravelled lady, no doubt,
to her travelled brother or cousin. No place certainly sounds more
familiarly in the ear as a novel-scene; and its very name is associated
with ideas of beauty, verdure, retirement, orange groves, hanging woods,
and all the et ceteras of a spot.
"Where simply to feel that we breathe, that we live,
Is worth the best joy that life elsewhere can give."
The truth is, that the Montpelier of the imagination may be found at
Vico, Sorrento, Massa di Carrara; or, with a little alteration, in some
spots of our own Devonshire coast. The real Montpelier is a large,
opulent, well-frequented provincial capital, full of noise and dress,
and possessing an air of neatness and fashion, but totally devoid of any
thing allied to the poetry of nature. It stands on a round sweeping
hill, commanding a considerable extent of land and sea; but the
sea-coast is chiefly an expanse of low ground and etangs, or salt-water
lakes; and the neighbouring hill country, resembling in form a
succession of cultivated downs, has neither height nor variety to
recommend it. The most interesting spot in Montpelier is the Place
Peyrou, a public garden raised on high terraces, in a situation
commanding the rest of the town. At the extremity of the principal walk
stands an elegant open building of the Grecian order, overarching a
basin into which the waters of the celebrated aqueduct of Montpelier are
received, and from thence distributed through the town. The aqueduct
itself, which springs from the foot of this pavilion, and conveys the
water from the crest of an opposite hill, is a truly noble work, and,
though modern, worthy in every respect of a Roman aedile. It was erected
by the states of Languedoc in honour of Louis XIV. whose statue is
placed in the garden. Like the Pont du Gard, it consists of two tiers of
arches, fifty of which we counted in the lower range, and one hundred
and fifty in the upper, until the lessening perspective baffled all
farther attempts at reckoning. The architecture is inferior in dignity
and massiveness to that of the Roman work, but exceeds it in extent, and
probably in the quantity of masonry employed. Nothing can be more
elegant than its general form, and the manner in which it is united to
the terrace of the Place Peyrou.
Whatever natural objects are interesting in the environs, may be seen
also from this elevated spot, though I am inclined to think that the
views of distant Pyrenees which we were taught to expect, are a fiction
existing in the minds of some travellers. At all events, the glimpses
must be partial, and only to be obtained on a fine day. The Cevennes
mountains rise, however, to a tolerable height in the distance to the
west; and to the south-east, the remains of the old town and cathedral
of Maguelone, form a striking distant group, projecting like a low reef
of rocks into the sea at the distance of three or four miles. To judge
from the site of this ancient town, which tradition describes as the
original nucleus of Montpelier, the sea must have made great inroads on
the neighbouring coast. The air, it is said, is growing less wholesome
than formerly, owing probably to the accumulation of the etangs. From
the edge of the coast to Maguelone, the distance cannot be much less
than a mile and a half at low water.