travellers describe it. It occurs infrequently and is performed by the
Pope. We were there to-day at ten, crowding at the door with hundreds
of foreigners, mostly English, elbowed alternately by priests and
ladies, and kept in order by the Swiss guards in their harlequin
dresses and long pikes. We were admitted after an hour's pushing, and
the guard retreated to the grated door, through which no woman is
permitted to pass. Their gay bonnets and feathers clustered behind the
gilded bars, and we could admire them for once without the qualifying
reflection that they were between us and the show. An hour more was
occupied in the entrance, one by one, of some forty cardinals with
their rustling silk trains supported by boys in purple. They passed
the gate, their train bearers lifted their cassocks and helped them to
kneel, a moment's prayer was mumbled, and they took their seats with
the same servile assistance. Their attendants placed themselves at
their feet, and, taking the prayer-books, the only use of which
appeared to be to display their jewelled fingers, they looked over
them at the faces behind the grating, and waited for his Holiness.
The intervals of this memory, gave us time to study the famous
_frescoes_ for which the Sistine chapel is renowned. The subject is
the "Last Judgment." The Saviour sits in the midst, pronouncing the
sentence, the wicked plunging from his presence on the left hand, and
the righteous ascending with the assistance of angels on the right.
The artist had, of course, infinite scope for expression, and the fame
of the fresco (which occupies the whole of the wall behind the altar)
would seem to argue his success. The light is miserable, however, and
incense or lamp-smoke, has obscured the colors, and one looks at it
now with little pleasure. As well as I could see, the figure of the
Saviour was more that of a tiler throwing down slates from the top of
a house in some fear of falling, than the Judge of the world upon his
throne. Some of the other parts are better, and one or two naked
females figures might once have been beautiful, but one of the
succeeding popes ordered them dressed, and they now flaunt at the
judgment-seat in colored silks, obscuring both saints and sinners with
their finery. There are some redeeming frescoes, also by Michael
Angelo, on the ceiling, among them "Adam and Eve," exquisitely done.
The Pope entered by a door at the side of the altar. With him came a
host of dignitaries and church servants, and, as he tottered round in
front of the altar, to kneel, his cap was taken off and put on, his
flowing robes lifted and spread, and he was treated in all respects,
as if he were the Deity himself. In fact, the whole service was the
worship, not of God, but of the Pope. The cardinals came up, one by
one, with their heads bowed, and knelt reverently to kiss his hand and
the hem of his white satin dress; his throne was higher than the
altar, and ten times as gorgeous; the incense was flung toward him,
and his motions from one side of the chapel to the other, were
attended with more ceremony and devotion than all the rest of the
service together. The chanting commenced with his entrance, and this
should have been to God alone, for it was like music from heaven. The
choir was composed of priests, who sang from massive volumes bound in
golden clasps, in a small side gallery. One stood by the book, turning
the leaves as the chant proceeded, and keeping the measure, and the
others clustered around with their hands clasped, their heads thrown
back, and their eyes closed or fixed upon the turning leaves in such
grouping and attitude as you see in pictures of angels singing in the
clouds. I have heard wonderful music since I have been on the
continent, and have received new ideas of the compass of the human
voice, and its capacities for pathos and sweetness. But, after all the
wonders of the opera, as it is learned to sing before kings and
courts, the chanting of these priests transcended every conception in
my mind of music. It was the human voice, cleared of all earthliness,
and gushing through its organs with uncontrollable feeling and nature.
The burden of the various parts returned continually upon one or two
simple notes, the deepest and sweetest in the octave for melody, and
occasionally a single voice outran the choir in a passionate
repetition of the air, which seemed less like musical contrivance,
than an abandonment of soul and voice to a preternatural impulse of
devotion. One writes nonsense in describing such things, but there is
no other way of conveying an idea of them. The subject is beyond the
wildest superlatives.
To-day we have again seen the Pope. It was a festa, and the church of
San Carlos was the scene of the ceremonies. His Holiness came in the
state-coach with six long-tailed black horses, and all his cardinals
in their red and gold carriages in his train. The gaudy procession
swept up to the steps, and the father of the church was taken upon the
shoulders of his bearers in a chair of gold and crimson, and solemnly
borne up the aisle, and deposited within the railings of the altar,
where homage was done to him by the cardinals as before, and the
half-supernatural music of his choir awaited his motions. The church
was half filled with soldiers armed to the teeth, and drawn up on
either side, and his body-guard of Roman nobles, stood even within the
railing of the altar, capped and motionless, conveying, as everything
else does, the irresistible impression that it was the worship of the
Pope, not of God.
Gregory the sixteenth, is a small old man, with a large heavy nose,
eyes buried in sluggish wrinkles, and a flushed, apoplectic
complexion. He sits, or is borne about with his eyes shut, looking
quite asleep, even his limbs hanging lifelessly. The gorgeous and
heavy papal costumes only render him more insignificant, and when he
is borne about, buried in his deep chair, or lost in the corner of his
huge black and gold pagoda of a carriage, it is difficult to look at
him without a smile. Among his cardinals, however, there are
magnificent heads, boldly marked, noble and scholarlike, and I may
say, perhaps, that there is no one of them, who had not nature's mark
upon him of superiority. They are a dignified and impressive body of
men, and their servile homage to the Pope, seems unnatural and
disgusting.
LETTER XLV.
ROME--A MORNING IN THE STUDIO OF THORWALDSEN--COLOSSAL STATUE
OF THE SAVIOUR--STATUE OF BYRON--GIBSON'S ROOMS--CUPID AND
PSYCHE--HYLAS WITH THE RIVER NYMPHS--PALAZZO SPADA--STATUE OF
POMPEY--BORGHESE PALACE--PORTRAIT OF CESAR BORGIA--DOSSI'S
PSYCHE--SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE--ROOM DEVOTED TO VENUSES--THE
SOCIETY OF ROME, ETC.
I have spent a morning in the studio of _Thorwaldsen_. He is probably
the greatest sculptor now living. A colossal statue of Christ, thought
by many to be his masterpiece, is the prominent object as you enter.
It is a noble conception--the mild majesty of a Saviour expressed in a
face of the most dignified human beauty. Perhaps his full-length
statue of Byron is inferior to some of his other works, but it
interested me, and I spent most of my time in looking at it. It was
taken from life; and my friend, Mr. Auchmuty, who was with me, and who
had seen Byron frequently on board one of our ships-of-war at Leghorn,
thought it the only faithful likeness he had ever seen. The poet is
dressed oddly enough, in a morning frock coat, cravat, pantaloons, and
shoes; and, unpromising as these materials would seem, the statue is
classic and elegant to a very high degree. His coat is held by the
two centre buttons in front (a more exquisite cut never came from the
hands of a London tailor), swelled out a little above and below by the
fleshy roundness of his figure; his cravat is tied loosely, leaving
his throat bare (which, by the way, both in the statue and the
original, was very beautifully chiselled); and he sits upon a fragment
of a column, with a book in one hand and a pencil in the other. A man
reading a pleasant poem among the ruins of Rome, and looking up to
reflect upon a fine passage before marking it, would assume the
attitude and expression exactly. The face has half a smile upon it,
and, differing from the Apollo faces usually drawn for Byron, is
finer, and more expressive of his character than any I ever met with.
Thorwaldsen is a Dane, and is beloved by every one for his simplicity
and modesty. I did not see him.
We were afterward at _Gibson's_ rooms. This gentleman is an English
artist, apparently about thirty, and full of genius. He has taken some
portraits which are esteemed admirable; but his principal labor has
been thrown upon the most beautiful fables of antiquity. His various
groups and bas-reliefs of Cupid and Psyche are worthy of the beauty of
the story. His _chef d'oeuvre_, I think, is a group of three
figures, representing the boy, "Hylas with the river nymphs." He
stands between them with the pitcher in his hand, startled with their
touch, and listening to their persuasions. The smaller of the two
female figures is an almost matchless conception of loveliness. Gibson
went round with us kindly, and I was delighted with his modesty of
manner, and the apparently completely poetical character of his mind.
He has a noble head, a lofty forehead well marked, and a mouth of
finely mingled strength and mildness.
We devoted this morning to _palaces_. At the _Palazzo Spada_ we saw
the statue of Pompey, at the base of which Cesar fell. Antiquaries
dispute its authenticity, but the evidence is quite strong enough for
a poetical belief; and if it were not, one's time is not lost, for the
statue is a majestic thing, and well worth the long walk necessary to
see it. The mutilated arm, and the hole in the wall behind, remind one
of the ludicrous fantasy of the French, who carried it to the Forum to
enact "Brutus" at its base.
The _Borghese Palace_ is rich in pictures. The portrait of _Cesar
Borgia_, by Titian, is one of the most striking. It represents that
accomplished villain with rather slight features, and, barring a look
of cool determination about his well-formed lips, with rather a
prepossessing countenance. One detects in it the capabilities of such
a character as his, after the original is mentioned; but otherwise he
might pass for a handsome gallant, of no more dangerous trait than a
fiery temper. Just beyond it is a very strong contrast in a figure of
_Psyche_, by Dossi, of Ferrara. She is coming on tiptoe, with the
lamp, to see her lover. The Cupid asleep is not so well done; but for
an image of a real woman, unexaggerated and lovely, I have seen
nothing which pleases me better than this Psyche. Opposite it hangs a
very celebrated Titian, representing "Sacred and Profane Love." Two
female figures are sitting by a well--one quite nude, with her hair
about her shoulders, and the other dressed, and coiffed _a la mode_,
but looking less modest to my eye than her undraped sister. It is
little wonder, however, that a man who could paint his own daughter in
the embraces of a satyr (a revolting picture, which I saw in the
Barberigo palace at Venice) should fail in drawing the face of
Virtue. The coloring of the picture is exquisite, but the design is
certainly a failure.
The last room in the palace is devoted to Venuses--all very naked and
very bad. There might be forty, I think, and not a limb among them
that one's eye would rest upon with the least pleasure for a single
moment.
The society of Rome is of course changing continually. At this
particular season, strangers from every part of the continent are
beginning to arrive, and it promises to be pleasant. I have been at
most of the parties during the fortnight that I have been here, but
find them thronged with priests, and with only the resident society
which is dull. Cards and conversation with people one never saw
before, and will certainly never see again, are heavy pastimes. I
start for Florence to-morrow, and shall return to Rome for Holy Week,
and the spring months.
LETTER XLVI.
ITALIAN AND AMERICAN SKIES--FALLS OF TERNI--THE CLITUMNUS--THE
TEMPLE--EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE AT FOLIGNO--LAKE
THRASIMENE--JOURNEY FROM ROME--FLORENCE--FLORENTINE
SCENERY--PRINCE PONIATOWSKI--JEROME BONAPARTE AND FAMILY--WANT
OF A MINISTER IN ITALY.
I left Rome by the magnificent "Porta del Popolo," as the flush of a
pearly and spotless Italian sunrise deepened over Soracte. They are so
splendid without clouds--these skies of Italy! so deep to the eye, so
radiantly clear! _Clouds_ make the glory of an American sky. The
"Indian summer" sunsets excepted, our sun goes down in New England,
with the extravagance of a theatrical scene. The clouds are massed and
heavy, like piles of gold and fire, and day after day, if you observe
them, you are literally astonished with the brilliant phenomena of the
west. Here, for seven months, we have had no rain. The sun has risen
faultlessly clear, with the same gray, and silver, and rose tints
succeeding each other as regularly as the colors in a turning prism,
and it has set as constantly in orange, gold, and purple, with scarce
the variation of a painter's pallet, from one day to another. It is
really most delightful to live under such heavens as these; to be
depressed never by a gloomy sky, nor ill from a chance exposure to a
chill wind, nor out of humor because the rain or damp keeps you a
prisoner at home. You feel the delicious climate in a thousand ways.
It is a positive blessing, and were worth more than a fortune, if it
were bought and sold. I would rather be poor in Italy, than rich in
any other country in the world.
We ascended the mountain that shuts in the campagna on the north, and
turned, while the horses breathed, to take a last look at Rome. My two
friends, the lieutenants, and myself, occupied the interior of the
vetturino, in company with a young Roman woman, who was making her
first journey from home. She was going to see her husband. I pointed
out of the window to the distant dome of St. Peter's, rising above the
thin smoke hung over the city, and she looked at it with the tears
streaming from her large black eyes in torrents. She might have cried
because she was going to her husband, but I could not divest myself of
the fact that she was a Roman, and leaving a home that _could_ be very
romantically wept for. She was a fine specimen of this finest of the
races of woman--amply proportioned without grossness, and with that
certain presence or dignity that rises above manners and rank, common
to them all.
We saw beautiful scenery at Narni. The town stands on the edge of a
precipice, and the valley, a hundred feet or two below, is coursed by
a wild stream, that goes foaming along its bed in a long line of froth
for miles away. We dined here, and drove afterward to Terni, where the
voiturier stopped for the night, to give us an opportunity to see the
_Falls_.
We drove to the mountain base, three miles, in an old post barouche,
and made the ascent on foot. A line of precipices extends along from
the summit, and from the third or fourth of these leaps the Velino,
clear into the valley. We saw it in front as we went on, and then
followed the road round, till we reached the bed of the river behind.
The fountain of Egeria is not more secludedly beautiful than its
current above the fall. Trees overhang and meet, and flowers spring in
wonderful variety on its banks, and the ripple against the roots is
heard amid the roar of the cataract, like a sweet, clear voice in a
chorus. It is a place in which you half expect to startle a fawn, it
looks so unvisited and wild. We wound out through the shrubbery, and
gained a projecting point, from which we could see the sheet of the
cascade. It is "horribly beautiful" to be sure. Childe Harold's
description of it is as true as a drawing.
I should think the quantity of water at Niagara would make five
hundred such falls as those of Terni, without exaggeration. It is a
"hell of waters," however, notwithstanding, and leaps over with a
current all turned into foam by the roughness of its bed above--a
circumstance that gives the sheet more richness of surface. Two or
three lovely little streams steal off on either side of the fall, as
if they shrunk from the leap, and drop down, from rock to rock, till
they are lost in the rising mist.
The sun set over the little town of Terni, while we stood silently
looking down into the gulf, and the wet spray reminded us that the
most romantic people may take cold. We descended to our carriage; and
in an hour were sitting around the blazing fire at the post-house,
with a motley group of Germans, Swiss, French, and Italians--a mixture
of company universal in the public room of an Italian albergo, at
night. The coming and going vetturini stop at the same houses
throughout, and the concourse is always amusing. We sat till the fire
burned low, and then wishing our chance friends a happy night, had the
"priests"[4] taken from our beds, and were soon lost to everything but
sleep.
Terni was the Italian Tempe, and its beautiful scenery was shown to
Cicero, whose excursion hither is recorded. It is part of a long, deep
valley, between abrupt ranges of mountains, and abounds in loveliness.
We went to Spoleto, the next morning, to breakfast. It is a very old
town, oddly built, and one of its gates still remains, at which
Hannibal was repulsed after his victory at Thrasimene. It bears his
name in time-worn letters.
At the distance of one post from Spoleto we came to the _Clitumnus_, a
small stream, still, deep, and glassy--the clearest water I ever saw.
It looks almost like air. On its bank, facing away from the road,
stands the temple, "of small and delicate proportions," mentioned so
exquisitely by Childe Harold.
The temple of the Clitumnus might stand in a drawing-room. The stream
is a mere brook, and this little marble gem, whose richly fretted
columns were raised to its honor with a feeling of beauty that makes
one thrill, seems exactly of relative proportions. It is a thing of
pure poetry; and to find an antiquity of such perfect preservation,
with the small clear stream running still at the base of its _facade_,
just as it did when Cicero and his contemporaries passed it on their
visits to a country called after the loveliest vale of Greece for its
beauty, was a gratification of the highest demand of taste. Childe
Harold's lesson,
"Pass not unblest the genius of the place"
was scarce necessary.[5]
We slept at _Foligno_. For many miles we had observed that the houses
were propped in every direction, many of them in ruins apparently
recent, and small wooden sheds erected in the midst of the squares, or
beside the roads, and crowded with the poor. The next morning we
arrived at St. Angelo, and found its gigantic cathedral a heap of
ruins. Its painted chapels, to the number of fifteen or sixteen, were
half standing in the shattered walls, the altars all exposed, and the
interior of the dome one mass of stone and rubbish. It was the first
time I had seen the effects of an _earthquake_. For eight or ten miles
further, we found every house cracked and deserted, and the people
living like the settlers in a new country, half in the open air. The
beggars were innumerable.
We stopped the next night on the shores of lake Thrasimene. For once
in my life, I felt that the time spent at school on the "dull drilled
lesson," had not been wasted. I was on the battle ground of
Hannibal--the "_locus aptus insidiis_" where the consul Flaminius was
snared and beaten by the wily Carthaginian on his march to Rome. I
longed for my old copy of Livy "much thumbed," that I might sit on
the hill and compare the image in my mind, made by his pithy and
sententious description, with the reality.
The battle ground, the scene of the principal slaughter, was beyond
the _albergo_, and the increasing darkness compelled us to defer a
visit to it till the next morning. Meantime the lake was beautiful. We
were on the eastern side, and the deep-red sky of a departed sunset
over the other shore, was reflected glowingly on the water. All around
was dark, but the light in the sky and lake seemed to have forgotten
to follow. It is a phenomenon peculiar to Italy. The heavens seem
"dyed" and steeped in the glory of the sunset.
We drank our host's best bottle of wine, the grape plucked from the
battle ground; and if it was not better for the Roman blood that had
manured its ancestor, it was better for some other reason.
Early the next morning we were on our way, and wound down into the
narrow pass between the lake and the hill, as the sun rose. We crossed
the _Sanguinetto_, a little stream which took its name from the
battle. The principal slaughter was just on its banks, and the hills
are so steep above it, that everybody who fell near must have rolled
into its bed. It crawls on very quietly across the road, its clear
stream scarce interrupted by the wheels of the vetturino, which in
crossing it, passes from the Roman states into Tuscany. I ran a little
up the stream, knelt and drank at a small gurgling fall. The blood of
the old Flaminian Cohort spoiled very delicious water, when it mingled
with that brook.
We were six days and a half accomplishing the hundred and eighty miles
from Rome to Florence--slow travelling--but not too slow in Italy,
where every stone has its story, and every ascent of a hill its twenty
matchless pictures, sprinkled with ruins, as a painter's eye could not
imagine them. We looked down on the Eden-like valley of the Arno at
sunrise, and again my heart leaped to see the tall dome of Florence,
and the hills all about the queenly city, sparkling with palaces and
bright in a sun that shines nowhere so kindly. If there is a spot in
the world that could wean one from his native home, it is Florence!
"Florence the fair," they call her! I have passed four of the seven
months I have been in Italy, here--and I think I shall pass here as
great a proportion of the rest of my life. There is nothing that can
contribute to comfort and pleasure, that is not within the reach of
the smallest means in Florence. I never saw a place where wealth made
less distinction. The choicest galleries of art in the world, are open
to all comers. The palace of the monarch may be entered and visited,
and enjoyed by all. The ducal gardens of the Boboli, rich in
everything that can refine nature, and commanding views that no land
can equal, cooled by fountains, haunted in every grove by statuary,
are the property of the stranger and the citizen alike. Museums,
laboratories, libraries, grounds, palaces, are all free as Utopia. You
may take any pleasure that others can command, and have any means of
instruction, as free as the common air. Where else would one live so
pleasantly--so profitably--so wisely.
The society of Florence is of a very fascinating description. The
Florentine nobles have a _casino_, or club-house, to which most of the
respectable strangers are invited, and balls are given there once a
week, frequently by the duke and his court, and the best society of
the place. I attended one on my first arrival from Rome, at which I
saw a proportion of beauty which astonished me. The female
descendants of the great names in Italian history, seem to me to have
almost without exception the mark of noble beauty by nature. The
loveliest woman in Florence is a _Medici_. The two daughters of
_Capponi_, the patriot and the descendant of patriots, are of the
finest order of beauty. I could instance many others, the mention of
whose names, when I have first seen them, has made my blood start. I
think if Italy is ever to be redeemed, she must owe it to her
daughters. The men, the brothers of these women, with very rare
exceptions, look like the slaves they are, from one end of Italy to
the other.
One of the most hospitable houses here, is that of Prince Poniatowski,
the brother of the hero of Poland. He has a large family, and his
_soirees_ are thronged with all that is fair and distinguished. He is
a venerable, grayheaded old man, of perhaps seventy, very fond of
speaking English, of which rare acquisition abroad he seems a little
vain. He gave me the heartiest welcome as an American, and said he
loved the nation.