the hero), are perhaps as agreeable as any in Florence. He has several
grown-up sons and daughters married, and, with a very sumptuous palace
and great liberality of style, he has made his parties more than
usually valued. His eldest daughter is the leader of the fashion, and
his second is the "cynosure of all eyes." The old Prince is a tall,
bent, venerable man, with snow-white hair, and very peculiarly marked
features. He is fond of speaking English, and professes a great
affection for America.
Then there are the _soirees_ of the rich banker, Fenzi, which, as they
are subservient to business, assemble all ranks on the common
pretensions of interest. At the last, I saw, among other curiosities,
a young girl of eighteen from one of the more common families of
Florence--a fine specimen of the peasant beauty of Italy. Her heavily
moulded figure, hands, and feet, were quite forgiven when you looked
at her dark, deep, indolent eye, and glowing skin, and strongly-lined
mouth and forehead. The society was evidently new to her, but she had
a manner quite beyond being astonished. It was the kind of _animal
dignity_ so universal in the lower classes of this country.
A German baroness of high rank receives on the Mondays, and here one
sees foreign society in its highest coloring. The prettiest woman that
frequents her parties, is a Genoese marchioness, who has _left her
husband_ to live with a Lucchese count, who has _left his wife_. He is
a very accomplished man, with the look of Mephistopheles in the
"Devil's Walk," and she is certainly a most fascinating woman. She is
received in most of the good society of Florence--a severe, though a
very just comment on its character. A Prince, the brother of the King
of ----, divided the attention of the company with her last Monday. He
is a tall, military-looking man, with very bad manners, ill at ease,
and impudent at the same time. He entered with his suite in the middle
of a song. The singer stopped, the company rose, the Prince swept
about, bowing like a dancing-master, and, after the sensation had
subsided, the ladies were taken up and presented to him, one by one.
He asked them all the same question, stayed through two songs, which
he spoiled by talking loudly all the while, and then bowed himself out
in the same awkward style, leaving everybody more happy for his
departure.
One gains little by his opportunities of meeting Italian ladies in
society. The _cavaliere servente_ flourishes still as in the days of
Beppo, and it is to him only that the lady condescends to _talk_.
There is a delicate, refined-looking, little marchioness here, who is
remarkable as being the only known Italian lady without a cavalier.
They tell you, with an amused smile, "that she is content with her
husband." It really seems to be a business of real love between the
lady of Italy and her cavalier. Naturally enough too--for her parents
marry her without consulting her at all, and she selects a friend
afterward, as ladies in other countries select a lover who is to end
in a husband. The married couple are never seen together by any
accident, and the lady and her cavalier never apart. The latter is
always invited with her as a matter of course, and the husband, if
there is room, or if he is not forgotten. She is insulted if asked
without a cavalier, but is quite indifferent whether her husband goes
with her or not. These are points _really settled_ in the policy of
society, and the rights of the cavalier are specified in the marriage
contracts. I had thought, until I came to Italy, that such things were
either a romance, or customs of an age gone by.
I like very much the personal manners of the Italians. They are mild
and courteous to the farthest extent of looks and words. They do not
entertain, it is true, but their great dim rooms are free to you
whenever you can find them at home, and you are at liberty to join the
gossiping circle around the lady of the house, or sit at the table and
read, or be silent unquestioned. You are _let alone_, if you seem to
choose it, and it is neither commented on, nor thought uncivil, and
this I take to be a grand excellence in manners.
The society is dissolute, I think, almost without an exception. The
English fall into its habits, with the difference that they do not
conceal it so well, and have the appearance of knowing its
wrong--which the Italians have not. The latter are very much shocked
at the want of propriety in the management of the English. To suffer
the particulars of an intrigue to get about is a worse sin, in their
eyes, than any violation of the commandments. It is scarce possible
for an American to conceive the universal corruption of a society
like this of Florence, though, if he were not told of it he would
think it all that was delicate and attractive. There are external
features in which the society of our own country is far less
scrupulous and proper.
LETTER LII.
SIENNA--POGGIOBONSI--BONCONVENTO--ENCOURAGEMENT OF FRENCH
ARTISTS BY THEIR GOVERNMENT--ACQUAPENDENTE--POOR BEGGAR, THE
ORIGINAL OF A SKETCH BY COLE--BOLSENA--VOLSCENIUM--SCENERY--
CURIOUS STATE OF THE CHESTNUT WOODS.
SIENNA.--A day and a half on my second journey to Rome. With a party
of four nations inside, and two strangers, probably Frenchmen, in the
cabriolet, we have jogged on at some three miles in the hour, enjoying
the lovely scenery of these lower Appenines at our leisure. We slept
last night at Poggiobonsi, a little village on a hill-side, and
arrived at Sienna for our mid-day rest. I pencil this note after an
hour's ramble over the city, visiting once more the cathedral, with
its encrusted marbles and naked graces, and the shell-shaped square in
the centre of the city, at the rim of which the eight principal
streets terminate. There is a fountain in the midst, surrounded with
_bassi relievi_ much disfigured. It was mentioned by Dante. The
streets were deserted, it being Sunday, and all the people at the
Corso, to see the racing of horses without riders.
BONCONVENTO.--We sit, with the remains of a traveller's supper on the
table--six very social companions. Our cabriolet friends are two
French artists, on their way to study at Rome. They are both
pensioners of the government, each having gained the annual prize at
the academy in his separate branch of art, which entitles him to five
years' support in Italy. They are full of enthusiasm, and converse
with all the amusing vivacity of their nation. The academy of France
send out in this manner five young men annually, who have gained the
prizes for painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and engraving.
This is the place where Henry the Seventh of Germany was poisoned by a
monk, on his way to Rome. The drug was given to him in the communion
cup. The "Ave Marie" was ringing when we drove into town, and I left
the carriage and followed the crowd, in the hope of finding an old
church where the crime might have been committed. But the priest was
mumbling the service in a new chapel, which no romance that I could
summon would picture as the scene of a tragedy.
* * * * *
ACQUAPENDENTE.--While the dirty customhouse officer is deciphering our
passports, in a hole a dog would live in unwillingly, I take out my
pencil to mark once more the pleasure I have received from the
exquisite scenery of this place. The wild rocks enclosing the little
narrow valley below, the waterfalls, the town on its airy perch above,
the just starting vegetation of spring, the roads lined with
snowdrops, crocuses and violets, have renewed, in a tenfold degree,
the delight with which I saw this romantic spot on my former journey
to Rome.
We crossed the mountain of Radicofani yesterday, in so thick a mist
that I could not even distinguish the ruin of the old castle, towering
into the clouds above. The wild, half-naked people thronged about us
as before, and I gave another paul to the old beggar with whom I
became acquainted by Mr. Cole's graphic sketch. The winter had,
apparently, gone hard with him. He was scarce able to come to the
carriage window, and coughed so hollowly that I thought he had nearly
begged his last pittance.
BOLSENA.--we walked in advance of the vetturino along the borders of
this lovely and beautiful lake till we are tired. Our artists have
taken off their coats with the heat, and sit, a quarter of a mile
further on, pointing in every direction at these unparalleled views.
The water is as still as a mirror, with a soft mist on its face, and
the water-fowl in thousands are diving and floating within gunshot of
us. An afternoon in June could not be more summer-like, and this, to a
lover of soft climate, is no trifling pleasure.
A mile behind us lies the town, the seat of ancient _Volscinium_, the
capital of the Volscians. The country about is one quarry of ruins,
mouldering away in the moss. Nobody can live in health in the
neighborhood, and the poor pale wretches who call it a home are in
melancholy contrast to the smiling paradise about them. Before us, in
the bosom of the lake, lie two green islands, those which Pliny
records to have floated in his time and one of which, _Martana_, a
small conical isle, was the scene of the murder of the queen of the
Goths, by her cousin Theodatus. She was taken there and strangled. It
is difficult to imagine, with such a sea of sunshine around and over
it, that it was ever anything but a spot of delight.
The whole neighborhood is covered with rotten trunks of trees--a thing
which at first surprised me in a country where wood is so economised.
It is accounted for in the French guide-book of one of our party by
the fact, that the chestnut woods of Bolsena are considered sacred by
the people, from their antiquity, and are never cut. The trees have
ripened and fallen and rotted thus for centuries--one cause, perhaps,
of the deadly change in the air.
The vetturino comes lumbering up, and I must pocket my pencil and
remount.
LETTER LIII.
MONTEFIASCONE--ANECDOTE OF THE WINE--VITERBO--MOUNT
CIMINO--TRADITION--VIEW OF ST. PETER'S--ENTRANCE INTO ROME--A
STRANGER'S IMPRESSIONS OF THE CITY.
MONTEFIASCONE.--We have stopped for the night at the hotel of this
place, so renowned for its wine--the remnant of a bottle of which
stands, at this moment, twinkling between me and my French companions.
The ladies of our party have gone to bed, and left us in the room
where sat _Jean Defoucris_, the merry German monk, who died of excess
in drinking the same liquor that flashes through this straw-covered
flask. The story is told more fully in the French guide-books. A
prelate of Augsbourg, on a pilgrimage to Rome, sent forward his
servant with orders to mark every tavern where the wine was good with
the word _est_, in large letters of chalk. On arriving at this hotel,
the monk saw the signal thrice written over the door--_Est! Est! Est!_
He put up his mule, and drank of Montefiascone till he died. His
servant wrote his epitaph, which is still seen in the church of St.
Florian:--
"Propter minium EST, EST,
Dominus meus mortuus EST!"
"_Est, Est, Est!_" is the motto upon the sign of the hotel to this
day.
* * * * *
In wandering about Viterbo in search of amusement, while the horses
were baiting, I stumbled upon the shop of an antiquary. After looking
over his medals, Etruscan vases, cameos, &c., a very interesting
collection, I inquired into the state of trade for such things in
Viterbo. He was a cadaverous, melancholy looking old man, with his
pockets worn quite out with the habit of thrusting his hands into
them, and about his mouth and eye there was the proper virtuoso
expression of inquisitiveness and discrimination. He kept also a small
_cafe_ adjoining his shop, into which we passed, as he shrugged his
shoulders at my question. I had wondered to find a vender of costly
curiosities in a town of such poverty, and I was not surprised at the
sad fortunes which had followed upon his enterprise. They were a base
herd, he said, of the people, utterly ignorant of the value of the
precious objects he had for sale and he had been compelled to open a
_cafe_, and degrade himself by waiting on them for a contemptible
_crazie_ worth of coffee, while his lovely antiquities lay
unappreciated within. The old gentleman was eloquent upon his
misfortunes. He had not been long in trade, and had collected his
museum originally for his own amusement. He was an odd specimen, in a
small way, of a man who was quite above his sphere, and suffered for
his superiority. I bought a pretty _intaglio_, and bade him farewell,
after an hour's acquaintance, with quite the feeling of a friend.
* * * * *
Mount Cimino rose before us soon after leaving Viterbo, and we walked
up most of the long and gentle ascent, inhaling the odor of the spicy
plants for which it is famous, and looking out sharply for the
brigands with which it is always infested. English carriages are
constantly robbed on this part of the route of late. The robbers are
met usually in parties of ten and twelve, and, a week before we
passed, Lady Berwick (the widow of an English nobleman, and a sister
of the famous Harriet Wilson) was stopped and plundered in broad
mid-day. The excessive distress among the peasantry of these
misgoverned States accounts for these things, and one only wonders why
there is not even more robbing among such a starving population. This
mountain, by the way, and the pretty lake below it, are spoken of in
the AEneid: "_Cimini cum monte locum_," etc. There is an ancient
tradition, that in the crescent-shaped valley which the lake fills,
there was formerly a city, which was overwhelmed by the rise of the
water, and certain authors state that when the lake is clear, the
ruins are still to be seen at the bottom.
* * * * *
The sun rose upon us as we reached the mountain above Baccano, on the
sixth day of our journey, and, by its clear golden flood, we saw the
dome of St. Peter's, at a distance of sixteen miles, towering amid the
campagna in all its majestic beauty. We descended into the vast plain,
and traversed its gentle undulations for two or three hours. With the
forenoon well advanced, we turned into the valley of the Tiber, and
saw the home of Raphael, a noble chateau on the side of a hill, near
the river, and, in the little plain between, the first peach-trees we
had seen, in full blossom. The tomb of Nero is on one side of the
road, before crossing the Tiber, and on the other a newly painted and
staring _restaurant_, where the modern Roman cockneys drive for punch
and ices. The bridge of Pontemolle, by which we passed into the
immediate suburb of Rome, was the ancient _Pons AEmilius_, and here
Cicero arrested the conspirators on their way to join Catiline in his
camp. It was on the same bridge, too, that Constantine saw his famous
vision, and gained his victory over the tyrant Maxentius.
Two miles over the _Via Flaminia_, between garden walls that were
ornamented with sculpture and inscription in the time of Augustus,
brought us to the _Porta del Popolo_. The square within this noble
gate is modern, but very imposing. Two streets diverge before you, as
far away as you can see into the heart of the city, a magnificent
fountain sends up its waters in the centre, the facades of two
handsome churches face you as you enter, and on the right and left are
gardens and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and sumptuous equipages
cross it in every direction, driving out to the villa Borghese, and up
to the Pincian mount, the splendid troops of the Pope are on guard,
and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome swell out to its
limit like the ebb and flow of the sea. All this disappoints while it
impresses the stranger. He has come to Rome--but it was _old_ Rome
that he had pictured to his fancy. The Forum, the ruins of her
temples, the palaces of her emperors, the homes of her orators, poets,
and patriots, the majestic relics of the once mistress of the world,
are the features in his anticipation. But he enters by a modern gate
to a modern square, and pays his modern coin to a whiskered officer of
customs; and in the place of a venerable Belisarius begging an obolus
in classic Latin, he is beset by a troop of lusty and filthy
lazzaroni entreating for a _baioch_ in the name of the Madonna, and in
effeminate Italian. He drives down the Corso, and reads nothing but
French signs, and sees all the familiar wares of his own country
exposed for sale, and every other person on the _pave_ is an
Englishman, with a narrow-rimmed hat and whalebone stick, and with an
hour at the Dogama, where his baggage is turned inside out by a snuffy
old man who speaks French, and a reception at a hotel where the porter
addresses him in his own language, whatever it may be; he goes to bed
under Parisian curtains, and tries to dream of the Rome he could not
realize while awake.
LETTER LIV.
APPIAN WAY--TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA--ALBANO--TOMB OF THE
CURIATII--ARICIA--TEMPLE OF DIANA--FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA--LAKE OF
NEMI--VELLETRI--PONTINE MARSHES--CONVENT--CANAL--TERRACINA--
SAN FELICE--FONDI--STORY OF JULIA GONZAGA--CICERO'S GARDEN AND
TOMB--MOLA--MINTURNA--RUINS OF AN AMPHITHEATRE AND TEMPLE--
FALERNIAN MOUNT AND WINE--THE DOCTOR OF ST. AGATHA--CAPUA--
ENTRANCE INTO NAPLES--THE QUEEN.
With the intention of returning to Rome for the ceremonies of the holy
week, I have merely passed through on my way to Naples. We left it the
morning after our arrival, going by the "Appian way" to mount Albano,
which borders the Campagna on the south, at a distance of fifteen
miles. This celebrated road is lined with the ruined tombs of the
Romans. Off at the right, some four or five miles from the city, rises
the fortress-like _tomb of Cecilia Metella_, so exquisitely mused upon
by Childe Harold. This, says Sismondi, with the tombs of Adrian and
Augustus, became fortresses of banditti, in the thirteenth century,
and were taken by Brancallone, the Bolognese governor of Rome, who
hanged the marauders from the walls. It looks little like "a woman's
grave."
We changed horses at the pretty village of Albano, and, on leaving it,
passed an ancient mausoleum, believed to be the tomb of the Curiatii
who fought the Horatii on this spot. It is a large structure, and had
originally four pyramids on the corners, two of which only remain.
A mile from Albano lies Aricia, in a country of the loveliest rural
beauty. Here was the famous temple of Diana, and here were the lake
and grove sacred to the "virgin huntress," and consecrated as her home
by peculiar worship. The fountain of Egeria is here, where Numa
communed with the nymph, and the lake of Nemi, on the borders of which
the temple stood, and which was called _Diana's mirror_ (_speculum
Dianae_), is at this day, perhaps, one of the sweetest gems of natural
scenery in the world.
We slept at Velletri, a pretty town of some twelve thousand
inhabitants, which stands on a hill-side, leaning down to the Pontine
marshes. It was one of the grand days of carnival, and the streets
were full of masks, walking up and down in their ridiculous dresses,
and committing every sort of foolery. The next morning, by daylight,
we were upon the Pontine marshes, the long thirty miles level of which
we passed in an unbroken trot, one part of a day's journey of
seventy-five miles, done by the _same horses_, at the rate of six
miles in the hour! They are small, compact animals, and look in good
condition, though they do as much habitually.
At a distance of fifteen miles from Velletri, we passed a convent,
which is built opposite the spot where St. Paul was met by his
friends, on his journey from the seaside to Rome. The canal upon which
Horace embarked on his celebrated journey to Brundusium, runs
parallel with the road for its whole distance. This marshy desert is
inhabited by a race of as wretched beings, perhaps, as are to be found
upon the face of the earth. The pestiferous miasma of the pools is
certain destruction to health, and the few who are needed at the
distant post-houses, crawl out to the road-side like so many victims
from a pest-house, stooping with weakness, hollow-eyed, and apparently
insensible to everything. The feathered race seems exempt from its
influence, and the quantities of game of every known description are
incredible. The ground was alive with wild geese, turkeys, pigeons,
plover, ducks, and numerous birds we did not know, as far as the eye
could distinguish. The travelling books caution against sleeping in
the carriage while passing these marshes, but we found it next to
impossible to resist the heavy drowsiness of the air.
At Terracina the marshes end, and the long avenue of elms terminates
at the foot of a romantic precipice, which is washed by the
Mediterranean. The town is most picturesquely built between the rocky
wall and the sea. We dined with the hollow murmur of the surf in our
ears, and then, presenting our passports, entered the kingdom of
Naples. This Terracina, by the way, was the ancient _Anxur_, which
Horace describes in his line--
"Impositum late saxis candentibus Anxur."
For twenty or thirty miles before arriving at Terracina, we had seen
before us the headland of Circoeum, lying like a mountain island off
the shore. It is usually called San Felice, from the small town seated
upon it. This was the ancient abode of the "daughter of the sun," and
here were imprisoned, according to Homer, the champions of Ulysses,
after their metamorphoses.
From Terracina to Fondi, we followed the old Appian way, a road hedged
with flowering myrtles and orange trees laden with fruit. Fondi itself
is dirtier than imagination could picture it, and the scowling men in
the streets look like myrmidons of Fra Diavolo, their celebrated
countryman. This town, however, was the scene of the romantic story of
the beautiful Julia Gonzaga, and was destroyed by the corsair
Barbarossa, who had intended to present the rarest beauty of Italy to
the Sultan. It was to the rocky mountains above the town that she
escaped in her night-dress, and lay concealed till the pirate's
departure.
In leaving Fondi, we passed the ruined walls of a garden said to have
belonged to Cicero, whose tomb is only three leagues distant. Night
came on before we reached the tomb, and we were compelled to promise
ourselves a pilgrimage to it on our return.
We slept at Mola, and here Cicero was assassinated. The ruins of his
country-house are still here. The town lies in the lap of a graceful
bay, and in all Italy, it is said, there is no spot more favored by
nature. The mountains shelter it from the winds of the north; the soil
produces, spontaneously, the orange, the myrtle, the olive, delicious
grapes, jasmine, and many odoriferous herbs. This and its neighborhood
was called, by the great orator and statesman who selected it for his
retreat, "the most beautiful patrimony of the Romans." The
Mediterranean spreads out from its bosom, the lovely islands near
Naples bound its view, Vesuvius sends up its smoke and fire in the
south, and back from its hills stretches a country fertile and
beautiful as a paradise. This is a place of great resort for the
English and other travellers in the summer. The old palaces are turned
into hotels, and we entered our inn through an avenue of shrubs that
must have been planted and trimmed for a century.
* * * * *
We left Mola before dawn and crossed the small river Garigliano as the
sun rose. A short distance from the southern bank, we found ourselves
in the midst of ruins, the golden beams of the sun pouring upon us
through the arches of some once magnificent structure, whose area is
now crossed by the road. This was the ancient Minturna, and the ruins
are those of an amphitheatre, and a temple of Venus. Some say that it
was in the marshes about the now waste city, that the soldier sent by
Sylla to kill Marius, found the old hero, and, struck with his noble
mien, fell with respect at his feet.