deposited yesterday amid its thousand lamps in the Paoline chapel, was
taken from its place this morning, in solemn procession, and carried
back to the Sistine, after lying in the consecrated place twenty-four
hours. Vigils were kept over it all night. The Paoline chapel has no
windows, and the lights are so disposed as to multiply its receding
arches till the eye is lost in them. The altar on which the host lay
was piled up to the roof in a pyramid of light, and with the prostrate
figures constantly covering the floor, and the motionless soldier in
antique armor at the entrance, it was like some scene of wild romance.
The ceremonies of Easter Sunday were performed where all others should
have been--in the body of St. Peter's. Two lines of soldiers, forming
an aisle up the centre, stretched from the square without the portico
to the sacred sepulchre. Two temporary platforms for the various
diplomatic corps and other privileged persons occupied the sides, and
the remainder of the church was filled by thousands of strangers,
Roman peasantry, and contadini (in picturesque red boddices, and with
golden bodkins through their hair), from all the neighboring towns.
A loud blast of trumpets, followed by military music, announced the
coming of the procession. The two long lines of soldiers presented
arms, and the esquires of the Pope entered first, in red robes,
followed by the long train of proctors, chamberlains, mitre-bearers,
and incense-bearers, the men-at-arms, escorting the procession on
either side. Just before the cardinals, came a cross-bearer, supported
on either side by men in showy surplices carrying lights, and then
came the long and brilliant line of white-headed cardinals, in scarlet
and ermine. The military dignitaries of the monarch preceded the Pope,
a splendid mass of uniforms, and his Holiness then appeared,
supported, in his great gold and velvet chair, upon the shoulders of
twelve men, clothed in red damask, with a canopy over his head,
sustained by eight gentlemen, in short, violet-colored silk mantles.
Six of the Swiss guard (representing the six Catholic canons) walked
near the Pope, with drawn swords on their shoulders, and after his
chair followed a troop of civil officers, whose appointments I did not
think it worth while to enquire. The procession stopped when the Pope
was opposite the "chapel of the holy sacrament," and his Holiness
descended. The tiara was lifted from his head by a cardinal, and he
knelt upon a cushion of velvet and gold to adore the "sacred host,"
which was exposed upon the altar. After a few minutes he returned to
his chair, his tiara was again set on his head, and the music rang
out anew, while the procession swept on to the sepulchre.
The spectacle was all splendor. The clear space through the vast area
of the church, lined with glittering soldiery, the dazzling gold and
crimson of the coming procession, the high papal chair, with the
immense fan-banners of peacock's feathers, held aloft, the almost
immeasurable dome and mighty pillars, above and around, and the
multitudes of silent people, produced a scene which, connected with
the idea of religious worship, and added to by the swell of a hundred
instruments of music, quite dazzled and overpowered me.
The high mass (performed but three times a year) proceeded. At the
latter part of it, the Pope mounted to the altar, and, after various
ceremonies, elevated the sacred host. At the instant that the small
white wafer was seen between the golden candlesticks, the two immense
lines of soldiers dropped upon their knees, and all the people
prostrated themselves at the same instant.
This fine scene over, we hurried to the square in front of the church,
to secure places for a still finer one--that of the Pope blessing the
people. Several thousand troops, cavalry and footmen, were drawn up
between the steps and the obelisk, in the centre of the piazza, and
the immense area embraced by the two circling colonnades was crowded
by, perhaps, a hundred thousand people, with eyes directed to one
single point. The variety of bright costumes, the gay liveries of the
ambassadors' and cardinals' carriages, the vast body of soldiery, and
the magnificent frame of columns and fountains in which this gorgeous
picture was contained, formed the grandest scene conceivable.
In a few minutes the Pope appeared in the balcony, over the great
door of St. Peter's. Every hat in the vast multitude was lifted and
every knee bowed in an instant. _Half a nation prostrate together, and
one gray old man lifting up his hands to heaven and blessing them!_
The cannon of the castle of St. Angelo thundered, the innumerable
bells of Rome pealed forth simultaneously, the troops fell into line
and motion, and the children of the two hundred and fifty-seventh
successor of St. Peter departed _blessed_.
In the evening all the world assembled to see the illumination, which
it is useless to attempt to describe.
The night was cloudy and black, and every line in the architecture of
the largest building in the world was defined in light, even to the
cross, which, as I have said before, is at the height of a mountain
from the base. For about an hour it was a delicate but vast structure
of shining lines, like a drawing of a glorious temple on the clouds.
At eight, as the clock struck, flakes of fire burst from every point,
and the whole building seemed started into flame. It was done by a
simultaneous kindling of torches in a thousand points, a man stationed
at each. The glare seemed to exceed that of noonday. No description
can give an idea of it.
I am not sure that I have not been a little tedious in describing the
ceremonies of the holy week. Forsyth says in his bilious book, that he
"never could read, and certainly never could write, a description of
them." They have struck me, however, as particularly unlike anything
ever seen in our own country, and I have endeavored to draw them
slightly and with as little particularity as possible. I trust that
some of the readers of the Mirror may find them entertaining and
novel.
* * * * *
FLORENCE, 1833.--I found myself at six this morning, where I had found
myself at the same hour a year before--in the midst of the rural festa
in the Cascine of Florence. The Duke, to-day, breakfasts at his farm.
The people of Florence, high and low, come out, and spread their
repasts upon the fine sward of the openings in the wood, the roads are
watered, and the royal equipages dash backward and forward, while the
ladies hang their shawls in the trees, and children and lovers stroll
away into the shade, and all looks like a scene from Boccaccio.
I thought it a picturesque and beautiful sight last year, and so
described it. But I was a stranger then, newly arrived in Florence,
and felt desolate amid the happiness of so many. A few months among so
frank and warm-hearted a people as the Tuscans, however, makes one at
home. The tradesman and his wife, familiar with your face, and happy
to be seen in their holyday dresses, give you the "_buon giorno_" as
you pass, and a cup of red wine or a seat at the cloth on the grass is
at your service in almost any group in the _prato_. I am sure I should
not find so many acquaintances in the town in which I have passed my
life.
A little beyond the crowd, lies a broad open glade of the greenest
grass, in the very centre of the woods of the farm. A broad fringe of
shade is flung by the trees along the eastern side, and at their roots
cluster the different parties of the nobles and the ambassadors. Their
gayly-dressed _chasseurs_ are in waiting, the silver plate quivers and
glances, as the chance rays of the sun break through the leaves over
head, and at a little distance, in the road, stand their showy
equipages in a long line from the great oak to the farmhouse.
In the evening, there was an illumination of the green alleys and the
little square in front of the house, and a band of music for the
people. Within, the halls were thrown open for a ball. It was given by
the Grand Duke to the Duchess of Litchtenberg, the widow of Eugene
Beauharnois. The company assembled at eight, and the presentations
(two lovely countrywomen of our own among them), were over at nine.
The dancing then commenced, and we drove home, through the fading
lights still burning in the trees, an hour or two past midnight.
The Grand Duke is about to be married to one of the princesses of
Naples, and great preparations are making for the event. He looks
little like a bridegroom, with his sad face, and unshorn beard and
hair. It is, probably, not a marriage of inclination, for the fat
princess expecting him, is every way inferior to the incomparable
woman he has lost, and he passed half the last week in a lonely visit
to the chamber in which she died, in his palace at Pisa.
LETTER LXII.
BOLOGNA--MALIBRAN--PARMA--NIGHTINGALES OF
LOMBARDY--PLACENZA--AUSTRIAN SOLDIERS--THE
SIMPLON--MILAN--RESEMBLANCE TO PARIS--THE
CATHEDRAL--GUERCINO'S HAGAR--MILANESE COFFEE.
MILAN.--My fifth journey over the Apennines--dull of course. On the
second evening we were at Bologna. The long colonnades pleased me less
than before, with their crowds of foreign officers and ill-dressed
inhabitants, and a placard for the opera, announcing Malibran's last
night, relieved us of the prospect of a long evening of weariness. The
divine music of _La Norma_ and a crowded and brilliant audience,
enthusiastic in their applause, seemed to inspire this still
incomparable creature even beyond her wont. She sang with a fulness,
an abandonment, a passionate energy and sweetness that seemed to come
from a soul rapt and possessed beyond control, with the melody it had
undertaken. They were never done calling her on the stage after the
curtain had fallen. After six re-appearances, she came out once more
to the footlights, and murmuring something inaudible from her lips
that showed strong agitation, she pressed her hands together, bowed
till her long hair, falling over her shoulders, nearly touched her
feet, and retired in tears. She is the siren of Europe for me!
I was happy to have no more to do with the Duke of Modena, than to eat
a dinner in his capital. We did "not forget the picture," but my
inquiries for it were as fruitless as before. I wonder whether the
author of the Pleasures of Memory has the pleasure of remembering
having seen the picture himself! "Tassoni's bucket which is not the
true one," is still shown in the tower, and the keeper will kiss the
cross upon his fingers, that Samuel Rogers has written a false line.
At Parma we ate parmesan and saw _the_ Correggio. The angel who holds
the book up to the infant Saviour, the female laying her cheek to his
feet, the countenance of the holy child himself, are creations that
seem apart from all else in the schools of painting. They are like a
group, not from life, but from heaven. They are superhuman, and,
unlike other pictures of beauty which stir the heart as if they
resembled something one had loved or might have loved, these mount
into the fancy like things transcending sympathy, and only within
reach of an intellectual and elevated wonder. This is the picture that
Sir Thomas Lawrence returned six times in one day to see. It is the
only thing I saw to admire in the Duchy of Maria Louisa. An Austrian
regiment marched into the town as we left it, and an Italian at the
gate told us that the Duchess had disbanded her last troops of the
country, and supplied their place with these yellow and black Croats
and Illyrians. Italy is Austria now to the foot of the Apennines--if
not to the top of Radicofani.
Lombardy is full of nightingales. They sing by day, however (as not
specified in poetry). They are up quite as early as the lark, and the
green hedges are alive with their gurgling and changeful music till
twilight. Nothing can exceed the fertility of these endless plains.
They are four or five hundred miles of uninterrupted garden. The same
eternal level road, the same rows of elms and poplars on either side,
the same long, slimy canals, the same square, vine-laced, perfectly
green pastures and cornfields, the same shaped houses, the same-voiced
beggars with the same sing-song whine, and the same villanous
Austrians poring over your passports and asking to be paid for it,
from the Alps to the Apennines. It is wearisome, spite of green leaves
and nightingales. A bare rock or a good brigand-looking mountain would
so refresh the eye!
At Placenza, one of those admirable German bands was playing in the
public square, while a small corps of picked men were manoeuvred.
Even an Italian, I should think, though he knew and felt it was the
music of his oppressors, might have been pleased to listen. And
pleased they seemed to be--for there were hundreds of dark-haired and
well-made men, with faces and forms for heroes, standing and keeping
time with the well-played instruments, as peacefully as if there were
no such thing as liberty, and no meaning in the foreign uniforms
crowding them from their own pavement. And there were the women of
Placenza, nodding from the balconies to the white mustaches and padded
coats strutting below, and you would never dream Italy thought herself
wronged, watching the exchange of courtesies between her dark-eyed
daughters and these fair-haired coxcombs.
We crossed the Po, and entered Austria's _nominal_ dominions. They
rummaged our baggage as if they smelt republicanism somewhere, and
after showing a strong disposition to retain a volume of very bad
poetry as suspicious, and detaining us two long hours, they had the
modesty to ask to be paid for letting us off lightly. When we
declined it, the _chef_ threatened us a precious searching "_the next
time_." How willingly I would submit to the annoyance to have that
_next time_ assured to me! Every step I take toward the bounds of
Italy, pulls so upon my heart!
As most travellers come into Italy over the Simplon, Milan makes
generally the first enthusiastic chapter in their books. I have
reversed the order myself, and have a better right to praise it from
comparison. For exterior, there is certainly no city in Italy
comparable to it. The streets are broad and noble, the buildings
magnificent, the pavement quite the best in Europe, and the Milanese
(all of whom I presume I have seen, for it is Sunday, and the streets
swarm with them), are better dressed, and look "better to do in the
world" than the Tuscans, who are gayer and more Italian, and the
Romans, who are graver and vastly handsomer. Milan is quite like
Paris. The showy and mirror-lined _cafes_, the elegant shops, the
variety of strange people and costumes, and a new gallery lately
opened in imitation of the glass-roofed _passages_ of the French
capital, make one almost feel that the next turn will bring him upon
the Boulevards.
The famous cathedral, nearly completed by Napoleon, is a sort of
Aladdin creation, quite too delicate and beautiful for the open air.
The filmly traceries of gothic fretwork, the needle-like minarets, the
hundreds of beautiful statues with which it is studded, the intricate,
graceful, and bewildering architecture of every window and turret, and
the frost-like frailness and delicacy of the whole mass, make an
effect altogether upon the eye that must stand high on the list of new
sensations. It is a vast structure withal, but a middling easterly
breeze, one would think in looking at it, would lift it from its base
and bear it over the Atlantic like the meshes of a cobweb. Neither
interior nor exterior impresses you with the feeling of awe common to
other large churches. The sun struggles through the immense windows of
painted glass, staining every pillar and carved cornice with the
richest hues, and wherever the eye wanders it grows giddy with the
wilderness of architecture. The people on their knees are like
paintings in the strong artificial light, the checkered pavement seems
trembling with a quivering radiance, the altar is far and indistinct,
and the lamps burning over the tomb of Saint Carlo, shine out from the
centre like gems glistening in the midst of some enchanted hall. This
reads very like rhapsody, but it is the way the place impressed me. It
is like a great dream. Its excessive beauty scarce seems constant
while the eye rests upon it.
The _Brera_ is a noble palace, occupied by the public galleries of
statuary and painting. I felt on leaving Florence that I could give
pictures a very long holyday. To live on them, as one does in Italy,
is like dining from morn till night. The famous Guercino, is at Milan,
however, the "Hagar," which Byron talks of so enthusiastically, and I
once more surrendered myself to a cicerone. The picture catches your
eye on your first entrance. There is that harmony and effect in the
color that mark a masterpiece, even in a passing glance. Abraham
stands in the centre of the group, a fine, prophet-like, "green old
man," with a mild decision in his eye, from which there is evidently
no appeal. Sarah has turned her back, and you can just read in the
half-profile glance of her face, that there is a little pity mingled
in her hard-hearted approval of her rival's banishment. But Hagar--who
can describe the world of meaning in her face? The closed lips have
in them a calm incredulousness, contradicted with wonderful nature in
the flushed and troubled forehead, and the eyes red with long weeping.
The gourd of water is hung over her shoulder, her hand is turning her
sorrowful boy from the door, and she has looked back once more, with a
large tear coursing down her cheek, to read in the face of her master
if she is indeed driven forth for ever. It is the instant before pride
and despair close over her heart. You see in the picture that the next
moment is the crisis of her life. Her gaze is straining upon the old
man's lips, and you wait breathlessly to see her draw up her bending
form, and depart in proud sorrow for the wilderness. It is a piece of
powerful and passionate poetry. It affects you like nothing but a
reality. The eyes get warm, and the heart beats quick, and as you walk
away you feel as if a load of oppressive sympathy was lifting from
your heart.
I have seen little else in Milan, except Austrian soldiers, of whom
there are fifteen thousand in this single capital! The government has
issued an order to officers not on duty, to appear in citizen's dress,
it is supposed, to diminish the appearance of so much military
preparation. For the rest, they make a kind of coffee here, by boiling
it with cream, which is better than anything of the kind either in
Paris or Constantinople; and the Milanese are, for slaves, the most
civil people I have seen, after the Florentines. There is little
English society here; I know not why, except that the Italians are
rich enough to be exclusive and make their houses difficult of access
to strangers.
LETTER LXIII.
A MELANCHOLY PROCESSION--LAGO MAGGIORE--ISOLA BELLA--THE
SIMPLON--MEETING A FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN--THE VALLEY OF THE RHONE.
In going out of the gates of Milan, we met a cart full of peasants,
tied together and guarded by _gens d'armes_, the fifth sight of the
kind that has crossed us since we passed the Austrian border. The poor
fellows looked very innocent and very sorry. The extent of their
offences probably might be the want of a passport, and a desire to
step over the limits of his majesty's possessions. A train of
beautiful horses, led by soldiers along the ramparts, the property of
the Austrian officers, were in melancholy contrast to their sad faces.
The clear snowy Alps soon came in sight, and their cold beauty
refreshed us in the midst of a heat that prostrated every nerve in the
system. It is only the first of May, and they are mowing the grass
everywhere on the road, the trees are in their fullest leaf, the frogs
and nightingales singing each other down, and the grasshopper would be
a burden. Toward night we crossed the Sardinian frontier, and in an
hour were set down at an auberge on the bank of Lake Maggiore, in the
little town of Arona. The mountains on the other side of the broad
and mirror-like water, are speckled with ruined castles, here and
there a boat is leaving its long line of ripples behind in its course,
the cattle are loitering home, the peasants sit on the benches before
their doors, and all the lovely circumstances of a rural summer's
sunset are about us, in one of the very loveliest spots in nature. A
very old Florence friend is my companion, and what with mutual
reminiscences of sunny Tuscany, and the deepest love in common for the
sky over our heads, and the green land around us, we are noting down
"red days" in our calendar of travel.
We walked from Arona by sunrise, four or five miles along the borders
of Lake Maggiore. The kind-hearted peasants on their way to the market
raised their hats to us in passing, and I was happy that the greeting
was still "_buon giorno_." Those dark-lined mountains before us were
to separate me too soon from the mellow accents in which it was
spoken. As yet, however, it was all Italian--the ultra-marine sky, the
clear, half-purpled hills, the inspiring air--we felt in every pulse
that it was still Italy.
We were at Baveno at an early hour, and took a boat for _Isola Bella_.
It looks like a gentleman's villa afloat. A boy would throw a stone
entirely over it in any direction. It strikes you like a kind of toy
as you look at it from a distance, and getting nearer, the illusion
scarcely dissipates--for, from the water's edge, the orange-laden
terraces are piled one above another like a pyramidal fruit-basket,
the villa itself peers above like a sugar castle, and it scarce seems
real enough to land upon. We pulled round to the northern side, and
disembarked at a broad stone staircase, where a cicerone, with a look
of suppressed wisdom, common to his vocation, met us with the offer of
his services.
The entrance-hall was hung with old armor, and a magnificent suite of
apartments above, opening on all sides upon the lake, was lined
thickly with pictures, none of them remarkable except one or two
landscapes by the savage Tempesta. Travellers going the other way
would probably admire the collection more than we. We were glad to be
handed over by our pragmatical custode to a pretty contadina, who
announced herself as the gardener's daughter, and gave us each a bunch
of roses. It was a proper commencement to an acquaintance upon Isola
Bella. She led the way to the water's edge, where, in the foundations
of the palace, a suite of eight or ten spacious rooms is constructed
_a la grotte_--with a pavement laid of small stones of different
colors, walls and roof of fantastically set shells and pebbles, and
statues that seem to have reason in their nudity. The only light came
in at the long doors opening down to the lake, and the deep leather
sofas, and dark cool atmosphere, with the light break of the waves
outside, and the long views away toward Isola Madra, and the far-off
opposite shore, composed altogether a most seductive spot for an
indolent humor and a summer's day. I shall keep it as a cool
recollection till sultry summers trouble me no more.
But the garden was the prettiest place. The lake is lovely enough any
way; but to look at it through perspectives of orange alleys, and have
the blue mountains broken by stray branches of tulip-trees, clumps of
crimson rhododendron, and clusters of citron, yellower than gold; to
sit on a garden-seat in the shade of a thousand roses, with
sweet-scented shrubs and verbenums, and a mixture of novel and
delicious perfumes embalming the air about you, and gaze up at snowy
Alps and sharp precipices, and down upon a broad smooth mirror in
which the islands lie like clouds, and over which the boats are
silently creeping with their white sails, like birds asleep in the
sky--why (not to disparage nature), it seems to my poor judgment, that
these artificial appliances are an improvement even to Lago Maggiore.
On one side, without the villa walls, are two or three small houses,
one of which is occupied as a hotel; and here, if I had a friend with
matrimony in his eye, would I strongly recommend lodgings for the
honeymoon. A prettier cage for a pair of billing doves no poet would
conceive you.
We got on to Domo d'Ossola to sleep, saying many an oft-said thing
about the entrance to the valleys of the Alps. They seem common when
spoken of, these romantic places, but they are not the less new in the
glow of a first impression.