This pious foundation of retired Benedictines, situated in the
Appenines, about eighteen miles from Florence, owes its original to
Giovanni Gualberto, a Tuscan nobleman, whose brother Hugo having been
killed by a relation in the year 1015, he resolved to avenge his death;
but happening to meet the assassin alone and in a solitary place,
whither he appeared to have been driven by a sense of guilt, and seeing
him suddenly drop down at his feet, and without uttering a word produce
from his bosom a crucifix, holding it up in a supplicating gesture, with
look submissively imploring, he felt the force of this silent rhetoric,
and generously gave his enemy free pardon.
On further reflection upon the striking scene, Gualberto felt still more
affected; and from seeing the dangers and temptations which surround a
bustling life, resolved to quit the too much mixed society of mankind,
and settle in a state of perpetual retirement. For this purpose he chose
Vallombrosa, and there founded the famous convent so justly admired by
all who visit it.
Such stories lead one forward to the tombs of Michael Angelo and the
great Galileo, which last I looked on to-day with reverence, pity, and
wonder; to think that a change so surprising should be made in worldly
affairs since his time; that the man who no longer ago than the year
1636, was by the torments and terrors of the Inquisition obliged
formally to renounce, as heretical, accursed, and contrary to religion,
the revived doctrines of Copernicus, should now have a monument erected
to his memory, in the very city where he was born, whence he was cruelly
torn away to answer at Rome for the supposed offence; to which he
returned; and strange to tell, in which he lived on, by his own desire,
with the wife who, by her discovery of his sentiments, and information
given to the priests accordingly, had caused his ruin; and who, after
his death, in a fit of mad mistaken zeal, flung into the fire, in
company with her confessor, all the papers she could find in his study.
How wonderful are these events! and how sweet must the science of
astronomy have been to that poor man, who suffered all but actual
martyrdom in its cause! How odd too, that ever Galileo's son, by such a
mother as we have just described, should apply himself to the same
studies, and be the inventor of the simple pendulum so necessary to
every kind of clock-work!
Religious prejudices however, and their effects--and thanks be to God
their almost final conclusion too--may be found nearer home than
Galileo's tomb; while Milton has a monument in the same cathedral with
Dr. South, who perhaps would have given credit to no _human_
information, which should have told him that event would take place.
We are now going soon to leave Florence, seat of the arts and residence
of literature! I shall be sincerely sorry to quit a city where not a
step can be taken without a new or a revived idea being added to our
store;--where such statues as would in England have colleges founded, or
palaces built for their reception, stand in the open street; the
Centaur, the Sabine woman, and the Justice: Where the Madonna della
Seggiola reigns triumphant over all pictures for brilliancy of colouring
and vigour of pencil.
It was the portrait of Raphaelle's favourite mistress, and his own child
by her sate for the Bambino:--is it then wonderful that it should want
that heavenly expression of dignity divine, and grace unutterable, which
breathes through the school of Caracci? Connoisseurs will have all
excellence united in one picture, and quarrel unkindly if merit of any
kind be wanting: Surely the Madonna della Seggiola has nature to
recommend it, and much more need not be desired. If the young and tender
and playful innocence of early infancy is what chiefly delights and
detains one's attention, it may be found to its utmost possible
perfection in a painter far inferior to Raphael, Carlo Marratt.
If softness in the female character, and meek humility of countenance,
be all that are wanted for the head of a Madonna, we must go to
Elisabetta Sirani and Sassoferrata I think; but it is ever so. The
Cordelia of Mrs. Cibber was beyond all comparison softer and sweeter
than that of her powerful successor Siddons; yet who will say that the
actresses were equal?
But I must bid adieu to beautiful Florence, where the streets are kept
so clean one is afraid to dirty _them_, and not _one's self_, by walking
in them: where the public walks are all nicely weeded, as in England,
and the gardens have a homeish and Bath-like look, that is excessively
cheering to an English eye:--where, when I dined at Prince Corsini's
table, I heard the Cardinal say grace, and thought of the ceremonies at
Queen's College, Oxford; where I had the honour of entertaining, at my
own dinner on the 25th of July, many of the Tuscan, and many of the
English nobility; and Nardini kindly played a solo in the evening at a
concert we gave in Meghitt's great room:--where we have compiled the
little book amongst us, known by the name of the Florence Miscellany; as
a memorial of that friendship which does me so much honour, and which I
earnestly hope may long subsist among us:--where in short we have lived
exceeding comfortably, but where dear Mrs. Greatheed and myself have
encouraged each other, in saying it would be particularly sad to _die_,
not of the gnats, or more properly musquitoes, for they do not sting one
quite to death, though their venom has swelled my arm so as to oblige me
to carry it for this last week in a sling; but of the _mal di petto_,
which is endemial in this country, and much resembling our pleurisy in
its effects.
Blindness too seems no uncommon misfortune at Florence, from the strong
reverberation of the sun's rays on houses of the cleanest and most
brilliant whiteness; kept so elegantly nice too, that I should despair
of seeing more delicacy at Amsterdam.
Apoplexies are likewise frequent enough: I saw a man carried out stone
dead from St. Pancrazio's church one morning about noon-day; but nobody
seemed disturbed at the event I think, except myself. Though this is no
good town to take one's last leave of life in neither; as the body one
has been so long taking care of, would in twenty-four hours be hoisted
up upon a common cart, with those of all the people who died the same
day, and being fairly carried out of Porto San Gallo towards the dusk of
evening, would be shot into a hole dug away from the city, properly
enough, to protect Florence, and keep it clear of putrid disorders and
disagreeable smells. All this with little ceremony to be sure, and less
distinction; for the Grand Duke suffers the pride of birth to last no
longer than life however, and demolishes every hope of the woman of
quality lying in a separate grave from the distressed object who begged
at her carriage door when she was last on an airing.
Let me add, that his liberality of sentiment extends to virtue on the
one hand, if hardness of heart may be complained of on the other. He
suffers no difference of opinions to operate on his philosophy, and I
believe we heretics here should sleep among the best of his Tuscan
nobles. But there is no comfort in the possibility of being buried alive
by the excessive haste with which people are catched up and hurried
away, before it can be known almost whether all sparks of life are
extinct or no. Such management, and the lamentations one hears made by
the great, that they should thus be forced to keep _bad company_ after
death, remind me for ever of an old French epigram, the sentiment of
which I perfectly recollect, but have forgotten the verses, of which
however these lines are no unfaithful translation;
I dreamt that in my house of clay,
A beggar buried by me lay;
Rascal! go stink apart, I cry'd,
Nor thus disgrace my noble side.
Heyday! cries he, what's here to do?
I'm on my dunghill sure, as well as you.
Of elegant Florence then, so ornamented and so lovely, so neat that it
is said she should be seen only on holidays; dedicated of old to Flora,
and still the residence of sweetness, grace, and the fine arts
particularly; of these kind friends too, so amiable, so hospitable,
where I had the choice of four boxes every night at the theatre, and a
certainty of charming society in each, we must at last unwillingly take
leave; and on to-morrow, the twelfth day of September 1785, once more
commit ourselves to our coach, which has hitherto met with no accident
that could affect us, and in which, with God's protection, I fear not my
journey through what is left of Italy; though such tremendous tales are
told in many of our travelling books, of terrible roads and wicked
postillions, and ladies labouring through the mire on foot, to arrive at
bad inns where nothing eatable could be found. All which however is less
despicable than Tournefort, the great French botanist; who, while his
works swell with learning, and sparkle with general knowledge; while he
enlarges _your_ stock of ideas, and displays _his own_; laments
pathetically that he could not get down the partridges caught for him in
one of the Archipelagon islands, because they were not larded--_à la
mode de Paris_.