PISA.

This town has been so often described that it is as well known in

England as in Italy almost; where I, like others, have seen the

magnificent cathedral; have examined the two pillars which support its

entrance, and which once adorned Diana's temple at Ephesus, one of the

seven wonders of the world. Their carving is indeed beyond all idea of

workmanship; and the possession of them is inestimable. I have seen the

old stones with inscriptions on them, bearing date the reign of

Antoninus Pius, stuck casually, some with the letters reversed, some

sloping, according to accident merely, as it appears to me, in the body

of the great church: and I have seen the leaning tower that Lord

Chesterfield so comically describes our English travellers eagerness to

see. It is a beautiful building though after all, and a strange thing

that it should lean so. The cylindrical form, and marble pillars that

support each story, may rationally enough attract a stranger's notice,

and one is sorry the lower stories have sunk from their foundations,

originally defective ones I trust they were, though, God knows, if the

Italians do not build towers well, it is not for want either of skill or

of experience; for there is a tower to every town I think, and commonly

fabricated with elaborate nicety and well-fixed bases. But as

earthquakes and subterranean fires here are scarcely a wonder, one need

not marvel much at seeing the ground retreat just _here_. It is nearer

our hand, and quite as well worth our while to enquire, why the tower at

_Bridgnorth_ in Shropshire leans exactly in the same direction, and is

full as much out of the perpendicular as this at Pisa.

The brazen gates here, carved by John of Bologna, at least begun by him,

are a wonderful work; and the marbles in the baptistery beat those of

Florence for value and for variety. A good lapidary might find perpetual

amusement in adjusting the claims of superiority to these precious

columns of jasper, granite, alabaster, &c. The different animals which

support the font being equally admirable for their composition as for

their workmanship.

The Campo Santo is an extraordinary place, and, for aught I know,

unparalleled for its power over the mind in exciting serious

contemplations upon the body's decay, and suggesting consolatory

thoughts concerning the soul's immortality. Here in three days, owing to

quick-lime mixed among the earth, vanishes every vestige, every trace of

the human being carried thither seventy hours before, and here round the

walls Giotto and Cimabue have exhausted their invention to impress the

passers-by with deep and pensive melancholy.

The four stages of man's short life, infancy, childhood, maturity, and

decrepit age, not ill represented by one of the ancient artists, shew

the sad but not slow progress we make to this dark abode; while the last

judgment, hell, and paradise inform us what events of the utmost

consequence are to follow our journey. All this a modern traveller finds

out to be _vastly ridiculous!_ though Doctor Smollet _(whose book I

think he has read)_ confesses, that the spacious Corridor round the

Campo Santo di Pisa would make the noblest walk in the world perhaps for

a contemplative philosopher.

The tomb of Algarotti produces softer ideas when one looks at the

sepulchre of a man who, having deserved and obtained such solid and

extensive praise, modestly contented himself with desiring that his

epitaph might be so worded, as to record, upon a simple but lasting

monument, that he had the honour of being disciple to the immortal

_Newton_.

The battle of the bridge here at Pisa drew a great many spectators this

year, as it has not been performed for a considerable time before: the

waiters at our inn here give a better account of it than one should have

got perhaps from Cavalier or Dama, who would have felt less interested

in the business, and seen it from a greater distance. The armies of

Sant' Antonio, and I think San Giovanni Battista, but I will not be

positive as to the last, disputed the possession of the bridge, and

fought gallantly I fancy; but the first remained conqueror, as our very

conversible _Camerieres_ took care to inform us, as it was on that side

it seems that they had exerted their valour.

Calling theatres, and ships, and running horses, and mock fights, and

almost every thing so by the names of Saints, whom we venerate in

silence, and they themselves publicly worship, has a most profane and

offensive sound with it to be sure; and shocks delicate ears very

dreadfully: and I used to reprimand my maids at Milan for bringing up

the blessed Virgin Mary's name on every trivial, almost on every

ludicrous occasion, with a degree of sharpness they were not accustomed

to, because it kept me in a constant shivering. Yet let us reflect a

moment on our own conduct in England, and we shall be forced candidly to

confess that the Puritans alone keep their lips unpolluted by breach of

the third commandment, while the common exclamation of _good God!_

scrupled by few people on the slightest occurrences, and apparently

without any temptation in the world, is no less than gross irreverence

of his sacred name, whom we acknowledge to be

Father of all, in _every_ age

In _every_ clime ador'd;

By saint, by savage, and by sage,

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.

Nor have the ladies at a London card-table Italian ignorance to plead

in their excuse; as not instruction but docility is wanted among almost

all ranks of people in Great Britain, where, if the Christian religion

were practised as it is understood, little could be wished for its

eternal, as little is left out among the blessings of its temporal

welfare.

I have been this morning to look at the Grand Duke's camels, which he

keeps in his park as we do deer in England. There were a hundred and

sixteen of them, pretty creatures! and they breed very well here, and

live quite at their ease, only housing them the winter months: they are

perfectly docile and gentle the man told me, apparently less tender of

their young than mares, but more approachable by human creatures than

even such horses as have been long at grass. That dun hue one sees them

of, is, it seems, not totally and invariably the same, though I doubt

not but it is so in their native deserts. Let it once become a fashion

for sovereigns and other great men to keep and to caress them, we shall

see camels as variegated as cats, which in the woods are all of the

uniformly-streaked tabby--the males inclining to the brown shade--the

females to blue among them;--but being bred _down_, become

tortoise-shell, and red, and every variety of colour, which

domestication alone can bestow.

The misery of Tuscany is, that _all animals_ thrive so happily under

this productive sun; so that if you scorn the Zanzariere, you are

half-devoured before morning, and so disfigured, that I defy one's

nearest friends to recollect one's countenance; while the spiders sting

as much as any of their insects; and one of them bit me this very day

till the blood came.

With all this not ill-founded complaint of these our active companions,

my constant wonder is, that the grapes hang untouched this 20th of

September, in vast heavy clusters covered with bloom; and unmolested by

insects, which, with a quarter of this heat in England, are encouraged

to destroy all our fruit in spite of the gardener's diligence to blow up

nests, cover the walls with netting, and hang them about with bottles of

syrup, to court the creatures in, who otherwise so damage every fig and

grape and plum of ours, that nothing but the skins are left remaining

_by now. Here_ no such contrivances are either wanted or thought on;

and while our islanders are sedulously bent to guard, and studious to

invent new devices to protect their half dozen peaches from their half

dozen wasps, the standard trees of Italy are loaded with high-flavoured

and delicious fruits.

Here figs sky-dy'd a purple hue disclose,

Green looks the olive, the pomegranate glows;

Here dangling pears exalted scents unfold,

And yellow apples ripen into gold.

The roadside is indeed hedged with festoons of vines, crawling from

olive to olive, which they plant in the ditches of Tuscany as we do

willows in Britain: mulberry trees too by the thousand, and some

pollarded poplars serve for support to the glorious grapes that will now

soon be gathered. What least contributes to the beauty of the country

however, is perhaps most subservient to its profits. I am ashamed to

write down the returns of money gained by the oil alone in this

territory and that of Lucca, where I was much struck with the colour as

well as the excellence of this useful commodity. Nor can I tell why none

of that green cast comes over to England, unless it is, that, like

essential oil of chamomile, it loses the tint by exposure to the air.

An olive tree, however, is no elegantly-growing or happily-coloured

plant: straggling and dusky, one is forced to think of its produce,

before one can be pleased with its merits, as in a deformed and ugly

friend or companion.

The fogs now begin to fall pretty heavily in a morning, and rising about

the middle of the day, leave the sun at liberty to exert his violence

very powerfully. At night come forth the inhabitants, like dor-beetles

at sunset on the coast of Sussex; then is their season to walk and chat,

and sing and make love, and run about the street with a girl and a

guittar; to eat ice and drink lemonade; but never to be seen drunk or

quarrelsome, or riotous. Though night is the true season of Italian

felicity, they place not their happiness in brutal frolics, any more

than in malicious titterings; they are idle and they are merry: it is, I

think, the worst we can say of them; they are idle because there is

little for them to do, and merry because they have little given them to

think about. To the busy Englishman they might well apply these verses

of his own Milton in the Masque of Comus:

What have we with day to do?

Sons of Care! 'twas made for you.