SCENE I

[Illustration]

Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece

by John Addington Symonds

Contents

VOLUME I.

THE LOVE OF THE ALPS

WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS

BACCHUS IN GRAUBÜNDEN

OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE

THE CORNICE

AJACCIO

MONTE GENEROSO

LOMBARD VIGNETTES

COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO

BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI

CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX

CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE

A VENETIAN MEDLEY

THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING

A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS

TWO DRAMATISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY

VOLUME II.

RAVENNA

RIMINI

MAY IN UMBRIA

THE PALACE OF URBINO

VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI

AUTUMN WANDERINGS

PARMA

CANOSSA

FORNOVO

FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI

THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE

POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY

POPULAR ITALIAN POETRY OF THE RENAISSANCE

THE ‘ORFEO’ OF POLIZIANO

EIGHT SONNETS OF PETRARCH

VOLUME III.

FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO

THOUGHTS IN ITALY ABOUT CHRISTMAS

SIENA

MONTE OLIVETO

MONTEPULCIANO

PERUGIA

ORVIETO

LUCRETIUS

ANTINOUS

SPRING WANDERINGS

AMALFI, PÆSTUM, CAPRI

ETNA

PALERMO

SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI

ATHENS

INDEX FOR ALL THREE VOLUMES

PREFATORY NOTE

In preparing this new edition of the late J.A. Symonds's three volumes

of travels, 'Sketches in Italy and Greece,' 'Sketches and Studies in

Italy,' and 'Italian Byways,' nothing has been changed except the order

of the Essays. For the convenience of travellers a topographical

arrangement has been adopted. This implied a new title to cover the

contents of all three volumes, and 'Sketches and Studies in Italy and

Greece' has been chosen as departing least from the author's own

phraseology.

HORATIO F. BROWN.

Venice: _June_ 1898.

SKETCHES AND STUDIES

IN

ITALY AND GREECE

VOLUME I.

THE LOVE OF THE ALPS[1]

Of all the joys in life, none is greater than the joy of arriving on

the outskirts of Switzerland at the end of a long dusty day's journey

from Paris. The true epicure in refined pleasures will never travel to

Basle by night. He courts the heat of the sun and the monotony of

French plains,—their sluggish streams and never-ending poplar trees—for

the sake of the evening coolness and the gradual approach to the great

Alps, which await him at the close of the day. It is about Mulhausen

that he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields broaden

into rolling downs, watered by clear and running streams; the green

Swiss thistle grows by riverside and cowshed; pines begin to tuft the

slopes of gently rising hills; and now the sun has set, the stars come

2out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights; and he feels—yes,

indeed, there is now no mistake—the well-known, well-loved magical

fresh air, that never fails to blow from snowy mountains and meadows

watered by perennial streams. The last hour is one of exquisite

enjoyment, and when he reaches Basle, he scarcely sleeps all night for

hearing the swift Rhine beneath the balconies, and knowing that the

moon is shining on its waters, through the town, beneath the bridges,

between pasture-lands and copses, up the still mountain-girdled valleys

to the ice-caves where the water springs. There is nothing in all

experience of travelling like this. We may greet the Mediterranean at

Marseilles with enthusiasm; on entering Rome by the Porta del Popolo,

we may reflect with pride that we have reached the goal of our

pilgrimage, and are at last among world-shaking memories. But neither

Rome nor the Riviera wins our hearts like Switzerland. We do not lie

awake in London thinking of them; we do not long so intensely, as the

year comes round, to revisit them. Our affection is less a passion than

that which we cherish for Switzerland.

[1] This Essay was written in 1866, and published in 1867. Reprinting

it in 1879, after eighteen months spent continuously in one high

valley of the Grisons, I feel how slight it is. For some amends, I

take this opportunity of printing at the end of it a description of

Davos in winter.

Why, then, is this? What, after all, is the love of the Alps, and when

and where did it begin? It is easier to ask these questions than to

answer them. The classic nations hated mountains. Greek and Roman poets

talk of them with disgust and dread. Nothing could have been more

depressing to a courtier of Augustus than residence at Aosta, even

though he found his theatres and triumphal arches there. Wherever

classical feeling has predominated, this has been the case. Cellini's

Memoirs, written in the height of pagan Renaissance, well express the

aversion which a Florentine or Roman felt for the inhospitable

wildernesses of Switzerland.[2] Dryden, in his dedication to 'The

Indian 3Emperor,' says, 'High objects, it is true, attract the sight;

but it looks up with pain on craggy rocks and barren mountains, and

continues not intent on any object which is wanting in shades and green

to entertain it.' Addison and Gray had no better epithets than

'rugged,' 'horrid,' and the like for Alpine landscape. The classic

spirit was adverse to enthusiasm for mere nature. Humanity was too

prominent, and city life absorbed all interests,—not to speak of what

perhaps is the weightiest reason—that solitude, indifferent

accommodation, and imperfect means of travelling, rendered mountainous

countries peculiarly disagreeable. It is impossible to enjoy art or

nature while suffering from fatigue and cold, dreading the attacks of

robbers, and wondering whether you will find food and shelter at the

end of your day's journey. Nor was it different in the Middle Ages.

Then individuals had either no leisure from war or strife with the

elements, or else they devoted themselves to the salvation of their

souls. But when the ideas of the Middle Ages had decayed, when improved

arts of life had freed men from servile subjection to daily needs, when

the bondage of religious tyranny had been thrown off and political

liberty allowed the full development of tastes and instincts, when,

moreover, the classical traditions had lost their power, and courts and

coteries became too narrow for the activity of man,—then suddenly it

was discovered that Nature in herself possessed transcendent charms. It

may seem absurd to class them all together; yet there is no doubt that

the French Revolution, the criticism of the Bible, Pantheistic forms of

religious feeling, landscape-painting, Alpine travelling, and the

poetry of Nature, are all signs of the same movement—of a new

Renaissance. Limitations of every sort have been shaken off during the

last century; all forms have been destroyed, all questions asked. The

classical spirit loved to 4arrange, model, preserve traditions, obey

laws. We are intolerant of everything that is not simple, unbiassed by

prescription, liberal as the wind, and natural as the mountain crags.

We go to feed this spirit of freedom among the Alps. What the virgin

forests of America are to the Americans, the Alps are to us. What there

is in these huge blocks and walls of granite crowned with ice that

fascinates us, it is hard to analyse. Why, seeing that we find them so

attractive, they should have repelled our ancestors of the fourth

generation and all the world before them, is another mystery. We cannot

explain what rapport there is between our human souls and these

inequalities in the surface of the earth which we call Alps. Tennyson

speaks of

Some vague emotion of delight

In gazing up an Alpine height,

and its vagueness eludes definition. The interest which physical

science has created for natural objects has something to do with it.

Curiosity and the charm of novelty increase this interest. No towns, no

cultivated tracts of Europe however beautiful, form such a contrast to

our London life as Switzerland. Then there is the health and joy that

comes from exercise in open air; the senses freshened by good sleep;

the blood quickened by a lighter and rarer atmosphere. Our modes of

life, the breaking down of class privileges, the extension of

education, which contribute to make the individual greater and society

less, render the solitude of mountains refreshing. Facilities of

travelling and improved accommodation leave us free to enjoy the

natural beauty which we seek. Our minds, too, are prepared to

sympathise with the inanimate world; we have learned to look on the

universe as a whole, and ourselves as a part of it, related by close

ties of friendship to all its other members 5Shelley's, Wordsworth's,

Goethe's poetry has taught us this; we are all more or less Pantheists,

worshippers of 'God in Nature,' convinced of the omnipresence of the

informing mind.

[2] See, however, what is said about Leo Battista Alberti in the

sketch of Rimini in the second series.

Thus, when we admire the Alps, we are after all but children of the

century. We follow its inspiration blindly; and while we think

ourselves spontaneous in our ecstasy, perform the part for which we

have been trained from childhood by the atmosphere in which we live. It

is this very unconsciousness and universality of the impulse we obey

which makes it hard to analyse. Contemporary history is difficult to

write; to define the spirit of the age in which we live is still more

difficult; to account for 'impressions which owe all their force to

their identity with themselves' is most difficult of all. We must be

content to feel, and not to analyse.

Rousseau has the credit of having invented the love of Nature. Perhaps

he first expressed, in literature, the pleasures of open life among the

mountains, of walking tours, of the '_école buissonnière_,' away from

courts, and schools, and cities, which it is the fashion now to love.

His bourgeois birth and tastes, his peculiar religious and social

views, his intense self-engrossment,—all favoured the development of

Nature-worship. But Rousseau was not alone, nor yet creative, in this

instance. He was but one of the earliest to seize and express a new

idea of growing humanity. For those who seem to be the most original in

their inauguration of periods are only such as have been favourably

placed by birth and education to imbibe the floating creeds of the

whole race. They resemble the first cases of an epidemic, which become

the centres of infection and propagate disease. At the time of

Rousseau's greatness the French people were initiative. In politics, in

literature, in fashions, and in 6philosophy, they had for some time led

the taste of Europe. But the sentiment which first received a clear and

powerful expression in the works of Rousseau, soon declared itself in

the arts and literature of other nations. Goethe, Wordsworth, and the

earlier landscape-painters, proved that Germany and England were not

far behind the French. In England this love of Nature for its own sake

is indigenous, and has at all times been peculiarly characteristic of

our genius. Therefore it is not surprising that our life and literature

and art have been foremost in developing the sentiment of which we are

speaking. Our poets, painters, and prose writers gave the tone to

European thought in this respect. Our travellers in search of the

adventurous and picturesque, our Alpine Club, have made of Switzerland

an English playground.

The greatest period in our history was but a foreshadowing of this. To

return to Nature-worship was but to reassume the habits of the

Elizabethan age, altered indeed by all the changes of religion,

politics, society, and science which the last three centuries have

wrought, yet still, in its original love of free open life among the

fields and woods, and on the sea, the same. Now the French national

genius is classical. It reverts to the age of Louis XIV., and

Rousseauism in their literature is as true an innovation and

parenthesis as Pope-and-Drydenism was in ours. As in the age of the

Reformation, so in this, the German element of the modern character

predominates. During the two centuries from which we have emerged, the

Latin element had the upper hand. Our love of the Alps is a Gothic, a

Teutonic, instinct; sympathetic with all that is vague, infinite, and

insubordinate to rules, at war with all that is defined and systematic

in our genius. This we may perceive in individuals as well as in the

broader aspects of arts and literatures. The classically minded man,

the reader of Latin poets, the lover 7of brilliant conversation, the

frequenter of clubs and drawing-rooms, nice in his personal

requirements, scrupulous in his choice of words, averse to unnecessary

physical exertion, preferring town to country life, _cannot_ deeply

feel the charm of the Alps. Such a man will dislike German art, and

however much he may strive to be Catholic in his tastes, will find as

he grows older that his liking for Gothic architecture and modern

painting diminish almost to aversion before an increasing admiration

for Greek peristyles and the Medicean Venus. If in respect of

speculation all men are either Platonists or Aristotelians, in respect

of taste all men are either Greek or German.

At present the German, the indefinite, the natural, commands; the

Greek, the finite, the cultivated, is in abeyance. We who talk so much

about the feeling of the Alps, are creatures, not creators of our

_cultus_,—a strange reflection, proving how much greater man is than

men, the common reason of the age in which we live than our own

reasons, its constituents and subjects.

Perhaps it is our modern tendency to 'individualism' which makes the

Alps so much to us. Society is there reduced to a vanishing point—no

claims are made on human sympathies—there is no need to toil in

yoke-service with our fellows. We may be alone, dream our own dreams,

and sound the depths of personality without the reproach of

selfishness, without a restless wish to join in action or money-making

or the pursuit of fame. To habitual residents among the Alps this

absence of social duties and advantages may be barbarising, even

brutalising. But to men wearied with too much civilisation, and

deafened by the noise of great cities, it is beyond measure refreshing.

Then, again, among the mountains history finds no place. The Alps have

no past nor present nor future. The human beings who live upon their

sides are at odds 8with nature, clinging on for bare existence to the

soil, sheltering themselves beneath protecting rocks from avalanches,

damming up destructive streams, all but annihilated every spring. Man,

who is paramount in the plain, is nothing here. His arts and sciences,

and dynasties, and modes of life, and mighty works, and conquests and

decays, demand our whole attention in Italy or Egypt. But here the

mountains, immemorially the same, which were, which are, and which are

to be, present a theatre on which the soul breathes freely and feels

herself alone. Around her on all sides is God, and Nature, who is here

the face of God and not the slave of man. The spirit of the world hath

here not yet grown old. She is as young as on the first day; and the

Alps are a symbol of the self-creating, self-sufficing, self-enjoying

universe which lives for its own ends. For why do the slopes gleam with

flowers, and the hillsides deck themselves with grass, and the

inaccessible ledges of black rock bear their tufts of crimson primroses

and flaunting tiger-lilies? Why, morning after morning, does the red

dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded?

Why does the torrent shout, the avalanche reply in thunder to the music

of the sun, the trees and rocks and meadows cry their 'Holy, Holy,

Holy'? Surely not for us. We are an accident here, and even the few men

whose eyes are fixed habitually upon these things are dead to them—the

peasants do not even know the names of their own flowers, and sigh with

envy when you tell them of the plains of Lincolnshire or Russian

steppes.

But indeed there is something awful in the Alpine elevation above human

things. We do not love Switzerland merely because we associate its

thought with recollections of holidays and joyfulness. Some of the most

solemn moments of life are spent high up above among the mountains, on

the barren tops of rocky passes, where the soul has seemed to hear in

solitude 9a low controlling voice. It is almost necessary for the

development of our deepest affections that some sad and sombre moments

should be interchanged with hours of merriment and elasticity. It is

this variety in the woof of daily life which endears our home to us;

and perhaps none have fully loved the Alps who have not spent some days

of meditation, or it may be of sorrow, among their solitudes. Splendid

scenery, like music, has the power to make 'of grief itself a fiery

chariot for mounting above the sources of grief,' to ennoble and refine

our passions, and to teach us that our lives are merely moments in the

years of the eternal Being. There are many, perhaps, who, within sight

of some great scene among the Alps, upon the height of the Stelvio or

the slopes of Mürren, or at night in the valley of Courmayeur, have

felt themselves raised above cares and doubts and miseries by the mere

recognition of unchangeable magnificence; have found a deep peace in

the sense of their own nothingness. It is not granted to us everyday to

stand upon these pinnacles of rest and faith above the world. But

having once stood there, how can we forget the station? How can we

fail, amid the tumult of our common cares, to feel at times the hush of

that far-off tranquillity? When our life is most commonplace, when we

are ill or weary in city streets, we can remember the clouds upon the

mountains we have seen, the sound of innumerable waterfalls, and the

scent of countless flowers. A photograph of Bisson's or of Braun's, the

name of some well-known valley, the picture of some Alpine plant,

rouses the sacred hunger in our souls, and stirs again the faith in

beauty and in rest beyond ourselves which no man can take from us. We

owe a deep debt of gratitude to everything which enables us to rise

above depressing and enslaving circumstances, which brings us nearer in

some way or other to what is eternal in the universe, and which makes

us know 10that, whether we live or die, suffer or enjoy, life and

gladness are still strong in the world. On this account, the proper

attitude of the soul among the Alps is one of silence. It is almost

impossible without a kind of impiety to frame in words the feelings

they inspire. Yet there are some sayings, hallowed by long usage, which

throng the mind through a whole summer's day, and seem in harmony with

its emotions—some portions of the Psalms or lines of greatest poets,

inarticulate hymns of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, waifs and strays not

always apposite, but linked by strong and subtle chains of feeling with

the grandeur of the mountains. This reverential feeling for the Alps is

connected with the Pantheistic form of our religious sentiments to

which I have before alluded. It is a trite remark, that even devout men

of the present generation prefer temples _not_ made with hands to

churches, and worship God in the fields more contentedly than in their

pews. What Mr. Ruskin calls 'the instinctive sense of the divine

presence not formed into distinct belief' lies at the root of our

profound veneration for the nobler aspects of mountain scenery. This

instinctive sense has been very variously expressed by Goethe in

Faust's celebrated confession of faith, by Shelley in the stanzas of

'Adonais,' which begin 'He is made one with nature,' by Wordsworth in

the lines on Tintern Abbey, and lately by Mr. Roden Noel in his noble

poems of Pantheism. It is more or less strongly felt by all who have

recognised the indubitable fact that religious belief is undergoing a

sure process of change from the dogmatic distinctness of the past to

some at present dimly descried creed of the future. Such periods of

transition are of necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and anxiety,

vague, variable, and unsatisfying. The men in whose spirits the

fermentation of the change is felt, who have abandoned their old

moorings, and have not yet 11reached the haven for which they are

steering, cannot but be indistinct and undecided in their faith. The

universe of which they form a part becomes important to them in its

infinite immensity. The principles of beauty, goodness, order and law,

no longer connected in their minds with definite articles of faith,

find symbols in the outer world. They are glad to fly at certain

moments from mankind and its oppressive problems, for which religion no

longer provides a satisfactory solution, to Nature, where they vaguely

localise the spirit that broods over us controlling all our being. To

such men Goethe's hymn is a form of faith, and born of such a mood are

the following far humbler verses:—

At Mürren let the morning lead thee out

To walk upon the cold and cloven hills,

To hear the congregated mountains shout

Their pæan of a thousand foaming rills.

Raimented with intolerable light

The snow-peaks stand above thee, row on row

Arising, each a seraph in his might;

An organ each of varied stop doth blow.

Heaven's azure dome trembles through all her spheres,

Feeling that music vibrate; and the sun

Raises his tenor as he upward steers,

And all the glory-coated mists that run

Below him in the valley, hear his voice,

And cry unto the dewy fields, Rejoice!

There is a profound sympathy between music and fine scenery: they both

affect us in the same way, stirring strong but undefined emotions,

which express themselves in 'idle tears,' or evoking thoughts 'which

lie,' as Wordsworth says, 'too deep for tears,' beyond the reach of any

words. How little we know what multitudes of mingling reminiscences,

held in solution by the mind, and colouring its fancy with the

iridescence of variable hues, go to make up the sentiments 12which

music or which mountains stir! It is the very vagueness, changefulness,

and dreamlike indistinctness of these feelings which cause their charm;

they harmonise with the haziness of our beliefs and seem to make our

very doubts melodious. For this reason it is obvious that unrestrained

indulgence in the pleasures of music or of scenery may tend to destroy

habits of clear thinking, sentimentalise the mind, and render it more

apt to entertain embryonic fancies than to bring ideas to definite

perfection.

If hours of thoughtfulness and seclusion are necessary to the

development of a true love for the Alps, it is no less essential to a

right understanding of their beauty that we should pass some wet and

gloomy days among the mountains. The unclouded sunsets and sunrises

which often follow one another in September in the Alps, have something

terrible. They produce a satiety of splendour, and oppress the mind

with a sense of perpetuity. I remember spending such a season in one of

the Oberland valleys, high up above the pine-trees, in a little châlet.

Morning after morning I awoke to see the sunbeams glittering on the

Eiger and the Jungfrau; noon after noon the snow-fields blazed beneath

a steady fire; evening after evening they shone like beacons in the red

light of the setting sun. Then peak by peak they lost the glow; the

soul passed from them, and they stood pale yet weirdly garish against

the darkened sky. The stars came out, the moon shone, but not a cloud

sailed over the untroubled heavens. Thus day after day for several

weeks there was no change, till I was seized with an overpowering

horror of unbroken calm. I left the valley for a time; and when I

returned to it in wind and rain, I found that the partial veiling of

the mountain heights restored the charm which I had lost and made me

feel once more at home. The landscape takes a graver tone beneath the

mist that hides the higher 13peaks, and comes drifting, creeping,

feeling, through the pines upon their slopes—white, silent, blinding

vapour-wreaths around the sable spires. Sometimes the cloud descends

and blots out everything. Again it lifts a little, showing cottages and

distant Alps beneath its skirts. Then it sweeps over the whole valley

like a veil, just broken here and there above a lonely châlet or a

thread of distant dangling torrent foam. Sounds, too, beneath the mist

are more strange. The torrent seems to have a hoarser voice and grinds

the stones more passionately against its boulders. The cry of shepherds

through the fog suggests the loneliness and danger of the hills. The

bleating of penned sheep or goats, and the tinkling of the cowbells,

are mysteriously distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then,

again, how immeasurably high above our heads appear the domes and peaks

of snow revealed through chasms in the drifting cloud; how desolate the

glaciers and the avalanches in gleams of light that struggle through

the mist! There is a leaden glare peculiar to clouds, which makes the

snow and ice more lurid. Not far from the house where I am writing, the

avalanche that swept away the bridge last winter is lying now, dripping

away, dank and dirty, like a rotting whale. I can see it from my

window, green beech-boughs nodding over it, forlorn larches bending

their tattered branches by its side, splinters of broken pine

protruding from its muddy caves, the boulders on its flank, and the

hoarse hungry torrent tossing up its tongues to lick the ragged edge of

snow. Close by, the meadows, spangled with yellow flowers and red and

blue, look even more brilliant than if the sun were shining on them.

Every cup and blade of grass is drinking. But the scene changes; the

mist has turned into rain-clouds, and the steady rain drips down,

incessant, blotting out the view. Then, too, what a joy it is if the

clouds break towards evening with a north wind, and a rainbow in 14the

valley gives promise of a bright to-morrow! We look up to the cliffs

above our heads, and see that they have just been powdered with the

snow that is a sign of better weather.

Such rainy days ought to be spent in places like Seelisberg and Mürren,

at the edge of precipices, in front of mountains, or above a lake. The

cloud-masses crawl and tumble about the valleys like a brood of

dragons; now creeping along the ledges of the rock with sinuous

self-adjustment to its turns and twists; now launching out into the

deep, repelled by battling winds, or driven onward in a coil of twisted

and contorted serpent curls. In the midst of summer these wet seasons

often end in a heavy fall of snow. You wake some morning to see the

meadows which last night were gay with July flowers huddled up in snow

a foot in depth. But fair weather does not tarry long to reappear. You

put on your thickest boots and sally forth to find the great cups of

the gentians full of snow, and to watch the rising of the cloud-wreaths

under the hot sun. Bad dreams or sickly thoughts, dissipated by

returning daylight or a friend's face, do not fly away more rapidly and

pleasantly than those swift glory-coated mists that lose themselves we

know not where in the blue depths of the sky.

In contrast with these rainy days nothing can be more perfect than

clear moonlight nights. There is a terrace upon the roof of the inn at

Courmayeur where one may spend hours in the silent watches, when all

the world has gone to sleep beneath. The Mont Chétif and the Mont de la

Saxe form a gigantic portal not unworthy of the pile that lies beyond.

For Mont Blanc resembles a vast cathedral; its countless spires are

scattered over a mass like that of the Duomo at Milan, rising into one

tower at the end. By night the glaciers glitter in the steady moon;

domes, pinnacles, and buttresses stand 15clear of clouds. Needles of

every height and most fantastic shapes rise from the central ridge,

some solitary, like sharp arrows shot against the sky, some clustering

into sheaves. On every horn of snow and bank of grassy hill stars

sparkle, rising, setting, rolling round through the long silent night.

Moonlight simplifies and softens the landscape. Colours become scarcely

distinguishable, and forms, deprived of half their detail, gain in

majesty and size. The mountains seem greater far by night than

day—higher heights and deeper depths, more snowy pyramids, more

beetling crags, softer meadows, and darker pines. The whole valley is

hushed, but for the torrent and the chirping grasshopper and the

striking of the village clocks. The black tower and the houses of

Courmayeur in the foreground gleam beneath the moon until she reaches

the edge of the Cramont, and then sinks quietly away, once more to

reappear among the pines, then finally to leave the valley dark beneath

the shadow of the mountain's bulk. Meanwhile the heights of snow still

glitter in the steady light: they, too, will soon be dark, until the

dawn breaks, tinging them with rose.

But it is not fair to dwell exclusively upon the more sombre aspect of

Swiss beauty when there are so many lively scenes of which to speak.

The sunlight and the freshness and the flowers of Alpine meadows form

more than half the charm of Switzerland. The other day we walked to a

pasture called the Col de Checruit, high up the valley of Courmayeur,

where the spring was still in its first freshness. Gradually we

climbed, by dusty roads and through hot fields where the grass had just

been mown, beneath the fierce light of the morning sun. Not a breath of

air was stirring, and the heavy pines hung overhead upon their crags,

as if to fence the gorge from every wandering breeze. There is nothing

more oppressive than these scorching sides of narrow rifts, shut in by

woods 16and precipices. But suddenly the valley broadened, the pines

and larches disappeared, and we found ourselves upon a wide green

semicircle of the softest meadows. Little rills of water went rushing

through them, rippling over pebbles, rustling under dock leaves, and

eddying against their wooden barriers. Far and wide 'you scarce could

see the grass for flowers,' while on every side the tinkling of

cow-bells, and the voices of shepherds calling to one another from the

Alps, or singing at their work, were borne across the fields. As we

climbed we came into still fresher pastures, where the snow had

scarcely melted. There the goats and cattle were collected, and the

shepherds sat among them, fondling the kids and calling them by name.

When they called, the creatures came, expecting salt and bread. It was

pretty to see them lying near their masters, playing and butting at

them with their horns, or bleating for the sweet rye-bread. The women

knitted stockings, laughing among themselves, and singing all the

while. As soon as we reached them, they gathered round to talk. An old

herdsman, who was clearly the patriarch of this Arcadia, asked us many

questions in a slow deliberate voice. We told him who we were, and

tried to interest him in the cattle-plague, which he appeared to regard

as an evil very unreal and far away—like the murrain upon Pharaoh's

herds which one reads about in Exodus. But he was courteous and polite,

doing the honours of his pasture with simplicity and ease. He took us

to his châlet and gave us bowls of pure cold milk. It was a funny

little wooden house, clean and dark. The sky peeped through its tiles,

and if shepherds were not in the habit of sleeping soundly all night

long, they might count the setting and rising stars without lifting

their heads from the pillow. He told us how far pleasanter they found

the summer season than the long cold winter which they have to spend in

gloomy houses in Courmayeur. This, indeed, is 17the true pastoral life

which poets have described—a happy summer holiday among the flowers,

well occupied with simple cares, and harassed by 'no enemy but winter

and rough weather.'

Very much of the charm of Switzerland belongs to simple things—to

greetings from the herdsmen, the 'Guten Morgen,' and 'Guten Abend,'

that are invariably given and taken upon mountain paths; to the tame

creatures, with their large dark eyes, who raise their heads one moment

from the pasture while you pass; and to the plants that grow beneath

your feet. The latter end of May is the time when spring begins in the

high Alps. Wherever sunlight smiles away a patch of snow, the brown

turf soon becomes green velvet, and the velvet stars itself with red

and white and gold and blue. You almost see the grass and lilies grow.

First come pale crocuses and lilac soldanellas. These break the last

dissolving clods of snow, and stand upon an island, with the cold wall

they have thawed all round them. It is the fate of these poor flowers

to spring and flourish on the very skirts of retreating winter; they

soon wither—the frilled chalice of the soldanella shrivels up and the

crocus fades away before the grass has grown; the sun, which is

bringing all the other plants to life, scorches their tender petals.

Often when summer has fairly come, you still may see their pearly cups

and lilac bells by the side of avalanches, between the chill snow and

the fiery sun, blooming and fading hour by hour. They have as it were

but a Pisgah view of the promised land, of the spring which they are

foremost to proclaim. Next come the clumsy gentians and yellow

anemones, covered with soft down like fledgling birds. These are among

the earliest and hardiest blossoms that embroider the high meadows with

a diaper of blue and gold. About the same time primroses and auriculas

begin to tuft the dripping rocks, while frail white fleur-de-lis,

18like flakes of snow forgotten by the sun, and golden-balled

ranunculuses join with forget-me-nots and cranesbill in a never-ending

dance upon the grassy floor. Happy, too, is he who finds the

lilies-of-the-valley clustering about the chestnut boles upon the

Colma, or in the beechwood by the stream at Macugnaga, mixed with

garnet-coloured columbines and fragrant white narcissus, which the

people of the villages call 'Angiolini.' There, too, is Solomon's seal,

with waxen bells and leaves expanded like the wings of hovering

butterflies. But these lists of flowers are tiresome and cold; it would

be better to draw the portrait of one which is particularly

fascinating. I think that botanists have called it _Saxifraga

cotyledon_; yet, in spite of its long name, it is beautiful and poetic.

London-pride is the commonest of all the saxifrages; but the one of

which I speak is as different from London-pride as a Plantagenet upon

his throne from that last Plantagenet who died obscure and penniless

some years ago. It is a great majestic flower, which plumes the granite

rocks of Monte Rosa in the spring. At other times of the year you see a

little tuft of fleshy leaves set like a cushion on cold ledges and dark

places of dripping cliffs. You take it for a stonecrop—one of those

weeds doomed to obscurity, and safe from being picked because they are

so uninviting—and you pass it by incuriously. But about June it puts

forth its power, and from the cushion of pale leaves there springs a

strong pink stem, which rises upward for a while, and then curves down

and breaks into a shower of snow-white blossoms. Far away the splendour

gleams, hanging like a plume of ostrich-feathers from the roof of rock,

waving to the wind, or stooping down to touch the water of the mountain

stream that dashes it with dew. The snow at evening, glowing with a

sunset flush, is not more rosy-pure than this cascade of pendent

blossoms. It loves to be alone—inaccessible ledges, chasms where winds

combat, or 19moist caverns overarched near thundering falls, are the

places that it seeks. I will not compare it to a spirit of the

mountains or to a proud lonely soul, for such comparisons desecrate the

simplicity of nature, and no simile can add a glory to the flower. It

seems to have a conscious life of its own, so large and glorious it is,

so sensitive to every breath of air, so nobly placed upon its bending

stem, so royal in its solitude. I first saw it years ago on the

Simplon, feathering the drizzling crags above Isella. Then we found it

near Baveno, in a crack of sombre cliff beneath the mines. The other

day we cut an armful opposite Varallo, by the Sesia, and then felt like

murderers; it was so sad to hold in our hands the triumph of those many

patient months, the full expansive life of the flower, the splendour

visible from valleys and hillsides, the defenceless creature which had

done its best to make the gloomy places of the Alps most beautiful.

After passing many weeks among the high Alps it is a pleasure to

descend into the plains. The sunset, and sunrise, and the stars of

Lombardy, its level horizons and vague misty distances, are a source of

absolute relief after the narrow skies and embarrassed prospects of a

mountain valley. Nor are the Alps themselves ever more imposing than

when seen from Milan or the church-tower of Chivasso or the terrace of

Novara, with a foreground of Italian cornfields and old city towers and

rice-ground, golden-green beneath a Lombard sun. Half veiled by clouds,

the mountains rise like visionary fortress walls of a celestial

city—unapproachable, beyond the range of mortal feet. But those who

know by old experience what friendly châlets, and cool meadows, and

clear streams are hidden in their folds and valleys, send forth fond

thoughts and messages, like carrier-pigeons, from the marble parapets

of Milan, crying, 'Before another sun has set, I too shall rest beneath

the shadow of their pines!' It is in truth not more 20than a day's

journey from Milan to the brink of snow at Macugnaga. But very sad it

is to _leave_ the Alps, to stand upon the terraces of Berne and waft

ineffectual farewells. The unsympathising Aar rushes beneath; and the

snow-peaks, whom we love like friends, abide untroubled by the coming

and the going of the world. The clouds drift over them—the sunset warms

them with a fiery kiss. Night comes, and we are hurried far away to

wake beside the Seine, remembering, with a pang of jealous passion,

that the flowers on Alpine meadows are still blooming, and the rivulets

still flowing with a ceaseless song, while Paris shops are all we see,

and all we hear is the dull clatter of a Paris crowd.

THE ALPS IN WINTER

The gradual approach of winter is very lovely in the high Alps. The

valley of Davos, where I am writing, more than five thousand feet above

the sea, is not beautiful, as Alpine valleys go, though it has scenery

both picturesque and grand within easy reach. But when summer is

passing into autumn, even the bare slopes of the least romantic glen

are glorified. Golden lights and crimson are cast over the grey-green

world by the fading of innumerable plants. Then the larches begin to

put on sallow tints that deepen into orange, burning against the solid

blue sky like amber. The frosts are severe at night, and the meadow

grass turns dry and wan. The last lilac crocuses die upon the fields.

Icicles, hanging from watercourse or mill-wheel, glitter in the noonday

sunlight. The wind blows keenly from the north, and now the snow begins

to fall and thaw and freeze, and fall and thaw again. The seasons are

confused; wonderful days of flawless purity are 21intermingled with

storm and gloom. At last the time comes when a great snowfall has to be

expected. There is hard frost in the early morning, and at nine o'clock

the thermometer stands at 2°. The sky is clear, but it clouds rapidly

with films of cirrus and of stratus in the south and west. Soon it is

covered over with grey vapour in a level sheet, all the hill-tops

standing hard against the steely heavens. The cold wind from the west

freezes the moustache to one's pipe-stem. By noon the air is thick with

a coagulated mist; the temperature meanwhile has risen, and a little

snow falls at intervals. The valleys are filled with a curious opaque

blue, from which the peaks rise, phantom-like and pallid, into the grey

air, scarcely distinguishable from their background. The pine-forests

on the mountain-sides are of darkest indigo. There is an indescribable

stillness and a sense of incubation. The wind has fallen. Later on, the

snow-flakes flutter silently and sparely through the lifeless air. The

most distant landscape is quite blotted out. After sunset the clouds

have settled down upon the hills, and the snow comes in thick,

impenetrable fleeces. At night our hair crackles and sparkles when we

brush it. Next morning there is a foot and a half of finely powdered

snow, and still the snow is falling. Strangely loom the châlets through

the semi-solid whiteness. Yet the air is now dry and singularly

soothing. The pines are heavy with their wadded coverings; now and

again one shakes himself in silence, and his burden falls in a white

cloud, to leave a black-green patch upon the hillside, whitening again

as the imperturbable fall continues. The stakes by the roadside are

almost buried. No sound is audible. Nothing is seen but the

snow-plough, a long raft of planks with a heavy stone at its stem and a

sharp prow, drawn by four strong horses, and driven by a young man

erect upon the stem.

So we live through two days and nights, and on the third 22a north wind

blows. The snow-clouds break and hang upon the hills in scattered

fleeces; glimpses of blue sky shine through, and sunlight glints along

the heavy masses. The blues of the shadows are everywhere intense. As

the clouds disperse, they form in moulded domes, tawny like sunburned

marble in the distant south lands. Every châlet is a miracle of

fantastic curves, built by the heavy hanging snow. Snow lies mounded on

the roads and fields, writhed into loveliest wreaths, or outspread in

the softest undulations. All the irregularities of the hills are

softened into swelling billows like the mouldings of Titanic statuary.

It happened once or twice last winter that such a clearing after

snowfall took place at full moon. Then the moon rose in a swirl of

fleecy vapour—clouds above, beneath, and all around. The sky was blue

as steel, and infinitely deep with mist-entangled stars. The horn above

which she first appears stood carved of solid black, and through the

valley's length from end to end yawned chasms and clefts of liquid

darkness. As the moon rose, the clouds were conquered, and massed into

rolling waves upon the ridges of the hills. The spaces of open sky grew

still more blue. At last the silver light came flooding over all, and

here and there the fresh snow glistened on the crags. There is

movement, palpitation, life of light through earth and sky. To walk out

on such a night, when the perturbation of storm is over and the heavens

are free, is one of the greatest pleasures offered by this winter life.

It is so light that you can read the smallest print with ease. The

upper sky looks quite black, shading by violet and sapphire into

turquoise upon the horizon. There is the colour of ivory upon the

nearest snow-fields, and the distant peaks sparkle like silver,

crystals glitter in all directions on the surface of the snow, white,

yellow, and pale blue. The stars are exceedingly keen, but only a few

can shine in the intensity of moonlight. 23The air is perfectly still,

and though icicles may be hanging from beard and moustache to the furs

beneath one's chin, there is no sensation of extreme cold.

During the earlier frosts of the season, after the first snows have

fallen, but when there is still plenty of moisture in the ground, the

loveliest fern-fronds of pure rime may be found in myriads on the

meadows. They are fashioned like perfect vegetable structures, opening

fan-shaped upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the

brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light

into iridescent colours, appearing now like emeralds, rubies, or

topazes, and now like Labrador spar, blending all hues in a wondrous

sheen. When the lake freezes for the first time, its surface is of

course quite black, and so transparent that it is easy to see the

fishes swimming in the deep beneath; but here and there, where rime has

fallen, there sparkle these fantastic flowers and ferns and mosses made

of purest frost. Nothing, indeed, can be more fascinating than the new

world revealed by frost. In shaded places of the valley you may walk

through larches and leafless alder thickets by silent farms, all

silvered over with hoar spangles—fairy forests, where the flowers and

foliage are rime. The streams are flowing half-frozen over rocks

sheeted with opaque green ice. Here it is strange to watch the swirl of

water freeing itself from these frost-shackles, and to see it eddying

beneath the overhanging eaves of frailest crystal-frosted snow. All is

so silent, still, and weird in this white world, that one marvels when

the spirit of winter will appear, or what shrill voices in the air will

make his unimaginable magic audible. Nothing happens, however, to

disturb the charm, save when a sunbeam cuts the chain of diamonds on an

alder bough, and down they drift in a thin cloud of dust. It may be

also that the air is full of floating crystals, like tiniest most

restless fire-flies 24rising and falling and passing crosswise in the

sun-illumined shade of tree or mountain-side.

It is not easy to describe these beauties of the winter-world; and yet

one word must be said about the sunsets. Let us walk out, therefore,

towards the lake at four o'clock in mid-December. The thermometer is

standing at 3°, and there is neither breath of wind nor cloud. Venus is

just visible in rose and sapphire, and the thin young moon is beside

her. To east and south the snowy ranges burn with yellow fire,

deepening to orange and crimson hues, which die away and leave a

greenish pallor. At last, the higher snows alone are livid with a last

faint tinge of light, and all beneath is quite white. But the tide of

glory turns. While the west grows momently more pale, the eastern

heavens flush with afterglow, suffuse their spaces with pink and

violet. Daffodil and tenderest emerald intermingle; and these colours

spread until the west again has rose and primrose and sapphire

wonderfully blent, and from the burning skies a light is cast upon the

valley—a phantom light, less real, more like the hues of molten gems,

than were the stationary flames of sunset. Venus and the moon meanwhile

are silvery clear. Then the whole illumination fades like magic.

All the charms of which I have been writing are combined in a

sledge-drive. With an arrowy gliding motion one passes through the

snow-world as through a dream. In the sunlight the snow surface

sparkles with its myriad stars of crystals. In the shadow it ceases to

glitter, and assumes a blueness scarcely less blue than the sky. So the

journey is like sailing through alternate tracts of light irradiate

heavens, and interstellar spaces of the clearest and most flawless

ether. The air is like the keen air of the highest glaciers. As we go,

the bells keep up a drowsy tinkling at the horse's head. The whole

landscape is transfigured—lifted high up out of commonplaceness. 25The

little hills are Monte Rosas and Mont Blancs. Scale is annihilated, and

nothing tells but form. There is hardly any colour except the blue of

sky and shadow. Everything is traced in vanishing tints, passing from

the almost amber of the distant sunlight through glowing white into

pale greys and brighter blues and deep ethereal azure. The pines stand

in black platoons upon the hillsides, with a tinge of red or orange on

their sable. Some carry masses of snow. Others have shaken their plumes

free. The châlets are like fairy houses or toys, waist-deep in stores

of winter fuel. With their mellow tones of madder and umber on the

weather-beaten woodwork relieved against the white, with fantastic

icicles and folds of snow depending from their eaves, or curled like

coverlids from roof and window-sill, they are far more picturesque than

in the summer. Colour, wherever it is found, whether in these cottages

or in a block of serpentine by the roadside, or in the golden bulrush

blades by the lake shore, takes more than double value. It is shed upon

the landscape like a spiritual and transparent veil. Most beautiful of

all are the sweeping lines of pure untroubled snow, fold over fold of

undulating softness, billowing along the skirts of the peaked hills.

There is no conveying the charm of immaterial, aë;rial, lucid beauty,

the feeling of purity and aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the

fine touch on all our senses of light, colour, form, and air, and

motion, and rare tinkling sound. The magic is like a spirit mood of

Shelley's lyric verse. And, what is perhaps most wonderful, this

delicate delight may be enjoyed without fear in the coldest weather. It

does not matter how low the temperature may be, if the sun is shining,

the air dry, and the wind asleep.

Leaving the horse-sledges on the verge of some high hill-road, and

trusting oneself to the little hand-sledge which the 26people of the

Grisons use, and which the English have christened by the Canadian term

'toboggan,' the excitement becomes far greater. The hand-sledge is

about three feet long, fifteen inches wide, and half a foot above the

ground, on runners shod with iron. Seated firmly at the back, and

guiding with the feet in front, the rider skims down precipitous slopes

and round perilous corners with a rapidity that beats a horse's pace.

Winding through sombre pine-forests, where the torrent roars fitfully

among caverns of barbed ice, and the glistening mountains tower above

in their glory of sun-smitten snow, darting round the frozen ledges at

the turnings of the road, silently gliding at a speed that seems

incredible, it is so smooth, he traverses two or three miles without

fatigue, carried onward by the mere momentum of his weight. It is a

strange and great joy. The toboggan, under these conditions, might be

compared to an enchanted boat shooting the rapids of a river; and what

adds to its fascination is the entire loneliness in which the rider

passes through those weird and ever-shifting scenes of winter radiance.

Sometimes, when the snow is drifting up the pass, and the world is

blank behind, before, and all around, it seems like plunging into

chaos. The muffled pines loom fantastically through the drift as we

rush past them, and the wind, ever and anon, detaches great masses of

snow in clouds from their bent branches. Or again at night, when the

moon is shining, and the sky is full of flaming stars, and the snow,

frozen to the hardness of marble, sparkles with innumerable crystals, a

new sense of strangeness and of joy is given to the solitude, the

swiftness, and the silence of the exercise. No other circumstances

invest the poetry of rapid motion with more fascination. Shelley, who

so loved the fancy of a boat inspired with its own instinct of life,

would have delighted in the game, and would probably have pursued it

recklessly. At the same time, 27as practised on a humbler scale nearer

home, in company, and on a run selected for convenience rather than for

picturesqueness, tobogganing is a very Bohemian amusement. No one who

indulges in it can count on avoiding hard blows and violent upsets, nor

will his efforts to maintain his equilibrium at the dangerous corners

be invariably graceful.

Nothing, it might be imagined, could be more monotonous than an Alpine

valley covered up with snow. And yet to one who has passed many months

in that seclusion Nature herself presents no monotony; for the changes

constantly wrought by light and cloud and alternations of weather on

this landscape are infinitely various. The very simplicity of the

conditions seems to assist the supreme artist. One day is wonderful

because of its unsullied purity; not a cloud visible, and the pines

clothed in velvet of rich green beneath a faultless canopy of light.

The next presents a fretwork of fine film, wrought by the south wind

over the whole sky, iridescent with delicate rainbow tints within the

influences of the sun, and ever-changing shape. On another, when the

turbulent Föhn is blowing, streamers of snow may be seen flying from

the higher ridges against a pallid background of slaty cloud, while the

gaunt ribs of the hills glisten below with fitful gleams of lurid

light. At sunrise, one morning, stealthy and mysterious vapours clothe

the mountains from their basement to the waist, while the peaks are

glistening serenely in clear daylight. Another opens with silently

falling snow. A third is rosy through the length and breadth of the

dawn-smitten valley. It is, however, impossible to catalogue the

indescribable variety of those beauties, which those who love nature

may enjoy by simply waiting on the changes of the winter in a single

station of the Alps.

28

WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS

I

Light, marvellously soft yet penetrating, everywhere diffused,

everywhere reflected without radiance, poured from the moon high above

our heads in a sky tinted through all shades and modulations of blue,

from turquoise on the horizon to opaque sapphire at the zenith—_dolce

color_. (It is difficult to use the word _colour_ for this scene

without suggesting an exaggeration. The blue is almost indefinable, yet

felt. But if possible, the total effect of the night landscape should

be rendered by careful exclusion of tints from the word-palette. The

art of the etcher is more needed than that of the painter.) Heaven

overhead is set with stars, shooting intensely, smouldering with dull

red in Aldeboran, sparkling diamond-like in Sirius, changing from

orange to crimson and green in the swart fire of yonder double star. On

the snow this moonlight falls tenderly, not in hard white light and

strong black shadow, but in tones of cream and ivory, rounding the

curves of drift. The mountain peaks alone glisten as though they were

built of silver burnished by an agate. Far away they rise diminished in

stature by the all-pervading dimness of bright light, that erases the

distinctions of daytime. On the path before our feet lie crystals of

many hues, the splinters of a thousand gems. In the wood there are

caverns of darkness, alternating with spaces of star-twinkled sky, or

windows opened between russet stems and solid branches for the 29moony

sheen. The green of the pines is felt, although invisible, so soft in

substance that it seems less like velvet than some materialised depth

of dark green shadow.

II

Snow falling noiseless and unseen. One only knows that it is falling by

the blinking of our eyes as the flakes settle on their lids and melt.

The cottage windows shine red, and moving lanterns of belated wayfarers

define the void around them. Yet the night is far from dark. The

forests and the mountain-bulk beyond the valley loom softly large and

just distinguishable through a pearly haze. The path is purest

trackless whiteness, almost dazzling though it has no light. This was

what Dante felt when he reached the lunar sphere:

Parova a me, che nube ne coprisse

Lucida, spessa, solida e pulita.

Walking silent, with insensible footfall, slowly, for the snow is deep

above our ankles, we wonder what the world would be like if this were

all. Could the human race be acclimatised to this monotony (we say)

perhaps emotion would be rarer, yet more poignant, suspended brooding

on itself, and wakening by flashes to a quintessential mood. Then fancy

changes, and the thought occurs that even so must be a planet, not yet

wholly made, nor called to take her place among the sisterhood of light

and song.

III

Sunset was fading out upon the Rhætikon and still reflected from the

Seehorn on the lake, when we entered the gorge of the Fluela—dense

pines on either hand, a mounting drift of snow in front, and faint

peaks, paling from rose to saffron, far above, beyond. There was no

sound but a tinkling stream 30and the continual jingle of our

sledge-bells. We drove at a foot's pace, our horse finding his own

path. When we left the forest, the light had all gone except for some

almost imperceptible touches of primrose on the eastern horns. It was a

moonless night, but the sky was alive with stars, and now and then one

fell. The last house in the valley was soon passed, and we entered

those bleak gorges where the wind, fine, noiseless, penetrating like an

edge of steel, poured slantwise on us from the north. As we rose, the

stars to west seemed far beneath us, and the Great Bear sprawled upon

the ridges of the lower hills outspread. We kept slowly moving onward,

upward, into what seemed like a thin impalpable mist, but was

immeasurable tracts of snow. The last cembras were left behind,

immovable upon dark granite boulders on our right. We entered a

formless and unbillowed sea of greyness, from which there rose dim

mountain-flanks that lost themselves in air. Up, ever up, and still

below us westward sank the stars. We were now 7500 feet above

sea-level, and the December night was rigid with intensity of frost.

The cold, and movement, and solemnity of space, drowsed every sense.

IV

The memory of things seen and done in moonlight is like the memory of

dreams. It is as a dream that I recall the night of our tobogganing to

Klosters, though it was full enough of active energy. The moon was in

her second quarter, slightly filmed with very high thin clouds, that

disappeared as night advanced, leaving the sky and stars in all their

lustre. A sharp frost, sinking to three degrees above zero Fahrenheit,

with a fine pure wind, such wind as here they call 'the mountain

breath.' We drove to Wolfgang in a two-horse sledge, four of us inside,

and our two Christians on the box. Up 31there, where the Alps of Death

descend to join the Lakehorn Alps, above the Wolfswalk, there is a

world of whiteness—frozen ridges, engraved like cameos of aë;rial onyx

upon the dark, star-tremulous sky; sculptured buttresses of snow,

enclosing hollows filled with diaphanous shadow, and sweeping aloft

into the upland fields of pure clear drift. Then came the swift

descent, the plunge into the pines, moon-silvered on their frosted

tops. The battalions of spruce that climb those hills defined the

dazzling snow from which they sprang, like the black tufts upon an

ermine robe. At the proper moment we left our sledge, and the big

Christian took his reins in hand to follow us. Furs and greatcoats were

abandoned. Each stood forth tightly accoutred, with short coat, and

clinging cap, and gaitered legs for the toboggan. Off we started in

line, with but brief interval between, at first slowly, then glidingly,

and when the impetus was gained, with darting, bounding, almost savage

swiftness—sweeping round corners, cutting the hard snow-path with keen

runners, avoiding the deep ruts, trusting to chance, taking advantage

of smooth places, till the rush and swing and downward swoop became

mechanical. Space was devoured. Into the massy shadows of the forest,

where the pines joined overhead, we pierced without a sound, and felt

far more than saw the great rocks with their icicles; and out again,

emerging into moonlight, met the valley spread beneath our feet, the

mighty peaks of the Silvretta and the vast blue sky. On, on, hurrying,

delaying not, the woods and hills rushed by. Crystals upon the

snow-banks glittered to the stars. Our souls would fain have stayed to

drink these marvels of the moon-world, but our limbs refused. The magic

of movement was upon us, and eight minutes swallowed the varying

impressions of two musical miles. The village lights drew near and

nearer, then the sombre village huts, and soon the speed grew less, and

soon we glided to our rest into the sleeping village street.

32

V

It was just past midnight. The moon had fallen to the western horns.

Orion's belt lay bar-like on the opening of the pass, and Sirius shot

flame on the Seehorn. A more crystalline night, more full of fulgent

stars, was never seen, stars everywhere, but mostly scattered in large

sparkles on the snow. Big Christian went in front, tugging toboggans by

their strings, as Gulliver, in some old woodcut, drew the fleets of

Lilliput. Through the brown wood-châlets of Selfrangr, up to the

undulating meadows, where the snow slept pure and crisp, he led us.

There we sat awhile and drank the clear air, cooled to zero, but

innocent and mild as mother Nature's milk. Then in an instant, down,

down through the hamlet, with its châlets, stables, pumps, and logs,

the slumbrous hamlet, where one dog barked, and darkness dwelt upon the

path of ice, down with the tempest of a dreadful speed, that shot each

rider upward in the air, and made the frame of the toboggan

tremble—down over hillocks of hard frozen snow, dashing and bounding,

to the river and the bridge. No bones were broken, though the race was

thrice renewed, and men were spilt upon the roadside by some furious

plunge. This amusement has the charm of peril and the unforeseen. In no

wise else can colder, keener air be drunken at such furious speed. The

joy, too, of the engine-driver and the steeplechaser is upon us. Alas,

that it should be so short! If only roads were better made for the

purpose, there would be no end to it; for the toboggan cannot lose his

wind. But the good thing fails at last, and from the silence of the

moon we pass into the silence of the fields of sleep.

33

VI

The new stable is a huge wooden building, with raftered lofts to stow

the hay, and stalls for many cows and horses. It stands snugly in an

angle of the pine-wood, bordering upon the great horse-meadow. Here at

night the air is warm and tepid with the breath of kine. Returning from

my forest walk, I spy one window yellow in the moonlight with a lamp. I

lift the latch. The hound knows me, and does not bark. I enter the

stable, where six horses are munching their last meal. Upon the

corn-bin sits a knecht. We light our pipes and talk. He tells me of the

valley of Arosa (a hawk's flight westward over yonder hills), how deep

in grass its summer lawns, how crystal-clear its stream, how blue its

little lakes, how pure, without a taint of mist, 'too beautiful to

paint,' its sky in winter! This knecht is an Ardüser, and the valley of

Arosa lifts itself to heaven above his Langwies home. It is his duty

now to harness a sleigh for some night-work. We shake hands and part—I

to sleep, he for the snow.

VII

The lake has frozen late this year, and there are places in it where

the ice is not yet firm. Little snow has fallen since it froze—about

three inches at the deepest, driven by winds and wrinkled like the

ribbed sea-sand. Here and there the ice-floor is quite black and clear,

reflecting stars, and dark as heaven's own depths. Elsewhere it is of a

suspicious whiteness, blurred in surface, with jagged cracks and

chasms, treacherously mended by the hand of frost. Moving slowly, the

snow cries beneath our feet, and the big crystals tinkle. These are

shaped like fern-fronds, growing fan-wise from a point, and set at

various angles, so that the moonlight takes 34them with capricious

touch. They flash, and are quenched, and flash again, light darting to

light along the level surface, while the sailing planets and the stars

look down complacent at this mimicry of heaven. Everything above,

around, beneath, is very beautiful—the slumbrous woods, the snowy

fells, and the far distance painted in faint blue upon the tender

background of the sky. Everything is placid and beautiful; and yet the

place is terrible. For, as we walk, the lake groans, with throttled

sobs, and sudden cracklings of its joints, and sighs that shiver,

undulating from afar, and pass beneath our feet, and die away in

distance when they reach the shore. And now and then an upper crust of

ice gives way; and will the gulfs then drag us down? We are in the very

centre of the lake. There is no use in thinking or in taking heed.

Enjoy the moment, then, and march. Enjoy the contrast between this

circumambient serenity and sweetness, and the dreadful sense of

insecurity beneath. Is not, indeed, our whole life of this nature? A

passage over perilous deeps, roofed by infinity and sempiternal things,

surrounded too with evanescent forms, that like these crystals, trodden

underfoot, or melted by the Föhn-wind into dew, flash, in some lucky

moment, with a light that mimics stars! But to allegorise and sermonise

is out of place here. It is but the expedient of those who cannot etch

sensation by the burin of their art of words.

VIII

It is ten o'clock upon Sylvester Abend, or New Year's Eve. Herr Buol

sits with his wife at the head of his long table. His family and

serving folk are round him. There is his mother, with little Ursula,

his child, upon her knee. The old lady is the mother of four comely

daughters and nine 35stalwart sons, the eldest of whom is now a

grizzled man. Besides our host, four of the brothers are here to-night;

the handsome melancholy Georg, who is so gentle in his speech; Simeon,

with his diplomatic face; Florian, the student of medicine; and my

friend, colossal-breasted Christian. Palmy came a little later, worried

with many cares, but happy to his heart's core. No optimist was ever

more convinced of his 6philosophy than Palmy. After them, below the

salt, were ranged the knechts and porters, the marmiton from the

kitchen, and innumerable maids. The board was tesselated with plates of

birnen-brod and eier-brod, küchli and cheese and butter; and Georg

stirred grampampuli in a mighty metal bowl. For the uninitiated, it may

be needful to explain these Davos delicacies. Birnen-brod is what the

Scotch would call a 'bun,' or massive cake, composed of sliced pears,

almonds, spices, and a little flour. Eier-brod is a saffron-coloured

sweet bread, made with eggs; and küchli is a kind of pastry, crisp and

flimsy, fashioned into various devices of cross, star, and scroll.

Grampampuli is simply brandy burnt with sugar, the most unsophisticated

punch I ever drank from tumblers. The frugal people of Davos, who live

on bread and cheese and dried meat all the year, indulge themselves but

once with these unwonted dainties in the winter.

The occasion was cheerful, and yet a little solemn. The scene was

feudal. For these Buols are the scions of a warrior race:

A race illustrious for heroic deeds;

Humbled, but not degraded.

During the six centuries through which they have lived nobles in Davos,

they have sent forth scores of fighting men to foreign lands,

ambassadors to France and Venice and the Milanese, governors to

Chiavenna and Bregaglia and the much-contested Valtelline. Members of

their house are 36Counts of Buol-Schauenstein in Austria, Freiherrs of

Muhlingen and Berenberg in the now German Empire. They keep the patent

of nobility conferred on them by Henri IV. Their ancient coat—parted

per pale azure and argent, with a dame of the fourteenth century

bearing in her hand a rose, all counterchanged—is carved in wood and

monumental marble on the churches and old houses hereabouts. And from

immemorial antiquity the Buol of Davos has sat thus on Sylvester Abend

with family and folk around him, summoned from alp and snowy field to

drink grampampuli and break the birnen-brod.

These rites performed, the men and maids began to sing—brown arms

lounging on the table, and red hands folded in white aprons—serious at

first in hymn-like cadences, then breaking into wilder measures with a

jodel at the close. There is a measured solemnity in the performance,

which strikes the stranger as somewhat comic. But the singing was good;

the voices strong and clear in tone, no hesitation and no shirking of

the melody. It was clear that the singers enjoyed the music for its own

sake, with half-shut eyes, as they take dancing, solidly, with

deep-drawn breath, sustained and indefatigable. But eleven struck; and

the two Christians, my old friend, and Palmy, said we should be late

for church. They had promised to take me with them to see bell-ringing

in the tower. All the young men of the village meet, and draw lots in

the Stube of the Rathhaus. One party tolls the old year out; the other

rings the new year in. He who comes last is sconced three litres of

Veltliner for the company. This jovial fine was ours to pay to-night.

When we came into the air, we found a bitter frost; the whole sky

clouded over; a north wind whirling snow from alp and forest through

the murky gloom. The benches and 37broad walnut tables of the Bathhaus

were crowded with men, in shaggy homespun of brown and grey frieze. Its

low wooden roof and walls enclosed an atmosphere of smoke, denser than

the external snow-drift. But our welcome was hearty, and we found a

score of friends. Titanic Fopp, whose limbs are Michelangelesque in

length; spectacled Morosani; the little tailor Kramer, with a French

horn on his knees; the puckered forehead of the Baumeister; the

Troll-shaped postman; peasants and woodmen, known on far excursions

upon pass and upland valley. Not one but carried on his face the memory

of winter strife with avalanche and snow-drift, of horses struggling

through Fluela whirlwinds, and wine-casks tugged across Bernina, and

haystacks guided down precipitous gullies at thundering speed 'twixt

pine and pine, and larches felled in distant glens beside the frozen

watercourses. Here we were, all met together for one hour from our

several homes and occupations, to welcome in the year with clinked

glasses and cries of _Prosit Neujahr!_

The tolling bells above us stopped. Our turn had come. Out into the

snowy air we tumbled, beneath the row of wolves' heads that adorn the

pent-house roof. A few steps brought us to the still God's acre, where

the snow lay deep and cold upon high-mounded graves of many

generations. We crossed it silently, bent our heads to the low Gothic

arch, and stood within the tower. It was thick darkness there. But far

above, the bells began again to clash and jangle confusedly, with

volleys of demonic joy. Successive flights of ladders, each ending in a

giddy platform hung across the gloom, climb to the height of some

hundred and fifty feet; and all their rungs were crusted with frozen

snow, deposited by trampling boots. For up and down these stairs,

ascending and descending, moved other than angels—the friezejacketed

38Bürschen, Grisons bears, rejoicing in their exercise, exhilarated

with the tingling noise of beaten metal. We reached the first room

safely, guided by firm-footed Christian, whose one candle just defined

the rough walls and the slippery steps. There we found a band of boys,

pulling ropes that set the bells in motion. But our destination was not

reached. One more aë;rial ladder, perpendicular in darkness, brought us

swiftly to the home of sound. It is a small square chamber, where the

bells are hung, filled with the interlacement of enormous beams, and

pierced to north and south by open windows, from whose parapets I saw

the village and the valley spread beneath. The fierce wind hurried

through it, charged with snow, and its narrow space was thronged with

men. Men on the platform, men on the window-sills, men grappling the

bells with iron arms, men brushing by to reach the stairs, crossing,

recrossing, shouldering their mates, drinking red wine from gigantic

beakers, exploding crackers, firing squibs, shouting and yelling in

corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted, one could see it by their

open mouths and glittering eyes; but not a sound from human lungs could

reach our ears. The overwhelming incessant thunder of the bells drowned

all. It thrilled the tympanum, ran through the marrow of the spine,

vibrated in the inmost entrails. Yet the brain was only steadied and

excited by this sea of brazen noise. After a few moments I knew the

place and felt at home in it. Then I enjoyed a spectacle which

sculptors might have envied. For they ring the bells in Davos after

this fashion:—The lads below set them going with ropes. The men above

climb in pairs on ladders to the beams from which they are suspended.

Two mighty pine-trees, roughly squared and built into the walls, extend

from side to side across the belfry. Another from which the bells hang,

connects these massive trunks at right 39angles. Just where the central

beam is wedged into the two parallel supports, the ladders reach them

from each side of the belfry, so that, bending from the higher rung of

the ladder, and leaning over, stayed upon the lateral beam, each pair

of men can keep one bell in movement with their hands. Each comrade

plants one leg upon the ladder, and sets the other knee firmly athwart

the horizontal pine. Then round each other's waist they twine left arm

and right. The two have thus become one man. Right arm and left are

free to grasp the bell's horns, sprouting at its crest beneath the

beam. With a grave rhythmic motion, bending sideward in a close

embrace, swaying and returning to their centre from the well-knit

loins, they drive the force of each strong muscle into the vexed bell.

The impact is earnest at first, but soon it becomes frantic. The men

take something from each other of exalted enthusiasm. This efflux of

their combined energies inspires them and exasperates the mighty

resonance of metal which they rule. They are lost in a trance of what

approximates to dervish passion—so thrilling is the surge of sound, so

potent are the rhythms they obey. Men come and tug them by the heels.

One grasps the starting thews upon their calves. Another is impatient

for their place. But they strain still, locked together, and forgetful

of the world. At length they have enough: then slowly, clingingly

unclasp, turn round with gazing eyes, and are resumed, sedately, into

the diurnal round of common life. Another pair is in their room upon

the beam.

The Englishman who saw these things stood looking up, enveloped in his

ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One

candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when

his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for

some moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the 40swinging

bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely whether he ascribed

too much of feeling to the men he watched. But no, that was impossible.

There are emotions deeply seated in the joy of exercise, when the body

is brought into play, and masses move in concert, of which the subject

is but half conscious. Music and dance, and the delirium of battle or

the chase, act thus upon spontaneous natures. The mystery of rhythm and

associated energy and blood tingling in sympathy is here. It lies at

the root of man's most tyrannous instinctive impulses.

It was past one when we reached home, and now a meditative man might

well have gone to bed. But no one thinks of sleeping on Sylvester

Abend. So there followed bowls of punch in one friend's room, where

English, French, and Germans blent together in convivial Babel; and

flasks of old Montagner in another. Palmy, at this period, wore an

archdeacon's hat, and smoked a churchwarden's pipe; and neither were

his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from the

association. Late in the morning we must sally forth, they said, and

roam the town. For it is the custom here on New Year's night to greet

acquaintances, and ask for hospitality, and no one may deny these

self-invited guests. We turned out again into the grey snow-swept

gloom, a curious Comus—not at all like Greeks, for we had neither

torches in our hands nor rose-wreaths to suspend upon a lady's

door-posts. And yet I could not refrain, at this supreme moment of

jollity, in the zero temperature, amid my Grisons friends, from humming

to myself verses from the Greek Anthology:—

The die is cast! Nay, light the torch!

I'll take the road! Up, courage, ho!

Why linger pondering in the porch?

Upon Love's revel we will go!

Shake off those fumes of wine! Hang care

And caution! What has Love to do

With prudence? Let the torches flare!

Quick, drown the doubts that hampered you!

Cast weary wisdom to the wind!

One thing, but one alone, I know:

Love bent e'en Jove and made him blind

Upon Love's revel we will go!

41

And then again:—

I've drunk sheer madness! Not with wine,

But old fantastic tales, I'll arm

My heart in heedlessness divine,

And dare the road, nor dream of harm!

I'll join Love's rout! Let thunder break,

Let lightning blast me by the way!

Invulnerable Love shall shake

His ægis o'er my head to-day.

This last epigram was not inappropriate to an invalid about to begin

the fifth act in a roystering night's adventure. And still once more:—

Cold blows the winter wind; 'tis Love,

Whose sweet eyes swim with honeyed tears,

That bears me to thy doors, my love,

Tossed by the storm of hopes and fears.

Cold blows the blast of aching Love;

But be thou for my wandering sail,

Adrift upon these waves of love,

Safe harbour from the whistling gale!

However, upon this occasion, though we had winter-wind enough, and cold

enough, there was not much love in the business. My arm was firmly

clenched in Christian Buol's, and Christian Palmy came behind, trolling

out songs in Italian dialect, with still recurring _canaille_ choruses,

of which the facile rhymes seemed mostly made on a prolonged

42_amu-u-u-r_. It is noticeable that Italian ditties are specially

designed for fellows shouting in the streets at night. They seem in

keeping there, and nowhere else that I could ever see. And these

Davosers took to them naturally when the time for Comus came. It was

between four and five in the morning, and nearly all the houses in the

place were dark. The tall church-tower and spire loomed up above us in

grey twilight. The tireless wind still swept thin snow from fell and

forest. But the frenzied bells had sunk into their twelvemonth's

slumber, which shall be broken only by decorous tollings at less

festive times. I wondered whether they were tingling still with the

heart-throbs and with the pressure of those many arms? Was their old

age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life—the young men who had

clung to them like bees to lily-bells, and shaken all their locked-up

tone and shrillness into the wild winter air? Alas! how many

generations of the young have handled them; and they are still there,

frozen in their belfry; and the young grow middle-aged, and old, and

die at last; and the bells they grappled in their lust of manhood toll

them to their graves, on which the tireless wind will, winter after

winter, sprinkle snow from alps and forests which they knew.

'There is a light,' cried Christian, 'up in Anna's window!' 'A light! a

light!' the Comus shouted. But how to get at the window, which is

pretty high above the ground, and out of reach of the most ardent

revellers? We search a neighbouring shed, extract a stable-ladder, and

in two seconds Palmy has climbed to the topmost rung, while Christian

and Georg hold it firm upon the snow beneath. Then begins a passage

from some comic opera of Mozart's or Cimarosa's—an escapade familiar to

Spanish or Italian students, which recalls the stage. It is an episode

from 'Don Giovanni,' translated to this dark-etched scene of snowy

hills, and 43Gothic tower, and mullioned windows deep embayed beneath

their eaves and icicles. _Deh vieni alla finestra!_ sings

Palmy-Leporello; the chorus answers: _Deh vieni! Perchè non vieni

ancora?_ pleads Leporello; the chorus shouts: _Perchè? Mio amu-u-u-r_,

sighs Leporello; and Echo cries, _amu-u-u-r!_ All the wooing, be it

noticed, is conducted in Italian. But the actors murmur to each other

in Davoser Deutsch, 'She won't come, Palmy! It is far too late; she is

gone to bed. Come down; you'll wake the village with your

caterwauling!' But Leporello waves his broad archdeacon's hat, and

resumes a flood of flexible Bregaglian. He has a shrewd suspicion that

the girl is peeping from behind the window curtain; and tells us,

bending down from the ladder, in a hoarse stage-whisper, that we must

have patience; 'these girls are kittle cattle, who take long to draw:

but if your lungs last out, they're sure to show.' And Leporello is

right. Faint heart ne'er won fair lady. From the summit of his ladder,

by his eloquent Italian tongue, he brings the shy bird down at last. We

hear the unbarring of the house door, and a comely maiden, in her

Sunday dress, welcomes us politely to her ground-floor sitting-room.

The Comus enters, in grave order, with set speeches, handshakes, and

inevitable _Prosits_! It is a large low chamber, with a huge stone

stove, wide benches fixed along the walls, and a great oval table. We

sit how and where we can. Red wine is produced, and eier-brod and

küchli. 44Fräulein Anna serves us sedately, holding her own with decent

self-respect against the inrush of the revellers. She is quite alone;

but are not her father and mother in bed above, and within earshot?

Besides, the Comus, even at this abnormal hour and after an abnormal

night, is well conducted. Things seem slipping into a decorous

wine-party, when Leporello readjusts the broad-brimmed hat upon his

head, and very cleverly acts a little love-scene for our benefit.

Fräulein Anna takes this as a delicate compliment, and the thing is so

prettily done in truth, that not the sternest taste could be offended.

Meanwhile another party of night-wanderers, attracted by our mirth,

break in. More _Prosits_ and clinked glasses follow; and with a fair

good-morning to our hostess, we retire.

It is too late to think of bed. 'The quincunx of heaven,' as Sir Thomas

Browne phrased it on a dissimilar occasion, 'runs low.... The huntsmen

are up in America; and not in America only, for the huntsmen, if there

are any this night in Graubünden, have long been out upon the snow, and

the stable-lads are dragging the sledges from their sheds to carry down

the mails to Landquart. We meet the porters from the various hotels,

bringing letter-bags and luggage to the post. It is time to turn in and

take a cup of black coffee against the rising sun.

IX

Some nights, even in Davos, are spent, even by an invalid, in bed. A

leaflet, therefore, of 'Sleep-chasings' may not inappropriately be

flung, as envoy to so many wanderings on foot and sledge upon the

winter snows.

The first is a confused medley of things familiar and things strange. I

have been dreaming of far-away old German towns, with gabled houses

deep in snow; dreaming of châlets in forgotten Alpine glens, where

wood-cutters come plunging into sleepy light from gloom, and sinking

down beside the stove to shake the drift from their rough shoulders;

dreaming of vast veils of icicles upon the gaunt black rocks in places

where no foot of man will pass, and where the snow is weaving eyebrows

over the ledges of grey whirlwind-beaten precipices; dreaming of

Venice, forlorn beneath the windy drip of rain, the gas lamps

flickering on the swimming piazzetta, the barche 45idle, the gondolier

wrapped in his thread-bare cloak, alone; dreaming of Apennines, with

world-old cities, brown, above the brown sea of dead chestnut boughs;

dreaming of stormy tides, and watchers aloft in lighthouses when day is

finished; dreaming of dead men and women and dead children in the

earth, far down beneath the snow-drifts, six feet deep. And then I lift

my face, awaking, from my pillow; the pallid moon is on the valley, and

the room is filled with spectral light.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is a hospice in an unfrequented

pass, between sad peaks, beside a little black lake, overdrifted with

soft snow. I pass into the house-room, gliding silently. An old man and

an old woman are nodding, bowed in deepest slumber, by the stove. A

young man plays the zither on a table. He lifts his head, still

modulating with his fingers on the strings. He looks right through me

with wide anxious eyes. He does not see me, but sees Italy, I know, and

some one wandering on a sandy shore.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's Church in Wien.

Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the choir. There is fog in the

aisles; but through the sleepy air and over the red candles flies a

wild soprano's voice, a boy's soul in its singing sent to heaven.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. From the mufflers in which his father,

the mountebank, has wrapped the child, to carry him across the heath, a

little tumbling-boy emerges in soiled tights. He is half asleep. His

father scrapes the fiddle. The boy shortens his red belt, kisses his

fingers to us, and ties himself into a knot among the glasses on the

table.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. I am on the parapet of a huge circular

tower, hollow like a well, and pierced with windows at irregular

intervals. The parapet is broad, and 46slabbed with red Verona marble.

Around me are athletic men, all naked, in the strangest attitudes of

studied rest, down-gazing, as I do, into the depths below. There comes

a confused murmur of voices, and the tower is threaded and rethreaded

with great cables. Up these there climb to us a crowd of young men,

clinging to the ropes and flinging their bodies sideways on aë;rial

trapezes. My heart trembles with keen joy and terror. For nowhere else

could plastic forms be seen more beautiful, and nowhere else is peril

more apparent. Leaning my chin upon the utmost verge, I wait. I watch

one youth, who smiles and soars to me; and when his face is almost

touching mine, he speaks, but what he says I know not.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. The whole world rocks to its

foundations. The mountain summits that I know are shaken. They bow

their bristling crests. They are falling, falling on us, and the earth

is riven. I wake in terror, shouting: INSOLITIS TREMUERUNT MOTIBUS

ALPES! An earthquake, slight but real, has stirred the ever-wakeful

Vesta of the brain to this Virgilian quotation.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. Once more at night I sledge alone upon

the Klosters road. It is the point where the woods close over it and

moonlight may not pierce the boughs. There come shrill cries of many

voices from behind, and rushings that pass by and vanish. Then on their

sledges I behold the phantoms of the dead who died in Davos, longing

for their homes; and each flies past me, shrieking in the still cold

air; and phosphorescent like long meteors, the pageant turns the

windings of the road below and disappears.

I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is the top of some high mountain,

where the crags are cruelly tortured and cast in enormous splinters on

the ledges of cliffs grey with old-world ice. A ravine, opening at my

feet, plunges 47down immeasurably to a dim and distant sea. Above me

soars a precipice embossed with a gigantic ice-bound shape. As I gaze

thereon, I find the lineaments and limbs of a Titanic man chained and

nailed to the rock. His beard has grown for centuries, and flowed this

way and that, adown his breast and over to the stone on either side;

and the whole of him is covered with a greenish ice, ancient beyond the

memory of man. 'This is Prometheus,' I whisper to myself, 'and I am

alone on Caucasus.'

48

BACCHUS IN GRAUBÜNDEN

I

Some years' residence in the Canton of the Grisons made me familiar

with all sorts of Valtelline wine; with masculine but rough _Inferno_,

generous _Forzato_, delicate _Sassella_, harsher _Montagner_, the

raspberry flavour of _Grumello_, the sharp invigorating twang of

_Villa_. The colour, ranging from garnet to almandine or ruby, told me

the age and quality of wine; and I could judge from the crust it forms

upon the bottle, whether it had been left long enough in wood to ripen.

I had furthermore arrived at the conclusion that the best Valtelline

can only be tasted in cellars of the Engadine or Davos, where this

vintage matures slowly in the mountain air, and takes a flavour unknown

at lower levels. In a word, it had amused my leisure to make or think

myself a connoisseur. My literary taste was tickled by the praise

bestowed in the Augustan age on Rhætic grapes by Virgil:

Et quo te carmine dicam,

Rhætica? nec cellis ideo contende Falernis.

I piqued myself on thinking that could the poet but have drank one

bottle at Samaden—where Stilicho, by the way, in his famous recruiting

expedition may perhaps have drank it—he would have been less chary in

his panegyric. For the point of inferiority on which he seems to

insist, namely, that Valtelline wine does not keep well in cellar, is

only proper to this vintage in Italian climate.

49Such meditations led my fancy on the path of history. Is there truth,

then, in the dim tradition that this mountain land was colonised by

Etruscans? Is _Ras_ the root of Rhætia? The Etruscans were accomplished

wine-growers, we know. It was their Montepulciano which drew the Gauls

to Rome, if Livy can be trusted. Perhaps they first planted the vine in

Valtelline. Perhaps its superior culture in that district may be due to

ancient use surviving in a secluded Alpine valley. One thing is

certain, that the peasants of Sondrio and Tirano understand viticulture

better than the Italians of Lombardy.

Then my thoughts ran on to the period of modern history, when the

Grisons seized the Valtelline in lieu of war-pay from the Dukes of

Milan. For some three centuries they held it as a subject province.

From the Rathhaus at Davos or Chur they sent their nobles—Von Salis and

Buol, Planta and Sprecher von Bernegg—across the hills as governors or

podestàs to Poschiavo, Sondrio, Tirano, and Morbegno. In those old days

the Valtelline wines came duly every winter over snow-deep passes to

fill the cellars of the Signori Grigioni. That quaint traveller Tom

Coryat, in his so-called 'Crudities,' notes the custom early in the

seventeenth century. And as that custom then obtained, it still

subsists with little alteration. The wine-carriers—Weinführer, as they

are called—first scaled the Bernina pass, halting then as now, perhaps

at Poschiavo and Pontresina. Afterwards, in order to reach Davos, the

pass of the Scaletta rose before them—a wilderness of untracked

snow-drifts. The country-folk still point to narrow, light

hand-sledges, on which the casks were charged before the last pitch of

the pass. Some wine came, no doubt, on pack-saddles. A meadow in front

of the Dischma-Thal, where the pass ends, still bears the name of the

Ross-Weid, or horse-pasture. It was here that the beasts 50of burden

used for this wine-service, rested after their long labours. In

favourable weather the whole journey from Tirano would have occupied at

least four days, with scanty halts at night.

The Valtelline slipped from the hands of the Grisons early in this

century. It is rumoured that one of the Von Salis family negotiated

matters with Napoleon more for his private benefit than for the

interests of the state. However this may have been, when the Graubünden

became a Swiss Canton, after four centuries of sovereign independence,

the whole Valtelline passed to Austria, and so eventually to Italy.

According to modern and just notions of nationality, this was right. In

their period of power, the Grisons masters had treated their Italian

dependencies with harshness. The Valtelline is an Italian valley,

connected with the rest of the peninsula by ties of race and language.

It is, moreover, geographically linked to Italy by the great stream of

the Adda, which takes its rise upon the Stelvio, and after passing

through the Lake of Como, swells the volume of the Po.

But, though politically severed from the Valtelline, the Engadiners and

Davosers have not dropped their old habit of importing its best

produce. What they formerly levied as masters, they now acquire by

purchase. The Italian revenue derives a large profit from the frontier

dues paid at the gate between Tirano and Poschiavo on the Bernina road.

Much of the same wine enters Switzerland by another route, travelling

from Sondrio to Chiavenna and across the Splügen. But until quite

recently, the wine itself could scarcely be found outside the Canton.

It was indeed quoted upon Lombard wine-lists. Yet no one drank it; and

when I tasted it at Milan, I found it quite unrecognisable. The fact

seems to be that the Graubündeners alone know how to 51deal with it;

and, as I have hinted, the wine requires a mountain climate for its

full development.

II

The district where the wine of Valtellina is grown extends, roughly

speaking, from Tirano to Morbegno, a distance of some fifty-four miles.

The best sorts come from the middle of this region. High up in the

valley, soil and climate are alike less favourable. Low down a coarser,

earthier quality springs from fat land where the valley broadens. The

northern hillsides to a very considerable height above the river are

covered with vineyards. The southern slopes on the left bank of the

Adda, lying more in shade, yield but little. Inferno, Grumello, and

Perla di Sassella are the names of famous vineyards. Sassella is the

general name for a large tract. Buying an Inferno, Grumello, or Perla

di Sassella wine, it would be absurd to suppose that one obtained it

precisely from the eponymous estate. But as each of these vineyards

yields a marked quality of wine, which is taken as standard-giving, the

produce of the whole district may be broadly classified as approaching

more or less nearly to one of these accepted types. The Inferno,

Grumello, and Perla di Sassella of commerce are therefore three sorts

of good Valtelline, ticketed with famous names to indicate certain

differences of quality. Montagner, as the name implies, is a somewhat

lighter wine, grown higher up in the hill-vineyards. And of this class

there are many species, some approximating to Sassella in delicacy of

flavour, others approaching the tart lightness of the Villa vintage.

This last takes its title from a village in the neighbourhood of

Tirano, where a table-wine is chiefly grown.

Forzato is the strongest, dearest, longest-lived of this 52whole family

of wines. It is manufactured chiefly at Tirano; and, as will be

understood from its name, does not profess to belong to any one of the

famous localities. Forzato or Sforzato, forced or enforced, is in fact

a wine which has undergone a more artificial process. In German the

people call it Strohwein, which also points to the method of its

preparation. The finest grapes are selected and dried in the sun (hence

the _Stroh_) for a period of eight or nine weeks. When they have almost

become raisins, they are pressed. The must is heavily charged with

sugar, and ferments powerfully. Wine thus made requires several years

to ripen. Sweet at first, it takes at last a very fine quality and

flavour, and is rough, almost acid, on the tongue. Its colour too turns

from a deep rich crimson to the tone of tawny port, which indeed it

much resembles.

Old Forzato, which has been long in cask, and then perhaps three years

in bottle, will fetch at least six francs, or may rise to even ten

francs a flask. The best Sassella rarely reaches more than five francs.

Good Montagner and Grumello can be had perhaps for four francs; and

Inferno of a special quality for six francs. Thus the average price of

old Valtelline wine may be taken as five francs a bottle. These, I

should observe, are hotel prices.

Valtelline wines bought in the wood vary, of course, according to their

age and year of vintage. I have found that from 2.50 fr. to 3.50 fr.

per litre is a fair price for sorts fit to bottle. The new wine of 1881

sold in the following winter at prices varying from 1.05 fr. to 1.80

fr. per litre.

It is customary for the Graubünden wine-merchants to buy up the whole

produce of a vineyard from the peasants at the end of the vintage. They

go in person or depute their agents to inspect the wine, make their

bargains, and seal the cellars where the wine is stored. Then, when the

snow has 53fallen, their own horses with sleighs and trusted servants

go across the passes to bring it home. Generally they have some local

man of confidence at Tirano, the starting-point for the homeward

journey, who takes the casks up to that place and sees them duly

charged. Merchants of old standing maintain relations with the same

peasants, taking their wine regularly; so that from Lorenz Gredig at

Pontresina or Andreas Gredig at Davos Dörfli, from Fanconi at Samaden,

or from Giacomi at Chiavenna, special qualities of wine, the produce of

certain vineyards, are to be obtained. Up to the present time this wine

trade has been conducted with simplicity and honesty by both the

dealers and the growers. One chief merit of Valtelline wine is that it

is pure. How long so desirable a state of things will survive the slow

but steady development of an export business may be questioned.

III

With so much practical and theoretical interest in the produce of the

Valtelline to stimulate my curiosity, I determined to visit the

district at the season when the wine was leaving it. It was the winter

of 1881-82, a winter of unparalleled beauty in the high Alps. Day

succeeded day without a cloud. Night followed night with steady stars,

gliding across clear mountain ranges and forests of dark pines

unstirred by wind. I could not hope for a more prosperous season; and

indeed I made such use of it, that between the months of January and

March I crossed six passes of the Alps in open sleighs—the Fluela

Bernina, Splügen, Julier, Maloja, and Albula—with less difficulty and

discomfort in mid-winter than the traveller may often find on them in

June.

At the end of January, my friend Christian and I left Davos long before

the sun was up, and ascended for four 54hours through the interminable

snow-drifts of the Fluela in a cold grey shadow. The sun's light seemed

to elude us. It ran along the ravine through which we toiled; dipped

down to touch the topmost pines above our heads; rested in golden calm

upon the Schiahorn at our back; capriciously played here and there

across the Weisshorn on our left, and made the precipices of the

Schwartzhorn glitter on our right. But athwart our path it never fell

until we reached the very summit of the pass. Then we passed quietly

into the full glory of the winter morning—a tranquil flood of sunbeams,

pouring through air of crystalline purity, frozen and motionless. White

peaks and dark brown rocks soared up, cutting a sky of almost purple

blueness. A stillness that might be felt brooded over the whole world;

but in that stillness there was nothing sad, no suggestion of suspended

vitality. It was the stillness rather of untroubled health, of strength

omnipotent but unexerted.

From the Hochspitz of the Fluela the track plunges at one bound into

the valley of the Inn, following a narrow cornice carved from the

smooth bank of snow, and hung, without break or barrier, a thousand

feet or more above the torrent. The summer road is lost in snow-drifts.

The galleries built as a protection from avalanches, which sweep in

rivers from those grim, bare fells above, are blocked with snow. Their

useless arches yawn, as we glide over or outside them, by paths which

instinct in our horse and driver traces. As a fly may creep along a

house-roof, slanting downwards we descend. One whisk from the swinged

tail of an avalanche would hurl us, like a fly, into the ruin of the

gaping gorge. But this season little snow has fallen on the higher

hills; and what still lies there, is hard frozen. Therefore we have no

fear, as we whirl fast and faster from the snow-fields into the black

forests of gnarled cembras and wind-wearied pines. Then 55Süss is

reached, where the Inn hurries its shallow waters clogged with

ice-floes through a sleepy hamlet. The stream is pure and green; for

the fountains of the glaciers are locked by winter frosts; and only

clear rills from perennial sources swell its tide. At Süss we lost the

sun, and toiled in garish gloom and silence, nipped by the

ever-deepening cold of evening, upwards for four hours to Samaden.

The next day was spent in visiting the winter colony at San Moritz,

where the Kulm Hotel, tenanted by some twenty guests, presented in its

vastness the appearance of a country-house. One of the prettiest spots

in the world is the ice-rink, fashioned by the skill of Herr Caspar

Badrutt on a high raised terrace, commanding the valley of the Inn and

the ponderous bulwarks of Bernina. The silhouettes of skaters, defined

against that landscape of pure white, passed to and fro beneath a

cloudless sky. Ladies sat and worked or read on seats upon the ice. Not

a breath of wind was astir, and warm beneficent sunlight flooded the

immeasurable air. Only, as the day declined, some iridescent films

overspread the west; and just above Maloja the apparition of a mock

sun—a well-defined circle of opaline light, broken at regular intervals

by four globes—seemed to portend a change of weather. This forecast

fortunately proved delusive. We drove back to Samaden across the silent

snow, enjoying those delicate tints of rose and violet and saffron

which shed enchantment for one hour over the white monotony of Alpine

winter.

At half-past eight next morning, the sun was rising from behind Pitz

Languard, as we crossed the Inn and drove through Pontresina in the

glorious light, with all its huge hotels quite empty and none but a few

country-folk abroad. Those who only know the Engadine in summer have

little conception of its beauty. Winter softens the hard details of

bare rock, and rounds the melancholy grassless mountain 56flanks,

suspending icicles to every ledge and spangling the curved surfaces of

snow with crystals. The landscape gains in purity, and, what sounds

unbelievable, in tenderness. Nor does it lose in grandeur. Looking up

the valley of the Morteratsch that morning, the glaciers were

distinguishable in hues of green and sapphire through their veil of

snow; and the highest peaks soared in a transparency of amethystine

light beneath a blue sky traced with filaments of windy cloud. Some

storm must have disturbed the atmosphere in Italy, for fan-shaped mists

frothed out around the sun, and curled themselves above the mountains

in fine feathery wreaths, melting imperceptibly into air, until, when

we had risen above the cembras, the sky was one deep solid blue.

All that upland wilderness is lovelier now than in the summer; and on

the morning of which I write, the air itself was far more summery than

I have ever known it in the Engadine in August. We could scarcely bear

to place our hands upon the woodwork of the sleigh because of the

fierce sun's heat. And yet the atmosphere was crystalline with windless

frost. As though to increase the strangeness of these contrasts, the

pavement of beaten snow was stained with red drops spilt from

wine-casks which pass over it.

The chief feature of the Bernina—what makes it a dreary pass enough in

summer, but infinitely beautiful in winter—is its breadth; illimitable

undulations of snow-drifts; immensity of open sky; unbroken lines of

white, descending in smooth curves from glittering ice-peaks.

A glacier hangs in air above the frozen lakes, with all its green-blue

ice-cliffs glistening in intensest light. Pitz Palu shoots aloft like

sculptured marble, delicately veined with soft aë;rial shadows of

translucent blue. At the summit of the pass all Italy seems to burst

upon the eyes in those steep serried ranges, with their craggy crests,

violet-hued in noonday 57sunshine, as though a bloom of plum or grape

had been shed over them, enamelling their jagged precipices.

The top of the Bernina is not always thus in winter. It has a bad

reputation for the fury of invading storms, when falling snow hurtles

together with snow scooped from the drifts in eddies, and the weltering

white sea shifts at the will of whirlwinds. The Hospice then may be

tenanted for days together by weather-bound wayfarers; and a line drawn

close beneath its roof shows how two years ago the whole building was

buried in one snow-shroud. This morning we lounged about the door,

while our horses rested and postillions and carters pledged one another

in cups of new Veltliner.

The road takes an awful and sudden dive downwards, quite irrespective

of the carefully engineered post-track. At this season the path is

badly broken into ruts and chasms by the wine traffic. In some places

it was indubitably perilous: a narrow ledge of mere ice skirting thinly

clad hard-frozen banks of snow, which fell precipitately sideways for

hundreds of sheer feet. We did not slip over this parapet, though we

were often within an inch of doing so. Had our horse stumbled, it is

not probable that I should have been writing this.

When we came to the galleries which defend the road from avalanches, we

saw ahead of us a train of over forty sledges ascending, all charged

with Valtelline wine. Our postillions drew up at the inner side of the

gallery, between massive columns of the purest ice dependent from the

rough-hewn roof and walls of rock. A sort of open _loggia_ on the

farther side framed vignettes of the Valtelline mountains in their hard

cerulean shadows and keen sunlight. Between us and the view defiled the

wine-sledges; and as each went by, the men made us drink out of their

_trinketti_. These are oblong, hexagonal wooden kegs, holding about

fourteen litres, 58which the carter fills with wine before he leaves

the Valtelline, to cheer him on the homeward journey. You raise it in

both hands, and when the bung has been removed, allow the liquor to

flow stream-wise down your throat. It was a most extraordinary Bacchic

procession—a pomp which, though undreamed of on the banks of the

Ilissus, proclaimed the deity of Dionysos in authentic fashion.

Struggling horses, grappling at the ice-bound floor with sharp-spiked

shoes; huge, hoarse drivers, some clad in sheepskins from Italian

valleys, some brown as bears in rough Graubünden homespun; casks,

dropping their spilth of red wine on the snow; greetings, embracings;

patois of Bergamo, Romansch, and German roaring around the low-browed

vaults and tingling ice pillars; pourings forth of libations of the new

strong Valtelline on breasts and beards;—the whole made up a scene of

stalwart jollity and manful labour such as I have nowhere else in such

wild circumstances witnessed. Many Davosers were there, the men of

Andreas Gredig, Valär, and so forth; and all of these, on greeting

Christian, forced us to drain a _Schluck_ from their unmanageable

cruses. Then on they went, crying, creaking, struggling, straining

through the corridor, which echoed deafeningly, the gleaming crystals

of those hard Italian mountains in their winter raiment building a

background of still beauty to the savage Bacchanalian riot of the team.

How little the visitors who drink Valtelline wine at S. Moritz or Davos

reflect by what strange ways it reaches them. A sledge can scarcely be

laden with more than one cask of 300 litres on the ascent; and this

cask, according to the state of the road, has many times to be shifted

from wheels to runners and back again before the journey is

accomplished. One carter will take charge of two horses, and

consequently of two sledges and two casks, driving them both by voice

and gesture rather than by rein. When they leave the Valtelline, 59the

carters endeavour, as far as possible, to take the pass in gangs, lest

bad weather or an accident upon the road should overtake them singly.

At night they hardly rest three hours, and rarely think of sleeping,

but spend the time in drinking and conversation. The horses are fed and

littered; but for them too the night-halt is little better than a

baiting-time. In fair weather the passage of the mountain is not

difficult, though tiring. But woe to men and beasts alike if they

encounter storms! Not a few perish in the passes; and it frequently

happens that their only chance is to unyoke the horses and leave the

sledges in a snow-wreath, seeking for themselves such shelter as may

possibly be gained, frost-bitten, after hours of battling with

impermeable drifts. The wine is frozen into one solid mass of rosy ice

before it reaches Pontresina. This does not hurt the young vintage, but

it is highly injurious to wine of some years' standing. The perils of

the journey are aggravated by the savage temper of the drivers.

Jealousies between the natives of rival districts spring up; and there

are men alive who have fought the whole way down from Fluela Hospice to

Davos Platz with knives and stones, hammers and hatchets, wooden staves

and splintered cart-wheels, staining the snow with blood, and bringing

broken pates, bruised limbs, and senseless comrades home to their women

to be tended.

Bacchus Alpinus shepherded his train away from us to northward, and we

passed forth into noonday from the gallery. It then seemed clear that

both conductor and postillion were sufficiently merry. The plunge they

took us down those frozen parapets, with shriek and _jauchzen_ and

cracked whips, was more than ever dangerous. Yet we reached La Rosa

safely. This is a lovely solitary spot, beside a rushing stream, among

grey granite boulders grown with spruce and rhododendron: a veritable

rose of Sharon 60blooming in the desert. The wastes of the Bernina

stretch above, and round about are leaguered some of the most

forbidding sharp-toothed peaks I ever saw. Onwards, across the silent

snow, we glided in immitigable sunshine, through opening valleys and

pine-woods, past the robber-huts of Pisciadella, until at evenfall we

rested in the roadside inn at Poschiavo.

IV

The snow-path ended at Poschiavo; and when, as usual, we started on our

journey next day at sunrise, it was in a carriage upon wheels. Yet even

here we were in full midwinter. Beyond Le Prese the lake presented one

sheet of smooth black ice, reflecting every peak and chasm of the

mountains, and showing the rocks and water-weeds in the clear green

depths below. The glittering floor stretched away for acres of

untenanted expanse, with not a skater to explore those dark mysterious

coves, or strike across the slanting sunlight poured from clefts in the

impendent hills. Inshore the substance of the ice sparkled here and

there with iridescence like the plumelets of a butterfly's wing under

the microscope, wherever light happened to catch the jagged or oblique

flaws that veined its solid crystal.

From the lake the road descends suddenly for a considerable distance

through a narrow gorge, following a torrent which rushes among granite

boulders. Chestnut trees begin to replace the pines. The sunnier

terraces are planted with tobacco, and at a lower level vines appear at

intervals in patches. One comes at length to a great red gate across

the road, which separates Switzerland from Italy, and where the export

dues on wine are paid. The Italian custom-house is romantically perched

above the torrent. Two courteous and elegant _finanzieri_, mere boys,

were sitting wrapped in 61their military cloaks and reading novels in

the sun as we drove up. Though they made some pretence of examining the

luggage, they excused themselves with sweet smiles and apologetic

eyes—it was a disagreeable duty!

A short time brought us to the first village in the Valtelline, where

the road bifurcates northward to Bormio and the Stelvio pass, southward

to Sondrio and Lombardy. It is a little hamlet, known by the name of La

Madonna di Tirano, having grown up round a pilgrimage church of great

beauty, with tall Lombard bell-tower, pierced with many tiers of

pilastered windows, ending in a whimsical spire, and dominating a

fantastic cupola building of the earlier Renaissance. Taken altogether,

this is a charming bit of architecture, picturesquely set beneath the

granite snow-peaks of the Valtelline. The church, they say, was raised

at Madonna's own command to stay the tide of heresy descending from the

Engadine; and in the year 1620, the bronze statue of S. Michael, which

still spreads wide its wings above the cupola, looked down upon the

massacre of six hundred Protestants and foreigners, commanded by the

patriot Jacopo Robustelli.

From Madonna the road leads up the valley through a narrow avenue of

poplar-trees to the town of Tirano. We were now in the district where

Forzato is made, and every vineyard had a name and history. In Tirano

we betook ourself to the house of an old acquaintance of the Buol

family, Bernardo da Campo, or, as the Graubündeners call him, Bernard

Campbèll. We found him at dinner with his son and grandchildren in a

vast, dark, bare Italian chamber. It would be difficult to find a more

typical old Scotchman of the Lowlands than he looked, with his clean

close-shaven face, bright brown eyes, and snow-white hair escaping from

a broad-brimmed hat. He might have sat to a painter for 62some

Covenanter's portrait, except that there was nothing dour about him, or

for an illustration to Burns's 'Cotter's Saturday Night.' The air of

probity and canniness combined with a twinkle of dry humour was

completely Scotch; and when he tapped his snuff-box, telling stories of

old days, I could not refrain from asking him about his pedigree. It

should be said that there is a considerable family of Campèlls or

Campbèlls in the Graubünden, who are fabled to deduce their stock from

a Scotch Protestant of Zwingli's time; and this made it irresistible to

imagine that in our friend Bernardo I had chanced upon a notable

specimen of atavism. All he knew, however, was, that his first ancestor

had been a foreigner, who came across the mountains to Tirano two

centuries ago.[3]

[3] The Grisons surname Campèll may derive from the Romansch Campo

Bello. The founder of the house was one Kaspar Campèll, who in the

first half of the sixteenth century preached the Reformed religion in

the Engadine.

This old gentleman is a considerable wine-dealer. He sent us with his

son, Giacomo, on a long journey underground through his cellars, where

we tasted several sorts of Valtelline, especially the new Forzato, made

a few weeks since, which singularly combines sweetness with strength,

and both with a slight effervescence. It is certainly the sort of wine

wherewith to tempt a Polyphemus, and not unapt to turn a giant's head.

Leaving Tirano, and once more passing through the poplars by Madonna,

we descended the valley all along the vineyards of Villa and the vast

district of Sassella. Here and there, at wayside inns, we stopped to

drink a glass of some particular vintage; and everywhere it seemed as

though god Bacchus were at home. The whole valley on the right side of

the Adda is one gigantic vineyard, climbing the hills in tiers 63and

terraces, which justify its Italian epithet of _Teatro di Bacco_. The

rock is a greyish granite, assuming sullen brown and orange tints where

exposed to sun and weather. The vines are grown on stakes, not

trellised over trees or carried across boulders, as is the fashion at

Chiavenna or Terlan. Yet every advantage of the mountain is adroitly

used; nooks and crannies being specially preferred, where the sun's

rays are deflected from hanging cliffs. The soil seems deep, and is of

a dull yellow tone. When the vines end, brushwood takes up the growth,

which expires at last in crag and snow. Some alps and chalets, dimly

traced against the sky, are evidences that a pastoral life prevails

above the vineyards. Pan there stretches the pine-thyrsus down to

vine-garlanded Dionysos.

The Adda flows majestically among willows in the midst, and the valley

is nearly straight. The prettiest spot, perhaps, is at Tresenda or S.

Giacomo, where a pass from Edolo and Brescia descends from the southern

hills. But the Valtelline has no great claim to beauty of scenery. Its

chief town, Sondrio, where we supped and drank some special wine called

_il vino de' Signori Grigioni_, has been modernised in dull Italian

fashion.

V

The hotel at Sondrio, La Maddalena, was in carnival uproar of masquers,

topers, and musicians all night through. It was as much as we could do

to rouse the sleepy servants and get a cup of coffee ere we started in

the frozen dawn. 'Verfluchte Maddalena!' grumbled Christian as he

shouldered our portmanteaus and bore them in hot haste to the post.

Long experience only confirms the first impression, that, of all cold,

the cold of an Italian winter is most penetrating. As we lumbered out

of Sondrio in a heavy diligence, I could 64have fancied myself back

once again at Radicofani or among the Ciminian hills. The frost was

penetrating. Fur-coats would not keep it out; and we longed to be once

more in open sledges on Bernina rather than enclosed in that cold

coupé. Now we passed Grumello, the second largest of the renowned vine

districts; and always keeping the white mass of Monte di Disgrazia in

sight, rolled at last into Morbegno. Here the Valtelline vintage

properly ends, though much of the ordinary wine is probably supplied

from the inferior produce of these fields. It was past noon when we

reached Colico, and saw the Lake of Como glittering in sunlight,

dazzling cloaks of snow on all the mountains, which look as dry and

brown as dead beech-leaves at this season. Our Bacchic journey had

reached its close; and it boots not here to tell in detail how we made

our way across the Splügen, piercing its avalanches by low-arched

galleries scooped from the solid snow, and careering in our sledges

down perpendicular snow-fields, which no one who has crossed that pass

from the Italian side in winter will forget. We left the refuge station

at the top together with a train of wine-sledges, and passed them in

the midst of the wild descent. Looking back, I saw two of their horses

stumble in the plunge and roll headlong over. Unluckily in one of these

somersaults a man was injured. Flung ahead into the snow by the first

lurch, the sledge and wine-cask crossed him like a garden-roller. Had

his bed not been of snow, he must have been crushed to death; and as it

was, he presented a woeful appearance when he afterwards arrived at

Splügen.

VI

Though not strictly connected with the subject of this paper, I shall

conclude these notes of winter wanderings in 65the high Alps with an

episode which illustrates their curious vicissitudes.

It was late in the month of March, and nearly all the mountain roads

were open for wheeled vehicles. A carriage and four horses came to meet

us at the termination of a railway journey in Bagalz. We spent one day

in visiting old houses of the Grisons aristocracy at Mayenfeld and

Zizers, rejoicing in the early sunshine, which had spread the fields

with spring flowers—primroses and oxlips, violets, anemones, and bright

blue squills. At Chur we slept, and early next morning started for our

homeward drive to Davos. Bad weather had declared itself in the night.

It blew violently, and the rain soon changed to snow, frozen by a

bitter north blast. Crossing the dreary heath of Lenz was both

magnificent and dreadful. By the time we reached Wiesen, all the

forests were laden with snow, the roads deep in snow-drifts, the whole

scene wintrier than it had been the winter through.

At Wiesen we should have stayed, for evening was fast setting in. But

in ordinary weather it is only a two hours drive from Wiesen to Davos.

Our coachman made no objections to resuming the journey, and our four

horses had but a light load to drag. So we telegraphed for supper to be

prepared, and started between five and six.

A deep gorge has to be traversed, where the torrent cleaves its way

between jaws of limestone precipices. The road is carried along ledges

and through tunnels in the rock. Avalanches, which sweep this passage

annually from the hills above, give it the name of Züge, or the

Snow-Paths. As we entered the gorge darkness fell, the horses dragged

more heavily, and it soon became evident that our Tyrolese driver was

hopelessly drunk. He nearly upset us twice by taking sharp turns in the

road, banged the carriage against telegraph 66posts and jutting rocks,

shaved the very verge of the torrent in places where there was no

parapet, and, what was worst of all, refused to leave his box without a

fight. The darkness by this time was all but total, and a blinding

snow-storm swept howling through the ravine. At length we got the

carriage to a dead-stop, and floundered out in deep wet snow toward

some wooden huts where miners in old days made their habitation. The

place, by a curious, perhaps unconscious irony, is called Hoffnungsau,

or the Meadow of Hope. Indeed, it is not ill named; for many wanderers,

escaping, as we did, from the dreadful gorge of Avalanches on a stormy

night, may have felt, as we now felt, their hope reviving when they

reached this shelter.

There was no light; nothing above, beneath, around, on any side, but

tearing tempest and snow whirled through the ravine. The horses were

taken out of the carriage; on their way to the stable, which

fortunately in these mountain regions will be always found beside the

poorest habitation, one of them fell back across a wall and nearly

broke his spine. Hoffnungsau is inhabited all through the year. In its

dismal dark kitchen we found a knot of workmen gathered together, and

heard there were two horses on the premises besides our own. It then

occurred to us that we might accomplish the rest of the journey with

such sledges as they bring the wood on from the hills in winter, if

coal-boxes or boxes of any sort could be provided. These should be

lashed to the sledges and filled with hay. We were only four persons;

my wife and a friend should go in one, myself and my little girl in the

other. No sooner thought of than put into practice. These original

conveyances were improvised, and after two hours' halt on the Meadow of

Hope, we all set forth again at half-past eight.

I have rarely felt anything more piercing than the grim 67cold of that

journey. We crawled at a foot's pace through changeful snow-drifts. The

road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum

stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness. My little

girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white

covering of snow above her. Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen masses

to our faces, lashed by a wind so fierce and keen that it was difficult

to breathe it. My forehead-bone ached, as though with neuralgia, from

the mere mask of icy snow upon it, plastered on with frost. Nothing

could be seen but millions of white specks, whirled at us in eddying

concentric circles. Not far from the entrance to the village we met our

house-folk out with lanterns to look for us. It was past eleven at

night when at last we entered warm rooms and refreshed ourselves for

the tiring day with a jovial champagne supper. Horses, carriage, and

drunken driver reached home next morning.

68

OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE

Travellers journeying southward from Paris first meet with olive-trees

near Montdragon or Monsélimart—little towns, with old historic names,

upon the road to Orange. It is here that we begin to feel ourselves

within the land of Provence, where the Romans found a second Italy, and

where the autumn of their antique civilisation was followed, almost

without an intermediate winter of barbarism, by the light and delicate

springtime of romance. Orange itself is full of Rome. Indeed, the ghost

of the dead empire seems there to be more real and living than the

actual flesh and blood of modern time, as represented by narrow dirty

streets and mean churches. It is the shell of the huge theatre,

hollowed from the solid hill, and fronted with a wall that seems made

rather to protect a city than to form a sounding-board for a stage,

which first tells us that we have reached the old Arausio. Of all

theatres this is the most impressive, stupendous, indestructible, the

Colosseum hardly excepted; for in Rome herself we are prepared for

something gigantic, while in the insignificant Arausio—a sort of

antique Tewkesbury—to find such magnificence, durability, and vastness,

impresses one with a nightmare sense that the old lioness of Empire can

scarcely yet be dead. Standing before the colossal, towering, amorphous

precipice which formed the background of the scena, we feel as if once

more the 'heart-shaking sound of Consul Romanus' might be heard; as if

Roman knights and deputies, arisen 69from the dead, with faces hard and

stern as those of the warriors carved on Trajan's frieze, might take

their seats beneath us in the orchestra, and, after proclamation made,

the mortmain of imperial Rome be laid upon the comforts, liberties, and

little gracefulnesses of our modern life. Nor is it unpleasant to be

startled from such reverie by the voice of the old guardian upon the

stage beneath, sonorously devolving the vacuous Alexandrines with which

he once welcomed his ephemeral French emperor from Algiers. The little

man is dim with distance, eclipsed and swallowed up by the shadows and

grotesque fragments of the ruin in the midst of which he stands. But

his voice—thanks to the inimitable constructive art of the ancient

architect, which, even in the desolation of at least thirteen

centuries, has not lost its cunning-emerges from the pigmy throat, and

fills the whole vast hollow with its clear, if tiny, sound. Thank

heaven, there is no danger of Roman resurrection here! The illusion is

completely broken, and we turn to gather the first violets of February,

and to wonder at the quaint postures of a praying mantis on the grass

grown tiers and porches fringed with fern.

The sense of Roman greatness which is so oppressive in Orange and in

many other parts of Provence, is not felt at Avignon. Here we exchange

the ghost of Imperial for the phantom of Ecclesiastical Rome. The fixed

epithet of Avignon is Papal; and as the express train rushes over its

bleak and wind-tormented plain, the heavy dungeon-walls and

battlemented towers of its palace fortress seem to warn us off, and bid

us quickly leave the Babylon of exiled impious Antichrist. Avignon

presents the bleakest, barest, greyest scene upon a February morning,

when the incessant mistral is blowing, and far and near, upon desolate

hillside and sandy plain, the scanty trees are bent sideways, the

crumbling castle turrets shivering like bleached skeletons in the dry

ungenial air. Yet 70inside the town, all is not so dreary. The Papal

palace, with its terrible Glacière, its chapel painted by Simone Memmi,

its endless corridors and staircases, its torture-chamber,

funnel-shaped to drown and suffocate—so runs tradition—the shrieks of

wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with lively little

French soldiers, whose politeness, though sorely taxed, is never

ruffled by the introduction of inquisitive visitors into their

dormitories, eating-places, and drill-grounds. And strange, indeed, it

is to see the lines of neat narrow barrack beds, between which the

red-legged little men are shaving, polishing their guns, or mending

their trousers, in those vaulted halls of popes and cardinals, those

vast presence-chambers and audience-galleries, where Urban entertained

S. Catherine, where Rienzi came, a prisoner, to be stared at. Pass by

the Glacière with a shudder, for it has still the reek of blood about

it; and do not long delay in the cheerless dungeon of Rienzi. Time and

regimental whitewash have swept these lurking-places of old crime very

bare; but the parable of the seven devils is true in more senses than

one, and the ghosts that return to haunt a deodorised, disinfected,

garnished sepulchre are almost more ghastly than those which have never

been disturbed from their old habitations.

Little by little the eye becomes accustomed to the bareness and

greyness of this Provençal landscape; and then we find that the scenery

round Avignon is eminently picturesque. The view from Les Doms—which is

a hill above the Pope's palace, the Acropolis, as it were, of

Avignon—embraces a wide stretch of undulating champaign, bordered by

low hills, and intersected by the flashing waters of the majestic

Rhone. Across the stream stands Villeneuve, like a castle of romance,

with its round stone towers fronting the gates and battlemented walls

of the Papal city. A bridge used to connect the two towns, but it is

now broken. The remaining fragment is of 71solid build, resting on

great buttresses, one of which rises fantastically above the bridge

into a little chapel. Such, one might fancy, was the bridge which

Ariosto's Rodomonte kept on horse against the Paladins of Charlemagne,

when angered by the loss of his love. Nor is it difficult to imagine

Bradamante spurring up the slope against him with her magic lance in

rest, and tilting him into the tawny waves beneath.

On a clear October morning, when the vineyards are taking their last

tints of gold and crimson, and the yellow foliage of the poplars by the

river mingles with the sober greys of olive-trees and willows, every

square inch of this landscape, glittering as it does with light and

with colour, the more beautiful for its subtlety and rarity, would make

a picture. Out of many such vignettes let us choose one. We are on the

shore close by the ruined bridge, the rolling muddy Rhone in front;

beyond it, by the towing-path, a tall strong cypress-tree rises beside

a little house, and next to it a crucifix twelve feet or more in

height, the Christ visible afar, stretched upon His red cross; arundo

donax is waving all around, and willows near; behind, far off, soar the

peaked hills, blue and pearled with clouds; past the cypress, on the

Rhone, comes floating a long raft, swift through the stream, its rudder

guided by a score of men: one standing erect upon the prow bends

forward to salute the cross; on flies the raft, the tall reeds rustle,

and the cypress sleeps.

For those who have time to spare in going to or from the south it is

worth while to spend a day or two in the most comfortable and

characteristic of old French inns, the Hôtel de l'Europe, at Avignon.

Should it rain, the museum of the town is worth a visit. It contains

Horace Vernet's not uncelebrated picture of Mazeppa, and another, less

famous, but perhaps more interesting, by swollen-cheeked David, the

72'genius in convulsion,' as Carlyle has christened him. His canvas is

unfinished. Who knows what cry of the Convention made the painter fling

his palette down and leave the masterpiece he might have spoiled? For

in its way the picture is a masterpiece. There lies Jean Barrad,

drummer, aged fourteen, slain in La Vendée, a true patriot, who, while

his life-blood flowed away, pressed the tricolor cockade to his heart,

and murmured 'Liberty!' David has treated his subject classically. The

little drummer-boy, though French enough in feature and in feeling,

lies, Greek-like, naked on the sand—a very Hyacinth of the Republic, La

Vendée's Ilioneus. The tricolor cockade and the sentiment of upturned

patriotic eyes are the only indications of his being a hero in his

teens, a citizen who thought it sweet to die for France.

In fine weather a visit to Vaucluse should by no means be omitted, not

so much, perhaps, for Petrarch's sake as for the interest of the drive,

and for the marvel of the fountain of the Sorgues. For some time after

leaving Avignon you jog along the level country between avenues of

plane-trees; then comes a hilly ridge, on which the olives, mulberries,

and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into distant purple.

After crossing this we reach L'Isle, an island village girdled by the

gliding Sorgues, overshadowed with gigantic plane-boughs, and echoing

to the plash of water dripped from mossy fern-tufted millwheels. Those

who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to be some trickling poet's rill emerging

from a damp grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar of this

azure river so close upon its fountain-head. It has a volume and an

arrow-like rapidity that communicate the feeling of exuberance and

life. In passing, let it not be forgotten that it was somewhere or

other in this 'chiaro fondo di Sorga,' as Carlyle describes, that

Jourdain, the hangman-hero of the Glacière, stuck fast upon his pony

when flying from his foes, 73and had his accursed life, by some

diabolical providence, spared for future butcheries. On we go across

the austere plain, between fields of madder, the red roots of the

'garance' lying in swathes along the furrows. In front rise ash-grey

hills of barren rock, here and there crimsoned with the leaves of the

dwarf sumach. A huge cliff stands up and seems to bar all passage. Yet

the river foams in torrents at our side. Whence can it issue? What pass

or cranny in that precipice is cloven for its escape? These questions

grow in interest as we enter the narrow defile of limestone rocks which

leads to the cliff-barrier, and find ourselves among the figs and

olives of Vaucluse. Here is the village, the little church, the ugly

column to Petrarch's memory, the inn, with its caricatures of Laura,

and its excellent trout, the bridge and the many-flashing, eddying

Sorgues, lashed by millwheels, broken by weirs, divided in its course,

channelled and dyked, yet flowing irresistibly and undefiled. Blue,

purple, greened by moss and water-weeds, silvered by snow-white

pebbles, on its pure smooth bed the river runs like elemental diamond,

so clear and fresh. The rocks on either side are grey or yellow,

terraced into oliveyards, with here and there a cypress, fig, or

mulberry tree. Soon the gardens cease, and lentisk, rosemary, box, and

ilex—shrubs of Provence—with here and there a sumach out of reach,

cling to the hard stone. And so at last we are brought face to face

with the sheer impassable precipice. At its basement sleeps a pool,

perfectly untroubled; a lakelet in which the sheltering rocks and

nestling wild figs are glassed as in a mirror—a mirror of blue-black

water, like amethyst or fluor-spar—so pure, so still, that where it

laps the pebbles you can scarcely say where air begins and water ends.

This, then, is Petrarch's 'grotto;' this is the fountain of Vaucluse.

Up from its deep reservoirs, from the mysterious basements of the

mountain, wells the silent stream; pauseless 74and motionless it fills

its urn, rises unruffled, glides until the brink is reached, then

overflows, and foams, and dashes noisily, a cataract, among the

boulders of the hills. Nothing at Vaucluse is more impressive than the

contrast between the tranquil silence of the fountain and the roar of

the released impetuous river. Here we can realise the calm clear eyes

of sculptured water-gods, their brimming urns, their gushing streams,

the magic of the mountain-born and darkness-cradled flood. Or again,

looking up at the sheer steep cliff, 800 feet in height, and arching

slightly roofwise, so that no rain falls upon the cavern of the pool,

we seem to see the stroke of Neptune's trident, the hoof of Pegasus,

the force of Moses' rod, which cleft rocks and made water gush forth in

the desert. There is a strange fascination in the spot. As our eyes

follow the white pebble which cleaves the surface and falls visibly,

until the veil of azure is too thick for sight to pierce, we feel as if

some glamour were drawing us, like Hylas, to the hidden caves. At

least, we long to yield a prized and precious offering to the spring,

to grace the nymph of Vaucluse with a pearl of price as token of our

reverence and love.

Meanwhile nothing has been said about Petrarch, who himself said much

about the spring, and complained against those very nymphs to whom we

have in wish, at least, been scattering jewels, that they broke his

banks and swallowed up his gardens every winter. At Vaucluse Petrarch

loved, and lived, and sang. He has made Vaucluse famous, and will never

be forgotten there. But for the present the fountain is even more

attractive than the memory of the poet.[4]

[4] I have translated and printed at the end of the second volume some

sonnets of Petrarch as a kind of palinode for this impertinence.

The change from Avignon to Nismes is very trying to the latter place;

for Nismes is not picturesquely or historically 75interesting. It is a

prosperous modern French town with two almost perfect Roman

monuments—Les Arènes and the Maison Carrée. The amphitheatre is a

complete oval, visible at one glance. Its smooth white stone, even

where it has not been restored, seems unimpaired by age; and Charles

Martel's conflagration, when he burned the Saracen hornet's nest inside

it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches venerably. Utility

and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of Roman

buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence displayed

in them, their strength, simplicity, solidity, and purpose, are their

glory. Perhaps there is only one modern edifice—Palladio's Palazzo

della Ragione at Vicenza—which approaches the dignity and loftiness of

Roman architecture; and this it does because of its absolute freedom

from ornament, the vastness of its design, and the durability of its

material. The temple, called the Maison Carrée, at Nismes, is also very

perfect, and comprehended at one glance. Light, graceful, airy, but

rather thin and narrow, it reminds one of the temple of Fortuna Virilis

at Rome.

But if Nismes itself is not picturesque, its environs contain the

wonderful Pont du Gard. A two or three hours' drive leads through a

desolate country to the valley of the Cardon, where suddenly, at a turn

of the road, one comes upon the aqueduct. It is not within the scope of

words to describe the impression produced by those vast arches, row

above row, cutting the deep blue sky. The domed summer clouds sailing

across them are comprehended in the gigantic span of their perfect

semicircles, which seem rather to have been described by Miltonic

compasses of Deity than by merely human mathematics. Yet, standing

beneath one of the vaults and looking upward, you may read Roman

numerals in order from I. to X., which prove their human origin well

enough. 76Next to their strength, regularity, and magnitude, the most

astonishing point about this triple tier of arches, piled one above the

other to a height of 180 feet above a brawling stream between two

barren hills, is their lightness. The arches are not thick; the

causeway on the top is only just broad enough for three men to walk

abreast. So smooth and perpendicular are the supporting walls that

scarcely a shrub or tuft of grass has grown upon the aqueduct in all

these years. And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no buttress,

has needed no repair. This lightness of structure, combined with such

prodigious durability, produces the strongest sense of science and

self-reliant power in the men who designed it. None but Romans could

have built such a monument, and have set it in such a place—a

wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered with low

brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep—for such a purpose, too, in

order to supply Nemausus with pure water. The modern town does pretty

well without its water; but here subsists the civilisation of eighteen

centuries past intact: the human labour yet remains, the measuring,

contriving mind of man, shrinking from no obstacles, spanning the air,

and in one edifice combining gigantic strength and perfect beauty. It

is impossible not to echo Rousseau's words in such a place, and to say

with him: 'Le retentissement de mes pas dans ces immenses voûtes me

faisait croire entendre la forte voix de ceux qui les avaient bâties.

Je me perdais comme un insecte dans cette immensité. Je sentais, tout

en me faisant petit, je ne sais quoi qui m'élevait l'âme; et je me

disais en soupirant, Que ne suis-je né Romain!'

There is nothing at Arles which produces the same deep and indelible

impression. Yet Arles is a far more interesting town than Nismes,

partly because of the Rhone delta which begins there, partly because of

its ruinous antiquity, and 77partly also because of the strong local

character of its population. The amphitheatre of Arles is vaster and

more sublime in its desolation than the tidy theatre at Nismes; the

crypts, and dens, and subterranean passages suggest all manner of

speculation as to the uses to which they may have been appropriated;

while the broken galleries outside, intricate and black and cavernous,

like Piranesi's etchings of the 'Carceri,' present the wildest pictures

of greatness in decay, fantastic dilapidation. The ruins of the smaller

theatre, again, with their picturesquely grouped fragments and their

standing columns, might be sketched for a frontispiece to some

dilettante work on classical antiquities. For the rest, perhaps the

Aliscamps, or ancient Roman burial-ground, is the most interesting

thing at Arles, not only because of Dante's celebrated lines in the

canto of 'Farinata:'—

Si come ad Arli ove 'l Rodano stagna,

Fanno i sepolcri tutto 'l loco varo;

but also because of the intrinsic picturesqueness of this avenue of

sepulchres beneath green trees upon a long soft grassy field.

But as at Avignon and Nismes, so also at Arles, one of the chief

attractions of the place lies at a distance, and requires a special

expedition. The road to Les Baux crosses a true Provençal desert where

one realises the phrase, 'Vieux comme les rochers de Provence,'—a

wilderness of grey stone, here and there worn into cart-tracks, and

tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and lentisk. On the way it passes

the Abbaye de Mont Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all

periods of architecture; where nothing seems to flourish now but

henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a mumble-toothed and

terrible old hag. The ruin stands above a desolate marsh, its vast

Italian buildings of Palladian splendour 78looking more forlorn in

their decay than the older and austerer mediæval towers, which rise up

proud and patient and defiantly erect beneath the curse of time. When

at length what used to be the castle town of Les Baux is reached, you

find a naked mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature into

bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage, sculptured by ancient

art into palaces and chapels, battlements and dungeons. Now art and

nature are confounded in one ruin. Blocks of masonry lie cheek by jowl

with masses of the rough-hewn rock; fallen cavern vaults are heaped

round fragments of fan-shaped spandrel and clustered column-shaft; the

doors and windows of old pleasure-rooms are hung with ivy and wild fig

for tapestry; winding staircases start midway upon the cliff, and lead

to vacancy. High overhead suspended in mid-air hang chambers—lady's

bower or poet's singing-room—now inaccessible, the haunt of hawks and

swallows. Within this rocky honeycomb—'cette ville en monolithe,' as it

has been aptly called, for it is literally scooped out of one mountain

block—live about two hundred poor people, foddering their wretched

goats at carved piscina and stately sideboards, erecting mud

beplastered hovels in the halls of feudal princes. Murray is wrong in

calling the place a mediæval town in its original state, for anything

more purely ruinous, more like a decayed old cheese, cannot possibly be

conceived. The living only inhabit the tombs of the dead. At the end of

the last century, when revolutionary effervescence was beginning to

ferment, the people of Arles swept all its feudality away, defacing the

very arms upon the town gate, and trampling the palace towers to dust.

The castle looks out across a vast extent of plain over Arles, the

stagnant Rhone, the Camargue, and the salt pools of the lingering sea.

In old days it was the eyrie of an eagle race called Seigneurs of Les

Baux; and whether they took their 79title from the rock, or whether, as

genealogists would have it, they gave the name of Oriental

Balthazar—their reputed ancestor, one of the Magi—to the rock itself,

remains a mystery not greatly worth the solving.

Anyhow, here they lived and flourished, these feudal princes, bearing

for their ensign a silver comet of sixteen rays upon a field of

gules—themselves a comet race, baleful to the neighbouring lowlands,

blazing with lurid splendour over wide tracts of country, a burning,

raging, fiery-souled, swift-handed tribe, in whom a flame unquenchable

glowed from son to sire through twice five hundred years until, in the

sixteenth century, they were burned out, and nothing remained but

cinders—these broken ruins of their eyrie, and some outworn and dusty

titles. Very strange are the fate and history of these same titles:

King of Arles, for instance, savouring of troubadour and high romance;

Prince of Tarentum, smacking of old plays and Italian novels; Prince of

Orange, which the Nassaus, through the Châlons, seized in all its

emptiness long after the real principality had passed away, and came

therewith to sit on England's throne.

The Les Baux in their heyday were patterns of feudal nobility. They

warred incessantly with Counts of Provence, archbishops and burghers of

Arles, Queens of Naples, Kings of Aragon. Crusading, pillaging,

betraying, spending their substance on the sword, and buying it again

by deeds of valour or imperial acts of favour, tuning troubadour harps,

presiding at courts of love,—they filled a large page in the history of

Southern France. The Les Baux were very superstitious. In the fulness

of their prosperity they restricted the number of their dependent

towns, or _places baussenques_, to seventy-nine, because these numbers

in combination were thought to be of good omen to their house. Beral

des Baux, Seigneur of Marseilles, was one day starting on a journey

80with his whole force to Avignon. He met an old woman herb-gathering

at daybreak, and said, 'Mother, hast thou seen a crow or other bird?'

'Yea,' answered the crone, 'on the trunk of a dead willow.' Beral

counted upon his fingers the day of the year, and turned bridle. With

troubadours of name and note they had dealings, but not always to their

own advantage, as the following story testifies. When the Baux and

Berengers were struggling for the countship of Provence, Raymond

Berenger, by his wife's counsel, went, attended by troubadours, to meet

the Emperor Frederick at Milan. There he sued for the investiture and

ratification of Provence. His troubadours sang and charmed Frederick;

and the Emperor, for the joy he had in them, wrote his celebrated lines

beginning—

Plas mi cavalier Francez.

And when Berenger made his request he met with no refusal. Hearing

thereof, the lords of Baux came down in wrath with a clangour of armed

men. But music had already gained the day; and where the Phoebus of

Provence had shone, the Æolus of storm-shaken Les Baux was powerless.

Again, when Blacas, a knight of Provence, died, the great Sordello

chanted one of his most fiery hymns, bidding the princes of Christendom

flock round and eat the heart of the dead lord. 'Let Rambaude des

Baux,' cries the bard, with a sarcasm that is clearly meant, but at

this distance almost unintelligible, 'take also a good piece, for she

is fair and good and truly virtuous; let her keep it well who knows so

well to husband her own weal.' But the poets were not always adverse to

the house of Baux. Fouquet, the beautiful and gentle melodist whom

Dante placed in paradise, served Adelaisie, wife of Berald, with long

service of unhappy love, and wrote upon her death 'The Complaint of

Berald des Baux for Adelaisie.' Guillaume de Cabestan loved Berangère

des Baux, and was 81so loved by her that she gave him a philtre to

drink, whereof he sickened and grew mad. Many more troubadours are

cited as having frequented the castle of Les Baux, and among the

members of the princely house were several poets.

Some of them were renowned for beauty. We hear of a Cécile, called

Passe Rose, because of her exceeding loveliness; also of an unhappy

François, who, after passing eighteen years in prison, yet won the

grace and love of Joan of Naples by his charms. But the real temper of

this fierce tribe was not shown among troubadours, or in the courts of

love and beauty. The stern and barren rock from which they sprang, and

the comet of their scutcheon, are the true symbols of their nature.

History records no end of their ravages and slaughters. It is a tedious

catalogue of blood—how one prince put to fire and sword the whole town

of Courthezon; how another was stabbed in prison by his wife; how a

third besieged the castle of his niece, and sought to undermine her

chamber, knowing her the while to be in childbed; how a fourth was

flayed alive outside the walls of Avignon. There is nothing terrible,

splendid, and savage, belonging to feudal history, of which an example

may not be found in the annals of Les Baux, as narrated by their

chronicler, Jules Canonge.

However abrupt may seem the transition from these memories of the

ancient nobles of Les Baux to mere matters of travel and

picturesqueness, it would be impossible to take leave of the old towns

of Provence without glancing at the cathedrals of S. Trophime at Arles,

and of S. Gilles—a village on the border of the dreary flamingo-haunted

Camargue. Both of these buildings have porches splendidly encrusted

with sculptures, half classical, half mediæval, marking the transition

from ancient to modern art. But that of S. Gilles is by far the richer

and more elaborate. The whole façade of 82this church is one mass of

intricate decoration; Norman arches and carved lions, like those of

Lombard architecture, mingling fantastically with Greek scrolls of

fruit and flowers, with elegant Corinthian columns jutting out upon the

church steps, and with the old conventional wave-border that is called

Etruscan in our modern jargon. From the midst of florid fret and

foliage lean mild faces of saints and Madonnas. Symbols of evangelists

with half-human, half-animal eyes and wings, are interwoven with the

leafy bowers of cupids. Grave apostles stand erect beneath acanthus

wreaths that ought to crisp the forehead of a laughing Faun or Bacchus.

And yet so full, exuberant, and deftly chosen are these various

elements, that there remains no sense of incongruity or discord. The

mediæval spirit had much trouble to disentangle itself from classic

reminiscences; and fortunately for the picturesqueness of S. Gilles, it

did not succeed. How strangely different is the result of this

transition in the south from those severe and rigid forms which we call

Romanesque in Germany and Normandy and England!

83

THE CORNICE

It was a dull afternoon in February when we left Nice, and drove across

the mountains to Mentone. Over hill and sea hung a thick mist. Turbia's

Roman tower stood up in cheerless solitude, wreathed round with driving

vapour, and the rocky nest of Esa seemed suspended in a chaos between

sea and sky. Sometimes the fog broke and showed us Villafranca, lying

green and flat in the deep blue below: sometimes a distant view of

higher peaks swam into sight from the shifting cloud. But the whole

scene was desolate. Was it for this that we had left our English home,

and travelled from London day and night? At length we reached the edge

of the cloud, and jingled down by Roccabruna and the olive-groves, till

one by one Mentone's villas came in sight, and at last we found

ourselves at the inn door. That night, and all next day and the next

night, we heard the hoarse sea beat and thunder on the beach. The rain

and wind kept driving from the south, but we consoled ourselves with

thinking that the orange-trees and every kind of flower were drinking

in the moisture and waiting to rejoice in sunlight which would come.

It was a Sunday morning when we woke and found that the rain had gone,

the sun was shining brightly on the sea, and a clear north wind was

blowing cloud and mist away. Out upon the hills we went, not caring

much what path we took; for everything was beautiful, and hill and vale

were 84full of garden walks. Through lemon-groves,—pale, golden-tender

trees,—and olives, stretching their grey boughs against the lonely

cottage tiles, we climbed, until we reached the pines and heath above.

Then I knew the meaning of Theocritus for the first time. We found a

well, broad, deep, and clear, with green herbs growing at the bottom, a

runlet flowing from it down the rocky steps, maidenhair, black

adiantum, and blue violets, hanging from the brink and mirrored in the

water. This was just the well in _Hylas_. Theocritus has been badly

treated. They call him a court poet, dead to Nature, artificial in his

pictures. Yet I recognised this fountain by his verse, just as if he

had showed me the very spot. Violets grow everywhere, of every shade,

from black to lilac. Their stalks are long, and the flowers 'nod' upon

them, so that I see how the Greeks could make them into chaplets—how

Lycidas wore his crown of white violets[5] lying by the fireside

elbow-deep in withered asphodel, watching the chestnuts in the embers,

and softly drinking deep healths to Ageanax far off upon the waves. It

is impossible to go wrong in these valleys. They are cultivated to the

height of about five hundred feet above the sea, in terraces

laboriously built up with walls, earthed and manured, and irrigated by

means of tanks and aqueducts. Above this level, where the virgin soil

has not been yet reclaimed, or where the winds of winter bring down

freezing currents from the mountains through a gap or gully of the

lower hills, a tangled growth of heaths and arbutus, and pines, and

rosemarys, and myrtles, continue the vegetation, till it finally ends

in bare grey rocks and peaks some thousand feet in height. Far above

all signs of cultivation 85on these arid peaks, you still may see

villages and ruined castles, built centuries ago for a protection from

the Moorish pirates. To these mountain fastnesses the people of the

coast retreated when they descried the sails of their foes on the

horizon. In Mentone, not very long ago, old men might be seen who in

their youth were said to have been taken captive by the Moors; and many

Arabic words have found their way into the patois of the people.

[5] This begs the question whether λευκόϊον does not properly mean

snowflake, or some such flower. Violets in Greece, however, were often

used for crowns: ΐοστέφανος is the epithet of Homer for Aphrodite,

and of Aristophanes for Athens.

There is something strangely fascinating in the sight of these ruins on

the burning rocks, with their black sentinel cypresses, immensely tall

and far away. Long years and rain and sunlight have made these

castellated eyries one with their native stone. It is hard to trace in

their foundations where Nature's workmanship ends and where man's

begins. What strange sights the mountain villagers must see! The vast

blue plain of the unfurrowed deep, the fairy range of Corsica hung

midway between the sea and sky at dawn or sunset, the stars so close

above their heads, the deep dew-sprinkled valleys, the green pines! On

penetrating into one of these hill-fortresses, you find that it is a

whole village, with a church and castle and piazza, some few feet

square, huddled together on a narrow platform. We met one day three

magnates of Gorbio taking a morning stroll backwards and forwards, up

and down their tiny square. Vehemently gesticulating, loudly

chattering, they talked as though they had not seen each other for ten

years, and were but just unloading their budgets of accumulated news.

Yet these three men probably had lived, eaten, drunk, and talked

together from the cradle to that hour: so true it is that use and

custom quicken all our powers, especially of 93gossiping and

scandal-mongering. S. Agnese is the highest and most notable of all

these villages. The cold and heat upon its absolutely barren rock must

be alike intolerable. In appearance 86it is not unlike the Etruscan

towns of Central Italy; but there is something, of course, far more

imposing in the immense antiquity and the historical associations of a

Narni, a Fiesole, a Chiusi, or an Orvieto. Sea-life and rusticity

strike a different note from that of those Apennine-girdled seats of

dead civilisation, in which nations, arts, and religions have gone by

and left but few traces,—some wrecks of giant walls, some excavated

tombs, some shrines, where monks still sing and pray above the relics

of the founders of once world-shaking, now almost forgotten, orders.

Here at Mentone there is none of this; the idyllic is the true note,

and Theocritus is still alive.

We do not often scale these altitudes, but keep along the terraced

glades by the side of olive-shaded streams. The violets, instead of

peeping shyly from hedgerows, fall in ripples and cascades over mossy

walls among maidenhair and spleen-worts. They are very sweet, and the

sound of trickling water seems to mingle with their fragrance in a most

delicious harmony. Sound, smell, and hue make up one chord, the sense

of which is pure and perfect peace. The country-people are kind,

letting us pass everywhere, so that we make our way along their

aqueducts and through their gardens, under laden lemon-boughs, the pale

fruit dangling at our ears, and swinging showers of scented dew upon us

as we pass. Far better, however, than lemon or orange trees, are the

olives. Some of these are immensely old, numbering, it is said, five

centuries, so that Petrarch may almost have rested beneath their shade

on his way to Avignon. These veterans are cavernous with age: gnarled,

split, and twisted trunks, throwing out arms that break into a hundred

branches; every branch distinct, and feathered with innumerable sparks

and spikelets of white, wavy, greenish light. These are the leaves, and

the stems are grey with lichens. The sky and sea—two blues, one full

87of sunlight and the other purple—set these fountains of perennial

brightness like gems in lapis-lazuli. At a distance the same olives

look hoary and soft—a veil of woven light or luminous haze. When the

wind blows their branches all one way, they ripple like a sea of

silver. But underneath their covert, in the shade, grey periwinkles

wind among the snowy drift of allium. The narcissus sends its arrowy

fragrance through the air, while, far and wide, red anemones burn like

fire, with interchange of blue and lilac buds, white arums, orchises,

and pink gladiolus. Wandering there, and seeing the pale flowers, stars

white and pink and odorous, we dream of Olivet, or the grave Garden of

the Agony, and the trees seem always whispering of sacred things. How

people can blaspheme against the olives, and call them imitations of

the willow, or complain that they are shabby shrubs, I do not know.[6]

[6] Olive-trees must be studied at Mentone or San Remo, in Corfu, at

Tivoli, on the coast between Syracuse and Catania, or on the lowlands

of Apulia. The stunted but productive trees of the Rhone valley, for

example, are no real measure of the beauty they can exhibit.

This shore would stand for Shelley's Island of Epipsychidion, or the

golden age which Empedocles describes, when the mild nations worshipped

Aphrodite with incense and the images of beasts and yellow honey, and

no blood was spilt upon her altars—when 'the trees flourished with

perennial leaves and fruit, and ample crops adorned their boughs

through all the year.' This even now is literally true of the

lemon-groves, which do not cease to flower and ripen. Everything fits

in to complete the reproduction of Greek pastoral life. The goats eat

cytisus and myrtle on the shore; a whole flock gathered round me as I

sat beneath a tuft of golden green euphorbia the other day, and nibbled

bread from my hands. The frog still croaks by tank and 88fountain,

'whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye,' in spite of Bion's

death. The narcissus, anemone, and hyacinth still tell their tales of

love and death. Hesper still gazes on the shepherd from the

mountain-head. The slender cypresses still vibrate, the pines murmur.

Pan sleeps in noontide heat, and goat-herds and wayfaring men lie down

to slumber by the roadside, under olive-boughs in which cicadas sing.

The little villages high up are just as white, the mountains just as

grey and shadowy when evening falls. Nothing is changed—except

ourselves. I expect to find a statue of Priapus or pastoral Pan, hung

with wreaths of flowers—the meal cake, honey, and spilt wine upon his

altar, and young boys and maidens dancing round. Surely, in some

far-off glade, by the side of lemon-grove or garden, near the village,

there must be still a pagan remnant of glad Nature-worship. Surely I

shall chance upon some Thyrsis piping in the pine-tree shade, or Daphne

flying from the arms of Phoebus. So I dream until I come upon the

Calvary set on a solitary hillock, with its prayer-steps lending a wide

prospect across the olives and the orange-trees, and the broad valleys,

to immeasurable skies and purple seas. There is the iron cross, the

wounded heart, the spear, the reed, the nails, the crown of thorns, the

cup of sacrificial blood, the title, with its superscription royal and

divine. The other day we crossed a brook and entered a lemon-field,

rich with blossoms and carpeted with red anemones. Everything basked in

sunlight and glittered with exceeding brilliancy of hue. A tiny white

chapel stood in a corner of the enclosure. Two iron-grated windows let

me see inside: it was a bare place, containing nothing but a wooden

praying-desk, black and worm-eaten, an altar with its candles and no

flowers, and above the altar a square picture brown with age. On the

floor were scattered several pence, and in a vase above the holy-water

vessel stood 89some withered hyacinths. As my sight became accustomed

to the gloom, I could see from the darkness of the picture a pale

Christ nailed to the cross with agonising upward eyes and ashy aureole

above the bleeding thorns. Thus I stepped suddenly away from the

outward pomp and bravery of nature to the inward aspirations, agonies,

and martyrdoms of man—from Greek legends of the past to the real

Christian present—and I remembered that an illimitable prospect has

been opened to the world, that in spite of ourselves we must turn our

eyes heavenward, inward, to the infinite unseen beyond us and within

our souls. Nothing can take us back to Phoebus or to Pan. Nothing can

again identify us with the simple natural earth. '_Une immense

espérance a traversé la terre_,' and these chapels, with their deep

significances, lurk in the fair landscape like the cares of real life

among our dreams of art, or like a fear of death and the hereafter in

the midst of opera music. It is a strange contrast. The worship of men

in those old times was symbolised by dances in the evening, banquets,

libations, and mirth-making. 'Euphrosyne' was alike the goddess of the

righteous mind and of the merry heart. Old withered women telling their

rosaries at dusk; belated shepherds crossing themselves beneath the

stars when they pass the chapel; maidens weighed down with Margaret's

anguish of unhappy love; youths vowing their life to contemplation in

secluded cloisters,—these are the human forms which gather round such

chapels; and the motto of the worshippers consists in this, 'Do often

violence to thy desire.' In the Tyrol we have seen whole villages

praying together at daybreak before their day's work, singing their

_Miserere_ and their _Gloria_ and their _Dies Iræ_, to the sound of

crashing organs and jangling bells; appealing in the midst of Nature's

splendour to the Spirit which is above Nature, which dwells in darkness

rather than light, 90and loves the yearnings and contentions of our

soul more than its summer gladness and peace. Even the olives here tell

more to us of Olivet and the Garden than of the oil-press and the

wrestling-ground. The lilies carry us to the Sermon on the Mount, and

teach humility, instead of summoning up some legend of a god's love for

a mortal. The hillside tanks and running streams, and water-brooks

swollen by sudden rain, speak of Palestine. We call the white flowers

stars of Bethlehem. The large sceptre-reed; the fig-tree, lingering in

barrenness when other trees are full of fruit; the locust-beans of the

Caruba:—for one suggestion of Greek idylls there is yet another, of far

deeper, dearer power.

But who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cap S. Martin?

Down to the verge of the sea stretch the tall, twisted stems of Levant

pines, and on the caverned limestone breaks the deep blue water.

Dazzling as marble are these rocks, pointed and honeycombed with

constant dashing of the restless sea, tufted with corallines and grey

and purple seaweeds in the little pools, but hard and dry and rough

above tide level. Nor does the sea always lap them quietly; for the

last few days it has come tumbling in, roaring and raging on the beach

with huge waves crystalline in their transparency, and maned with

fleecy spray. Such were the rocks and such the swell of breakers when

Ulysses grasped the shore after his long swim. Samphire, very salt and

fragrant, grows in the rocky honeycomb; then lentisk and beach-loving

myrtle, both exceeding green and bushy; then rosemary and euphorbia

above the reach of spray. Fishermen, with their long reeds, sit lazily

perched upon black rocks above blue waves, sunning themselves as much

as seeking sport. One distant tip of snow, seen far away behind the

hills, reminds us of an alien, unremembered winter. While dreaming

there, this fancy came into my 91head: Polyphemus was born yonder in

the Gorbio Valley. There he fed his sheep and goats, and on the hills

found scanty pasture for his kine. He and his mother lived in the white

house by the cypress near the stream where tulips grow. Young Galatea,

nursed in the caverns of these rocks, white as the foam, and shy as the

sea fishes, came one morning up the valley to pick mountain hyacinths,

and little Polyphemus led the way. He knew where violets and sweet

narcissus grew, as well as Galatea where pink coralline and spreading

sea-flowers with their waving arms. But Galatea, having filled her lap

with bluebells, quite forgot the leaping kids, and piping Cyclops, and

cool summer caves, and yellow honey, and black ivy, and sweet vine, and

water cold as Alpine snow. Down the swift streamlet she danced

laughingly, and made herself once more bitter with the sea. But

Polyphemus remained,—hungry, sad, gazing on the barren sea, and piping

to the mockery of its waves.

Filled with these Greek fancies, it is strange to come upon a little

sandstone dell furrowed by trickling streams and overgrown with English

primroses; or to enter the village of Roccabruna, with its mediæval

castle and the motto on its walls, _Tempora labuntur tacitisque

senescimus annis_. A true motto for the town, where the butcher comes

but once a week, and where men and boys, and dogs, and palms, and

lemon-trees grow up and flourish and decay in the same hollow of the

sunny mountain-side. Into the hard conglomerate of the hill the town is

built; house walls and precipices mortised into one another, dovetailed

by the art of years gone by, and riveted by age. The same plants grow

from both alike—spurge, cistus, rue, and henbane, constant to the

desolation of abandoned dwellings. From the castle you look down on

roofs, brown tiles and chimney-pots, set one above the other like a big

card-castle. Each house has 92its foot on a neighbour's neck, and its

shoulder set against the native stone. The streets meander in and out,

and up and down, overarched and balconied, but very clean. They swarm

with children, healthy, happy, little monkeys, who grow fat on salt

fish and yellow polenta, with oil and sun _ad libitum_.

At night from Roccabruna you may see the flaring gas-lamps of the

gaming-house at Monaco, that Armida's garden of the nineteenth century.

It is the sunniest and most sheltered spot of all the coast. Long ago

Lucan said of Monaco, '_Non Corus in illum jus habet aut Zephyrus_;'

winter never comes to nip its tangled cactuses, and aloes, and

geraniums. The air swoons with the scent of lemon-groves; tall

palm-trees wave their graceful branches by the shore; music of the

softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool corridors and

sunny seats stand ready for the noontide heat or evening calm; without,

are olive-gardens, green and fresh and full of flowers. But the witch

herself holds her high court and never-ending festival of sin in the

painted banquet-halls and among the green tables.

Let us leave this scene and turn with the country-folk of Roccabruna to

S. Michael's Church at Mentone. High above the sea it stands, and from

its open doors you look across the mountains with their olive-trees.

Inside the church is a seething mass of country-folk and townspeople,

mostly women, and these almost all old, but picturesque beyond

description; kerchiefs of every colour, wrinkles of every shape and

depth, skins of every tone of brown and yellow, voices of every

gruffness, shrillness, strength, and weakness. Wherever an empty corner

can be found, it is soon filled by tottering babies and mischievous

children. The country-women come with their large dangling earrings of

thin gold, wearing pink tulips or lemon-buds in their black hair. A low

buzz of gossiping and mutual recognition keeps the air alive. The whole

service seems a holiday—a general enjoyment of gala dresses and

friendly greetings, very different from the silence, immobility, and

_noli me tangere_ aspect of an English congregation. Over all drones,

rattles, snores, and shrieks the organ; wailing, querulous, asthmatic,

incomplete, its everlasting nasal chant—always beginning, never ending,

through a range of two or three notes ground into one monotony. The

voices of the congregation rise and sink above it. These southern

people, like the Arabs, the Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find

their music in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we met a

little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all the while, whose

song was just another version of this chant. It has a discontented

plaintive wail, as if it came from some vast age, and were a cousin of

primeval winds.

At first sight, by the side of Mentone, San Remo is sadly prosaic. The

valleys seem to sprawl, and the universal olives are monotonously grey

upon their thick clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth

is wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm flower-bed

invaded by stray oats and beans and cabbages and garlic from the

kitchen-garden. The country does not suggest a single Greek idea. It

has no form or outline—no barren peaks, no spare and difficult

vegetation. The beauty is rich but tame—valleys green with oats and

corn, blossoming cherry-trees, and sweet bean-fields, figs coming into

leaf, and arrowy bay-trees by the side of sparkling streams: here and

there a broken aqueduct or rainbow bridge hung with maidenhair and

briar and clematis and sarsaparilla.

In the cathedral church of San Siro on Good Friday they hang the

columns and the windows with black; they cover the pictures and deface

the altar; above the high altar they 94raise a crucifix, and below they

place a catafalque with the effigy of the dead Christ. To this sad

symbol they address their prayers and incense, chant their 'litanies

and lurries,' and clash the rattles, which commemorate their rage

against the traitor Judas. So far have we already passed away from the

Greek feeling of Mentone. As I listened to the hideous din, I could not

but remember the Theocritean burial of Adonis. Two funeral beds

prepared: two feasts recurring in the springtime of the year. What a

difference beneath this superficial similarity—καλος νέκυς οι΅α

καθεύδων—_attritus ægrâ macie_. But the fast of Good Friday is followed

by the festival of Easter. That, after all, is the chief difference.

After leaving the cathedral we saw a pretty picture in a dull old

street of San Remo—three children leaning from a window, blowing

bubbles. The bubbles floated down the street, of every colour, round

and trembling, like the dreams of life which children dream. The town

is certainly most picturesque. It resembles a huge glacier of houses

poured over a wedge of rock, running down the sides and along the

ridge, and spreading itself into a fan between two torrents on the

shore below. House over house, with balcony and staircase, convent

turret and church tower, palm-trees and olives, roof gardens and

clinging creepers—this white cataract of buildings streams downward

from the lazar-house, and sanctuary, and sandstone quarries on the

hill. It is a mass of streets placed close above each other, and linked

together with arms and arches of solid masonry, as a protection from

the earthquakes, which are frequent at San Remo. The walls are tall,

and form a labyrinth of gloomy passages and treacherous blind alleys,

where the Moors of old might meet with a ferocious welcome. Indeed, San

Remo is a fortress as well as a dwelling-place. Over its gateways may

still be traced the pipes for molten lead, and on its walls the

eyeloops for 95arrows, with brackets for the feet of archers. Masses of

building have been shaken down by earthquakes. The ruins of what once

were houses gape with blackened chimneys and dark forlorn cellars;

mazes of fungus and unhealthy weeds among the still secure habitations.

Hardly a ray of light penetrates the streets; one learns the meaning of

the Italian word _uggia_ from their cold and gloom. During the day they

are deserted by every one but babies and witchlike old women—some

gossiping, some sitting vacant at the house door, some spinning or

weaving, or minding little children—ugly and ancient as are their own

homes, yet clean as are the streets. The younger population goes

afield; the men on mules laden for the hills, the women burdened like

mules with heavy and disgusting loads. It is an exceptionally

good-looking race; tall, well-grown, and strong.—But to the streets

again. The shops in the upper town are few, chiefly wine-booths and

stalls for the sale of salt fish, eggs, and bread, or cobblers' and

tinkers' ware. Notwithstanding the darkness of their dwellings, the

people have a love of flowers; azaleas lean from their windows, and

vines, carefully protected by a sheath of brickwork, climb the six

stories, to blossom out into a pergola upon the roof. Look at that mass

of greenery and colours, dimly seen from beneath, with a yellow cat

sunning herself upon the parapet! To reach such a garden and such

sunlight who would not mount six stories and thread a labyrinth of

passages? I should prefer a room upon the east side of the town,

looking southward to the Molo and the sea, with a sound of water

beneath, and a palm soaring up to fan my window with his feathery

leaves.

The shrines are little spots of brightness in the gloomy streets.

Madonna with a sword; Christ holding His pierced and bleeding heart;

l'Eterno Padre pointing to the dead Son stretched upon His knee; some

souls in torment; S. Roch 96reminding us of old plagues by the spot

upon his thigh;—these are the symbols of the shrines. Before them stand

rows of pots filled with gillyflowers, placed there by pious, simple,

praying hands—by maidens come to tell their sorrows to our Lady rich in

sorrow, by old women bent and shrivelled, in hopes of paradise or

gratitude for happy days, when Madonna kept Cecchino faithful to his

home, or saved the baby from the fever.

Lower down, between the sea and the hill, is the municipal,

aristocratic, ecclesiastical quarter of San Remo. There stands the

Palace Borea—a truly princely pile, built in the last Renaissance style

of splendour, with sea-nymphs and dolphins, and satyric heads, half

lips, half leafage, round about its doors and windows. Once it formed

the dwelling of a feudal family, but now it is a roomy anthill of a

hundred houses, shops, and offices, the Boreas of to-day retaining but

a portion of one flat, and making profit of the rest. There, too, are

the barracks and the syndic's hall; the Jesuits' school, crowded with

boys and girls; the shops for clothes, confectionery, and trinkets; the

piazza, with its fountain and tasselled planes, and flowery

chestnut-trees, a mass of greenery. Under these trees the idlers

lounge, boys play at leap-frog, men at bowls. Women in San Remo work

all day, but men and boys play for the most part at bowls or toss-penny

or leap-frog or morra. San Siro, the cathedral, stands at one end of

the square. Do not go inside; it has a sickly smell of immemorial

incense and garlic, undefinable and horrible. Far better looks San Siro

from the parapet above the torrent. There you see its irregular

half-Gothic outline across a tangle of lemon-trees and olives. The

stream rushes by through high walls, covered with creepers, spanned by

ferny bridges, feathered by one or two old tufty palms. And over all

rises the ancient turret of San Siro, like a Spanish giralda, a minaret

of pinnacles and 97pyramids and dome bubbles, with windows showing

heavy bells, old clocks, and sundials painted on the walls, and a

cupola of green and yellow tiles like serpent-scales, to crown the

whole. The sea lies beyond, and the house-roofs break it with grey

horizontal lines. Then there are convents, legions of them, large white

edifices, Jesuitical apparently for the most part, clanging importunate

bells, leaning rose-blossoms and cypress-boughs over their jealous

walls.

Lastly, there is the port—the mole running out into the sea, the quay

planted with plane-trees, and the fishing-boats—by which San Remo is

connected with the naval glory of the past—with the Riviera that gave

birth to Columbus—with the Liguria that the Dorias ruled—with the great

name of Genoa. The port is empty enough now; but from the pier you look

back on San Remo and its circling hills, a jewelled town set in

illimitable olive greyness. The quay seems also to be the

cattle-market. There the small buff cows of North Italy repose after

their long voyage or march, kneeling on the sandy ground or rubbing

their sides against the wooden cross awry with age and shorn of all its

symbols. Lambs frisk among the boats; impudent kids nibble the drooping

ears of patient mules. Hinds in white jackets and knee-breeches made of

skins, lead shaggy rams and fiercely bearded goats, ready to butt at

every barking dog, and always seeking opportunities of flight. Farmers

and parish priests in black petticoats feel the cattle and dispute

about the price, or whet their bargains with a draught of wine.

Meanwhile the nets are brought on shore glittering with the fry of

sardines, which are cooked like whitebait, with cuttlefish—amorphous

objects stretching shiny feelers on the hot dry sand—and prickly purple

eggs of the sea-urchin. Women go about their labour through the throng,

some carrying stones upon their heads, or unloading boats and bearing

planks of wood in single file, two marching 98side by side beneath one

load of lime, others scarcely visible under a stack of oats, another

with her baby in its cradle fast asleep.

San Remo has an elder brother among the hills, which is called San

Romolo, after one of the old bishops of Genoa. Who San Remo was is

buried in remote antiquity; but his town has prospered, while of San

Romolo nothing remains but a ruined hill-convent among pine-trees. The

old convent is worth visiting. Its road carries you into the heart of

the sierra which surrounds San Remo, a hill-country something like the

Jura, undulating and green to the very top with maritime pines and

pinasters. Riding up, you hear all manner of Alpine sounds; brawling

streams, tinkling cowbells, and herdsmen calling to each other on the

slopes. Beneath you lies San Remo, scarcely visible; and over it the

great sea rises ever so far into the sky, until the white sails hang in

air, and cloud and sea-line melt into each other indistinguishably.

Spanish chestnuts surround the monastery with bright blue gentians,

hepaticas, forget-me-nots, and primroses about their roots. The house

itself is perched on a knoll with ample prospect to the sea and to the

mountains, very near to heaven, within a theatre of noble

contemplations and soul-stirring thoughts. If Mentone spoke to me of

the poetry of Greek pastoral life, this convent speaks of mediæval

monasticism—of solitude with God, above, beneath, and all around, of

silence and repose from agitating cares, of continuity in prayer, and

changelessness of daily life. Some precepts of the _Imitatio_ came into

my mind: 'Be never wholly idle; read or write, pray or meditate, or

work with diligence for the common needs.' 'Praiseworthy is it for the

religious man to go abroad but seldom, and to seem to shun, and keep

his eyes from men.' 'Sweet is the cell when it is often sought, but if

we gad about, it wearies us by its 99seclusion.' Then I thought of the

monks so living in this solitude; their cell windows looking across the

valley to the sea, through summer and winter, under sun and stars. Then

would they read or write, what long melodious hours! or would they

pray, what stations on the pine-clad hills! or would they toil, what

terraces to build and plant with corn, what flowers to tend, what cows

to milk and pasture, what wood to cut, what fir-cones to gather for the

winter fire! or should they yearn for silence, silence from their

comrades of the solitude, what whispering galleries of God, where never

human voice breaks loudly, but winds and streams and lonely birds

disturb the awful stillness! In such a hermitage as this, only more

wild, lived S. Francis of Assisi, among the Apennines.[7] It was there

that he learned the tongues of beasts and birds, and preached them

sermons. Stretched for hours motionless on the bare rocks, coloured

like them and rough like them in his brown peasant's serge, he prayed

and meditated, saw the vision of Christ crucified, and planned his

order to regenerate a vicious age. So still he lay, so long, so like a

stone, so gentle were his eyes, so kind and low his voice, that the

mice nibbled breadcrumbs from his wallet, lizards ran over him, and

larks sang to him in the air. There, too, in those long, solitary

vigils, the Spirit of God came upon him, and the spirit of Nature was

even as God's Spirit, and he sang: 'Laudato sia Dio mio Signore, con

tutte le creature, specialmente messer lo frate sole; per suor luna, e

per le stelle; per frate vento e per l'aire, e nuvolo, e sereno e ogni

tempo.' Half the value of this hymn would be lost were we to forget how

it was written, in what solitudes and mountains far from men, or to

ticket it with some abstract word like Pantheism. Pantheism it is not;

but an acknowledgment of that brotherhood, beneath the love of God, by

which the sun 100and moon and stars, and wind and air and cloud, and

clearness and all weather, and all creatures, are bound together with

the soul of man.

[7] Dante, Par. xi. 106.

Few, of course, were like S. Francis. Probably no monk of San Romolo

was inspired with his enthusiasm for humanity, or had his revelation of

the Divine Spirit inherent in the world. Still fewer can have felt the

æsthetic charm of Nature but most vaguely. It was as much as they could

boast, if they kept steadily to the rule of their order, and attended

to the concerns each of his own soul. A terrible selfishness, if

rightly considered; but one which accorded with the delusion that this

world is a cave of care, the other world a place of torture or undying

bliss, death the prime object of our meditation, and lifelong

abandonment of our fellow-men the highest mode of existence. Why, then,

should monks, so persuaded of the riddle of the earth, have placed

themselves in scenes so beautiful? Why rose the Camaldolis and

Chartreuses over Europe? white convents on the brows of lofty hills,

among the rustling boughs of Vallombrosas, in the grassy meadows of

Engelbergs,—always the eyries of Nature's lovers, men smitten with the

loveliness of earth? There is surely some meaning in these poetic

stations.

Here is a sentence of the _Imitatio_ which throws some light upon the

hymn of S. Francis and the sites of Benedictine monasteries, by

explaining the value of natural beauty for monks who spent their life

in studying death: 'If thy heart were right, then would every creature

be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine. There is no

creature so small and vile that does not show forth the goodness of

God.' With this sentence bound about their foreheads, walked Fra

Angelico and S. Francis. To men like them the mountain valleys and the

skies, and all that they contained, were full of deep significance.

Though they reasoned '_de conditione 101humanæ miseriæ_,' and '_de

contemptu mundi_,' yet the whole world was a pageant of God's glory, a

testimony to His goodness. Their chastened senses, pure hearts, and

simple wills were as wings by which they soared above the things of

earth, and sent the music of their souls aloft with every other

creature in the symphony of praise. To them, as to Blake, the sun was

no mere blazing disc or ball, but 'an innumerable company of the

heavenly host singing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty."' To

them the winds were brothers, and the streams were sisters—brethren in

common dependence upon God their Father, brethren in common

consecration to His service, brethren by blood, brethren by vows of

holiness. Unquestioning faith rendered this world no puzzle; they

overlooked the things of sense because the spiritual things were ever

present, and as clear as day. Yet did they not forget that spiritual

things are symbolised by things of sense; and so the smallest herb of

grass was vital to their tranquil contemplations. We who have lost

sight of the invisible world, who set our affections more on things of

earth, fancy that because these monks despised the world, and did not

write about its landscapes, therefore they were dead to its beauty.

This is mere vanity: the mountains, stars, seas, fields, and living

things were only swallowed up in the one thought of God, and made

subordinate to the awfulness of human destinies. We to whom hills are

hills, and seas are seas, and stars are ponderable quantities, speak,

write, and reason of them as of objects interesting in themselves. The

monks were less ostensibly concerned about such things, because they

only found in them the vestibules and symbols of a hidden mystery.

The contrast between the Greek and mediæval modes of regarding Nature

is not a little remarkable. Both Greeks and monks, judged by

nineteenth-century standards, were 102unobservant of natural beauties.

They make but brief and general remarks upon landscapes and the like.

The ποντίων τε κυμάτων άνήριθμον γέλασμα is very rare. But the Greeks

stopped at the threshold of Nature; the forces they found there, the

gods, were inherent in Nature, and distinct. They did not, like the

monks, place one spiritual power, omnipotent and omnipresent, above

all, and see in Nature lessons of Divine government. We ourselves

having somewhat overstrained the latter point of view, are now apt to

return vaguely to Greek fancies. Perhaps, too, we talk so much about

scenery because it is scenery to us, and the life has gone out of it.

I cannot leave the Cornice without one word about a place which lies

between Mentone and San Remo. Bordighera has a beauty which is quite

distinct from both. Palms are its chief characteristics. They lean

against the garden walls, and feather the wells outside the town, where

women come with brazen pitchers to draw water. In some of the marshy

tangles of the plain, they spring from a thick undergrowth of spiky

leaves, and rear their tall aë;rial arms against the deep blue

background of the sea or darker purple of the distant hills. White

pigeons fly about among their branches, and the air is loud with

cooings and with rustlings, and the hoarser croaking of innumerable

frogs. Then, in the olive-groves that stretch along the level shore,

are labyrinths of rare and curious plants, painted tulips and white

periwinkles, flinging their light of blossoms and dark glossy leaves

down the swift channels of the brawling streams. On each side of the

rivulets they grow, like sister cataracts of flowers instead of spray.

At night fresh stars come out along the coast, beneath the stars of

heaven; for you can see the lamps of Ventimiglia and Mentone and

Monaco, and, far away, the lighthouses upon the promontories of Antibes

and the Estrelles. At dawn, a vision of Corsica grows from the sea. The

island lies eighty miles away, but 103one can trace the dark strip of

irregular peaks glowing amid the gold and purple of the rising sun. If

the air is clear and bright, the snows and overvaulting clouds which

crown its mountains shine all day, and glitter like an apparition in

the bright blue sky. 'Phantom fair,' half raised above the sea, it

stands, as unreal and transparent as the moon when seen in April

sunlight, yet not to be confounded with the shape of any cloud. If

Mentone speaks of Greek legends, and San Romolo restores the monastic

past, we feel ourselves at Bordighera transported to the East; and

lying under its tall palms can fancy ourselves at Tyre or Daphne, or in

the gardens of a Moslem prince.

Note.—Dec. 1873. My old impressions are renewed and confirmed by a

third visit, after seven years, to this coast. For purely idyllic

loveliness, the Cornice is surpassed by nothing in the South. A very

few spots in Sicily, the road between Castellammare and Amalfi, and the

island of Corfu, are its only rivals in this style of scenery. From

Cannes to Sestri is one continuous line of exquisitely modulated

landscape beauty, which can only be fully appreciated by travellers in

carriage or on foot.

104

AJACCIO

It generally happens that visitors to Ajaccio pass over from the

Cornice coast, leaving Nice at night, and waking about sunrise to find

themselves beneath the frowning mountains of Corsica. The difference

between the scenery of the island and the shores which they have left

is very striking. Instead of the rocky mountains of the Cornice,

intolerably dry and barren at their summits, but covered at their base

with villages and ancient towns and olive-fields, Corsica presents a

scene of solitary and peculiar grandeur. The highest mountain-tops are

covered with snow, and beneath the snow-level to the sea they are as

green as Irish or as English hills, but nearly uninhabited and

uncultivated. Valleys of almost Alpine verdure are succeeded by tracts

of chestnut wood and scattered pines, or deep and flowery brushwood—the

'maquis' of Corsica, which yields shelter to its traditional outlaws

and bandits. Yet upon these hillsides there are hardly any signs of

life; the whole country seems abandoned to primeval wildness and the

majesty of desolation. Nothing can possibly be more unlike the smiling

Riviera, every square mile of which is cultivated like a garden, and

every valley and bay dotted over with white villages. After steaming

for a few hours along this savage coast, the rocks which guard the

entrance to the bay of Ajaccio, murderous-looking teeth and needles

ominously christened Sanguinari, are passed, and we enter the splendid

land-locked harbour, on the northern shore of which 105Ajaccio is

built. About three centuries ago the town, which used to occupy the

extreme or eastern end of the bay, was removed to a more healthy point

upon the northern coast, so that Ajaccio is quite a modern city.

Visitors who expect to find in it the picturesqueness of Genoa or San

Remo, or even of Mentone, will be sadly disappointed. It is simply a

healthy, well-appointed town of recent date, the chief merits of which

are, that it has wide streets, and is free, externally at least, from

the filth and rubbish of most southern seaports.

But if Ajaccio itself is not picturesque, the scenery which it

commands, and in the heart of which it lies, is of the most

magnificent. The bay of Ajaccio resembles a vast Italian lake—a Lago

Maggiore, with greater space between the mountains and the shore. From

the snow-peaks of the interior, huge granite crystals clothed in white,

to the southern extremity of the bay, peak succeeds peak and ridge

rises behind ridge in a line of wonderful variety and beauty. The

atmospheric changes of light and shadow, cloud and colour, on this

upland country, are as subtle and as various as those which lend their

beauty to the scenery of the lakes, while the sea below is blue and

rarely troubled. One could never get tired with looking at this view.

Morning and evening add new charms to its sublimity and beauty. In the

early morning Monte d'Oro sparkles like a Monte Rosa with its fresh

snow, and the whole inferior range puts on the crystal blueness of dawn

among the Alps. In the evening, violet and purple tints and the golden

glow of Italian sunset lend a different lustre to the fairyland. In

fact, the beauties of Switzerland and Italy are curiously blended in

this landscape.

In soil and vegetation the country round Ajaccio differs much from the

Cornice. There are very few olive-trees, nor is the cultivated ground

backed up so immediately by stony mountains; but between the seashore

and the hills there is 106plenty of space for pasture-land, and

orchards of apricot and peach-trees, and orange gardens. This

undulating champaign, green with meadows and watered with clear

streams, is very refreshing to the eyes of Northern people, who may

have wearied of the bareness and greyness of Nice or Mentone. It is

traversed by excellent roads, recently constructed on a plan of the

French Government, which intersect the country in all directions, and

offer an infinite variety of rides or drives to visitors. The broken

granite of which these roads are made is very pleasant for riding over.

Most of the hills through which they strike, after starting from

Ajaccio, are clothed with a thick brushwood of box, ilex, lentisk,

arbutus, and laurustinus, which stretches down irregularly into

vineyards, olive-gardens, and meadows. It is, indeed, the native growth

of the island; for wherever a piece of ground is left untilled, the

macchi grow up, and the scent of their multitudinous aromatic blossoms

is so strong that it may be smelt miles out at sea. Napoleon, at S.

Helena, referred to this fragrance when he said that he should know

Corsica blindfold by the smell of its soil. Occasional woods of holm

oak make darker patches on the landscape, and a few pines fringe the

side of enclosure walls or towers. The prickly pear runs riot in and

out among the hedges and upon the walls, diversifying the colours of

the landscape with its strange grey-green masses and unwieldy fans. In

spring, when peach and almond trees are in blossom, and when the

roadside is starred with asphodels, this country is most beautiful in

its gladness. The macchi blaze with cistus flowers of red and silver.

Golden broom mixes with the dark purple of the great French lavender,

and over the whole mass of blossom wave plumes of Mediterranean heath

and sweet-scented yellow coronilla. Under the stems of the ilex peep

cyclamens, pink and sweet; the hedgerows are a tangle of vetches,

convolvuluses, 107lupines, orchises, and alliums, with here and there a

purple iris. It would be difficult to describe all the rare and lovely

plants which are found here in a profusion that surpasses even the

flower-gardens of the Cornice, and reminds one of the most favoured

Alpine valleys in their early spring.

Since the French occupied Corsica they have done much for the island by

improving its harbours and making good roads, and endeavouring to

mitigate the ferocity of the people. But they have many things to

contend against, and Corsica is still behind the other provinces of

France. The people are idle, haughty, umbrageous, fiery, quarrelsome,

fond of gipsy life, and retentive through generations of old feuds and

prejudices to an almost inconceivable extent. Then the nature of the

country itself offers serious obstacles to its proper colonisation and

cultivation. The savage state of the island and its internal feuds have

disposed the Corsicans to quit the seaboard for their mountain villages

and fortresses, so that the great plains at the foot of the hills are

unwholesome for want of tillage and drainage. Again, the mountains

themselves have in many parts been stripped of their forests, and

converted into mere wildernesses of macchi stretching up and down their

slopes for miles and miles of useless desolation. Another impediment to

proper cultivation is found in the old habit of what is called free

pasturage. The highland shepherds are allowed by the national custom to

drive down their flocks and herds to the lowlands during the winter, so

that fences are broken, young crops are browsed over and trampled down,

and agriculture becomes a mere impossibility. The last and chief

difficulty against which the French have had to contend, and up to this

time with apparent success, is brigandage. The Corsican system of

brigandage is so very different from that of the Italians, Sicilians,

and Greeks, that 108a word may be said about its peculiar character. In

the first place, it has nothing at all to do with robbery and thieving.

The Corsican bandit took to a free life among the macchi, not for the

sake of supporting himself by lawless depredation, but because he had

put himself under a legal and social ban by murdering some one in

obedience to the strict code of honour of his country. His victim may

have been the hereditary foe of his house for generations, or else the

newly made enemy of yesterday. But in either case, if he had killed him

fairly, after a due notification of his intention to do so, he was held

to have fulfilled a duty rather than to have committed a crime. He then

betook himself to the dense tangles of evergreens which I have

described, where he lived upon the charity of countryfolk and

shepherds. In the eyes of those simple people it was a sacred duty to

relieve the necessities of the outlaws, and to guard them from the

bloodhounds of justice. There was scarcely a respectable family in

Corsica who had not one or more of its members thus _alla campagna_, as

it was euphemistically styled. The Corsicans themselves have attributed

this miserable state of things to two principal causes. The first of

these was the ancient bad government of the island: under its Genoese

rulers no justice was administered, and private vengeance for homicide

or insult became a necessary consequence among the haughty and warlike

families of the mountain villages. Secondly, the Corsicans have been

from time immemorial accustomed to wear arms in everyday life. They

used to sit at their house doors and pace the streets with musket,

pistol, dagger, and cartouch-box on their persons; and on the most

trivial occasion of merriment or enthusiasm they would discharge their

firearms. This habit gave a bloody termination to many quarrels, which

might have ended more peaceably had the parties been unarmed; and so

the seeds of _vendetta_ were constantly being 109sown. Statistics

published by the French Government present a hideous picture of the

state of bloodshed in Corsica even during this century. In one period

of thirty years (between 1821 and 1850) there were 4319 murders in the

island. Almost every man was watching for his neighbour's life, or

seeking how to save his own; and agriculture and commerce were

neglected for this grisly game of hide-and-seek. In 1853 the French

began to take strong measures, and, under the Prefect Thuillier, they

hunted the bandits from the macchi, killing between 200 and 300 of

them. At the same time an edict was promulgated against bearing arms.

It is forbidden to sell the old Corsican stiletto in the shops, and no

one may carry a gun, even for sporting purposes, unless he obtains a

special licence. These licences, moreover, are only granted for short

and precisely measured periods.

In order to appreciate the stern and gloomy character of the Corsicans,

it is necessary to leave the smiling gardens of Ajaccio, and to visit

some of the more distant mountain villages—Vico, Cavro, Bastelica, or

Bocognano, any of which may easily be reached from the capital.

Immediately after quitting the seaboard, we enter a country austere in

its simplicity, solemn without relief, yet dignified by its majesty and

by the sense of freedom it inspires. As we approach the mountains, the

macchi become taller, feathering man-high above the road, and

stretching far away upon the hills. Gigantic masses of granite, shaped

like buttresses and bastions, seem to guard the approaches to these

hills; while, looking backward over the green plain, the sea lies

smiling in a haze of blue among the rocky horns and misty headlands of

the coast. There is a stateliness about the abrupt inclination of these

granite slopes, rising from their frowning portals by sharp _arêtes_ to

the snows piled on their summits, which contrasts in a strange way with

the softness and beauty 110of the mingling sea and plain beneath. In no

landscape are more various qualities combined; in none are they so

harmonised as to produce so strong a sense of majestic freedom and

severe power. Suppose that we are on the road to Corte, and have now

reached Bocognano, the first considerable village since we left

Ajaccio. Bocognano might be chosen as typical of Corsican

hill-villages, with its narrow street, and tall tower-like houses of

five or six stories high, faced with rough granite, and pierced with

the smallest windows and very narrow doorways. These buildings have a

mournful and desolate appearance. There is none of the grandeur of

antiquity about them; no sculptured arms or castellated turrets, or

balconies or spacious staircases, such as are common in the poorest

towns of Italy. The signs of warlike occupation which they offer, and

their sinister aspect of vigilance, are thoroughly prosaic. They seem

to suggest a state of society in which feud and violence were

systematised into routine. There is no relief to the savage austerity

of their forbidding aspect; no signs of wealth or household comfort; no

trace of art, no liveliness and gracefulness of architecture. Perched

upon their coigns of vantage, these villages seem always menacing, as

if Saracen pirates, or Genoese marauders, or bandits bent on vengeance,

were still for ever on the watch. Forests of immensely old

chestnut-trees surround Bocognano on every side, so that you step from

the village streets into the shade of woods that seem to have remained

untouched for centuries. The country-people support themselves almost

entirely upon the fruit of these chestnuts; and there is a large

department of Corsica called Castagniccia, from the prevalence of these

trees and the sustenance which the inhabitants derive from them. Close

by the village brawls a torrent, such as one may see in the Monte Rosa

valleys or the Apennines, but very rarely in Switzerland. It is of a

pure green colour, 111absolutely like Indian jade, foaming round the

granite boulders, and gliding over smooth slabs of polished stone, and

eddying into still, deep pools fringed with fern. Monte d'Oro, one of

the largest mountains of Corsica, soars above, and from his snows the

purest water, undefiled by glacier mud or the _débris_ of avalanches,

melts away. Following the stream, we rise through the macchi and the

chestnut woods, which grow more sparely by degrees, until we reach the

zone of beeches. Here the scene seems suddenly transferred to the

Pyrenees; for the road is carried along abrupt slopes, thickly set with

gigantic beech-trees, overgrown with pink and silver lichens. In the

early spring their last year's leaves are still crisp with hoar-frost;

one morning's journey has brought us from the summer of Ajaccio to

winter on these heights, where no flowers are visible but the pale

hellebore and tiny lilac crocuses. Snow-drifts stretch by the roadside,

and one by one the pioneers of the vast pine-woods of the interior

appear. A great portion of the pine-forest (_Pinus larix_, or Corsican

pine, not larch) between Bocognano and Corte had recently been burned

by accident when we passed by. Nothing could be more forlorn than the

black leafless stems and branches emerging from the snow. Some of these

trees were mast-high, and some mere saplings. Corte itself is built

among the mountain fastnesses of the interior. The snows and granite

cliffs of Monte Rotondo overhang it to the north-west, while two fair

valleys lead downward from its eyrie to the eastern coast. The rock on

which it stands rises to a sharp point, sloping southward, and

commanding the valleys of the Golo and the Tavignano. Remembering that

Corte was the old capital of Corsica, and the centre of General Paoli's

government, we are led to compare the town with Innsprück, Meran, or

Grenoble. In point of scenery and situation it is hardly second to any

of these mountain-girdled cities; but its 112poverty and bareness are

scarcely less striking than those of Bocognano.

The whole Corsican character, with its stern love of justice, its

furious revengefulness and wild passion for freedom, seems to be

illustrated by the peculiar elements of grandeur and desolation in this

landscape. When we traverse the forest of Vico or the rocky

pasture-lands of Niolo, the history of the Corsican national heroes,

Giudice della Rocca and Sampiero, becomes intelligible, nor do we fail

to understand some of the mysterious attraction which led the more

daring spirits of the island to prefer a free life among the macchi and

pine-woods to placid lawful occupations in farms and villages. The

lives of the two men whom I have mentioned are so prominent in Corsican

history, and are so often still upon the lips of the common people,

that it may be well to sketch their outlines in the foreground of the

Salvator Rosa landscape just described. Giudice was the governor of

Corsica, as lieutenant for the Pisans, at the end of the thirteenth

century. At that time the island belonged to the republic of Pisa, but

the Genoese were encroaching on them by land and sea, and the whole

life of their brave champion was spent in a desperate struggle with the

invaders, until at last he died, old, blind, and in prison, at the

command of his savage foes. Giudice was the title which the Pisans

usually conferred upon their governor, and Della Rocca deserved it by

right of his own inexorable love of justice. Indeed, justice seems to

have been with him a passion, swallowing up all other feelings of his

nature. All the stories which are told of him turn upon this point in

his character; and though they may not be strictly true, they

illustrate the stern virtues for which he was celebrated among the

Corsicans, and show what kind of men this harsh and gloomy nation loved

to celebrate as heroes. This is not the place either to criticise these

legends or to recount them at 113full length. The most famous and the

most characteristic may, however, be briefly told. On one occasion,

after a victory over the Genoese, he sent a message that the captives

in his hands should be released if their wives and sisters came to sue

for them. The Genoese ladies embarked, and arrived in Corsica, and to

Giudice's nephew was intrusted the duty of fulfilling his uncle's

promise. In the course of executing his commission, the youth was so

smitten with the beauty of one of the women that he dishonoured her.

Thereupon Giudice had him at once put to death. Another story shows the

Spartan justice of this hero in a less savage light. He was passing by

a cowherd's cottage, when he heard some young calves bleating. On

inquiring what distressed them, he was told that the calves had not

enough milk to drink after the farm people had been served. Then

Giudice made it a law that the calves throughout the land should take

their fill before the cows were milked.

Sampiero belongs to a later period of Corsican history. After a long

course of misgovernment the Genoese rule had become unbearable. There

was no pretence of administering justice, and private vengeance had

full sway in the island. The sufferings of the nation were so great

that the time had come for a new judge or saviour to rise among them.

Sampiero was the son of obscure parents who lived at Bastelica. But his

abilities very soon declared themselves, and made a way for him in the

world. He spent his youth in the armies of the Medici and of the French

Francis, gaining great renown as a brave soldier. Bayard became his

friend, and Francis made him captain of his Corsican bands. But

Sampiero did not forget the wrongs of his native land while thus on

foreign service. He resolved, if possible, to undermine the power of

Genoa, and spent the whole of his manhood and old age in one long

struggle with their great captain, Stephen Doria. Of 114his stern

patriotism and Roman severity of virtue the following story is a

terrible illustration. Sampiero, though a man of mean birth, had

married an heiress of the noble Corsican house of the Ornani. His wife,

Vannina, was a woman of timid and flexible nature, who, though devoted

to her husband, fell into the snares of his enemies. During his absence

on an embassy to Algiers the Genoese induced her to leave her home at

Marseilles and to seek refuge in their city, persuading her that this

step would secure the safety of her child. She was starting on her

journey when a friend of Sampiero arrested her, and brought her back to

Aix, in Provence. Sampiero, when he heard of these events, hurried to

France, and was received by a relative of his, who hinted that he had

known of Vannina's projected flight. 'E tu hai taciuto?' was Sampiero's

only answer, accompanied by a stroke of his poignard that killed the

lukewarm cousin. Sampiero now brought his wife from Aix to Marseilles,

preserving the most absolute silence on the way, and there, on entering

his house, he killed her with his own hand. It is said that he loved

Vannina passionately; and when she was dead, he caused her to be buried

with magnificence in the church of S. Francis. Like Giudice, Sampiero

fell at last a prey to treachery. The murder of Vannina had made the

Ornani his deadly foes. In order to avenge her blood, they played into

the hands of the Genoese, and laid a plot by which the noblest of the

Corsicans was brought to death. First, they gained over to their scheme

a monk of Bastelica, called Ambrogio, and Sampiero's own squire and

shield-bearer, Vittolo. By means of these men, in whom he trusted, he

was drawn defenceless and unattended into a deeply wooded ravine near

Cavro, not very far from his birthplace, where the Ornani and their

Genoese troops surrounded him. Sampiero fired his pistols in vain, for

Vittolo had loaded them with the shot downwards. Then he drew 115his

sword, and began to lay about him, when the same Vittolo, the Judas,

stabbed him from behind, and the old lion fell dead by his friend's

hand. Sampiero was sixty-nine when he died, in the year 1567. It is

satisfactory to know that the Corsicans have called traitors and foes

to their country Vittoli for ever. These two examples of Corsican

patriots are enough; we need not add to theirs the history of Paoli—a

milder and more humane, but scarcely less heroic leader. Paoli,

however, in the hour of Corsica's extremest peril, retired to England,

and died in philosophic exile. Neither Giudice nor Sampiero would have

acted thus. The more forlorn the hope, the more they struggled.

Among the old Corsican customs which are fast dying out, but which

still linger in the remote valleys of Niolo and Vico, is the _vócero_,

or funeral chant, improvised by women at funerals over the bodies of

the dead. Nothing illustrates the ferocious temper and savage passions

of the race better than these _vóceri_, many of which have been written

down and preserved. Most of them are songs of vengeance and

imprecation, mingled with hyperbolical laments and utterances of

extravagant grief, poured forth by wives and sisters at the side of

murdered husbands and brothers. The women who sing them seem to have

lost all milk of human kindness, and to have exchanged the virtues of

their sex for Spartan fortitude and the rage of furies. While we read

their turbid lines we are carried in imagination to one of the

cheerless houses of Bastelica or Bocognano, overshadowed by its

mournful chestnut-tree, on which the blood of the murdered man is yet

red. The _gridata_, or wake, is assembled in a dark room. On the wooden

board, called _tola_, the corpse lies stretched; and round it are

women, veiled in the blue-black mantle of Corsican costume, moaning and

rocking themselves upon their chairs. The _pasto_ or _conforto_, food

supplied for mourners, 116stands upon a side table, and round the room

are men with savage eyes and bristling beards, armed to the teeth, keen

for vengeance. The dead man's musket and pocket-pistol lie beside him,

and his bloody shirt is hung up at his head. Suddenly, the silence,

hitherto only disturbed by suppressed groans and muttered curses, is

broken by a sharp cry. A woman rises: it is the sister of the dead man;

she seizes his shirt, and holding it aloft with Mænad gestures and

frantic screams, gives rhythmic utterance to her grief and rage. 'I was

spinning, when I heard a great noise: it was a gunshot, which went into

my heart, and seemed a voice that cried, "Run, thy brother is dying." I

ran into the room above; I took the blow into my breast; I said, "Now

he is dead, there is nothing to give me comfort. Who will undertake thy

vengeance? When I show thy shirt, who will vow to let his beard grow

till the murderer is slain? Who is there left to do it? A mother near

her death? A sister? Of all our race there is only left a woman,

without kin, poor, orphan, and a girl. Yet, O my brother! never fear.

For thy vengeance thy sister is enough!

'"Ma per fà la to bindetta,

Sta siguru, basta anch ella!

Give me the pistol; I will shoulder the gun; I will away to the hills.

My brother, heart of thy sister, thou shalt be avenged!"' A _vócero_

declaimed upon the bier of Giammatteo and Pasquale, two cousins, by the

sister of the former, is still fiercer and more energetic in its

malediction. This Erinnys of revenge prays Christ and all the saints to

extirpate the murderer's whole race, to shrivel it up till it passes

from the earth. Then, with a sudden and vehement transition to the

pathos of her own sorrow, she exclaims:—

'Halla mai bista nissunu

Tumbà l'omi pe li canti?'

117

It appears from these words that Giammatteo's enemies had killed him

because they were jealous of his skill in singing. Shortly after, she

curses the curate of the village, a kinsman of the murderer, for

refusing to toll the funeral bells; and at last, all other threads of

rage and sorrow being twined and knotted into one, she gives loose to

her raging thirst for blood: 'If only I had a son, to train like a

sleuth-hound, that he might track the murderer! Oh, if I had a son! Oh,

if I had a lad!' Her words seem to choke her, and she swoons, and

remains for a short time insensible. When the Bacchante of revenge

awakes, it is with milder feelings in her heart: 'O brother mine,

Matteo! art thou sleeping? Here I will rest with thee and weep till

daybreak.' It is rare to find in literature so crude and intense an

expression of fiery hatred as these untranslatable _vóceri_ present.

The emotion is so simple and so strong that it becomes sublime by mere

force, and affects us with a strange pathos when contrasted with the

tender affection conveyed in such terms of endearment as 'my dove,' 'my

flower,' 'my pheasant,' 'my bright painted orange,' addressed to the

dead. In the _vóceri_ it often happens that there are several

interlocutors: one friend questions and another answers; or a kinswoman

of the murderer attempts to justify the deed, and is overwhelmed with

deadly imprecations. Passionate appeals are made to the corpse: 'Arise!

Do you not hear the women cry? Stand up. Show your wounds, and let the

fountains of your blood flow! Alas! he is dead; he sleeps; he cannot

hear!' Then they turn again to tears and curses, feeling that no help

or comfort can come from the clay-cold form. The intensity of grief

finds strange language for its utterance. A girl, mourning over her

father, cries:—

'Mi l'hannu crucifissatu

Cume Ghiesu Cristu in croce.'

118

Once only, in Viale's collection, does any friend of the dead remember

mercy. It is an old woman, who points to the crucifix above the bier.

But all the _vóceri_ are not so murderous. Several are composed for

girls who died unwedded and before their time, by their mothers or

companions. The language of these laments is far more tender and

ornate. They praise the gentle virtues and beauty of the girl, her

piety and helpful household ways. The most affecting of these dirges is

that which celebrates the death of Romana, daughter of Dariola Danesi.

Here is a pretty picture of the girl: 'Among the best and fairest

maidens you were like a rose among flowers, like the moon among stars;

so far more lovely were you than the loveliest. The youths in your

presence were like lighted torches, but full of reverence; you were

courteous to all, but with none familiar. In church they gazed at you,

but you looked at none of them; and after mass you said, "Mother, let

us go." Oh! who will console me for your loss? Why did the Lord so much

desire you? But now you rest in heaven, all joy and smiles; for the

world was not worthy of so fair a face. Oh, how far more beautiful will

Paradise be now!' Then follows a piteous picture of the old bereaved

mother, to whom a year will seem a thousand years, who will wander

among relatives without affection, neighbours without love; and who,

when sickness comes, will have no one to give her a drop of water, or

to wipe the sweat from her brow, or to hold her hand in death. Yet all

that is left for her is to wait and pray for the end, that she may join

again her darling.

But it is time to return to Ajaccio itself. At present the attractions

and ornaments of the town consist of a good public library, Cardinal

Fesch's large but indifferent collection of pictures, two monuments

erected to Napoleon, and Napoleon's house. It will always be the chief

pride of Ajaccio that she 119gave birth to the great emperor. Close to

the harbour, in a public square by the sea-beach, stands an equestrian

statue of the conqueror, surrounded by his four brothers on foot. They

are all attired in Roman fashion, and are turned seaward, to the west,

as if to symbolise the emigration of this family to subdue Europe.

There is something ludicrous and forlorn in the stiffness of the

group—something even pathetic, when we think how Napoleon gazed seaward

from another island, no longer on horseback, no longer laurel-crowned,

an unthroned, unseated conqueror, on S. Helena. His father's house

stands close by. An old Italian waiting-woman, who had been long in the

service of the Murats, keeps it and shows it. She has the manners of a

lady, and can tell many stories of the various members of the

Buonaparte family. Those who fancy that Napoleon was born in a mean

dwelling of poor parents will be surprised to find so much space and

elegance in these apartments. Of course his family was not rich by

comparison with the riches of French or English nobles. But for

Corsicans they were well-to-do, and their house has an air of antique

dignity. The chairs of the entrance-saloon have been literally stripped

of their coverings by enthusiastic visitors; the horse-hair stuffing

underneath protrudes itself with a sort of comic pride, as if

protesting that it came to be so tattered in an honourable service.

Some of the furniture seems new; but many old presses, inlaid with

marbles, agates, and lapis-lazuli, such as Italian families preserve

for generations, have an air of respectable antiquity about them. Nor

is there any doubt that the young Napoleon led his minuets beneath the

stiff girandoles of the formal dancing-room. There, too, in a dark back

chamber, is the bed in which he was born. At its foot is a photograph

of the Prince Imperial sent by the Empress Eugénie, who, when she

visited the room, wept much 120_pianse molto_ (to use the old lady's

phrase)—at seeing the place where such lofty destinies began. On the

wall of the same room is a portrait of Napoleon himself as the young

general of the republic—with the citizen's unkempt hair, the fierce

fire of the Revolution in his eyes, a frown upon his forehead, lips

compressed, and quivering nostrils; also one of his mother, the

pastille of a handsome woman, with Napoleonic eyes and brows and nose,

but with a vacant simpering mouth. Perhaps the provincial artist knew

not how to seize the expression of this feature, the most difficult to

draw. For we cannot fancy that Letizia had lips without the firmness or

the fulness of a majestic nature.

The whole first story of this house belonged to the Buonaparte family.

The windows look out partly on a little court and partly on narrow

streets. It was, no doubt, the memory of this home that made Napoleon,

when emperor, design schemes for the good of Corsica—schemes that might

have brought him more honour than many conquests, but which he had no

time or leisure to carry out. On S. Helena his mind often reverted to

them, and he would speak of the gummy odours of the macchi wafted from

the hillsides to the seashore.

121

MONTE GENEROSO

The long hot days of Italian summer were settling down on plain and

country when, in the last week of May, we travelled northward from

Florence and Bologna seeking coolness. That was very hard to find in

Lombardy. The days were long and sultry, the nights short, without a

respite from the heat. Milan seemed a furnace, though in the Duomo and

the narrow shady streets there was a twilight darkness which at least

looked cool. Long may it be before the northern spirit of improvement

has taught the Italians to despise the wisdom of their forefathers, who

built those sombre streets of palaces with overhanging eaves, that,

almost meeting, form a shelter from the fiercest sun. The lake country

was even worse than the towns; the sunlight lay all day asleep upon the

shining waters, and no breeze came to stir their surface or to lift the

tepid veil of haze, through which the stony mountains, with their yet

unmelted patches of winter snow, glared as if in mockery of coolness.

Then we heard of a new inn, which had just been built by an

enterprising Italian doctor below the very top of Monte Generoso. There

was a picture of it in the hotel at Cadenabbia, but this gave but

little idea of any particular beauty. A big square house, with many

windows, and the usual ladies on mules, and guides with alpenstocks,

advancing towards it, and some round bushes growing near, was all it

showed. Yet there hung the real Monte Generoso above our heads, and we

122thought it must be cooler on its height than by the lake-shore. To

find coolness was the great point with us just then. Moreover, some one

talked of the wonderful plants that grew among its rocks, and of its

grassy slopes enamelled with such flowers as make our cottage gardens

at home gay in summer, not to speak of others rarer and peculiar to the

region of the Southern Alps. Indeed, the Generoso has a name for

flowers, and it deserves it, as we presently found.

This mountain is fitted by its position for commanding one of the

finest views in the whole range of the Lombard Alps. A glance at the

map shows that. Standing out pre-eminent among the chain of lower hills

to which it belongs, the lakes of Lugano and Como with their long arms

enclose it on three sides, while on the fourth the plain of Lombardy

with its many cities, its rich pasture-lands and cornfields intersected

by winding river-courses and straight interminable roads, advances to

its very foot. No place could be better chosen for surveying that

contrasted scene of plain and mountain, which forms the great

attraction of the outlying buttresses of the central Alpine mass. The

superiority of the Monte Generoso to any of the similar eminences on

the northern outskirts of Switzerland is great. In richness of colour,

in picturesqueness of suggestion, in sublimity and breadth of prospect,

its advantages are incontestable. The reasons for this superiority are

obvious. On the Italian side the transition from mountain to plain is

far more abrupt; the atmosphere being clearer, a larger sweep of

distance is within our vision; again, the sunlight blazes all day long

upon the very front and forehead of the distant Alpine chain, instead

of merely slanting along it, as it does upon the northern side.

From Mendrisio, the village at the foot of the mountain, an easy

mule-path leads to the hotel, winding first through 123English-looking

hollow lanes with real hedges, which are rare in this country, and

English primroses beneath them. Then comes a forest region of luxuriant

chestnut-trees, giants with pink boles just bursting into late leafage,

yellow and tender, but too thin as yet for shade. A little higher up,

the chestnuts are displaced by wild laburnums bending under their

weight of flowers. The graceful branches meet above our heads, sweeping

their long tassels against our faces as we ride beneath them, while the

air for a good mile is full of fragrance. It is strange to be reminded

in this blooming labyrinth of the dusty suburb roads and villa gardens

of London. The laburnum is pleasant enough in S. John's Wood or the

Regent's Park in May—a tame domesticated thing of brightness amid smoke

and dust. But it is another joy to see it flourishing in its own home,

clothing acres of the mountain-side in a very splendour of

spring-colour, mingling its paler blossoms with the golden broom of our

own hills, and with the silver of the hawthorn and wild cherry. Deep

beds of lilies-of-the-valley grow everywhere beneath the trees; and in

the meadows purple columbines, white asphodels, the Alpine spiræa,

tall, with feathery leaves, blue scabious, golden hawkweeds, turkscap

lilies, and, better than all, the exquisite narcissus poeticus, with

its crimson-tipped cup, and the pure pale lilies of San Bruno, are

crowded in a maze of dazzling brightness. Higher up the laburnums

disappear, and flaunting crimson peonies gleam here and there upon the

rocks, until at length the gentians and white ranunculuses of the

higher Alps displace the less hardy flowers of Italy.

About an hour below the summit of the mountain we came upon the inn, a

large clean building, with scanty furniture and snowy wooden floors,

guiltless of carpets. It is big enough to hold about a hundred guests;

and Doctor Pasta, who built it, a native of Mendrisio, was gifted

either 124with much faith or with a real prophetic instinct.[8] Anyhow

he deserves commendation for his spirit of enterprise. As yet the house

is little known to English travellers: it is mostly frequented by

Italians from Milan, Novara, and other cities of the plain, who call it

the Italian Righi, and come to it, as cockneys go to Richmond, for

noisy picnic excursions, or at most for a few weeks' _villeggiatura_ in

the summer heats. When we were there in May the season had scarcely

begun, and the only inmates besides ourselves were a large party from

Milan, ladies and gentlemen in holiday guise, who came, stayed one

night, climbed the peak at sunrise, and departed amid jokes and

shouting and half-childish play, very unlike the doings of a similar

party in sober England. After that the stillness of nature descended on

the mountain, and the sun shone day after day upon that great view

which seemed created only for ourselves. And what a view it was! The

plain stretching up to the high horizon, where a misty range of pink

cirrus-clouds alone marked the line where earth ended and the sky

began, was islanded with cities and villages innumerable, basking in

the hazy shimmering heat. Milan, seen through the doctor's telescope,

displayed its Duomo perfect as a microscopic shell, with all its

exquisite fretwork, and Napoleon's arch of triumph surmounted by the

four tiny horses, as in a fairy's dream. Far off, long silver lines

marked the lazy course of Po and Ticino, while little lakes like Varese

and the lower end of Maggiore spread themselves out, connecting the

mountains with the plain.

[8] It is but just to Doctor Pasta to remark that the above sentence

was written more than ten years ago. Since then he has enlarged and

improved his house in many ways, furnished it more luxuriously, made

paths through the beechwoods round it, and brought excellent water at

a great cost from a spring near the summit of the mountain. A more

charming residence from early spring to late autumn can scarcely be

discovered.

125Five minutes' walk from the hotel brought us to a ridge where the

precipice fell suddenly and almost sheer over one arm of Lugano Lake.

Sullenly outstretched asleep it lay beneath us, coloured with the tints

of fluor-spar, or with the changeful green and azure of a peacock's

breast. The depth appeared immeasurable. San Salvadore had receded into

insignificance: the houses and churches and villas of Lugano bordered

the lake-shore with an uneven line of whiteness. And over all there

rested a blue mist of twilight and of haze, contrasting with the

clearness of the peaks above. It was sunset when we first came here;

and, wave beyond wave, the purple Italian hills tossed their crested

summits to the foot of a range of stormy clouds that shrouded the high

Alps. Behind the clouds was sunset, clear and golden; but the mountains

had put on their mantle for the night, and the hem of their garment was

all we were to see. And yet—over the edge of the topmost ridge of

cloud, what was that long hard line of black, too solid and immovable

for cloud, rising into four sharp needles clear and well defined?

Surely it must be the familiar outline of Monte Rosa itself, the form

which every one who loves the Alps knows well by heart, which

picture-lovers know from Ruskin's woodcut in the 'Modern Painters.' For

a moment only the vision stayed: then clouds swept over it again, and

from the place where the empress of the Alps had been, a pillar of mist

shaped like an angel's wing, purple and tipped with gold, shot up

against the pale green sky. That cloud-world was a pageant in itself,

as grand and more gorgeous perhaps than the mountains would have been.

Deep down through the hollows of the Simplon a thunderstorm was

driving; and we saw forked flashes once and again, as in a distant

world, lighting up the valleys for a moment, and leaving the darkness

blacker behind them as the storm blurred out the landscape forty miles

away. 126Darkness was coming to us too, though our sky was clear and

the stars were shining brightly. At our feet the earth was folding

itself to sleep; the plain was wholly lost; little islands of white

mist had formed themselves, and settled down upon the lakes and on

their marshy estuaries; the birds were hushed; the gentian-cups were

filling to the brim with dew. Night had descended on the mountain and

the plain; the show was over.

The dawn was whitening in the east next morning, when we again

scrambled through the dwarf beechwood to the precipice above the lake.

Like an ink-blot it lay, unruffled, slumbering sadly. Broad sheets of

vapour brooded on the plain, telling of miasma and fever, of which we

on the mountain, in the pure cool air, knew nothing. The Alps were all

there now—cold, unreal, stretching like a phantom line of snowy peaks,

from the sharp pyramids of Monte Viso and the Grivola in the west to

the distant Bernina and the Ortler in the east. Supreme among them

towered Monte Rosa—queenly, triumphant, gazing down in proud

pre-eminence, as she does when seen from any point of the Italian

plain. There is no mountain like her. Mont Blanc himself is scarcely so

regal; and she seems to know it, for even the clouds sweep humbled

round her base, girdling her at most, but leaving her crown clear and

free. Now, however, there were no clouds to be seen in all the sky. The

mountains had a strange unshriven look, as if waiting to be blessed.

Above them, in the cold grey air, hung a low black arch of shadow, the

shadow of the bulk of the huge earth, which still concealed the sun.

Slowly, slowly this dark line sank lower, till, one by one, at last,

the peaks caught first a pale pink flush; then a sudden golden glory

flashed from one to the other, as they leapt joyfully into life. It is

a supreme moment this first burst of life and light over the sleeping

world, as one can 127only see it on rare days and in rare places like

the Monte Generoso. The earth—enough of it at least for us to picture

to ourselves the whole—lies at our feet; and we feel as the Saviour

might have felt, when from the top of that high mountain He beheld the

kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them. Strangely and solemnly

may we image to our fancy the lives that are being lived down in those

cities of the plain: how many are waking at this very moment to toil

and a painful weariness, to sorrow, or to 'that unrest which men

miscall delight;' while we upon our mountain buttress, suspended in

mid-heaven and for a while removed from daily cares, are drinking in

the beauty of the world that God has made so fair and wonderful. From

this same eyrie, only a few years ago, the hostile armies of France,

Italy, and Austria might have been watched moving in dim masses across

the plains, for the possession of which they were to clash in mortal

fight at Solferino and Magenta. All is peaceful now. It is hard to

picture the waving cornfields trodden down, the burning villages and

ransacked vineyards, all the horrors of real war to which that fertile

plain has been so often the prey. But now these memories of

Old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago,

do but add a calm and beauty to the radiant scene that lies before us.

And the thoughts which it suggests, the images with which it stores our

mind, are not without their noblest uses. The glory of the world sinks

deeper into our shallow souls than we well know; and the spirit of its

splendour is always ready to revisit us on dark and dreary days at home

with an unspeakable refreshment. Even as I write, I seem to see the

golden glow sweeping in broad waves over the purple hills nearer and

nearer, till the lake brightens at our 128feet, and the windows of

Lugano flash with sunlight, and little boats creep forth across the

water like spiders on a pond, leaving an arrowy track of light upon the

green behind them, while Monte Salvadore with its tiny chapel and a

patch of the further landscape are still kept in darkness by the shadow

of the Generoso itself. The birds wake into song as the sun's light

comes; cuckoo answers cuckoo from ridge to ridge; dogs bark; and even

the sounds of human life rise up to us: children's voices and the

murmurs of the market-place ascending faintly from the many villages

hidden among the chestnut-trees beneath our feet; while the creaking of

a cart we can but just see slowly crawling along the straight road by

the lake, is heard at intervals.

The full beauty of the sunrise is but brief. Already the low lakelike

mists we saw last night have risen and spread, and shaken themselves

out into masses of summer clouds, which, floating upward, threaten to

envelop us upon our vantage-ground. Meanwhile they form a changeful sea

below, blotting out the plain, surging up into the valleys with the

movement of a billowy tide, attacking the lower heights like the

advance-guard of a besieging army, but daring not as yet to invade the

cold and solemn solitudes of the snowy Alps. These, too, in time, when

the sun's heat has grown strongest, will be folded in their midday pall

of sheltering vapour.

The very summit of Monte Generoso must not be left without a word of

notice. The path to it is as easy as the Bheep-walks on an English

down, though cut along grass-slopes descending at a perilously sharp

angle. At the top the view is much the same, as far as the grand

features go, as that which is commanded from the cliff by the hotel.

But the rocks here are crowded with rare Alpine flowers—delicate golden

auriculas with powdery leaves and 129stems, pale yellow cowslips,

imperial purple saxifrages, soldanellas at the edge of lingering

patches of the winter snow, blue gentians, crocuses, and the frail,

rosy-tipped ranunculus, called glacialis. Their blooming time is brief.

When summer comes the mountain will be bare and burned, like all

Italian hills. The Generoso is a very dry mountain, silent and solemn

from its want of streams. There is no sound of falling waters on its

crags; no musical rivulets flow down its sides, led carefully along the

slopes, as in Switzerland, by the peasants, to keep their hay-crops

green and gladden the thirsty turf throughout the heat and drought of

summer. The soil is a Jurassic limestone: the rain penetrates the

porous rock, and sinks through cracks and fissures, to reappear above

the base of the mountain in a full-grown stream. This is a defect in

the Generoso, as much to be regretted as the want of shade upon its

higher pastures. Here, as elsewhere in Piedmont, the forests are cut

for charcoal; the beech-scrub, which covers large tracts of the hills,

never having the chance of growing into trees much higher than a man.

It is this which makes an Italian mountain at a distance look woolly,

like a sheep's back. Among the brushwood, however, lilies-of-the-valley

and Solomon's seals delight to grow; and the league-long beds of wild

strawberries prove that when the laburnums have faded, the mountain

will become a garden of feasting.

It was on the crest of Monte Generoso, late one afternoon in May, that

we saw a sight of great beauty. The sun had yet about an hour before it

sank behind the peaks of Monte Rosa, and the sky was clear, except for

a few white clouds that floated across the plain of Lombardy. Then as

we sat upon the crags, tufted with soldanellas and auriculas, we could

see a fleecy vapour gliding upward from the hollows of the mountain,

very thin and pale, yet dense enough to blot the 130landscape to the

south and east from sight. It rose 314with an imperceptible motion, as

the Oceanides might have soared from the sea to comfort Prometheus in

the tragedy of Æschylus. Already the sun had touched its upper edge

with gold, and we were expecting to be enveloped in a mist; when

suddenly upon the outspread sheet before us there appeared two forms,

larger than life, yet not gigantic, surrounded with haloes of such

tempered iridescence as the moon half hidden by a summer cloud is wont

to make. They were the glorified figures of ourselves; and what we did,

the phantoms mocked, rising or bowing, or spreading wide their arms.

Some scarce-felt breeze prevented the vapour from passing across the

ridge to westward, though it still rose from beneath, and kept fading

away into thin air above our heads. Therefore the vision lasted as long

as the sun stayed yet above the Alps; and the images with their

aureoles shrank and dilated with the undulations of the mist. I could

not but think of that old formula for an anthropomorphic Deity—'the

Brocken-spectre of the human spirit projected on the mists of the

Non-ego.' Even like those cloud-phantoms are the gods made in the image

of man, who have been worshipped through successive ages of the world,

gods dowered with like passions to those of the races who have crouched

before them, gods cruel and malignant and lustful, jealous and noble

and just, radiant or gloomy, the counterparts of men upon a vast and

shadowy scale. But here another question rose. If the gods that men

have made and ignorantly worshipped be really but glorified copies of

their own souls, where is the sun in this parallel? Without the sun's

rays the mists of Monte Generoso could have shown, no shadowy forms.

Without some other power than the mind of man, could men have fashioned

for themselves 131those ideals that they named their gods? Unseen by

Greek, or Norseman, or Hindoo, the potent force by which alone they

could externalise their image, existed outside them, independent of

their thought. Nor does the trite epigram touch the surface of the real

mystery. The sun, the human beings on the mountain, and the mists are

all parts of one material universe: the transient phenomenon we

witnessed was but the effect of a chance combination. Is, then, the

anthropomorphic God as momentary and as accidental in the system of the

world as that vapoury spectre? The God in whom we live and move and

have our being must be far more all-pervasive, more incognisable by the

souls of men, who doubt not for one moment of His presence and His

power. Except for purposes of rhetoric the metaphor that seemed so

clever fails. Nor, when once such thoughts have been stirred in us by

such a sight, can we do better than repeat Goethe's sublime profession

of a philosophic mysticism. This translation I made one morning on the

Pasterze Gletscher beneath the spires of the Gross Glockner:—

To Him who from eternity, self-stirred,

Himself hath made by His creative word!

To Him, supreme, who causeth Faith to be,

Trust, Hope, Love, Power, and endless Energy!

To Him, who, seek to name Him as we will,

Unknown within Himself abideth still!

Strain ear and eye, till sight and sense be dim;

Thou'lt find but faint similitudes of Him:

Yea, and thy spirit in her flight of flame

Still strives to gauge the symbol and the name:

Charmed and compelled thou climb'st from height to height,

And round thy path the world shines wondrous bright;

Time, Space, and Size, and Distance cease to be,

And every step is fresh infinity.

132

What were the God who sat outside to scan

The spheres that 'neath His finger circling ran?

God dwells within, and moves the world and moulds,

Himself and Nature in one form enfolds:

Thus all that lives in Him and breathes and is,

Shall ne'er His puissance, ne'er His spirit miss.

The soul of man, too, is an universe:

Whence follows it that race with race concurs

In naming all it knows of good and true

God,—yea, its own God; and with homage due

Surrenders to His sway both earth and heaven;

Fears Him, and loves, where place for love is given.

133

LOMBARD VIGNETTES

ON THE SUPERGA

This is the chord of Lombard colouring in May. Lowest in the scale:

bright green of varied tints, the meadow-grasses mingling with willows

and acacias, harmonised by air and distance. Next, opaque blue—the blue

of something between amethyst and lapis-lazuli—that belongs alone to

the basements of Italian mountains. Higher, the roseate whiteness of

ridged snow on Alps or Apennines. Highest, the blue of the sky,

ascending from pale turquoise to transparent sapphire filled with

light. A mediæval mystic might have likened this chord to the spiritual

world. For the lowest region is that of natural life, of plant and bird

and beast, and unregenerate man; it is the place of faun and nymph and

satyr, the plain where wars are fought and cities built, and work is

done. Thence we climb to purified humanity, the mountains of purgation,

the solitude and simplicity of contemplative life not yet made perfect

by freedom from the flesh. Higher comes that thin white belt, where are

the resting places of angelic feet, the points whence purged souls take

their flight toward infinity. Above all is heaven, the hierarchies

ascending row on row to reach the light of God.

This fancy occurred to me as I climbed the slope of the Superga, gazing

over acacia hedges and poplars to the mountains bare in morning light.

The occasional occurrence of 134bars across this chord—poplars

shivering in sun and breeze, stationary cypresses as black as night,

and tall campanili with the hot red shafts of glowing brick—adds just

enough of composition to the landscape. Without too much straining of

the allegory, the mystic might have recognised in these aspiring bars

the upward effort of souls rooted in the common life of earth.

The panorama, unrolling as we ascend, is enough to overpower a lover of

beauty. There is nothing equal to it for space and breadth and majesty.

Monte Rosa, the masses of Mont Blanc blent with the Grand Paradis, the

airy pyramid of Monte Viso, these are the battlements of that vast

Alpine rampart, in which the vale of Susa opens like a gate. To west

and south sweep the Maritime Alps and the Apennines. Beneath, glides

the infant Po; and where he leads our eyes, the plain is only limited

by pearly mist.

A BRONZE BUST OF CALIGULA AT TURIN

The Albertina bronze is one of the most precious portraits of

antiquity, not merely because it confirms the testimony of the green

basalt bust in the Capitol, but also because it supplies an even more

emphatic and impressive illustration to the narrative of Suetonius.

Caligula is here represented as young and singularly beautiful. It is

indeed an ideal Roman head, with the powerful square modelling, the

crisp short hair, low forehead and regular firm features, proper to the

noblest Roman type. The head is thrown backward from the throat; and

there is a something of menace or defiance or suffering in the

suggestion of brusque movement given to the sinews of the neck. This

attitude, together with the tension of the forehead, and the fixed

expression of pain and strain communicated by the 135lines of the

mouth—strong muscles of the upper lip and abruptly chiselled under

lip—in relation to the small eyes, deep set beneath their cavernous and

level brows, renders the whole face a monument of spiritual anguish. I

remember that the green basalt bust of the Capitol has the same anxious

forehead, the same troubled and overburdened eyes; but the agony of

this fretful mouth, comparable to nothing but the mouth of Pandolfo

Sigismondo Malatesta, and, like that, on the verge of breaking into the

spasms of delirium, is quite peculiar to the Albertina bronze. It is

just this which tha portrait of the Capitol lacks for the completion of

Caligula. The man who could be so represented in art had nothing wholly

vulgar in him. The brutality of Caracalla, the overblown sensuality of

Nero, the effeminacy of Commodus or Heliogabalus, are all absent here.

This face idealises the torture of a morbid soul. It is withal so truly

beautiful that it might easily be made the poem of high suffering or

noble passion. If the bronze were plastic, I see how a great sculptor,

by but few strokes, could convert it into an agonising Stephen or

Sebastian. As it is, the unimaginable touch of disease, the unrest of

madness, made Caligula the genius of insatiable appetite; and his

martyrdom was the torment of lust and ennui and everlasting agitation.

The accident of empire tantalised him with vain hopes of satisfying the

Charybdis of his soul's sick cravings. From point to point he passed of

empty pleasure and unsatisfying cruelty, for ever hungry; until the

malady of his spirit, unrestrained by any limitations, and with the

right medium for its development, became unique—the tragic type of

pathological desire. What more than all things must have plagued a man

with that face was probably the unavoidable meanness of his career.

When we study the chapters of Suetonius, we are forced to feel that,

though the situation and the madness of Caligula 136were dramatically

impressive, his crimes were trivial and, small. In spite of the vast

scale on which he worked his devilish will, his life presents a total

picture of sordid vice, differing only from pot-house dissipation and

schoolboy cruelty in point of size. And this of a truth is the Nemesis

of evil. After a time, mere tyrannous caprice must become commonplace

and cloying, tedious to the tyrant, and uninteresting to the student of

humanity: nor can I believe that Caligula failed to perceive this to

his own infinite disgust.

Suetonius asserts that he was hideously ugly. How are we to square this

testimony with the witness of the bronze before us? What changed the

face, so beautiful and terrible in youth, to ugliness that shrank from

sight in manhood? Did the murderers find it blurred in its fine

lineaments, furrowed with lines of care, hollowed with the soul's

hunger? Unless a life of vice and madness had succeeded in making

Caligula's face what the faces of some maniacs are—the bloated ruin of

what was once a living witness to the soul within—I could fancy that

death may have sanctified it with even more beauty than this bust of

the self-tormented young man shows. Have we not all seen the anguish of

thought-fretted faces smoothed out by the hands of the Deliverer?

FERRARI AT VERCELLI

It is possible that many visitors to the Cathedral of Como have carried

away the memory of stately women with abundant yellow hair and

draperies of green and crimson, in a picture they connect thereafter

with Gaudenzio Ferrari. And when they come to Milan, they are probably

both impressed and disappointed by a Martyrdom of S. Catherine in the

Brera, bearing the same artist's name. If they wish to understand this

painter, they must seek him at Varallo, at 137Saronno, and at Vercelli.

In the Church of S. Cristoforo in Vercelli, Gaudenzio Ferrari at the

full height of his powers ghowed what he could do to justify Lomazzo's

title chosen for him of the Eagle. He has indeed the strong wing and

the swiftness of the king of birds. And yet the works of few really

great painters—and among the really great we place Ferrari—leave upon

the mind a more distressing sense of imperfection. Extraordinary

fertility of fancy, vehement dramatic passion, sincere study of nature,

and great command of technical resources are here (as elsewhere in

Ferrari's frescoes) neutralised by an incurable defect of the combining

and harmonising faculty, so essential to a masterpiece. There is stuff

enough of thought and vigour and imagination to make a dozen artists.

And yet we turn away disappointed from the crowded, dazzling,

stupefying wilderness of forma and faces on these mighty walls.

All that Ferrari derived from actual life—the heads of single figures,

the powerful movement of men and women in excited action, the

monumental pose of two praying nuns—is admirably rendered. His angels

too, in S. Cristoforo as elsewhere, are quite original; not only in

their type of beauty, which is terrestrial and peculiar to Ferrari,

without a touch of Correggio's sensuality; but also in the intensity of

their emotion, the realisation of their vitality. Those which hover

round the Cross in the fresco of the 'Crucifixion' are as passionate as

any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those again which crowd

the Stable of Bethlehem in the 'Nativity' yield no point of idyllic

charm to Gozzoli's in the Riccardi Chapel.

The 'Crucifixion' and the 'Assumption of Madonna' are very tall and

narrow compositions, audacious in their attempt to fill almost

unmanageable space with a connected action. Of the two frescoes the

'Crucifixion,' which has points of 138strong similarity to the same

subject at Varallo, is by far the best. Ferrari never painted anything

at once truer to life and nobler in tragic style than the fainting

Virgin. Her face expresses the very acme of martyrdom—not exaggerated

nor spasmodic, but real and sublime—in the suffering of a stately

matron. In points like this Ferrari cannot be surpassed. Raphael could

scarcely have done better; besides, there is an air of sincerity, a

stamp of popular truth, in this episode, which lies beyond Raphael's

sphere. It reminds us rather of Tintoretto.

After the 'Crucifixion,' I place the 'Adoration of the Magi,' full of

fine mundane motives and gorgeous costumes; then the 'Sposalizio'

(whose marriage, I am not certain), the only grandly composed picture

of the series, and marked by noble heads; then the 'Adoration of the

Shepherds,' with two lovely angels holding the bambino. The 'Assumption

of the Magdalen'—for which fresco there is a valuable cartoon in the

Albertina Collection at Turin—must have been a fine picture; but it is

ruined now. An oil altar-piece in the choir of the same church struck

me less than the frescoes. It represents Madonna and a crowd of saints

under an orchard of apple-trees, with cherubs curiously flung about

almost at random in the air. The motive of the orchard is prettily

conceived and carried out with spirit.

What Ferrari possessed was rapidity of movement, fulness and richness

of reality, exuberance of invention, excellent portraiture, dramatic

vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and

passionate world of angels. What he lacked was power of composition,

simplicity of total effect, harmony in colouring, control over his own

luxuriance, the sense of tranquillity. He seems to have sought grandeur

in size and multitude, richness, éclat, contrast. Being the 139disciple

of Lionardo and Raphael, his defects are truly singular. As a composer,

the old leaven of Giovenone remained in him; but he felt the dramatic

tendencies of a later age, and in occasional episodes he realised them

with a force and _furia_ granted to very few of the Italian painters.

LANINI AT VERCELLI

The Casa Mariano is a palace which belonged to a family of that name.

Like many houses of the sort in Italy, it fell to vile uses; and its

hall of audience was turned into a lumber-room. The Operai of Vercelli,

I was told, bought the palace a few years ago, restored the noble hall,

and devoted a smaller room to a collection of pictures valuable for

students of the early Vercellese style of painting. Of these there is

no need to speak. The great hall is the gem of the Casa Mariano. It has

a coved roof, with a large flat oblong space in the centre of the

ceiling. The whole of this vault and the lunettes beneath were painted

by Lanini; so runs the tradition of the fresco-painter's name; and

though much injured by centuries of outrage, and somewhat marred by

recent restoration, these frescoes form a precious monument of Lombard

art. The object of the painter's design seems to have been the

glorification of Music. In the central compartment of the roof is an

assembly of the gods, obviously borrowed from Raphael's 'Marriage of

Cupid and Psyche' in the Farnesina at Rome. The fusion of Roman

composition with Lombard execution constitutes the chief charm of this

singular work, and makes it, so far as I am aware, unique. Single

figures of the goddesses, and the whole movement of the scene upon

Olympus, are transcribed without attempt at concealment. And yet the

fresco is not a barefaced copy. 140The manner of feeling and of

execution is quite different from that of Raphael's school. The poetry

and sentiment are genuinely Lombard. None of Raphael's pupils could

have carried out his design with a delicacy of emotion and a technical

skill in colouring so consummate. What, we think, as we gaze upward,

would the Master have given for such a craftsman? The hardness,

coarseness, and animal crudity of the Roman School are absent: so also

is their vigour. But where the grace of form and colour is so soft and

sweet, where the high-bred calm of good company is so sympathetically

rendered, where the atmosphere of amorous languor and of melody is so

artistically diffused, we cannot miss the powerful modelling and rather

vulgar _tours de force_ of Giulio Romano. The scale of tone is silvery

golden. There are no hard blues, no coarse red flesh-tints, no black

shadows. Mellow lights, the morning hues of primrose, or of palest

amber, pervade the whole society. It is a court of gentle and

harmonious souls; and though this style of beauty might cloy, at first

sight there is something ravishing in those yellow-haired white-limbed,

blooming deities. No movement of lascivious grace as in Correggio, no

perturbation of the senses as in some of the Venetians, disturbs the

rhythm of their music; nor is the pleasure of the flesh, though felt by

the painter and communicated to the spectator, an interruption to their

divine calm. The white, saffron-haired goddesses are grouped together

like stars seen in the topaz light of evening, like daffodils half

smothered in snowdrops, and among them, Diana, with the crescent on her

forehead, is the fairest. Her dream-like beauty need fear no comparison

with the Diana of the Camera di S. Paolo. Apollo and Bacchus are

scarcely less lovely in their bloom of earliest manhood; honey-pale, as

Greeks would say; like statues of living electron; realising Simaetha's

picture of her lover and his friend:—

141

Τοίς δ΄ ήν ξανθοτέρα μέν ελιχρύσοιο γενειάς

στήθεα δε στίλβοντα πολύ πλέον η΅ τυ Σελάνα.[9]

[9] 'The down upon their cheeks and chin was yellower than

helichrysus, and their breasts gleamed whiter far than thou, O Moon.'

It was thus that the almost childlike spirit of the Milanese painters

felt the antique: how differently from their Roman brethren! It was

thus that they interpreted the lines of their own poets:—

E i tuoi capei più volte ho somigliati

Di Cerere a le paglie secche o bionde

Dintorno crespi al tuo capo legati.[10]

[10] 'Thy tresses have I oftentimes compared to Ceres' yellow autumn

sheaves, wreathed in curled bands around thy head.'

Yet the painter of this hall—whether we are to call him Lanini or

another—was not a composer. Where he has not robbed the motives and the

distribution of the figures from Raphael, he has nothing left but grace

of detail. The intellectual feebleness of his style may be seen in many

figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the

walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has

a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse

upon Parnassus, is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of

these subordinate compositions show power of conception or vigour of

design.

Lanini, like Sodoma, was a native of Vercelli; and though he was

Ferrari's pupil, there is more in him of Luini or of Sodoma than of his

master. He does not rise at any point to the height of these three

great masters, but he shares some of Luini's and Sodoma's fine

qualities, without having any of Ferrari's force. A visit to the

mangled remnants of his frescoes in S. Caterina will repay the student

of art. This was once, apparently, a double church, or a church with

the hall and chapel of a _confraternita_ appended to it. One 142portion

of the building was painted with the history of the Saint; and very

lovely must this work have been, to judge by the fragments which have

recently been rescued from whitewash, damp, and ruthless mutilation.

What wonderful Lombard faces, half obliterated on the broken wall and

mouldering plaster, smile upon us like drowned memories swimming up

from the depths of oblivion! Wherever three or four are grouped

together, we find an exquisite little picture—an old woman and two

young women in a doorway, for example, telling no story, but touching

us with simple harmony of form. Nothing further is needed to render

their grace intelligible. Indeed, knowing the faults of the school, we

may seek some consolation by telling ourselves that these incomplete

fragments yield Lanini's best. In the coved compartments of the roof,

above the windows, ran a row of dancing boys; and these are still most

beautifully modelled, though the pallor of recent whitewash is upon

them. All the boys have blonde hair. They are naked, with scrolls or

ribbons wreathed around them, adding to the airiness of their continual

dance. Some of the loveliest are in a room used to stow away the lumber

of the church—old boards and curtains, broken lanterns, candle-ends in

tin sconces, the musty apparatus of festival adornments, and in the

midst of all a battered, weather-beaten bier.

THE PIAZZA OF PIACENZA

The great feature of Piacenza is its famous piazza—romantically,

picturesquely perfect square, surpassing the most daring attempts of

the scene-painter, and realising a poet's dreams. The space is

considerable, and many streets converge upon it at irregular angles.

Its finest architectural feature is the antique Palace of the Commune:

Gothic 143arcades of stone below, surmounted by a brick building with

wonderfully delicate and varied terra-cotta work in the round-arched

windows. Before this façade, on the marble pavement, prance the bronze

equestrian statues of two Farnesi—insignificant men, exaggerated

horses, flying drapery—as _barocco_ as it is possible to be in style,

but so splendidly toned with verdigris, so superb in their _bravura_

attitude, and so happily placed in the line of two streets lending far

vistas from the square into the town beyond, that it is difficult to

criticise them seriously. They form, indeed, an important element in

the pictorial effect, and enhance the terra-cotta work of the façade by

the contrast of their colour.

The time to see this square is in evening twilight—that wonderful hour

after sunset—when the people are strolling on the pavement, polished to

a mirror by the pacing of successive centuries, and when the cavalry

soldiers group themselves at the angles under the lamp-posts or beneath

the dimly lighted Gothic arches of the Palace. This is the magical

mellow hour to be sought by lovers of the picturesque in all the towns

of Italy, the hour which, by its tender blendings of sallow western

lights with glimmering lamps, casts the veil of half shadow over any

crudeness and restores the injuries of Time; the hour when all the

tints of these old buildings are intensified, etherealised, and

harmonised by one pervasive glow. When I last saw Piacenza, it had been

raining all day; and ere sundown a clearing had come from the Alps,

followed by fresh threatenings of thunderstorms. The air was very

liquid. There was a tract of yellow sunset sky to westward, a faint new

moon half swathed in mist above, and over all the north a huge towered

thundercloud kept flashing distant lightnings. The pallid primrose of

the West, forced down and reflected back from that vast bank of

tempest, gave unearthly beauty to the hues of church and

144palace—tender half-tones of violet and russet paling into greys and

yellows on what in daylight seemed but dull red brick. Even the

uncompromising façade of S. Francesco helped; and the Dukes were like

statues of the 'Gran Commendatore,' waiting for Don Giovanni's

invitation.

MASOLINO AT CASTIGLIONE D'OLONA

Through the loveliest Arcadian scenery of woods and fields and rushing

waters the road leads downward from Varese to Castiglione. The

Collegiate Church stands on a leafy hill above the town, with fair

prospect over groves and waterfalls and distant mountains. Here in the

choir is a series of frescoes by Masolino da Panicale, the master of

Masaccio, who painted them about the year 1428. 'Masolinus de Florentia

pinxit' decides their authorship. The histories of the Virgin, S.

Stephen and S. Lawrence, are represented: but the injuries of time and

neglect have been so great that it is difficult to judge them fairly.

All we feel for certain is that Masolino had not yet escaped from the

traditional Giottesque mannerism. Only a group of Jews stoning Stephen,

and Lawrence before the tribunal, remind us by dramatic energy of the

Brancacci Chapel.

The Baptistery frescoes, dealing with the legend of S. John, show a

remarkable advance; and they are luckily in better preservation. A

soldier lifting his two-handed sword to strike off the Baptist's head

is a vigorous figure, full of Florentine realism. Also in the Baptism

in Jordan we are reminded of Masaccio by an excellent group of

bathers—one man taking off his hose, another putting them on again, a

third standing naked with his back turned, and a fourth shivering

half-dressed with a look of curious sadness on his face. The nude has

been carefully studied and well realised. 145The finest composition of

this series is a large panel representing a double action—Salome at

Herod's table begging for the Baptist's head, and then presenting it to

her mother Herodias. The costumes are quattrocento Florentine, exactly

rendered. Salome is a graceful slender creature; the two women who

regard her offering to Herodias with mingled curiosity and horror, are

well conceived. The background consists of a mountain landscape in

Masaccio's simple manner, a rich Renaissance villa, and an open loggia.

The architecture perspective is scientifically accurate, and a frieze

of boys with garlands on the villa is in the best manner of Florentine

sculpture. On the mountain side, diminished in scale, is a group of

elders, burying the body of S. John. These are massed together and

robed in the style of Masaccio, and have his virile dignity of form and

action. Indeed this interesting wall-painting furnishes an epitome of

Florentine art, in its intentions and achievements, during the first

half of the fifteenth century. The colour is strong and brilliant, and

the execution solid.

The margin of the Salome panel has been used for scratching the

Chronicle of Castiglione. I read one date, 1568, several of the next

century, the record of a duel between two gentlemen, and many

inscriptions to this effect, 'Erodiana Regina,' 'Omnia praetereunt,'

&c. A dirty one-eyed fellow keeps the place. In my presence he swept

the frescoes over with a scratchy broom, flaying their upper surface in

profound unconsciousness of mischief. The armour of the executioner has

had its steel colours almost rubbed off by this infernal process. Damp

and cobwebs are far kinder.

146

THE CERTOSA

The Certosa of Pavia leaves upon the mind an impression of bewildering

sumptuousness: nowhere else are costly materials so combined with a

lavish expenditure of the rarest art. Those who have only once been

driven round together with the crew of sightseers, can carry little

away but the memory of lapis-lazuli and bronze-work, inlaid agates and

labyrinthine sculpture, cloisters tenantless in silence, fair painted

faces smiling from dark corners on the senseless crowd, trim gardens

with rows of pink primroses in spring, and of begonia in autumn,

blooming beneath colonnades of glowing terra-cotta. The striking

contrast between the Gothic of the interior and the Renaissance façade,

each in its own kind perfect, will also be remembered; and thoughts of

the two great houses, Visconti and Sforza, to whose pride of power it

is a monument, may be blended with the recollection of art-treasures

alien to their spirit.

Two great artists, Ambrogio Borgognone and Antonio Amadeo, are the

presiding genii of the Certosa. To minute criticism, based upon the

accurate investigation of records and the comparison of styles, must be

left the task of separating their work from that of numerous

collaborators. But it is none the less certain that the keynote of the

whole music is struck by them, Amadeo, the master of the Colleoni

chapel at Bergamo, was both sculptor and architect. If the façade of

the Certosa be not absolutely his creation, he had a hand in the

distribution of its masses and the detail of its ornaments. The only

fault in this otherwise faultless product of the purest quattrocento

inspiration, is that the façade is a frontispiece, with hardly any

structural relation to the church it masks: and this, though serious

from the point of view of 147architecture, is no abatement of its

sculpturesque and picturesque refinement. At first sight it seems a

wilderness of loveliest reliefs and statues—of angel faces, fluttering

raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures of

grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and

cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details

to the main design, clear, rhythmical, and lucid, like a chaunt of

Pergolese or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the sense for unity

evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all caprices to the

harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere in Italy to find the

instinct of the earlier Renaissance, so amorous in its expenditure of

rare material, so lavish in its bestowal of the costliest workmanship

on ornamental episodes, brought into truer keeping with a pure and

simple structural effect.

All the great sculptor-architects of Lombardy worked in succession on

this miracle of beauty; and this may account for the sustained

perfection of style, which nowhere suffers from the languor of

exhaustion in the artist or from repetition of motives. It remains the

triumph of North Italian genius, exhibiting qualities of tenderness and

self-abandonment to inspiration, which we lack in the severer

masterpieces of the Tuscan school.

To Borgognone is assigned the painting of the roof in nave and

choir—exceeding rich, varied, and withal in sympathy with stately

Gothic style. Borgognone again is said to have designed the saints and

martyrs worked in _tarsia_ for the choir-stalls. His frescoes are in

some parts well preserved, as in the lovely little Madonna at the end

of the south chapel, while the great fresco above the window in the

south transept has an historical value that renders it interesting in

spite of partial decay. Borgognone's oil pictures throughout the church

prove, if such proof were needed after 148inspection of the altar-piece

in our National Gallery, that he was one of the most powerful and

original painters of Italy, blending the repose of the earlier masters

and their consummate workmanship with a profound sensibility to the

finest shades of feeling and the rarest forms of natural beauty. He

selected an exquisite type of face for his young men and women; on his

old men he bestowed singular gravity and dignity. His saints are a

society of strong, pure, restful, earnest souls, in whom the passion of

deepest emotion is transfigured by habitual calm. The brown and golden

harmonies he loved, are gained without sacrifice of lustre: there is a

self-restraint in his colouring which corresponds to the reserve of his

emotion; and though a regret sometimes rises in our mind that he should

have modelled the light and shade upon his faces with a brusque,

unpleasing hardness, their pallor dwells within our memory as something

delicately sought if not consummately attained. In a word, Borgognone

was a true Lombard of the best time. The very imperfection of his

flesh-painting repeats in colour what the greatest Lombard sculptors

sought in stone—a sharpness of relief that passes over into angularity.

This brusqueness was the counterpoise to tenderness of feeling and

intensity of fancy in these northern artists. Of all Borgognone's

pictures in the Certosa I should select the altar-piece of S. Siro with

S. Lawrence and S. Stephen and two Fathers of the Church, for its

fusion of this master's qualities.

The Certosa is a wilderness of lovely workmanship. From Borgognone's

majesty we pass into the quiet region of Luini's Christian grace, or

mark the influence of Lionardo on that rare Assumption of Madonna by

his pupil, Andrea Solari. Like everything touched by the Lionardesque

spirit, this great picture was left unfinished: yet Northern Italy has

nothing finer to show than the landscape, outspread in its

149immeasurable purity of calm, behind the grouped Apostles and the

ascendant Mother of Heaven. The feeling of that happy region between

the Alps and Lombardy, where there are many waters—_et tacitos sine

labe laous sine murmure rivos_—and where the last spurs of the

mountains sink in undulations to the plain, has passed into this azure

vista, just as all Umbria is suggested in a twilight background of

young Raphael or Perugino.

The portraits of the Dukes of Milan and their families carry us into a

very different realm of feeling. Medallions above the doors of sacristy

and chancel, stately figures reared aloft beneath gigantic canopies,

men and women slumbering with folded hands upon their marble biers—we

read in all those sculptured forms a strange record of human

restlessness, resolved into the quiet of the tomb. The iniquities of

Gian Galeazzo Visconti, _il gran Biscione_, the blood-thirst of Gian

Maria, the dark designs of Filippo and his secret vices, Francesco

Sforza's treason, Galeazzo Maria's vanities and lusts; their tyrants'

dread of thunder and the knife; their awful deaths by pestilence and

the assassin's poignard; their selfishness, oppression, cruelty and

fraud; the murders of their kinsmen; their labyrinthine plots and acts

of broken faith;—all is tranquil now, and we can say to each what

Bosola found for the Duchess of Malfi ere her execution:—

Much you had of land and rent;

Your length in clay's now competent:

A long war disturbed your mind;

Here your perfect peace is signed!

Some of these faces are commonplace, with _bourgeois_ cunning written

on the heavy features; one is bluff, another stolid, a third bloated, a

fourth stately. The sculptors have dealt fairly with all, and not one

has the lineaments of utter baseness. To Cristoforo Solari's statues of

Lodovico Sforza and 150his wife, Beatrice d'Este, the palm of

excellence in art and of historical interest must be awarded. Sculpture

has rarely been more dignified and true to life than here. The woman

with her short clustering curls, the man with his strong face, are

resting after that long fever which brought woe to Italy, to Europe a

new age, and to the boasted minion of Fortune a slow death in the

prison palace of Loches. Attired in ducal robes, they lie in state; and

the sculptor has carved the lashes on their eyelids, heavy with death's

marmoreal sleep. He at least has passed no judgment on their crimes.

Let us too bow and leave their memories to the historian's pen, their

spirits to God's mercy.

After all wanderings in this Temple of Art, we return to Antonio

Amadeo, to his long-haired seraphs playing on the lutes of Paradise, to

his angels of the Passion with their fluttering robes and arms

outspread in agony, to his saints and satyrs mingled on pilasters of

the marble doorways, his delicate _Lavabo_ decorations, and his hymns

of piety expressed in noble forms of weeping women and dead Christs.

Wherever we may pass, this master-spirit of the Lombard style enthralls

attention. His curious treatment of drapery as though it ¦were made of

crumpled paper, and his trick of enhancing relief by sharp angles and

attenuated limbs, do not detract from his peculiar charm. That is his

way, very different from Donatello's, of attaining to the maximum of

life and lightness in the stubborn vehicle of stone. Nor do all the

riches of the choir—those multitudes of singing angels, those

Ascensions and Assumptions, and innumerable basreliefs of gleaming

marble moulded into softest wax by mastery of art—distract our eyes

from the single round medallion, not larger than a common plate,

inscribed by him upon the front of the high altar. Perhaps, if one who

loved Amadeo were bidden to point out his masterpiece, he would lead

the way at 151once to this. The space is small: yet it includes the

whole tragedy of the Passion. Christ is lying dead among the women on

his mother's lap, and there are pitying angels in the air above. One

woman lifts his arm, another makes her breast a pillow for his head.

Their agony is hushed, but felt in every limb and feature; and the

extremity of suffering is seen in each articulation of the worn and

wounded form just taken from the cross. It would be too painful, were

not the harmony of art so rare, the interlacing of those many figures

in a simple round so exquisite. The noblest tranquillity and the most

passionate emotion are here fused in a manner of adorable naturalness.

From the church it is delightful to escape into the cloisters, flooded

with sunlight, where the swallows skim, and the brown hawks circle, and

the mason bees are at work upon their cells among the carvings. The

arcades of the two cloisters are the final triumph of Lombard

terra-cotta. The memory fails before such infinite invention, such

facility and felicity of execution. Wreaths of cupids gliding round the

arches among grape-bunches and bird-haunted foliage of vine; rows of

angels, like rising and setting planets, some smiling and some grave,

ascending and descending by the Gothic curves; saints stationary on

their pedestals, and faces leaning from the rounds above; crowds of

cherubs, and courses of stars, and acanthus leaves in woven lines, and

ribands incessantly inscribed with Ave Maria! Then, over all, the rich

red light and purple shadows of the brick, than which no substance

sympathises more completely with the sky of solid blue above, the broad

plain space of waving summer grass beneath our feet.

It is now late afternoon, and when evening comes, the train will take

us back to Milan. There is yet a little while to rest tired eyes and

strained spirits among the willows and 152the poplars by the monastery

wall. Through that grey-green leafage, young with early spring, the

pinnacles of the Certosa leap like flames into the sky. The rice-fields

are under water, far and wide, shining like burnished gold beneath the

level light now near to sun-down. Frogs are croaking; those persistent

frogs, whom the Muses have ordained to sing for aye, in spite of Bion

and all tuneful poets dead. We sit and watch the water-snakes, the busy

rats, the hundred creatures swarming in the fat well-watered soil.

Nightingales here and there, new-comers, tune their timid April song:

but, strangest of all sounds in such a place, my comrade from the

Grisons jodels forth an Alpine cowherd's melody. _Auf den Alpen droben

ist ein herrliches Leben!_

Did the echoes of Gian Galeazzo's convent ever wake to such a tune as

this before?

SAN MAURIZIO

The student of art in Italy, after mastering the characters of

different styles and epochs, finds a final satisfaction in the

contemplation of buildings designed and decorated by one master, or by

groups of artists interpreting the spirit of a single period. Such

supreme monuments of the national genius are not very common, and they

are therefore the more precious. Giotto's Chapel at Padua; the Villa

Farnesina at Rome, built by Peruzzi and painted in fresco by Raphael

and Sodoma; the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, Giulio Romano's masterpiece;

the Scuola di San Rocco, illustrating the Venetian Renaissance at its

climax, might be cited among the most splendid of these achievements.

In the church of the Monastero Maggiore at Milan, dedicated to S.

Maurizio, Lombard architecture and fresco-painting may be studied in

this rare combination. The monastery itself, one of the 153oldest in

Milan, formed a retreat for cloistered virgins following the rule of S.

Benedict. It may have been founded as early as the tenth century; but

its church was rebuilt in the first two decades of the sixteenth,

between 1503 and 1519, and was immediately afterwards decorated with

frescoes by Luini and his pupils. Gian Giacomo Dolcebono, architect and

sculptor, called by his fellow-craftsmen _magistro di taliare pietre_,

gave the design, at once simple and harmonious, which was carried out

with hardly any deviation from his plan. The church is a long

parallelogram, divided into two unequal portions, the first and smaller

for the public, the second for the nuns. The walls are pierced with

rounded and pilastered windows, ten on each side, four of which belong

to the outer and six to the inner section. The dividing wall or septum

rises to the point from which the groinings of the roof spring; and

round three sides of the whole building, north, east, and south, runs a

gallery for the use of the convent. The altars of the inner and outer

church are placed against the septum, back to back, with certain

differences of structure that need not be described. Simple and severe,

S. Maurizio owes its architectural beauty wholly and entirely to purity

of line and perfection of proportion. There is a prevailing spirit of

repose, a sense of space, fair, lightsome, and adapted to serene moods

of the meditative fancy in this building, which is singularly at

variance with the religious mysticism and imaginative grandeur of a

Gothic edifice. The principal beauty of the church, however, is its

tone of colour. Every square inch is covered with fresco or rich

woodwork, mellowed by time into that harmony of tints which blends the

work of greater and lesser artists in one golden hue of brown. Round

the arcades of the convent-loggia run delicate arabesques with faces of

fair female saints—Catherine, Agnes, Lucy, Agatha,—gem-like or

star-like, gazing from their gallery 154upon the church below. The

Luinesque smile is on their lips and in their eyes, quiet, refined, as

though the emblems of their martyrdom brought back no thought of pain

to break the Paradise of rest in which they dwell. There are twenty-six

in all, a sisterhood of stainless souls, the lilies of Love's garden

planted round Christ's throne. Soldier saints are mingled with them in

still smaller rounds above the windows, chosen to illustrate the

virtues of an order which renounced the world. To decide whose hand

produced these masterpieces of Lombard suavity and grace, or whether

more than one, would not be easy. Near the altar we can perhaps trace

the style of Bartolommeo Suardi in an Annunciation painted on the

spandrils—that heroic style, large and noble, known to us by the

chivalrous S. Martin and the glorified Madonna of the Brera frescoes.

It is not impossible that the male saints of the loggia may be also

his, though a tenderer touch, a something more nearly Lionardesque in

its quietude, must be discerned in Lucy and her sisters. The whole of

the altar in this inner church belongs to Luini. Were it not for

darkness and decay, we should pronounce this series of the Passion in

nine great compositions, with saints and martyrs and torch-bearing

genii, to be one of his most ambitious and successful efforts. As it

is, we can but judge in part; the adolescent beauty of Sebastian, the

grave compassion of S. Rocco, the classical perfection of the cupid

with lighted tapers, the gracious majesty of women smiling on us

sideways from their Lombard eyelids—these remain to haunt our memory,

emerging from the shadows of the vault above.

The inner church, as is fitting, excludes all worldly elements. We are

in the presence of Christ's agony, relieved and tempered by the

sunlight of those beauteous female faces. All is solemn here, still as

the convent, pure as the meditations 155of a novice. We pass the

septum, and find ourselves in the outer church appropriated to the

laity. Above the high altar the whole wall is covered with Luini's

loveliest work, in excellent light and far from ill preserved. The

space divides into eight compartments. A Pietà, an Assumption, Saints

and Founders of the church, group themselves under the influence of

Luini's harmonising colour into one symphonious whole. But the places

of distinction are reserved for two great benefactors of the convent,

Alessandro de' Bentivogli and his wife, Ippolita Sforza. When the

Bentivogli were expelled from Bologna by the Papal forces, Alessandro

settled at Milan, where he dwelt, honoured by the Sforzas and allied to

them by marriage, till his death in 1532. He was buried in the

monastery by the side of his sister Alessandra, a nun of the order.

Luini has painted the illustrious exile in his habit as he lived. He is

kneeling, as though in ever-during adoration of the altar mystery,

attired in a long black senatorial robe trimmed with furs. In his left

hand he holds a book; and above his pale, serenely noble face is a

little black berretta. Saints attend him, as though attesting to his

act of faith. Opposite kneels Ippolita, his wife, the brilliant queen

of fashion, the witty leader of society, to whom Bandello dedicated his

Novelle, and whom he praised as both incomparably beautiful and

singularly learned. Her queenly form is clothed from head to foot in

white brocade, slashed and trimmed with gold lace, and on her forehead

is a golden circlet. She has the proud port of a princess, the beauty

of a woman past her prime but stately, the indescribable dignity of

attitude which no one but Luini could have rendered so majestically

sweet. In her hand is a book; and she, like Alessandro, has her saintly

sponsors, Agnes and Catherine and S. Scolastica.

Few pictures bring the splendid Milanese Court so vividly 156before us

as these portraits of the Bentivogli: they are, moreover, very precious

for the light they throw on what Luini could achieve in the secular

style so rarely touched by him. Great, however, as are these frescoes,

they are far surpassed both in value and interest by his paintings in

the side chapel of S. Catherine. Here more than anywhere else, more

even than at Saronno or Lugano, do we feel the true distinction of

Luini—his unrivalled excellence as a colourist, his power over pathos,

the refinement of his feeling, and the peculiar beauty of his favourite

types. The chapel was decorated at the expense of a Milanese advocate,

Francesco Besozzi, who died in 1529. It is he who is kneeling,

grey-haired and bareheaded, under the protection of S. Catherine of

Alexandria, intently gazing at Christ unbound from the scourging

pillar. On the other side stand S. Lawrence and S. Stephen, pointing to

the Christ and looking at us, as though their lips were framed to say:

'Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow.' Even the

soldiers who have done their cruel work, seem softened. They untie the

cords tenderly, and support the fainting form, too weak to stand alone.

What sadness in the lovely faces of S. Catherine and Lawrence! What

divine anguish in the loosened limbs and bending body of Christ; what

piety in the adoring old man! All the moods proper to this supreme

tragedy of the faith are touched as in some tenor song with low

accompaniment of viols; for it was Luini's special province to feel

profoundly and to express musically. The very depth of the Passion is

there; and yet there is no discord.

Just in proportion to this unique faculty for yielding a melodious

representation of the most intense moments of stationary emotion, was

his inability to deal with a dramatic subject. The first episode of S.

Catherine's execution, when the wheel was broken and the executioners

struck by lightning, 157is painted in this chapel without energy and

with a lack of composition that betrays the master's indifference to

his subject. Far different is the second episode when Catherine is

about to be beheaded. The executioner has raised his sword to strike.

She, robed in brocade of black and gold, so cut as to display the curve

of neck and back, while the bosom is covered, leans her head above her

praying hands, and waits the blow in sweetest resignation. Two soldiers

stand at some distance in a landscape of hill and meadow; and far up

are seen the angels carrying her body to its tomb upon Mount Sinai. I

cannot find words or summon courage to describe the beauty of this

picture; its atmosphere of holy peace, the dignity of its composition,

the golden richness of its colouring. The most tragic situation has

here again been alchemised by Luini's magic into a pure idyll, without

the loss of power, without the sacrifice of edification.

S. Catherine in this incomparable fresco is a portrait, the history of

which so strikingly illustrates the relation of the arts to religion on

the one hand, and to life on the other, in the age of the Renaissance,

that it cannot be omitted. At the end of his fourth Novella, having

related the life of the Contessa di Cellant, Bandello says: 'And so the

poor woman was beheaded; such was the end of her unbridled desires; and

he who would fain see her painted to the life, let him go to the Church

of the Monistero Maggiore, and there will he behold her portrait.' The

Contessa di Cellant was the only child of a rich usurer who lived at

Casal Monferrato. Her mother was a Greek; and she was a girl of such

exquisite beauty, that, in spite of her low origin, she became the wife

of the noble Ermes Visconti in her sixteenth year. He took her to live

with him at Milan, where she frequented the house of the Bentivogli,

but none other. Her husband told Bandello that he knew her temper

better than to let her visit 158with the freedom of the Milanese

ladies. Upon his death, while she was little more than twenty, she

retired to Casale and led a gay life among many lovers. One of these,

the Count of Cellant in the Val d'Aosta, became her second husband,

conquered by her extraordinary loveliness. They could not, however,

agree together. She left him, and established herself at Pavia. Rich

with her father's wealth and still of most seductive beauty, she now

abandoned herself to a life of profligacy. Three among her lovers must

be named: Ardizzino Valperga, Count of Masino; Roberto Sanseverino, of

the princely Naples family; and Don Pietro di Cardona, a Sicilian. With

each of the two first she quarrelled, and separately besought each to

murder the other. They were friends and frustrated her plans by

communicating them to one another. The third loved her with the insane

passion of a very young man. What she desired, he promised to do

blindly; and she bade him murder his two predecessors in her favour. At

this time she was living at Milan, where the Duke of Bourbon was acting

as viceroy for the Emperor. Don Pietro took twenty-five armed men of

his household, and waylaid the Count of Masino, as he was returning

with his brother and eight or nine servants, late one night from

supper. Both the brothers and the greater part of their suite were

killed: but Don Pietro was caught. He revealed the atrocity of his

mistress; and she was sent to prison. Incapable of proving her

innocence, and prevented from escaping, in spite of 15,000 golden

crowns with which she hoped to bribe her jailors, she was finally

beheaded. Thus did a vulgar and infamous Messalina, distinguished only

by rare beauty, furnish Luini with a S. Catherine for this masterpiece

of pious art! The thing seems scarcely credible. Yet Bandello lived in

Milan while the Church of S. Maurizio was being painted; nor does he

show the slightest sign of 159disgust at the discord between the

Contessa's life and her artistic presentation in the person of a royal

martyr.

A HUMANIST'S MONUMENT

In the Sculpture Gallery of the Brera is preserved a fair white marble

tomb, carved by that excellent Lombard sculptor, Agostino Busti. The

epitaph runs as follows:—

En Virtutem Mortis nesciam.

Vivet Lancinus Curtius

Sæcula per omnia

Quascunque lustrans oras,

Tantum possunt Camoenæ.

'Look here on Virtue that knows nought of Death! Lancinus Curtius shall

live through all the centuries, and visit every shore of earth. Such

power have the Muses.' The timeworn poet reclines, as though sleeping

or resting, ready to be waked; his head is covered with flowing hair,

and crowned with laurel; it leans upon his left hand. On either side of

his couch stand cupids or genii with torches turned to earth. Above is

a group of the three Graces, flanked by winged Pegasi. Higher up are

throned two Victories with palms, and at the top a naked Fame. We need

not ask who was Lancinus Curtius. He is forgotten, and his virtue has

not saved him from oblivion; though he strove in his lifetime, _pro

virili parte_, for the palm that Busti carved upon his grave. Yet his

monument teaches in short compass a deep lesson; and his epitaph sums

up the dream which lured the men of Italy in the Renaissance to their

doom. We see before us sculptured in this marble the ideal of the

humanistic poet-scholar's life: Love, Grace, the Muse, and Nakedness,

and Glory. There is not a single intrusive thought derived from

Christianity. The end for which the man lived was 160Pagan. His hope

was earthly fame. Yet his name survives, if this indeed be a survival,

not in those winged verses which were to carry him abroad across the

earth, but in the marble of a cunning craftsman, scanned now and then

by a wandering scholar's eye in the half-darkness of a vault.

THE MONUMENT OF GASTON DE FOIX IN THE BRERA

The hero of Ravenna lies stretched upon his back in the hollow of a

bier covered with laced drapery; and his head rests on richly

ornamented cushions. These decorative accessories, together with the

minute work of his scabbard, wrought in the fanciful mannerism of the

_cinquecento_, serve to enhance the statuesque simplicity of the young

soldier's effigy. The contrast between so much of richness in the

merely subordinate details, and this sublime severity of treatment in

the person of the hero, is truly and touchingly dramatic. There is a

smile as of content in death, upon his face; and the features are

exceedingly beautiful—with the beauty of a boy, almost of a woman. The

heavy hair is cut straight above the forehead and straight over the

shoulders, falling in massive clusters. A delicately sculptured laurel

branch is woven into a victor's crown, and laid lightly on the tresses

it scarcely seems to clasp. So fragile is this wreath that it does not

break the pure outline of the boy-conqueror's head. The armour is quite

plain. So is the surcoat. Upon the swelling bust, that seems fit

harbour for a hero's heart, there lies the collar of an order composed

of cockle-shells; and this is all the ornament given to the figure. The

hands are clasped across a sword laid flat upon the breast, and placed

between the legs. Upon the chin is a little tuft of hair, parted, and

curling either way; for the victor of Ravenna, like the Hermes of

Homer, was πρωτον ϋπμνήτμς, 'a 161youth of princely blood, whose beard

hath just begun to grow, for whom the season of bloom is in its prime

of grace.' The whole statue is the idealisation of _virtù_—that quality

so highly prized by the Italians and the ancients, so well fitted for

commemoration in the arts. It is the apotheosis of human life resolved

into undying memory because of one great deed. It is the supreme

portrait in modern times of a young hero, chiselled by artists

belonging to a race no longer heroic, but capable of comprehending and

expressing the æsthetic charm of heroism. Standing before it, we may

say of Gaston what Arrian wrote to Hadrian of Achilles:—'That he was a

hero, if hero ever lived, I cannot doubt; for his birth and blood were

noble, and he was beautiful, and his spirit was mighty, and he passed

in youth's prime away from men.' Italian sculpture, under the condition

of the _cinquecento_, had indeed no more congenial theme than this of

bravery and beauty, youth and fame, immortal honour and untimely death;

nor could any sculptor of death have poetised the theme more thoroughly

than Agostino Busti, whose simple instinct, unlike that of

Michelangelo, led him to subordinate his own imagination to the pathos

of reality.

SARONNO

The church of Saronno is a pretty building with a Bramantesque cupola,

standing among meadows at some distance from the little town. It is the

object of a special cult, which draws pilgrims from the neighbouring

country-side; but the concourse is not large enough to load the

sanctuary with unnecessary wealth. Everything is very quiet in the holy

place, and the offerings of the pious seem to have been only just

enough to keep the building and its treasures of art in repair. The

church consists of a nave, a 162central cupola, a vestibule leading to

the choir, the choir itself, and a small tribune behind the choir. No

other single building in North Italy can boast so much that is

first-rate of the work of Luini and Gandenzio Ferrari.

The cupola is raised on a sort of drum composed of twelve pieces,

perforated with round windows and supported on four massive piers. On

the level of the eye are frescoes by Luini of S. Rocco, S. Sebastian,

S. Christopher, and S. Antony—by no means in his best style, and

inferior to all his other paintings in this church. The Sebastian, for

example, shows an effort to vary the traditional treatment of this

saint. He is tied in a sprawling attitude to a tree; and little of

Luini's special pathos or sense of beauty—the melody of idyllic grace

made spiritual—appears in him. These four saints are on the piers.

Above are frescoes from the early Bible history by Lanini, painted in

continuation of Ferrari's medallions from the story of Adam expelled

from Paradise, which fill the space beneath the cupola, leading the eye

upward to Ferrari's masterpiece.

The dome itself is crowded with a host of angels singing and playing

upon instruments of music. At each of the twelve angles of the drum

stands a coryphaeus of this celestial choir, full length, with waving

drapery. Higher up, the golden-haired, broad-winged, divine creatures

are massed together, filling every square inch of the vault with

colour. Yet there is no confusion. The simplicity of the selected

motive and the necessities of the place acted like a check on Ferrari,

who, in spite of his dramatic impulse, could not tell a story

coherently or fill a canvas with harmonised variety. There is no trace

of his violence here. Though the motion of music runs through the whole

multitude like a breeze, though the joy expressed is a real _tripudio

celeste_, not one of all these angels flings his arms abroad or makes a

movement 163that disturbs the rhythm. We feel that they are keeping

time and resting quietly, each in his appointed seat, as though the

sphere was circling with them round the throne of God, who is their

centre and their source of gladness. Unlike Correggio and his

imitators, Ferrari has introduced no clouds, and has in no case made

the legs of his angels prominent. It is a mass of noble faces and

voluminously robed figures, emerging each above the other like flowers

in a vase. Bach too has specific character, while all are robust and

full of life, intent upon the service set them. Their instruments of

music are all the lutes and viols, flutes, cymbals, drums, fifes,

citherns, organs, and harps that Ferrari's day could show. The scale of

colour, as usual with Ferrari, is a little heavy; nor are the tints

satisfactorily harmonised. But the vigour and invention of the whole

work would atone for minor defects of far greater consequence.

It is natural, beneath this dome, to turn aside and think one moment of

Correggio at Parma. Before the _macchinisti_ of the seventeenth century

had vulgarised the motive, Correggio's bold attempt to paint heaven in

flight from earth—earth left behind in the persons of the Apostles

standing round the empty tomb, heaven soaring upward with a spiral

vortex into the abyss of light above—had an originality which set at

nought all criticism. There is such ecstasy of jubilation, such

rapturous rapidity of flight, that we who strain our eyes from below,

feel we are in the darkness of the grave which Mary left. A kind of

controlling rhythm for the composition is gained by placing Gabriel,

Madonna, and Christ at three points in the swirl of angels.

Nevertheless, composition—the presiding all-controlling intellect—is

just what makes itself felt by absence; and Correggio's special

qualities of light and colour have now so far vanished from the cupola

of the Duomo that the, constructive poverty is not disguised. Here

164if anywhere in painting, we may apply Goethe's words—_Gefühl ist

Alles._

If then we return to Ferrari's angels at Saronno, we find that the

painter of Varallo chose a safer though a far more modest theme. Nor

did he expose himself to that most cruel of all degradations which the

ethereal genius of Correggio has suffered from incompetent imitators.

To daub a tawdry and superficial reproduction of those Parmese

frescoes, to fill the cupolas of Italy with veritable _guazzetti di

rane_, was comparatively easy; and between our intelligence and what

remains of that stupendous masterpiece of boldness, crowd a thousand

memories of such ineptitude. On the other hand, nothing but solid work

and conscientious inspiration could enable any workman, however able,

to follow Ferrari in the path struck out by him at Saronno. His cupola

has had no imitator; and its only rival is the noble pendant painted at

Varallo by his own hand, of angels in adoring anguish round the Cross.

In the ante-choir of the sanctuary are Luini's priceless frescoes of

the 'Marriage of the Virgin,' and the 'Dispute with the Doctors.'[11]

Their execution is flawless, and they are perfectly preserved. If

criticism before such admirable examples of so excellent a master be

permissible, it may be questioned whether the figures are not too

crowded, whether the groups are sufficiently varied and connected by

rhythmic lines. Yet the concords of yellow and orange with blue in the

'Sposalizio,' and the blendings of dull violet and red in the

'Disputa,' make up for much of stiffness. Here, as in the Chapel of S.

Catherine at Milan, we feel that Luini was the greatest colourist among

_frescanti._ In the 'Sposalizio' the female heads are singularly noble

and idyllically graceful. Some of the young men too have Luini's

special grace and abundance of golden hair. In 165the 'Disputa' the

gravity and dignity of old men are above all things striking.

[11] Both these and the large frescoes in the choir have been

chromolithographed by the Arundel Society.

Passing into the choir, we find on either hand the 'Adoration of the

Magi' and the 'Purification of the Virgin,' two of Luini's divinest

frescoes. Above them in lunettes are four Evangelists and four Latin

Fathers, with four Sibyls. Time and neglect have done no damage here:

and here, again, perforce we notice perfect mastery of colour in

fresco. The blues detach themselves too much, perhaps, from the rest of

the colouring; and that is all a devil's advocate could say. It is

possible that the absence of blue makes the S. Catherine frescoes in

the Monastero Maggiore at Milan surpass all other works of Luini. But

nowhere else has he shown more beauty and variety in detail than here.

The group of women led by Joseph, the shepherd carrying the lamb upon

his shoulder, the girl with a basket of white doves, the child with an

apple on the altar-steps, the lovely youth in the foreground heedless

of the scene; all these are idyllic incidents treated with the purest,

the serenest, the most spontaneous, the truest, most instinctive sense

of beauty. The landscape includes a view of Saronno, and an episodical

picture of the 'Flight into Egypt' where a white-robed angel leads the

way. All these lovely things are in the 'Purification,' which is dated

_Bernardinus Lovinus pinxit_, MDXXV.

The fresco of the 'Magi' is less notable in detail, and in general

effect is more spoiled by obtrusive blues. There is, however, one young

man of wholly Lionardesque loveliness, whose divine innocence of

adolescence, unalloyed by serious thought, unstirred by passions,

almost forces a comparison with Sodoma. The only painter who approaches

Luini in what may be called the Lombard, to distinguish it from the

Venetian idyll, is Sodoma; and the work of his which comes nearest to

Luini's masterpieces is the legend of S. Benedict, at 166Monte Oliveto,

near Siena. Yet Sodoma had not all Luini's innocence or _naïveté._ If

he added something slightly humorous which has an indefinite charm, he

lacked that freshness as of 'cool, meek-blooded flowers' and boyish

voices, which fascinates us in Luini. Sodoma was closer to the earth,

and feared not to impregnate what he saw of beauty with the fiercer

passions of his nature. If Luini had felt passion, who shall say? It

appears nowhere in his work, where life is toned to a religious

joyousness. When Shelley compared the poetry of the Theocritean

amourists to the perfume of the tuberose, and that of the earlier Greek

poets to 'a meadow-gale of June, which mingles the fragrance of all the

flowers of the field,' he supplied us with critical images which may

not unfairly be used to point the distinction between Sodoma at Monte

Oliveto and Luini at Saronno.

THE CASTELLO OF FERRARA

Is it possible that the patron saints of cities should mould the temper

of the people to their own likeness? S. George, the chivalrous, is

champion of Ferrara. His is the marble group above the Cathedral porch,

so feudal in its medieval pomp. He and S. Michael are painted in fresco

over the south portcullis of the Castle. His lustrous armour gleams

with Giorgionesque brilliancy from Dossi's masterpiece in the

Pinacoteca. That Ferrara, the only place in Italy where chivalry struck

any root, should have had S. George for patron, is at any rate

significant.

The best preserved relic of princely feudal life in Italy is this

Castello of the Este family, with its sombre moat, chained drawbridges,

doleful dungeons, and unnumbered tragedies, each one of which may be

compared with Parisina's history. I do not want to dwell on these

things now. It is enough to 167remember the Castello, built of ruddiest

brick, time-mellowed with how many centuries of sun and soft sea-air,

as it appeared upon the close of one tempestuous day. Just before

evening the rain-clouds parted and the sun flamed out across the misty

Lombard plain. The Castello burned like a hero's funeral pyre, and

round its high-built turrets swallows circled in the warm blue air. On

the moat slept shadows, mixed with flowers of sunset, tossed from

pinnacle and gable. Then the sky changed. A roof of thunder-cloud

spread overhead with the rapidity of tempest. The dying sun gathered

his last strength against it, fretting those steel-blue arches with

crimson; and all the fierce light, thrown from vault to vault of cloud,

was reflected back as from a shield, and cast in blots and patches on

the buildings. The Castle towered up rosy-red and shadowy sombre,

enshrined, embosomed in those purple clouds; and momently ran lightning

forks like rapiers through the growing mass. Everything around,

meanwhile, was quiet in the grass-grown streets. The only sound was a

high, clear boy's voice chanting an opera tune.

PETRARCH'S TOMB AT ARQUA

The drive from Este along the skirts of the Euganean Hills to Arqua

takes one through a country which is tenderly beautiful, because of its

contrast between little peaked mountains and the plain. It is not a

grand landscape. It lacks all that makes the skirts of Alps and

Apennines sublime. Its charm is a certain mystery and repose—an

undefined sense of the neighbouring Adriatic, a pervading consciousness

of Venice unseen, but felt from far away. From the terraces of Arqua

the eye ranges across olive-trees, laurels, and pomegranates on the

southern slopes, to the misty level land that melts into the sea, with

churches and tall campanili like 168gigantic galleys setting sail for

fairyland over 'the foam of perilous seas forlorn.' Let a blue-black

shadow from a thunder-cloud be cast upon this plain, and let one ray of

sunlight strike a solitary bell-tower;—it burns with palest flame of

rose against the steely dark, and in its slender shaft and shell-like

tint of pink all Venice is foreseen.

The village church of Arqua stands upon one of these terraces, with a

full stream of clearest water flowing by. On the little square before

the church-door, where the peasants congregate at mass-time—open to the

skies with all their stars and storms, girdled by the hills, and within

hearing of the vocal stream—is Petrarch's sepulchre. Fit resting-place

for what remains to earth of such a poet's clay! It is as though

archangels, flying, had carried the marble chest and set it down here

on the hillside, to be a sign and sanctuary for after-men. A simple

rectilinear coffin, of smooth Verona _mandorlato_, raised on four thick

columns, and closed by a heavy cippus-cover. Without emblems,

allegories, or lamenting genii, this tomb of the great poet, the great

awakener of Europe from mental lethargy, encircled by the hills,

beneath the canopy of heaven, is impressive beyond the power of words.

Bending here, we feel that Petrarch's own winged thoughts and fancies,

eternal and aë;rial, 'forms more real than living man, nurslings of

immortality,' have congregated to be the ever-ministering and

irremovable attendants on the shrine of one who, while he lived, was

purest spirit in a veil of flesh.

ON A MOUNTAIN

Milan is shining in sunset on those purple fields; and a score of

cities flash back the last red light, which shows each inequality and

undulation of Lombardy outspread four thousand feet beneath. Both

ranges, Alps and Apennines, 169are clear to view; and all the silvery

lakes are over-canopied and brought into one picture by flame-litten

mists. Monte Rosa lifts her crown of peaks above a belt of clouds into

light of living fire. The Mischabelhörner and the Dom rest stationary

angel-wings upon the rampart, which at this moment is the wall of

heaven. The pyramid of distant Monte Viso burns like solid amethyst

far, far away. Mont Cervin beckons to his brother, the gigantic

Finsteraarhorn, across tracts of liquid ether. Bells are rising from

the villages, now wrapped in gloom, between me and the glimmering lake.

A hush of evening silence falls upon the ridges, cliffs, and forests of

this billowy hill, ascending into wave-like crests, and toppling with

awful chasms over the dark waters of Lugano. It is good to be alone

here at this hour. Yet I must rise and go—passing through meadows,

where white lilies sleep in silvery drifts, and asphodel is pale with

spires of faintest rose, and narcissus dreams of his own beauty,

loading the air with fragrance sweet as some love-music of Mozart.

These fields want only the white figure of Persephone to make them

poems: and in this twilight one might fancy that the queen had left her

throne by Pluto's side, to mourn for her dead youth among the flowers

uplifted between earth and heaven. Nay, they are poems now, these

fields; with that unchanging background of history, romance, and human

life—the Lombard plain, against whose violet breadth the blossoms bend

their faint heads to the evening air. Downward we hurry, on pathways

where the beeches meet, by silent farms, by meadows honey-scented, deep

in dew. The columbine stands tall and still on those green slopes of

shadowy grass. The nightingale sings now, and now is hushed again.

Streams murmur through the darkness, where the growth of trees, heavy

with honeysuckle and wild rose, is thickest. Fireflies begin to flit

above the growing 170corn. At last the plain is reached, and all the

skies are tremulous with starlight. Alas, that we should vibrate so

obscurely to these harmonies of earth and heaven! The inner finer sense

of them seems somehow unattainable—that spiritual touch of soul evoking

soul from nature, which should transfigure our dull mood of self into

impersonal delight. Man needs to be a mytho-poet at some moments, or,

better still, to be a mystic steeped through half-unconsciousness in

the vast wonder of the world. Gold and untouched to poetry or piety by

scenes that ought to blend the spirit in ourselves with spirit in the

world without, we can but wonder how this phantom show of mystery and

beauty will pass away from us—how soon—and we be where, see what, use

all our sensibilities on aught or nought?

SIC GENIUS

In the picture-gallery at Modena there is a masterpiece of Dosso Dossi.

The frame is old and richly carved; and the painting, bordered by its

beautiful dull gold, shines with the lustre of an emerald. In his happy

moods Dosso set colour upon canvas, as no other painter out of Venice

ever did; and here he is at his happiest. The picture is the portrait

of a jester, dressed in courtly clothes and with a feathered cap upon

his head. He holds a lamb in his arms, and carries the legend, _Sic

Genius_. Behind him is a landscape of exquisite brilliancy and depth.

His face is young and handsome. Dosso has made it one most wonderful

laugh. Even so perhaps laughed Yorick. Nowhere else have I seen a laugh

thus painted: not violent, not loud, although the lips are opened to

show teeth of dazzling whiteness;—but fine and delicate, playing over

the whole face like a ripple sent up from the depths of the soul

within. Who was he? What 171does the lamb mean? How should the legend

be interpreted? We cannot answer these questions. He may have been the

court-fool of Ferrara; and his genius, the spiritual essence of the

man, may have inclined him to laugh at all things. That at least is the

value he now has for us. He is the portrait of perpetual irony, the

spirit of the golden Sixteenth Century which delicately laughed at the

whole world of thoughts and things, the quintessence of the poetry of

Ariosto, the wit of Berni, all condensed into one incarnation and

immortalised by truthfullest art. With the Gaul, the Spaniard, and the

German at her gates, and in her cities, and encamped upon her fields,

Italy still laughed; and when the voice of conscience sounding through

Savonarola asked her why, she only smiled—_Sic Genius_.

One evening in May we rowed from Venice to Torcello, and at sunset

broke bread and drank wine together among the rank grasses just outside

that ancient church. It was pleasant to sit in the so-called chair of

Attila and feel the placid stillness of the place. Then there came

lounging by a sturdy young fellow in brown country clothes, with a

marvellous old wide-awake upon his head, and across his shoulders a

bunch of massive church-keys. In strange contrast to his uncouth garb

he flirted a pink Japanese fan, gracefully disposing it to cool his

sunburned olive cheeks. This made us look at him. He was not ugly. Nay,

there was something of attractive in his face—the smooth-curved chin,

the shrewd yet sleepy eyes, and finely cut thin lips—a curious mixture

of audacity and meekness blent upon his features. Yet this impression

was but the prelude to his smile. When that first dawned, some breath

of humour seeming to stir in him unbidden, the true meaning was given

to his face. Each feature helped to make a smile that was the very

soul's life of the man expressed. I broadened, showing 172brilliant

teeth, and grew into a noiseless laugh; and then I saw before me

Dosso's jester, the type of Shakspere's fools, the life of that wild

irony, now rude, now fine, which once delighted Courts. The laughter of

the whole world and of all the centuries was silent in his face. What

he said need not be repeated. The charm was less in his words than in

his personality; for Momus-philosophy lay deep in every look and

gesture of the man. The place lent itself to irony: parties of

Americans and English parsons, the former agape for any rubbishy old

things, the latter learned in the lore of obsolete Church-furniture,

had thronged Torcello; and now they were all gone, and the sun had set

behind the Alps, while an irreverent stranger drank his wine in

Attila's chair, and nature's jester smiled—_Sic Genius_.

When I slept that night I dreamed of an altar-piece in the Temple of

Folly. The goddess sat enthroned beneath a canopy hung with bells and

corals. On her lap was a beautiful winged smiling genius, who

flourished two bright torches. On her left hand stood the man of Modena

with his white lamb, a new S. John. On her right stood the man of

Torcello with his keys, a new S. Peter. Both were laughing after their

all-absorbent, divine, noiseless fashion; and under both was written,

_Sic Genius_. Are not all things, even profanity, permissible in

dreams?

173

COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO

To which of the Italian lakes should the palm of beauty be accorded?

This question may not unfrequently have moved the idle minds of

travellers, wandering through that loveliest region from Orta to

Garda—from little Orta, with her gemlike island, rosy granite crags,

and chestnut-covered swards above the Colma; to Garda, bluest of all

waters, surveyed in majestic length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione,

a silvery sleeping haze of hill and cloud and heaven and clear waves

bathed in modulated azure. And between these extreme points what varied

lovelinesses lie in broad Maggiore, winding Como, Varese with the

laughing face upturned to heaven, Lugano overshadowed by the crested

crags of Monte Generoso, and Iseo far withdrawn among the rocky Alps!

He who loves immense space, cloud shadows slowly sailing over purple

slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped mountains,

breadth, air, immensity, and flooding sunlight, will choose Maggiore.

But scarcely has he cast his vote for this, the Juno of the divine

rivals, when he remembers the triple lovelinesses of the Larian

Aphrodite, disclosed in all their placid grace from Villa

Serbelloni;—the green blue of the waters, clear as glass, opaque

through depth; the _millefleurs_ roses clambering into cypresses by

Cadenabbia; the laburnums hanging their yellow clusters from the clefts

of Sasso Eancio; the oleander arcades of Varenna; the wild white

limestone crags of San Martiuo, which he has climbed to feast his eyes

174with the perspective, magical, serene, Lionardesquely perfect, of

the distant gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris is yet

doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of sterner, solitary

Lake Iseo—the Pallas of the three. She offers her own attractions. The

sublimity of Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and all the lowland like

Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above the plain of common life,

has charms to tempt heroic lovers. Nor can Varese be neglected. In some

picturesque respects, Varese is the most perfect of the lakes. Those

long lines of swelling hills that lead into the level, yield an

infinite series of placid foregrounds, pleasant to the eye by contrast

with the dominant snow-summits, from Monte Viso to Monte Leone: the sky

is limitless to southward; the low horizons are broken by bell-towers

and farmhouses; while armaments of clouds are ever rolling in the

interval of Alps and plain.

Of a truth, to decide which is the queen of the Italian lakes, is but

an _infinita quæstio_; and the mere raising of it is folly. Still each

lover of the beautiful may give his vote; and mine, like that of

shepherd Paris, is already given to the Larian goddess. Words fail in

attempting to set forth charms which have to be enjoyed, or can at best

but lightly be touched with most consummate tact, even as great poets

have already touched on Como Lake—from Virgil with his 'Lari maxume,'

to Tennyson and the Italian Manzoni. The threshold of the shrine is,

however, less consecrated ground; and the Cathedral of Como may form a

vestibule to the temple where silence is more golden than the speech of

a describer.

The Cathedral of Como is perhaps the most perfect building in Italy for

illustrating the fusion of Gothic and Renaissance styles, both of a

good type and exquisite in their sobriety. The Gothic ends with the

nave. The noble transepts and the choir, each terminating in a rounded

tribune of the same 175dimensions, are carried out in a simple and

decorous Bramantesque manner. The transition from the one style to the

other is managed so felicitously, and the sympathies between them are

so well developed, that there is no discord. What we here call Gothic,

is conceived in a truly southern spirit, without fantastic

efflorescence or imaginative complexity of multiplied parts; while the

Renaissance manner, as applied by Tommaso Rodari, has not yet stiffened

into the lifeless neo-Latinism of the later _cinquecento_: it is still

distinguished by delicate inventiveness, and beautiful subordination of

decorative detail to architectural effect. Under these happy conditions

we feel that the Gothic of the nave, with its superior severity and

sombreness, dilates into the lucid harmonies of choir and transepts

like a flower unfolding. In the one the mind is tuned to inner

meditation and religious awe; in the other the worshipper passes into a

temple of the clear explicit faith—as an initiated neophyte might be

received into the meaning of the mysteries.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire the district of Como seems to

have maintained more vividly than the rest of Northern Italy some

memory of classic art. _Magistri Comacini_ is a title frequently

inscribed upon deeds and charters of the earlier middle ages, as

synonymous with sculptors and architects. This fact may help to account

for the purity and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a race in

which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had never been

wholly interrupted. To Tommaso Rodari and his brothers, Bernardino and

Jacopo, the world owes this sympathetic fusion of the Gothic and the

Bramantesque styles; and theirs too is the sculpture with which the

Duomo is so richly decorated. They were natives of Maroggia, a village

near Mendrisio, beneath the crests of Monte Generoso, close to

Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out into the 176world

between the years 1300 and 1500. Indeed the name of Campionesi would

probably have been given to the Rodari, had they left their native

province for service in Eastern Lombardy. The body of the Duomo had

been finished when Tommaso Rodari was appointed master of the fabric in

1487. To complete the work by the addition of a tribune was his duty.

He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, after the fashion of those

times, for criticism in his _bottega_; and the usual difference of

opinion arose among the citizens of Como concerning its merits.

Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed Il Gobbo, was called in to advise. It may

be remembered that when Michelangelo first placed his Pietà in S.

Peter's, rumour gave it to this celebrated Lombard sculptor, and the

Florentine was constrained to set his own signature upon the marble.

The same Solaro carved the monument of Beatrice Sforza in the Certosa

of Pavia. He was indeed in all points competent to criticise or to

confirm the design of his fellow-craftsman. Il Gobbo disapproved of the

proportions chosen by Rodari, and ordered a new model to be made; but

after much discussion, and some concessions on the part of Rodari, who

is said to have increased the number of the windows and lightened the

orders of his model, the work was finally entrusted to the master of

Maroggia.

Not less creditable than the general design of the tribune is the

sculpture executed by the brothers. The north side door is a

master-work of early Renaissance chiselling, combining mixed Christian

and classical motives with a wealth of floral ornament. Inside, over

the same door, is a procession of children seeming to represent the

Triumph of Bacchus, with perhaps some Christian symbolism. Opposite,

above the south door, is a frieze of fighting Tritons—horsed sea

deities pounding one another with bunches of fish and splashing the

water, in Mantegna's spirit. The doorways of the façade are

177decorated with the same rare workmanship; and the canopies,

supported by naked fauns and slender twisted figures, under which the

two Plinies are seated, may be reckoned among the supreme achievements

of delicate Renaissance sculpture. The Plinies are not like the work of

the same master. They are older, stiffer, and more Gothic. The chief

interest attaching to them is that they are habited and seated after

the fashion of Humanists. This consecration of the two Pagan saints

beside the portals of the Christian temple is truly characteristic of

the fifteenth century in Italy. Beneath, are little basreliefs

representing scenes from their respective lives, in the style of carved

predellas on the altars of saints.

The whole church is peopled with detached statues, among which a

Sebastian in the Chapel of the Madonna must be mentioned as singularly

beautiful. It is a finely modelled figure, with the full life and

exuberant adolescence of Venetian inspiration. A peculiar feature of

the external architecture is the series of Atlantes, bearing on their

shoulders urns, heads of lions, and other devices, and standing on

brackets round the upper cornice just below the roof. They are of all

sorts; young and old, male and female; classically nude, and boldly

outlined. These water-conduits, the work of Bernardo Bianco and

Francesco Rusca, illustrate the departure of the earlier Renaissance

from the Gothic style. They are gargoyles; but they have lost the

grotesque element. At the same time the sculptor, while discarding

Gothic tradition, has not betaken himself yet to a servile imitation of

the antique. He has used invention, and substituted for grinning

dragons' heads something wild and bizarre of his own in harmony with

classic taste.

The pictures in the chapels, chiefly by Luini and Ferrari—an idyllic

Nativity, with faun-like shepherds and choirs of angels—a sumptuous

adoration of the Magi—a jewelled 178Sposalizio with abundance of golden

hair flowing over draperies of green and crimson—will interest those

who are as yet unfamiliar with Lombard painting. Yet their

architectural setting, perhaps, is superior to their intrinsic merit as

works of art; and their chief value consists in adding rare dim flakes

of colour to the cool light of the lovely church. More curious, because

less easily matched, is the gilded woodwork above the altar of S.

Abondio, attributed to a German carver, but executed for the most part

in the purest Luinesque manner. The pose of the enthroned Madonna, the

type and gesture of S. Catherine, and the treatment of the Pietà above,

are thoroughly Lombard, showing how Luini's ideal of beauty could be

expressed in carving. Some of the choicest figures in the Monastero

Maggiore at Milan seem to have descended from the walls and stepped

into their tabernacles on this altar. Yet the style is not maintained

consistently. In the reliefs illustrating the life of S. Abondio we

miss Luini's childlike grace, and find instead a something that reminds

us of Donatello—a seeking after the classical in dress, carriage, and

grouping of accessory figures. It may have been that the carver,

recognising Luini's defective composition, and finding nothing in that

master's manner adapted to the spirit of relief, had the good taste to

render what was Luinesquely lovely in his female figures, and to fall

back on a severer model for his basreliefs.

The building-fund for the Duomo was raised in Como and its districts.

Boxes were placed in all the churches to receive the alms of those who

wished to aid the work. The clergy begged in Lent, and preached the

duty of contributing on special days. Presents of lime and bricks and

other materials were thankfully received. Bishops, canons, and

municipal magistrates were expected to make costly gifts on taking

office. Notaries, under penalty of paying 100 soldi if they

179neglected their engagement, were obliged to persuade testators, _cum

bonis modis dulciter_, to inscribe the Duomo on their wills. Fines for

various offences were voted to the building by the city. Each new

burgher paid a certain sum; while guilds and farmers of the taxes

bought monopolies and privileges at the price of yearly subsidies. A

lottery was finally established for the benefit of the fabric. Of

course each payment to the good work carried with it spiritual

privileges; and so willingly did the people respond to the call of the

Church, that during the sixteenth century the sums subscribed amounted

to 200,000 golden crowns. Among the most munificent donators are

mentioned the Marchese Giacomo Gallio, who bequeathed 290,000 lire, and

a Benzi, who gave 10,000 ducats.

While the people of Como were thus straining every nerve to complete a

pious work, which at the same time is one of the most perfect

masterpieces of Italian art, their lovely lake was turned into a

pirate's stronghold, and its green waves stained with slaughter of

conflicting navies. So curious is this episode in the history of the

Larian lake that it is worth while to treat of it at some length.

Moreover, the lives of few captains of adventure offer matter more rich

in picturesque details and more illustrative of their times than that

of Gian Giacomo de' Medici, the Larian corsair, long known and still

remembered as Il Medeghino. He was born in Milan in 1498, at the

beginning of that darkest and most disastrous period of Italian

history, when the old fabric of social and political existence went to

ruin under the impact of conflicting foreign armies. He lived on until

the year 1555, witnessing and taking part in the dismemberment of the

Milanese Duchy, playing a game of hazard at high stakes for his own

profit with the two last Sforzas, the Empire, the French, and the

Swiss. At the beginning of the century, 180while he was still a youth,

the rich valley of the Valtelline, with Bormio and Chiavenna, had been

assigned to the Grisons. The Swiss Cantons at the same time had

possessed themselves of Lugano and Bellinzona. By these two acts of

robbery the mountaineers tore a portion of its fairest territory from

the Duchy; and whoever ruled in Milan, whether a Sforza, or a Spanish

viceroy, or a French general, was impatient to recover the lost jewel

of the ducal crown. So much has to be premised, because the scene of

our hero's romantic adventures was laid upon the borderland between the

Duchy and the Cantons. Intriguing at one time with the Duke of Milan,

at another with his foes the French or Spaniards, Il Medeghino found

free scope for his peculiar genius in a guerilla warfare, carried on

with the avowed purpose of restoring the Valtelline to Milan. To steer

a plain course through that chaos of politics, in which the modern

student, aided by the calm clear lights of history and meditation,

cannot find a clue, was of course impossible for an adventurer whose

one aim was to gratify his passions and exalt himself at the expense of

others. It is therefore of little use to seek motives of statecraft or

of patriotism in the conduct of Il Medeghino. He was a man shaped

according to Machiavelli's standard of political morality—self-reliant,

using craft and force with cold indifference to moral ends, bent only

upon wringing for himself the largest share of this world's power for

men who, like himself, identified virtue with unflinching and

immitigable egotism.

Il Medeghino's father was Bernardo de' Medici, a Lombard, who neither

claimed nor could have proved cousinship with the great Medicean family

of Florence. His mother was Cecilia Serbelloni. The boy was educated in

the fashionable humanistic studies, nourishing his young imagination

with the tales of Roman heroes. The first exploit by which he 181proved

his _virtù_, was the murder of a man he hated, at the age of sixteen.

This 'virile act of vengeance,' as it was called, brought him into

trouble, and forced him to choose the congenial profession of arms. At

a time when violence and vigour passed for manliness, a spirited

assassination formed the best of introductions to the captains of mixed

mercenary troops. Il Medeghino rose in favour with his generals, helped

to reinstate Francesco Sforza in his capital, and, returning himself to

Milan, inflicted severe vengeance on the enemies who had driven him to

exile. It was his ambition, at this early period of his life, to be

made governor of the Castle of Musso, on the Lake of Como. While

fighting in the neighbourhood, he had observed the unrivalled

capacities for defence presented by its site; and some pre-vision of

his future destinies now urged him to acquire it, as the basis for the

free marauding life he planned. The headland of Musso lies about

halfway between Gravedona and Menaggio, on the right shore of the Lake

of Como. Planted on a pedestal of rock, and surmounted by a sheer

cliff, there then stood a very ancient tower, commanding this

promontory on the side of the land. Between it and the water the

Visconti, in more recent days, had built a square fort; and the

headland had been further strengthened by the addition of connecting

walls and bastions pierced for cannon. Combining precipitous cliffs,

strong towers, and easy access from the lake below, this fortress of

Musso was exactly the fit station for a pirate. So long as he kept the

command of the lake, he had little to fear from land attacks, and had a

splendid basis for aggressive operations. Il Medeghino made his request

to the Duke of Milan; but the foxlike Sforza would not grant him a

plain answer. At length he hinted that if his suitor chose to rid him

of a troublesome subject, the noble and popular Astore Yisconti, he

should receive 182Musso for payment. Crimes of bloodshed and treason

sat lightly on the adventurer's conscience. In a short time he

compassed the young Visconti's death, and claimed his reward. The Duke

despatched him thereupon to Musso, with open letters to the governor,

commanding him to yield the castle to the bearer. Private advice, also

entrusted to Il Medeghino, bade the governor, on the contrary, cut the

bearer's throat. The young man, who had the sense to read the Duke's

letter, destroyed the secret document, and presented the other, or, as

one version of the story goes, forged a ducal order in his own

favour.[12] At any rate, the castle was placed in his hands; and

affecting to know nothing of the Duke's intended treachery, Il

Medeghino took possession of it as a trusted servant of the ducal

crown.

[12] I cannot see clearly through these transactions, the muddy waters

of decadent Italian plot and counterplot being inscrutable to senses

assisted by nothing more luminous than mere tradition.

As soon as he was settled in his castle, the freebooter devoted all his

energies to rendering it still more impregnable by strengthening the

walls and breaking the cliffs into more horrid precipices. In this work

he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; for Musso

rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an asylum for the ruffians and

outlaws of neighbouring provinces. It is even said that his sisters,

Clarina and Margherita, rendered efficient aid with manual labour. The

mention of Clarina's name justifies a parenthetical side-glance at Il

Medeghino's pedigree, which will serve to illustrate the exceptional

conditions of Italian society during this age. She was married to the

Count Giberto Borromeo, and became the mother of the pious Carlo

Borromeo, whose shrine is still adored at Milan in the Duomo. Il

Medeghino's brother, Giovan Angelo, rose to the Papacy, assuming the

title of Pius IV. Thus this murderous 183marauder was the brother of a

Pope and the uncle of a Saint; and these three persons of one family

embraced the various degrees and typified the several characters which

flourished with peculiar lustre in Renaissance Italy—the captain of

adventure soaked in blood, the churchman unrivalled for intrigue, and

the saint aflame with holiest enthusiasm. Il Medeghino was short of

stature, but well made and powerful; broad-chested; with a penetrating

voice and winning countenance. He dressed simply, like one of his own

soldiers; slept but little; was insensible to carnal pleasure; and

though he knew how to win the affection of his men by jovial speech, he

maintained strict discipline in his little army. In all points he was

an ideal bandit chief, never happy unless fighting or planning

campaigns, inflexible of purpose, bold and cunning in the execution of

his schemes, cruel to his enemies, generous to his followers,

sacrificing all considerations, human and divine, to the one aim of his

life, self-aggrandisement by force and intrigue. He knew well how to

make himself both feared and respected. One instance of his dealing

will suffice. A gentleman of Bellano, Polidoro Boldoni, in return to

his advances, coldly replied that he cared for neither amity nor

relationship with thieves and robbers; whereupon Il Medeghino

extirpated his family, almost to a man.

Soon after his settlement in Musso, Il Medeghino, wishing to secure the

gratitude of the Duke, his master, began war with the Grisons. From

Coire, from the Engadine, and from Davos, the Alpine pikemen were now

pouring down to swell the troops of Francis I.; and their road lay

through the Lake of Como. Il Medeghino burned all the boats upon the

lake, except those which he took into his own service, and thus made

himself master of the water passage. He then swept the 'length of

lordly Lario' from Colico to Lecco, harrying 184the villages upon the

shore, and cutting off the bands of journeying Switzers at his

pleasure. Not content with this guerilla, he made a descent upon the

territory of the Trepievi, and pushed far up towards Chiavenna, forcing

the Grisons to recall their troops from the Milanese. These acts of

prowess convinced the Duke that he had found a strong ally in the

pirate chief. "When Francis I. continued his attacks upon the Duchy,

and the Grisons still adhered to their French paymaster, the Sforza

formally invested Gian Giacomo de' Medici with the perpetual

governorship of Musso, the Lake of Como, and as much as he could wrest

from the Grisons above the lake. Furnished now with a just title for

his depredations, Il Medeghino undertook the siege of Chiavenna. That

town is the key to the valleys of the Splügen and Bregaglia. Strongly

fortified and well situated for defence, the burghers of the Grisons

well knew that upon its possession depended their power in the Italian

valleys. To take it by assault was impossible, Il Medeghino used craft,

entered the castle, and soon had the city at his disposition. Nor did

he lose time in sweeping Val Bregaglia. The news of this conquest

recalled the Switzers from the Duchy; and as they hurried homeward just

before the battle of Pavia, it may be affirmed that Gian Giacomo de'

Medici was instrumental in the defeat and capture of the French King.

The mountaineers had no great difficulty in dislodging their pirate

enemy from Chiavenna, the Valtelline, and Val Bregaglia. But he

retained his hold on the Trepievi, occupied the Valsassina, took

Porlezza, and established himself still more strongly in Musso as the

corsair monarch of the lake.

The tyranny of the Sforzas in Milan was fast going to pieces between

France and Spain; and in 1526 the Marquis of Pescara occupied the

capital in the name of Charles V. The Duke, meanwhile, remained a

prisoner in his Castello. 185Il Medeghino was now without a master; for

he refused to acknowledge the Spaniards, preferring to watch events and

build his own power on the ruins of the dukedom. At the head of 4,000

men, recruited from the lakes and neighbouring valleys, he swept the

country far and wide, and occupied the rich champaign of the Brianza.

He was now lord of the lakes of Como and Lugano, and absolute in Lecco

and the adjoining valleys. The town of Como itself alone belonged to

the Spaniards; and even Como was blockaded by the navy of the corsair.

Il Medeghino had a force of seven big ships, with three sails and

forty-eight oars, bristling with guns and carrying marines. His

flagship was a large brigantine, manned by picked rowers, from the mast

of which floated the red banner with the golden palle of the Medicean

arms. Besides these larger vessels, he commanded a flotilla of

countless small boats. It is clear that to reckon with him was a

necessity. If he could not be put down with force, he might be bought

over by concessions. The Spaniards adopted the second course, and Il

Medeghino, judging that the cause of the Sforza family was desperate,

determined in 1528 to attach himself to the Empire. Charles V. invested

him with the Castle of Musso and the larger part of Como Lake,

including the town of Lecco. He now assumed the titles of Marquis of

Musso and Count of Lecco: and in order to prove his sovereignty before

the world, he coined money with his own name and devices.

It will be observed that Gian Giacomo de' Medici had hitherto acted

with a single-hearted view to his own interests. At the age of thirty

he had raised himself from nothing to a principality, which, though

petty, might compare with many of some name in Italy—with Carpi, for

example, or Mirandola, or Camerino. Nor did he mean to remain quiet in

the prime of life. He regarded Como Lake as the mere basis for more

186arduous undertakings. Therefore, when the whirligig of events

restored Francesco Sforza to his duchy in 1529, Il Medeghino refused to

obey his old lord. Pretending to move under the Duke's orders, but

really acting for himself alone, he proceeded to attack his ancient

enemies, the Grisons. By fraud and force he worked his way into their

territory, seized Morbegno, and overran the Valtelline. He was

destined, however, to receive a serious check. Twelve thousand Switzers

rose against him on the one hand, on the other the Duke of Milan sent a

force by land and water to subdue his rebel subject, while Alessandro

Gonzaga marched upon his castles in the Brianza. He was thus assailed

by formidable forces from three quarters, converging upon the Lake of

Como, and driving him to his chosen element, the water. Hastily

quitting the Valtelline, he fell back to the Castle of Mandello on the

lake, collected his navy, and engaged the ducal ships in a battle off

Menaggio. In this battle he was worsted. But he did not lose his

courage. From Bellagio, from Varenna, from Bellano he drove forth his

enemies, rolled the cannon of the Switzers into the lake, regained

Lecco, defeated the troops of Alessandro Gonzaga, and took the Duke of

Mantua prisoner. Had he but held Como, it is probable that he might

have obtained such terms at this time as would have consolidated his

tyranny. The town of Como, however, now belonged to the Duke of Milan,

and formed an excellent basis for operations against the pirate.

Overmatched, with an exhausted treasury and broken forces, Il Medeghino

was at last compelled to give in. Yet he retired with all the honours

of war. In exchange for Musso and the lake, the Duke agreed to give him

35,000 golden crowns, together with the feud and marquisate of

Marignano. A free pardon was promised not only to himself and his

brothers, but to all his followers; and the Duke further undertook to

transport his 187artillery and munitions of war at his own expense to

Marignano. Having concluded this treaty under the auspices of Charles

V. and his lieutenant, Il Medeghino, in March 1532, set sail from

Musso, and turned his back upon the lake for ever. The Switzers

immediately destroyed the towers, forts, walls, and bastions of the

Musso promontory, leaving in the midst of their ruins the little chapel

of S. Eufemia.

Gian Giacomo de' Medici, henceforth known to Europe as the Marquis of

Marignano, now took service under Spain; and through the favour of

Anton de Leyva, Viceroy for the Duchy, rose to the rank of Field

Marshal. When the Marquis del Vasto succeeded to the Spanish

governorship of Milan in 1536, he determined to gratify an old grudge

against the ex-pirate, and, having invited him to a banquet, made him

prisoner. II Medeghino was not, however, destined to languish in a

dungeon. Princes and kings interested themselves in his fate. He was

released, and journeyed to the court of Charles V. in Spain. The

Emperor received him kindly, and employed him first in the Low

Countries, where he helped to repress the burghers of Ghent, and at the

siege of Landrecy commanded the Spanish artillery against other Italian

captains of adventure: for, Italy being now dismembered and enslaved,

her sons sought foreign service where they found best pay and widest

scope for martial science. Afterwards the Medici ruled Bohemia as

Spanish Viceroy; and then, as general of the league formed by the Duke

of Florence, the Emperor, and the Pope to repress the liberties of

Tuscany, distinguished himself in that cruel war of extermination,

which turned the fair Contado of Siena into a poisonous Maremma. To the

last Il Medeghino preserved the instincts and the passions of a brigand

chief. It was at this time that, acting for the Grand Duke of Tuscany,

he first claimed open kinship with the Medici of Florence. Heralds and

188genealogists produced a pedigree, which seemed to authorise this

pretension; he was recognised, together with his brother, Pius IV., as

an offshoot of the great house which had already given Dukes to

Florence, Kings to France, and two Popes to the Christian world. In the

midst of all this foreign service he never forgot his old dream of

conquering the Valtelline; and in 1547 he made proposals to the Emperor

for a new campaign against the Grisons. Charles V. did not choose to

engage in a war, the profits of which would have been inconsiderable

for the master of half the civilised world, and which might have proved

troublesome by stirring up the tameless Switzers. Il Medeghino was

obliged to abandon a project cherished from the earliest dawn of his

adventurous manhood.

When Gian Giacomo died in 1555, his brother Battista succeeded to his

claims upon Lecco and the Trepievi. His monument, magnificent with five

bronze figures, the masterpiece of Leone Lioni, from Menaggio,

Michelangelesque in style, and of consummate workmanship, still adorns

the Duomo of Milan. It stands close by the door that leads to the roof.

This mausoleum, erected to the memory of Gian Giacomo and his brother

Gabrio, is said to have cost 7800 golden crowns. On the occasion of the

pirate's funeral the Senate of Milan put on mourning, and the whole

city followed the great robber, the hero of Renaissance _virtù_, to the

grave.

Between the Cathedral of Como and the corsair Medeghino there is but a

slight link. Yet so extraordinary were the social circumstances of

Renaissance Italy, that almost at every turn, on her seaboard, in her

cities, from her hill-tops, we are compelled to blend our admiration

for the loveliest and purest works of art amid the choicest scenes of

nature with memories of execrable crimes and lawless characters.

Sometimes, as at Perugia, the _nexus_ is but local. At others, one

189single figure, like that of Cellini, unites both points of view in a

romance of unparalleled dramatic vividness. Or, again, beneath the

vaults of the Certosa, near Pavia, a masterpiece of the serenest beauty

carries our thoughts perforce back to the hideous cruelties and

snake-like frauds of its despotic founder. This is the excuse for

combining two such diverse subjects in one study.

190

BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI

From the new town of commerce to the old town of history upon the hill,

the road is carried along a rampart lined, with horse-chestnut

trees—clumps of massy foliage, and snowy pyramids of bloom, expanded in

the rapture of a southern spring. Each pair of trees between their

stems and arch of intermingling leaves includes a space of plain,

checkered with cloud-shadows, melting blue and green in amethystine

haze. To right and left the last spurs of the Alps descend, jutting

like promontories, heaving like islands from the misty breadth below:

and here and there are towers, half-lost in airy azure; and cities

dwarfed to blots; and silvery lines where rivers flow; and distant,

vapour-drowned, dim crests of Apennines. The city walls above us wave

with snapdragons and iris among fig-trees sprouting from the riven

stones. There are terraces over-rioted with pergolas of vine, and

houses shooting forward into balconies and balustrades, from which a

Romeo might launch himself at daybreak, warned by the lark's song. A

sudden angle in the road is turned, and we pass from airspace and

freedom into the old town, beneath walls of dark brown masonry, where

wild valerians light their torches of red bloom in immemorial shade.

Squalor and splendour live here side by side. Grand Renaissance portals

grinning with Satyr masks are flanked by tawdry frescoes shamming

stonework, or by doorways where the withered bush hangs out a promise

of bad wine. 191The Cappella Colleoni is our destination, that

masterpiece of the sculptor-architect's craft, with its variegated

marbles,—rosy and white and creamy yellow and jet-black,—in patterns,

basreliefs, pilasters, statuettes, encrusted on the fanciful domed

shrine. Upon the façade are mingled, in the true Renaissance spirit of

genial acceptance, motives Christian and Pagan with supreme

impartiality. Medallions of emperors and gods alternate with virtues,

angels and cupids in a maze of loveliest arabesque; and round the base

of the building are told two stories—the one of Adam from his creation

to his fall, the other of Hercules and his labours. Italian craftsmen

of the _quattrocento_ were not averse to setting thus together, in one

framework, the myths of our first parents and Alemena's son: partly

perhaps because both subjects gave scope to the free treatment of the

nude; but partly also, we may venture to surmise, because the heroism

of Hellas counterbalanced the sin of Eden. Here then we see how Adam

and Eve were made and tempted and expelled from Paradise and set to

labour, how Cain killed Abel, and Lamech slew a man to his hurt, and

Isaac was offered on the mountain. The tale of human sin and the

promise of redemption are epitomised in twelve of the sixteen

basreliefs. The remaining four show Hercules wrestling with Antæus,

taming the Nemean lion, extirpating the Hydra, and bending to his will

the bull of Crete. Labour, appointed for a punishment to Adam, becomes

a title to immortality for the hero. The dignity of man is reconquered

by prowess for the Greek, as it is repurchased for the Christian by

vicarious suffering. Many may think this interpretation of Amadeo's

basreliefs far-fetched; yet, such as it is, it agrees with the spirit

of Humanism, bent ever on harmonising the two great traditions of the

past. Of the workmanship little need be said, except that it is wholly

Lombard, distinguished from the similar work of Della 192Quercia at

Bologna and Siena by a more imperfect feeling for composition, and a

lack of monumental gravity, yet graceful, rich in motives, and instinct

with a certain wayward _improvvisatore_ charm.

This Chapel was built by the great Condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni, to

be the monument of his puissance even in the grave. It had been the

Sacristy of S. Maria Maggiore, which, when the Consiglio della

Misericordia refused it to him for his half-proud, half-pious purpose,

he took and held by force. The structure, of costliest materials,

reared by Gian Antonio Amadeo, cost him 50,000 golden florins. An

equestrian statue of gilt wood, voted to him by the town of Bergamo,

surmounts his monument inside the Chapel. This was the work of two

German masters, called 'Sisto figlio di Enrico Syri da Norimberga' and

'Leonardo Tedesco.' The tomb itself is of marble, executed for the most

part in a Lombard style resembling Amadeo's, but scarcely worthy of his

genius. The whole effect is disappointing. Five figures representing

Mars, Hercules, and three sons-in-law of Colleoni, who surround the

sarcophagus of the buried general, are indeed almost grotesque. The

angularity and crumpled draperies of the Milanese manner, when so

exaggerated, produce an impression of caricature. Yet many subordinate

details—a row of _putti_ in a _cinquecento_ frieze, for instance—and

much of the low relief work—especially the Crucifixion with its

characteristic episodes of the fainting Maries and the soldiers casting

dice—are lovely in their unaffected Lombardism.

There is another portrait of Colleoni in a round above the great door,

executed with spirit, though in a _bravura_ style that curiously

anticipates the decline of Italian sculpture. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, with

prominent cheek bones and strong jaws, this animated, half-length

statue of the hero bears the 193stamp of a good likeness; but when or

by whom it was made, I do not know.

Far more noteworthy than Colleoni's own monument is that of his

daughter Medea. She died young in 1470, and her father caused her tomb,

carved of Carrara marble, to be placed in the Dominican Church of

Basella, which he had previously founded. It was not until 1842 that

this most precious masterpiece of Antonio Amadeo's skill was

transferred to Bergamo. _Hic jacet Medea virgo._ Her hands are clasped

across her breast. A robe of rich brocade, gathered to the waist and

girdled, lies in simple folds upon the bier. Her throat, exceedingly

long and slender, is circled with a string of pearls. Her face is not

beautiful, for the features, especially the nose, are large and

prominent; but it is pure and expressive of vivid individuality. The

hair curls in crisp short clusters, and the ear, fine and shaped almost

like a Faun's, reveals the scrupulous fidelity of the sculptor. Italian

art has, in truth, nothing more exquisite than this still sleeping

figure of the girl, who, when she lived, must certainly have been so

rare of type and lovable in personality. If Busti's Lancinus Curtius be

the portrait of a humanist, careworn with study, burdened by the laurel

leaves that were so dry and dusty—if Gaston de Foix in the Brera,

smiling at death and beautiful in the cropped bloom of youth, idealise

the hero of romance—if Michelangelo's Penseroso translate in marble the

dark broodings of a despot's soul—if Della Porta's Julia Farnese be the

Roman courtesan magnificently throned in nonchalance at a Pope's

footstool—if Verocchio's Colleoni on his horse at Venice impersonate

the pomp and circumstance of scientific war—surely this Medea exhales

the flower-like graces, the sweet sanctities of human life, that even

in that turbid age were found among high-bred Italian ladies. Such

power have mighty sculptors, even in our 194modern world, to make the

mute stone speak in poems and clasp the soul's life of a century in

some five or six transcendent forms.

The Colleoni, or Coglioni, family were of considerable antiquity and

well-authenticated nobility in the town of Bergamo. Two lions' heads

conjoined formed one of their canting ensigns; another was borrowed

from the vulgar meaning of their name. Many members of the house held

important office during the three centuries preceding the birth of the

famous general, Bartolommeo. He was born in the year 1400 at Solza, in

the Bergamasque Contado. His father Paolo, or Pùho as he was commonly

called, was poor and exiled from the city, together with the rest of

the Guelf nobles, by the Visconti. Being a man of daring spirit, and

little inclined to languish in a foreign state as the dependent on some

patron, Pùho formed the bold design of seizing the Castle of Trezzo.

This he achieved in 1405 by fraud, and afterwards held it as his own by

force. Partly with the view of establishing himself more firmly in his

acquired lordship, and partly out of family affection, Pùho associated

four of his first-cousins in the government of Trezzo. They repaid his

kindness with an act of treason and cruelty, only too characteristic of

those times in Italy. One day while he was playing at draughts in a

room of the Castle, they assaulted him and killed him, seized his wife

and the boy Bartolommeo, and flung them into prison. The murdered Pùho

had another son, Antonio, who escaped and took refuge with Giorgio

Benzone, the tyrant of Crema. After a short time the Colleoni brothers

found means to assassinate him also; therefore Bartolommeo alone, a

child of whom no heed was taken, remained to be his father's avenger.

He and his mother lived together in great indigence at Solza, until the

lad felt strong enough to enter the service of one of the numerous

195petty Lombard princes, and to make himself if possible a captain of

adventure. His name alone was a sufficient introduction, and the Duchy

of Milan, dismembered upon the death of Gian Maria Visconti, was in

such a state that all the minor despots were increasing their forces

and preparing to defend by arms the fragments they had seized from the

Visconti heritage. Bartolommeo therefore had no difficulty in

recommending himself to Filippo d'Arcello, sometime general in the pay

of the Milanese, but now the new lord of Piacenza. With this master he

remained as page for two or three years, learning the use of arms,

riding, and training himself in the physical exercises which were

indispensable to a young Italian soldier. Meanwhile Filippo Maria

Visconti reacquired his hereditary dominions; and at the age of twenty,

Bartolommeo found it prudent to seek a patron stronger than d'Arcello.

The two great Condottieri, Sforza Attendolo and Braccio, divided the

military glories of Italy at this period; and any youth who sought to

rise in his profession, had to enrol himself under the banners of the

one or the other. Bartolommeo chose Braccio for his master, and was

enrolled among his men as a simple trooper, or _ragazzo_, with no

better prospects than he could make for himself by the help of his

talents and his borrowed horse and armour. Braccio at this time was in

Apulia, prosecuting the war of the Neapolitan Succession disputed

between Alfonso of Aragon and Louis of Anjou under the weak sovereignty

of Queen Joan. On which side of a quarrel a Condottiere fought mattered

but little: so great was the confusion of Italian politics, and so

complete was the egotism of these fraudful, violent, and treacherous

party leaders. Yet it may be mentioned that Braccio had espoused

Alfonso's cause. Bartolommeo Colleoni early distinguished himself among

the ranks of the Bracceschi. But he soon perceived that he could

196better his position by deserting to another camp. Accordingly he

offered his services to Jacopo Caldora, one of Joan's generals, and

received from him a commission of twenty men-at-arms. It may here be

parenthetically said that the rank and pay of an Italian captain varied

with the number of the men he brought into the field. His title

'Condofctiere' was derived from the circumstance that he was said to

have received a _Condotta di venti cavalli_, and so forth. Each

_cavallo_ was equal to one mounted man-at-arms and two attendants, who

were also called _ragazzi_. It was his business to provide the

stipulated number of men, to keep them in good discipline, and to

satisfy their just demands. Therefore an Italian army at this epoch

consisted of numerous small armies varying in size, each held together

by personal engagements to a captain, and all dependent on the will of

a general-in-chief, who had made a bargain with some prince or republic

for supplying a fixed contingent of fighting-men. The _Condottiere_ was

in other words a contractor or _impresario_, undertaking to do a

certain piece of work for a certain price, and to furnish the requisite

forces for the business in good working order. It will be readily seen

upon this system how important were the personal qualities of the

captain, and what great advantages those Condottieri had, who, like the

petty princes of Romagna and the March, the Montefeltri, Ordelaffi,

Malatesti, Manfredi, Orsini, and Vitelli, could rely upon a race of

hardy vassals for their recruits. It 239is not necessary to follow

Colleoni's fortunes in the Regno, at Aquila, Ancona, and Bologna. He

continued in the service of Caldora, who was now General of the Church,

and had his _Condotta_ gradually increased. Meanwhile his cousins, the

murderers of his father, began to dread his rising power, and

determined, if possible, to ruin him. He was not a man to be easily

assassinated; so they sent a hired ruffian 197to Caldora's camp to say

that Bartolommeo had taken his name by fraud, and that he was himself

the real son of Pùho Colleoni. Bartolommeo defied the liar to a duel;

and this would have taken place before the army, had not two witnesses

appeared, who knew the fathers of both Colleoni and the _bravo_, and

who gave such evidence that the captains of the army were enabled to

ascertain the truth. The impostor was stripped and drummed out of the

camp.

At the conclusion of a peace between the Pope and the Bolognese,

Bartolommeo found himself without occupation. He now offered himself to

the Venetians, and began to fight again under the great Carmagnola

against Filippo Visconti. His engagement allowed him forty men, which,

after the judicial murder of Carmagnola at Venice in 1432, were

increased to eighty. Erasmo da Narni, better known as Gattamelata, was

now his general-in-chief—a man who had risen from the lowest fortunes

to one of the most splendid military positions in Italy. Colleoni spent

the next years of his life, until 1443, in Lombardy, manoeuvring

against Il Piccinino, and gradually rising in the Venetian service,

until his Condotta reached the number of 800 men. Upon Gattamelata's

death at Padua in 1440, Colleoni became the most important of the

generals who had fought with Caldora in the March. The lordships of

Romano in the Bergamasque and of Covo and Antegnate in the Cremonese

had been assigned to him; and he was in a position to make independent

engagements with princes. What distinguished him as a general, was a

combination of caution with audacity. He united the brilliant system of

his master Braccio with the more prudent tactics of the Sforzeschi; and

thus, though he often surprised his foes by daring stratagems and

vigorous assaults, he rarely met with any serious check. He was a

captain who could be relied upon for boldly seizing an advantage, no

less 198than for using a success with discretion. Moreover he had

acquired an almost unique reputation for honesty in dealing with his

masters, and for justice combined with humane indulgence to his men.

His company was popular, and he could always bring capital troops into

the field.

In the year 1443 Colleoni quitted the Venetian service on account of a

quarrel with Gherardo Dandolo, the Provoditore of the Republic. He now

took a commission from Filippo Maria Visconti, who received him at

Milan with great honour, bestowed on him the Castello Adorno at Pavia,

and sent him into the March of Ancona upon a military expedition. Of

all Italian tyrants this Visconti was the most difficult to serve.

Constitutionally timid, surrounded with a crowd of spies and base

informers, shrinking from the sight of men in the recesses of his

palace, and controlling the complicated affairs of his Duchy by means

of correspondents and intelligencers, this last scion of the Milanese

despots lived like a spider in an inscrutable network of suspicion and

intrigue. His policy was one of endless plot and counterplot. He

trusted no man; his servants were paid to act as spies on one another;

his bodyguard consisted of mutually hostile mercenaries; his captains

in the field were watched and thwarted by commissioners appointed to

check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory.

The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's

schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to

have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing

his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers.

Conscious that his power was artificial, that the least breath might

blow him back into the nothingness from which he had arisen on the

wrecks of his father's tyranny, he dreaded the personal eminence of his

generals above all things. His chief object was to establish a system

of checks, by means 199of which no one whom he employed should at any

moment be great enough to threaten him. The most formidable of these

military adventurers, Francesco Sforza, had been secured by marriage

with Bianca Maria Visconti, his master's only daughter, in 1441; but

the Duke did not even trust his son-in-law. The last six years of his

life were spent in scheming to deprive Sforza of his lordships; and the

war in the March, on which he employed Colleoni, had the object of

ruining the principality acquired by this daring captain from Pope

Eugenius IV. in 1443.

Colleoni was by no means deficient in those foxlike qualities which

were necessary to save the lion from the toils spread for him by

Italian intriguers. He had already shown that he knew how to push his

own interests, by changing sides and taking service with the highest

bidder, as occasion prompted. Nor, though his character for probity and

loyalty stood exceptionally high among the men of his profession, was

he the slave to any questionable claims of honour or of duty. In that

age of confused politics and extinguished patriotism, there was not

indeed much scope for scrupulous honesty. But Filippo Maria Visconti

proved more than a match for him in craft. While Colleoni was engaged

in pacifying the revolted population of Bologna, the Duke yielded to

the suggestion of his parasites at Milan, who whispered that the

general was becoming dangerously powerful. He recalled him, and threw

him without trial into the dungeons of the Forni at Monza. Here

Colleoni remained a prisoner more than a year, until the Duke's death

in 1447, when he made his escape, and profited by the disturbance of

the Duchy to reacquire his lordships in the Bergamasque territory. The

true motive for his imprisonment remains still buried in obscure

conjecture. Probably it was not even known to the Visconti, who acted

on this, as on so many other occasions, 200by a mere spasm of

suspicious jealousy, for which he could have given no account.

From the year 1447 to the year 1455, it is difficult to follow

Colleoni's movements, or to trace his policy. First, we find him

employed by the Milanese Republic, during its brief space of

independence; then he is engaged by the Venetians, with a commission

for 1500 horse; next, he is in the service of Francesco Sforza; once

more in that of the Venetians, and yet again in that of the Duke of

Milan. His biographer relates with pride that, during this period, he

was three times successful against French troops in Piedmont and

Lombardy. It appears that he made short engagements, and changed his

paymasters according to convenience. But all this time he rose in

personal importance, acquired fresh lordships in the Bergamasque, and

accumulated wealth. He reached the highest point of his prosperity in

1455, when the Republic of S. Mark elected him General-in-Chief of

their armies, with the fullest powers, and with a stipend of 100,000

florins. For nearly twenty-one years, until the day of his death, in

1475, Colleoni held this honourable and lucrative office. In his will

he charged the Signory of Venice that they should never again commit

into the hands of a single captain such unlimited control over their

military resources. It was indeed no slight tribute to Colleoni's

reputation for integrity, that the jealous Republic, which had

signified its sense of Carmagnola's untrustworthiness by capital

punishment, should have left him so long in the undisturbed disposal of

their army. The Standard and the Bâton of S. Mark were conveyed to

Colleoni by two ambassadors, and presented to him at Brescia on June

24, 1455. Three years later he made a triumphal entry into Venice, and

received the same ensigns of military authority from the hands of the

new Doge, Pasquale Malipiero. On this occasion his staff consisted of

201some two hundred officers, splendidly armed, and followed by a train

of serving-men. Noblemen from Bergamo, Brescia, and other cities of the

Venetian territory, swelled the cortege. When they embarked on the

lagoons, they found the water covered with boats and gondolas, bearing

the population of Venice in gala attire, to greet the illustrious guest

with instruments of music. Three great galleys of the Republic, called

Bucentaurs, issued from the crowd of smaller craft. On the first was

the Doge in his state robes, attended by the government in office, or

the Signoria of S. Mark. On the second were members of the Senate and

minor magistrates. The third carried the ambassadors of foreign powers.

Colleoni was received into the first state-galley, and placed by the

side of the Doge. The oarsmen soon cleared the space between the land

and Venice, passed the small canals, and swept majestically up the

Canalozzo among the plaudits of the crowds assembled on both sides to

cheer their General. Thus they reached the piazzetta, where Colleoni

alighted between the two great pillars, and, conducted by the Doge in

person, walked to the Church of S. Mark. Here, after Mass had been

said, and a sermon had been preached, kneeling before the high altar he

received the truncheon from the Doge's hands. The words of his

commission ran as follows:—

'By authority and decree of this most excellent City of Venice, of us

the Prince, and of the Senate, you are to be Commander and Captain

General of all our forces and armaments on terra firma. Take from our

hands this truncheon, with good augury and fortune, as sign and warrant

of your power. Be it your care and effort, with dignity and splendour

to maintain and to defend the Majesty, the Loyalty, and the Principles

of this Empire. Neither provoking, not yet provoked, unless at our

command, shall you break into open 202warfare with our enemies. Free

jurisdiction and lordship over each one of our soldiers, except in

cases of treason, we hereby commit to you.'

After the ceremony of his reception, Colleoni was conducted with no

less pomp to his lodgings, and the next ten days were spent in

festivities of all sorts.

The commandership-in-chief of the Venetian forces was perhaps the

highest military post in Italy. It placed Colleoni on the pinnacle of

his profession, and made his camp the favourite school of young

soldiers. Among his pupils or lieutenants we read of Ercole d'Este, the

future Duke of Ferrara; Alessandro Sforza, lord of Pesaro; Boniface,

Marquis of Montferrat; Cicco and Pino Ordelaffi, princes of Forli;

Astorre Manfredi, the lord of Faenza; three Counts of Mirandola; two

princes of Carpi; Deifobo, the Count of Anguillara; Giovanni Antonio

Caldora, lord of Jesi in the March; and many others of less name.

Honours came thick upon him. When one of the many ineffectual leagues

against the infidel was formed in 1468, during the pontificate of Paul

II., he was named Captain-General for the Crusade. Pius II. designed

him for the leader of the expedition he had planned against the impious

and savage despot, Sigismondo Malatesta. King René of Anjou, by special

patent, authorised him to bear his name and arms, and made him a member

of his family. The Duke of Burgundy, by a similar heraldic fiction,

conferred upon him his name and armorial bearings. This will explain

why Colleoni is often styled 'di Andegavia e Borgogna.' In the case of

René, the honour was but a barren show. But the patent of Charles the

Bold had more significance. In 1473 he entertained the project of

employing the great Italian General against his Swiss foes; nor does it

seem reasonable to reject a statement made by Colleoni's biographer, to

the effect that a secret compact had been 203drawn up between him and

the Duke of Burgundy, for the conquest and partition of the Duchy of

Milan. The Venetians, in whose service Colleoni still remained, when

they became aware of this project, met it with peaceful but

irresistible opposition.

Colleoni had been engaged continually since his earliest boyhood in the

trade of war. It was not therefore possible that he should have gained

a great degree of literary culture. Yet the fashion of the times made

it necessary that a man in his position should seek the society of

scholars. Accordingly his court and camp were crowded with students, in

whose wordy disputations he is said to have delighted. It will be

remembered that his contemporaries, Alfonso the Magnanimous, Francesco

Sforza, Federigo of Urbino, and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, piqued

themselves at least as much upon their patronage of letters, as upon

their prowess in the field.

Colleoni's court, like that of Urbino, was a model of good manners. As

became a soldier, he was temperate in food and moderate in slumber. It

was recorded of him that he had never sat more than one hour at meat in

his own house, and that he never overslept the sunrise. After dinner he

would converse with his friends, using commonly his native dialect of

Bergamo, and entertaining the company now with stories of adventure,

and now with pithy sayings. In another essential point he resembled his

illustrious contemporary, the Duke of Urbino; for he was sincerely

pious in an age which, however it preserved the decencies of ceremonial

religion, was profoundly corrupt at heart. His principal lordships in

the Bergamasque territory owed to his munificence their fairest

churches and charitable institutions. At Martinengo, for example, he

rebuilt and re-endowed two monasteries, the one dedicated to S. Chiara,

the other to S. Francis. In Bergamo itself he founded an establishment

named' La Pieta,' for 204the good purpose of dowering and marrying poor

girls. This house he endowed with a yearly income of 3000 ducats. The

Sulphur baths of Trescorio, at some distance from the city, were

improved and opened to poor patients by a hospital which he provided.

At Rumano he raised a church to S. Peter, and erected buildings of

public utility, which on his death he bequeathed to the society of the

Misericordia in that town. All the places of his jurisdiction owed to

him such benefits as good water, new walls, and irrigation works. In

addition to these munificent foundations must be mentioned the Basella,

or Monastery of Dominican friars, which he established not far from

Bergamo, upon the river Serio, in memory of his beloved daughter Medea.

Last, not least, was the Chapel of S. John the Baptist, attached to the

Church of S. Maria Maggiore, which he endowed with fitting maintenance

for two priests and deacons.

The one defect acknowledged by his biographer was his partiality for

women. Early in life he married Tisbe, of the noble house of the

Brescian Martinenghi, who bore him one daughter, Caterina, wedded to

Gasparre Martinengo. Two illegitimate daughters, Ursina and Isotta,

were recognised and treated by him as legitimate. The first he gave in

marriage to Gherardo Martinengo, and the second to Jacopo of the same

family. Two other natural children, Doratina and Ricardona, were

mentioned in his will: he left them four thousand ducats a piece for

dowry. Medea, the child of his old age (for she was born to him when he

was sixty), died before her father, and was buried, as we have seen, in

the Chapel of Basella.

Throughout his life he was distinguished for great physical strength

and agility. When he first joined the troop of Braccio, he could race,

with his corselet on, against the swiftest runner of the army; and when

he was stripped, few 205horses could beat him in speed. Far on into old

age he was in the habit of taking long walks every morning for the sake

of exercise, and delighted in feats of arms and jousting matches. 'He

was tall, straight, and full of flesh, well proportioned, and

excellently made in all his limbs. His complexion inclined somewhat to

brown, but was coloured with sanguine and lively carnation. His eyes

were black; in look and sharpness of light, they were vivid, piercing,

and terrible. The outlines of his nose and all his countenance

expressed a certain manly nobleness, combined with goodness and

prudence.' Such is the portrait drawn of Colleoni by his biographer;

and it well accords with the famous bronze statue of the general at

Venice.

Colleoni lived with a magnificence that suited his rank. His favourite

place of abode was Malpaga, a castle built by him at the distance of

about an hour's drive from Bergamo. The place is worth a visit, though

its courts and gates and galleries have now been turned into a monster

farm, and the southern rooms, where Colleoni entertained his guests,

are given over to the silkworms. Half a dozen families, employed upon a

vast estate of the Martinengo family, occupy the still substantial

house and stables. The moat is planted with mulberry-trees; the upper

rooms are used as granaries for golden maize; cows, pigs, and horses

litter in the spacious yard. Yet the walls of the inner court and of

the ancient state rooms are brilliant with frescoes, executed by some

good Venetian hand, which represent the chief events of Colleoni's

life—his battles, his reception by the Signory of Venice, his

tournaments and hawking parties, and the great series of entertainments

with which he welcomed Christiern of Denmark. This king had made his

pilgrimage to Rome and was returning westward, when the fame of

Colleoni and his princely state at Malpaga induced him to turn aside

and spend 206some days as the general's guest. In order to do him

honour, Colleoni left his castle at the king's disposal and established

himself with all his staff and servants in a camp at some distance from

Malpaga. The camp was duly furnished with tents and trenches,

stockades, artillery, and all the other furniture of war. On the king's

approach, Colleoni issued with trumpets blowing and banners flying to

greet his guest, gratifying him thus with a spectacle of the pomp and

circumstance of war as carried on in Italy. The visit was further

enlivened by sham fights, feats of arms, and trials of strength. When

it ended, Colleoni presented the king with one of his own suits of

armour, and gave to each of his servants a complete livery of red and

white, his colours. Among the frescoes at Malpaga none are more

interesting, and none, thanks to the silkworms rather than to any other

cause, are fortunately in a better state of preservation, than those

which represent this episode in the history of the Castle.

Colleoni died in the year 1475, at the age of seventy-five. Since he

left no male representative, he constituted the Republic of S. Mark his

heir-in-chief, after properly providing for his daughters and his

numerous foundations. The Venetians received under this testament a sum

of 100,000 ducats, together with all arrears of pay due to him, and

10,000 ducats owed him by the Duke of Ferrara. It set forth the

testator's intention that this money should be employed in defence of

the Christian faith against the Turk. One condition was attached to the

bequest. The legatees were to erect a statue to Colleoni on the Piazza

of S. Mark. This, however, involved some difficulty; for the proud

Republic had never accorded a similar honour, nor did they choose to

encumber their splendid square with a monument. They evaded the

condition by assigning the Campo in front of the Scuola di S. Marco,

where also stands the Church of S. Zanipolo, 207to the purpose. Here

accordingly the finest bronze equestrian statue in Italy, if we except

the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, was reared upon its marble pedestal

by Andrea Verocchio and Alessandro Leopardi.

Colleoni's liberal expenditure of wealth found its reward in the

immortality conferred by art. While the names of Braccio, his master in

the art of war, and of Piccinino, his great adversary, are familiar to

few but professed students, no one who has visited either Bergamo or

Venice can fail to have learned something about the founder of the

Chapel of S. John and the original of Leopardi's bronze. The annals of

sculpture assign to Verocchio, of Florence, the principal share in this

statue: but Verocchio died before it was cast; and even granting that

he designed the model, its execution must be attributed to his

collaborator, the Venetian Leopardi. For my own part, I am loth to

admit that the chief credit of this masterpiece belongs to a man whose

undisputed work at Florence shows but little of its living spirit and

splendour of suggested motion. That the Tuscan science of Verocchio

secured conscientious modelling for man and horse may be assumed; but I

am fain to believe that the concentrated fire which animates them both

is due in no small measure to the handling of his northern

fellow-craftsman.

While immersed in the dreary records of crimes, treasons, cruelties,

and base ambitions, which constitute the bulk of fifteenth-century

Italian history, it is refreshing to meet with a character so frank and

manly, so simply pious and comparatively free from stain, as Colleoni.

The only general of his day who can bear comparison with him for purity

of public life and decency in conduct, was Federigo di Montefeltro.

Even here, the comparison redounds to Colleoni's credit; for he, unlike

the Duke of Urbino, rose to eminence by his own exertion in a

profession fraught with peril to men 208of ambition and energy.

Federigo started with a principality sufficient to satisfy his just

desires for power. Nothing but his own sense of right and prudence

restrained Colleoni upon the path which brought Francesco Sforza to a

duchy by dishonourable dealings, and Carmagnola to the scaffold by

questionable practice against his masters.

209

CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX

Few people visit Crema. It is a little country town of Lombardy,

between Cremona and Treviglio, with no historic memories but very misty

ones belonging to the days of the Visconti dynasty. On every side

around the city walls stretch smiling vineyards and rich meadows, where

the elms are married to the mulberry-trees by long festoons of foliage

hiding purple grapes, where the sunflowers droop their heavy golden

heads among tall stems of millet and gigantic maize, and here and there

a rice-crop ripens in the marshy loam. In vintage time the carts, drawn

by their white oxen, come creaking townward in the evening, laden with

blue bunches. Down the long straight roads, between rows of poplars,

they creep on; and on the shafts beneath the pyramid of fruit lie

contadini stained with lees of wine. Far off across that 'waveless sea'

of Lombardy, which has been the battlefield of countless generations,

rise the dim grey Alps, or else pearled domes of thunder-clouds in

gleaming masses over some tall solitary tower. Such backgrounds, full

of peace, suggestive of almost infinite distance, and dignified with

colours of incomparable depth and breadth, the Venetian painters loved.

No landscape in Europe is more wonderful than this—thrice wonderful in

the vastness of its arching heavens, in the stillness of its level

plain, and in the bulwark of huge crested mountains, reared afar like

bastions against the northern sky. 210The little town is all alive in

this September weather. At every corner of the street, under rustling

abeles and thick-foliaged planes, at the doors of palaces and in the

yards of inns, men, naked from the thighs downward, are treading the

red must into vats and tuns; while their mild-eyed oxen lie beneath

them in the road, peaceably chewing the cud between one journey to the

vineyard and another. It must not be imagined that the scene of Alma

Tadema's 'Roman Vintage,' or what we fondly picture to our fancy of the

Athenian Lenaea, is repeated in the streets of Crema. This modern

treading of the wine-press is a very prosaic affair. The town reeks

with a sour smell of old casks and crushed grape-skins, and the men and

women at work bear no resemblance whatever to Bacchus and his crew. Yet

even as it is, the Lombard vintage, beneath floods of sunlight and a

pure blue sky, is beautiful; and he who would fain make acquaintance

with Crema, should time his entry into the old town, if possible, on

some still golden afternoon of autumn. It is then, if ever, that he

will learn to love the glowing brickwork of its churches and the quaint

terra-cotta traceries that form its chief artistic charm.

How the unique brick architecture of the Lombard cities took its

origin—whether from the precepts of Byzantine aliens in the earliest

middle ages, or from the native instincts of a mixed race composed of

Gallic, Ligurian, Roman, and Teutonic elements, under the leadership of

Longobardic rulers—is a question for antiquarians to decide. There can,

however, be no doubt that the monuments of the Lombard style, as they

now exist, are no less genuinely local, no less characteristic of the

country they adorn, no less indigenous to the soil they sprang from,

than the Attic colonnades of Mnesicles and Ictinus. What the marble

quarries of Pentelicus were to the Athenian builders, the clay beneath

their 211feet was to those Lombard craftsmen. From it they fashioned

structures as enduring, towers as majestic, and cathedral aisles as

solemn, as were ever wrought from chiselled stone. There is a true

sympathy between those buildings and the Lombard landscape, which by

itself might suffice to prove the originality of their almost unknown

architects. The rich colour of the baked clay—finely modulated from a

purplish red, through russet, crimson, pink, and orange, to pale yellow

and dull grey—harmonises with the brilliant greenery of Lombard

vegetation and with the deep azure of the distant Alpine range. Reared

aloft above the flat expanse of plain, those square _torroni_, tapering

into octagons and crowned with slender cones, break the long sweeping

lines and infinite horizons with a contrast that affords relief, and

yields a resting-place to tired eyes; while, far away, seen haply from

some bridge above Ticino, or some high-built palace loggia, they gleam

like columns of pale rosy fire against the front of mustering

storm-clouds blue with rain. In that happy orchard of Italy, a pergola

of vines in leaf, a clump of green acacias, and a campanile soaring

above its church roof, brought into chance combination with the reaches

of the plain and the dim mountain range, make up a picture eloquent in

its suggestive beauty.

Those ancient builders wrought cunningly with their material. The

bricks are fashioned and fixed to last for all time. Exposed to the icy

winds of a Lombard winter, to the fierce fire of a Lombard summer, and

to the moist vapours of a Lombard autumn; neglected by unheeding

generations; with flowers clustering in their crannies, and birds

nesting in their eaves, and mason-bees filling the delicate network of

their traceries—they still present angles as sharp as when they were

but finished, and joints as nice as when the mortar dried in the first

months of their building. This immunity 212from age and injury they owe

partly to the imperishable nature of baked clay; partly to the care of

the artists who selected and mingled the right sorts of earth, burned

them with scrupulous attention, and fitted them together with a

patience born of loving service. Each member of the edifice was

designed with a view to its ultimate place. The proper curve was

ascertained for cylindrical columns and for rounded arches. Larger

bricks were moulded for the supporting walls, and lesser pieces were

adapted to the airy vaults and lanterns. In the brickfield and the kiln

the whole church was planned and wrought out in its details, before the

hands that made a unity of all these scattered elements were set to the

work of raising it in air. When they came to put the puzzle together,

they laid each brick against its neighbour, filling up the almost

imperceptible interstices with liquid cement composed of quicklime and

fine sand in water. After five centuries the seams between the layers

of bricks that make the bell-tower of S. Gottardo at Milan, yield no

point of vantage to the penknife or the chisel.

Nor was it in their welding of the bricks alone that these craftsmen

showed their science. They were wont to enrich the surface with marble,

sparingly but effectively employed—as in those slender detached

columns, which add such beauty to the octagon of S. Gottardo, or in the

string-courses of strange beasts and reptiles that adorn the church

fronts of Pavia. They called to their aid the _mandorlato_ of Verona,

supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant lions,

inserting polished slabs on their façades, and building huge sarcophagi

into their cloister alleys. Between terra-cotta and this marble of

Verona there exists a deep and delicate affinity. It took the name of

_mandorlato_, I suppose, from a resemblance to almond blossoms. But it

is far from having the simple beauty of a single hue. Like all noble

veined stones, 213it passes by a series of modulations and gradations

through a gamut of associated rather than contrasted tints. Not the

pink of the almond blossom only, but the creamy whiteness of the almond

kernel, and the dull yellow of the almond nut may be found in it; and

yet these colours are so blent and blurred to all-pervading mellowness,

that nowhere is there any shock of contrast or violence of a

preponderating tone. The veins which run in labyrinths of crossing,

curving, and contorted lines all over its smooth surface add, no doubt,

to this effect of unity. The polish, lastly, which it takes, makes the

_mandorlato_ shine like a smile upon the sober face of the brickwork:

for, serviceable as terra-cotta is for nearly all artistic purposes, it

cannot reflect light or gain the illumination which comes from surface

brightness.

What the clay can do almost better than any crystalline material, may

be seen in the mouldings so characteristic of Lombard architecture.

Geometrical patterns of the rarest and most fanciful device; scrolls of

acanthus foliage, and traceries of tendrils; Cupids swinging in

festoons of vines; angels joining hands in dance, with fluttering

skirts and windy hair, and mouths that symbol singing; grave faces of

old men and beautiful profiles of maidens leaning from medallions;

wide-winged genii filling the spandrils of cloister arches, and cherubs

clustered in the rondure of rose-windows—ornaments like these, wrought

from the plastic clay, and adapted with true taste to the requirements

of the architecture, are familiar to every one who has studied the

church front of Crema, the cloisters of the Certosa, the courts of the

Ospedale Maggiore at Milan, or the public palace of Cremona.

If the _mandorlato_ gives a smile to those majestic Lombard buildings,

the terra-cotta decorations add the element of life and movement. The

thought of the artist in its first 214freshness and vivacity is felt in

them. They have all the spontaneity of improvisation, the seductive

melody of unpremeditated music. Moulding the supple earth with 'hand

obedient to the brain,' the _plasticatore_ has impressed his most

fugitive dreams of beauty on it without effort; and what it cost him

but a few fatigueless hours to fashion, the steady heat of the furnace

has gifted with imperishable life. Such work, no doubt, has the defects

of its qualities. As there are few difficulties to overcome, it suffers

from a fatal facility—_nec pluteum coedit nec demorsos sapit ungues_.

It is therefore apt to be unequal, touching at times the highest point

of inspiration, as in the angels of Guccio at Perugia, and sinking not

unfrequently into the commonplace of easygoing triviality, as in the

common floral traceries of Milanese windows. But it is never laboured,

never pedantic, never dulled by the painful effort to subdue an

obstinate material to the artist's will. If marble is required to

develop the strength of the few supreme sculptors, terra-cotta saves

intact the fancies of a crowd of lesser men.

When we reflect that all the force, solemnity, and beauty of the

Lombard buildings was evoked from clay, we learn from them this lesson:

that the thought of man needs neither precious material nor yet

stubborn substance for the production of enduring masterpieces. The red

earth was enough for God when He made man in His own image; and mud

dried in the sun suffices for the artist, who is next to God in his

creative faculty—since _non merita nome di creatore se non Iddio ed il

poeta_. After all, what is more everlasting than terra-cotta? The

hobnails of the boys who ran across the brickfields in the Roman town

of Silchester, may still be seen, mingled with the impress of the feet

of dogs and hoofs of goats, in the tiles discovered there. Such traces

might serve as a metaphor for the footfall of artistic genius, when

215the form-giver has stamped his thought upon the moist clay, and fire

has made that imprint permanent.

Of all these Lombard edifices, none is more beautiful than the

Cathedral of Crema, with its delicately finished campanile, built of

choicely tinted yellow bricks, and ending in a lantern of the

gracefullest, most airily capricious fancy. This bell-tower does not

display the gigantic force of Cremona's famous torrazzo, shooting 396

feet into blue ether from the city square; nor can it rival the octagon

of S. Gottardo for warmth of hue. Yet it has a character of elegance,

combined with boldness of invention, that justifies the citizens of

Crema in their pride. It is unique; and he who has not seen it does not

know the whole resources of the Lombard style. The façade of the

Cathedral displays that peculiar blending of Byzantine or Romanesque

round arches with Gothic details in the windows, and with the acute

angle of the central pitch, which forms the characteristic quality of

the late _trecento_ Lombard manner. In its combination of purity and

richness it corresponds to the best age of decorated work in English

Gothic. What, however, strikes a Northern observer is the strange

detachment of this elaborate façade from the main structure of the

church. Like a frontispiece cut out of cardboard and pierced with

ornamental openings, it shoots far above the low roof of the nave; so

that at night the moon, rising above the southern aisle, shines through

its topmost window, and casts the shadow of its tracery upon the

pavement of the square. This is a constructive blemish to which the

Italians in no part of the peninsula were sensitive. They seem to have

regarded their church fronts as independent of the edifice, capable of

separate treatment, and worthy in themselves of being made the subject

of decorative skill.

In the so-called Santuario of Crema—a circular church dedicated to S.

Maria della Croce, outside the walls—the 216Lombard style has been

adapted to the manner of the Mid-Renaissance. This church was raised in

the last years of the fifteenth century by Gian Battista Battagli, an

architect of Lodi, who followed the pure rules of taste, bequeathed to

North Italian builders by Bramante. The beauty of the edifice is due

entirely to its tranquil dignity and harmony of parts, the lightness of

its circling loggia, and the just proportion maintained between the

central structure and the four projecting porticoes. The sharp angles

of these vestibules afford a contrast to the simplicity of the main

building, while their clustered cupolas assist the general effect of

roundness aimed at by the architect. Such a church as this proves how

much may be achieved by the happy distribution of architectural masses.

It was the triumph of the best Renaissance style to attain lucidity of

treatment, and to produce beauty by geometrical proportion. When Leo

Battista Alberti complained to his friend, Matteo di Bastia, that a

slight alteration of the curves in his design for S. Francesco at

Rimini would 'spoil his music,' _ciò che tu muti discorda tutta quella

musica_, this is what he meant. The melody of lines and the harmony of

parts made a symphony to his eyes no less agreeable than a concert of

tuned lutes and voices to his ears; and to this concord he was so

sensitive that any deviation was a discord.

After visiting the churches of Crema and sauntering about the streets

awhile, there is nothing left to do but to take refuge in the old

Albergo del Pozzo. This is one of those queer Italian inns, which carry

you away at once into a scene of Goldoni. It is part of some palace,

where nobles housed their _bravi_ in the sixteenth century, and which

the lesser people of to-day have turned into a dozen habitations. Its

great stone staircase leads to a saloon upon which the various

bedchambers open; and round its courtyard runs an open 217balcony, and

from the court grows up a fig-tree poking ripe fruit against a bedroom

window. Oleanders in tubs and red salvias in pots, and kitchen herbs in

boxes, flourish on the pavement, where the ostler comes to wash his

carriages, and where the barber shaves the poodle of the house.

Visitors to the Albergo del Pozzo are invariably asked if they have

seen the Museo; and when they answer in the negative, they are

conducted with some ceremony to a large room on the ground-floor of the

inn, looking out upon the courtyard and the fig-tree. It was here that

I gained the acquaintance of Signor Folcioni, and became possessor of

an object that has made the memory of Crema doubly interesting to me

ever since.

When we entered the Museo, we found a little old man, gentle, grave,

and unobtrusive, varnishing the ugly portrait of some Signor of the

_cinquecento_. Round the walls hung pictures, of mediocre value, in

dingy frames; but all of them bore sounding titles. Titians, Lionardos,

Guido Renis, and Luinis, looked down and waited for a purchaser. In

truth this museum was a _bric-à-brac_ shop of a sort that is common

enough in Italy, where treasures of old lace, glass, armour, furniture,

and tapestry, may still be met with. Signor Folcioni began by pointing

out the merits of his pictures; and after making due allowance for his

zeal as amateur and dealer, it was possible to join in some of his

eulogiums. A would-be Titian, for instance, bought in Verona from a

noble house in ruins, showed Venetian wealth of colour in its gemmy

greens and lucid crimsons shining from a background deep and glowing.

Then he led us to a walnut-wood bureau of late Renaissance work,

profusely carved with nymphs and Cupids, and armed men, among festoons

of fruits embossed in high relief. Deeply drilled worm-holes set a seal

of antiquity upon the blooming faces and luxuriant garlandslike 218the

touch of Time who 'delves the parallels in beauty's brow.' On the

shelves of an ebony cabinet close by he showed us a row of cups cut out

of rock-crystal and mounted in gilt silver, with heaps of engraved

gems, old snuff-boxes, coins, medals, sprays of coral, and all the

indescribable lumber that one age flings aside as worthless for the

next to pick up from the dust-heap and regard as precious. Surely the

genius of culture in our century might be compared to a chiffonnier of

Paris, who, when the night has fallen, goes into the streets, bag on

back and lantern in hand, to rake up the waifs and strays a day of

whirling life has left him.

The next curiosity was an ivory carving of S. Anthony preaching to the

fishes, so fine and small you held it on your palm, and used a lens to

look at it. Yet there stood the Santo gesticulating, and there were the

fishes in rows—the little fishes first, and then the middle-sized, and

last of all the great big fishes almost out at sea, with their heads

above the water and their mouths wide open, just as the _Fioretti di

San Francesco_ describes them. After this came some original drawings

of doubtful interest, and then a case of fifty-two _nielli_. These were

of unquestionable value; for has not Cicognara engraved them on a page

of his classic monograph? The thin silver plates, over which once

passed the burin of Maso Finiguerra, cutting lines finer than hairs,

and setting here a shadow in dull acid-eaten grey, and there a high

light of exquisite polish, were far more delicate than any proofs

impressed from them. These frail masterpieces of Florentine art—the

first beginnings of line engraving—we held in our hands while Signor

Folcioni read out Cicognara's commentary in a slow impressive voice,

breaking off now and then to point at the originals before us.

The sun had set, and the room was almost dark, when he laid his book

down, and said: 'I have not much left to show—yet stay! 219Here are

still some little things of interest.' He then opened the door into his

bedroom, and took down from a nail above his bed a wooden Crucifix. Few

things have fascinated me more than this Crucifix—produced without

parade, half negligently, from the dregs of his collection by a dealer

in old curiosities at Crema. The cross was, or is—for it is lying on

the table now before me—twenty-one inches in length, made of strong

wood, covered with coarse yellow parchment, and shod at the four ends

with brass. The Christ is roughly hewn in reddish wood, coloured

scarlet, where the blood streams from the five wounds. Over the head an

oval medallion, nailed into the cross, serves as framework to a

miniature of the Madonna, softly smiling with a Correggiesque simper.

The whole Crucifix is not a work of art, but such as may be found in

every convent. Its date cannot be earlier than the beginning of the

eighteenth century. As I held it in my hand, I thought—perhaps this has

been carried to the bedside of the sick and dying; preachers have

brandished it from the pulpit over conscience-stricken congregations;

monks have knelt before it on the brick floor of their cells, and

novices have kissed it in the vain desire to drown their yearnings

after the relinquished world; perhaps it has attended criminals to the

scaffold, and heard the secrets of repentant murderers; but why should

it be shown me as a thing of rarity? These thoughts passed through my

mind, while Signor Folcioni quietly remarked: 'I bought this Cross from

the Frati when their convent was dissolved in Crema.' Then he bade me

turn it round, and showed a little steel knob fixed into the back

between the arms. This was a spring. He pressed it, and the upper and

lower parts of the cross came asunder; and holding the top like a

handle, I drew out as from a scabbard a sharp steel blade, concealed in

the thickness of the wood, behind the very body of the agonising

Christ. What 220had been a crucifix became a deadly poniard in my

grasp, and the rust upon it in the twilight looked like blood. 'I have

often wondered,' said Signor Folcioni, 'that the Frati cared to sell me

this.'

There is no need to raise the question of the genuineness of this

strange relic, though I confess to having had my doubts about it, or to

wonder for what nefarious purposes the impious weapon was

designed—whether the blade was inserted by some rascal monk who never

told the tale, or whether it was used on secret service by the friars.

On its surface the infernal engine carries a dark certainty of treason,

sacrilege, and violence. Yet it would be wrong to incriminate the Order

of S. Francis by any suspicion, and idle to seek the actual history of

this mysterious weapon. A writer of fiction could indeed produce some

dark tale in the style of De Stendhal's 'Nouvelles,' and christen it

'The Crucifix of Crema.' And how delighted would Webster have been if

he had chanced to hear of such a sword-sheath! He might have placed it

in the hands of Bosola for the keener torment of his Duchess. Flamineo

might have used it; or the disguised friars, who made the deathbed of

Bracciano hideous, might have plunged it in the Duke's heart after

mocking his eyes with the figure of the suffering Christ. To imagine

such an instrument of moral terror mingled with material violence, lay

within the scope of Webster's sinister and powerful genius. But unless

he had seen it with his eyes, what poet would have ventured to devise

the thing and display it even in the dumb show of a tragedy? Fact is

more wonderful than romance. No apocalypse of Antichrist matches what

is told of Roderigo Borgia; and the crucifix of Crema exceeds the

sombre fantasy of Webster.

Whatever may be the truth about this cross, it has at any rate the

value of a symbol or a metaphor. The idea which it 221materialises, the

historical events of which it is a sign, may well arrest attention. A

sword concealed in the crucifix—what emblem brings more forcibly to

mind than this that two-edged glaive of persecution which Dominic

unsheathed to mow down the populations of Provence and to make Spain

destitute of men? Looking upon the crucifix of Crema, we may seem to

see pestilence-stricken multitudes of Moors and Jews dying on the

coasts of Africa and Italy. The Spaniards enter Mexico; and this is the

cross they carry in their hands. They take possession of Peru; and

while the gentle people of the Incas come to kiss the bleeding brows of

Christ, they plunge this dagger in their sides. What, again, was the

temporal power of the Papacy but a sword embedded in a cross? Each Papa

Rè, when he ascended the Holy Chair, was forced to take the crucifix of

Crema and to bear it till his death. A long procession of war-loving

Pontiffs, levying armies and paying captains with the pence of S.

Peter, in order to keep by arms the lands they had acquired by fraud,

defiles before our eyes. First goes the terrible Sixtus IV., who died

of grief when news was brought him that the Italian princes had made

peace. He it was who sanctioned the conspiracy to murder the Medici in

church, at the moment of the elevation of the Host. The brigands hired

to do this work refused at the last moment. The sacrilege appalled

them. 'Then,' says the chronicler, 'was found a priest, who, being used

to churches, had no scruple.' The poignard this priest carried was this

crucifix of Crema. After Sixtus came the blood-stained Borgia; and

after him Julius II., whom the Romans in triumphal songs proclaimed a

second Mars, and who turned, as Michelangelo expressed it, the chalices

of Rome into swords and helms. Leo X., who dismembered Italy for his

brother and nephew; and Clement VII., who broke the neck of Florence

and delivered the Eternal City to the spoiler, 222follow. Of the

antinomy between the Vicariate of Christ and an earthly kingdom,

incarnated by these and other Holy Fathers, what symbol could be found

more fitting than a dagger with a crucifix for case and covering?

It is not easy to think or write of these matters without rhetoric.

When I laid my head upon my pillow that night in the Albergo del Pozzo

at Crema, it was full of such thoughts; and when at last sleep came, it

brought with it a dream begotten doubtless by the perturbation of my

fancy. For I thought that a brown Franciscan, with hollow cheeks, and

eyes aflame beneath his heavy cowl, sat by my bedside, and, as he

raised the crucifix in his lean quivering hands, whispered a tale of

deadly passion and of dastardly revenge. His confession carried me away

to a convent garden of Palermo; and there was love in the story, and

hate that is stronger than love, and, for the ending of the whole

matter, remorse which dies not even in the grave. Each new possessor of

the crucifix of Crema, he told me, was forced to hear from him in

dreams his dreadful history. But, since it was a dream and nothing

more, why should I repeat it? I have wandered far enough already from

the vintage and the sunny churches of the little Lombard town.

223

CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE

I

It was a gala night. The opera-house of Milan was one blaze of light

and colour. Royalty in field-marshal's uniform and diamonds, attended

by decorated generals and radiant ladies of the court, occupied the

great box opposite the stage. The tiers from pit to gallery were filled

with brilliantly dressed women. From the third row, where we were

fortunately placed, the curves of that most beautiful of theatres

presented to my gaze a series of retreating and approaching lines,

composed of noble faces, waving feathers, sparkling jewels, sculptured

shoulders, uniforms, robes of costly stuffs and every conceivable

bright colour. Light poured from the huge lustre in the centre of the

roof, ran along the crimson velvet cushions of the boxes, and flashed

upon the gilded frame of the proscenium—satyrs and acanthus scrolls

carved in the manner of a century ago. Pit and orchestra scarcely

contained the crowd of men who stood in lively conversation, their

backs turned to the stage, their lorgnettes raised from time to time to

sweep the boxes. This surging sea of faces and sober costumes enhanced

by contrast the glitter, variety, and luminous tranquillity of the

theatre above it.

No one took much thought of the coming spectacle, till the conductor's

rap was heard upon his desk, and the orchestra broke into the overture

to Mozart's _Nozze_. Before they were half through, it was clear that

we should not enjoy that 224evening the delight of perfect music added

to the enchantment of so brilliant a scene. The execution of the

overture was not exactly bad. But it lacked absolute precision, the

complete subordination of all details to the whole. In rendering German

music Italians often fail through want of discipline, or through

imperfect sympathy with a style they will not take the pains to master.

Nor, when the curtain lifted and the play began, was the vocalisation

found in all parts satisfactory. The Contessa had a meagre _mezza

voce_. Susanna, though she did not sing false, hovered on the verge of

discords, owing to the weakness of an organ which had to be strained in

order to make any effect on that enormous stage. On the other hand, the

part of Almaviva was played with dramatic fire, and Figaro showed a

truly Southern sense of comic fun. The scenes were splendidly mounted,

and something of a princely grandeur—the largeness of a noble train of

life—was added to the drama by the vast proportions of the theatre. It

was a performance which, in spite of drawbacks, yielded pleasure.

And yet it might have left me frigid but for the artist who played

Cherubino. This was no other than Pauline Lucca, in the prime of youth

and petulance. From her first appearance to the last note she sang, she

occupied the stage. The opera seemed to have been written for her. The

mediocrity of the troupe threw her commanding merits—the richness of

her voice, the purity of her intonation, her vivid conception of

character, her indescribable brusquerie of movement and emotion—into

that relief which a sapphire gains from a setting of pearls. I can see

her now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, as she stood there

singing in blue doublet and white mantle, with the slouched Spanish hat

and plume of ostrich feathers, a tiny rapier at her side, and blue

rosettes upon her white silk shoes! 225The _Nozze di Figaro_ was

followed by a Ballo. This had for its theme the favourite legend of a

female devil sent from the infernal regions to ruin a young man.

Instead of performing the part assigned her, Satanella falls in love

with the hero, sacrifices herself, and is claimed at last by the powers

of goodness. _Quia multum amavit_, her lost soul is saved. If the opera

left much to be desired, the Ballo was perfection. That vast stage of

the Scala Theatre had almost overwhelmed the actors of the play. Now,

thrown open to its inmost depths, crowded with glittering moving

figures, it became a fairyland of fantastic loveliness. Italians

possess the art of interpreting a serious dramatic action by pantomime.

A Ballo with them is no mere affair of dancing—fine dresses, evolutions

performed by brigades of pink-legged women with a fixed smile on their

faces. It takes the rank of high expressive art. And the motive of this

Ballo was consistently worked out in an intelligible sequence of

well-ordered scenes. To moralise upon its meaning would be out of

place. It had a conflict of passions, a rhythmical progression of

emotions, a tragic climax in the triumph of good over evil.

II

At the end of the performance there were five persons in our box—the

beautiful Miranda, and her husband, a celebrated English man of

letters; a German professor of biology; a young Milanese gentleman,

whom we called Edoardo; and myself. Edoardo and the professor had

joined us just before the ballet. I had occupied a seat behind Miranda

and my friend the critic from the commencement. We had indeed dined

together first at their hotel, the Rebecchino; and they now proposed

that we should all adjourn together there on 226foot for supper. From

the Scala Theatre to the Rebecchino is a walk of some three minutes.

When we were seated at the supper-table and had talked some while upon

indifferent topics, the enthusiasm roused in me by Pauline Lucca burst

out. I broke a moment's silence by exclaiming, 'What a wonder-world

music creates! I have lived this evening in a sphere of intellectual

enjoyment raised to rapture. I never lived so fast before!' 'Do you

really think so?' said Miranda. She had just finished a _beccafico_,

and seemed disposed for conversation. 'Do you really think so? For my

part, music is in a wholly different region from experience, thought,

or feeling. What does it communicate to you?' And she hummed to herself

the _motif_ of Cherubino's 'Non so più cosa son cosa faccio.'—'What

does it teach me?' I broke in upon the melody. 'Why, to-night, when I

heard the music, and saw her there, and felt the movement of the play,

it seemed to me that a new existence was revealed. For the first time I

understood what love might be in one most richly gifted for emotion.'

Miranda bent her eyes on the table-cloth and played with her wineglass.

'I don't follow you at all. I enjoyed myself to-night. The opera,

indeed, might have been better rendered. The ballet, I admit, was

splendid. But when I remember the music—even the best of it—even

Pauline Lucca's part'—here she looked up, and shot me a quick glance

across the table—'I have mere music in my ears. Nothing more. Mere

music!' The professor of biology, who was gifted with, a sense of music

and had studied it scientifically, had now crunched his last leaf of

salad. Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our _tête-à-tête_.

'Gracious madam, I agree with you. He who seeks from music more than

music gives, is on the quest—how shall I put it?—of the Holy Grail.'

'And what,' I struck in, 'is this minimum or maximum that 227music

gives?' 'Dear young friend,' replied the professor, 'music gives

melodies, harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be

fashioned. Just as in the case of shells and fossils, lovely in

themselves, interesting for their history and classification, so is it

with music. You must not seek an intellectual meaning. No; there is no

_Inhalt_ in music' And he hummed contentedly the air of 'Voi che

sapete.' While he was humming, Miranda whispered to me across the

table, 'Separate the Lucca from the music.' 'But,' I answered rather

hotly, for I was nettled by Miranda's argument _ad hominem_, 'But it is

not possible in an opera to divide the music from the words, the

scenery, the play, the actor. Mozart, when he wrote the score to Da

Ponte's libretto, was excited to production by the situations. He did

not conceive his melodies out of connection with a certain cast of

characters, a given ethical environment.' 'I do not know, my dear young

friend,' responded the professor, 'whether you have read Mozart's Life

and letters. It is clearly shown in them how he composed airs at times

and seasons when he had no words to deal with. These he afterwards used

as occasion served. Whence I conclude that music was for him a free and

lovely play of tone. The words of our excellent Da Ponte were a

scaffolding to introduce his musical creations to the public. But

without that carpenter's work, the melodies of Cherubino are

_Selbst-ständig_, sufficient in themselves to vindicate their place in

art. Do I interpret your meaning, gracious lady?' This he said bending

to Miranda. 'Yes,' she replied. But she still played with her

wineglass, and did not look as though she were quite satisfied. I

meanwhile continued: 'Of course I have read Mozart's Life, and know how

he went to work. But Mozart was a man of feeling, of experience, of

ardent passions. How can you prove to me that the melodies he gave to

Cherubino had not been evolved 228from situations similar to those in

which Cherubino finds himself? How can you prove he did not feel a

natural appropriateness in the _motifs_ he selected from his memory for

Cherubino? How can you be certain that the part itself did not

stimulate his musical faculty to fresh and still more appropriate

creativeness? And if we must fall back on documents, do you remember

what he said himself about the love-music in _Die Entführung?_ I think

he tells us that he meant it to express his own feeling for the woman

who had just become his wife.' Miranda looked up as though she were

almost half-persuaded. Yet she hummed again 'Non so più,' then said to

herself, 'Yes, it is wiser to believe with the professor that these are

sequences of sounds, and nothing more.' Then she sighed. In the pause

which followed, her husband, the famous critic, filled his glass,

stretched his legs out, and began: 'You have embarked, I see, upon the

ocean of æsthetics. For my part, to-night I was thinking how much

better fitted for the stage Beaumarchais' play was than this musical

mongrel—this operatic adaptation. The wit, observe, is lost. And

Cherubino—that sparkling little _enfant terrible_—becomes a sentimental

fellow—a something I don't know what—between a girl and a boy—a medley

of romance and impudence—anyhow a being quite unlike the sharply

outlined playwright's page. I confess I am not a musician; the drama is

my business, and I judge things by their fitness for the stage. My wife

agrees with me to differ. She likes music, I like plays. To-night she

was better pleased than I was; for she got good music tolerably well

rendered, while I got nothing but a mangled comedy.'

We bore the critic's monologue with patience. But once again the

spirit, seeking after something which neither Miranda, nor her husband,

nor the professor could be got to recognise, moved within me. I cried

out at a venture, 229'People who go to an opera must forget music pure

and simple, must forget the drama pure and simple. You must welcome a

third species of art, in which the play, the music, the singers with

their voices, the orchestra with its instruments—Pauline Lucca, if you

like, with her fascination' (and here I shot a side-glance at Miranda),

'are so blent as to create a world beyond the scope of poetry or music

or acting taken by themselves. I give Mozart credit for having had

insight into this new world, for having brought it near to us. And I

hold that every fresh representation of his work is a fresh revelation

of its possibilities.'

To this the critic answered, 'You now seem to me to be confounding the

limits of the several arts.' 'What!' I continued, 'is the drama but

emotion presented in its most external forms as action? And what is

music but emotion, in its most genuine essence, expressed by sound?

Where then can a more complete artistic harmony be found than in the

opera?'

'The opera,' replied our host, 'is a hybrid. You will probably learn to

dislike artistic hybrids, if you have the taste and sense I give you

credit for. My own opinion has been already expressed. In the _Nozze_,

Beaumarchais' _Mariage de Figaro_ is simply spoiled. My friend the

professor declares Mozart's music to be sufficient by itself, and the

libretto to be a sort of machinery for its display. Miranda, I think,

agrees with him. You plead eloquently for the hybrid. You have a right

to your own view. These things are matters, in the final resort, of

individual taste rather than of demonstrable principles. But I repeat

that you are very young.' The critic drained his Lambrusco, and smiled

at me.

'Yes, he is young,' added Miranda. 'He must learn to distinguish

between music, his own imagination, and a pretty woman. At present he

mixes them all up together. It is a 230sort of transcendental omelette.

But I think the pretty woman has more to do with it than metaphysics!'

All this while Edoardo had bestowed devout attention on his supper. But

it appeared that the drift of our discourse had not been lost by him.

'Well,' he said, 'you finely fibred people dissect and analyse. I am

content with the _spettacolo_. That pleases. What does a man want more?

The _Nozze_ is a comedy of life and manners. The music is adorable.

To-night the women were not bad to look at—the Lucca was divine; the

scenes—ingenious. I thought but little. I came away delighted. You

could have a better play, Caro Signore!' (with a bow to our host).

'That is granted. You might have better music, Cara Signora!' (with a

bow to Miranda). 'That too is granted. But when the play and the music

come together—how shall I say?—the music helps the play, and the play

helps the music; and we—well we, I suppose, must help both!'

Edoardo's little speech was so ingenuous, and, what is more, so true to

his Italian temperament, that it made us all laugh and leave the

argument just where we found it. The bottles of Lambrusco supplied us

each with one more glass; and while we were drinking them, Miranda,

woman-like, taking the last word, but contradicting herself, softly

hummed 'Non so più cosa son,' and 'Ah!' she said, 'I shall dream of

love to-night!'

We rose and said good-night. But when I had reached my bedroom in the

Hôtel de la Ville, I sat down, obstinate and unconvinced, and penned

this rhapsody, which I have lately found among papers of nearly twenty

years ago. I give it as it stands.

231

III

Mozart has written the two melodramas of love—the one a melo-tragedy,

the other a melo-comedy. But in really noble art, Comedy and Tragedy

have faces of equal serenity and beauty. In the Vatican there are

marble busts of the two Muses, differing chiefly in their head-dresses:

that of Tragedy is an elaborately built-up structure of fillets and

flowing hair, piled high above the forehead and descending in long

curls upon the shoulders; while Comedy wears a similar adornment, with

the addition of a wreath of vine-leaves and grape-bunches. The

expression of the sister goddesses is no less finely discriminated.

Over the mouth of Comedy plays a subtle smile, and her eyes are relaxed

in a half-merriment. A shadow rests upon the slightly heavier brows of

Tragedy, and her lips, though not compressed, are graver. So delicately

did the Greek artist indicate the division between two branches of one

dramatic art. And since all great art is classical, Mozart's two

melodramas, _Don Giovanni_ and the _Nozze di Figaro_, though the one is

tragic and the other comic, are twin-sisters, similar in form and

feature.

The central figure of the melo-tragedy is Don Juan, the hero of

unlimited desire, pursuing the unattainable through tortuous

interminable labyrinths, eager in appetite yet never satisfied, 'for

ever following and for ever foiled.' He is the incarnation of lust that

has become a habit of the soul—rebellious, licentious, selfish, even

cruel. His nature, originally noble and brave, has assumed the

qualities peculiar to lust—rebellion, license, cruelty, defiant

egotism. Yet, such as he is, doomed to punishment and execration, Don

Juan remains a fit subject for poetry and music, because he is

complete, because he is impelled by some demonic influence, spurred on

by yearnings after an unsearchable delight. In 232his death, the spirit

of chivalry survives, metamorphosed, it is true, into the spirit of

revolt, yet still tragic, such as might animate the desperate sinner of

a haughty breed.

The central figure of the melo-comedy is Cherubino, the genius of love,

no less insatiable, but undetermined to virtue or to vice. This is the

point of Cherubino, that the ethical capacities in him are still

potential. His passion still hovers on the borderland of good and bad.

And this undetermined passion is beautiful because of extreme

freshness; of infinite, immeasurable expansibility. Cherubino is the

epitome of all that belongs to the amorous temperament in a state of

still ascendant adolescence. He is about sixteen years of age—a boy

yesterday, a man to-morrow—to-day both and neither—something beyond

boyhood, but not yet limited by man's responsibility and man's

absorbing passions. He partakes of both ages in the primal awakening to

self-consciousness. Desire, which in Don Juan has become a fiend,

hovers before him like a fairy. His are the sixteen years, not of a

Northern climate, but of Spain or Italy, where manhood appears in a

flash, and overtakes the child with sudden sunrise of new faculties.

_Nondum amabam, sed amare amabam, quaerebam quod amarem, amans

amare_—'I loved not yet, but was in love with loving; I sought what I

should love, being in love with loving.' That sentence, penned by S.

Augustine and consecrated by Shelley, describes the mood of Cherubino.

He loves at every moment of his life, with every pulse of his being.

His object is not a beloved being, but love itself—the satisfaction of

an irresistible desire, the paradise of bliss which merely loving has

become for him. What love means he hardly knows. He only knows that he

must love. And women love him—half as a plaything to be trifled with,

half as a young god to be wounded by. This rising of the star of love

as it ascends into the heaven of youthful fancy, is revealed 233in the

melodies Mozart has written for him. How shall we describe their

potency? Who shall translate those curiously perfect words to which

tone and rhythm have been indissolubly wedded? _E pur mi piace languir

cosi.... E se non ho chi m' oda, parlo d'amor con me._

But if this be so, it may be asked, Who shall be found worthy to act

Cherubino on the stage? You cannot have seen and heard Pauline Lucca,

or you would not ask this question.

Cherubino is by no means the most important person in the plot of the

_Nozze_. But he strikes the keynote of the opera. His love is the

standard by which we measure the sad, retrospective, stately love of

the Countess, who tries to win back an alienated husband. By Cherubino

we measure the libertine love of the Count, who is a kind of Don Juan

without cruelty, and the humorous love of Figaro and his sprightly

bride Susanna. Each of these characters typifies one of the many

species of love. But Cherubino anticipates and harmonises all. They are

conscious, experienced, world-worn, disillusioned, trivial. He is all

love, foreseen, foreshadowed in a dream of life to be; all love,

diffused through brain and heart and nerves like electricity; all love,

merging the moods of ecstasy, melancholy, triumph, regret, jealousy,

joy, expectation, in a hazy sheen, as of some Venetian sunrise. What

will Cherubino be after three years? A Romeo, a Lovelace, a Lothario, a

Juan? a disillusioned rake, a sentimentalist, an effete fop, a romantic

lover? He may become any one of these, for he contains the

possibilities of all. As yet, he is the dear glad angel of the May of

love, the nightingale of orient emotion. This moment in the unfolding

of character Mozart has arrested and eternalised for us in Cherubino's

melodies; for it is the privilege of art to render things most fugitive

and evanescent fixed imperishably in immortal form.

234

IV

This is indeed a rhapsodical production. Miranda was probably right.

Had it not been for Pauline Lucca, I might not have philosophised the

_Nozze_ thus. Yet, in the main, I believe that my instinct was well

grounded. Music, especially when wedded to words, more especially when

those words are dramatic, cannot separate itself from emotion. It will

not do to tell us that a melody is a certain sequence of sounds; that

the composer chose it for its beauty of rhythm, form, and tune, and

only used the words to get it vocalised. We are forced to go farther

back, and ask ourselves, What suggested it in the first place to the

composer? why did he use it precisely in connection with this dramatic

situation? How can we answer these questions except by supposing that

music was for him the utterance through art of some emotion? The final

fact of human nature is emotion, crystallising itself in thought and

language, externalising itself in action and art. 'What,' said Novalis,

'are thoughts but pale dead feelings?' Admitting this even in part, we

cannot deny to music an emotional content of some kind. I would go

farther, and assert that, while a merely mechanical musician may set

inappropriate melodies to words, and render music inexpressive of

character, what constitutes a musical dramatist is the conscious

intention of fitting to the words of his libretto such melody as shall

interpret character, and the power to do this with effect.

That the Cherubino of Mozart's _Nozze_ is quite different from

Beaumarchais' Cherubin does not affect this question. He is a new

creation, just because Mozart could not, or would not, conceive the

character of the page in Beaumarchais' sprightly superficial spirit. He

used the part to utter something unutterable except by music about the

soul of 235the still adolescent lover. The libretto-part and the

melodies, taken together, constitute a new romantic ideal, consistent

with experience, but realised with the intensity and universality

whereby art is distinguished from life. Don Juan was a myth before

Mozart touched him with the magic wand of music. Cherubino became a

myth by the same Prospero's spell. Both characters have the

universality, the symbolic potency, which belongs to legendary beings.

That there remains a discrepancy between the boy-page and the music

made for him, can be conceded without danger to my theory; for the

music made for Cherubino is meant to interpret his psychical condition,

and is independent of his boyishness of conduct.

This further explains why there may be so many renderings of

Cherubino's melodies. Mozart idealised an infinite emotion. The singer

is forced to define; the actor also is forced to define. Each

introduces his own limit on the feeling. When the actor and the singer

meet together in one personality, this definition of emotion becomes of

necessity doubly specific. The condition of all music is that it

depends in a great measure on the temperament of the interpreter for

its momentary shade of expression, and this dependence is of course

exaggerated when the music is dramatic. Furthermore, the subjectivity

of the audience enters into the problem as still another element of

definition. It may therefore be fairly said that, in estimating any

impression produced by Cherubino's music, the original character of the

page, transplanted from French comedy to Italian opera, Mozart's

conception of that character, Mozart's specific quality of emotion and

specific style of musical utterance, together with the contralto's

interpretation of the character and rendering of the music, according

to her intellectual capacity, artistic skill, and timbre of voice, have

236collaborated with the individuality of the hearer. Some of the

constituents of the ever-varying product—a product which is new each

time the part is played—are fixed. Da Ponte's Cherubino and Mozart's

melodies remain unalterable. All the rest is undecided; the singer and

the listener change on each occasion.

To assert that the musician Mozart meant nothing by his music, to

assert that he only cared about it _quâ_ music, is the same as to say

that the painter Tintoretto, when he put the Crucifixion upon canvas,

the sculptor Michelangelo, when he carved Christ upon the lap of Mary,

meant nothing, and only cared about the beauty of their forms and

colours. Those who take up this position prove, not that the artist has

no meaning to convey, but that for them the artist's nature is

unintelligible, and his meaning is conveyed in an unknown tongue. It

seems superfluous to guard against misinterpretation by saying that to

expect clear definition from music—the definition which belongs to

poetry—would be absurd. The sphere of music is in sensuous perception;

the sphere of poetry is in intelligence. Music, dealing with pure

sound, must always be vaguer in significance than poetry, dealing with

words. Nevertheless, its effect upon the sentient subject may be more

intense and penetrating for this very reason. We cannot fail to

understand what words are intended to convey; we may very easily

interpret in a hundred different ways the message of sound. But this is

not because words are wider in their reach and more alive; rather

because they are more limited, more stereotyped, more dead. They

symbolise something precise and unmistakable; but this precision is

itself attenuation of the something symbolised. The exact value of the

counter is better understood when it is a word than when it is a chord,

because all that a word conveys has already become a thought, while all

that musical 237sounds convey remains within the region of emotion

which has not been intellectualised. Poetry touches emotion through the

thinking faculty. If music reaches the thinking faculty at all, it is

through fibres of emotion. But emotion, when it has become thought, has

already lost a portion of its force, and has taken to itself a

something alien to its nature. Therefore the message of music can never

rightly be translated into words. It is the very largeness and

vividness of the sphere of simple feeling which makes its symbolical

counterpart in sound so seeming vague. But in spite of this

incontestable defect of seeming vagueness, emotion expressed by music

is nearer to our sentient self, if we have ears to take it in, than the

same emotion limited by language. It is intenser, it is more immediate,

as compensation for being less intelligible, less unmistakable in

meaning. It is an infinite, an indistinct, where each consciousness

defines and sets a limitary form.

V

A train of thought which begins with the concrete not unfrequently

finds itself finishing, almost against its will, in abstractions. This

is the point to which the performance of Cherubino's part by Pauline

Lucca at the Scala twenty years ago has led me—that I have to settle

with myself what I mean by art in general, and what I take to be the

proper function of music as one of the fine arts.

'Art,' said Goethe, 'is but form-giving.' We might vary this

definition, and say, 'Art is a method of expression or presentation.'

Then comes the question: If art gives form, if it is a method of

expression or presentation, to what does it give form, what does it

express or present? The answer certainly must be: Art gives form to

human consciousness; expresses or presents the feeling or the thought

of man. 238Whatever else art may do by the way, in the communication of

innocent pleasures, in the adornment of life and the softening of

manners, in the creation of beautiful shapes and sounds, this, at all

events, is its prime function.

While investing thought, the spiritual subject-matter of all art, with

form, or finding for it proper modes of presentation, each of the arts

employs a special medium, obeying the laws of beauty proper to that

medium. The vehicles of the arts, roughly speaking, are material

substances (like stone, wood, metal), pigments, sounds, and words. The

masterly handling of these vehicles and the realisation of their

characteristic types of beauty have come to be regarded as the

craftsman's paramount concern. And in a certain sense this is a right

conclusion; for dexterity in the manipulation of the chosen vehicle and

power to create a beautiful object, distinguish the successful artist

from the man who may have had like thoughts and feelings. This

dexterity, this power, are the properties of the artist _quâ_ artist.

Yet we must not forget that the form created by the artist for the

expression of a thought or feeling is not the final end of art itself.

That form, after all, is but the mode of presentation through which the

spiritual content manifests itself. Beauty, in like manner, is not the

final end of art, but is the indispensable condition under which the

artistic manifestation of the spiritual content must he made. It is the

business of art to create an ideal world, in which perception, emotion,

understanding, action, all elements of human life sublimed by thought,

shall reappear in concrete forms as beauty. This being so, the logical

criticism of art demands that we should not only estimate the technical

skill of artists and their faculty for presenting beauty to the

æsthetic sense, but that we should also ask ourselves what portion of

the human spirit he has chosen to invest with form, and how he has

conceived his subject. It is not necessary that the ideas embodied in a

work of art should be the artist's own. They may be common to the race

and age: as, for instance, the conception of sovereign deity expressed

in the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias, or the conception of divine maternity

expressed in Raphael's 'Madonna di San Sisto.' Still the personality of

the artist, his own intellectual and moral nature, his peculiar way of

thinking and feeling, his individual attitude towards the material

given to him in ideas of human consciousness, will modify his choice of

subject and of form, and will determine his specific type of beauty. To

take an example: supposing that an idea, common to his race and age, is

given to the artist for treatment; this will be the final end of the

work of art which he produces. But his personal qualities and technical

performance determine the degree of success or failure to which he

attains in presenting that idea and in expressing it with beauty.

Signorelli fails where Perugino excels, in giving adequate and lovely

form to the religious sentiment. Michelangelo is sure of the sublime,

and Raphael of the beautiful.

Art is thus the presentation of the human spirit by the artist to his

fellow-men. The subject-matter of the arts is commensurate with what

man thinks and feels and does. It is as deep as religion, as wide as

life. But what distinguishes art from religion or from life is, that

this subject-matter must assume beautiful form, and must be presented

directly or indirectly to the senses. Art is not the school or the

cathedral, but the playground, the paradise of humanity. It does not

teach, it does not preach. Nothing abstract enters into art's domain.

Truth and goodness are transmuted into beauty there, just as in science

beauty and goodness assume the shape of truth, and in religion truth

and beauty become goodness. The rigid definitions, the unmistakable

laws of science, are not to be found in art. Whatever art has touched

240acquires a concrete sensuous embodiment, and thus ideas presented to

the mind in art have lost a portion of their pure thought-essence. It

is on this account that the religious conceptions of the Greeks were so

admirably fitted for the art of sculpture, and certain portions of the

mediæval Christian mythology lent themselves so well to painting. For

the same reason the metaphysics of ecclesiastical dogma defy the

artist's plastic faculty. Art, in a word, is a middle term between

reason and the senses. Its secondary aim, after the prime end of

presenting the human spirit in beautiful form has been accomplished, is

to give tranquil and innocent enjoyment.

From what has gone before it will be seen that no human being can make

or mould a beautiful form without incorporating in that form some

portion of the human mind, however crude, however elementary. In other

words, there is no work of art without a theme, without a motive,

without a subject. The presentation of that theme, that motive, that

subject, is the final end of art. The art is good or bad according as

the subject has been well or ill presented, consistently with the laws

of beauty special to the art itself. Thus we obtain two standards for

æsthetic criticism. We judge a statue, for example, both by the

sculptor's intellectual grasp upon his subject, and also by his

technical skill and sense of beauty. In a picture of the Last Judgment

by Fra Angelico we say that the bliss of the righteous has been more

successfully treated than the torments of the wicked, because the

former has been better understood, although the painter's skill in each

is equal. In the Perseus of Cellini we admire the sculptor's spirit,

finish of execution, and originality of design, while we deplore that

want of sympathy with the heroic character which makes his type of

physical beauty slightly vulgar and his facial expression vacuous.

241If the phrase 'Art for art's sake' has any meaning, this meaning is

simply that the artist, having chosen a theme, thinks exclusively in

working at it of technical dexterity or the quality of beauty. There

are many inducements for the artist thus to narrow his function, and

for the critic to assist him by applying the canons of a soulless

connoisseurship to his work; for the conception of the subject is but

the starting-point in art-production, and the artist's difficulties and

triumphs as a craftsman lie in the region of technicalities. He knows,

moreover, that, however deep or noble his idea may be, his work of art

will be worthless if it fail in skill or be devoid of beauty. What

converts a thought into a statue or a picture, is the form found for

it; and so the form itself seems all-important. The artist, therefore,

too easily imagines that he may neglect his theme; that a fine piece of

colouring, a well-balanced composition, or, as Cellini put it, 'un bel

corpo ignudo,' is enough. And this is especially easy in an age which

reflects much upon the arts, and pursues them with enthusiasm, while

its deeper thoughts and feelings are not of the kind which translate

themselves readily into artistic form. But, after all, a fine piece of

colouring, a well-balanced composition, a sonorous stanza, a learned

essay in counterpoint, are not enough. They are all excellent good

things, yielding delight to the artistic sense and instruction to the

student. Yet when we think of the really great statues, pictures,

poems, music of the world, we find that these are really great because

of something more—and that more is their theme, their presentation of a

noble portion of the human soul. Artists and art-students may be

satisfied with perfect specimens of a craftsman's skill, independent of

his theme; but the mass of men will not be satisfied; and it is as

wrong to suppose that art exists for artists and art-students, as to

talk of art for art's sake. Art exists for 242humanity. Art transmutes

thought and feeling into terms of beautiful form. Art is great and

lasting in proportion as it appeals to the human consciousness at

large, presenting to it portions of itself in adequate and lovely form.

VI

It was necessary in the first place firmly to apprehend the truth that

the final end of all art is the presentation of a spiritual content; it

is necessary in the next place to remove confusions by considering the

special circumstances of the several arts.

Each art has its own vehicle of presentation. What it can present and

how it must present it, depends upon the nature of this vehicle. Thus,

though architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, meet upon the

common ground of spiritualised experience—though the works of art

produced by the architect, sculptor, painter, musician, poet, emanate

from the spiritual nature of the race, are coloured by the spiritual

nature of the men who make them, and express what is spiritual in

humanity under concrete forms invented for them by the artist—yet it is

certain that all of these arts do not deal exactly with the same

portions of this common material in the same way or with the same

results. Each has its own department. Each exhibits qualities of

strength and weakness special to itself. To define these several

departments, to explain the relation of these several vehicles of

presentation to the common subject-matter, is the next step in

criticism.

Of the fine arts, architecture alone subserves utility. We build for

use. But the geometrical proportions which the architect observes,

contain the element of beauty and powerfully influence the soul. Into

the language of arch and aisle and colonnade, of cupola and façade and

pediment, of spire 243and vault, the architect translates emotion,

vague perhaps but deep, mute but unmistakable. When we say that a

building is sublime or graceful, frivolous or stern, we mean that

sublimity or grace, frivolity or sternness, is inherent in it. The

emotions connected with these qualities are inspired in us when we

contemplate it, and are presented to us by its form. Whether the

architect deliberately aimed at the sublime or graceful—whether the

dignified serenity of the Athenian genius sought to express itself in

the Parthenon, and the mysticism of mediæval Christianity in the gloom

of Chartres Cathedral—whether it was Renaissance paganism which gave

its mundane pomp and glory to S. Peter's, and the refined selfishness

of royalty its specious splendour to the palace of Versailles—need not

be curiously questioned. The fact that we are impelled to raise these

points, that architecture more almost than any art connects itself

indissolubly with the life, the character, the moral being of a nation

and an epoch, proves that we are justified in bringing it beneath our

general definition of the arts. In a great measure because it subserves

utility, and is therefore dependent upon the necessities of life, does

architecture present to us through form the human spirit. Comparing the

palace built by Giulio Romano for the Dukes of Mantua with the

contemporary castle of a German prince, we cannot fail at once to

comprehend the difference of spiritual conditions, as these displayed

themselves in daily life, which then separated Italy from the Teutonic

nations. But this is not all. Spiritual quality in the architect

himself finds clear expression in his work. Coldness combined with

violence marks Brunelleschi's churches; a certain suavity and well-bred

taste the work of Bramante; while Michelangelo exhibits wayward energy

in his Library of S. Lorenzo, and Amadeo self-abandonment to fancy in

his Lombard chapels. I have chosen examples from 244one nation and one

epoch in order that the point I seek to make, the demonstration of a

spiritual quality in buildings, may be fairly stated.

Sculpture and painting distinguish themselves from the other fine arts

by the imitation of concrete existences in nature. They copy the bodies

of men and animals, the aspects of the world around us, and the

handiwork of men. Yet, in so far as they are rightly arts, they do not

make imitation an object in itself. The grapes of Zeuxis at which birds

pecked, the painted dog at which a cat's hair bristles—if such grapes

or such a dog were ever put on canvas—are but evidences of the artist's

skill, not of his faculty as artist. These two plastic, or, as I prefer

to call them, figurative arts, use their imitation of the external

world for the expression, the presentation of internal, spiritual

things. The human form is for them the outward symbol of the inner

human spirit, and their power of presenting spirit is limited by the

means at their disposal.

Sculpture employs stone, wood, clay, the precious metals, to model

forms, detached and independent, or raised upon a flat surface in

relief. Its domain is the whole range of human character and

consciousness, in so far as these can be indicated by fixed facial

expression, by physical type, and by attitude. If we dwell for an

instant on the greatest historical epoch of sculpture, we shall

understand the domain of this art in its range and limitation. At a

certain point of Greek development the Hellenic Pantheon began to be

translated by the sculptors into statues; and when the genius of the

Greeks expired in Rome, the cycle of their psychological conceptions

had been exhaustively presented through this medium. During that long

period of time, the most delicate gradations of human personality,

divinised, idealised, were 245presented to the contemplation of the

consciousness which gave them being, in appropriate types. Strength and

swiftness, massive force and airy lightness, contemplative repose and

active energy, voluptuous softness and refined grace, intellectual

sublimity and lascivious seductiveness—the whole rhythm of qualities

which can be typified by bodily form—were analysed, selected, combined

in various degrees, to incarnate the religious conceptions of Zeus,

Aphrodite, Herakles, Dionysus, Pallas, Fauns and Satyrs, Nymphs of

woods and waves, Tritons, the genius of Death, heroes and hunters,

lawgivers and poets, presiding deities of minor functions, man's

lustful appetites and sensual needs. All that men think, or do, or are,

or wish for, or imagine in this world, had found exact corporeal

equivalents. Not physiognomy alone, but all the portions of the body

upon which the habits of the animating soul are wont to stamp

themselves, were studied and employed as symbolism. Uranian Aphrodite

was distinguished from her Pandemic sister by chastened lust-repelling

loveliness. The muscles of Herakles were more ponderous than the tense

sinews of Achilles. The Hermes of the palæstra bore a torso of majestic

depth; the Hermes, who carried messages from heaven, had limbs alert

for movement. The brows of Zeus inspired awe; the breasts of Dionysus

breathed delight.

A race accustomed, as the Greeks were, to read this symbolism,

accustomed, as the Greeks were, to note the individuality of naked

form, had no difficulty in interpreting the language of sculpture. Nor

is there now much difficulty in the task. Our surest guide to the

subject of a basrelief or statue is study of the physical type

considered as symbolical of spiritual quality. From the fragment of a

torso the true critic can say whether it belongs to the athletic or the

erotic species. A limb of Bacchus differs from a limb of Poseidon.

246The whole psychological conception of Aphrodite Pandemos enters into

every muscle, every joint, no less than into her physiognomy, her hair,

her attitude.

There is, however, a limit to the domain of sculpture. This art deals

most successfully with personified generalities. It is also strong in

the presentation of incarnate character. But when it attempts to tell a

story, we often seek in vain its meaning. Battles of Amazons or

Centaurs upon basreliefs, indeed, are unmistakable. The subject is

indicated here by some external sign. The group of Laocoon appeals at

once to a reader of Virgil, and the divine vengeance of Leto's children

upon Niobe is manifest in the Uffizzi marbles. But who are the several

heroes of the Æginetan pediment, and what was the subject of the

Pheidian statues on the Parthenon? Do the three graceful figures of a

basrelief which exists at Naples and in the Villa Albani, represent

Orpheus, Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two sons? Was the

winged and sworded genius upon the Ephesus column meant for a genius of

Death or a genius of Love?

This dimness of significance indicates the limitation of sculpture, and

inclines some of those who feel its charm to assert that the sculptor

seeks to convey no intellectual meaning, that he is satisfied with the

creation of beautiful form. There is sense in this revolt against the

faith which holds that art is nothing but a mode of spiritual

presentation. Truly the artist aims at producing beauty, is satisfied

if he conveys delight. But it is impossible to escape from the

certainty that, while he is creating forms of beauty, he means

something; and that something, that theme for which he finds the form,

is part of the world's spiritual heritage. Only the crudest works of

plastic art, capricci and arabesques, have no intellectual content; and

even these are good in so far as they convey the playfulness of fancy.

247Painting employs colours upon surfaces—walls, panels, canvas. What

has been said about sculpture will apply in a great measure to this

art. The human form, the world around us, the works of man's hands, are

represented in painting, not for their own sake merely, but with a view

to bringing thought, feeling, action, home to the consciousness of the

spectator from the artist's consciousness on which they have been

impressed. Painting can tell a story better than sculpture, can

represent more complicated feelings, can suggest thoughts of a subtler

intricacy. Through colour, it can play, like music, directly on

powerful but vague emotion. It is deficient in fulness and roundness of

concrete reality. A statue stands before us, the soul incarnate in

ideal form, fixed and frozen for eternity. The picture is a reflection

cast upon a magic glass; not less permanent, but reduced to a shadow of

reality. To follow these distinctions farther would be alien from the

present purpose. It is enough to repeat that, within their several

spheres, according to their several strengths and weaknesses, both

sculpture and painting present the spirit to us only as the spirit

shows itself immersed in things of sense. The light of a lamp enclosed

within an alabaster vase is still lamplight, though shorn of lustre and

toned to coloured softness. Even thus the spirit, immersed in things of

sense presented to us by the figurative arts, is still spirit, though

diminished in its intellectual clearness and invested with hues not its

own. To fashion that alabaster form of art with utmost skill, to make

it beautiful, to render it transparent, is the artist's function. But

he will have failed of the highest if the light within burns dim, or if

he gives the world a lamp in which no spiritual flame is lighted.

Music transports us to a different region. It imitates nothing. It uses

pure sound, and sound of the most wholly 248artificial kind—so

artificial that the musical sounds of one race are unmusical, and

therefore unintelligible, to another. Like architecture, music relies

upon mathematical proportions. Unlike architecture, music serves no

utility. It is the purest art of pleasure—the truest paradise and

playground of the spirit. It has less power than painting, even less

power than sculpture, to tell a story or to communicate an idea. For we

must remember that when music is married to words, the words, and not

the music, reach our thinking faculty. And yet, in spite of all, music

presents man's spirit to itself through form. The domain of the spirit

over which music reigns, is emotion—not defined emotion, not feeling

even so defined as jealousy or anger—but those broad bases of man's

being out of which emotions spring, defining themselves through action

into this or that set type of feeling. Architecture, we have noticed,

is so connected with specific modes of human existence, that from its

main examples we can reconstruct the life of men who used it. Sculpture

and painting, by limiting their presentation to the imitation of

external things, have all the help which experience and, association

render. The mere artificiality of music's vehicle separates it from

life and makes its message untranslatable. Yet, as I have already

pointed out, this very disability under which it labours is the secret

of its extraordinary potency. Nothing intervenes between the musical

work of art and the fibres of the sentient being it immediately

thrills. We do not seek to say what music means. We feel the music. And

if a man should pretend that the music has not passed beyond his ears,

has communicated nothing but a musical delight, he simply tells us that

he has not felt music. The ancients on this point were wiser than some

moderns when, without pretending to assign an intellectual significance

to music, they held it for an axiom that one type of music bred one

type of character, 249another type another. A change in the music of a

state, wrote Plato, will be followed by changes in its constitution. It

is of the utmost importance, said Aristotle, to provide in education

for the use of the ennobling and the fortifying moods. These

philosophers knew that music creates a spiritual world, in which the

spirit cannot live and move without contracting habits of emotion. In

this vagueness of significance but intensity of feeling lies the magic

of music. A melody occurs to the composer, which he certainly connects

with no act of the reason, which he is probably unconscious of

connecting with any movement of his feeling, but which nevertheless is

the form in sound of an emotional mood. When he reflects upon the

melody secreted thus impromptu, he is aware, as we learn from his own

lips, that this work has correspondence with emotion. Beethoven calls

one symphony Heroic, another Pastoral; of the opening of another he

says, 'Fate knocks at the door.' Mozart sets comic words to the

mass-music of a friend, in order to mark his sense of its inaptitude

for religious sentiment. All composers use phrases like Maestoso,

Pomposo, Allegro, Lagrimoso, Con Fuoco, to express the general

complexion of the mood their music ought to represent.

Before passing to poetry, it may be well to turn aside and consider two

subordinate arts, which deserve a place in any system of æsthetics.

These are dancing and acting. Dancing uses the living human form, and

presents feeling or action, the passions and the deeds of men, in

artificially educated movements of the body. The element of beauty it

possesses, independently of the beauty of the dancer, is rhythm. Acting

or the art of mimicry presents the same subject-matter, no longer under

the conditions of fixed rhythm but as an ideal reproduction of reality.

The actor is 250what he represents, and the element of beauty in his

art is perfection of realisation. It is his duty as an artist to show

us Orestes or Othello, not perhaps exactly as Othello and Orestes were,

but as the essence of their tragedies, ideally incorporate in action,

ought to be. The actor can do this in dumb show. Some of the greatest

actors of the ancient world were mimes. But he usually interprets a

poet's thought, and attempts to present an artistic conception in a

secondary form of art, which has for its advantage his own personality

in play.

The last of the fine arts is literature; or, in the narrower sphere of

which it will be well to speak here only, is poetry. Poetry employs

words in fixed rhythms, which we call metres. Only a small portion of

its effect is derived from the beauty of its sound. It appeals to the

sense of hearing far less immediately than music does. It makes no

appeal to the eyesight, and takes no help from the beauty of colour. It

produces no tangible object. But language being the storehouse of all

human experience, language being the medium whereby spirit communicates

with spirit in affairs of life, the vehicle which transmits to us the

thoughts and feelings of the past, and on which we rely for continuing

our present to the future, it follows that, of all the arts, poetry

soars highest, flies widest, and is most at home in the region of the

spirit. What poetry lacks of sensuous fulness, it more than balances by

intellectual intensity. Its significance is unmistakable, because it

employs the very material men use in their exchange of thoughts and

correspondence of emotions. To the bounds of its empire there is no

end. It embraces in its own more abstract being all the arts. By words

it does the work in turn of architecture, sculpture, painting, music.

It is the metaphysic of the fine arts. Philosophy finds place in

251poetry; and life itself, refined to its last utterance, hangs

trembling on this thread which joins our earth to heaven, this bridge

between experience and the realms where unattainable and imperceptible

will have no meaning.

If we are right in defining art as the manifestation of the human

spirit to man by man in beautiful form, poetry, more incontestably than

any other art, fulfils this definition and enables us to gauge its

accuracy. For words are the spirit, manifested to itself in symbols

with no sensual alloy. Poetry is therefore the presentation, through

words, of life and all that life implies. Perception, emotion, thought,

action, find in descriptive, lyrical, reflective, dramatic, and epical

poetry their immediate apocalypse. In poetry we are no longer puzzled

with problems as to whether art has or has not of necessity a spiritual

content. There cannot be any poetry whatsoever without a spiritual

meaning of some sort: good or bad, moral, immoral, or non-moral,

obscure or lucid, noble or ignoble, slight or weighty—such distinctions

do not signify. In poetry we are not met by questions whether the poet

intended to convey a meaning when he made it. Quite meaningless poetry

(as some critics would fain find melody quite meaningless, or a statue

meaningless, or a Venetian picture meaningless) is a contradiction in

terms. In poetry, life, or a portion of life, lives again, resuscitated

and presented to our mental faculty through art. The best poetry is

that which reproduces the most of life, or its intensest moments.

Therefore the extensive species of the drama and the epic, the

intensive species of the lyric, have been ever held in highest esteem.

Only a half-crazy critic flaunts the paradox that poetry is excellent

in so far as it assimilates the vagueness of music, or estimates a poet

by his power of translating sense upon the borderland of nonsense into

melodious words. Where poetry falls short in the comparison with other

arts, is 252in the quality of form-giving, in the quality of sensuous

concreteness. Poetry can only present forms to the mental eye and to

the intellectual sense, stimulate the physical senses by indirect

suggestion. Therefore dramatic poetry, the most complicated kind of

poetry, relies upon the actor; and lyrical poetry, the intensest kind

of poetry, seeks the aid of music. But these comparative deficiencies

are overbalanced, for all the highest purposes of art, by the width and

depth, the intelligibility and power, the flexibility and multitudinous

associations, of language. The other arts are limited in what they

utter. There is nothing which has entered into the life of man which

poetry cannot express. Poetry says everything in man's own language to

the mind. The other arts appeal imperatively, each in its own region,

to man's senses; and the mind receives art's message by the help of

symbols from the world of sense. Poetry lacks this immediate appeal to

sense. But the elixir which it offers to the mind, its quintessence

extracted from all things of sense, reacts through intellectual

perception upon all the faculties that make men what they are.

VII

I used a metaphor in one of the foregoing paragraphs to indicate the

presence of the vital spirit, the essential element of thought or

feeling, in the work of art. I said it radiated through the form, as

lamplight through an alabaster vase. Now the skill of the artist is

displayed in modelling that vase, in giving it shape, rich and rare,

and fashioning its curves with subtlest workmanship. In so far as he is

a craftsman, the artist's pains must be bestowed upon this precious

vessel of the animating theme. In so far as he has power over beauty,

he must exert it in this plastic act. It is here that he displays

dexterity; here that he creates; here that he 253separates himself from

other men who think and feel. The poet, more perhaps than any other

artist, needs to keep this steadily in view; for words being our daily

vehicle of utterance, it may well chance that the alabaster vase of

language should be hastily or trivially modelled. This is the true

reason why 'neither gods nor men nor the columns either suffer

mediocrity in singers.' Upon the poet it is specially incumbent to see

that he has something rare to say and some rich mode of saying it. The

figurative arts need hardly be so cautioned. They run their risk in

quite a different direction. For sculptor and for painter, the danger

is lest he should think that alabaster vase his final task. He may too

easily be satisfied with moulding a beautiful but empty form.

The last word on the topic of the arts is given in one sentence. Let us

remember that every work of art enshrines a spiritual subject, and that

the artist's power is shown in finding for that subject a form of ideal

loveliness. Many kindred points remain to be discussed; as what we mean

by beauty, which is a condition indispensable to noble art; and what

are the relations of the arts to ethics. These questions cannot now be

raised. It is enough in one essay to have tried to vindicate the

spirituality of art in general.

254

A VENETIAN MEDLEY

I.—FIRST IMPRESSIONS AND FAMILIARITY

It is easy to feel and to say something obvious about Venice. The

influence of this sea-city is unique, immediate, and unmistakable. But

to express the sober truth of those impressions which remain when the

first astonishment of the Venetian revelation has subsided, when the

spirit of the place has been harmonised through familiarity with our

habitual mood, is difficult.

Venice inspires at first an almost Corybantic rapture. From our

earliest visits, if these have been measured by days rather than weeks,

we carry away with us the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold and

crimson upon cloud and water; of violet domes and bell-towers etched

against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering

breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering

in sun-litten haze; of music and black gliding boats; of labyrinthine

darkness made for mysteries of love and crime; of statue-fretted palace

fronts; of brazen clangour and a moving crowd; of pictures by earth's

proudest painters, cased in gold on walls of council chambers where

Venice sat enthroned a queen, where nobles swept the floors with robes

of Tyrian brocade. These reminiscences will be attended by an

ever-present sense of loneliness and silence in the world around; the

sadness of a limitless horizon, the solemnity of an unbroken arch of

heaven, the calm and greyness of evening on the lagoons, the 255pathos

of a marble city crumbling to its grave in mud and brine.

These first impressions of Venice are true. Indeed they are inevitable.

They abide, and form a glowing background for all subsequent pictures,

toned more austerely, and painted in more lasting hues of truth upon

the brain. Those have never felt Venice at all who have not known this

primal rapture, or who perhaps expected more of colour, more of

melodrama, from a scene which nature and the art of man have made the

richest in these qualities. Yet the mood engendered by this first

experience is not destined to be permanent. It contains an element of

unrest and unreality which vanishes upon familiarity. From the blare of

that triumphal bourdon of brass instruments emerge the delicate voices

of violin and clarinette. To the contrasted passions of our earliest

love succeed a multitude of sweet and fanciful emotions. It is my

present purpose to recapture some of the impressions made by Venice in

more tranquil moods. Memory might be compared to a kaleidoscope. Far

away from Venice I raise the wonder-working tube, allow the glittering

fragments to settle as they please, and with words attempt to render

something of the patterns I behold.

II.—A LODGING IN SAN VIO

I have escaped from the hotels with their bustle of tourists and

crowded _tables-d'hôte_. My garden stretches down to the Grand Canal,

closed at the end with a pavilion, where I lounge and smoke and watch

the cornice of the Prefettura fretted with gold in sunset light. My

sitting-room and bed-room face the southern sun. There is a canal

below, crowded with gondolas, and across its bridge the good folk of

San Vio come and go the whole day long—men in blue shirts with

256enormous hats, and jackets slung on their left shoulder; women in

kerchiefs of orange and crimson. Barelegged boys sit upon the parapet,

dangling their feet above the rising tide. A hawker passes, balancing a

basket full of live and crawling crabs. Barges filled with Brenta water

or Mirano wine take up their station at the neighbouring steps, and

then ensues a mighty splashing and hurrying to and fro of men with tubs

upon their heads. The brawny fellows in the wine-barge are red from

brows to breast with drippings of the vat. And now there is a bustle in

the quarter. A _barca_ has arrived from S. Erasmo, the island of the

market-gardens. It is piled with gourds and pumpkins, cabbages and

tomatoes, pomegranates and pears—a pyramid of gold and green and

scarlet. Brown men lift the fruit aloft, and women bending from the

pathway bargain for it. A clatter of chaffering tongues, a ring of

coppers, a Babel of hoarse sea-voices, proclaim the sharpness of the

struggle. When the quarter has been served, the boat sheers off

diminished in its burden. Boys and girls are left seasoning their

polenta with a slice of _zucca_, while the mothers of a score of

families go pattering up yonder courtyard with the material for their

husbands' supper in their handkerchiefs. Across the canal, or more

correctly the _Rio_, opens a wide grass-grown court. It is lined on the

right hand by a row of poor dwellings, swarming with gondoliers'

children. A garden wall runs along the other side, over which I can see

pomegranate-trees in fruit and pergolas of vines. Far beyond are more

low houses, and then the sky, swept with sea-breezes, and the masts of

an ocean-going ship against the dome and turrets of Palladio's

Redentore.

This is my home. By day it is as lively as a scene in _Masaniello_. By

night, after nine o'clock, the whole stir of the quarter has subsided.

Far away I hear the bell of some church tell the hours. But no noise

disturbs my rest, unless 257perhaps a belated gondolier moors his boat

beneath the window. My one maid, Catina, sings at her work the whole

day through. My gondolier, Francesco, acts as valet. He wakes me in the

morning, opens the shutters, brings sea-water for my bath, and takes

his orders for the day. 'Will it do for Chioggia, Francesco?'

'Sissignore! The Signorino has set off in his _sandolo_ already with

Antonio. The Signora is to go with us in the gondola.' 'Then get three

more men, Francesco, and see that all of them can sing.'

III.—TO CHIOGGIA WITH OAR AND SAIL

The _sandolo_ is a boat shaped like the gondola, but smaller and

lighter, without benches, and without the high steel prow or _ferro_

which distinguishes the gondola. The gunwale is only just raised above

the water, over which the little craft skims with a rapid bounding

motion, affording an agreeable variation from the stately swanlike

movement of the gondola. In one of these boats—called by him the

_Fisolo_ or Seamew—my friend Eustace had started with Antonio,

intending to row the whole way to Chioggia, or, if the breeze favoured,

to hoist a sail and help himself along. After breakfast, when the crew

for my gondola had been assembled, Francesco and I followed with the

Signora. It was one of those perfect mornings which occur as a respite

from broken weather, when the air is windless and the light falls soft

through haze on the horizon. As we broke into the lagoon behind the

Redentore, the islands in front of us, S. Spirito, Poveglia, Malamocco,

seemed as though they were just lifted from the sea-line. The

Euganeans, far away to westward, were bathed in mist, and almost blent

with the blue sky. Our four rowers put their backs into their work; and

soon we reached the port of Malamocco, where a breeze from the

258Adriatic caught us sideways for a while. This is the largest of the

breaches in the Lidi, or raised sand-reefs, which protect Venice from

the sea: it affords an entrance to vessels of draught like the steamers

of the Peninsular and Oriental Company. We crossed the dancing wavelets

of the port; but when we passed under the lee of Pelestrina, the breeze

failed, and the lagoon was once again a sheet of undulating glass. At

S. Pietro on this island a halt was made to give the oarsmen wine, and

here we saw the women at their cottage doorways making lace. The old

lace industry of Venice has recently been revived. From Burano and

Pelestrina cargoes of hand-made imitations of the ancient fabrics are

sent at intervals to Jesurun's magazine at S. Marco. He is the chief

_impresario_ of the trade, employing hundreds of hands, and speculating

for a handsome profit in the foreign market on the price he gives his

workwomen.

Now we are well lost in the lagoons—Venice no longer visible behind;

the Alps and Euganeans shrouded in a noonday haze; the lowlands at the

mouth of Brenta marked by clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver

silhouette against the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour have

disappeared in light-irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet

instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different quality of

the water, the piles emerging here and there above the surface, the

suggestion of coast-lines scarcely felt in this infinity of lustre, all

remind us that our voyage is confined to the charmed limits of an

inland lake. At length the jutting headland of Pelestrina was reached.

We broke across the Porto di Chioggia, and saw Chioggia itself ahead—a

huddled mass of houses low upon the water. One by one, as we rowed

steadily, the fishing-boats passed by, emerging from their harbour for

a twelve hours' cruise upon the open sea. In a long line they came,

with variegated sails of orange, red, and 259saffron, curiously

chequered at the corners, and cantled with devices in contrasted tints.

A little land-breeze carried them forward. The lagoon reflected their

deep colours till they reached the port. Then, slightly swerving

eastward on their course, but still in single file, they took the sea

and scattered, like beautiful bright-plumaged birds, who from a

streamlet float into a lake, and find their way at large according as

each wills.

The Signorino and Antonio, though want of wind obliged them to row the

whole way from Venice, had reached Chioggia an hour before, and stood

waiting to receive us on the quay. It is a quaint town this Chioggia,

which has always lived a separate life from that of Venice. Language

and race and customs have held the two populations apart from those

distant years when Genoa and the Republic of S. Mark fought their duel

to the death out in the Chioggian harbours, down to these days, when

your Venetian gondolier will tell you that the Chioggoto loves his pipe

more than his _donna_ or his wife. The main canal is lined with

substantial palaces, attesting to old wealth and comfort. But from

Chioggia, even more than from Venice, the tide of modern luxury and

traffic has retreated. The place is left to fishing folk and builders

of the fishing craft, whose wharves still form the liveliest quarter.

Wandering about its wide deserted courts and _calli_, we feel the

spirit of the decadent Venetian nobility. Passages from Goldoni's and

Casanova's Memoirs occur to our memory. It seems easy to realise what

they wrote about the dishevelled gaiety and lawless license of Chioggia

in the days of powder, sword-knot, and _soprani_. Baffo walks beside us

in hypocritical composure of bag-wig and senatorial dignity, whispering

unmentionable sonnets in his dialect of _Xe_ and _Ga_. Somehow or

another that last dotage of S. Mark's decrepitude is more recoverable

by our fancy than the heroism of Pisani in the fourteenth century.

260From his prison in blockaded Venice the great admiral was sent forth

on a forlorn hope, and blocked victorious Doria here with boats on

which the nobles of the Golden Book had spent their fortunes. Pietro

Doria boasted that with his own hands he would bridle the bronze horses

of S. Mark. But now he found himself between the navy of Carlo Zeno in

the Adriatic and the flotilla led by Vittore Pisani across the lagoon.

It was in vain that the Republic of S. George strained every nerve to

send him succour from the Ligurian sea; in vain that the lords of Padua

kept opening communications with him from the mainland. From the 1st of

January 1380 till the 21st of June the Venetians pressed the blockade

ever closer, grappling their foemen in a grip that if relaxed one

moment would have hurled him at their throats. The long and breathless

struggle ended in the capitulation at Chioggia of what remained of

Doria's forty-eight galleys and fourteen thousand men.

These great deeds are far away and hazy. The brief sentences of

mediæval annalists bring them less near to us than the _chroniques

scandaleuses_ of good-for-nothing scoundrels, whose vulgar adventures

might be revived at the present hour with scarce a change of setting.

Such is the force of _intimité_ in literature. And yet Baffo and

Casanova are as much of the past as Doria and Pisani. It is only

perhaps that the survival of decadence in all we see around us, forms a

fitting framework for our recollections of their vividly described

corruption.

Not far from the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample breadth

and large bravura manner spans the main canal. Like everything at

Chioggia, it is dirty and has fallen from its first estate. Yet neither

time nor injury can obliterate style or wholly degrade marble. Hard by

the bridge there are two rival inns. At one of these we ordered a

seadinner—crabs, 261cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots—which we ate at a

table in the open air. Nothing divided us from the street except a row

of Japanese privet-bushes in hooped tubs. Our banquet soon assumed a

somewhat unpleasant similitude to that of Dives; for the Chioggoti, in

all stages of decrepitude and squalor, crowded round to beg for

scraps—indescribable old women, enveloped in their own petticoats

thrown over their heads; girls hooded with sombre black mantles; old

men wrinkled beyond recognition by their nearest relatives; jabbering,

half-naked boys; slow, slouching fishermen with clay pipes in their

mouths and philosophical acceptance on their sober foreheads.

That afternoon the gondola and sandolo were lashed together side by

side. Two sails were raised, and in this lazy fashion we stole

homewards, faster or slower according as the breeze freshened or

slackened, landing now and then on islands, sauntering along the

sea-walls which bulwark Venice from the Adriatic, and singing—those at

least of us who had the power to sing. Four of our Venetians had

trained voices and memories of inexhaustible music. Over the level

water, with the ripple plashing at our keel, their songs went abroad,

and mingled with the failing day. The barcaroles and serenades peculiar

to Venice were, of course, in harmony with the occasion. But some

transcripts from classical operas were even more attractive, through

the dignity with which these men invested them. By the peculiarity of

their treatment the _recitativo_ of the stage assumed a solemn

movement, marked in rhythm, which removed it from the commonplace into

antiquity, and made me understand how cultivated music may pass back by

natural, unconscious transition into the realm of popular melody.

The sun sank, not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds above the

Alps. Stars came out, uncertainly at first, 262and then in strength,

reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana watch-boat challenged us

and let us pass. Madonna's lamp was twinkling from her shrine upon the

harbour-pile. The city grew before us. Stealing into Venice in that

calm—stealing silently and shadowlike, with scarce a ruffle of the

water, the masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight,

till San Giorgio's gun boomed with a flash athwart our stern, and the

gas-lamps of the Piazzetta swam into sight; all this was like a long

enchanted chapter of romance. And now the music of our men had sunk to

one faint whistling from Eustace of tunes in harmony with whispers at

the prow.

Then came the steps of the Palazzo Venier and the deep-scented darkness

of the garden. As we passed through to supper, I plucked a spray of

yellow Banksia rose, and put it in my buttonhole. The dew was on its

burnished leaves, and evening had drawn forth its perfume.

IV.—MORNING RAMBLES

A story is told of Poussin, the French painter, that when he was asked

why he would not stay in Venice, he replied, 'If I stay here, I shall

become a colourist!' A somewhat similar tale is reported of a

fashionable English decorator. While on a visit to friends in Venice,

he avoided every building which contains a Tintoretto, averring that

the sight of Tintoretto's pictures would injure his carefully trained

taste. It is probable that neither anecdote is strictly true. Yet there

is a certain epigrammatic point in both; and I have often speculated

whether even Venice could have so warped the genius of Poussin as to

shed one ray of splendour on his canvases, or whether even Tintoretto

could have so 263sublimed the prophet of Queen Anne as to make him add

dramatic passion to a London drawing-room. Anyhow, it is exceedingly

difficult to escape from colour in the air of Venice, or from

Tintoretto in her buildings. Long, delightful mornings may be spent in

the enjoyment of the one and the pursuit of the other by folk who have

no classical or pseudo-mediæval theories to oppress them.

Tintoretto's house, though changed, can still be visited. It formed

part of the Fondamenta dei Mori, so called from having been the quarter

assigned to Moorish traders in Venice. A spirited carving of a turbaned

Moor leading a camel charged with merchandise, remains above the

waterline of a neighbouring building; and all about the crumbling walls

sprout flowering weeds—samphire and snapdragon and the spiked

campanula, which shoots a spire of sea-blue stars from chinks of

Istrian stone.

The house stands opposite the Church of Santa Maria dell' Orto, where

Tintoretto was buried, and where four of his chief masterpieces are to

be seen. This church, swept and garnished, is a triumph of modern

Italian restoration. They have contrived to make it as commonplace as

human ingenuity could manage. Yet no malice of ignorant industry can

obscure the treasures it contains—the pictures of Cima, Gian Bellini,

Palma, and the four Tintorettos, which form its crowning glory. Here

the master may be studied in four of his chief moods: as the painter of

tragic passion and movement, in the huge 'Last Judgment;' as the

painter of impossibilities, in the 'Vision of Moses upon Sinai;' as the

painter of purity and tranquil pathos, in the 'Miracle of S. Agnes;' as

the painter of Biblical history brought home to daily life, in the

'Presentation of the Virgin.' Without leaving the Madonna dell' Orto, a

student can explore his genius in all its depth and breadth; comprehend

the enthusiasm he 264excites in those who seek, as the essentials of

art, imaginative boldness and sincerity; understand what is meant by

adversaries who maintain that, after all, Tintoretto was but an

inspired Gustave Doré. Between that quiet canvas of the 'Presentation,'

so modest in its cool greys and subdued gold, and the tumult of flying,

running ascending figures in the 'Judgment,' what an interval there is!

How strangely the white lamb-like maiden, kneeling beside her lamb in

the picture of S. Agnes, contrasts with the dusky gorgeousness of the

Hebrew women despoiling themselves of jewels for the golden calf!

Comparing these several manifestations of creative power, we feel

ourselves in the grasp of a painter who was essentially a poet, one for

whom his art was the medium for expressing before all things thought

and passion. Each picture is executed in the manner suited to its tone

of feeling, the key of its conception.

Elsewhere than in the Madonna dell' Orto there are more distinguished

single examples of Tintoretto's realising faculty. The 'Last Supper' in

San Giorgio, for instance, and the 'Adoration of the Shepherds' in the

Scuola di San Rocco illustrate his unique power of presenting sacred

history in a novel, romantic framework of familiar things. The

commonplace circumstances of ordinary life have been employed to

portray in the one case a lyric of mysterious splendour; in the other,

an idyll of infinite sweetness. Divinity shines through the rafters of

that upper chamber, where round a low large table the Apostles are

assembled in a group translated from the social customs of the

painter's days. Divinity is shed upon the straw-spread manger, where

Christ lies sleeping in the loft, with shepherds crowding through the

room beneath.

A studied contrast between the simplicity and repose of the central

figure and the tumult of passions in the multitude 265around, may be

observed in the 'Miracle of S. Agnes.' It is this which gives dramatic

vigour to the composition. But the same effect is carried to its

highest fulfilment, with even a loftier beauty, in the episode of

Christ before the judgment-seat of Pilate, at San Rocco. Of all

Tintoretto's religious pictures, that is the most profoundly felt, the

most majestic. No other artist succeeded as he has here succeeded in

presenting to us God incarnate. For this Christ is not merely the just

man, innocent, silent before his accusers. The stationary, white-draped

figure, raised high above the agitated crowd, with tranquil forehead

slightly bent, facing his perplexed and fussy judge, is more than man.

We cannot say perhaps precisely why he is divine. But Tintoretto has

made us feel that he is. In other words, his treatment of the high

theme chosen by him has been adequate.

We must seek the Scuola di San Rocco for examples of Tintoretto's

liveliest imagination. Without ceasing to be Italian in his attention

to harmony and grace, he far exceeded the masters of his nation in the

power of suggesting what is weird, mysterious, upon the borderland of

the grotesque. And of this quality there are three remarkable instances

in the Scuola. No one but Tintoretto could have evoked the fiend in his

'Temptation of Christ.' It is an indescribable hermaphroditic genius,

the genius of carnal fascination, with outspread downy rose-plumed

wings, and flaming bracelets on the full but sinewy arms, who kneels

and lifts aloft great stones, smiling entreatingly to the sad, grey

Christ seated beneath a rugged pent-house of the desert. No one again

but Tintoretto could have dashed the hot lights of that fiery sunset in

such quivering flakes upon the golden flesh of Eve, half hidden among

laurels, as she stretches forth the fruit of the Fall to shrinking

Adam. No one but Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined

yonder Jonah, summoned 266by the beck of God from the whale's belly.

The monstrous fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour

from his trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his

naked breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has forgotten the past

peril of the deep, although the whale's jaws yawn around him. Between

him and the outstretched finger of Jehovah calling him again to life,

there runs a spark of unseen spiritual electricity.

To comprehend Tintoretto's touch upon the pastoral idyll we must turn

our steps to San Giorgio again, and pace those meadows by the running

river in company with his Manna-Gatherers. Or we may seek the

Accademia, and notice how he here has varied the 'Temptation of Adam by

Eve,' choosing a less tragic motive of seduction than the one so

powerfully rendered at San Rocco. Or in the Ducal Palace we may take

our station, hour by hour, before the 'Marriage of Bacchus and

Ariadne.' It is well to leave the very highest achievements of art

untouched by criticism, undescribed. And in this picture we have the

most perfect of all modern attempts to realise an antique myth—more

perfect than Raphael's 'Galatea,' or Titian's 'Meeting of Bacchus with

Ariadne,' or Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus from the Sea.' It may suffice

to marvel at the slight effect which melodies so powerful and so direct

as these produce upon the ordinary public. Sitting, as is my wont, one

Sunday morning, opposite the 'Bacchus,' four Germans with a cicerone

sauntered by. The subject was explained to them. They waited an

appreciable space of time. Then the youngest opened his lips and spake:

'Bacchus war der Wein-Gott.' And they all moved heavily away. _Bos

locutus est_. 'Bacchus was the wine-god!' This, apparently, is what a

picture tells to one man. To another it presents divine harmonies,

perceptible indeed in nature, but here by the painter-poet for the

first time brought 267together and cadenced in a work of art. For

another it is perhaps the hieroglyph of pent-up passions and desired

impossibilities. For yet another it may only mean the unapproachable

inimitable triumph of consummate craft.

Tintoretto, to be rightly understood, must be sought all over Venice—in

the church as well as the Scuola di San Rocco; in the 'Temptation of S.

Anthony' at S. Trovaso no less than in the Temptations of Eve and

Christ; in the decorative pomp of the Sala del Senato, and in the

Paradisal vision of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. Yet, after all, there

is one of his most characteristic moods, to appreciate which fully we

return to the Madonna dell' Orto. I have called him 'the painter of

impossibilities.' At rare moments he rendered them possible by sheer

imaginative force. If we wish to realise this phase of his creative

power, and to measure our own subordination to his genius in its most

hazardous enterprise, we must spend much time in the choir of this

church. Lovers of art who mistrust this play of the audacious

fancy—aiming at sublimity in supersensual regions, sometimes attaining

to it by stupendous effort or authentic revelation, not seldom sinking

to the verge of bathos, and demanding the assistance of interpretative

sympathy in the spectator—such men will not take the point of view

required of them by Tintoretto in his boldest flights, in the 'Worship

of the Golden Calf' and in the 'Destruction of the World by Water.' It

is for them to ponder well the flying archangel with the scales of

judgment in his hand, and the seraph-charioted Jehovah enveloping Moses

upon Sinai in lightnings.

The gondola has had a long rest. Were Francesco but a little more

impatient, he might be wondering what had become of the padrone. I bid

him turn, and we are soon gliding into the Sacca della Misericordia.

This is a protected float, where the wood which comes from Cadore and

the hills of the 268Ampezzo is stored in spring. Yonder square white

house, standing out to sea, fronting Murano and the Alps, they call the

Oasa degli Spiriti. No one cares to inhabit it; for here, in old days,

it was the wont of the Venetians to lay their dead for a night's rest

before their final journey to the graveyard of S. Michele. So many

generations of dead folk had made that house their inn, that it is now

no fitting home for living men. San Michele is the island close before

Murano, where the Lombardi built one of their most romantically

graceful churches of pale Istrian stone, and where the Campo Santo has

for centuries received the dead into its oozy clay. The cemetery is at

present undergoing restoration. Its state of squalor and abandonment to

cynical disorder makes one feel how fitting for Italians would be the

custom of cremation. An island in the lagoons devoted to funeral pyres

is a solemn and ennobling conception. This graveyard, with its ruinous

walls, its mangy riot of unwholesome weeds, its corpses festering in

slime beneath neglected slabs in hollow chambers, and the mephitic wash

of poisoned waters that surround it, inspires the horror of disgust.

The morning has not lost its freshness. Antelao and Tofana, guarding

the vale above Cortina, show faint streaks of snow upon their amethyst.

Little clouds hang in the still autumn sky. There are men dredging for

shrimps and crabs through shoals uncovered by the ebb. Nothing can be

lovelier, more resting to eyes tired with pictures than this tranquil,

sunny expanse of the lagoon. As we round the point of the Bersaglio,

new landscapes of island and Alp and low-lying mainland move into sight

at every slow stroke of the oar. A luggage-train comes lumbering along

the railway bridge, puffing white smoke into the placid blue. Then we

strike down Cannaregio, and I muse upon processions of kings and

generals and noble strangers, entering Venice by 269this water-path

from Mestre, before the Austrians built their causeway for the trains.

Some of the rare scraps of fresco upon house fronts, still to be seen

in Venice, are left in Cannaregio. They are chiaroscuro allegories in a

bold bravura manner of the sixteenth century. From these and from a few

rosy fragments on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the Fabbriche Nuove, and

precious fading figures in a certain courtyard near San Stefano, we

form some notion how Venice looked when all her palaces were painted.

Pictures by Gentile Bellini, Mansueti, and Carpaccio help the fancy in

this work of restoration. And here and there, in back canals, we come

across coloured sections of old buildings, capped by true Venetian

chimneys, which for a moment seem to realise our dream.

A morning with Tintoretto might well be followed by a morning with

Carpaccio or Bellini. But space is wanting in these pages. Nor would it

suit the manner of this medley to hunt the Lombardi through palaces and

churches, pointing out their singularities of violet and yellow

panellings in marble, the dignity of their wide-opened arches, or the

delicacy of their shallow chiselled traceries in cream-white Istrian

stone. It is enough to indicate the goal of many a pleasant pilgrimage:

warrior angels of Vivarini and Basaiti hidden in a dark chapel of the

Frari; Fra Francesco's fantastic orchard of fruits and flowers in

distant S. Francesco della Vigna; the golden Gian Bellini in S.

Zaccaria; Palma's majestic S. Barbara in S. Maria Formosa; San Giobbe's

wealth of sculptured frieze and floral scroll; the Ponte di Paradiso,

with its Gothic arch; the painted plates in the Museo Civico; and

palace after palace, loved for some quaint piece of tracery, some

moulding full of mediæval symbolism, some fierce impossible Renaissance

freak of fancy.

Bather than prolong this list, I will tell a story which drew 270me one

day past the Public Gardens to the metropolitan Church of Venice, San

Pietro di Castello. The novella is related by Bandello. It has, as will

be noticed, points of similarity to that of 'Romeo and Juliet.'

V.—A VENETIAN NOVELLA

At the time when Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini were painting those

handsome youths in tight jackets, parti-coloured hose, and little round

caps placed awry upon their shocks of well-combed hair, there lived in

Venice two noblemen, Messer Pietro and Messer Paolo, whose palaces

fronted each other on the Grand Canal. Messer Paolo was a widower, with

one married daughter, and an only son of twenty years or thereabouts,

named Gerardo. Messer Pietro's wife was still living; and this couple

had but one child, a daughter, called Elena, of exceeding beauty, aged

fourteen. Gerardo, as is the wont of gallants, was paying his addresses

to a certain lady; and nearly every day he had to cross the Grand Canal

in his gondola, and to pass beneath the house of Elena on his way to

visit his Dulcinea; for this lady lived some distance up a little canal

on which the western side of Messer Pietro's palace looked.

Now it so happened that at the very time when the story opens, Messer

Pietro's wife fell ill and died, and Elena was left alone at home with

her father and her old nurse. Across the little canal of which I spoke

there dwelt another nobleman, with four daughters, between the years of

seventeen and twenty-one. Messer Pietro, desiring to provide amusement

for poor little Elena, besought this gentleman that his daughters might

come on feast-days to play with her. For you must know that, except on

festivals of the Church, the custom of Venice required that gentlewomen

should remain 271closely shut within the private apartments of their

dwellings. His request was readily granted; and on the next feast-day

the five girls began to play at ball together for forfeits in the great

saloon, which opened with its row of Gothic arches and balustraded

balcony upon the Grand Canal. The four sisters, meanwhile, had other

thoughts than for the game. One or other of them, and sometimes three

together, would let the ball drop, and run to the balcony to gaze upon

their gallants, passing up and down in gondolas below; and then they

would drop flowers or ribands for tokens. Which negligence of theirs

annoyed Elena much; for she thought only of the game. Wherefore she

scolded them in childish wise, and one of them made answer, 'Elena, if

you only knew how pleasant it is to play as we are playing on this

balcony, you would not care so much for ball and forfeits!'

On one of those feast-days the four sisters were prevented from keeping

their little friend company. Elena, with nothing to do, and feeling

melancholy, leaned upon the window-sill which overlooked the narrow

canal. And it chanced that just then Gerardo, on his way to Dulcinea,

went by; and Elena looked down at him, as she had seen those sisters

look at passers-by. Gerardo caught her eye, and glances passed between

them, and Gerardo's gondolier, bending from the poop, said to his

master, 'O master! methinks that gentle maiden is better worth your

wooing than Dulcinea.' Gerardo pretended to pay no heed to these words;

but after rowing a little way, he bade the man turn, and they went

slowly back beneath the window. This time Elena, thinking to play the

game which her four friends had played, took from her hair a clove

carnation and let it fall close to Gerardo on the cushion of the

gondola. He raised the flower and put it to his lips, acknowledging the

courtesy with a grave bow. But the perfume of the clove and the beauty

of Elena in that moment 272took possession of his heart together, and

straightway he forgot Dulcinea.

As yet he knew not who Elena was. Nor is this wonderful; for the

daughters of Venetian nobles were but rarely seen or spoken of. But the

thought of her haunted him awake and sleeping; and every feast-day,

when there was the chance of seeing her, he rowed his gondola beneath

her windows. And there she appeared to him in company with her four

friends; the five girls clustering together like sister roses beneath

the pointed windows of the Gothic balcony. Elena, on her side, had no

thought of love; for of love she had heard no one speak. But she took

pleasure in the game those friends had taught her, of leaning from the

balcony to watch Gerardo. He meanwhile grew love-sick and impatient,

wondering how he might declare his passion. Until one day it happened

that, talking through a lane or _calle_ which skirted Messer Pietro'a

palace, he caught sight of Elena's nurse, who was knocking at the door,

returning from some shopping she had made. This nurse had been his own

nurse in childhood; therefore he remembered her, and cried aloud,

'Nurse, Nurse!' But the old woman did not hear him, and passed into the

house and shut the door behind her. Whereupon Gerardo, greatly moved,

still called to her, and when he reached the door, began to knock upon

it violently. And whether it was the agitation of finding himself at

last so near the wish of his heart, or whether the pains of waiting for

his love had weakened him, I know not; but, while he knocked, his

senses left him, and he fell fainting in the doorway. Then the nurse

recognised the youth to whom she had given suck, and brought him into

the courtyard by the help of handmaidens, and Elena came down and gazed

upon him. The house was now full of bustle, and Messer Pietro heard the

noise, and seeing the son of his neighbour in so piteous a plight, he

caused Gerardo 273to be laid upon a bed. But for all they could do with

him, he recovered not from his swoon. And after a while force was that

they should place him in a gondola and ferry him across to his father's

house. The nurse went with him, and informed Messer Paolo of what had

happened. Doctors were sent for, and the whole family gathered round

Gerardo's bed. After a while he revived a little; and thinking himself

still upon the doorstep of Pietro's palace, called again, 'Nurse,

Nurse!' She was near at hand, and would have spoken to him. But while

he summoned his senses to his aid, he became gradually aware of his own

kinsfolk and dissembled the secret of his grief. They beholding him in

better cheer, departed on their several ways, and the nurse still sat

alone beside him. Then he explained to her what he had at heart, and

how he was in love with a maiden whom he had seen on feast-days in the

house of Messer Pietro. But still he knew not Elena's name; and she,

thinking it impossible that such a child had inspired this passion,

began to marvel which of the four sisters it was Gerardo loved. Then

they appointed the next Sunday, when all the five girls should be

together, for Gerardo by some sign, as he passed beneath the window, to

make known to the old nurse his lady.

Elena, meanwhile, who had watched Gerardo lying still and pale in swoon

beneath her on the pavement of the palace, felt the stirring of a new

unknown emotion in her soul. When Sunday came, she devised excuses for

keeping her four friends away, bethinking her that she might see him

once again alone, and not betray the agitation which she dreaded. This

ill suited the schemes of the nurse, who nevertheless was forced to be

content. But after dinner, seeing how restless was the girl, and how

she came and went, and ran a thousand times to the balcony, the nurse

began to wonder whether Elena herself were not in love with some one.

So she feigned to 274sleep, but placed herself within sight of the

window. And soon Gerardo came by in his gondola; and Elena, who was

prepared, threw to him her nosegay. The watchful nurse had risen, and

peeping behind the girl's shoulder, saw at a glance how matters stood.

Thereupon she began to scold her charge, and say, 'Is this a fair and

comely thing, to stand all day at balconies and throw flowers at

passers-by? Woe to you if your father should come to know of this! He

would make you wish yourself among the dead!' Elena, sore troubled at

her nurse's rebuke, turned and threw her arms about her neck, and

called her 'Nanna!' as the wont is of Venetian children. Then she told

the old woman how she had learned that game from the four sisters, and

how she thought it was not different, but far more pleasant, than the

game of forfeits; whereupon her nurse spoke gravely, explaining what

love is, and how that love should lead to marriage, and bidding her

search her own heart if haply she could choose Gerardo for her husband.

There was no reason, as she knew, why Messer Paolo's son should not

mate with Messer Pietro's daughter. But being a romantic creature, as

many women are, she resolved to bring the match about in secret.

Elena took little time to reflect, but told her nurse that she was

willing, if Gerardo willed it too, to have him for her husband. Then

went the nurse and made the young man know how matters stood, and

arranged with him a day, when Messer Pietro should be in the Council of

the Pregadi, and the servants of the palace otherwise employed, for him

to come and meet his Elena. A glad man was Gerardo, nor did he wait to

think how better it would be to ask the hand of Elena in marriage from

her father. But when the day arrived, he sought the nurse, and she took

him to a chamber in the palace, where there stood an image of the

Blessed Virgin. Elena was there, pale and timid; and when the lovers

clasped 275hands, neither found many words to say. But the nurse bade

them take heart, and leading them before Our Lady, joined their hands,

and made Gerardo place his ring on his bride's finger. After this

fashion were Gerardo and Elena wedded. And for some while, by the

assistance of the nurse, they dwelt together in much love and solace,

meeting often as occasion offered.

Messer Paolo, who knew nothing of these things, took thought meanwhile

for his son's career. It was the season when the Signiory of Venice

sends a fleet of galleys to Beirut with merchandise; and the noblemen

may bid for the hiring of a ship, and charge it with wares, and send

whomsoever they list as factor in their interest. One of these galleys,

then, Messer Paolo engaged, and told his son that he had appointed him

to journey with it and increase their wealth. 'On thy return, my son,'

he said, 'we will bethink us of a wife for thee.' Gerardo, when he

heard these words, was sore troubled, and first he told his father

roundly that he would not go, and flew off in the twilight to pour out

his perplexities to Elena. But she, who was prudent and of gentle soul,

besought him to obey his father in this thing, to the end, moreover,

that, having done his will and increased his wealth, he might

afterwards unfold the story of their secret marriage. To these good

counsels, though loth, Gerardo consented. His father was overjoyed at

his son's repentance. The galley was straightway laden with

merchandise, and Gerardo set forth on his voyage.

The trip to Beirut and back lasted usually six months or at the most

seven. Now when Gerardo had been some six months away, Messer Pietro,

noticing how fair his daughter was, and how she had grown into

womanhood, looked about him for a husband for her. When he had found a

youth suitable in birth and wealth and years, he called for Elena,

276and told her that the day had been appointed for her marriage. She,

alas! knew not what to answer. She feared to tell her father that she

was already married, for she knew not whether this would please

Gerardo. For the same reason she dreaded to throw herself upon the

kindness of Messer Paolo. Nor was her nurse of any help in counsel; for

the old woman repented her of what she had done, and had good cause to

believe that, even if the marriage with Gerardo were accepted by the

two fathers, they would punish her for her own part in the affair.

Therefore she bade Elena wait on fortune, and hinted to her that, if

the worst came to the worst, no one need know she had been wedded with

the ring to Gerardo. Such weddings, you must know, were binding; but

till they had been blessed by the Church, they had not taken the force

of a religious sacrament. And this is still the case in Italy among the

common folk, who will say of a man, 'Si, è ammogliato; ma il matrimonio

non è stato benedetto.' 'Yes, he has taken a wife, but the marriage has

not yet been blessed.'

So the days flew by in doubt and sore distress for Elena. Then on the

night before her wedding, she felt that she could bear this life no

longer. But having no poison, and being afraid to pierce her bosom with

a knife, she lay down on her bed alone, and tried to die by holding in

her breath. A mortal swoon came over her; her senses fled; the life in

her remained suspended. And when her nurse came next morning to call

her, she found poor Elena cold as a corpse. Messer Pietro and all the

household rushed, at the nurse's cries, into the room, and they all saw

Elena stretched dead upon her bed undressed. Physicians were called,

who made theories to explain the cause of death. But all believed that

she was really dead, beyond all help of art or medicine. Nothing

remained but to carry her to church for burial instead of marriage.

Therefore, that very evening, a funeral procession 277was formed, which

moved by torchlight up the Grand Canal, along the Riva, past the blank

walls of the Arsenal, to the Campo before San Pietro in Castello. Elena

lay beneath the black felze in one gondola, with a priest beside her

praying, and other boats followed bearing mourners. Then they laid her

in a marble chest outside the church, and all departed, still with

torches burning, to their homes.

Now it so fell out that upon that very evening Gerardo's galley had

returned from Syria, and was anchoring within the port of Lido, which

looks across to the island of Castello. It was the gentle custom of

Venice at that time that, when a ship arrived from sea, the friends of

those on board at once came out to welcome them, and take and give the

news. Therefore many noble youths and other citizens were on the deck

of Gerardo's galley, making merry with him over the safe conduct of his

voyage. Of one of these he asked, 'Whose is yonder funeral procession

returning from San Pietro?' The young man made answer, 'Alas, for poor

Elena, Messer Pietro's daughter! She should have been married this day.

But death took her, and to-night they buried her in the marble monument

outside the church.' A woeful man was Gerardo, hearing suddenly this

news, and knowing what his dear wife must have suffered ere she died.

Yet he restrained himself, daring not to disclose his anguish, and

waited till his friends had left the galley. Then he called to him the

captain of the oarsmen, who was his friend, and unfolded to him all the

story of his love and sorrow, and said that he must go that night and

see his wife once more, if even he should have to break her tomb. The

captain tried to dissuade him, but in vain. Seeing him so obstinate, he

resolved not to desert Gerardo. The two men took one of the galley's

boats, and rowed together toward San Pietro. It was past midnight when

they reached the Campo and broke the marble sepulchre 278asunder.

Pushing back its lid, Gerardo descended into the grave and abandoned

himself upon the body of his Elena. One who had seen them at that

moment could not well have said which of the two was dead and which was

living—Elena or her husband. Meantime the captain of the oarsmen,

fearing lest the watch (set by the Masters of the Night to keep the

peace of Venice) might arrive, was calling on Gerardo to come back.

Gerardo heeded him no whit. But at the last, compelled by his

entreaties, and as it were astonied, he arose, bearing his wife's

corpse in his arms, and carried her clasped against his bosom to the

boat, and laid her therein, and sat down by her side and kissed her

frequently, and suffered not his friend's remonstrances. Force was for

the captain, having brought himself into this scrape, that he should

now seek refuge by the nearest way from justice. Therefore he hoved

gently from the bank, and plied his oar, and brought the gondola apace

into the open waters. Gerardo still clasped Elena, dying husband by

dead wife. But the sea-breeze freshened towards daybreak; and the

captain, looking down upon that pair, and bringing to their faces the

light of his boat's lantern, judged their case not desperate at all. On

Elena's cheek there was a flush of life less deadly even than the

pallor of Gerardo's forehead. Thereupon the good man called aloud, and

Gerardo started from his grief; and both together they chafed the hands

and feet of Elena; and, the sea-breeze aiding with its saltness, they

awoke in her the spark of life.

Dimly burned the spark. But Gerardo, being aware of it, became a man

again. Then, having taken counsel with the captain, both resolved to

bear her to that brave man's mother's house. A bed was soon made ready,

and food was brought; and after due time, she lifted up her face and

knew Gerardo. The peril of the grave was past, but thought had now to

be 279taken for the future. Therefore Gerardo, leaving his wife to the

captain's mother, rowed back to the galley and prepared to meet his

father. With good store of merchandise and with great gains from his

traffic, he arrived in that old palace on the Grand Canal. Then having

opened to Messer Paolo the matters of his journey, and shown him how he

had fared, and set before him tables of disbursements and receipts, he

seized the moment of his father's gladness. 'Father,' he said, and as

he spoke he knelt upon his knees, 'Father, I bring you not good store

of merchandise and bags of gold alone; I bring you also a wedded wife,

whom I have saved this night from death.' And when the old man's

surprise was quieted, he told him the whole story. Now Messer Paolo,

desiring no better than that his son should wed the heiress of his

neighbour, and knowing well that Messer Pietro would make great joy

receiving back his daughter from the grave, bade Gerardo in haste take

rich apparel and clothe Elena therewith, and fetch her home. These

things were swiftly done; and after evenfall Messer Pietro was bidden

to grave business in his neighbour's palace. With heavy heart he came,

from a house of mourning to a house of gladness. But there, at the

banquet-table's head he saw his dead child Elena alive, and at her side

a husband. And when the whole truth had been declared, he not only

kissed and embraced the pair who knelt before him, but of his goodness

forgave the nurse, who in her turn came trembling to his feet. Then

fell there joy and bliss in overmeasure that night upon both palaces of

the Canal Grande. And with the morrow the Church blessed the spousals

which long since had been on both sides vowed and consummated.

280

VI.—ON THE LAGOONS

The mornings are spent in study, sometimes among pictures, sometimes in

the Marcian Library, or again in those vast convent chambers of the

Frari, where the archives of Venice load innumerable shelves. The

afternoons invite us to a further flight upon the water. Both sandolo

and gondola await our choice, and we may sail or row, according as the

wind and inclination tempt us.

Yonder lies San Lazzaro, with the neat red buildings of the Armenian

convent. The last oleander blossoms shine rosy pink above its walls

against the pure blue sky as we glide into the little harbour. Boats

piled with coal-black grapes block the landing-place, for the Padri are

gathering their vintage from the Lido, and their presses run with new

wine. Eustace and I have not come to revive memories of Byron—that

curious patron saint of the Armenian colony—or to inspect the

printing-press, which issues books of little value for our studies. It

is enough to pace the terrace, and linger half an hour beneath the low

broad arches of the alleys pleached with vines, through which the domes

and towers of Venice rise more beautiful by distance.

Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour of stout

rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow strip of land,

and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall—block piled on block—of

Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cunning breathing-places for the

waves to wreak their fury on and foam their force away in fretful

waste. The very existence of Venice may be said to depend sometimes on

these _murazzi_, which were finished at an immense cost by the Republic

in the days of its decadence. The enormous monoliths which compose them

had to be brought across the 281Adriatic in sailing vessels. Of all the

Lidi, that of Malamocco is the weakest; and here, if anywhere, the sea

might effect an entrance into the lagoon. Our gondoliers told us of

some places where the _murazzi_ were broken in a gale, or _sciroccale_,

not very long ago. Lying awake in Venice, when the wind blows hard, one

hears the sea thundering upon its sandy barrier, and blesses God for

the _murazzi_. On such a night it happened once to me to dream a dream

of Venice overwhelmed by water. I saw the billows roll across the

smooth lagoon like a gigantic Eager. The Ducal Palace crumbled, and San

Marco's domes went down. The Campanile rocked and shivered like a reed.

And all along the Grand Canal the palaces swayed helpless, tottering to

their fall, while boats piled high with men and women strove to stem

the tide, and save themselves from those impending ruins. It was a mad

dream, born of the sea's roar and Tintoretto's painting. But this

afternoon no such visions are suggested. The sea sleeps, and in the

moist autumn air we break tall branches of the seeded yellowing

samphire from hollows of the rocks, and bear them homeward in a wayward

bouquet mixed with cobs of Indian-corn.

Fusina is another point for these excursions. It lies at the mouth of

the Canal di Brenta, where the mainland ends in marsh and meadows,

intersected by broad renes. In spring the ditches bloom with

fleurs-de-lys; in autumn they take sober colouring from lilac daisies

and the delicate sea-lavender. Scores of tiny plants are turning

scarlet on the brown moist earth; and when the sun goes down behind the

Euganean hills, his crimson canopy of cloud, reflected on these

shallows, muddy shoals, and wilderness of matted weeds, converts the

common earth into a fairyland of fabulous dyes. Purple, violet, and

rose are spread around us. In front stretches the lagoon, tinted with a

pale light from the east, and beyond this 282pallid mirror shines

Venice—a long low broken line, touched with the softest roseate flush.

Ere we reach the Giudecca on our homeward way, sunset has faded. The

western skies have clad themselves in green, barred with dark

fire-rimmed clouds. The Euganean hills stand like stupendous pyramids,

Egyptian, solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The far reaches

of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those tones of glowing

lilac which are the supreme beauty of Venetian evening. Then, at last,

we see the first lamps glitter 288on the Zattere. The quiet of the

night has come.

Words cannot be formed to express the endless varieties of Venetian

sunset. The most magnificent follow after wet stormy days, when the

west breaks suddenly into a labyrinth of fire, when chasms of clear

turquoise heavens emerge, and horns of flame are flashed to the zenith,

and unexpected splendours scale the fretted clouds, step over step,

stealing along the purple caverns till the whole dome throbs. Or,

again, after a fair day, a change of weather approaches, and high,

infinitely high, the skies are woven over with a web of

half-transparent cirrus-clouds. These in the afterglow blush crimson,

and through their rifts the depth of heaven is of a hard and gemlike

blue, and all the water turns to rose beneath them. I remember one such

evening on the way back from Torcello. We were well out at sea between

Mazzorbo and Murano. The ruddy arches overhead were reflected without

interruption in the waveless ruddy lake below. Our black boat was the

only dark spot in this sphere of splendour. We seemed to hang

suspended; and such as this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an

insect caught in the heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these

melodramatic sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite, perhaps,

are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just one touch of

pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples 283here and there on

the waves below, reminding us that day has passed and evening come. And

beautiful again are the calm settings of fair weather, when sea and sky

alike are cheerful, and the topmost blades of the lagoon grass, peeping

from the shallows, glance like emeralds upon the surface. There is no

deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of light and colour; but

purity, peace, and freshness make their way into our hearts.

VII.—AT THE LIDO

Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most frequent.

It has two points for approach. The more distant is the little station

of San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto. With an ebb-tide, the

water of the lagoon runs past the mulberry gardens of this hamlet like

a river. There is here a grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy,

above deep grass, which even an Italian summer does not wither. The

Riva is fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure up the

personages of a century ago. For San Nicoletto used to be a fashionable

resort before the other points of Lido had been occupied by

pleasure-seekers. An artist even now will select its old-world quiet,

leafy shade, and prospect through the islands of Vignole and Sant'

Erasmo to snow-touched peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than the

glare and bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant'

Elisabetta offers.

But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll along smooth

sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a handful of horned

poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour's contemplation of a

limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, then we seek Sant'

Elisabetta. Our boat is left at the landing-place. We saunter across

the island and back again. 284Antonio and Francesco wait and order

wine, which we drink with them in the shade of the little _osteria's_

wall.

A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to the Lido

was marked by one of those apparitions which are as rare as they are

welcome to the artist's soul. I have always held that in our modern

life the only real equivalent for the antique mythopoeic sense—that

sense which enabled the Hellenic race to figure for themselves the

powers of earth and air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii

of places, under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the

appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who impersonates

for our imagination the essence of the beauty that environs us. It

seems, at such a fortunate moment, as though we had been waiting for

this revelation, although perchance the want of it had not been

previously felt. Our sensations and perceptions test themselves at the

touchstone of this living individuality. The keynote of the whole music

dimly sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in form

and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have painted on our brain,

no longer lack their central figure. The life proper to the complex

conditions we have studied is discovered, and every detail, judged by

this standard of vitality, falls into its right relations.

I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the mystery of the

lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and water, their fretful

risings and sudden subsidence into calm, the treacherousness of their

shoals, the sparkle and the splendour of their sunlight. I had asked

myself how would a Greek sculptor have personified the elemental deity

of these salt-water lakes, so different in quality from the Ægean or

Ionian sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The Tritons

of these shallows must be of other form and lineage than the

fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon 285the curled crest of a

wave, crying aloud to his comrades, as he bears the nymph away to

caverns where the billows plunge in tideless instability.

We had picked up shells and looked for sea-horses on the Adriatic

shore. Then we returned to give our boatmen wine beneath the vine-clad

_pergola_. Four other men were there, drinking, and eating from a dish

of fried fish set upon the coarse white linen cloth. Two of them soon

rose and went away. Of the two who stayed, one was a large, middle-aged

man; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but slender,

for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. Each limb is

equally developed by the exercise of rowing upright, bending all the

muscles to their stroke. Their bodies are elastically supple, with free

sway from the hips and a mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed

these qualities almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to

its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, but moved

with a singular brusque grace. A black broad-brimmed hat was thrown

back upon his matted _zazzera_ of dark hair tipped with dusky brown.

This shock of hair, cut in flakes, and falling wilfully, reminded me of

the lagoon grass when it darkens in autumn upon uncovered shoals, and

sunset gilds its sombre edges. Fiery grey eyes beneath it gazed

intensely, with compulsive effluence of electricity. It was the wild

glance of a Triton. Short blonde moustache, dazzling teeth, skin

bronzed, but showing white and healthful through open front and sleeves

of lilac shirt. The dashing sparkle of this animate splendour, who

looked to me as though the sea-waves and the sun had made him in some

hour of secret and unquiet rapture, was somehow emphasised by a curious

dint dividing his square chin—a cleft that harmonised with smile on lip

and steady flame in eyes. I hardly know what effect it would have upon

a reader to compare eyes to 286opals. Yet Stefano's eyes, as they met

mine, had the vitreous intensity of opals, as though the colour of

Venetian waters were vitalised in them. This noticeable being had a

rough, hoarse voice, which, to develop the parallel with a sea-god,

might have screamed in storm or whispered raucous messages from crests

of tossing billows.

I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem of the

lagoons was humanised; the spirit of the saltwater lakes had appeared

to me; the final touch of life emergent from nature had been given. I

was satisfied; for I had seen a poem.

Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews' cemetery. It is a quiet

place, where the flat grave-stones, inscribed in Hebrew and Italian,

lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with wild grass and poppies. I would

fain believe that no neglect, but rather the fashion of this folk, had

left the monuments of generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet,

knowing nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not affirm

so much. There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which seems to

contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not far from San

Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the unconsecrated dunes.

Acacia-trees sprout amid the monuments, and break the tablets with

their thorny shoots upthrusting from the soil. Where patriarchs and

rabbis sleep for centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and

defile these habitations of the dead:

Corruption most abhorred

Mingling itself with their renownèd ashes.

Some of the grave-stones have been used to fence the towing-path; and

one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew on fair Istrian

marble, which roofed an open drain leading from the stable of a

Christian dog.

287

VIII.—A VENETIAN RESTAURANT

At the end of a long glorious day, unhappy is that mortal whom the

Hermes of a cosmopolitan hotel, white-chokered and white-waistcoated,

marshals to the Hades of the _table-d'hôte_. The world has often been

compared to an inn; but on my way down to this common meal I have, not

unfrequently, felt fain to reverse the simile. From their separate

stations, at the appointed hour, the guests like ghosts flit to a

gloomy gas-lit chamber. They are of various speech and race,

preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity and the waiter

drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof the cook too

frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet—αδου μάγειρος —cook of

the Inferno. And just as we are told that in Charon's boat we shall not

be allowed to pick our society, so here we must accept what fellowship

the fates provide. An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled

to-day from Ruskin's handbooks; an American citizen describing his

jaunt in a gondóla from the railway station; a German shopkeeper

descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and the beauties of the

Marcusplatz; an intelligent æsthete bent on working into clearness his

own views of Carpaccio's genius: all these in turn, or all together,

must be suffered gladly through well-nigh two long hours. Uncomforted

in soul we rise from the expensive banquet; and how often rise from it

unfed!

Far other be the doom of my own friends—of pious bards and genial

companions, lovers of natural and lovely things! Nor for these do I

desire a seat at Florian's marble tables, or a perch in Quadri's

window, though the former supply dainty food, and the latter command a

bird's-eye view of the Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain

humble tavern on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending

little place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a

cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In front lies

a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has been discharging cargo.

Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts and funnels bar the sunset and the

Paduan hills; and from a little front room of the _trattoria_ the view

is so marine that one keeps fancying oneself in some ship's cabin.

Sea-captains sit and smoke beside their glass of grog in the pavilion

and the _caffé_. But we do not seek their company at dinner-time. Our

way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into a paved court.

Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of Japanese spindle-wood in

tubs; and from the walls beneath the window hang cages of all sorts of

birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries,

linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a _barchetta_

with his master, snuffs around. 'Where are Porthos and Aramis, my

friend?' Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail

and pokes his nose into my hand. What a Tartufe's nose it is! Its

bridge displays the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle.

But beneath, this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even

pretend to close on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a

decoration. A little farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no

discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and grace with

which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from the cat one is sure to

find Carlo—the bird-like, bright-faced, close-cropped Venetian urchin,

whose duty it is to trot backwards and forwards between the cellar and

the dining-tables. At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen,

where the black-capped little _padrone_ and the gigantic white-capped

chef are in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of

inspecting the larder—fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables,

289several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild

ducks, chickens, woodcock, &c., according to the season. We select our

dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among the birds

beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which occupies one side of

it. Artists of many nationalities and divers ages frequent this house;

and the talk arising from the several little tables, turns upon points

of interest and beauty in the life and landscape of Venice. There can

be no difference of opinion about the excellence of the _cuisine_, or

about the reasonable charges of this _trattoria_. A soup of lentils,

followed by boiled turbot or fried soles, beefsteak or mutton cutlets,

tordi or beccafichi, with a salad, the whole enlivened with good red

wine or Florio's Sicilian Marsala from the cask, costs about four

francs. Gas is unknown in the establishment. There is no noise, no

bustle, no brutality of waiters, no _ahurissement_ of tourists. And

when dinner is done, we can sit awhile over our cigarette and coffee,

talking until the night invites us to a stroll along the Zattere or a

_giro_ in the gondola.

IX.—NIGHT IN VENICE

Night in Venice! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, unless it be in

winter among the high Alps. But the nights of Venice and the nights of

the mountains are too different in kind to be compared.

There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising, before day

is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of gold on the lagoon

which black boats traverse with the glow-worm lamp upon their prow;

ascending the cloudless sky and silvering the domes of the Salute;

pouring vitreous sheen upon the red lights of the Piazzetta; flooding

the Grand Canal, and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal whiteness;

piercing 290but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of _rio_ linked

with _rio_, through which we wind in light and shadow, to reach once