We left Rome Tuesday at 2 p.m., after a stay of six days, which was
all too short. For one could spend months and months in Rome and
still not see a tithe of what is worth seeing, or even begin to be
weary of a place so rich in all that sages have thought and poets
have dreamed of and artists have wrought and martyrs have bled for
and saints have loved. We leave Rome with regret; feeling as all
must feel in whom there is a spark of Divine Faith, that it is the
City of the Soul, to which, in the words of the poet, "the exile of
the heart" must forever turn.
The run from Rome to Florence is made in five or six hours.
Florence, the city of flowers, is built on both banks of the Arno.
It is a beautiful city much frequented by tourists. It is the
birthplace of many of Italy's greatest sons, of Dante, of Michael
Angelo, of Galileo. Here Savonarola lived and preached and wielded
an influence more potent than that of any civil ruler. We saw, in
one of the palaces of the Medici, the chapel where he spoke his last
words to his brother monks, just before he was led out to be burnt at
the stake in the Piazza of the Signoria, hard by. Here, too, first
saw the light of day one who was the opposite of Savonarola in many
ways, the sweet and gentle Philip Neri. Rome, the city of his
adoption, of which he became the second Apostle, is still filled with
the fragrance of his saintly life.
From Florence we come by rail to Pisa, and thence the same day to
Genoa. From Spezia to the latter city, the railway, skirting the
shores of the Mediterranean, is one series of tunnels. In the
intervals between tunnels we catch glimpses of as beautiful and
picturesque scenery as one could wish to gaze upon--a background of
hills, rising in many places abruptly to a great height, sloping
vineyards, groves of olive, clusters of fruit trees, and, in front,
the waters of the Mediterranean, clear as crystal and mirroring in
their depths the fleecy summer clouds that float in the blue above.
Over all, like a great dome over Nature's own Cathedral, is the sky
of Italy.
"Genoa la Superba"--Genoa the Superb--the Genoese call this city by
the rippling Mediterranean, and well they may. It is, indeed,
superb. In its marble palaces could be entertained to-day, in
princely fashion, all the princes of the earth. It is the richest
city of the peninsula, the great mart of the Mediterranean, the
Liverpool of Italy. From the harbour, where float the flags of all
nations, the city resembles a vast amphitheatre, tier upon tier of
tall buildings rising one above another. Even the urchins in the
street are proud of this queenly city. In the higher part of the
town, away up among the hills, near the marvellous Campo Santo, a
group of them stood talking rapidly, and to me unintelligibly, in
their own Genoese dialect, as we passed by. "Che linguaggio parlate
voi altri?" I asked somewhat bluntly. "Noi," says one of the number,
with a sweep of the hand which took in the other members of the
group, and then pointing proudly with his finger to his breast, "Noi
siamo Genovesi--We are natives of Genoa."
That Campo Santo, by the same token, is one of the wonders of the
world. Truly the dead of Genoa dwell in marble halls, and this city
of the dead is a miracle in marble. Every monument is a work of art.
The pose of that figure, how graceful and natural! Those faces in
marble and bronze, how life-like are they! The dead seem to live in
them again, and to look down at you with their solemn eyes from the
other world.
We loved that hall, tho' white and cold
Those niched shapes of noble mould
A princely people's awful princes,
The grave, severe Genoese of old.
--Tennyson, "The Daisy."
Quieti et Memoriae--you meet it everywhere, this terse and beautiful
epigraph. Recalling the memory of some dear departed one, it
breathes a prayer for that rest after which the human heart ever
hungers here below--that rest which we look for "where beyond these
voices there is peace."
For full nine hundred years, from 900 to 1,800, Genoa maintained
herself an independent Republic. Already six centuries had rolled
over this Old World Republic when the boldest of her sailors embarked
at Palos on his voyage of discovery. "Were it not for him we might
all of us to-day be--Indians," is the curious thought that comes to
one of the pilgrims as he gazes on the massive monument, near the
railway station, which bears the legend in huge letters: