is true. That their leader, Signor Enrico Ferri, an Italian journalist
and a Senator, is one of the most able men in Italy since the time of
Cavour is equally undeniable. The Socialists are fortunate, too, in
other leading men. Turati, the editor of the _Critica Sociale_,
Pantaleoni, Colajanni, and others are absolutely the hope of Italy at
the present time in the struggle for better conditions. For the
conditions of life in Italy, as regards taxation, the problems of
transit, the government restrictions on agricultural production and on
manufactures, are absolutely intolerable and should not be endured for a
day. The taxation is so exorbitant that it is a marvel Italy is not
depopulated. On land the tax rate is from thirty to fifty per cent; the
income tax is not merely, as one would suppose, levied on a legitimate
income derived from a man's possessions, but is levied on salaries,
ranging from ten to twenty per cent of these, and also, not content with
this unheard-of extortion, the tax is levied on the nature and source
of his salary, and even the smallest wage is thus subject to an income
tax. Again, there is a most absurd tax on salt, which, like sugar and
tobacco, is held as a government monopoly. No poor person living on the
seacoast in Italy is allowed to take even a pail of water from the sea
to his house, as the government assumes that, by evaporation, it might
yield a few grains of salt. The tax on sugar effectually checks an
industry that might be made most profitable, that of putting up fruit in
jams, jellies, and compote, and renders the price of these commodities
absurdly high. Again, when taxes are paid the process is even worse than
the unjust and exorbitant tax itself. No one is allowed to send a check
or postal order; no tax gatherer calls at the home or the office. Each
person must go himself or send a personal representative to a given
place between certain hours. Here stand a long procession, each person
in town going up, filling out pages of written formalities; talking of
each item and discussing it according to the national custom, until the
office hours are over for that day, and often not one-fourth of the
persons waiting have been served. All then must take their chances the
next day, and perhaps even a third or a fourth day,--a loss of time and
energy that in no other country would be tolerated for a moment. But
time has not yet any recognizable value in Italy. Every enterprise and
manufacture is taxed in Italy, and as the returns of these are
inevitably revealed so that no evasion is possible, and as the exactions
of the government consume nearly all the profits, the result is that all
business enterprises are discouraged and that Italy swarms with a great
idle population, while nearly all articles and supplies are imported
from other countries, with the payment of enormous duties, making their
cost far greater, proportionately, than their value.
There are great tracts of country in Southern Italy suitable for tobacco
raising, but (as it is one of the government monopolies) people are
forbidden to raise it; and in private gardens only three plants are
permitted. Again, all industries are crippled, if not paralyzed, by the
tax at the frontier, and also by the tax at every gate of every city. At
every _porta_ in Rome are stationed government officers who scrutinize
every box, basket, and package; and all fruit, eggs, garden stuff,
milk, and commodities of every kind are taxed as they are brought inside
the walls.
The railroads of Italy are, at present, very poor in all facilities of
transit. Within a year the Italian government has "taken over" these
roads and better conditions are promised, which are, alas! not yet in
sight. There are many "counts" to the indictment against the Italian
railroads which are only suitable to adorn the very lowest circles of
the Inferno described by Dante. They are uncleanly; the roadbeds are so
rough that the miserably built compartments jolt and jostle over the
tracks; the seats are so high that the feet can hardly touch the floor,
and the facilities for light and air are as badly managed as is possible
to conceive. As is well known, these are divided into first, second, and
third class, these compartments all being in the same train, and between
the first and second there is little difference save that of price.
Curiously, the price of even second-class travelling in Italy is over
half a cent a mile higher than that of the splendid trains in America,
with their swift time, their smooth roadbeds, their admirable
conveniences in every way. Again, no luggage is carried free, and the
prices asked for it are extortionate beyond words. One may check all his
impedimenta from San Francisco to New York without extra charge; but in
going from Rome to Naples, or from Florence to Genoa to sail, the same
luggage will cost from six to eight dollars to convey it to the steamer.
Again, these railroads pay their employes so poorly that only the most
inefficient service can be retained at all; only those persons who are
the absolute prisoners of poverty will consent to accept such meagrely
paid service.
The Italian government consists, like that of most countries, of an
upper and lower house, the Senate and the House of Deputies. But the
former is rather a matter of miscellaneous honors than one of political
initiative. There is no limit to the number of Senators; they are
created by being named by the King, and the office is for life. If a man
attracts the favorable notice of the King,--because he is a good artist,
engineer, archaeologist, chemist, or financier,--presto, he is liable to
be made a Senator. Canova, the celebrated sculptor, was made a Senator
because, indeed, he was a great artist! There is one condition,
however, that a Senator must be one who pays annually not less than
three thousand lire in taxes. The Senators receive no salary, and their
times of meeting are uncertain and no man's presence is obligatory. The
House of Deputies has five hundred and eight members, all of whom must
be Italian subjects over thirty years of age. They have no salary, but
are given the entire freedom of the realm in all transit on railroads
and steamers. The Chamber of Deputies is largely made up of professional
men, and it is little wonder that the Socialists are demanding an entire
reform in the government of the country. There was never in any country
more defective conditions than now prevail in Italy. The very fact that
the young King is an estimable gentleman, who is personally not in the
least to blame for the prevailing status of unfortunate conditions, is
in one way an added misfortune, as the personal loyalty he justly
inspires militates by so much against the revolution in government which
is so deeply a necessity of Italy before her better and more prosperous
life can begin. It is now a country of stagnation. All Southern and
Central Italy simply lives off its tourists; and every year prices and
fees and extortion in general from the visitors to Italy become greater.
Senator Enrico Ferri, the leader of Socialism in Italy, was born in 1856
in Mantua. He had a university education, was admitted to the bar, and
in 1881 was called to the chair of penal law in the University of
Bologna. The Senator is a scientific Socialist,--a man of the most
exceptional gifts and qualities, and the author of a noted work,
entitled "Criminal Sociology," which is translated into several
languages. Senators Ferri and Lombroso are special friends and also
co-workers.
On taking his seat in the University of Bologna, Professor Ferri
delivered a lecture, entitled "New Horizons in Penal Law," which was a
most impressive effort. In it he said:--
"It was in this inaugural discourse that I affirmed the existence
of the positivist school of criminal law, and assigned to it these
two fundamental rules: First, while the classical schools of
criminal law have always studied the crime and neglected the
criminal, the object of the positivist school was, in the first
place, to study the criminal, so that, instead of the crime being
regarded merely as a juridical fact, it must be studied with the
aid of biology, of psychology, and of criminal statistics as a
natural and social fact, transforming the old criminal law into a
criminal sociology. Secondly, while the classical schools, since
Beccaria and Howard, have fulfilled the historic mission of
decreasing the punishments as a reaction from the severity of the
mediaeval laws, the object of the positivist school is to decrease
the offence by investigating its natural and social causes in order
to apply social remedies more efficacious and more humane than the
penal counteraction, always slow in its effects, especially in its
cellular system, which I have called one of the aberrations of the
nineteenth century."
Such is the man to whom it is no extravagance to allude as one of the
present leaders of progress in Italy. He is in the early prime of mature
life; he is a man of education, culture, great original gifts, and of
sympathies with humanity as wise and judicious as they are liberal and
all-embracing. Scientific Socialism tolerates no lawlessness, no
violence, nor does it, like the so-called Christian Socialism, attempt
to graft impossible conditions on society. It regards the laws of
economics, and it is practicable and possible as well as considerate and
just. And the great inspirer, proclaimer, and leader of scientific
Socialism is Enrico Ferri.
Italy not only inspires the enthusiasm of the lover of beauty in nature
and art, she inspires a vital and abiding interest in all that shall
make for her true progress, and she inspires, as well, absolute faith in
her ultimate future. At present her monarchy is among the most liberal
and progressive of Europe. King Victor Emmanuel is a man of integrity,
of intelligence, and of devotion to the best interests of his country as
he understands these interests to be. If they might be better served by
a more democratic form of government, it is hardly to be asked or
expected that such a view should present itself to an hereditary
monarch. Among the most liberal element there are not wanting men who
believe that for the immediate future the present form of government is
the most feasible. In their conviction Italy is by no means prepared to
be a republic. The masses of the people are uneducated; and a great
work, requiring time, must be effected in the popularization of
intelligence and of instruction, before democratic government could be
adopted. Yet there is no faltering in the outlook on a glorious future.
The noble words of Mazzini still ring in the Italian air: "Walk in
faith, and fear not. Believe, and you will conquer." By way of enforcing
his convictions Mazzini said:--
"Upon a day in the sixteenth century, at Rome, some men bearing the
title of _Inquisitors_, who assumed to derive wisdom and authority
from God himself, were assembled to decree the immobility of the
earth. A prisoner stood before them. His brow was illumined by
genius. He had outstripped time and mankind, and revealed the
secret of a world.
"It was Galileo.
"The old man shook his bold and venerable head. His soul revolted
against the absurd violence of those who sought to force him to
deny the truths revealed to him by God. But his pristine energy was
worn down by long suffering and sorrow; the monkish menace crushed
him. He strove to submit. He raised his hand, he too, to declare
the immobility of the earth. But as he raised his hand, he raised
his weary eyes to that heaven they had searched throughout long
nights to read thereon one line of the universal law; they
encountered a ray of that sun which he so well knew motionless amid
the moving spheres. Remorse entered his heart: an involuntary cry
burst from the believer's soul: _Eppur si muove!_ and yet it moves.
"Three centuries have passed away.
Inquisitors,--inquisition,--absurd theses imposed by force,--all
these have disappeared. Naught remains but the well-established
movement of the earth, and the sublime cry of Galileo floating
above the ages.
"Child of Humanity, raise thy brow to the sun of God, and read upon
the heavens: _It moves._ Faith and action! The future is ours."
"Poetry," added Mazzini, "will teach the young the nobleness of
sacrifice, of constancy, and silence; of feeling one's self alone
without despairing, in an existence of suffering unknown or
misunderstood; in long years of bitterness, wounds, and delusion,
endured without murmur or lament; it will teach them to have faith in
things to come, and to labor unceasingly to hasten their coming, even
though without hope of living to witness their triumph;" and his final
word in this great invocation to the new potencies of the opening future
is an exhortation to believe in all greatness and goodness. "Faith," he
said, "which is intellect, energy, and love, will put an end to the
discords existing in a society which has neither church nor leaders;
which invokes a new world, but forgets to ask its secret, its Word, from
God." In universal education must lie the first national aid to the
development of Italy. "_L'anima del gran mondo e l'allegria._"
As Florence is pre-eminently the city of culture, so is Milan of
activities. Her keynote is _modernite_. The visitor is at once impressed
by her energy, her enterprise, and her commercial prosperity. Milan has
the best municipal facilities and conveniences in all Italy. The
electric lighting of streets, public buildings, and residences, the
street transit, the arrangement and conduct of shops and all industrial
matters, are in such contrast to any other city in Italy as to lead the
sojourner to ask himself whether he can still be on the southern side of
the Alpine range. In the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele Milan has the most
wonderful structure in all Europe. This arcade was built in 1865, and
under the magnificent glass dome it includes nearly one hundred of the
most attractive and well-stocked shops, bazaars, and establishments. The
dome is decorated with frescoes and caryatides, and with the statues of
numbers of eminent men, among whom are Dante, Raphael, Savonarola, and
Cavour. The offices and banks in Milan are centres of incessant energy.
For all this stress of activity the visitor does not, however, forget
the art features; the visit to the antique Church of St. Ambrosio; to
the old convent where Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated fresco, "The Last
Supper," is to be seen, though so faded that it is now difficult to
discern all the figures. Nor does he fail to climb the wonderful
cathedral that lifts its airy grace, as if about to float upward in the
skies. Every flight of the steps, in the ascent, brings one to a new
vision of beauty. On the roof of this cathedral one wanders as in a very
forest of sculpture. Its scheme of decoration includes more than two
thousand statues, two of which are by Canova. From the summit, when the
air is clear, there are beautiful views of the Alps.
To the savant and scholar the Ambrosian library in Milan is one of the
special treasures of Europe. It contains some of the most rare and
valuable manuscripts in the entire world,--some of Virgil's with
annotations from Petrarcha; a manuscript of Dante's; drawings by
Leonardo da Vinci, and other interesting matters of which no other
copies exist.
The Magic Land is seen under its most bewitching spell in the region of
the Italian lakes. The palace of Isola Bella; the charming gardens; the
lake of Como, green-walled in hills whose luxuriant foliage and bloom
form a framework for the white villas that cluster on their terraced
slopes,--all form a very fairyland of ethereal, rose-embowered beauty.
At night the lakes are a strange, unreal world of silver lights and
shadows.
The completion of the Simplon tunnel has opened between Italy and Paris
a route not only offering swifter facilities for transit, but adding
another to the regions of beauty. This route has also still further
increased the commercial importance of Milan, the portal and metropolis
of Northern Italy. Milan has become the national centre of all
scientific and technical pursuits, and it is fairly the Mecca for young
men of Central and Southern Italy who are entering into the professions,
or into civil and electrical engineering and other of the technical arts
and industries.
Bologna, with her historic University, with the long covered arcades of
the streets, the fountain, which is the work of Giovanni di Bologna, and
the gallery where many of Guido's best works are placed, has its
individual interest for the tourist; and Verona, Pavia, Modena, Parma,
and Turin all repay a visit from the leisurely saunterer in Italy.
Pisa offers to the visitor four interesting architectural monuments in
the Duomo, the Baptistery, the Leaning Tower, and the Campo Santo, all
of which are unique. The cathedral has unique designs in its black and
white marbles that render it almost as much an object of artistic study
as is the cathedral in Siena. The view from the summit of the Leaning
Tower reveals the Mediterranean six miles in the distance, gleaming like
a sea of silver. The Campo Santo dates from the thirteenth century,
when the earth of which it is composed was brought (in 1228) from the
holy places in Jerusalem, conveyed to the city (then a seaport) by fifty
galleys sent out by the Republic of Pisa. The interior walls of the
Campo Santo are covered with fresco paintings by Orcagna which are one
of the artistic spectacles of the country in their extravagant portrayal
of theological beliefs, so realistically presented in their dramatic
scenes from Paradise and from Hades, as to leave nothing to the
imagination. The fantasies in this emblematic sculpture of memorial
monuments over a period of seven hundred years can be seen in the Campo
Santo of Pisa,--a strange and often a most grotesque medley.
Genoa is well named La Superba. Her thoroughfares are streets of
palaces. Her terraced gardens and villas, reached by the subterranean
funicular street railway, are regions of unique and incomparable beauty,
with the blue Mediterranean at their feet. Genoa is the paradise for
walking. The streets are largely inaccessible to carriages, but the
admirable street electric railway penetrates every locality. It passes
in dark tunnels under the hills, reappears on the high terraces, and
climbs every height. From the crest of one of these Corsica can often be
seen. All the hill-slopes are a dream of pictorial grandeur, with their
terraces, their palaces, their sculpture, fountains, and flowers. On the
summit of almost every hill there is a fortress, and often ramparts
which are silhouetted, in dark masses, against the sky. Orange groves
abound on the terraces, often showing the golden fruit, buds, and
blossoms all at the same time.
Genoa is fairly a metropolis of sculpture. The great families have
themselves perpetuated in portrait statues rather than in painted
portraits. In one of the grand ducal palaces in the Via Balbi the
visitor may see, not only the life-size statues and the busts of the
family ancestry, but one group comprising nine figures, where three
generations are represented, in both sitting and standing poses,
ingeniously combined.
The churches of Genoa are among the richest in Europe. That of the
Annunziata, the special monument of the Lomellini family, glitters and
gleams with its gold ceilings and rich frescoes. The cathedral has the
special allurement of the emerald dish which King Solomon received as
a gift from the Queen of Sheba. The little "street of the jewellers" is
an alluring place,--so narrow that one can almost stand in the centre of
the road and touch the shop windows on either hand, and these windows
dazzle the eye with their fascinating glitter of gold and silver
filigree work and their rich jewels.
[Illustration: CAMPO SANTO, GENOA
_Page 453_]
Beyond all other curious excursions that even a Magic Land can offer is
that to the Campo Santo of Genoa. A cloistered promenade encloses a
square, and above are terraced colonnades, each and all revealing
statues, and monuments, and groups of sculpture whose varied beauty,
oddity, or bizarre effects are a curious study. Some memorials--as one
of an angel with outstretched wings; another of a flight of angels
bearing the soul away; another combining the figure of Christ with the
cross, and angels hovering near--are full of beauty. Others are a marvel
of ingenious and incongruous combination. One of the latter represents
the man whose memory it commemorates as lying on his bed in his last
illness; the physician stands by, his fingers on the patient's pulse;
on the opposite side a maid is approaching with a dish holding some
article of food, and near the physician are grouped the wife, with a
little child clinging to her skirts; the son, holding his hat with both
hands and looking down on it, and the daughter, a young girl, with her
eyes raised to heaven. Each of these figures is in life size; the bed is
reproduced in marble, with the pillows and all the coverings in the most
absolute realism, and the entire effect is so startling in its bizarre
aspect that one could hardly believe in its existence until by personal
observation he had verified so singular a monument.
Yet there is beauty and symbolic loveliness, too, in many of the
memorial sculptures of this Campo Santo, and turning away from this
cemetery in which lies the body of the noble Mazzini, one hears on the
air the refrain of his words on Dante:--
"It appeared to him of more importance to hasten to accomplish his
mission upon earth, than to meditate upon the inevitable hour which
marks for all men the beginning of a new task. And if at times he
speaks of weariness of life, it is only because he sees evil more
and more triumphant in the places where his mission was appointed.
He concerned himself, not about the length or the shortness of
life, but about the end for which life was given; for he felt God
in life, and knew the creative virtue there is in action."
Eighty thousand people followed Mazzini to his tomb, and his name lives
in the Italy of to-day as one to be associated with that of Dante as
prophet and inspirer.
The enchantment of approaching Genoa from the sea at night is an
experience to remain as one of the pictorial treasures of memory. The
magnificent _lanterna_, the lighthouse with its revolving light, that
can be seen for fifty miles out from the coast; the brilliant
illumination defining the _fortezza_ on the summit of one hill; the
curving lights of the terraced residential district and the illumination
of the very forest of shipping clustered in the bay,--all combine into a
scene not easily effaced from the memories of foreign scenes.
It is only in close relations with Italian literature that Italy can be
adequately enjoyed and that the sojourner may enter into sympathetic
associations with contemporary Italian life. Dr. Richard Garnett
believes that the literature of Italy "is a less exhaustive
manifestation than elsewhere of the intellect of the nation," and that
"the best energies of the country are employed in artistic production.
It is, indeed, remarkable," he continues, "that out of the nine Italians
most brilliantly conspicuous in the first rank of genius and
achievement,--Aquinas, Dante, Columbus, Leonardo, Michael Angelo,
Raphael, Titian, Galileo, Napoleon,--only one should have been a man of
letters."
Contemporary Italian literature follows the trend of the day in
reflecting the life of the people. The novels of Fogazzaro, the poems of
Carducci, the biography and history written by Villari, to say nothing
of several other writers who, while not approaching these authors, have
still a definite place in the literature of the present, offer
illumination on the outer scenery of life, and offer interpretation of
the life itself. Art has declined; literature has advanced in Italy,
even within the past decade. The law of progress is as inevitable as is
the law of gravitation.
"Onward the chariot of the Unvarying moves;
Nor day divulges him nor night conceals;
Thou hear'st the echo of unreturning hooves,
And thunder of irrevocable wheels."
The future of Italy inspires faith in the renewal of its noblest ideals
of achievement. Its ineffable beauty is a heritage of joy to every
visitor who comes under the indescribable spell of its attraction and
finds that, in all the panorama of foreign life which haunts his memory,
it is Italy which shines resplendent as the Magic Land!
INDEX
Accademia des Arcades, Rome, 334.
Accademia di San Luca, oldest art school, 44;
location of, 45;
galleries of, 46, 47, 48.
Acqua Sacra, 428.
Akers, Paul, in Rome, 10;
early death of, 53;
work of, 54, 55;
quoted, 56;
Hawthorne's estimate of, 57.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, quoted, 387.
Allen, Elizabeth Akers, quoted, 53.
Amalfi, 253-257;
destruction of, 258, 259.
Ambrosian library, Milan, 449.
American Academy, Rome, 214.
American Embassy, Rome, location of, 153;
ball at, 164-167;
receptions at, 169.
Anderson, Hendrick Christian, in Rome, 10.