I.

It was after sunset when we arrived in the birthplace of Palladio,

which we found a fair city in the lap of caressing hills. There are

pretty villas upon these slopes, and an abundance of shaded walks and

drives about the houses which were pointed out to us, by the boy who

carried our light luggage from the railway station, as the property of

rich citizens "but little less than lords" in quality. A lovely grove

lay between the station and the city, and our guide not only took us

voluntarily by the longest route through this, but, after reaching

the streets, led us by labyrinthine ways to the hotel, in order, he

afterwards confessed, to show us the city. He was a poet, though in

that lowly walk of life, and he had done well. No other moment of our

stay would have served us so well for a first general impression of

Vicenza as that twilight hour. In its uncertain glimmer we seemed

to get quite back to the dawn of feudal civilization, when Theodoric

founded the great Basilica of the city; and as we stood before

the famous Clock Tower, which rises light and straight as a mast

eighty-two metres into the air from a base of seven metres, the

wavering obscurity enhanced the effect by half concealing the tower's

crest, and letting it soar endlessly upward in the fancy. The Basilica

is greatly restored by Palladio, and the cold hand of that friend of

virtuous poverty in architecture lies heavy upon his native city in

many places. Yet there is still a great deal of Lombardic architecture

in Vicenza; and we walked through one street of palaces in which

Venetian Gothic prevailed, so that it seemed as if the Grand Canal had

but just shrunk away from their bases. When we threw open our window

at the hotel, we found that it overlooked one of the city gates, from

which rose a Ghibelline tower with a great bulging cornice, full of

the beauty and memory of times long before Palladio.

They were rather troublous times, and not to be recalled here in all

their circumstance; but I think it due to Vicenza, which is now little

spoken of, even in Italy, and is scarcely known in America, where her

straw-braid is bought for that of Leghorn, to remind the reader

that the city was for a long time a republic of very independent and

warlike stomach. Before she arrived at that state, however, she had

undergone a great variety of fortunes. The Gauls founded the city

(as I learn from "The Chronicles of Vicenza," by Battista Pagliarino,

published at Vicenza in 1563) when Gideon was Judge in Israel, and

were driven out by the Romans some centuries later. As a matter of

course, Vicenza was sacked by Attila and conquered by Alboin; after

which she was ruled by some lords of her own, until she was made

an imperial city by Henry I. Then she had a government more or less

republican in form till Frederick Barbarossa burnt her, and "wrapped

her in ashes," and gave her to his vicar Ecelino da Romano, who "held

her in cruel tyranny" from 1236 to 1259. The Paduans next ruled

her forty years, and the Veronese seventy-seven, and the Milanese

seventeen years; then she reposed in the arms of the Venetian Republic

till these fell weak and helpless from all the Venetian possessions

at the threat of Napoleon. Vicenza belonged again to Venice during the

brief Republic of 1848, but the most memorable battle of that heroic

but unhappy epoch gave her back to Austria. Now at last, and for the

first time, she is Italian. Vicenza is

"Of kindred that have greatly expiated

And greatly wept,"

and but that I so long fought against Ecelino da Romano, and the

imperial interest in Italy, I could readily forgive her all her past

errors. To us of the Lombard League, it was grievous that she should

remain so doggishly faithful to her tyrant; though it is to be granted

that perhaps fear had as much to do with her devotion as favor. The

defense of 1848 was greatly to her honor, and she took an active part

in that demonstration against the Austrians which endured from 1859

till 1866.

Of the demonstration we travellers saw an amusing phase at the

opera which we attended the evening of our arrival in Vicenza.

"Nabucodonosor" was the piece to be given in the new open-air theatre

outside the city walls, whither we walked under the starlight. It

was a pretty structure of fresh white stucco, oval in form, with some

graceful architectural pretensions without, and within very charmingly

galleried; while overhead it was roofed with a blue dome set with such

starry mosaic as never covered temple or theatre since they used to

leave their houses of play and worship open to the Attic skies. The

old Hebrew story had, on this stage brought so near to Nature, effects

seldom known to opera, and the scene evoked from far-off days the

awful interest of the Bible histories,--the vague, unfigured oriental

splendor--the desert--the captive people by the waters of the river of

Babylon--the shadow and mystery of the prophecies. When the Hebrews,

chained and toiling on the banks of the Euphrates, lifted their voices

in lamentation, the sublime music so transfigured the commonplaceness

of the words, that they meant all deep and unutterable affliction, and

for a while swept away whatever was false and tawdry in the show, and

thrilled our hearts with a rapture rarely felt. Yet, as but a moment

before we had laughed to see Nebuchadnezzar's crown shot off his head

by a squib visibly directed from the side scenes,--at the point when,

according to the libretto, "the thunder roars, and a bolt descends

upon the head of the king,"--so but a moment after some new absurdity

marred the illusion, and we began to look about the theatre at the

audience. We then beheld that act of _dimostrazioni_ which I have

mentioned. In one of the few boxes sat a young and very beautiful

woman in a dress of white, with a fan which she kept in constant

movement. It was red on one side, and green on the other, and gave,

with the white dress, the forbidden Italian colors, while, looked

at alone, it was innocent of offense. I do not think a soul in the

theatre was ignorant of the demonstration. A satisfied consciousness

was reflected from the faces of the Italians, and I saw two Austrian

officers exchange looks of good-natured intelligence, after a glance

at the fair patriot. I wonder what those poor people do, now they

are free, and deprived of the sweet, perilous luxury of defying their

tyrants by constant acts of subtle disdain? Life in Venetia must be

very dull: no more explosion of pasteboard petards; no more treason

in bouquets; no more stealthy inscriptions on the walls--it must be

insufferably dull. _Ebbene, pazienza_! Perhaps Victor Emanuel may

betray them yet.

A spirit of lawless effrontery, indeed, seemed to pervade the whole

audience in the theatre that night at Vicenza, and to extend to the

ministers of the law themselves. There were large placards everywhere

posted, notifying the people that it was forbidden to smoke in the

theatre, and that smokers were liable to expulsion; but except for

ourselves, and the fair patriot in the box, I think every body there

was smoking and the policemen set the example of anarchy by smoking

the longest and worst cigars of all. I am sure that the captive

Hebrews all held lighted cigarettes behind their backs, and that

Nebuchadnezzar, condemned to the grass of the field, conscientiously

gave himself up to the Virginia weed behind the scenes.

Before I fell asleep that night, the moon rose over the top of the

feudal tower, in front of our hotel, and produced some very pretty

effects with the battlements. Early in the morning a regiment of

Croats marched through the gate below the tower, their band playing

"The Young Recruit." These advantages of situation were not charged in

our bill; but, even if they had been, I should still advise my reader

to go, when in Vicenza, if he loves a pleasant landlord and a good

dinner, to the Hotel de la Ville, which he will find almost at his

sole disposition for however long time he may stay. His meals will be

served him in a vast dining-hall, as bare as a barn or a palace, but

for the pleasant, absurd old paintings on the wall, representing, as

I suppose, Cleopatra applying the Asp, Susannah and the Elders, the

Roman Lucrezia, and other moral and appetizing histories. I take it

there is a quaint side-table or two lost midway of the wall, and that

an old woodcut picture of the Most Noble City of Venice hangs over

each. I know that there is a screen at one end of the apartment behind

which the landlord invisibly assumes the head waiter; and I suspect

that at the moment of sitting down at meat, you hear two Englishmen

talking--as they pass along the neighboring corridor--of wine, in

dissatisfied chest-tones. This hotel is of course built round a court,

in which there is a stable and--exposed to the weather--a diligence,

and two or three carriages and a driver, and an ostler chewing straw,

and a pump and a grape-vine. Why the hotel, therefore, does not smell

like a stable, from garret to cellar, I am utterly at a loss to know.

I state the fact that it does not, and that every other hotel in Italy

does smell of stable as if cattle had been immemorially pastured in

its halls, and horses housed in its bed-chambers,--or as if its only

guests were centaurs on their travels.

From the Museo Civico, whither we repaired first in the morning, and

where there are some beautiful Montagnas, and an assortment of good

and bad works by other masters, we went to the Campo Santo, which is

worthy to be seen, if only because of the beautiful Laschi monument by

Vela, one of the greatest modern sculptors. It is nothing more than

a very simple tomb, at the door of which stands a figure in

flowing drapery, with folded hands and uplifted eyes in an attitude

exquisitely expressive of grief. The figure is said to be the portrait

statue of the widow of him within the tomb, and the face is very

beautiful. We asked if the widow was still young, and the custodian

answered us in terms that ought to endear him to all women, if not

to our whole mortal race,--"Oh quite young, yet. She is perhaps fifty

years old."

After the Campo Santo one ought to go to that theatre which Palladio

built for the representation of classic tragedy, and which is perhaps

the perfectest reproduction of the Greek theatre in the world. Alfieri

is the only poet of modern times, whose works have been judged worthy

of this stage, and no drama has been given on it since 1857, when the

"Oedipus Tyrannus" of Sophocles was played. We found it very silent

and dusty, and were much sadder as we walked through its gayly

frescoed, desolate anterooms than we had been in the Campo Santo. Here

used to sit, at coffee and bassett, the merry people who owned the now

empty seats of the theatre,--lord, and lady, and abbé--who affected

to be entertained by the scenes upon the stage. Upon my word, I

should like to know what has become, in the other world, of those poor

pleasurers of the past whose memory makes one so sad upon the scenes

of their enjoyment here! I suppose they have something quite as

unreal, yonder, to satisfy them as they had on earth, and that they

still play at happiness in the old rococo way, though it is hard to

conceive of any fiction outside of Italy so perfect and so entirely

suited to their unreality as this classic theatre. It is a Greek

theatre, for Greek tragedies; but it could never have been for

popular amusement, and it was not open to the air, though it had a

sky skillfully painted in the centre of the roof. The proscenium is a

Greek façade, in three stories, such as never was seen in Greece;

and the architecture of the three streets running back from the

proscenium, and forming the one unchangeable scene of all the dramas,

is--like the statues in the niches and on the gallery inclosing the

auditorium--Greek in the most fashionable Vicentine taste. It must

have been but an operatic chorus that sang in the semicircular space

just below the stage and in front of the audience. Admit and forget

these small blemishes and aberrations, however, and what a marvelous

thing Palladio's theatre is! The sky above the stage is a wonderful

trick, and those three streets--one in the centre and serving as

entrance for the royal persons of the drama, one at the right for

the nobles, and one at the left for the citizens--present unsurpassed

effects of illusion. They are not painted, but modeled in stucco. In

perspective they seem each half a mile long, but entering them you

find that they run back from the proscenium only some fifteen feet,

the fronts of the houses and the statues upon them decreasing in

recession with a well-ordered abruptness. The semicircular gallery

above the auditorium is of stone, and forty statues of marble crown

its colonnade, or occupy niches between the columns.