CHAPTER X.

[Sidenote: Italy, 1860.]

We have finished our journey to Italy--the journey I had looked

forward to for years, rather with the hope of the new elements it

would bring to my culture than with the hope of immediate pleasure.

Travelling can hardly be without a continual current of

disappointment, if the main object is not the enlargement of one's

general life, so as to make even weariness and annoyances enter into

the sum of benefit. One great deduction to me from the delight of

seeing world-famous objects is the frequent double consciousness which

tells me that I am not enjoying the actual vision enough, and that,

when higher enjoyment comes with the reproduction of the scenes in my

imagination, I shall have lost some of the details, which impress me

too feebly in the present, because the faculties are not wrought up

into energetic action.

I have no other journal than the briefest record of what we did each

day, so I shall put down my recollections whenever I happen to have

leisure and inclination--just for the sake of making clear to myself

the impressions I have brought away from our three months' travel.

The first striking moment in our journey was when we arrived, I think

about eleven o'clock at night, at the point in the ascent of the Mont

Cenis where we were to quit the diligences and take to the sledges.

After a hasty drink of hot coffee in the roadside inn, our large

party--the inmates of three diligences--turned out into the starlight

to await the signal for getting into the sledges. That signal seemed

to be considerably on in the future--to be arrived at through much

confusion of luggage-lifting, voices, and leading about of mules. The

human bustle and confusion made a poetic contrast with the sublime

stillness of the starlit heavens spread over the snowy table-land and

surrounding heights. The keenness of the air contributed strongly to

the sense of novelty; we had left our every-day, conventional world

quite behind us, and were on a visit to Nature in her private home.

Once closely packed in our sledge, congratulating ourselves that,

after all, we were no more squeezed than in our diligence, I gave

myself up to as many naps as chose to take possession of me, and

actually slept without very considerable interruption till we were

near the summit of the mighty pass. Already there was a faint hint of

the morning in the starlight, which showed us the vast, sloping

snow-fields as we commenced the descent. I got a few glimpses of the

pure, far-stretching whiteness before the sharpening edge of cold

forced us to close the window. Then there was no more to be seen till

it was time to get out of the sledge and ascend the diligence once

more; not, however, without a preliminary struggle with the wind,

which fairly blew me down on my slippery standing-ground. The rest of

our descent showed us fine, varied scenes of mountain and ravine till

we got down at Susa, where breakfast and the railway came as a

desirable variety after our long mountain journey and long fast. One

of our companions had been a gigantic French soldier, who had in

charge a bag of government money. He was my _vis-à-vis_ for some time,

and cramped my poor legs not a little with his precious bag, which he

would by no means part from.

The approach to Turin by the railway gave us a grand view of snowy

mountains surrounding the city on three sides. A few hours of rest

spent there could leave no very vivid impression. A handsome street,

well broken by architectural details, with a glimpse of snowy

mountains at the end of the vista, colonnades on each side, and flags

waving their bright colors in sign of political joy, is the image that

usually rises before me at the mention of Turin. I fancy the said

street is the principal one, but in our walk about the town we saw

everywhere a similar character of prosperous, well-lodged town

existence--only without the colonnades and without the balconies and

other details, which make the principal street picturesque. This is

the place that Alfieri lived in through many of his young follies,

getting tired of it at last for the Piedmontese pettiness of which it

was the centre. And now, eighty years later, it is the centre of a

widening life which may at last become the life of resuscitated Italy.

At the railway station, as we waited to take our departure for Genoa,

we had a sight of the man whose name will always be connected with the

story of that widening life--Count Cavour--"imitant son portrait,"

which we had seen in the shops, with unusual closeness. A man pleasant

to look upon, with a smile half kind, half caustic; giving you

altogether the impression that he thinks of "many matters," but thanks

Heaven and makes no boast of them. He was there to meet the Prince de

Carignan, who was going to Genoa on his way towards Florence by the

same train as ourselves. The prince is a notability with a thick

waist, bound in by a gold belt, and with a fat face, predominated over

by a large mustache--"Non ragionam di lui." The railway journey from

Turin was chiefly distinguished by dust; but I slept through the

latter half, without prejudice, however, to the satisfaction with

which I lay down in a comfortable bedroom in the Hotel Feder.

In Genoa again on a bright, warm spring morning! I was here eleven

years ago, and the image that visit had left in my mind was

surprisingly faithful, though fragmentary. The outlook from our hotel

was nearly the same as before--over a low building with a colonnade,

at the masts of the abundant shipping. But there was a striking change

in the interior of the hotel. It was like the other, a palace adapted

to the purposes of an inn; but be-carpeted and be-furnished with an

exaggeration of English fashion.

We lost no time in turning out, after breakfast, into the morning

sunshine. George was enchanted with the aspect of the place, as we

drove or walked along the streets. It was his first vision of anything

corresponding to his preconception of Italy. After the Adlergasse, in

Nürnberg, surely no streets can be more impressive than the Strada

Nuova and Strada Nuovissima, at Genoa. In street architecture I can

rise to the highest point of the admiration given to the Palladian

style. And here in these chief streets of Genoa the palaces have two

advantages over those of Florence: they form a series, creating a

general impression of grandeur of which each particular palace gets

the benefit; and they have the open gateway, showing the _cortile_

within--sometimes containing grand stone staircases. And all this

architectural splendor is accompanied with the signs of actual

prosperity. Genova la Superba is not a name of the past merely.

We ascended the tower of Santa Maria di Carignano to get a panoramic

view of the city, with its embosoming hills and bay--saw the

cathedral, with its banded black-and-white marble--the churches of the

Annunziata and San Ambrogio, with their wealth of gilding and rich

pink-brown marbles--the Palazzo Rosso, with its collection of

eminently forgettable pictures--and the pretty gardens of the Palazzo

Doria, with their flourishing green close against the sea.

A drive in the direction of the Campo Santo, along the dry, pebbly bed

of the river, showed us the terraced hills planted with olives, and

many picturesque groups of the common people with mules or on carts;

not to mention what gives beauty to every corner of the inhabited

world--the groups of children squatting against walls or trotting

about by the side of their elders or grinning together over their

play.

One of the personages we were pleased to encounter in the streets here

was a quack--a Dulcamara--mounted on his carriage and holding forth

with much _brio_ before proceeding to take out the tooth of a negro,

already seated in preparation.

We left Genoa on the second evening--unhappily, a little too long

after sundown, so that we did not get a perfect view of the grand city

from the sea. The pale starlight could bring out no color. We had a

prosperous passage to Leghorn.

Leghorn on a brilliant, warm morning, with five or six hours before us

to fill as agreeably as possible! Of course, the first thought was to

go to Pisa, but the train would not start till eleven; so, in the

meantime, we took a drive about the prosperous-looking town, and saw

the great reservoir which receives the water brought from the distant

mountains; a beautiful and interesting sight--to look into the glassy

depth and see columns and grand arches reflected as if in mockery and

frustration of one's desire to see the bottom. But in one corner the

light fell so as to reveal that reality instead of the beautiful

illusion. On our way back we passed the Hebrew synagogue, and were

glad of our coachman's suggestion that we should enter, seeing it was

the Jews' Sabbath.

At Pisa we took a carriage and drove at once to the cathedral, seeing

as we went the well-looking lines of building on each side of the

Arno.

A wonderful sight is that first glimpse of the cathedral, with the

leaning campanile on one side and the baptistery on the other, green

turf below, and a clear, blue sky above! The structure of the

campanile is exquisitely light and graceful--tier above tier of small

circular arches, supported by delicate, round pillars narrowing

gradually in circumference, but very slightly, so that there is no

striking difference of size between the base and summit. The campanile

is all of white marble, but the cathedral has the bands of black and

white, softened in effect by the yellowing which time has given to the

white. There is a family likeness among all these structures: they all

have the delicate little colonnades and circular arches. But the

baptistery has stronger traits of the Gothic style in the pinnacles

that crown the encircling colonnade.

After some dusty delay outside the railway station we set off back

again to Livorno, and forthwith got on board our steamboat again--to

awake next morning (being Palm-Sunday) at Civita Vecchia. Much waiting

before we were allowed to land; and again much waiting for the clumsy

process of "visiting" our luggage. I was amused while sitting at the

_Dogana_, where almost every one was cross and busy, to see a dog

making his way quietly out with a bone in his mouth.

Getting into our railway carriage, our _vis-à-vis_--a stout, amiable,

intelligent Livornian, with his wife and son, named Dubreux--exclaimed,

"C'en est fini d'un peuple qui n'est pas capable de changer une bêtise

comme ça!" George got into pleasant talk with him, and his son, about

Edinburgh and the scientific men there--the son having been there for

some time in order to go through a course of practical science. The

father was a naturalist--an entomologist, I think.

It was an interesting journey from Civita Vecchia to Rome: at first, a

scene of rough, hilly character, then a vast plain, frequently marshy,

crowded with asphodels, inhabited by buffaloes; here and there a

falcon or other slow, large-winged bird floating and alighting.

At last we came in sight of Rome, but there was nothing imposing to be

seen. The chief object was what I afterwards knew to be one of the

aqueducts, but which I then, in the vagueness of my conceptions,

guessed to be the ruins of baths. The railway station where we

alighted looked remote and countrified; only the omnibuses and one

family carriage were waiting, so that we were obliged to take our

chance in one of the omnibuses--that is, the chance of finding no

place left for us in the hotels. And so it was. Every one wanted to go

to the Hotel d'Angleterre, and every one was disappointed. We, at

last, by help of some fellow-travellers, got a small room _au

troisième_ at the Hotel d'Amérique; and as soon as that business was

settled we walked out to look at Rome--not without a rather heavy load

of disappointment on our minds from the vision we had of it from the

omnibus windows. A weary length of dirty, uninteresting streets had

brought us within sight of the dome of St. Peter's, which was not

impressive, seen in a peeping, makeshift manner, just rising above the

houses; and the Castle of St. Angelo seemed but a shabby likeness of

the engravings. Not one iota had I seen that corresponded with my

preconceptions.

Our hotel was in the Strada Babuino, which leads directly from the

Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza di Spagna. We went to the latter for

our first walk, and arriving opposite the high, broad flights of stone

steps which lead up to the Trinità di Monte, stopped for the first

time with a sense that here was something not quite common and ugly.

But I think we got hardly any farther, that evening, than the tall

column at the end of the piazza, which celebrates the final settlement

by Pius IX. of the Virgin's Immaculate Conception. Oh, yes; I think we

wandered farther among narrow and ugly streets, and came into our

hotel again still with some dejection at the probable relation our

"Rome visited" was to bear to our "Rome unvisited."

Discontented with our little room at an extravagant height of stairs

and price, we found and took lodgings the next day in the Corso

opposite St. Carlo, with a well-mannered Frenchman named Peureux and

his little, dark, Italian wife--and so felt ourselves settled for a

month. By this time we were in better spirits; for in the morning we

had been to the Capitol (Campidoglio, the modern variant for

Capitolium), had ascended the tower, and had driven to the Coliseum.

The scene, looking along the Forum to the Arch of Titus, resembled

strongly that mixture of ruined grandeur with modern life which I had

always had in my imagination at the mention of Rome. The approach to

the Capitol from the opposite side is also impressive: on the right

hand the broad, steep flight of steps leading up to the Church and

Monastery of Ara Coeli, placed, some say, on the site of the Arx; in

the front a less steep flight of steps _à cordon_ leading to that

lower, flatter portion of the hill which was called the

_Intermontium_, and which now forms a sort of piazza, with the

equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the centre, and on three sides

buildings designed, or rather modified, by Michael Angelo--on the left

the Museum, on the right the Museo dei Conservatori, and, on the side

opposite the steps, the building devoted to public offices (Palazzo

dei Senatori), in the centre of which stands the tower. On each hand,

at the summit of the steps, are the two Colossi, less celebrated but

hardly less imposing in their calm grandeur than the Colossi of the

Quirinal. They are strangely streaked and disfigured by the blackening

weather; but their large-eyed, mild might gives one a thrill of awe,

half like what might have been felt by the men of old who saw the

divine twins watering their steeds when they brought the news of

victory.

Perhaps the world can hardly offer a more interesting outlook than

that from the tower of the Capitol. The eye leaps first to the

mountains that bound the Campagna--the Sabine and Alban Hills and the

solitary Soracte farther on to the left. Then, wandering back across

the Campagna, it searches for the Sister Hills, hardly distinguishable

now as hills. The Palatine is conspicuous enough, marked by the ruins

of the Palace of the Cæsars, and rising up beyond the extremity of the

Forum. And now, once resting on the Forum, the eye will not readily

quit the long area that begins with the Clivus Capitolinus and extends

to the Coliseum--an area that was once the very focus of the world.

The Campo Vaccino, the site probably of the Comitium, was this first

morning covered with carts and animals, mingling a simple form of

actual life with those signs of the highly artificial life that had

been crowded here in ages gone by: the three Corinthian pillars at the

extremity of the Forum, said to have belonged to the Temple of Jupiter

Stator; the grand temple of Antoninus and Faustina; the white arch of

Titus; the Basilica of Constantine; the temple built by Adrian, with

its great, broken granite columns scattered around on the green,

rising ground; the huge arc of the Coliseum and the arch of

Constantine.

The scenes of these great relics remained our favorite haunt during

our stay at Rome; and one day, near the end of it, we entered the

enclosure of the Clivus Capitolinus and the excavated space of the

Forum. The ruins on the Clivus--the façade of massive columns on the

right, called the temple of Vespasian; the two Corinthian columns,

called the temple of Saturn, in the centre; and the arch of Septimius

Severus on the left--have their rich color set off by the luxuriant

green, clothing the lower masonry, which formed the foundations of the

crowded buildings on this narrow space, and, as a background to them

all, the rough solidity of the ancient wall forming the back of the

central building on the Intermontium, and regarded as one of the few

remains of Republican constructions. On either hand, at another angle

from the arch, the ancient road forming the double ascent of the

Clivus is seen, firm and level, with its great blocks of pavement. The

arch of Septimius Severus is particularly rich in color; and the

poorly executed bas-reliefs of military groups still look out in the

grotesque completeness of attitude and expression, even on the sides

exposed to the weather. From the Clivus a passage, underneath the

present road, leads into the Forum, whose immense pinkish granite

columns lie on the weather-worn white marble pavement. The column of

Phocas, with its base no longer "buried," stands at the extreme corner

nearest the Clivus; and the three elegant columns of the temple (say

some) of Jupiter Stator, mark the opposite extremity; between lie

traces, utterly confused to all but erudite eyes, of marble steps and

of pedestals stripped of their marble.

Let me see what I most delighted in, in Rome. Certainly this drive

from the Clivus to the Coliseum was, from first to last, one of the

chief things; but there are many objects and many impressions of

various kinds which I can reckon up as of almost equal interest: the

Coliseum itself, with the view from it; the drive along the Appian Way

to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and the view from thence of the

Campagna bridged by the aqueduct; the baths of Titus, with the

remnants of their arabesques, seen by the light of torches, in the now

damp and gloomy spaces; the glimpse of the Tarpeian rock, with its

growth of cactus and rough herbage; the grand, bare arch brickwork of

the Palace of the Cæsars rising in huge masses on the Palatine; the

theatre of Marcellus bursting suddenly into view from among the

crowded mean houses of the modern city, and still more the Temple of

Minerva and Temple of Nerva, also set in the crowded city of the

present; and the exterior of the Pantheon, if it were not marred by

the Papal belfries--these are the traces of ancient Rome that have

left the strongest image of themselves in my mind. I ought not to

leave out Trajan's column, and the forum in which it stands; though

the severe cold tint of the gray granite columns, or fragments of

columns, gave this forum rather a dreary effect to me. For vastness

there is perhaps nothing more impressive in Rome than the Baths of

Caracalla, except the Coliseum; and I remember that it was among them

that I first noticed the lovely effect of the giant fennel, luxuriant

among the crumbling brickwork.

Among the ancient sculptures I think I must place on a level the

Apollo, the Dying Gladiator, and the Lateran Antinous: they affected

me equally in different ways. After these I delighted in the Venus of

the Capitol, and the Kissing Children in the same room; the Sophocles

at the Lateran Museum; the Nile; the black, laughing Centaur at the

Capitol; the Laughing Faun in the Vatican; and the _Sauroktonos_, or

Boy with the Lizard, and the sitting statue called Menander. The Faun

of Praxiteles, and the old Faun with the infant Bacchus, I had already

seen at Munich, else I should have mentioned them among my first

favorites. Perhaps the greatest treat we had at the Vatican was the

sight of a few statues, including the Apollo, by torchlight--all the

more impressive because it was our first sight of the Vatican. Even

the mere hurrying along the vast halls, with the fitful torchlight

falling on the innumerable statues and busts and bas-reliefs and

sarcophagi, would have left a sense of awe at these crowded, silent

forms which have the solemnity of suddenly arrested life. Wonderfully

grand these halls of the Vatican are; and there is but one complaint

to be made against the home provided for this richest collection of

antiquities--it is that there is no historical arrangement of them,

and no catalogue. The system of classification is based on the history

of their collection by the different popes, so that for every other

purpose but that of securing to each pope his share of glory, it is a

system of helter-skelter.

Of Christian Rome, St. Peter's is, of course, the supreme wonder. The

piazza, with Bernini's colonnades, and the gradual slope upward to the

mighty temple, gave me always a sense of having entered some

millennial new Jerusalem, where all small and shabby things were

unknown. But the exterior of the cathedral itself is even ugly; it

causes a constant irritation by its partial concealment of the dome.

The first impression from the interior was, perhaps, at a higher pitch

than any subsequent impression, either of its beauty or vastness; but

then, on later visits, the lovely marble, which has a tone at once

subdued and warm, was half-covered with hideous red drapery. There is

hardly any detail one cares to dwell on in St. Peter's. It is

interesting, for once, to look at the mosaic altar-pieces, some of

which render with marvellous success such famous pictures as the

Transfiguration, the Communion of St. Jerome, and the Entombment or

Disentombment of St. Petronilla. And some of the monuments are worth

looking at more than once, the chief glory of that kind being Canova's

Lions. I was pleased one day to watch a group of poor people looking

with an admiration that had a half-childish terror in it at the

sleeping lion, and with a sort of daring air thrusting their fingers

against the teeth of the waking "mane-bearer."

We ascended the dome near the end of our stay, but the cloudy horizon

was not friendly to our distant view, and Rome itself is ugly to a

bird's-eye contemplation. The chief interest of the ascent was the

vivid realization it gave of the building's enormous size, and after

that the sight of the inner courts and garden of the Vatican.

Our most beautiful view of Rome and the Campagna was one we had much

earlier in our stay, before the snow had vanished from the mountains;

it was from the terrace of the Villa Pamfili Doria.

Of smaller churches I remember especially Santa Maria degli Angeli, a

church formed by Michael Angelo by additions to the grand hall in the

Baths of Diocletian--the only remaining hall of ancient Rome; and the

Church of San Clemente, where there is a chapel painted by Masaccio,

as well as a perfect specimen of the ancient enclosure near the

tribune, called the presbytery, with the _ambones_ or pulpits from

which the lessons and gospel were read. Santa Maria Maggiore is an

exquisitely beautiful basilica, rich in marbles from a pagan temple;

and the reconstructed San Paolo fuori le Mura is a wonder of wealth

and beauty, with its lines of white-marble columns--if one could

possibly look with pleasure at such a perverted appliance of money and

labor as a church built in an unhealthy solitude. After St. Peter's,

however, the next great monument of Christian art is the Sistine

Chapel; but since I care for the chapel solely for the sake of its

ceiling, I ought rather to number it among my favorite paintings than

among the most memorable buildings. Certainly this ceiling of Michael

Angelo's is the most wonderful fresco in the world. After it come

Raphael's School of Athens and Triumph of Galatea, so far as Rome is

concerned. Among oil-paintings there I like best the Madonna di

Foligno, for the sake of the cherub who is standing and looking

upward; the Perugino also, in the Vatican, and the pretty

Sassoferrato, with the clouds budding angels; at the Barberini Palace,

Beatrice Cenci, and Una Schiava, by Titian; at the Sciarra Palace, the

Joueurs de Violon, by Raphael, another of Titian's golden-haired

women, and a sweet Madonna and Child with a bird, by Fra Bartolomeo;

at the Borghese Palace, Domenichino's Chase, the Entombment, by

Raphael, and the Three Ages--a copy of Titian, by Sassoferrato.

We should have regretted entirely our efforts to get to Rome during

the Holy Week, instead of making Florence our first resting-place, if

we had not had the compensation for wearisome, empty ceremonies and

closed museums in the wonderful spectacle of the illumination of St.

Peter's. That, really, is a thing so wondrous, so magically beautiful,

that one can't find in one's heart to say it is not worth doing. I

remember well the first glimpse we had as we drove out towards it, of

the outline of the dome like a new constellation on the black sky. I

thought _that_ was the final illumination, and was regretting our

tardy arrival, from the _détour_ we had to make, when, as our carriage

stopped in front of the cathedral, the great bell sounded, and in an

instant the grand illumination flashed out and turned the outline of

stars into a palace of gold. Venus looked out palely.

One of the finest positions in Rome is the Monte Cavallo (the

Quirinal), the site of the pope's palace, and of the fountain against

which are placed the two Colossi--the Castor and Pollux, ascribed,

after a lax method of affiliation, to Phidias and Praxiteles. Standing

near this fountain one has a real sense of being on a hill; city and

distant ridge stretching below. Close by is the Palazzo Rospigliosi,

where we went to see Guido's Aurora.

Another spot where I was struck with the view of modern Rome (and

_that_ happened rarely) was at San Pietro in Vincoli, on the

Esquiline, where we went to see Michael Angelo's Moses. Turning round

before one enters the church, a palm-tree in the high foreground

relieves very picturesquely the view of the lower distance. The Moses

did not affect me agreeably; both the attitude and the expression of

the face seemed to me, in that one visit, to have an exaggeration that

strained after effect without reaching it. The failure seemed to me of

this kind: Moses was an angry man trying to frighten the people by his

mien, instead of being rapt by his anger, and terrible without

self-consciousness. To look at the statue of Christ, after the other

works of Michael Angelo at Rome, was a surprise; in this the fault

seems to incline slightly to the namby-pamby. The Pietà in St. Peter's

has real tenderness in it.

The visit to the Farnesina was one of the most interesting among our

visits to Roman palaces. It is here that Raphael painted the Triumph

of Galatea, and here this wonderful fresco is still bright upon the

wall. In the same room is a colossal head, drawn by Michael Angelo

with a bit of charcoal, by way of _carte-de-visite_, one day that he

called on Daniele di Volterra, who was painting detestably in this

room, and happened to be absent. In the entrance-hall, preceding the

Galatea room, are the frescoes by Raphael representing the story of

Cupid and Psyche; but we did not linger long to look at them, as they

disappointed us.

We visited only four artists' studios in Rome: Gibson's, the sculptor;

Frey's, the landscape painter; Riedel's, genre painter, and

Overbeck's. Gibson's was entirely disappointing to me, so far as his

own sculptures are concerned; except the Cacciatore, which he sent to

the Great Exhibition, I could see nothing but feeble imitations of the

antique--no spontaneity and no vigor. Miss Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci is

a pleasing and new conception; and her little Puck a bit of humor that

one would like to have if one were a grand seigneur.

Frey is a very meritorious landscape painter--finished in execution

and poetic in feeling. His Egyptian scenes--the Simoon, the Pair in

the Light of Sunset, and the Island of Philæ--are memorable pictures;

so is the View of Athens, with its blue, island-studded sea. Riedel

interested us greatly with his account of the coincidence between the

views of light and colors at which he had arrived through his artistic

experience, and Goethe's theory of colors, with which he became

acquainted only after he had thought of putting his own ideas into

shape for publication. He says the majority of painters continue their

work when the sun shines from the north--they paint with _blue_ light.

But it was our visit to Overbeck that we were most pleased not to have

missed. The man himself is more interesting than his pictures: a

benevolent calm and quiet conviction breathes from his person and

manners. He has a thin, rather high-nosed face, with long gray hair,

set off by a maroon velvet cap, and a gray scarf over his shoulders.

Some of his cartoons pleased me: one large one of our Saviour passing

from the midst of the throng who were going to cast him from the brow

of the hill at Capernaum--one foot resting on a cloud borne up by

cherubs; and some smaller round cartoons representing the Parable of

the Ten Virgins, and applying it to the function of the artist.

We drove about a great deal in Rome, but were rather afflicted in our

drives by the unending walls that enclose everything like a garden,

even outside the city gates. First among our charming drives was that

to the Villa Pamfili Doria--a place which has the beauties of an

English park and gardens, with views such as no English park can show;

not to speak of the columbarium or ancient Roman burying-place, which

has been disinterred in the grounds. The compactest of all

burying-places must these columbaria be: little pigeon-holes, tier

above tier, for the small urns containing the ashes of the dead. In

this one traces of peacocks and other figures in fresco, ornamenting

the divisions between the rows, are still visible. We sat down in the

sunshine by the side of the water, which is made to fall in a cascade

in the grounds fronting the house, and then spreads out into a

considerable breadth of mirror for the plantation on the slope which

runs along one side of it. On the opposite side is a broad, grassy

walk, and here we sat on some blocks of stone, watching the little

green lizards. Then we walked on up the slope on the other side, and

through a grove of weird ilexes, and across a plantation of tall

pines, where we saw the mountains in the far distance. A beautiful

spot! We ought to have gone there again.

Another drive was to the Villa Albani, where, again, the view is

grand. The precious sculptures once there are all at Munich now; and

the most remarkable remnants of the collection are the bas-relief of

Antinous, and the Æsop. The Antinous is the least beautiful of all the

representations of that sad loveliness that I have seen--be it said in

spite of Winckelmann; attitude and face are strongly Egyptian. In an

outside pavilion in the garden were some interesting examples of Greek

masks.

Our journey to Frascati by railway was fortunate. The day was fine,

except, indeed, for the half hour that we were on the heights of

Tusculum, and longed for a clear horizon. But the weather was so

generally gloomy during our stay in Rome that we were "thankful for

small mercies" in the way of sunshine. I enjoyed greatly our excursion

up the hill on donkey-back to the ruins of Tusculum--in spite of our

loquacious guide, who exasperated George. The sight of the Campagna on

one side, and of Mount Algidus, with its snow-capped fellows, and

Mount Albano, with Rocca di Papa on its side, and Castel Gandolfo

below on the other side, was worth the trouble--to say nothing of the

little theatre, which was the most perfect example of an ancient

theatre I had then seen in that pre-Pompeian period of my travels.

After lunching at Frascati we strolled out to the Villa Aldobrandini,

and enjoyed a brighter view of the Campagna in the afternoon sunlight.

Then we lingered in a little croft enclosed by plantations, and

enjoyed this familiar-looking bit of grass with wild-flowers perhaps

more, even, than the greatest novelties. There are fine plantations on

the hill behind the villa, and there we wandered till it was time to

go back to the railway. A literally grotesque thing in these

plantations is the opening of a grotto in the hillside, cut in the

form of a huge Greek comic mask. It was a lovely walk from the town

downward to the railway station--between the olive-clad slopes looking

towards the illimitable plain. Our best view of the aqueducts was on

this journey, but it was the tantalizing sort of view one gets from a

railway carriage.

Our excursion to Tivoli, reserved till nearly the end of our stay,

happened on one of those cruel, seductive days that smile upon you at

five o'clock in the morning, to become cold and cloudy at eight, and

resolutely rainy at ten. And so we ascended the hill through the

vast, venerable olive grove, thinking what would be the effect of

sunshine among those gray, fantastically twisted trunks and boughs;

and paddled along the wet streets under umbrellas to look at the

Temple of the Sibyl, and to descend the ravine of the waterfalls. Yet

it was enjoyable; for the rain was not dense enough to shroud the near

view of rock and foliage. We looked for the first time at a rock of

Travertine, with its curious petrified vegetable forms, and lower down

at a mighty cavern, under which the smaller cascade rushes--an awful

hollow in the midst of huge, rocky masses. But--rain, rain, rain! No

possibility of seeing the Villa of Hadrian, chief wonder of Tivoli:

and so we had our carriage covered up and turned homeward in despair.

The last week of our stay we went for the first time to the

picture-gallery of the Capitol, where we saw the famous Guercino--the

Entombment of Petronilla--which we had already seen in mosaic at St.

Peter's. It is a stupendous piece of painting, about which one's only

feeling is that it might as well have been left undone. More

interesting is the portrait of Michael Angelo, by himself--a deeply

melancholy face. And there is also a picture of a bishop, by Giovanni

Bellini, which arrested us a long while. After these, I remember most

distinctly Veronese's Europa, superior to that we afterwards saw at

Venice; a delicious mythological Poussin, all light and joy; and a

Sebastian, by Guido, exceptionally beautiful among the many detestable

things of his in this gallery.

The Lateran Museum, also, was a sight we had neglected till this last

week, though it turned out to be one of the most memorable. In the

classical museum are the great Antinous, a Bacchus, and the

Sophocles; besides a number of other remains of high interest,

especially in the department of architectural decoration. In the

museum of Christian antiquities there are, besides sculptures, copies

of the frescoes in the Catacombs--invaluable as a record of those

perishable remains. If we ever go to Rome again the Lateran Museum

will be one of the first places I shall wish to revisit.

We saw the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, on the Appian Way--the long,

dark passages, with great oblong hollows in the rock for the bodies

long since crumbled, and the one or two openings out of the passages

into a rather wider space, called chapels, but no indications of

paintings or other detail--our monkish guide being an old man, who

spoke with an indistinct grunt that would not have enlightened us if

we had asked any questions. In the church through which we entered

there is a strangely barbarous reclining statue of St. Sebastian, with

arrows sticking all over it.

A spot that touched me deeply was Shelley's grave. The English

cemetery in which he lies is the most attractive burying-place I have

seen. It lies against the old city walls, close to the Porta San Paolo

and the pyramid of Caius Cestius--one of the quietest spots of old

Rome. And there, under the shadow of the old walls on one side, and

cypresses on the other, lies the _Cor cordium_, forever at rest from

the unloving cavillers of this world, whether or not he may have

entered on other purifying struggles in some world unseen by us. The

grave of Keats lies far off from Shelley's, unshaded by wall or trees.

It is painful to look upon, because of the inscription on the stone,

which seems to make him still speak in bitterness from his grave.[11]

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th April, 1860.]

A wet day for the first time since we left Paris! That assists our

consciences considerably in urging us to write our letters on this

fourth day at Rome, for I will not pretend that writing a letter, even

to you, can be anything more alluring than a duty when there is a blue

sky over the Coliseum and the Arch of Constantine, and all the other

marvels of this marvellous place. Since our arrival, in the middle of

Sunday, I have been gradually rising from the depth of disappointment

to an intoxication of delight; and that makes me wish to do for you

what no one ever did for me--warn you that you must expect no grand

impression on your first entrance into Rome, at least, if you enter it

from Civita Vecchia. My heart sank, as it would if you behaved

shabbily to me, when I looked through the windows of the omnibus as it

passed through street after street of ugly modern Rome, and in that

mood the dome of St. Peter's and the Castle of St. Angelo--the only

grand objects on our way--could only look disappointing to me. I

believe the impression on entering from the Naples side is quite

different; there one must get a glimpse of the broken grandeur and

Renaissance splendor that one associates with the word "Rome." So keep

up your spirits in the omnibus when your turn comes, and believe that

you will mount the Capitol the next morning, as we did, and look out

on the Forum and the Coliseum, far on to the Alban mountains, with

snowy Apennines behind them, and feel--what I leave you to imagine,

because the rain has left off, and my husband commands me to put on my

bonnet. (Two hours later.) Can you believe that I have not had a

headache since we set out? But I would willingly have endured more

than one to be less anxious than I am about Mr. Lewes's health. Now

that we are just come in from our walk to the Pantheon he is obliged

to lie down with terrible oppression of the head; and since we have

been in Rome he has been nearly deaf on one side. That is the dark

"crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air" just now; everything else

in our circumstances here is perfect. We are glad to have been driven

into apartments, instead of remaining at the hotel, as we had

intended; for we enjoy the abundance of room and the quiet that belong

to this mode of life, and we get our cooking and all other comforts in

perfection at little more than a third of the hotel prices. Most of

the visitors to Rome this season seem to come only for a short stay;

and, as apartments can't be taken for less than a month, the hotels

are full and the lodgings are empty. Extremely unpleasant for the

people who have lodgings to let, but very convenient for us, since we

get excellent rooms in a good situation for a moderate price. We have

a good little landlady, who can speak nothing but Italian, so that she

serves as a _parlatrice_ for us, and awakens our memory of Italian

dialogue--a memory which consists chiefly of recollecting Italian

words without knowing their meaning, and English words without knowing

the Italian for them.

I shall tell you nothing of what we have seen. Have you not a husband

who has seen it all, and can tell you much better? Except, perhaps,

one sight which might have had some interest for him, namely, Count

Cavour, who was waiting with other eminences at the Turin station to

receive the Prince de Carignan, the new Viceroy of Tuscany. A really

pleasant sight--not the prince, who is a large, stout "mustache,"

squeezed in at the waist with a gold belt, looking like one of those

dressed-up personages who are among the chessmen that the Cavours of

the world play their game with. The pleasant sight was Count Cavour,

in plainest dress, with a head full of power, mingled with _bonhomie_.

We had several fellow-travellers who belonged to Savoy, and were full

of chagrin at the prospect of the French annexation. Our most

agreeable companion was a Baron de Magliano, a Neapolitan who has

married a French wife with a large fortune, and has been living in

France for years, but has now left his wife and children behind for

the sake of entering the Sardinian army, and, if possible, helping to

turn out the Neapolitan Bourbons. I feel some stirrings of the

insurrectionary spirit myself when I see the red pantaloons at every

turn in the streets of Rome. I suppose Mrs. Browning could explain to

me that this is part of the great idea nourished in the soul of the

modern saviour, Louis Napoleon, and that for the French to impose a

hateful government on the Romans is the only proper sequence to the

story of the French Revolution.

Oh, the beautiful men and women and children here! Such wonderful

babies with wise eyes! such grand-featured mothers nursing them! As

one drives along the streets sometimes, one sees a madonna and child

at every third or fourth upper window; and on Monday a little crippled

girl, seated at the door of a church, looked up at us with a face full

of such pathetic sweetness and beauty that I think it can hardly leave

me again. Yesterday we went to see dear Shelley's tomb, and it was

like a personal consolation to me to see that simple outward sign that

he is at rest, where no hatred can ever reach him again. Poor Keats's

tombstone, with that despairing, bitter inscription, is almost as

painful to think of as Swift's.

And what have you been doing, being, or suffering in these long twelve

days? While we were standing with weary impatience in the custom-house

at Civita Vecchia, Mr. Congreve was delivering his third lecture, and

you were listening. And what else? _Friday._--Since I wrote my letter

we have not been able to get near the post-office. Yesterday was taken

up with seeing ceremonies, or, rather, with waiting for them. I knelt

down to receive the pope's blessing, remembering what Pius VII. said

to the soldier--that he would never be the worse for the blessing of

an old man. But, altogether, these ceremonies are a melancholy, hollow

business, and we regret bitterly that the Holy Week has taken up our

time from better things. I have a cold and headache this morning, and

in other ways am not conscious of improvement from the pope's

blessing. I may comfort myself with thinking that the King of Sardinia

is none the worse for the pope's curse. It is farcical enough that the

excommunication is posted up at the Church of St. John Lateran, out of

everybody's way, and yet there are police to guard it.

[Sidenote: Italy, 1860.]

How much more I have to write about Rome! How I should like to linger

over every particular object that has left an image in my memory! But

here I am only to give a hasty sketch of what we saw and did at each

place at which we paused in our three months' life in Italy.

It was on the 29th of April that we left Rome, and on the morning of

the 30th we arrived at Naples--under a rainy sky, alas! but not so

rainy as to prevent our feeling the beauty of the city and bay, and

declaring it to surpass all places we had seen before. The weather

cleared up soon after our arrival at the Hotel des Étrangers, and

after a few days it became brilliant, showing us the blue sea, the

purple mountains, and bright city, in which we had almost disbelieved

as we saw them in the pictures. Hardly anything can be more lovely

than Naples seen from Posilippo under a blue sky: the irregular

outline with which the town meets the sea, jutting out in picturesque

masses, then lifted up high on a basis of rock, with the grand Castle

of St. Elmo and the monastery on the central height crowning all the

rest; the graceful outline of purple Vesuvius rising beyond the Molo,

and the line of deeply indented mountains carrying the eye along to

the Cape of Sorrento; and, last of all, Capri sleeping between sea and

sky in the distance. Crossing the promontory of Posilippo, another

wonderful scene presents itself: white Nisida on its island rock; the

sweep of bay towards Pozzuoli; beyond that, in fainter colors of

farther distance, the Cape of Miseno and the peaks of Ischia.

Our first expedition was to Pozzuoli and Miseno, on a bright, warm

day, with a slipshod Neapolitan driver, whom I christened Baboon, and

who acted as our charioteer throughout our stay at Naples. Beyond

picturesque Pozzuoli, jutting out with precipitous piles of building

into the sea, lies Baiæ. Here we halted to look at a great circular

temple, where there was a wonderful echo that made whispers circulate

and become loud on the opposite side to that on which they were

uttered. Here, for our amusement, a young maiden and a little old man

danced to the sound of a tambourine and fife. On our way to Baiæ we

had stopped to see the Lake Avernus, no longer terrible to behold, and

the amphitheatre of Cumæ, now grown over with greensward, and fringed

with garden stuff.

From Baiæ we went to Miseno--the Misenum where Pliny was stationed

with the fleet--and looked out from the promontory on the lovely isles

of Ischia and Procida. On the approach to this promontory lies the

Piscina Mirabilis, one of the most striking remains of Roman building.

It is a great reservoir, into which one may now descend dryshod and

look up at the lofty arches festooned with delicate plants, while the

sunlight shoots aslant through the openings above. It was on this

drive, coming back towards Pozzuoli, that we saw the Mesembryanthemum

in its greatest luxuriance--a star of amethyst with its golden tassel

in the centre. The amphitheatre at Pozzuoli is the most interesting in

Italy after the Coliseum. The seats are in excellent preservation, and

the subterranean structures for water and for the introduction of wild

beasts are unique. The temple of Jupiter Serapis is another remarkable

ruin, made more peculiar by the intrusion of the water, which makes

the central structure, with its great columns, an island to be

approached by a plank bridge.

In the views from Capo di Monte--the king's summer residence--and from

St. Elmo one enjoys not only the view towards the sea, but the wide,

green plain sprinkled with houses and studded with small towns or

villages, bounded on the one hand by Vesuvius, and shut in, in every

other direction, by the nearer heights close upon Naples, or by the

sublimer heights of the distant Apennines. We had the view from St.

Elmo on a clear, breezy afternoon, in company with a Frenchman and his

wife, come from Rome with his family after a two years' residence

there--worth remembering for the pretty bondage the brusque, stern,

thin father was under to the tiny, sickly looking boy.

It was a grand drive up to Capo di Monte--between rich plantations,

with glimpses, as we went up, of the city lying in picturesque

irregularity below; and as we went down, in the other direction, views

of distant mountain rising above some pretty accident of roof or

groups of trees in the foreground.

One day we went, from this drive, along the Poggio Reale to the

cemetery--the most ambitious burying-place I ever saw, with building

after building of elaborate architecture, serving as tombs to various

_Arci-confraternità_ as well as to private families, all set in the

midst of well-kept gardens. The humblest kind of tombs there were long

niches for coffins, in a wall bordering the carriage-road, which are

simply built up when the coffin is once in--the inscription being

added on this final bit of masonry. The lines of lofty sepulchres

suggested to one very vividly the probable appearance of the Appian

Way when the old Roman tombs were in all their glory.

Our first visit to the Museo Borbonico was devoted to the sculpture,

of which there is a precious collection. Of the famous Balbi family,

found at Herculaneum, the mother, in grand drapery, wound round her

head and body, is the most unforgetable--a really grand woman of

fifty, with firm mouth and knitted brow, yet not unbenignant. Farther

on in this transverse hall is a Young Faun with the Infant Bacchus--a

different conception altogether from the fine Munich statue, but

delicious for humor and geniality. Then there is the Aristides--more

real and speaking and easy in attitude even than the Sophocles at

Rome. Opposite is a lovely Antinous, in no mythological character, but

in simple, melancholy beauty. In the centre of the deep recess, in

front of which these statues are placed, is the colossal Flora, who

holds up her thin dress in too finicking a style for a colossal

goddess; and on the floor--to be seen by ascending a platform--is the

precious, great mosaic representing the Battle of the Issus, found at

Pompeii. It is full of spirit, the _ordonnance_ of the figures is very

much after the same style as in the ancient bas-reliefs, and the

colors are still vivid enough for us to have a just idea of the

effect. In the halls on each side of this central one there are

various Bacchuses and Apollos, Atlas groaning under the weight of the

Globe, the Farnese Hercules, the Toro Farnese, and, among other things

less memorable, a glorious Head of Jupiter.

The bronzes here are even more interesting than the marbles. Among

them there is Mercury Resting, the Sleeping Faun, the little Dancing

Faun, and the Drunken Faun snapping his fingers, of which there is a

marble copy at Munich, with the two remarkable Heads of Plato and

Seneca.

But our greatest treat at the Museo Borbonico could only be enjoyed

after our visit to Pompeii, where we went, unhappily, in the company

of some Russians whose acquaintance G. had made at the _table d'hôte_.

I hope I shall never forget the solemnity of our first entrance into

that silent city, and the walk along the street of tombs. After seeing

the principal houses we went, as a proper climax, to the Forum, where,

among the lines of pedestals and the ruins of temples and tribunal, we

could see Vesuvius overlooking us; then to the two theatres, and

finally to the amphitheatre.

This visit prepared us to enjoy the collection of _piccoli bronzi_, of

paintings and mosaics at the Museo. Several of the paintings have

considerable positive merit. I remember particularly a large one of

Orestes and Pylades, which in composition and general conception

might have been a picture of yesterday. But the most impressive

collection of remains found at Pompeii and Herculaneum is that of the

ornaments, articles of food and domestic utensils, pieces of bread,

loaves with the bakers' names on them, fruits, corn, various seeds,

paste in the vessel, imperfectly mixed, linen just wrung in washing,

eggs, oil consolidated in a glass bottle, wine mixed with the lava,

and a piece of asbestos; gold lace, a lens, a lantern with sides of

talc, gold ornaments of Etruscan character, patty-pans (!), moulds for

cakes; ingenious portable cooking apparatus, urn for hot water,

portable candelabrum, to be raised or lowered at will, bells, dice,

theatre-checks, and endless objects that tell of our close kinship

with those old Pompeians. In one of the rooms of this collection there

are the Farnese cameos and engraved gems, some of them--especially of

the latter--marvellously beautiful, complicated, and exquisitely

minute in workmanship. I remember particularly one splendid yellow

stone engraved with an elaborate composition of Apollo and his chariot

and horses--a masterpiece of delicate form.

[Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 5th May, 1860.]

We left Rome a week ago, almost longing, at last, to come southward in

search of sunshine. Every one likes to boast of peculiar experience,

and we can boast of having gone to Rome in the very worst spring that

has been known for the last twenty years. Here, at Naples, we have had

some brilliant days, though the wind is still cold, and rain has often

fallen heavily in the night. It is the very best change for us after

Rome; there is comparatively little art to see, and there is nature in

transcendent beauty. We both think it the most beautiful place in the

world, and are sceptical about Constantinople, which has not had the

advantage of having been seen by us. That is the fashion of

travellers, as you know: for you must have been bored many times in

your life by people who have insisted on it that you _must_ go and see

the thing _they_ have seen--there is nothing like it. We shall bore

you in that way, I dare say--so prepare yourself. Our plan at present

is to spend the next week in seeing Pæstum, Amalfi, Castellamare, and

Sorrento, and drinking in as much of this Southern beauty, in a quiet

way, as our souls are capable of absorbing.

The calm blue sea, and the mountains sleeping in the afternoon light,

as we have seen them to-day from the height of St. Elmo, make one feel

very passive and contemplative, and disinclined to bustle about in

search of meaner sights. Yet I confess Pompeii, and the remains of

Pompeian art and life in the Museum, have been impressive enough to

rival the sea and sky. It is a thing never to be forgotten--that walk

through the silent city of the past, and then the sight of utensils

and eatables and ornaments and half-washed linen and hundreds of other

traces of life so startlingly like our own in its minutest details,

suddenly arrested by the fiery deluge. All that you will see some day,

and with the advantage of younger eyes than mine.

We expect to reach Florence (by steamboat, alas!) on the 17th, so that

if you have the charity to write to me again, address to me there.

We thought the advance to eighteen in the number of hearers was very

satisfactory, and rejoiced over it. The most solid comfort one can

fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life--the

work at home after the holiday is done--is to help in some small,

nibbling way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation, and misery

on the face of this beautiful earth. I am writing at night--Mr. Lewes

is already asleep, else he would say, "Send my kind regards to them

all." We have often talked of you, and the thought of seeing you again

makes the South Fields look brighter in our imagination than they

could have looked from the dreariest part of the world if you had not

been living in them.

[Sidenote: Italy, 1860.]

The pictures at Naples are worth little: the Marriage of St.

Catherine, a small picture by Correggio; a Holy Family, by Raphael,

with a singularly fine St. Ann, and Titian's Paul the Third, are the

only paintings I have registered very distinctly in all the large

collection. The much-praised frescoes of the dome in a chapel of the

cathedral, and the oil-paintings over the altars, by Domenichino and

Spagnoletto, produced no effect on me. Worth more than all these are

Giotto's frescoes in the choir of the little old Church of

l'Incoronata, though these are not, I think, in Giotto's ripest

manner, for they are inferior to his frescoes in the Santa Croce at

Florence--more uniform in the type of face.

We went to a Sunday-morning service at the cathedral, and saw a

detachment of silver busts of saints ranged around the tribune, Naples

being famous for gold and silver sanctities.

When we had been a week at Naples we set off in our carriage with

Baboon on an expedition to Pæstum, arriving the first evening at

Salerno--beautiful Salerno, with a bay as lovely, though in a

different way, as the bay of Naples. It has a larger sweep; grander

piles of rocky mountain on the north and northeast; then a stretch of

low plain, the mountains receding; and, finally, on the south, another

line of mountain coast extending to the promontory of Sicosa.

From Salerno we started early in the morning for Pæstum, with no

alloy to the pleasure of the journey but the dust, which was capable

of making a simoon under a high wind. For a long way we passed through

a well-cultivated plain, the mountains on our left and the sea on our

right; but farther on came a swampy, unenclosed space of great extent,

inhabited by buffaloes, who lay in groups, comfortably wallowing in

the muddy water, with their grand, stupid heads protruding

horizontally.

On approaching Pæstum, the first thing one catches sight of is the

Temple of Vesta, which is not beautiful either for form or color, so

that we began to tremble lest disappointment were to be the harvest of

our dusty journey. But the fear was soon displaced by almost rapturous

admiration at the sight of the great Temple of Neptune--the finest

thing, I verily believe, that we had yet seen in Italy. It has all the

requisites to make a building impressive: First, _form_. What perfect

satisfaction and repose for the eye in the calm repetition of those

columns; in the proportions of height and length, of front and sides;

the right thing is _found_--it is not being sought after in uneasy

labor of detail or exaggeration. Next, _color_. It is built of

Travertine, like the other two temples; but while they have remained,

for the most part, a cold gray, this Temple of Neptune has a rich,

warm, pinkish brown, that seems to glow and deepen under one's eyes.

Lastly, _position_. It stands on the rich plain, covered with long

grass and flowers, in sight of the sea on one hand, and the sublime

blue mountains on the other. Many plants caress the ruins; the

acanthus is there, and I saw it in green life for the first time; but

the majority of the plants on the floor, or bossing the architrave,

are familiar to me as home flowers--purple mallows, snapdragons, pink

hawksweed, etc. On our way back we saw a herd of buffaloes clustered

near a pond, and one of them was rolling himself in the water like a

gentleman enjoying his bath.

The next day we went in the morning from Salerno to Amalfi. It is an

unspeakably grand drive round the mighty rocks with the sea below; and

Amalfi itself surpasses all imagination of a romantic site for a city

that once made itself famous in the world. We stupidly neglected

seeing the cathedral, but we saw a macaroni-mill and a paper-mill from

among the many that are turned by the rushing stream, which, with its

precipitous course down the ravine, creates an immense water-power;

and we climbed up endless steps to the Capuchin Monastery, to see

nothing but a cavern where there are barbarous images and a small

cloister with double Gothic arches.

Our way back to La Cava gave us a repetition of the grand drive we had

had in the morning by the coast, and beyond that an inland drive of

much loveliness, through Claude-like scenes of mountain, trees, and

meadows, with picturesque accidents of building, such as single round

towers, on the heights. The valley beyond La Cava, in which our hotel

lay, is of quite paradisaic beauty; a rich, cultivated spot, with

mountains behind and before--those in front varied by ancient

buildings that a painter would have chosen to place there; and one of

pyramidal shape, steep as an obelisk, is crowned by a monastery,

famous for its library of precious MSS. and its archives. We arrived

too late for everything except to see the shroud of mist gather and

gradually envelop the mountains.

In the morning we set off, again in brightest weather, to Sorrento,

coasting the opposite side of the promontory to that which we had

passed along the day before, and having on our right hand Naples and

the distant Posilippo. The coast on this side is less grand than on

the Amalfi side, but it is more friendly as a place for residence. The

most charming spot on the way to Sorrento, to my thinking, is Vico,

which I should even prefer to Sorrento, because there is no town to be

traversed before entering the ravine and climbing the mountain in the

background. But I will not undervalue Sorrento, with its orange-groves

embalming the air, its glorious sunsets over the sea, setting the gray

olives aglow on the hills above us, its walks among the groves and

vineyards out to the solitary coast. One day of our stay there we took

donkeys and crossed the mountains to the opposite side of the

promontory, and saw the Siren Isles--very palpable, unmysterious bits

of barren rock now. A great delight to me, in all the excursions round

about Naples, was the high cultivation of the soil and the sight of

the vines, trained from elm to elm, above some other precious crop

carpeting the ground below. On our way back to Naples we visited the

silent Pompeii again. That place had such a peculiar influence over me

that I could not even look towards the point where it lay on the plain

below Vesuvius without a certain thrill.

Amid much dust we arrived at Naples again on Sunday morning, to start

by the steamboat for Leghorn on the following Tuesday. But before I

quit Naples I must remember the Grotto of Posilippo, a wonderful

monument of ancient labor; Virgil's tomb, which repaid us for a steep

ascent only by the view of the city and bay; and a villa on the way to

Posilippo, with gardens gradually descending to the margin of the sea,

where there is a collection of animals, both stuffed and alive. It

was there we saw the flying-fish, with their lovely blue fins.

One day and night voyage to Civita Vecchia, and another day and night

to Leghorn--wearisome to the flesh that suffers from nausea even on

the summer sea! We had another look at dear Pisa under the blue sky,

and then on to Florence, which, unlike Rome, looks inviting as one

catches sight from the railway of its cupolas and towers and its

embosoming hills--the greenest of hills, sprinkled everywhere with

white villas. We took up our quarters at the Pension Suisse, and on

the first evening we took the most agreeable drive to be had round

Florence--the drive to Fiesole. It is in this view that the eye takes

in the greatest extent of green, billowy hills, besprinkled with white

houses, looking almost like flocks of sheep; the great, silent,

uninhabited mountains lie chiefly behind; the plain of the Arno

stretches far to the right. I think the view from Fiesole the most

beautiful of all; but that from San Miniato, where we went the next

evening, has an interest of another kind, because here Florence lies

much nearer below, and one can distinguish the various buildings more

completely. It is the same with Bellosguardo, in a still more marked

degree. What a relief to the eye and the thought, among the huddled

roofs of a distant town, to see towers and cupolas rising in abundant

variety, as they do at Florence! There is Brunelleschi's mighty dome,

and close by it, with its lovely colors not entirely absorbed by

distance, Giotto's incomparable Campanile, beautiful as a jewel.

Farther on, to the right, is the majestic tower of the Palazzo

Vecchio, with the flag waving above it; then the elegant Badia and the

Bargello close by; nearer to us the grand Campanile of Santo Spirito

and that of Santa Croce; far away, on the left, the cupola of San

Lorenzo and the tower of Santa Maria Novella; and, scattered far and

near, other cupolas and campaniles of more insignificant shape and

history.

Even apart from its venerable historical glory, the exterior of the

Duomo is pleasant to behold when the wretched, unfinished _façade_ is

quite hidden. The soaring pinnacles over the doors are exquisite; so

are the forms of the windows in the great semicircle of the apsis; and

on the side where Giotto's Campanile is placed, especially, the white

marble has taken on so rich and deep a yellow that the black bands

cease to be felt as a fault. The entire view on this side, closed in

by Giotto's tower, with its delicate pinkish marble, its delicate

Gothic windows with twisted columns, and its tall lightness carrying

the eye upward, in contrast with the mighty breadth of the dome, is a

thing not easily to be forgotten. The Baptistery, with its paradisaic

gates, is close by; but, except in those gates, it has no exterior

beauty. The interior is almost awful, with its great dome covered with

gigantic early mosaics--the pale, large-eyed Christ surrounded by

images of paradise and perdition. The interior of the cathedral is

comparatively poor and bare; but it has one great beauty--its colored

lanceolate windows. Behind the high-altar is a piece of sculpture--the

last under Michael Angelo's hand, intended for his own tomb, and left

unfinished. It represents Joseph of Arimathea holding the body of

Jesus, with Mary, his mother, on one side, and an apparently angelic

form on the other. Joseph is a striking and real figure, with a hood

over the head.

For external architecture it is the palaces, the old palaces of the

fifteenth century, that one must look at in the streets of Florence.

One of the finest was just opposite our hotel, the Palazzo Strozzi,

built by Cronaca; perfect in its massiveness, with its iron cressets

and rings, as if it had been built only last year. This is the palace

that the Pitti was built to outvie (so tradition falsely pretends),

and to have an inner court that would contain it. A wonderful union is

that Pitti Palace of cyclopean massiveness with stately regularity.

Next to the Pitti, I think, comes the Palazzo Riccardi--the house of

the Medici--for size and splendor. Then that unique Laurentian

library, designed by Michael Angelo; the books ranged on desks in

front of seats, so that the appearance of the library resembles that

of a chapel with open pews of dark wood. The precious books are all

chained to the desk; and here we saw old manuscripts of exquisite

neatness, culminating in the Virgil of the fourth century, and the

Pandects, said to have been recovered from oblivion at Amalfi, but

falsely so said, according to those who are more learned than

tradition. Here, too, is a little chapel covered with remarkable

frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli.

Grander still, in another style, is the Palazzo Vecchio, with its

unique _cortile_, where the pillars are embossed with arabesque and

floral tracery, making a contrast in elaborate ornament with the large

simplicity of the exterior building. Here there are precious little

works in ivory by Benvenuto Cellini, and other small treasures of art

and jewelry, preserved in cabinets in one of the great upper chambers,

which are painted all over with frescoes, and have curious inlaid

doors showing buildings or figures in wooden mosaic, such as is often

seen in great beauty in the stalls of the churches. The great

council-chamber is ugly in its ornaments--frescoes and statues in bad

taste all round it.

Orcagna's Loggia de' Lanzi is disappointing at the first glance, from

its sombre, dirty color; but its beauty grew upon me with longer

contemplation. The pillars and groins are very graceful and chaste in

ornamentation. Among the statues that are placed under it there is not

one I could admire, unless it were the dead body of Ajax with the

Greek soldier supporting it. Cellini's Perseus is fantastic. The

Bargello, where we went to see Giotto's frescoes (in lamentable

condition) was under repair, but I got glimpses of a wonderful inner

court, with heraldic carvings and stone stairs and gallery.

Most of the churches in Florence are hideous on the outside--piles of

ribbed brickwork awaiting a coat of stone or stucco--looking like

skinned animals. The most remarkable exception is Santa Maria Novella,

which has an elaborate facing of black and white marble. Both this

church and San Lorenzo were under repair in the interior,

unfortunately for us; but we could enter Santa Maria so far as to see

Orcagna's frescoes of Paradise and Hell. The Hell has been repainted,

but the Paradise has not been maltreated in this way; and it is a

splendid example of Orcagna's powers--far superior to his frescoes in

the Campo Santo at Pisa. Some of the female forms on the lowest range

are of exquisite grace. The splendid chapel in San Lorenzo, containing

the tombs of the Medici, is ugly and heavy, with all its precious

marbles; and the world-famous statues of Michael Angelo on the tombs

in another smaller chapel--the Notte, the Giorno, and the

Crepuscolo--remained to us as affected and exaggerated in the

original as in copies and casts.

The two churches we frequented most in Florence were Santa Croce and

the Carmine. In this last are the great frescoes of Masaccio--chief

among them the Raising of the Dead Youth. In the other are Giotto's

frescoes revealed from under the whitewash by which they were long

covered, like those in the Bargello. Of these the best are the

Challenge to Pass through the Fire, in the series representing the

history of St. Francis, and the rising of some saint (unknown to me)

from his tomb, while Christ extends his arms to receive him above, and

wondering venerators look on, on each side. There are large frescoes

here of Taddeo Gaddi's also, but they are not good; one sees in him a

pupil of Giotto, and nothing more. Besides the frescoes, Santa Croce

has its tombs to attract a repeated visit; the tombs of Michael

Angelo, Dante, Alfieri, and Machiavelli. Even those tombs of the

unknown dead under our feet, with their effigies quite worn down to a

mere outline, were not without their interest. I used to feel my heart

swell a little at the sight of the inscription on Dante's

tomb--"Onorate l'altissimo poeta."

In the Church of the Trinità also there are valuable frescoes by the

excellent Domenico Ghirlandajo, the master of Michael Angelo. They

represent the history of St. Francis, and happily the best of them is

in the best light; it is the death of St. Francis, and is full of

natural feeling, with well-marked gradations from deepest sorrow to

indifferent spectatorship.

The frescoes I cared for most in all Florence were the few of Fra

Angelico's that a _donna_ was allowed to see, in the Convent of San

Marco. In the chapter-house, now used as a guard-room, is a large

Crucifixion, with the inimitable group of the fainting mother, upheld

by St. John and the younger Mary, and clasped round by the kneeling

Magdalene. The group of adoring, sorrowing saints on the right hand

are admirable for earnest truthfulness of representation. The Christ

in this fresco is not good, but there is a deeply impressive original

crucified Christ outside in the cloisters; St. Dominic is clasping the

cross and looking upward at the agonized Saviour, whose real, pale,

calmly enduring face is quite unlike any other Christ I have seen.

I forgot to mention, at Santa Maria Novella, the chapel which is

painted with very remarkable frescoes by Simone Memmi and Taddeo

Gaddi. The best of these frescoes is the one in which the Dominicans

are represented by black and white dogs--_Domini Canes_. The human

groups have high merit for conception and lifelikeness; and they are

admirable studies of costume. At this church, too, in the sacristy, is

the Madonna della Stella,[12] with an altar-step by Fra

Angelico--specimens of his minuter painting in oil. The inner part of

the frame is surrounded with his lovely angels, with their seraphic

joy and flower-garden coloring.

Last of all the churches we visited San Michele, which had been one of

the most familiar to us on the outside, with its statues in niches,

and its elaborate Gothic windows, designed by the genius of Orcagna.

The great wonder of the interior is the shrine of white marble made to

receive the miracle-working image which first caused the consecration

of this mundane building, originally a corn-market. Surely this shrine

is the most wonderful of all Orcagna's productions; for the beauty of

the reliefs he deserves to be placed along with Nicolo Pisano, and for

the exquisite Gothic design of the whole he is a compeer of Giotto.

For variety of treasures the Uffizi Gallery is pre-eminent among all

public sights in Florence; but the variety is in some degree a cause

of comparative unimpressiveness, pictures and statues being crowded

together and destroying each other's effect. In statuary it has the

great Niobe group; the Venus de Medici; the Wrestlers; the admirable

statue of the Knife-Sharpener, supposed to represent the flayer of

Marsyas; the Apollino; and the Boy taking a Thorn out of his Foot;

with numerous less remarkable antiques. And besides these it has what

the Vatican has not--a collection of early Italian sculpture, supreme

among which is Giovanni di Bologna's Mercury.[13] Then there is a

collection of precious drawings; and there is the cabinet of gems,

quite alone in its fantastic, elaborate minuteness of workmanship in

rarest materials; and there is another cabinet containing ivory

sculptures, cameos, intaglios, and a superlatively fine Niello, as

well as Raffaelle porcelain. The pictures here are multitudinous, and

among them there is a generous proportion of utterly bad ones. In the

entrance gallery, where the early paintings are, is a great Fra

Angelico--a Madonna and Child--a triptych, the two side compartments

containing very fine figures of saints, and the inner part of the

central frame a series of unspeakably lovely angels.[14] Here I always

paused with longing, trying to believe that a copyist there could make

an imitation angel good enough to be worth buying. Among the other

paintings that remain with me, after my visit to the Uffizi, are the

portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, by himself; the portrait of Dante, by

Filippino Lippi;[15] the Herodias of Luini; Titian's Venus, in the

Tribune; Raphael's Madonna and Child with the Bird; and the portrait

falsely called the Fornarina; the two remarkable pictures by Ridolfo

Ghirlandajo; and the Salutation, by Albertinelli, which hangs

opposite; the little prince in pink dress, with two recent teeth, in

the next room, by Angelo Bronzino (No. 1155); the small picture of

Christ in the Garden, by Lorenzo Credi; Titian's Woman with the Golden

Hair, in the Venetian room; Leonardo's Medusa head; and Michael

Angelo's ugly Holy Family--these, at least, rise up on a rapid

retrospect. Others are in the background; for example, Correggio's

Madonna adoring the Infant Christ, in the Tribune.

For pictures, however, the Pitti Palace surpasses the Uffizi. Here the

paintings are more choice and not less numerous. The Madonna della

Sedia leaves me, with all its beauty, impressed only by the grave gaze

of the Infant; but besides this there is another Madonna of

Raphael--perhaps the most beautiful of all his earlier ones--the

Madonna del Gran Duca, which has the sweet grace and gentleness of its

sisters without their sheeplike look. Andrea del Sarto is seen here in

his highest glory of oil-painting. There are numerous large pictures

of his--Assumptions and the like--of great technical merit; but better

than all these I remember a Holy Family, with a very fine St. Ann,

and the portraits of himself and his fatal, auburn-haired wife. Of

Fra Bartolomeo there is a Pietà of memorable expression,[16] a Madonna

enthroned with saints, and his great St. Mark. Of Titian, a Marriage

of St. Catherine, of supreme beauty; a Magdalen, failing in

expression; and an exquisite portrait of the same woman, who is

represented as Venus at the Uffizi. There is a remarkable group of

portraits by Rubens--himself, his brother, Lipsius, and Grotius--and a

large landscape by him. The only picture of Veronese's that I remember

here is a portrait of his wife when her beauty was gone. There is a

remarkably fine sea-piece by Salvator Rosa; a striking portrait of

Aretino, and a portrait of Vesalius, by Titian; one of Inghirami, by

Raphael; a delicious, rosy baby--future cardinal--lying in a silken

bed;[17] a placid, contemplative young woman, with her finger between

the leaves of a book, by Leonardo da Vinci;[18] a memorable portrait

of Philip II., by Titian; a splendid Judith, by Bronzino; a portrait

of Rembrandt, by himself, etc., etc.

Andrea del Sarto is seen to advantage at the Pitti Palace; but his

_chef-d'oeuvre_ is a fresco, unhappily much worn--the Madonna del

Sacco--in the cloister of the Annunziata.

For early Florentine paintings the most interesting collection is that

of the Accademia. Here we saw a Cimabue, which gave us the best idea

of his superiority over the painters who went before him: it is a

colossal Madonna enthroned. And on the same wall there is a colossal

Madonna by Giotto, which is not only a demonstration that he surpassed

his master, but that he had a clear vision of the noble in art. A

delightful picture--very much restored, I fear--of the Adoration of

the Magi made me acquainted with Gentile da Fabriano. The head of

Joseph in this picture is masterly in the delicate rendering of the

expression; the three kings are very beautiful in conception; and the

attendant group, or rather crowd, shows a remarkable combination of

realism with love of the beautiful and splendid.

There is a fine Domenico Ghirlandajo--the Adoration of the Shepherds;

a fine Lippo Lippi; and an Assumption, by Perugino, which I like well

for its cherubs and angels, and for some of the adoring figures below.

In the smaller room there is a lovely Pietà by Fra Angelico; and there

is a portrait of Fra Angelico himself by another artist.

One of our drives at Florence, which I have not mentioned, was that to

Galileo's Tower, which stands conspicuous on one of the hills close

about the town. We ascended it for the sake of looking out over the

plain from the same spot as the great man looked from, more than two

centuries ago. His portrait is in the Pitti Palace--a grave man with

an abbreviated nose, not unlike Mr. Thomas Adolphus Trollope.

One fine day near the end of our stay we made an expedition to

Siena--that fine old town built on an abrupt height overlooking a

wide, wide plain. We drove about a couple of hours or more, and saw

well the exterior of the place--the peculiar piazza or campo in the

shape of a scallop-shell, with its large old Palazzo _publico_, the

Porta Ovile and Porta Romana, the archbishop's palace, and the

cemetery. Of the churches we saw only the cathedral, the Chapel of St.

John the Baptist, and San Domenico. The cathedral has a highly

elaborate Gothic façade, but the details of the upper part are

unsatisfactory--a square window in the centre shocks the eye, and the

gables are not slim and aspiring enough. The interior is full of

interest: there is the unique pavement in a sort of marble Niello,

presenting Raffaellesque designs by Boccafumi, carrying out the

example of the older portions, which are very quaint in their drawing;

there is a picture of high interest in the history of early art--a

picture by Guido of Siena, who was rather earlier than Cimabue; fine

carved stalls and screens in dark wood; and in an adjoining chapel a

series of frescoes by Pinturicchio, to which Raphael is said to have

contributed designs and workmanship, and wonderfully illuminated old

choir-books. The Chapel of St. John the Baptist has a remarkable

Gothic façade, and a baptismal font inside, with reliefs wrought by

Ghiberti and another Florentine artist. To San Domenico we went for

the sake of seeing the famous Madonna by Guido da Siena; I think we

held it superior to any Cimabue we had seen. There is a considerable

collection of the Siennese artists at the Accademia, but the school

had no great genius equal to Giotto to lead it. The Three Graces--an

antique to which Canova's modern triad bears a strong resemblance in

attitude and style--are also at the Accademia.

An interesting visit we made at Florence was to Michael Angelo's

house--Casa Buonarotti--in the Via Ghibellina. This street is striking

and characteristic: the houses are all old, with broad eaves, and in

some cases with an open upper story, so that the roof forms a sort of

pavilion supported on pillars. This is a feature one sees in many

parts of Florence. Michael Angelo's house is preserved with great

care by his descendants--only one could wish their care had not been

shown in giving it entirely new furniture. However, the rooms are the

same as those he occupied, and there are many relics of his presence

there--his stick, his sword, and many of his drawings. In one room

there is a very fine Titian of small size--the principal figure a

woman fainting.

The Last Supper--a fresco believed to be by Raphael--is in a room at

the Egyptian Museum.[19] The figure of Peter--of which, apparently,

there exists various sketches by Raphael's hand--is memorable.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th May, 1860.]

Things really look so threatening in the Neapolitan kingdom that we

begin to think ourselves fortunate in having got our visit done.

Tuscany is in the highest political spirits for the moment, and of

course Victor Emanuel stares at us at every turn here, with the most

loyal exaggeration of mustache and intelligent meaning. But we are

selfishly careless about dynasties just now, caring more for the

doings of Giotto and Brunelleschi than for those of Count Cavour. On a

first journey to the greatest centres of art one must be excused for

letting one's public spirit go to sleep a little. As for me, I am

thrown into a state of humiliating passivity by the sight of the great

things done in the far past--it seems as if life were not long enough

to learn, and as if my own activity were so completely dwarfed by

comparison that I should never have courage for more creation of my

own. There is only one thing that has an opposite and stimulating

effect: it is the comparative rarity, even here, of great and truthful

art, and the abundance of wretched imitation and falsity. Every hand

is wanted in the world that can do a little genuine, sincere work.

We are at the quietest hotel in Florence, having sought it out for the

sake of getting clear of the stream of English and Americans, in which

one finds one's self in all the main tracks of travel, so that one

seems at last to be in a perpetual, noisy picnic, obliged to be civil,

though with a strong inclination to be sullen. My philanthropy rises

several degrees as soon as we are alone.

[Sidenote: Letter to Major Blackwood, 27th May, 1860.]

I am much obliged to you for writing at once, and so scattering some

clouds which had gathered over my mind in consequence of an indication

or two in Mr. John Blackwood's previous letter. The _Times_ article

arrived on Sunday. It is written in a generous spirit, and with so

high a degree of intelligence that I am rather alarmed lest the

misapprehensions it exhibits should be due to my defective

presentation, rather than to any failure on the part of the critic. I

have certainly fulfilled my intention very badly if I have made the

Dodson honesty appear "mean and uninteresting," or made the payment of

one's debts appear a contemptible virtue in comparison with any sort

of "Bohemian" qualities. So far as my own feeling and intention are

concerned, no one class of persons or form of character is held up to

reprobation or to exclusive admiration. Tom is painted with as much

love and pity as Maggie; and I am so far from hating the Dodsons

myself that I am rather aghast to find them ticketed with such very

ugly adjectives. We intend to leave this place on Friday (3d), and in

four days after that we shall be at Venice, in a few days from that

time at Milan, and then, by a route at present uncertain, at Berne,

where we take up Mr. Lewes's eldest boy, to bring him home with us.

We are particularly happy in our weather, which is unvaryingly fine

without excessive heat. There has been a crescendo of enjoyment in our

travels; for Florence, from its relation to the history of modern art,

has roused a keener interest in us even than Rome, and has stimulated

me to entertain rather an ambitious project, which I mean to be a

secret from every one but you and Mr. John Blackwood.

Any news of "Clerical Scenes" in its third edition? Or has its

appearance been deferred? The smallest details are acceptable to

ignorant travellers. We are wondering what was the last good article

in _Blackwood_, and whether Thackeray has gathered up his slack reins

in the _Cornhill_. Literature travels slowly even to this Italian

Athens. Hawthorne's book is not to be found here yet in the Tauchnitz

edition.

[Sidenote: Italy, 1860.]

We left Florence on the evening of the 1st of June, by diligence,

travelling all night and until eleven the next morning to get to

Bologna. I wish we could have made that journey across the Apennines

by daylight, though in that case I should have missed certain grand,

startling effects that came to me in my occasional wakings. Wonderful

heights and depths I saw on each side of us by the fading light of the

evening. Then, in the middle of the night, while the lightning was

flashing and the sky was heavy with threatening storm-clouds, I waked

to find the six horses resolutely refusing or unable to move the

diligence--till, at last, two meek oxen were tied to the axle, and

their added strength dragged us up the hill. But one of the strangest

effects I ever saw was just before dawn, when we seemed to be high up

on mighty mountains, which fell precipitously, and showed us the

awful, pale horizon far, far below.

The first thing we did at Bologna was to go to the Accademia, where I

confirmed myself in my utter dislike of the Bolognese school--the

Caraccis and Domenichino _et id genus omne_--and felt some

disappointment in Raphael's St. Cecilia. The pictures of Francia here,

to which I had looked forward as likely to give me a fuller and higher

idea of him, were less pleasing to me than the smaller specimens of

him that I had seen in the Dresden and other galleries. He seems to me

to be more limited even than Perugino; but he is a faithful,

painstaking painter, with a religious spirit. Agostino Caracci's

Communion of St. Jerome is a remarkable picture, with real feeling in

it--an exception among all the great pieces of canvas that hang beside

it. Domenichino's figure of St. Jerome is a direct plagiarism from

that of Agostino; but in other points the two pictures are quite

diverse.

The following morning we took a carriage and were diligent in visiting

the churches. San Petronio has the melancholy distinction of an

exquisite Gothic façade, which is carried up only a little way above the

arches of the doorways; the sculptures on these arches are of wonderful

beauty. The interior is of lofty, airy, simple Gothic, and it contains

some curious old paintings in the various side-chapels--pre-eminent

among which are the great frescoes by the so-called Buffalmacco. The

Paradise is distinguished in my memory by the fact that the blessed are

ranged in seats like the benches of a church or chapel. At Santa

Cecilia--now used as a barrack or guard-room--there are two frescoes by

Francia, the Marriage and Burial of St. Cecilia, characteristic, but

miserably injured. At the great Church of San Domenico the object of

chief interest is the tomb of the said saint, by the ever-to-be-honored

Nicolo Pisano. I believe this tomb was his first great work, and very

remarkable it is; but there is nothing on it equal to the Nativity on

the pulpit at Pisa. On this tomb stands a lovely angel, by Michael

Angelo. It is small in size, holding a small candle-stick, and is a work

of his youth; it shows clearly enough how the feeling for grace and

beauty were strong in him, only not strong enough to wrestle with his

love of the grandiose and powerful.

The ugly, painful leaning towers of Bologna made me desire not to look

at them a second time; but there are fine bits of massive palatial

building here and there in the colonnaded streets. We trod the court

of the once famous university, where the arms of the various scholars

ornament the walls above and below an interior gallery. This building

is now, as far as I could understand, a communal school, and the

university is transported to another part of the town.

We left Bologna in the afternoon, rested at Ferrara for the night, and

passed the Euganean Mountains on our left hand as we approached Padua

in the middle of the next day.

After dinner and rest from our dusty journeying we took a carriage and

went out to see the town, desiring most of all to see Giotto's Chapel.

We paused first, however, at the great Church of San Antonio, which is

remarkable both externally and internally. There are two side chapels

opposite each other, which are quite unique for contrasted effect. On

the one hand is a chapel of oblong form, covered entirely with white

marble _relievi_, golden lamps hanging from the roof; while opposite

is a chapel of the same form, covered with frescoes by Avanzi, the

artist who seems to have been the link of genius between Giotto and

Masaccio. Close by, in a separate building, is the Capella di San

Giorgio, also covered with Avanzi's frescoes; and here one may study

him more completely, because the light is better than in the church.

He has quite a Veronese power of combining his human groups with

splendid architecture.

The Arena Chapel stands apart, and is approached, at present, through

a pretty garden. Here one is uninterruptedly with Giotto. The whole

chapel was designed and painted by himself alone; and it is said that,

while he was at work on it, Dante lodged with him at Padua. The nave

of the chapel is in tolerably good preservation, but the apsis has

suffered severely from damp. It is in this apsis that the lovely

Madonna, with the Infant at her breast, is painted in a niche, now

quite hidden by some altar-piece or woodwork, which one has to push by

in order to see the tenderest bit of Giotto's painting. This chapel

must have been a blessed vision when it was fresh from Giotto's

hand--the blue, vaulted roof; the exquisite bands of which he was so

fond, representing inlaid marble, uniting roof and walls, and forming

the divisions between the various frescoes which cover the upper part

of the wall. The glory of Paradise at one end, and the histories of

Mary and Jesus on the two sides; and the subdued effect of the series

of monochromes representing the Virtues and Vices below.

There is a piazza with a plantation and circular public walk, with

wildly affected statues of small and great notorieties, which remains

with one as a peculiarity of Padua; in general the town is merely old

and shabbily Italian, without anything very specific in its aspect.

From Padua to Venice!

It was about ten o'clock on a moonlight night--the 4th of June--that

we found ourselves apparently on a railway in the midst of the sea; we

were on the bridge across the Lagoon. Soon we were in a gondola on the

Grand Canal, looking out at the moonlit buildings and water. What

stillness! What beauty! Looking out from the high window of our hotel

on the Grand Canal I felt that it was a pity to go to bed. Venice was

more beautiful than romances had feigned.

And that was the impression that remained, and even deepened, during

our stay of eight days. That quiet which seems the deeper because one

hears the delicious dip of the oar (when not disturbed by clamorous

church bells) leaves the eye in full liberty and strength to take in

the exhaustless loveliness of color and form.

We were in our gondola by nine o'clock the next morning, and, of

course, the first point we sought was the Piazza di San Marco. I am

glad to find Ruskin calling the Palace of the Doges one of the two

most perfect buildings in the world; its only defects, to my feeling,

are the feebleness or triviality of the frieze or cornice, and the

want of length in the Gothic windows with which the upper wall is

pierced. This spot is a focus of architectural wonders; but the palace

is the crown of them all. The double tier of columns and arches, with

the rich sombreness of their finely outlined shadows, contrast

satisfactorily with the warmth and light and more continuous surface

of the upper part. Even landing on the Piazzetta, one has a sense, not

only of being in an entirely novel scene, but one where the ideas of a

foreign race have poured themselves in without yet mingling

indistinguishably with the pre-existent Italian life. But this is felt

yet more strongly when one has passed along the Piazzetta and arrived

in front of San Marco, with its low arches and domes and minarets. But

perhaps the most striking point to take one's stand on is just in

front of the white marble guard-house flanking the great tower--the

guard-house with Sansovino's iron gates before it. On the left is San

Marco, with the two square pillars from St. Jean d'Acre standing as

isolated trophies; on the right the Piazzetta extends between the

Doge's Palace and the Palazzo Reale to the tall columns from

Constantinople; and in front is the elaborate gateway leading to the

white marble Scala di Giganti, in the courtyard of the Doge's Palace.

Passing through this gateway and up this staircase, we entered the

gallery which surrounds the court on three sides, and looked down at

the fine sculptured vase-like wells below. Then into the great Sala,

surrounded with the portraits of the doges; the largest oil-painting

here--or perhaps anywhere else--is the Gloria del Paradiso, by

Tintoretto, now dark and unlovely. But on the ceiling is a great Paul

Veronese--the Apotheosis of Venice--which looks as fresh as if it were

painted yesterday, and is a miracle of color and composition--a

picture full of glory and joy of an earthly, fleshly kind, but without

any touch of coarseness or vulgarity. Below the radiant Venice on her

clouds is a balcony filled with upward-looking spectators; and below

this gallery is a group of human figures with horses. Next to this

Apotheosis, I admire another Coronation of Venice on the ceiling of

another Sala, where Venice is sitting enthroned above the globe with

her lovely face in half shadow--a creature born with an imperial

attitude. There are other Tintorettos, Veroneses, and Palmas in the

great halls of this palace; but they left me quite indifferent, and

have become vague in my memory. From the splendors of the palace we

crossed the Bridge of Sighs to the prisons, and saw the horrible,

dark, damp cells that would make the saddest life in the free light

and air seem bright and desirable.

The interior of St. Mark's is full of interest, but not of beauty; it

is dark and heavy, and ill-suited to the Catholic worship, from the

massive piers that obstruct the view everywhere, shut out the sight of

ceremony and procession, as we witnessed at our leisure on the day of

the great procession of Corpus Christi. But everywhere there are

relics of gone-by art to be studied, from mosaics of the Greeks to

mosaics of later artists than the Zuccati; old marble statues,

embrowned like a meerschaum pipe; amazing sculptures in wood;

Sansovino doors, ambitious to rival Ghiberti's; transparent alabaster

columns; an ancient Madonna, hung with jewels, transported from St.

Sophia, in Constantinople; and everywhere the venerable pavement, once

beautiful with its starry patterns in rich marble, now deadened and

sunk to unevenness, like the mud floor of a cabin.

Then outside, on the archway of the principal door, there are

sculptures of a variety that makes one renounce the study of them in

despair at the shortness of one's time--blended fruits and foliage,

and human groups and animal forms of all kinds. On our first morning

we ascended the great tower, and looked around on the island city and

the distant mountains and the distant Adriatic. And on the same day we

went to see the Pisani palace--one of the grand old palaces that are

going to decay. An Italian artist who resides in one part of this

palace interested us by his frank manner, and the glimpse we had of

his domesticity with his pretty wife and children. After this we saw

the Church of San Sebastiano, where Paul Veronese is buried, with his

own paintings around, mingling their color with the light that falls

on his tombstone. There is one remarkably fine painting of his here:

it represents, I think, some saints going to martyrdom, but, apart

from that explanation, is a composition full of vigorous, spirited

figures, in which the central ones are two young men leaving some

splendid dwelling, on the steps of which stands the mother, pleading

and remonstrating--a marvellous figure of an old woman with a bare

neck.

But supreme among the pictures at Venice is the Death of Peter the

Martyr,[20] now happily removed from its original position as an

altar-piece, and placed in a good light in the sacristy of San

Giovanni and Paolo (or San Zani Polo, as the Venetians conveniently

abbreviate it). In this picture, as in that of the Tribute-money at

Dresden, Titian seems to have surpassed himself, and to have reached

as high a point in expression as in color. In the same sacristy there

was a Crucifixion, by Tintoretto, and a remarkable Madonna with

Saints, by Giovanni Bellini; but we were unable to look long away from

the Titian to these, although we paid it five visits during our stay.

It is near this church that the famous equestrian statue stands, by

Verocchio.

Santa Maria della Salute, built as an _ex voto_ by the Republic on the

cessation of the plague, is one of the most conspicuous churches in

Venice, lifting its white cupolas close on the Grand Canal, where it

widens out towards the Giudecca.

Here there are various Tintorettos, but the only one which is not

blackened so as to be unintelligible is the _Cena_, which is

represented as a bustling supper party, with attendants and sideboard

accessories, in thoroughly Dutch fashion! The great scene of

Tintoretto's greatness is held to be the Scuola di San Rocco, of which

he had the painting entirely to himself, with his pupils; and here one

must admire the vigor and freshness of his conceptions, though I saw

nothing that delighted me in expression, and much that was

preposterous and ugly. The Crucifixion here is certainly a grand work,

to which he seems to have given his best powers; and among the smaller

designs, in the two larger halls, there were several of thorough

originality--for example, the Annunciation, where Mary is seated in a

poor house, with a carpenter's shop adjoining; the Nativity, in the

upper story of a stable, of which a section is made so as to show the

beasts below; and the Flight into Egypt, with a very charming

(European) landscape. In this same building of San Rocco there are

some exquisite iron gates, a present from Florence, and some

singularly painstaking wood-carving, representing, in one compartment

of wainscot, above the seats that surrounded the upper hall, a

bookcase filled with old books, an inkstand and pen set in front of

one shelf _à s'y méprendre_.

But of all Tintoretto's paintings the best preserved, and perhaps the

most complete in execution, is the Miracle of St. Mark, at the

Accademia. We saw it the oftener because we were attracted to the

Accademia again and again by Titian's Assumption, which we placed next

to Peter the Martyr among the pictures at Venice.

For a thoroughly rapt expression I never saw anything equal to the

Virgin in this picture; and the expression is the more remarkable

because it is not assisted by the usual devices to express spiritual

ecstasy, such as delicacy of feature and temperament, or pale

meagreness. Then what cherubs and angelic heads bathed in light! The

lower part of the picture has no interest; the attitudes are

theatrical; and the Almighty above is as unbeseeming as painted

Almighties usually are; but the middle group falls short only of the

Sistine Madonna.

Among the Venetian painters Giovanni Bellini shines with a mild,

serious light that gives one an affectionate respect towards him. In

the Church of the Scalzi there is an exquisite Madonna by

him--probably his _chef-d'oeuvre_--comparable to Raphael's for

sweetness.

And Palmo Vecchio, too, must be held in grateful reverence for his

Santa Barbara, standing in calm, grand beauty above an altar in the

Church of Santa Maria Formosa. It is an almost unique presentation of

a hero-woman, standing in calm preparation for martyrdom, without the

slightest air of pietism, yet with the expression of a mind filled

with serious conviction.

We made the journey to Chioggia, but with small pleasure, on account

of my illness, which continued all day. Otherwise that long floating

over the water, with the forts and mountains looking as if they were

suspended in the air, would have been very enjoyable. Of all dreamy

delights that of floating in a gondola along the canals and out on the

Lagoon is surely the greatest. We were out one night on the Lagoon

when the sun was setting, and the wide waters were flushed with the

reddened light. I should have liked it to last for hours; it is the

sort of scene in which I could most readily forget my own existence

and feel melted into the general life.

Another charm of evening-time was to walk up and down the Piazza of

San Marco as the stars were brightening and look at the grand, dim

buildings, and the flocks of pigeons flitting about them; or to walk

on to the Bridge of La Paglia and look along the dark canal that runs

under the Bridge of Sighs--its blackness lit up by a gaslight here and

there, and the plash of the oar of blackest gondola slowly advancing.

One of our latest visits was to the Palazzo Mamfrini, where there are

still the remains of a magnificent collection of pictures--remains

still on sale.

The young proprietor was walking about transacting business in the

rooms as we passed through them--a handsome, refined-looking man. The

chief treasure left--the Entombment, by Titian--is perhaps a superior

duplicate of the one in the Louvre. After this we went to a private

house (once the house of Bianca Capello) to see a picture which the

joint proprietors are anxious to prove to be a Leonardo da Vinci. It

is a remarkable--an unforgetable--picture. The subject is the Supper

at Emmaus; and the Christ, with open, almost tearful eyes, with loving

sadness spread over the regular beauty of his features, is a

masterpiece. This head is _not_ like the Leonardo sketch at Milan; and

the rest of the picture impressed me strongly with the idea that it is

of German, not Italian, origin. Again, the head is not like that of

Leonardo's Christ in the National Gallery--it is far finer, to my

thinking.

Farewell, lovely Venice! and away to Verona, across the green plains

of Lombardy, which can hardly look tempting to an eye still filled

with the dreamy beauty it has left behind. Yet I liked our short stay

at Verona extremely. The Amphitheatre had the disadvantage of coming

after the Coliseum and the Pozzuoli Amphitheatre, and would bear

comparison with neither; but the Church of San Zenone was equal in

interest to almost any of the churches we had seen in Italy. It is a

beautiful specimen of Lombard architecture, undisguised by any modern

barbarisms in the interior; and on the walls--now that they have been

freed from their coat of whitewash--there are early frescoes of high

historical value, some of them--apparently of the Giotto

school--showing a remarkable striving after human expression. More

than this, there is in one case an under layer of yet older frescoes,

partly laid bare, and showing the lower part of figures in mummy-like

degradation of drawing; while above these are the upper portion of the

later figures in striking juxtaposition with the dead art from which

they had sprung with the vitality of a hidden germ. There is a very

fine crypt to the church, where the fragments of some ancient

sculptures are built in wrong way upwards.

This was the only church we entered at Verona; for we contented

ourselves with a general view of the town, driving about to get _coups

d'oeil_ of the fine old walls, the river, the bridges, and surrounding

hills, and mounting up to a high terrace for the sake of a bird's-eye

view; this, with a passing sight of the famous tombs of the Scaligers,

was all gathered in our four or five hours at Verona.

Heavy rain came on our way to Milan, putting an end to the brilliant

weather we had enjoyed ever since our arrival at Naples. The line of

road lies through a luxuriant country, and I remember the picturesque

appearance of Bergamo--half of it on the level, half of it lifted up

on the green hill.

In this second visit of mine to Milan my greatest pleasures were the

Brera Gallery and the Ambrosian Library, neither of which I had seen

before. The cathedral no longer satisfied my eye in its exterior; and

though the interior has very grand effects, there are still disturbing

elements.

At the Ambrosian Library we saw MSS. surpassing in interest any even of

those we had seen in the Laurentian Library at Florence--illuminated

books, sacred and secular, a little Koran, rolled up something after the

fashion of a measuring-tape, private letters of Tasso, Galileo, Lucrezia

Borgia, etc., and a book full of Leonardo da Vinci's engineering

designs. Then, up-stairs, in the picture-gallery, we saw a delicious

Holy Family by Luini, of marvellous perfection in its execution, the

Cartoon for Raphael's School of Athens, and a precious collection of

drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo. Among Leonardo's are

amazingly grotesque faces, full of humor; among Michael Angelo's is the

sketch of the unfortunate Biagio, who figures with ass's ears, in the

lower corner of the Last Judgment.

At the Brera, among a host of pictures to which I was indifferent,

there were several things that delighted me. Some of Luini's

frescoes--especially the burial or transportation of the body of St.

Catherine by angels--some single figures of young cherubs, and Joseph

and Mary going to their Marriage; the drawing in pastel by Leonardo of

the Christ's head, supposed to be a study for the _Cena_; the Luini

Madonna among trellises--an exquisite oil-painting; Gentile Bellini's

picture of St. Mark preaching at Alexandria; and the Sposalizio by

Raphael.

At the Church of San Maurizio Maggiore we saw Luini's power tested by

an abundant opportunity. The walls are almost covered with frescoes by

him; but the only remarkable felicity he has is his female figures,

which are eminently graceful. He has not power enough for a

composition of any high character.

We visited, too, the interesting old Church of San Ambrogio, with its

court surrounded by cloisters, its old sculptured pulpit, chair of St.

Ambrose, and illuminated choir-books; and we drove to look at the line

of old Roman columns, which are almost the solitary remnant of

antiquity left in this ancient city--ancient, at least, in its name

and site.

We left Milan for Como on a fine Sunday morning, and arrived at

beautiful Bellagio by steamer in the evening. Here we spent a

delicious day--going to the Villa Somma Riva in the morning, and in

the evening to the Serbellone Gardens, from the heights of which we

saw the mountain-peaks reddened with the last rays of the sun. The

next day we reached lovely Chiavenna, at the foot of the Splügen Pass,

and spent the evening in company with a glorious mountain torrent,

mountain peaks, huge bowlders, with rippling miniature torrents and

lovely young flowers among them, and grassy heights with rich Spanish

chestnuts shadowing them. Then, the next morning, we set off by post

and climbed the almost perpendicular heights of the Pass--chiefly in

heavy rain that would hardly let us discern the patches of snow when

we reached the table-land of the summit. About five o'clock we reached

grassy Splügen and felt that we had left Italy behind us. Already our

driver had been German for the last long post, and now we had come to

a hotel where host and waiters were German. Swiss houses of dark wood,

outside staircases and broad eaves, stood on the steep, green, and

flowery slope that led up to the waterfall; and the hotel and other

buildings of masonry were thoroughly German in their aspect. In the

evening we enjoyed a walk between the mountains, whose lower sides

down to the torrent bed were set with tall, dark pines. But the climax

of grand--nay, terrible--scenery came the next day as we traversed the

Via Mala.

After this came open green valleys, dotted with white churches and

homesteads. We were in Switzerland, and the mighty wall of the

Valtelline Alps shut us out from Italy on the 21st of June.

[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 23d June, 1860, from Berne.]

Your letter to Florence reached me duly, and I feel as if I had been

rather unconscionable in asking for another before our return; but to

us, who have been seeing new things every day, a month seems so long a

space of time that we can't help fancying there must be a great

accumulation of news for us at the end of it.

We had hoped to be at home by the 25th; but we were so enchanted with

Venice that we were seduced into staying there a whole week instead of

three or four days, and now we must not rob the boys of their two

days' holiday with us.

We have had a wonderful journey. From Florence we went to Bologna,

Ferrara, and Padua, on our way to Venice; and from Venice we have come

by Verona, Milan, and Como, and across the Splügen to Zurich, where we

spent yesterday, chiefly in the company of Moleschott the

physiologist--an interview that has helped to sharpen Mr. Lewes's

appetite for a return to his microscope and dissecting-table. We ought

to be forever ashamed of ourselves if we don't work the better for

this great holiday. We both feel immensely enriched with new ideas and

new veins of interest.

I don't think I can venture to tell you what my great project is by

letter, for I am anxious to keep it secret. It will require a great

deal of study and labor, and I am athirst to begin.

As for "The Mill," I am in repose about it now I know it has found its

way to the great public. Its comparative rank can only be decided

after some years have passed, when the judgment upon it is no longer

influenced by the recent enthusiasm about "Adam," and by the fact that

it has the misfortune to be written by me instead of by Mr. Liggins. I

shall like to see Bulwer's criticism, if you will be kind enough to

send it me; but I particularly wish _not_ to see any of the newspaper

articles.

_SUMMARY._

MARCH TO JUNE, 1860.--FIRST JOURNEY TO ITALY.

Crossing Mont Cenis by night in diligence--Turin--Sees Count

Cavour--Genoa--Leghorn--Pisa--Civita Vecchia--Disappointment

with first sight of Rome--Better spirits after visit to

Capitol--View from Capitol--Points most struck with in

Rome--Sculpture at Capitol--Sculpture at Vatican first seen

by torchlight--St. Peter's--Other churches--Sistine

Chapel--Paintings--Illumination of St.

Peter's--Disappointment with Michael Angelo's Moses--Visits

to artists' studios--Riedel and Overbeck--Pamfili Doria

Gardens--Frascati--Tivoli--Pictures at Capitol--Lateran

Museum--Shelley's and Keats's graves--Letter to Mrs.

Congreve--Pope's blessing--Easter ceremonies--From Rome to

Naples--Description--Museo Borbonico--Visit to

Pompeii--Solemnity of street of tombs--Letter to Mrs.

Congreve--From Naples to Salerno and Pæstum--Temple of

Vesta--Temple of Neptune fulfils expectations--Amalfi--Drive

to Sorrento--Back to Naples--By steamer to Leghorn--To

Florence--Views from Fiesole and Bellosguardo--The

Duomo--Baptistery--Palaces--Churches--Dante's

tomb--Frescoes--Pictures at the Uffizi--Pictures at the

Pitti--Pictures at the Accademia--Expedition to Siena--Back

to Florence--Michael Angelo's house--Letter to

Blackwood--Dwarfing effect of the past--Letter to Major

Blackwood on _Times'_ criticism of "The Mill on the Floss,"

and first mention of an Italian novel--Leave Florence for

Bologna--Churches and pictures--To Padua by Ferrara--The

Arena Chapel--Venice by moonlight--Doge's Palace--St.

Mark's--Pictures--Scuola di San Rocco--Accademia--Gondola to

Chioggia--From Venice to Verona--Milan--Brera Gallery and

Ambrosian Library--Disappointment with

cathedral--Bellagio--Over Splügen to Switzerland--Letter to

Blackwood--Saw Moleschott at Zurich--Home by Berne and

Geneva.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

[12] Now in cell No. 33 in the Museo di San Marco.

[13] Now in the Museo Nazionale.

[14] Now in Sala Lorenzo Monaco, Uffizi.

[15] The only portraits of Dante in the Uffizi are No. 1207 in the

room opening out of the Tribune, by an unknown painter (Scuola

Toscana); and No. 553, in the passage to the Pitti--also by an unknown

painter.

[16] No. 81. Pitti Gallery.

[17] No. 49, by Tiberio Titti. Pitti Gallery.

[18] No. 140. Pitti Gallery.

[19] No. 56 Via de Faenza, Capella di Foligno.

[20] Since burned.