We had some thoughts of taking a lodging at L’Ariccia, at the Caffé del
Piazza, for a month, but the deep sandy roads, the centinels posted
every half-mile on this, which is the route for Naples (which shewed
that it was not very safe to leave them), the loose, straggling woods
sloping down to the dreary marshes, and the story of Hippolitus painted
on the walls of the inn (who, it seems, was ‘native to the manner
here’), deterred us. L’Ariccia, besides being, after Cortona, the oldest
place in Italy, is also one step towards Naples, which I had a strong
desire to see—its brimming shores, its sky which glows like one entire
sun, Vesuvius, the mouth of Hell, and Sorrentum, like the Islands of the
Blest—yet here again the reports of robbers, exaggerated alike by
foreigners and natives, who wish to keep you where you are, the accounts
of hogs without hair, and children without clothes to their backs, the
vermin (animal as well as human), the gilded hams and legs of mutton
that Forsyth speaks of, gave me a distaste to the journey, and I turned
back to put an end to the question. I am fond of the sun, though I do
not like to see him and the assassin’s knife glaring over my head
together. As to the real amount of the danger of travelling this road,
as far as I can learn, it is this—there is at present a possibility but
no probability of your being robbed or kidnapped, if you go in the
day-time and by the common method of a Vetturino, stopping two nights on
the road. If you go alone, and with a determination to set time, place,
and circumstances at defiance, like a personified representation of John
Bull, maintaining the character of your countrymen for sturdiness and
independence of spirit, you stand a very good chance of being shot
through the head: the same thing might happen to you, if you refused
your money to an English footpad; but if you give it freely, like a
gentleman, and do not stand too nicely upon a punctilio, they let you
pass like one. If you have no money about you, you must up into the
mountain, and wait till you can get it. For myself, my remittances have
not been very regular even in walled towns; how I should fare in this
respect upon the forked mountain, I cannot tell, and certainly I have no
wish to try. A friend of mine said that he thought it _the only romantic
thing going_, this of being carried off by the banditti; that life was
become too tame and insipid without such accidents, and that it would
not be amiss to put one’s-self in the way of such an adventure, like
putting in for the grand prize in the lottery. Assuredly, one is not
likely to go to sleep in such circumstances: one person who was detained
in this manner, and threatened every hour with being despatched, went
mad in consequence. A French Artist was laid hold of by a gang of the
outlaws, as he was sketching in the neighbourhood of their haunts, about
a year ago; he did not think their mode of life at all agreeable. As he
had no money, they employed him in making sketches of their heads, with
which they were exceedingly delighted. Their vanity kept him continually
on the alert when they had a moment’s leisure; and, besides, he was
fatigued almost to death, for they made long marches of from forty to
fifty miles a day, and scarcely ever rested more than one night in the
same place. They travelled through bye-roads (in constant apprehension
of the military) in parties of five or six, and met at some common
rendezvous at night-fall. He was in no danger from them in the day-time;
but at night they sat up drinking and carousing, and when they were in
this state of excitement, he was in considerable jeopardy from their
violence or sportive freaks: they amused themselves with presenting
their loaded pieces at his breast, or threatened to dispatch him if he
did not promise to procure ransom. At last he effected his escape in one
of their drunken bouts. Their seizure of the Austrian officer last year
was singular enough: they crept for above a mile on their hands and
knees, from the foot of the mountain which was their place of retreat,
and carried off their prize in the same manner, so as to escape the
notice of the sentinels who were stationed at short distances on the
road side. Some years since a plan was laid to carry off Lucien
Buonaparte from his villa at Frascati, about eleven miles from Rome, on
the Albano side, where the same range of Apennines begins: he was
walking in his garden and saw them approaching through some trees, for
his glance is quick and furtive; he retired into the house, his valet
came out to meet them, who passed himself off for his master, they were
delighted with their sham-prize, and glad to take 4,000 crowns to
release him. Since then Lucien Buonaparte has lived in Rome. I remember
once meeting this celebrated character in the streets of Paris, walking
arm in arm with Maria Cosway, with whom I had drunk tea the evening
before. He was dressed in a light drab-coloured great-coat, and was then
a spirited, dashing-looking young man. I believe I am the only person in
England who ever read his CHARLEMAGNE. It is as clever a poem as can be
written by a man who is not a poet. It came out in two volumes quarto,
and several individuals were applied to by the publishers to translate
it; among others Sir Walter Scott, who gave for answer, ‘that as to
Mister Buonaparte’s poem, he should have nothing to do with it.’ Such
was the petty spite of this understrapper of greatness and of titles,
himself since titled, the scale of whose intellect can be equalled by
nothing but the pitifulness and rancour of his prejudices! The last
account I have heard of the exploits of Neapolitan banditti is, that
they had seized upon two out of three Englishmen, who had determined
upon passing through Calabria on their way to Sicily, and were
proceeding beyond Pæstum for this purpose. They were told by the
Commandant there, that this was running into the lion’s mouth, that
there were no patrols to protect them farther, and that they were sure
to be intercepted; but an Englishman’s will is his law—they went
forward—and succeeded in getting themselves into _the only remaining
romantic situation_. I have not heard whether they have yet got out of
it. The national propensity to contend with difficulty and to resist
obstacles is curious, perhaps praiseworthy. A young Englishman returned
the other day to Italy with a horse that he had brought with him for
more than two thousand miles on the other side of Grand Cairo; and poor
Bowdich gave up the ghost in a second attempt to penetrate to the source
of the Niger, the encouragement to persevere being in proportion to the
impossibility of success! I am myself somewhat effeminate, and would
rather ‘the primrose path of dalliance tread;’ or the height of my
ambition in this line would be to track the ancient route up the valley
of the Simplon, leaving the modern road (much as I admire the work and
the workman), and clambering up the ledges of rocks, and over broken
bridges, at the risk of a sprained ankle or a broken limb, to return to
a late, but excellent dinner at the post-house at Brigg!
What increases the alarm of robbers in the South of Italy, is the
reviving of old stories, like the multiplication of echoes, and shifting
their dates indefinitely, so as to excite the fears of the listener, or
answer the purposes of the speaker. About three years ago, a desperate
gang of ruffians infested the passes of the Abruzzi, and committed a
number of atrocities; but this gang, to the amount of about thirty, were
seized and broken up, their ringleaders beheaded in the Square di Popolo
at Rome, and their wives or mistresses now live there by sitting for
their pictures to English artists. The remainder figure as convicts in
striped yellow and brown dresses in the streets of Rome, and very
civilly pull off their hats to strangers as they pass. By the way, I
cannot help reprobating this practice of employing felons as common
labourers in places of public resort. Either you must be supposed to
keep up your feelings of dislike and indignation against them while thus
mixing with the throng and innocently employed, which is a disagreeable
and forced operation of the sense of justice; or if you retain no such
feelings towards these victims of the law, then why do they retain the
chains on their feet and ugly badges on their shoulders? If the thing is
to be treated seriously, it is painful: if lightly and good-humouredly,
it turns the whole affair into a farce or drama, with as little of the
useful as the pleasant in it. I know nothing of these people that I see
manacled and branded, but that they are labouring in a broiling sun for
my convenience; if one of them were to break loose, I should not care to
stop him. When we witness the punishments of individuals, we should know
their crimes; or at least their punishment and their delinquency should
not be mixed up indiscriminately with the ordinary gaieties and business
of human life. It is a chapter of the volume that should be read apart!
About six months ago, twenty-two brigands came down from the mountains
at Velletri, and carried off four young women from the village. A
Vetturino, who wished me to return with him to Florence, spoke of this
as having happened the week before. There is a band of about ninety
banditti scattered through the mountains near Naples. Some years ago
they were the terror of travellers: at present they are more occupied in
escaping from the police themselves. But by thus confounding dates and
names, all parts of the road are easily filled all the year round with
nothing but robbers and rumours of robbers. In short, any one I believe
can pass with proper precaution from Rome to Naples and back again, with
tolerable, if not with absolute security. If he can guard equally
against petty thieving and constant imposition for the rest of his
route, it will be well.
Before leaving Rome, we went to Tivoli, of which so much has been said.
The morning was bright and cloudless; but a thick mist rose from the
low, rank, marshy grounds of the Campagna, and enveloped a number of
curious objects to the right and left, till we approached the sulphurous
stream of Solfatara, which we could distinguish at some distance by its
noise and smell, and which crossing the road like a blue ugly snake,
infects the air in its hasty progress to the sea. The bituminous lake
from which it springs is about a mile distant, and has the remains of an
ancient temple on its borders. Farther on is a round brick tower, the
tomb of the Plautian family, and Adrian’s villa glimmers with its vernal
groves and nodding arches to the right. In Rome, around it nothing
strikes the eye, nothing rivets the attention but ruins, the fragments
of what has been; the past is like a _halo_ forever surrounding and
obscuring the present! Ruins should be seen in a desert, like those of
Palmyra, and a pilgrimage should be made to them; but who would take up
his abode among tombs? Or if there be a country and men in it, why have
they nothing to shew but the relics of antiquity, or why are the living
contented to crawl about like worms, or to hover like shadows in the
monuments of the dead? Every object he sees reminds the modern Roman
that he is nothing—the spirits of former times overshadow him, and dwarf
his pigmy efforts: every object he sees reminds the traveller that
greatness is its own grave. Glory cannot last; for when a thing is once
done, it need not be done again, and with the energy to act, a people
lose the privilege _to be_. They repose upon the achievements of their
ancestors; and because every thing has been done for them, sink into
torpor, and dwindle into the counterfeits of what they were. The Greeks
will not recover their freedom till they forget that they had ancestors,
for nothing _is_ twice because it _was_ once. The Americans will perhaps
lose theirs, when they begin fully to reap all the fruits of it; for the
energy necessary to acquire freedom, and the ease that follows the
enjoyment of it, are almost incompatible. If Italy should ever be any
thing again, it will be when the tokens of her former glory, pictures,
statues, triumphal arches are mouldered in the dust, and she has to
re-tread the gradual stages of civilization, from primeval barbarism to
the topmost round of luxury and refinement; or when some new light gives
her a new impulse; or when the last oppression (such as in all
probability impends over her) equally contrary to former independence,
to modern apathy, stinging her to the quick, once more kindles the fire
in her eye, and twines the deadly terrors on her brow. Then she might
have music in her streets, the dance beneath her vines, inhabitants in
her houses, business in her shops, passengers in her roads, commerce on
her shores, honesty in her dealings, openness in her looks, books for
the censorship, the love of right for the fear of power, and a
calculation of consequences from a knowledge of principles—and England,
like the waning moon, would grow pale in the rising dawn of liberty,
that she had in vain tried to tarnish and obscure! _Mais assez des
reflexions pour un voyageur._
Tivoli is an enchanting—a fairy spot. Its rocks, its grottos, its
temples, its waterfalls, and the rainbows reflected on them, answer to
the description, and make a perfect play upon the imagination. Every
object is light and fanciful, yet steeped in classic recollections. The
whole is a fine net-work—a rare assemblage of intricate and high-wrought
beauties. To do justice to the scene would require the pen of Mr. Moore,
minute and striking as it is, sportive yet romantic, displaying all the
fascinations of sense, and unfolding the mysteries of sentiment,
‘Where all is strength below, and all above is grace,’—
glittering like a sun-beam on the Sybil’s Temple at top, or darting on a
rapid antithesis to the dark grotto of the God beneath, loading the
prismatic spray with epithets, linking the meeting beauties on each side
the abrupt, yawning chasm by an alliteration, painting the flowers,
pointing the rocks, passing the narrow bridge on a dubious metaphor, and
blending the natural and artificial, the modern and the antique, the
simple and the quaint, the glimmer and the gloom in an exquisite
profusion of fluttering conceits. He would be able to describe it much
better, with its tiny cascades and jagged precipices, than his friend
Lord Byron has described the Fall of Terni, who makes it, without any
reason that I can find, tortuous, dark, and boiling like a witch’s
cauldron. On the contrary, it is simple and majestic in its character, a
clear mountain-stream that pours an uninterrupted, lengthened sheet of
water over a precipice of eight hundred feet, in perpendicular descent,
and gracefully winding its way to the channel beyond, while on one side
the stained rock rises bare and stately the whole height, and on the
other, the gradual green woods ascend, moistened by the ceaseless spray,
and lulled by the roar of the waterfall, as the ear enjoys the sound of
famous poet’s verse. If this noble and interesting object have a fault,
it is that it is too slender, straight, and accompanied with too few
wild or grotesque ornaments. It is the Doric, or at any rate the Ionic,
among water-falls. It has nothing of the texture of Lord Byron’s
terzains, twisted, zigzag, pent up and struggling for a vent, broken off
at the end of a line, or point of a rock, diving under ground, or out of
the reader’s comprehension, and pieced on to another stanza or shelving
rock.—Nature has
‘Poured it out as plain
As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.’
To say the truth, if Lord Byron had put it into _Don Juan_ instead of
_Childe Harold_, he might have compared the part which her ladyship has
chosen to perform on this occasion to an experienced waiter pouring a
bottle of ale into a tumbler at a tavern. It has somewhat of the same
continued, plump, right-lined descent. It is not frittered into little
parts, nor contrasted into quaintness, nor tortured into fury. All the
intricacy and contradiction that the noble Poet ascribes to it belong to
Tivoli; but then Tivoli has none of the grandeur or violence of the
description in _Childe Harold_. The poetry is fine, but not like.
As I have got so far on my way, I may as well jump the intermediate
space, and proceed with my statistics here, as there was nothing on the
road between this and Rome worth mentioning, except Narni (ten miles
from Terni), the approach to which overlooks a fine, bold, woody,
precipitous valley. We stopped at Terni for the express purpose of
visiting the Fall, which is four or five miles from it. The road is
excellent, and commands a succession of charming points of view. You
must pass the little village of Papinio, perched like a set of
pigeon-houses on the point of a rock about half-way up, which has been
battered almost in pieces by French, Austrians, and others at different
times, from a fort several hundred feet above it, and that looks
directly down upon the road. When you get to the top of the winding
ascent, and immediately before you turn off by a romantic little path to
the waterfall, you see the ranges of the Abruzzi and the frozen top of
the Pie de Lupo. Along this road the Austrian troops marched three years
ago to the support of good government and social order at Naples. The
prospect of the cold blue mountain-tops, and other prospects which the
sight of this road recalled, chilled me, and I hastened down the
side-path to lose, in the roar of the Velino tumbling from its rocky
height, and the wild freedom of nature, my recollection of tyranny and
tyrants. On a green bank far below, so as to be just discernible, a
shepherd-boy was sleeping under the shadow of a tree, surrounded by his
flock, enjoying peace and freedom, scarce knowing their names. That’s
something—we must wait for the rest!
We returned to the inn at Terni too late to proceed on our journey, and
were thrust, as a special favour, into a disagreeable apartment. We had
the satisfaction, however, to hear the united voices of the passengers
by two vetturinos, French and Italian men and women, lifted up against
the supper and wine as intolerably bad. The general complaint was, that
having paid so much for our fare, we were treated like beggars—_comme
des gueux_. This was true enough, and not altogether unreasonable. Let
no one who can help it, and who travels for pleasure, travel by a
vetturino. You are treated much in the same manner as if in England you
went by the caravan or the waggon. In fact, this mode of conveyance is
an imposition on innkeepers and the public. It is the result of a
combination among the vetturino owners, who bargain to provide you for a
certain sum, and then billet you upon the innkeepers for as little as
they can, who when thus obtruded upon them, under the guarantee of a
grasping stage-coach driver, consider you as common property or prey,
receive you with incivility, keep out of the way, will not deign you an
answer, stint you in the quantity of your provisions, poison you by the
quality, order you into their worst apartments, force other people into
the same room or even bed with you, keep you in a state of continual
irritation and annoyance all the time you are in the house, and send you
away jaded and dissatisfied with your reception, and terrified at the
idea of arriving at the next place of refreshment, for fear of meeting
with a renewal of the same contemptible mortifications and petty
insults. You have no remedy: if you complain to the Vetturino, he says
it is the fault of the innkeeper; if you remonstrate with the innkeeper,
he says he has orders from the Vetturino only to provide certain things.
It is of little use to try to bribe the waiters; they doubt your word,
and besides, do not like to forego the privilege of treating a vetturino
passenger as one. It is best, if you travel in this manner, to pay for
yourself; and then you may stand some chance of decent accommodation. I
was foolish enough to travel twice in this manner, and pay three
Napoleons a day, for which I might have gone post, and fared in the most
sumptuous manner. I ought to add, in justice, that when I have escaped
from the guardianship of Monsieur le Vetturino and have stopped at inns
on my own account, as was the case at Venice, Milan, and at Florence
twice, I have no reason to complain either of the treatment or the
expence. As to economy, it is in vain to look for it in travelling in
Italy or at an hotel; and if you succeed in procuring a private lodging
for a time, besides the everlasting trickery and cabal, you are likely
to come off with very meagre fare, unless you can eat Italian dishes. I
ought, however, to repeat what I believe I have said before, that the
bread, butter, milk, wine and poultry that you get here (even
ordinarily) are excellent, and that you may also obtain excellent tea
and coffee.
We proceeded next morning (in no very good humour) on our way to
Spoleto. The day was brilliant, and our road lay through steep and
narrow defiles for several hours. The sides of the hills on each side
were wild and woody; indeed, the whole ride was interesting, and the
last hill before we came to Spoleto, with a fine monastery embosomed in
its thick tufted trees, crowned our satisfaction with the journey.
Spoleto is a handsome town, delightfully situated, and has an appearance
(somewhat startling in Italy) as if life were not quite extinct in it.
It stands on the slope of a range of the Apennines, extending as far as
Foligno and Perugia, and ‘sees and is seen’ to a great distance. From
Perugia in particular (an interval of forty miles) you seem as if you
could put your hand upon it, so plain does it appear, owing to the
contrast between the white stone-houses, and the dark pine-groves by
which it is surrounded. The effect of this contrast is not always
pleasant. The single cottages or villas scattered in the neighbourhood
of towns in Italy, often look like dominos or dice spread on a dark
green cloth. We arrived at Foligno early in the evening, and as a
memorable exception to the rest of our route, found there an inn equally
clean and hospitable. From the windows of our room we could see the
young people of the town walking out in a fine open country, to breathe
the clear fresh air, and the priests sauntering in groups and enjoying
the _otium cum dignitate_. It was for some monks of Foligno that Raphael
painted his inimitable Madonna.
We turned off at Assizi to view the triple Franciscan church and
monastery. We saw the picture of Christ (shewn by some nuns), that used
to smile upon St. Francis at his devotions; and the little chapel in the
plain below, where he preached to his followers six hundred years ago,
over which a large church is at present built, like Popery surmounting
Christianity. The church on the top of the hill, built soon after his
death in honour of the saint, and where his heart reposes, is a
curiosity in its kind. First, two churches were raised, one on the top
of the other, and then a third was added below with some difficulty, by
means of excavations in the rock. The last boasts a modern and somewhat
finical mausoleum or shrine, and the two first are ornamented with
fresco paintings by Giotto and Ghirlandaio, which are most interesting
and valuable specimens of the early history of the art. I see nothing to
contemn in them—much to admire—fine heads, simple grouping, a knowledge
of drawing and foreshortening, and dignified attitudes and expressions,
some of which Raphael has not disdained to copy, though he has improved
upon them. St. Francis died about 1220, and this church was finished and
ornamented with these designs of the chief actions of his life, within
forty months afterwards; so that the pictures in question must be about
six hundred years old. We are not, however, to wonder at the maturity of
these productions of the pencil; the art did not arise out of barbarism
or nothing, but from a lofty preconception in the minds of those who
first practised it, and applied it to purposes of devotion. Even the
grace and majesty of Raphael were, I apprehend, but emanations of the
spirit of the Roman Catholic religion, and existed virtually in the
minds of his countrymen long before and after he transferred them, with
consummate skill, to the canvass. Not a Madonna scrawled on the walls
near Rome, not a baby-house figure of the Virgin, that is out of
character and costume, or that is not imbued with an expression of
resignation, benignity, and purity. We were shewn these different
objects by a young priest, who explained them to us with a gracefulness
of manner, and a mild eloquence, characteristic of his order. I forgot
to mention, in the proper place, that I was quite delighted with the
external deportment of the ecclesiastics in Rome. It was marked by a
perfect propriety, decorum, and humanity, from the highest to the
lowest. Not the slightest look or gesture to remind you that you were
foreigners or heretics—an example of civility that is far from being
superfluous, even in the capital of the Christian world. It may be said
that this is art, and a desire to gain upon the good opinion of
strangers. Be it so, but it must be allowed that it is calculated to
this end. Good manners have this advantage over good morals, that they
lie more upon the surface; and there is nothing, I own, that inclines me
to think so well of the understandings or dispositions of others, as a
thorough absence of all impertinence. I do not think _they_ can be the
worst people in the world who habitually pay most attention to the
feelings of others; nor those the best who are endeavouring every moment
to hurt them. At Perugia, while looking at some panels in a church
painted by Pietro Perugino, we met with a young Irish priest, who
claimed acquaintance with us as country-folks, and recommended our
staying six days, to see the ceremonies and finery attending the
translation of the deceased head of his order from the church where he
lay to his final resting-place. We were obliged by this proposal, but
declined it. It was curious to hear English spoken by the inmate of a
Benedictine Monastery,—to see the manners of an Italian priest engrafted
on the Irish accent—to think that distant countries are brought together
by agreement in religion—that the same country is rent asunder by
differences in it. Man is certainly an ideal being, whom the breath of
an opinion wafts from Indus to the Pole, and who is ready to sacrifice
the present world and every object in it for a reversion in the skies!
Perugia is situated on a lofty hill, and is in appearance the most solid
mass of building I ever beheld. It commands a most extensive view in all
directions, and the ascent to it is precipitous on every side.
Travelling this road from Rome to Florence is like an eagle’s
flight—from hill-top to hill-top, from towered city to city, and your
eye devours your way before you over hill or plain. We saw Cortona on
our right, looking over its wall of ancient renown, conscious of its
worth, not obtruding itself on superficial notice; and passed through
Arezzo, the reputed birth-place of Petrarch. All the way we were
followed (hard upon) by another Vetturino, with an English family, and
we had a scramble whenever we stopped for supper, beds, or milk. At
Incisa, the last stage before we arrived at Florence, an intimation was
conveyed that we should give up our apartments in the inn, and seek for
lodgings elsewhere. This modest proposition could come only from English
people, who have such an opinion of their dormant stock of pretended
good-nature, that they think all the world must in return be ready to
give up their own comforts to oblige them. We had two French gentlemen
in the coach with us, equally well-behaved and well-informed, and two
Italians in the cabriolet, as good-natured and ‘honest as the skin
between their brows.’ Near Perugia we passed the celebrated lake of
Thrasymene, near which Hannibal defeated the Roman consul Flaminius. It
struck me as not unlike Windermere in character and scenery, but I have
seen other lakes since, which have driven it out of my head. Florence
(the city of flowers) seemed to deserve its name as we entered it for
the second time more than it did the first. The weather had been cold
during part of our journey, but now it had changed to sultry heat. The
people looked exceedingly plain and hard-featured, after having passed
through the Roman States. They have the look of the Scotch people, only
fiercer and more ill-tempered.