>^-i'
ROME AND VENICE,
WITH OTHER
WANDERINGS II ITALY, H 1866-7.
BY
GEGKGE AUGUSTUS SALA,
AUTHOR OP
"aaiebioa ly rHE mids'" or war," etc.
1859.
Ecco torno il Francese :
Vedete poi 1' esercito che sotto
La ruota di Fortuna era caduto,
Create il nuovo Re chi si prepara
Dall' onta vendicar che ebbe a Novara."
Ariosto.
Noi siamo padroni delle acque di Lissa."
Admiral Persano to General de la Marmora.
LONDON:
TINSLEY BEOTHERS, 18 CATHEEINE ST., STRAND.
1869,
SB
i.oNDONr:
BOBSON AND SOXS, I'laXTKlIS, PANCUAS BOAD, N.W.
^
TO
SHIRLEY BROOKS
IS VERY CORDIALLY DEDICATED.
ivi8208^6
NOTICE.
The Letters forming this volume, with the exception
of those headed respectively " On Travelling and
Travellers in Italy," and " Eoma Urbs," appeared
in the columns of the Daily Telegraphy between the
month of April 1866 and the month of February
1867. They are now republished by permission of
the Proprietors of that Journal. That which now
sees the hght again, under the comprehensive title
of Rome and Venice^ is scarcely a fourth part
of my original correspondence from, I think, nearly
every province of continental Italy, save Calabria.
Sicily I did not visit ; and for many reasons, at
which I have hinted "in another place," I have
cancelled all record of my experiences in the Tyrol
with Gaeibaldi — the Washington of Italy: "first
in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his
countrymen," but whose reputation has been shame-
fully maltreated, within these latter days, in Eng-
vi PREFACE.
land, simply because he is old, and ^ has failed in
two attempts, and because he is too noble and too
pure to tell lies, or to disguise his horror and hatred
of the cogging and shuffling of diplomacy, and the
wickedly impudent impostures of priestcraft. My
readers, and especially my critics in the amoene
sphere of journalism (how we all loathe one another,
to be sure !), may be reasonably congratulated on
the excision of three- fourths of my primary mass of
matter. The whole would have made a work as in-
tolerable as one of Prynne's, — "all rind and no
fruit." The piteous entreaties of my terrified Pub-
lishers notwithstanding, I had resolved to produce
an actual book of " Travels in Italy ;" but better
sense prevailed, and I held my hand at the present
excerpt.
G. A. S.
CONTENTS.
I
I
NO.
On Travelling and Travellers in
Italy
PAGE
I
L The Austrians in Venice . . . .
27
II. From Trieste to Vienna
46
III. The Kaiser ....
61
IV. A Flight from Venice
71
V. Ferrara ....
86
VI. From Ferrara to Eovigo
100
VII. Passage of the Po
116
viii. Theatre at Eovigo
134
IX. The Idle Lake .
150
X. PoNTE d' Arana .
165
XI. Gaffes
175
XII. Venetia
192
XIII. Finis AusTRiiE
200
XIV. The Surrender of Venice
. 210
XV. Eve in St. Mark .
. 226
XVI. The Plebiscitum .
. 236
XVII. Venice restored
. 247
XVIII. Entry of the King of Itali
r INTO
Venice
. 267
XIX. Passing through Florence
. 284
XX. The Eoad to Eome
. 292
" XXI. EoMA Urbs .
• Z'^9
XXII. A Eoman Festival
. 321
XXIII. The Pope .
.
• 334
vili
CONTENTS,
XXIV. Rome and the Romans
XXV. CumSTM AS-DAY IN ROME
XXVI. Roman " Shaves"
XXVII. CosB Di Roma
XXVIII. New Year in Rome
XXIX. Old Christmas-day
XXX. Roman Notes
XXXI. The Streets op Rome
XXXII. A Day with the Roman Hounds
344
354
364
373
383
397
406
423
453
ROME AND VENICE
IN 1866-7.
ON TRAVELLING AND TRAVELLERS IN ITALY.
There are two ways of doing everything — the poetic and the
prosaic. There are some persons so richly endowed with the
imaginative faculty that they have heen able to invest the
commonest and meanest things of life with an aspect of
poetry, or with nobility of thought and language. Thus the
sublime Siddons, at the dinner-table, astounded the little
footpage, who had handed her a glass of ale by mistake, with
an outbreak of blank-verse :
" I asked for water, boy ; ye've brought me beer."
x4.nd I have heard of a man, of the highest literary attain-
ments, but whose pecuniary difficulties were continuous, who
would borrow half-a-crown in the Spenserian stanza.
Although I have turned a verse occasionally, as husband-
men turn a sod, I think I can conscientiously aver that I have
not one tittle of poetry in my soul, and that I never wrote,
and (what is more) have never striven to write, anything of
the nature of lyricism. But I do npt .affect, to despise an art
2 ROME AND VENICE.
of which I am ignorant, or to undervalue a gift of which I
have been deprived. The grapes are not sour. They arc
only as far beyond my reach as that sumptuous bunch of
hothouse " sweetwaters," at a guinea a pound, which tempts
my eyes, while it derides my pocket, in the central avenue
of Covent-garden Market,
There are few things easier of accomplishment than to
sneer at poets and poetry; and for smartly sour railing, the
poet-hater may be commended to old Stephen Gosson, who,
falling foul of Homer, tells the story of Mithecus, who was
an excellent cook among the Greeks, and as much honoured
for his confections as Phidias for his carving. But when he
came to Sparta, thinking there for his cunning to be ac-
counted a god, the good laws of Lycurgus and customs of the
country were too strong for his diet. The governors banished
him and his art, and all the inhabitants, following the steps
of their predecessors, used not with dainties to provoke appe-
tite, but with labour and travail to whet their stomachs to
their meat. " I may," says Stephen, " well liken Homer to
Mithecus, and poets to cooks; the pleasures of the one
winnes the body from labour, and conquereth the sense ;
the allurement of the other draws the mind from virtue, and
confoundeth wit." It is, I apprehend, very facile to be thus
censorious. He who has no palate can say very cutting things
about Francatelli or Jules Gouffe ; the man who can neither
whistle *'Wapping old Stairs," nor hum ''God save the
Queen," is usually ready to sneer at Mozart and Beethoven
as " Tweedledum and Tweedledee ;" and if you would hear
a good set homily on the nasty, filthy, selfish, idle, health-
destrciyin^ haj^it.of smokijig, you should listen to the moralist
ON TEAVELTilNG AND TRAVELLERS. 3
whose stomach would be turned by three whiffs of the mildest
of havanas.
Never was there a more terrific Rhadamanthus than he
who sits in judgment on the things which he does not like,
or which he cannot do. An author may be a very pungent
satirist, but no poet : which may be one of the reasons, per-
chance, why the greatest poets have often been so Bcurvily
treated by writers of satire : nor have I ever been free from
a lurking suspicion that the eminent Juvenal may at one
period of his career have essayed to write either eclogues or
epics ; that his performances were not very favourably received at
fashionable dinner-tables or by the critics of the public baths,
and that, soured and disappointed, he avenged himself on
the Theseid, and " took it out," as the vulgar saying goes,
of poor hoarse Codrus, whose chief faults, it is possible, were
to have a wife and a large family, and to suffer from chronic
bronchitis.
For myself, I can say with candour that I should like
very much to be a poet, just as I should like to be Baron
Rothschild, or the Marquise de Caux, or Mr. Millais the
painter, or a Prime Warden of the Fishmongers' Company.
Providence has decreed that I am not to be anything of the
kind ; but it is still free to me, I conjecture, to regard the
man of millions with admiration and without envy; to go
into ecstasies every time I hear Patti sing ; to dwell with
€ver-recurring delight on the "Huguenot" and the " Order of
Release ;" and to dine at Fishmongers' Hall whenever I am
asked, or my liver will endure clear turtle and Steinberg
Cabinet.
I said there were two ways of doing everything — the poetic
4 ROME AND VENICE.
and the prosaic ; or, if you prefer to vary the terpas, the re-
fined and the vulgar. It can be no secret to such readers
as I possess that I am a Vulgarian, and that I have never
swerved from vulgarity of thought and coarseness of style
during the twenty years in which I have been writing for a
livelihood. Me Boeotum in crasso jurares aere natum. You
might swear, finding me anywhere, that I was born in the
gi-oss atmosphere of Cockaigne ; although for a man to be a
cockney it is by no means necessary that he should have
first drawn breath within the sound of Bow bells. He may
have a cockney soul. The inmost utterances of his heart
may misplace their /t's. Yet it has often struck me that one
of the lower animals — say a dog or a pig — coarse as may be
its appetites, gross its manners, and unintellectual its organi-
sation, may have more and better opportunities of judging
the qualities of things which are of the earth earthy, than
the Colossus, stalking along sublimely, his head in the
clouds, and his nose upraised, in the direction of the Milky
Way.
It is the ascertained business of a very few persons, in
every age, to study the stars,* and of a smaller number still
to understand anything of that which they study; whereas
the common and petty things of life intimately concern mil-
lions upon millions at every hour of the day. Granting, then,
* " Count me not, then, with them who, to amaze
The people, set them on the stars to gaze ;
Insinuating, with much confidence,
They are the only men that have science
Of some brave creatures ; yea, a world they will
Have in each star, though it be past their skill
To make it manifest unto a man
That reason hath, or tell his fingers can."
John Bunyan, Prologue to the Rohj War.
ON TEA YELLING AND TKAVELLERS. 5
for the sake of argument, that a cockney and a vulgarian has
four short legs — the Colossus has two long ones ; — that his
nose, instead of scenting the planets, is the rather disposed to
sniffing for foxes, or for truffles underground ; and that his
eyes lie naturally close to the earth, it may be conceded, per-
haps, that he is sometimes enabled to arrive at a tolerably
accurate estimate of the external phenomena of terrestrial
nature, and that he may occasionally turn up little specimens
of vegetation, or shells, or pebbles, which the Colossus — his
nose still among the stars — ^has never seen, cannot see, will
not stoop to see, and, in his sublime ignorance, tramples
under foot, and crunches into powder. A persuasion that
such may be the case, and an idea that the scent-hunting
hound, and the truffle-grubbing swine, may in their genera-
tion do good service to that cause which we should all have,
Titans and Troglodytes, at heart, — the increase of the sum
of human knowledge, — are my sole apologies for republishing
the papers which form this book.
For it appears to me that, from the poetical standard,
Italy as a country and the Italians as a nation have been
done, literally, to death, and that distance has led such en-
chantment to the view taken of the Peninsula, that the eye
of appreciation has grown, occasionally, somewhat weak and
watery : a circumstance which has led not unfrequently to the
confusion of hawks as hernshaws, and to the acceptance of
clouds as whales. China, I surmise, is a land about which
almost every traveller has told lies. Spain and Eussia are
countries which no travellers save Ford in the first, and Mr.
Sutherland Edwards in the second case, seem to have under-
stood anything worth noting. Germany is a country which
§ nOMI AND VKNICK.
kl Dot worth travelling in to understand, for its only toler-
aMe products, its literature and its wines, can bo studied
or drunk at Lome ; but Italy is a region about which every
teaveller that ever visited it ha» dreamed dreams.
The Italians themselves have, perhaps, been at all times
the greatest visionai-ies with respect to their own country;
and within these latter days the regcnemtion of Italy —
may it be permanent ! — has been chiefly the work of a states-
man (Count Gavour) whom his enemies declare to have
Been no more an Italian than a Shetlander is an EngUsh-
Buuu. I hasten, however, to quit this section of the argu-
meait; for, were I to continue the discussion as to who is
and who is not a good Italian, patriotically considered, I
should have Mr. Swinburne battering me with a fiery torch,
and telling me that out of the pale of Mazzinism there
was no political salvation ; while, if I dared to hint that
my own beaai»-ideal of a patriotic Italian was the late Daniel
Manin, I might be reminded that the illustrious Venetian
in question was by no means an advanced democrat, that
he was an uncompromising advocate of a '* strong" govern-
ment, and that as a lover of moderate freedom he enjoyed
to the last the esteem and admiration of the Emperor Na-
poleon in.
French travellers in Italy have, perhaps, dreamt fewer
cbeams concerning the Peninsula than have the Germans
or the English. But their theoiy as to things Italian is
decided enough. A Frenchman's political views of the
country are very simple, and seldom vary. He is of opinion
that Italy should be free ; but he questions the expediency
of her being united. His dream is one of a federal Italy
ON TRAVELLING AND TRAVELLERS. T
governed by native sovereigns, all to be petted, patronised,
and protected by the grand French nation. He would re-
morselessly drive out the Teutonic invader, — indeed, he has
driven him out over and over again ; nor would he install
himself as an armed occupant in the invader's place.
The first Napoleon might,'''ibyarTtroke of his pen, have
united the whole Peninsula under his sceptre ; but he held
his hand. He was crowned King of Italy, it is true; but
his kingdom comprised only Lombardy and Venetia, with
some pai-t of Piedmont, and later the " department of the
Tiber" and the " department of Thrasymene" were decreed,
under exceptional circumstances — those of the impossibility
of bringing an impracticable priest to terms — to be integral
parts of the French Empire. He dreamt the federal dream,
and made a kingdom, here, for his brother-in-law, and a
grand duchy, there, for his sister. Eome excepted, he never
held, nor professed to hold, Italy as a conquered country,
as the Spaniards had held Naples, and the Austrians Lom-
bardo-Venetia. He wished Italy to have her own princes,
her own usages, her own judges and magistrates, and her
own troops. He exacted merely that social barbarism should
be abolished, that the Code Napoleon should supersede
the antiquated system of mediaeval jurisprudence, and that
all the Italian governments should be amenable to French
influence.
It need scarcely be said that in the tail of the last sen-
tence lies the sting. In my own opinion (and I trust that
I am not singular in it) both the first and the third Na-
poleon have done an immensity of good in Italy ; but ars
I shall frequently have to revert to their Italian work, I
8 ROME AND VENICE.
shall not enlarge upon it now.* But had the Bonapartes
converted the Italian into a perfect angel (which they have
certainly failed in doing), the non-Latin nations would still
fiercely denounce the influence of Bonapartism in Italy,,
and continue their etale tirades ahout ^* the insatiahle am-
bition" of the conqueror of Marengo, and the "occult de-
signs" of the victor of Solferino. The non-Latin nations
have, I take it, a clear right to talk in that way ; but those
who are of the Latin race have as clear a right to talk in
their way, and to regard the influence of Cesarism in Italy
as much more beneficial than detrimental: — beneficial as
being calculated to establish a temporary mezzo termine be-
tween the peril of a return to the stupid and cruel despotism
* During my sojourn in Italy (I admit the time was one of tremendous
political excitement, and that the national vanity was intensely mortified
not only by the defeats of Custozza and Lissa, but by the contemptuous
cession of Yenetia by tha Austrians, not directly to the Italians, but through
the intermediary of France : a scornful flinging away, as though the Kaiser
were saying, ** Here, give this dog his bone; and let your General Lebceuf
hand it to him; for I will not"), I heard, saw, and read, in conversation, in
public orations, in caricatures, and in journals serious and trivial, at least
five hundred times the Emperor Napoleon III. compared to Tartuffe, to
Timour, to Ignatius Loyola, to Herod, to Commodus, to Amurath, and to
Judas Iscariot. In a satirical paper of large circulation, published in
Milan (the Spirito Folletto, I think it was called), I noticed one very large
cartoon, which was simply a blasphemous travesty of the magnificent
Road-to- Calvary picture by Rafaelle, now at Madrid, and known as the
" Spasimo di Sicilia." It was Italy who was staggering and fainting under
the weight of the Cross ; Rome and Venice were the Holy "Women ; and the
Emperor Napoleon was the Roman centurion oh horseback, who sternly
orders the procession to move on. This abominable picture was exposed,
surrounded by admiring crowds, in the Piazza del Duomo, on the bookstalls
by the theatre of La Scala, and at a dozen shops in the Corso Vittorio
Emmanuele— three of the most public resorts in Milan.
That same evening (an exquisitely beautiful one in August) I strolled far
away through the suburbs of Milan, past the great Naumachial circus built
by Napoleon L, past the Piazza de' Armi, towards that famous triumphal
monument of marble begun under the viceroyalty of Eugene Beauhamais,
and dedicated " alle gperanze d' Italia indipendente" by Napoleon I., and
ON TRAVELLING AND TRAVELLEES. 9
of the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons on the one hand, and,
on the other, the equally dismal danger of rabid Eed Kepub-
licanism.
The necessity for French influence and protection in
Italy must one day — and at no very distant one — cease to
exist. But every new nation must remain, for a certain
time, in leading-strings ; and in the Italian case which is,
the advocates of French influence may argue, best ? — that
the guide should be a nurse of a kindred race, and who
has already helped to suckle the bantling and place it in
terminated by the Austrians, who dubbed it the " Arco della Pace,'''' and
covered its sides with tawdry bas-reliefs, and fulsome inscriptions in bad
Latin, crying up the virtues of the Emperor Francis, the gaoler of the Spiel-
berg. It was thus decorated when I first went to Milan, many years since.
But when I revisited the arch that August evening in 1866, it had changed
its aspect ; it bare record of the events of 1859, and the inscription beneath
the architrave ran, Englished, thus :
Napoleon III.
AND
Victor Emmanuel II.
ENTEEING, THEIR ARMS COVERED WITH GLORY,
EXULTING MILAN,
TORE FROM THIS MARBLE THE IMPRINT OF SLAVERY,
AND WROTE, INSTEAD,
THAT ITALY WAS FREE.
Where would " Milano esultante" have been in '66 but for that " en-
trance with arms covered with glory" in 1859 ? Where would Italy have
been now, without the help of Napoleon ? Could Victor Emmanuel have
won Solferino and Magenta alone ? Without the aid of France, the Piazza
de' Armi of Milan would be full at this day of white-coated Austrians, exer-
cising " in squadrons and platoons, with their music playing chunes ;" the
adjoining Castello would be full, as of old, of political prisoners; and any
caricaturist venturing to lampoon the ruling powers would be very sum-
marily taken to a guardhouse, strapped down upon a bench, and scourged —
it would matter little if the offender were man or woman — within an inch
of his or her life. But " exulting Milan" had forgotten the cavaletto and
the hastone in 1866 ; just as those liberated Fenian convicts the other day
were no sooner freed from picking oakum at Millbank and wheeling bricks
at Chatham, than they went home to Ireland and set about abusing the
British Government.
10 ROME AND VENICE.
the way of walking; or an Austrian corporal, brandishing
handcuflfs and willow-rods, or a ranting, raving Ked Eepub-
lican, with Pianori's dagger in one hand and Felice Orsini's
fulminating bomb-shells in the other ? I must be pardoned
on this head for quoting one Italian authority on Italy,
when I entreat all English admirers of this beautiful and.
interesting land to read M. Cimmino's novel, I Coiu/iurati.
Therein — from the testimony of an Italiano italianissimo
— ^they may form some idea of the infinite mischief and
naisery inflicted on the cause of Italian independence by
secret societies and assassination plots ; by Mazzinism, in
a word, which has never ceased to retard, instead of ac-
celerating, the great cause — that of the creation of a new
and healthy member of the European family.
I doa^t say that I agree entirely with the ordinary French
traveller who pins his faith to Cesarism in general, and M.
Thiers' Italian notions in particular; but I do say that a
nation which has been more or less enslaved and held cap-
tive to the foreign bow and spear for fifteen hundred years
has some need of guidance and protection ere she sets en-
tirely up for herself as a great European power. Perhaps
in a dozen years or so we shall have no kings in Europe
at all, and then the Kepublic of Italy may form an import-
ant section of the United States of Europe. In the mean
time Frenchmen will continue to opine that united Italy,
■with an army thrice as large as she needs, with finances
in a state of chronic disorder, with a clergy continually
plotting to overthrow the newly-built edifice of freedom, and
with a canker-worm at her very heart in the shape of Rome,
and its Ponti£f more impracticable than that Pius whom
ON TRAVELLING AND TRAVELLERS. U
Napoleon I. took into custody, is, if not a failure, a mis-
take, and that the next European convulsion will crumble
the newly-built edifice to fragments.
With regard to Italian literature, the French know well-
nigh nothing about it. They sat patiently by while an
Italian, the late M. Fiorentino, learned the French lan-
guage in order that he might translate Dante for them.
They wouldn't read the Inferno when M. Fiorentino had
published it ; and at the present moment it is probable that
the only notions entertained by the majority of educated
Frenchmen touching the works of Italy's greatest poet are de-
rived from the drawings of M. G-ustave Dore. Every Italian
above the rank of a shopkeeper speaks French ; and not
one out of every score of French travellers I met in Italy
during nine months could speak twenty words of Italian.*
With respect to art, the average Frenchman's Italian
creed is as simple and as invariable as his political one. He
regards artistic Italy as a mine, and he extracts as much
precious metal from it as ever he possibly can, nor will he
pay even for smelting the ore if he can help it. The
English tourist goes to Italy to buy ancient pictures, or
* Nor, much as they vapour about " La Diva," and much as they profess
to admire Rossini, and much as they sneer at us as a nation incapable of
appreciating classical music, do I think that the French have any sincere
love for, or any profound comprehension of, Italian music. The Theatre des
Italiens in Paris has always been an exotic, which would have died long ago
but for a large subvention from the Government; whereas in England private
enterprise and the cooperation of the people have, during a period of a
hundred and fifty years, maintained one and sometimes two vast theatres for
Italian opera in London. In George the Third's time, even, we had two — the
King's Theatre and the Pantheon. Again, there is scarcely a provincial
town in England in which, periodically, the very best Italian artists have
not been heard. When did Grisi or Mario, Alboni or Lablache, visit Tours,,
or Abbeville, or even Bordeaux ?
12 ROME AND VENICE.
modern copies ; the wiser Frencliman sends the clever young
alumni of the Ecole des Beaux Arts to the Villa Medici, to
copy the pictures on the spot, and hring them home to Paris.
In art, the Frenchman is the worst customer the Italian can
have. He purchases little ; but he observes, imitates, and
borrows everything he can lay his mind and hand upon.
When he was all-powerful in Italy, he stole. Napoleon
would surrender a principality, but he would stick like grim
death to an antique cameo. He would part with a kingdom,
but a manuscript by Lionardo, or a picture by Kafaelle, was
not to be rescued, under compulsion, from his insatiate maw.
**'Galli, semper crudeles, rapaces, harharorum omnium Italis
infestissimV^
The cruelty and the barbarism may be doubtful ; but of
the artistic rapacity of the French there can be no doubt. I
have an old catalogue of the contents of the Museum of the
Louvre, dated 1812 ; and it is half droll, half melancholy, to
follow page after page of the records of impudent plunder.
The Venus de' Medici and the Apollo Belvedere, the Trans-
figuration and the Communion of St. Jerome — nothing came
amiss to these ''cracksmen with a taste." But they did not
destroy : they only stole. If they were obliged to bombard
a city, they built it up again. Of the long Austrian sway
in Italy, no architectural trace is visible now but fortresses
and barracks ; whereas, although French domination in the
Peninsula endured only from 1804 to 1815, in hundreds of
cases, while travelling, when your eye lights on a good road,
a well-built bridge, a commodious hospital, a solid quay, a
handsome modern theatre, you will, asking, " Chi V ha
fatto ?" receive the answer, " Napoleone PrimoJ*
i
ON TRAVELLING AND TRAVELLEKS. 18
*
The veneration still shown by the Italians for the memory
of the first Napoleon,* and which is so magnificently ex-
pressed by Manzoni in the Cinque Maggio, differs very
widely from the feverish and fantastic cultiis accorded to the
Corsican by that French people whom he subdued, but whose
vanity he flattered by the ephemeral gift of military glory.
There can be little doubt that Napoleon's heart was con-
stantly and chiefly in Italy, and that he loved Milan more
than he loved Paris. In his desolate captivity, Italian was
the tongue he liked best to speak; and in Italy his exiled
kindred found a home and a respectful welcome. He did
great things for Italy, and he would have done infinitely
greater and better ones ; but his life was short, and the
task was long ; but the occasion was fleeting, and judgment
difficult : as many men have discovered since Hippocrates'
time. He succeeded, however, in abolishing feudalism. in
Italy ; everywhere he reformed the criminal code — save in
Tuscany, where it was scarcely susceptible of reformation,
and in Kome, where the priests baffled his efforts to reform
anything. If his gendarmes were somewhat unscrupulous
as to the number of brigands they shot (Fra Diavolo was
among the number), there is abundant contemporary testi-
mony to prove that, for a time, he extirpated brigandage
from the Alps to the Adriatic, and that during his sway
there were rooted out those hideous pests to society the
hraviy or professional assassins, who, for at least eight cen-
turies, had publicly pursued their abhorrent trade throughout
taly. If his gendarmes did nothing else, they blew out the
* A gold piece of twenty francs is habitually called by the peasantry m
north and central Italy " un marengo,^^
AND VENICE.
of fiftltflbacBl, tod fiparafacile, and Sparentoro. And
let this eepecially be Boted : that bo soon as Napoleon fell,
and Italy once more reverted to the Pope, the Bourbons, the
Anstnasa, and liioae pale Grand-Dukes, always trembling,
tiwt^ rnmd^ to 'isvoke ihe aid of Austrian bayonets, bri-
gandism and bnKvoiam revived. Finally, let it be remem-
bend, and to his imperishable honour, that the Eepublican
General, the Wini Consul, the Emperor, the King of Italy,
the "Chief olBwiditti," as he has been called by high Tory
xsiticB, inexorably decreed the abolition of that abominable
and inhuman outrage to, and desecration of Humanity, -which
for ages had been common all over Italy, and the audible
evidence of which only lingers at this day in Eome, where it
counts yet a few miserable victims among the choristers in the
private chapel of the Supreme Pontiff of the Eoman Catholic
Church.
And now, not ^without perturbation, I approach mine own
countrymen who have travelled, or who travel, in Italy. I
think they may \)e divided into thi*ee grand classes : the
solemn, severe, and classical travellers ; second, the canting
and gushing ones ; third, the idiotic plagiarists.
Addison justly enjoys a considerable degree of renown as
a dassical traveller in Italy. He drags in quotations from
iiie ancient poets, it is true, a tort et a travers, in all parts of
his interesting work ; but now and again he allows the mellow
humour of Sir Roger de Coverley to peep from beneath the
ambrosial curls of his periwag, and gives us some very life-
like and unaffected touches of Italian manners. Sterne,
perhaps, might have written, an he would, the very best
book on the social habits of the Italians that has appeared in
ON TRAVELLING AND TEAVELLEKS. 15
tlie English language — a book as shrewd and trenchant as
that of the President de Brosses in the French ; but Sterne's
incurable laziness and perversity, "his essential cussedness,'*
as I once heard an American phrase it, prevented him from
doing anything thoroughly ; and he teases us only with such
delightful but disappointing fragments as the bit about
Radicofani, and the Italian lady with whom he went to the
oratorio at Milan.
The Head Master of English classical travellers in Italy is,
without a doubt, the Reverend John Chetwode Eustace, who
made the tour of the Peninsula with his patron Lord Brown -
low, and in whom may be summed up nearly all the merits
and demerits of all the chaplains who have ever made
the grand tour with noble lords. To his really sound
learning, and genuine love for antiquities, the compilers
of Murray's Italian handbooks have been very largely in-
debted ; and, although Eustace was a Roman-Catholic priest,
his four weighty volumes are generally regarded by the most
orthodox Anglicans as a standard of all that is decorous and
right-principled in Toryism. Mr. Eustace went to Italy while
the French were dominant in the country, and it will be very
easily understood that, as a faithful child of the Papacy, he
does not approve of the late Napoleon Bonaparte. ''Ban-
ditti" is the mildest term he has to bestow on the French
armies. Wlien at Verona, he noticed that the French were
" detested as the most cruel of the many barbarous tribes
that had invaded the devoted country."
You may be aware that at Verona there exists, quite
intact as to its outward walls, and even susceptible of use
as to its interior, a magnificent Roman amphitheatre, capable
16 ROME AND VENICE.
of holding twenty-two thousand spectators. For many ages
it has heen far too large for any purposes of recreation to
which it could be put by the Veronese ; but from time to
time some sort otfunciones — to use the convenient Spanish
term — have been held within its gray old walls. Now it was
an Emperor Joseph patronising a bull-fight in the arena
where an Emperor Gallienus had gazed on the combats of
gladiators and wild-beasts; now a Pope made a journey
hither, and gave his benediction to the closely -packed
thousands in the forty-five ranges of seats.
Mr. Eustace is inclined to be tolerant towards exhibitions
of this nature ; but those wretched French, during their stay
in Verona, having erected a wooden theatre near one of the
grand portals of the amphitheatre, and caused several farces
and pantomimes to be acted there for the amusement of
the army, the Keverend Mr. Eustace is " down" upon them
immediately. " The sheds and scafi'olding," he writes, ''that
composed this miserable edifice were standing in the year
1802, and looked as if intended by the builder as a satire
upon the taste of the Grande Nation that could disfigure so
noble an arena. The Veronese beheld this characteristic
absurdity with indignation, and compared the invaders, not
without reason, to the Huns and the Lombards."
I have no doubt that they did, and to the Goths, Ostra-
goths, and Visigoths likewise; the modern Veronese being
a dirty, lazy, good-for-nothing lot, generally speaking, who
find it convenient to excuse their own sloth and uncleanli-
ness by declaring themselves to be the lineal descendants of
ancient Romans, cruelly oppressed by successive hordes of
barbarians; but within my own time I have known the
ON TKAVELLma AND TRAVELLERS. 17
"noble arena" of these ardent classicists desecrated by all
kinds of " miserable edifices" with the full consent and con-
currence of the Veronese, who flocked to the edifice, and paid
their soldi to see the show. I have seen a horse-riding
circus in one corner, and a company of zanni and panto-
mimists in another, and Dr. Dulcamara, in his red coat,
powdered wig, and top-boots, drawing teeth, and selling
vials of the elixir of love in the centre, where Hercules'
pillar used to stand. And perhaps there was not much
desecration in any of these harmless buffooneries, and they
were preferable, in the long-run, to the Austrian Emperor
Joseph with his bull-fight, and the Roman Emperor Gallienus
with his gladiators and wild-beasts.
Eustace, in a solemn ''Preliminary Discourse," has laid
down something like a code of rules for the guidance of
travellers who intend to visit Italy in the true classical
spirit. "Virgil and Horace, Cicero and Livy, should be the
inseparable companions of all travellers ; they should occupy
a corner in every carriage, and be called forth in every in-
terval of leisure to relieve the fatigue and to heighten the
pleasure of the journey." This is excellent advice; and,
indeed, the majority of educated travellers are given to
carrying a copy of Horace (Firmin Didot's exquisite little
red-lined edition is at once the most portable and the most
legible) ; but in these rapid railroad days, when we have
so frequently to change trains, a Murray's guide-book ordi-
narily supersedes Virgil, Cicero, and Livy.
Very admirable is Mr. Eustace's advice to " diligent
travellers" to learn a little of the language before they go
to Italy; and very aptly does he quote Bacon's famous re-
c
18 BOMB AND VENICE.
nindcr that be that travellctli into a country before he hatli
•ome eninoioe into the language, ^oeth to school, and not to
4niTeL After this, according to Mr. Eustace, the traveller
iJMmH Btudy the history of the different revolutions of Italy,
]ii4«iily before, but during the decline and after the fall of
the Roman Empire. " The republican part of Boman his-
toiy," he goes on to say, "is considered as purely classical,
and as such is presupposed in the first paragraph."
Eustace wrote before those sad sceptics Niebuhr and Sii*
George Cornewall Lewis had disturbed the learned world with
their doubts, else he might have added that much of the
repubUcan part of Roman history was considered to be not
only " purely classical," but purely mythical. He wrote, too,
before the days of Sismondi, or at least before that illustrious
historian had published his great work; so the student of
Italian history is commended to the Abbate Denino's History
qftlie lievolutmis of Italy , and to Roscoe's Lorenzo the Mag-
nificent and Leo the Tenth: both books quite worthless as
authorities now.
The young traveller, too, may read Addison's Dialogues
on Medals (and very delightful reading they are, written with
the untiring feHcity of that graceful author) ; numismatically,
the Dialogues are not worth a brass farthing. Mr. Eustace's
model traveller may then turn his attention to architecture,
ftnd is counselled to con Dean Aldrich's Elements, " trans-
lated by Mr. Smyth, of New College ;" and, if they are acces-
sible to him, he should peep into Stuart's Athens, and
Wilkins's Magna Grcecia. Then as to sculpture : " Some
acquaintance with anatomy is a desirable preliminary to the
knowledge of this art;" therefore the tourist would do well to
ON TRAVELLING AND TRAVELLEES. 1&
attend a few anatomical lectures before he starts. To cul-
tivate his taste in pictorial art he should read (shade of my
grandfather's pigtail !) Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, and Sir
Joshua Reynolds's '' well-known" Discourses. At music good
old Mr. Eustace shakes his head gently, but gravely. Italy, he
admits, is the first country in the world for music, both with
regard to composition and execution; yet "young travellers
ought rather to be cautious against its allurements than ex-
j)Osed by preparatory lessons to their dangerous influence."
"When Mr. Eustace penned this, Mrs. Billington was the great
2orima donna assoluta of Italy. The model traveller must
take maps with him — ^D'Anville's map of ancient, Zannoni's
map of modern, Italy.
Touching the time selected for travelling, and the route
to be taken, the traveller is advised to pass the Alps early in
the autumn, and first proceed to Brussels; thence to Liege,
Spa (ga7'e a la roulette/), Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Bonn, and
along the banks of the Eliine to Coblentz, Mayence, and
Strasburg ; there cross the Rhine to Mannheim ; traverse the
Palatinate, the territories of Wittemburg, Bavaria, and Salz-
burg ; enter the defiles of the Tyrol, or Rhsetian Alps ; and,
passing through Innspruck and Trent, turn to Bassano and
to Mestre, whence he may send his carriage by land to Padua,
and embark for Venice. From Venice he may go by water
up the Brenta to Padua, and visit Arcqua, and then pass
onwards to Ferrara and Bologna ; then follow the Via Emilia
to Forli, thence proceed to Ravenna and Rimini, make an
excursion to San Marino, and advance to Ancona, whence he
may visit Ostia. He wiU then continue his journey by
Loretto and Macerata to Tolentino ; thence, over the Apen-
so ROME AND VENICE.
nines, to Foligno, Spoleto and Temi, and so follow the direct
road through Civita Castellana, to Rome. He should reach
Rome in Novemher, and devote the whole of December "to a
first contemplation of the Eternal City, and the consideration
of its most striking beauties." He will then proceed to
Naples, where the months of January, February, and March
will be delightfully employed. In the week before Easter he
must be back in Rome. April, May, and June will be given
to a leisurely survey of Tibur, Ostia, Antium, Mount Soracte,
Praeneste, and the Sabine mountains. The tumuli of the
Alban mount may be reserved for the hot months of July and
August; and in September it will be time to turn towards
Florence, between which and the other Tuscan cities the
winter is to be agreeably divided. In the beginning of the
next February our indefatigable traveller is to pass the
Apennines to Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Lodi, Cremona,
Mantua, and Verona. Thence Peschiera and the Lago di
Garda are to be explored. After that he may direct his
course by Brescia and Bergamo to Milan. Having taken a
trip to the Lago di Como and the Lago Maggiore, he may
shape his course by Vercelli and Tortona to Genoa. He will
then take the road of the Maritime Alps by Savona to Nice,
after which he will turn inland to Turin; and I wish him joy
of his inland tour, for he will have to go over the unutterably-
abominable pass of the Col di Tenda.
But for geographical authorities to the contrary, one might
think that the Sea of Galilee washed the shores of Nice, and
that it was over the Col di Tenda that the demoniac pigs
passed. The scenery is magnificent, but every village is one
huge hoggery, and every cottage a sty. " Mount Cenis, the
ON TRAVELLING AND TRAVELLERS. 21
termination of the traveller's classical tour, tlien rises before
him in distant perspective." It will be observed that the
Reverend Mr. Eustace does not say one word of getting in
or out of Italy by the way of St. Gothard or the Splugen, the
Simplon or the Stelvio, or even the minor passes of the
Tonale or the Bernardina. The reasons for his reticence:
Napoleon was, at the time of Mr. Eustace's visit to the Pen-
insula, very busy indeed in making roads through the
peaks, passes, and glaciers; but he granted rights of member-
ship in his Alpine Club only to himself and to his soldiers.
I wonder even that he left Mont Cenis pass and the Cornice
road open to Mr. Eustace, and that the good ecclesiastic was
not obliged to make the coast of Italy by long sea, say from
Gibraltar to Genoa, or from Malta to Venice.
Most of us have heard of a celebrated musician who,
ere he sat down before his pianoforte to compose, was
accustomed to dress himself in his Sunday best, to have his
hair frizzed and powdered, and his handkerchief elaborately
scented. Numbers of wax -candles were disposed about his
room, and a diamond -incrusted snuffbox, filled with the
choicest Macabaw, was placed at his elbow. Then, with laced
ruffles at his wrists, and jewels on his fingers, he felt himself
en train for the cultivation of counterpoint and thorough
bass, and proceeded to invent tremendous sonatas. It is
difficult to rise from the perusal of a book on Italy by an
English traveller without being reminded — the tremendous-
ness of the result apart — of the musician who combined
composition with coxcombry. The majority of English tour-
ists seem to think it essential to dress themselves in their
very finest intellectual clothes before they pass the Alps;
22 ROME AND VENICE.
and nme out often of them, as I have before hinted, either
gash or cant. The poets may be exempted from this cate-
gory, since gushing and canting are perfectly admissible in
poetry, so long as they are relieved by beauty of language.
We do not expect a poet to be logical, or even rational. We
only want him to be eloquent.
Byron gushes tremendously in Childe Harold about the
Coliseum and the Dying Gladiator ; but he gushes milk and
honey; or the conduit of his thoughts runs with rich bur-
gundy in lieu of water. In his letters, however, to Murray,
and in his conversations with his friends, Byron showed that
he had a very shrewd, practical, and even humorous appreci-
ation of Italy as a land inhabited, not by poetical abstrac-
tions, but by substantial human beings ; and there can be
Httle doubt that, had Lord Byron chosen to do so, he might
have written one of the best prose works on Italy or the
Italians with which it was possible to endow his country's
literature.
The Italy of Samuel Rogers, again, must be criticised
not as a book of travels, but as a purely poetical rhapsody,
less high-flown than Byron's, but still rose-coloured and
myrtle -tinged and orange -flower -flavoured in an elaborate
degree ; yet was Samuel Rogers, poet and banker, one of the
diyest, 'cutest of men;- and it is clear that he knew all about
Italy and the Italians, and could have written in prose most
admirably about them. The monkeys are said to forbear
from speaking articulately lest their rich relations, mankind,
should force them to work. Sam Rogers piped seemingly
sweet poetry, lest his countrymen should insist on his telling
the truth in prose.
ON teaVelling and teavellers. w
And why on earth should not the truth be told about this
country? Why could not Madame de Stael, hard-headed,
clear-sighted daughter ofNecker as she was, tell us real
Italian things, instead of gushing and canting as she has
done in Corinne ^ Because the Apollo Belvedere and the
Transfiguration are in the Vatican, and the Yenus de' Medici
is in the Tribune of Florence, is all Italy, from Calabria to
the Susa, to be hallowed ground ? Why, there is a splen-
did Murillo in our National Gallery; and in the British
Museum there are numerous exquisite examples of Greek
statuary ; but the possession of those art-treasures does not
blind us to the fact that St. Giles's is very near Great Kus-
sell-street, Bloomsbury, and that St. Martin's Workhouse is
just behind Trafalgar-square. If a man goes to Italy, and
discourses^ upon his return about the filth and the barbari^ia
to be found in many of its parts ; the half Joey-Grimalidi,
half mumbo -jumbo buffoonery and mummery into which
the rites of the Eoman Catholic Church have degenerated
in Eome and Naples; if he discusses Italian cookery, and
alludes to the really important fact that the sausages of
Bologna are very much superior to our best Cambridges, —
he is told, forsooth, that he is a Philistine, that he has no
soul for art, and that he is indifferent to the charms of his^
toric associations.
As to being a Philistine, I scarcely know what the term,
intellectually used, means, or how it applies. The shallow
and conceited sciolist who devised the sneer, in order to
insult writers whose minds and views were broader than his,
may plume himself mightily on his device ; but twenty
years hence, I fancy, we shall trouble ourselves no more
84 ROME AND VENICE.
about what a literary Philistine may have been, than we
trouble ourselves now about " Delia Crusca," or '' Rosa
Matilda," or that " Satanic" school about which poor Southey
made such a pother.
As for having no soul for art, whether a man has a soul
for anything is a fact known only to his Maker and him-
self; and by his acts and deeds only are we entitled to sur-
mise whether his soul is as broad as the beam of the Great
Eastern, or so small and narrow that, as some old writer
whose name has escaped me puts it, it is just but a pinch of
salt that serves to keep his body from stinking.
And, finally, touching the sanctity of historic associations,
didn't JuUus Caesar invade England ? and am I thereby to
be debarred from talking about a grocer's shop in Snargate-
street, Dover, or the table-dlwte at the Lord Warden, or the
slipperiness of the Admiralty pier ? Wasn't Constantine the
Great born at York? and am I for that reason to be for-
bidden to refer to the Doncaster St. Leger ? Every country
is full of historical associations. Every country in Europe ;
scores of lands in Africa and Italy bear the indelible stamp
of the Romans. In the market-places of dirty little Moorish
villages in Barbary you will find battered stones, two thou-
sand years old, with the inscription, '^ Hie Ccesar transehaty'
dimly legible upon them. Julian the Apostate had a palace
in Paris; Pontius Pilate, they say, died at Marseilles .(al-
though others stand out for the shores ^of the Lake of
Lucerne) ; am I in consequence to be warned ofi" from the
jewellers' shops of the Rue de la Paix, or the flower-girls of
the Cannebiere, or the Bedouin douars of Algeria? Every
country has a history ; every country is old ; but the actual
ON TRAVELLINa AND TKAVELLEES. 25
modern condition, manners, and circumstances of every land
need close and careful study and record, which will be all the
more trustworthy if it be constantly compared with the con-
ditions, manners, and circumstances which have gone before.
It seems to me in the highest degree disastrous that for
a real and life-like picture of Italy and the Italians in the
last century we should be constrained to go to the smirched
pages of the profligate adventurer Jacques Casanova. Yet,
with the exceptions of that which Stendhal (Beyle) has writ-
ten concerning Italy, and Storey the sculptor's admirable
pictures of Koman life, I do not know a single book in which
a tangible Italy, and breathing, vascular Italians, are so
vividly depicted as by the diverting vagabond whose volu-
minous memoirs are at once half the pride and half the
shame of autobiographical literature. No doubt that Casa-
nova has told an infinity of lies about his amours, and about'
the illustrious and the celebrated personages with whom he
claims to have rubbed shoulders ; but there is, notwithstand-
ing, an amazing quantity of truth in his writings — truth
which, perhaps, he told in spite of himself, and to a great
extent unconsciously. Be it as it may, he has painted
with Mieris-like fidelity the Italy and the Italians of the
eighteenth century. But Casanova in his entirety is so in-
famous, that a man dare scarcely place his volumes on the
sbelves of a library ; the sale of the Memoirs is prohibited
by the French police, although it is tolerated * throughout
Belgium and Germany; and in England discreet booksellers
announce in a whisper to the collectors of facetics that they
have a copy of Casanova on hand. It would be a futile task
to publish an expurgated edition of the rascally magnum opus.
jr ROME AND VENICE.
As well might one strive to treat Jean Jacques Rousseau as
Dr. Bowdler treated Shakespeare, and bring out an edition oS
the Confessions for "family reading;" but it might be fea-
sible, I imagine, to collect in a single volume the marrow of
Ctaanflra'B descriptions of the cities he visited, and his
observations on the men and the manners of his time, kick-
ing Casanova himself and his scoundrelly amours entirely on
one side.
L
THE AUSTEIANS IN VENICE.
I WAS very tranquilly and happily enjoying the spring-
time of the year 1866 in the fair city of Seville, in Andalusia,,
revelling in oranges, sweet lemons, early peas, and other
luxuries (including that inestimable one of not doing more
than I could help), varying existence by occasional trips up-
wards to Cordova and downwards to Cadiz, and meditating
a trip to Lisbon and Madeira, when, moved by the instiga-
tion of the Father of Evil (as the old indictments for high-
treason used, in somewhat stronger language, to say), the
heart of the Prussian Otto Von Bismark Schonstein, count
of that ilk, was stirred up to wrath against the Austrian Graf
Mensdorf-Pouilly ; and, these two statesmen pulling the
strings of the respective royal and imperial puppets they held
in the hollow of their hands, William of Prussia began to
shake his fist fiercely at Francis Joseph of Austria, and the
Emperor Napoleon III. became (good soul !) infinitely con-
<jem"ed at the prospect of the peace of Europe being disturbed.
In consequence of Bismark, my journey to Portugal and
to the Canaries was adjourned sine die ; an inexorable tele-
graphic message informed me that war was imminent, and
that I was wanted near its probable scene of outbreak ; so,
with a heavy heart, I retraced my steps; came back to
Madrid, mooned for the last time on the Puerta del Sol, and
S8 BOME AND VENICE.
watched Dona Isabel de Borbon, with her covey of ninos and
niSas, " robust infantes and infantas" all of them, roll by in
their gilded coaches, drawn by fat sleek mules ; and so passed
the Pyrenees, grumbUng, and came through Bordeaux to
Paris, whence, growling like a bear with a sore head (I saw
that identical bear, sore head and all, in Long-acre yesterday,
escorted by two foreign persons of brigand-like aspect, and in
blue blouses, and followed by a troop of ragged children), I
went down to Calais, and abode at an inn, even at Dessein's
Hotel, as that delightful George Borrow says, when it seems
to occur to him that he has been talking a little too freely
about the Caloros and Kommany chals, and that it be-
hoves him, for the sake of the Society, to be a little bib-
lical.
Dessein's was very dull ; but I had to stay there for the
best part of the week, waiting for messages and letters and
a travelling-companion. I read Sterne, of course, conscien-
ciously — a copy of the Sentimental Journey lies on the
coffee-room table — and pleased myself in fancy by selecting
places in the court-yard, where the desohligeante might have
stood, where the Franciscan might, have accosted the clergy-
man, and where the little French captain might have come
dancing in from the street. On being informed that the inn
formerly kept by Sterne's M. Dessein was in quite another
part of the town, and was now converted into a museum, I
was much abashed, and retired to my room, there to smoke
tobacco.
"This Indian weed, now withered quite,
Though green at noon, cut down at night,
Shows thy decay ;
All flesh is hay :
Thus think, and smoke tobacco.
AUSTRIANS IN VENICE. 29
The pipe, so lily-white and weak,
Does thus thy mortal state bespeak;
Thou art e'en such —
Gone with a touch :
Thus think, and gmoke tobacco.
And when the smoke ascends on high,
Then thou beholdst the vanity
Of worldly stuff-
Gone with a puff :
Thus think, and smoke tobacco."
I was very low in spirits, in consequence of Bismark, and
the non-arrival of my messages and travelling -companion,
and I learned the whole of the quaint old poem by heart, and
Ealph Erskine's paraphrase of it, too, out of a ragged copy
of the Gospel Son7iets which I had picked up, together
with a Moorish door-knocker and a rusty dagger, at a rag-
shop at Toledo. How on earth did that hook of the old Scots
minister get to Toledo? Perhaps it was found in bygone
days on the person of a wandering heretic by the familiars
of the Holy Inquisition, and that the heretic was roasted for"
having it. No; that was scarcely so, for the Gospel Son-
7iets are prefaced by a poem in praise of smoking ; and the
Spaniards are too fond of smoking, for the merciless Inqui-
sition even to have burned a sincere lover of the weed.
Messages, letters, and travelling-companion came at last,
and we went straight through Paris and Chamberi, over
Mont Cenis (which was almost impassable in consequence
of Bismark — I mean of the snow-drifts, and had to be tra-
versed in sledges) to Milan, and so, by Peschiera, to Venice.
Here I begin the excerpts from my Diary.
JO ROME AND VENICE.
Venice, April 20.
The Italians are certainly a strange people, and, accord-
ing to our received notions, not at all business-like. It
may be asked, "What is business?" Alexandre Dumas the
Elder has answered the question very wittily and pithily —
** Les affaires: c'est V argent des antrcs." Business is other
people's money, and business-like habits are the systematic
process by which we make that money our own. The
English, who have been so signally successful in the acqui-
sition of wealth, have always understood, as a first principle,
that all matters appertaining to business should be plain,
prosaic, and altogether divested of imagination or fancy, or
of that picturesqueness which is apt occasionally to trench
on Bohemianism. The foreign merchant will smoke in his
counting-house, whereas to the English trader the consump-
tion of tobacco during oflSce-hours is scandalously unbusiness-
like. The foreign banker shuts up his caisse while he eats
his breakfast, indulges in a nap, or strolls oflf to the casino
to take a hand at piquet. It would be horribly unbusiness-
like — it would be within an inch of the commission of an
act of bankruptcy — for an English banker to do such a
thing. If you call on a Continental man of business it is
not unlikely that you wiU find him in an elegantly -fur-
nished salon — that you will see pictures on the walls, china
on the mantelpiece, and flowers on the table. Not unfre-
quently abroad, when I have gone to draw a bill, I have
stumbled into the boudoir of Madame instead of the bureau
of Monsieur; and more than once I have mistaken the cui-
sine for the caisse. Who would be liable to fall into such
errors in Birchin-lane or Tokenhouse-yard ? The sound of
AUSTEIANS IN VENICE. 31
a grand pianoforte or the smell of compote de pigeons would
be as astounding in purely city regions as a salute of a hun-
dred and one guns, or the odour of orange-blossoms. Busi-
ness men in England require business environments. ^ For
them, consequently, have been devised the hideous parapher-
nalia known as "office furniture" — ^funereal desks and stools,
and leathern-covered tables, and with no gayer ornamentation
to the walls than is comprised in a Stationers' Almanac,
weights and scales, a letter-rack, or a placard full of inhos-
pitable platitudes to the effect that you should call on a man
of business only during business hours — that you should
confine your conversation exclusively to business, and that
having done your business you should go about your business
as soon as possible.
The mention of office furniture and mural decoration
brings me at once to the position with which I started — that
the Italians are far from business-like in their habits.
Would you believe that the walls and ceilings of the waiting-
and refreshment-rooms at the Milan terminus of the Lom-
bardo- Venetian Railway are covered with colossal fresco
paintings, illustrative of fanciful allegories and fantastic
passages from the works of such unbusiness-like people as
Dante, Boccaccio, and Ariosto ? That these frescoes are ex-
quisite in conception, grand in design, and beautiful in execu-
tion will avail very little, I am afraid, as an apology for their
thorough violation of established business rules. What can
the author of the Divine Comedy have to do with locomotives
and goods-wagons? What connection is there between the
Decameron and a viaduct ? between Orlando Furioso and the
permanent way ? We men of business well know how rail-
88 BOMB AND VENICE.
way waiting- and refreshment-rooms should properly he deco-
rated. Nothing should be seen there hut monstrous sign-
boards, or framed-and-glazed advertisements having reference
to breakfast cocoa, corn-flour, lists of bedding, felt roofing,
Sydenham trousers, and Benson's clocks. Art should have its
place, but a business-like place, there : such as in the infor-
mation that the Chinese colour tea for the English market,
that no vent-peg is required for Barlow's tap, and the pictorial
emblazonment of Allsopp's Pale Ale, and Dunville's V.K.
Whisky. No doubt the man of business, after cooling his
heels for half an hour in one of these vestibules, will enter
his train a wiser if not a sadder man. He will have learnt
the all-important truth that Epps's cocoa is a breakfast beve-
rage, and acquiesced in the futility of "giving more;" nay,
from attentive study of the Kamptulicon and the Eureka, the
Revalenta, the Anthropoglossos, and the Kales Geusis, he
may pick up a little Latin and more Greek; the value of
which to business men, whose classical training has ordi-
narily been neglected, can scarcely be exaggerated.
The Milanese have got their frescoes, nevertheless; and
among the series on which I gazed with rapt attention this
April was one which has since furnished me with a theme
for these remarks. It was a noble allegory of Venice. There
she was : the patriarchally aged, yet the ever young — stately,
superb, the beautiful Queen of the Adriatic. Over her
rounded limbs fell in rich folds the ducal robe of purple
velvet lined with ermine. On her fair hair rested the Cap of
Estate and Maintenance — the princely diadem she wore for
eleven hundred years. Around her were the lions which are
still the delight of St. Mark's Place. Behind her throne
AUSTRIANS IN VENICE. 33
soared the two columns with St. Theodore trampling on the
crocodile, and the Winged Lion conning his eternal Evangel.
At her feet were strewn thick the gems and the rich vessels,
the drugs and spices, the infinite merchandise, which of old
time were brought by her argosies from the ends of the earth.
And in the foreground stood the shawded and turbaned Turk,
the Jewish merchant in his gaberdine and high cap, the negro
glistening and brawny, and gaudy as his brethren who in
bronze and marble bear up the mighty architrave of Doge
Pesaro's tomb. They all — Turk, Jew, and Pagan — were come
to pay obeisance to the Sea Sultana. This, with the Piazzetta
for a background, was the allegory of Venice. It pictured the
Silent Sister, the Niobe of nations, as she Once was, and as
the Italians in fond, yet half-despairing, imaginings hope that
she will be again. But when is the day of her deliverance to
come, and when are the tears which, with but twelve months'
intermission, have flowed for half a century, to be dried ? She
waits and waits, and the Italians wait too, clenching their
hands and grinding their teeth ; and meanwhile the waiting-
room at Milan is thronged with tourists and pleasure-seekers.
There is not a better waiting-room, nor, indeed, a better
railway terminus, in all Italy than at Milan. The Turin
station is handsomer in an architectural sense, but Lombardy
beats Piedmont in the internal arrangements and decorations.
Fees to porters are not only prohibited, but the prohibition
is rigidly enforced by the inspectors.
Ten days elapsed. I went down with my head full of the
fresco through Bergamo, and at Desenzano saw the last of
the kingdom of Italy and the Italian flag. Heaven help her
out ol all her troubles, for they are many and sore enough,
D
34 ROME AND VENICE.
and threaten to be sorer. And then I came to Peschiera, the
Austro-Voneto frontier, the which Peschiera I consider to be,
with the exception of Fenchurch-street in the City of London,
and Jersey City in the State of that name, U.S.A., the most
abominable railway station with which in the course of my
wanderings about this sublunary globe I have ever met. The
place is like an ill-kept station-house, out of which a herd of
drunken devotees have just been turned to make way for the
captured belligerents of a Patrick's-day shindy. The platform
is beset by a loitering mob of Austrian soldiers and douaniers ;
the refreshment-room, both as regards its fare and its clean-
liness, is about on a par with a Hottentot ki-aal ; and a male
and female gorilla would be disgusted at the *' accommoda-
tion" for ladies and gentlemen.
I am wasting time, however, in disparaging this vile ex-
crescence to the Quadrilateral. Peschiera — not Peschiera the
fortress, but Peschiera the railway station — is on its last legs.
It is to be pulled down very shortly. Under the wise and
enlightened policy of the Government the passport nuisance
has been abolished in the Austrian dominions ; and the little
hutch at Peschiera, through whose aperture the police com-
missary used to blink mistrust at you through his green
spectacles, has been closed for good and all, and looks like a
stopped -up rat -hole. Luggage is no longer examined at
Peschiera, but is merely plombe till you reach Venice, where
the examination is all but nominal. In another six months
or so, it is to be hoped, Peschiera will be numbered among
the dead ducks on whom, according to Mr. Andrew Johnson,
it is useless to expend ammunition. Yet how soothing to
the spirit it is to shake your fist at an extinct or an expiring
AUSTRIANS IN VENICE. 35
nuisance ! When, as an old traveller, you remember how
you have been worried and bullied, and teased and harried,
at this same Peschiera — how needlessly impertinent questions
have been asked you; and how hands with nails, with a
mourning border a quarter of an inch long, were thrust into
the middle of your clean linen, and pawed the leaves of your
favourite books — you are apt to regret that shut -up passport
hutch, and that now useless luggage counter, with a sensation
of relief akin to that with which you look on a despotic school-
master's tombstone. The ruffian cannot any more cane little
boys because his breakfast bacon was ill-toasted, or because
his wife scolded him overnight. He is shut up, and is as
impotent a pedagogue as the bygone despot of Corinth.
Pending the good time coming, they still keep you waiting
a whole weary hour at Peschiera; and as fifteen minutes
would amply suffice for the transference of the luggage from
the Italian to the Austrian train, I conjecture that the delay
is due to a laudable desire to benefit the Hottentot kraal of a
refreshment-room. It is Erquellines or Yerviers over again.
T intend to write a book some day on the ''Average number
of hours wasted by continental express trains." Without
going deeply into the calculation, I am sure that the average
would not be much under five-and-twenty per cent. You
have another hour's stoppage — or fifty-five minutes, a pretty
close imitation of one — at Yerona. The train halts at the
Porta Yescova. You have no time for a run to see the Koman
amphitheatre ; but you may be regaled in an apartment
scarcely superior to the Peschiera kraal, where the viands
and the mode of serving them irresistibly remind you of the
establishment of that restaurateur on Holborn-hill, who used
5c ROME AND VENICE.
to supply the hungry with " a devilish good dinner for three-
pence-halfpenny/' consisting of leg-of-beef soup, bread, and
flies. The refreshment tariff at Verona is slightly in excess
of Monsieur Francatelli's.
There is not, however, much to be gained by grumbling
at the state of things here, or at Vicenza, or Padua. If the
stations are wretchedly provided with anything in the way of
comfort or luxury, and contrast miserably as regards archi-
tecture and pictorial embellishment with the gay and tasteful
edifices in regenerated Italy, you may console yourself by the
reflection that they are all very strongly fortified. The Verona
station, indeed, is a complete citadel ; and goods-sheds and
signal-houses are curiously mixed up with moats, bastions,
and lines of circumvallation. It is impossible to cross the
frontier or to be half an hour in the Austro-Venetian terri-
tory without becoming aware that the Austrian " autograph"
— as Mr. Thackeray used to call the double-headed eagle —
has got a very tight grip of the country, and that there is a
remarkably opinionated conclusion in his duplex brain that
he means to keep that country as long as he can. As he is
a very powerful eagle, strong on the wing and adamantine
in the talons, the contingency of his giving up his Venetian
quarry is, to say the least, remote. It is not impossible.*
That England should abandon the Ionian Islands seemed,
for many years, a contingency more remote ; but a compact
body of importunate persons in baggy breeches tired out our
patience at last, and we gave up the Sept-insular Republic to
* This was written in the spring. In the summer came Sadowa, and the
Austrians gave up Venice. But would they have surrendered it had Cus-
tozza been the only battle fought?
AUSTEIANS IN VENICE. 37
the discontented Ionian deputies and placemen ; not to the
Ionian people by any means, who, misgoverned and overtaxed
by Greece, are now mourning over the withdrawal of the Bri-
tish, and howling for them to return. I dare not presage
that any Venetian would regret the departure of the Austrians
from Venice, or would be unpatriotic enough to pray for their
return ; yet I have read that some degenerate Venetians, after
their ten years' servitude to France, welcomed Ferdinand of
Austria in 1815 us a saviour and a deliverer; and that even
during their brief spell of Eepublican independence in 1841,
under the heroic Daniel Manin, there were Venetians who
murmured, and Venetians who did not agree with the late
Dr. Pangloss in his notions of universal optimism.
The Kaiser Francis Joseph, who, rightly or wrongly, con-
ceives that he has as clear a title, both by treaty and conquest,
to his Italian dominions as we have to Lower Canada — and
when we talk so glibly of the claims of races to be governed
by rulers of their own blood, we should do well to remember
that we have in North America little less than a million of
Frenchmen, and Eoman Catholic Frenchmen too, under our
rule — will doubtless stick hard and fast to Venice and the
Quadrilateral until those territories shall be wrested from
him by the upheavings of a great European war or a greater
European revolution ; or until, as is just possible, the inge-
nuity of diplomacy exerted in that long-threatened European
congress on which we threw cold water a few years since, but
in whose assembling we must soon acquiesce, shall suggest
some convenient arrangements satisfactory to alPparties, by
means of which Italy shall gain her heart's desire, the amour
propre of Austria shall be gratified, and the ruler^ of France
88 BOME AND VENICE.
assured that the thorough independence of Italy " from the
Alps to the Adriatic" will not open the door to the " party of
action," that is to say, of anarchy. In the mean time it would
be unreasonable to expect that Austria should do very much
towards beautifying or developing the resources of the coun-
try which, in the opinion of liberal Europe, ought to be taken
from her at the first favourable opportunity. A tenant-at-will
has little temptation to improve the acres he is cultivating,
but out of which he may be turned to-morrow. To fortify
your house against those who come with sticks and staves is
one thing, but to repaint it inside and out, and have the gas
and water lai(f on, and the roof seen to, and the front draw-
ing-room new-papered in white and gold, when, for aught you
know, and within a couple of years, John a'Nokes may be
declared the rightful owner of the messuage which now per-
tains to John a' Styles, and the brass door-plate now bearing
the name of F. J. Hapsburg replaced by one inscribed V. E»
Savoy-Carignan, is quite another thing.
The Austrians, therefore, have concluded to keep their
powder dry in the Venetian territory, and are ready to exe-
cute any necessary repairs in the way of bombproof casemates,
curtains, ravelins, and demi-lunes ; but they think it no part
of their duty to sweep and garnish the country, socially
speaking, when, at very brief notice, they may be forced to
quit, and be sued besides for dilapidations and mesne profits.
The money they can muster is expended in works to keep
the Italians out, and not in beautifying the cities, which they
occupy, in hopes of pleasing the Italians when they come in.
The Austrians indeed complain that, as it is, they have done
a great deal too much for the internal improvement of Venice;
AUSTEIANS m VENICE. 39
and were they even ready, politically, to surrender the city,
they could not do so equitably without reimbursement for
the enormous outlay they have incurred in building bridges,
embanking canals, and preserving palaces from tumbling to
pieces.
Thus, while on the Italian side of the frontier traces of
energy, enterprise, and go-aheadism meet you at every step,
the posts no sooner begin to be striped with the Austrian
colours than you find inertia, stagnation, and neglect. The
only traffic is in munitions of war and convoys of provisions
for the forty or fifty thousand armed men who are kept idling
in the provinces from which Austria, oppressive as may be
her taxation and never-ending her exaction, does not derive
one kreutzer of profit. Venetia is, in every respect, a dead
loss to the Government of Vienna ; and the few thousands of
Italian conscripts who are annually squeezed from a reluctant
and disloyal population are hurried off to distant garrisons,
and are not in their entirety half so useful to the Empire as
a couple of regiments of Swiss mercenaries would be. The
railway passenger traffic is languid and unsatisfactory. In
free Italy few signs are more encouraging than the alacrity
with which the people, properly so called, flock to the railway-
stations ; but between Peschiera and Venice not many per-
sons are to be seen in the trains beyond English tourists
and Austrian officers and emj^loyes. Small need is there,
then, to decorate the gaol-like walls of the stations with
frescoes. Were any such painted, and were they designed to
harmonise with the aspect of affairs around them, such pro-
ductions would be, I trow, of the dismallest nature.
Suppose I draw a fresco in imagination. There might be
lO HOME AND VENICE.
an Allegory of Venice — not clothed in purple and ermine,
but half-naked, and in rags. An Austrian honnct de police
is on her golden locks, instead of the cap of Estate and Main-
tenance. A neat pair of handcuffs must be substituted for
the ring ^nth which she was wont to wed the Adriatic. An
Austrian sergeant with a stick keeps watch and ward over
her. You may introduce the Doge's Palace in the back-
ground, but in the basement is an Austrian guard-house, and
a park of very ugly field-pieces are planted in the Piazzetta,
prepared to blow the caryatides of Sansovino at the Zecca
opposite into shivers at the slightest notice. Her Grand
Canal is still dotted with gondolas, but among them please
not to forget an Austrian gunboat lying oif the Lido, and the
mail-packet of the Austrian Lloyd's getting her steam up for
a trip to Trieste — Trieste the thriving — which has put the
commerce of Venice into her pocket. She has little to hope
for from the opening of the Suez canal. Trieste will profit
by it ; Brindisi may profit a great deal more ;* but the port
of Venice is well-nigh dammed up ; her tide has little scour,
and it would take millions to dredge a channel deep enough
for ships of burden. Danish men-of-war, they say, once came
up to Holborn-bars. When they besiege Middle-row again
we may see East Indiamen unloading at the Dogana. These
hints may suffice for the Allegory of Venice as she is — stay,
we may throw in the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, whose
convent is said to be full of political prisoners.
It is quite time to have done with allegories and other
figures when you come to Venice itself, and find it miserable,
silent, impoverished, and forlorn. Of its unequalled struc-
* 1866.
AUSTRTAXS IN VENICE. 41
tural beauty, of its glories of architecture and painting,
nothing short of such a sack as Alexandria suffered under
the Arabs, and such destruction as Carthage under the Eo-
mans, could rob Venice. But beyond her palaces, her
churches, and pictures, — and of these last even nearly all
that could be with any show of decency removed from the
walls have been stolen or sold, — Venice is as empty as Na-
poleon's grave at St. Helena. She is a despoiled sepulchre,
desolate, deserted, and despairing.
This wondrously- beautiful spring-time should be the
beginning of a prosperous invasion of pleasure tourists ; but
even of these there is a lack at Venice. The Holy "Week is
gone and past, the benediction to the City and the World
has grown stale, and the forestieri should be rushing up from
Rome and Naples ; yet the hotelkeepers of Venice sit with
aching hearts and blank faces, wistfully gazing on the virgin
pages of lodgers. Last year, altheugh there was no cholera,
and the mosquitoes were few, there was no influx of travel-
lers. This year, when the political horizon is still further
troubled, the army of tourists may be still more meagre. If
the plain truth must be told, Venice has become rather a
bore to travellers of the calibre of Messrs. Brown, Jones, and
Robinson. They have been spoilt by the Alpine Club and
by Paris, and its new Boulevards and Grand Hotelism.
The beauties of Swiss scenery can be appreciated by
travellers of a very low intellectual calibre. A healthy lad
or lass can take alpenstock in hand, and tramp about Cha-
mouni and the shores of the lake without incurring even the
perils attendant on over- adventurous investigation of peaks,
passes, and glaciers. The exercise one gets during the
49 ROME AND VENICE.
** regular SynsB round" is as bracing and invigorating as that
enjoyed in riding to hounds, or footing it over the Brighton
Downs ; and while the chest is opened, the lungs are cleared,
the muscles animated, and any number of reefs shaken out
of the liver, the eye is pleased and the mind delighted by
the contemplation of the most romantic and sublime scenery
in the world. You have no need to have read Payne Knight,
or Louis Viardot, or John Euskin, to be able to understand
Mont Blanc. The Grands Mulets and the Mer de Glace
would interest the merest clodhopper. This is the reason
why Switzerland is with travellers an universal favourite.
You can't wrangle about the conflict of styles in a precipice ;
the odium theologicum has nothing to lay hold of in an
avalanche. The merest Philistine may be wonder-struck by
a mountain; whereas in the Campo Santo at Pisa, or in
Giotto's chapel at Padua, he is gravelled at once. Switzer-
land is easily accessible ; delights girls and children as well
as matrons and old men, and, to all save idiots, is cheap.
To travellers of even more mediocre mental capacity,
Paris is Paradise. Paris and the Grand Hotel, Paris and
the Louvre, Paris with its boulevards, its shops, its Bois de
Boulogne, its innumerable theatres, its inexliaustible gaiety,
its cafes, its restaurants, its perpetual round of brilliance
and excitement — Paris is the place, almost the only place,
for those who travel for pleasure. I have passed through
this gay metropolis three times within the last six months,
although my stay in it each time has not exceeded a few
hours. Last January I came to Paris from the north of
Germany, on my way to Spain. It was about nine o'clock
when we drove through the blazing streets from the Place
AUSTKIANS IN VENICE. 43--
Lafayette to the Eue St. Honore. The carriage turned down
one of the narrow streets off the boulevard — the Eue de
Grammont, I think. A white -jerkined cook, just emanci-
pated from his bain-marie pans, was smoking a cigar at the
street-corner, and ever and anon dancing a lightsome jig hy
himself. We reached an hotel, but had scarcely been in our
room ten minutes, ere a little glazed card was thrust under-
neath our door, with the address of Monsieur Alphonse,
" coiffeur de la, maison.^^
Could you wish for a completer epitome of Parisian life
than that which we saw in a twenty-minutes' drive ? It is
all cooking and dancing, and fiddling and smoking, and the
barber always ready to friz your hair. No wonder that
Brown, Jones, and Kobinson adore Paris. Hampstead, ac-
cording to the middle-aged gentleman in Pickivick, is the
place for a wounded heart; but since the Second Empire,
Paris has become not only the universal amuser, but the
universal consoler. Doctors tell their patients to run over
to Paris, as they used to tell them to run down to Tunbridge
Wells. It is rather too hard to expect that when Brown,
Jones, and Eobinson, with their wives and their sweethearts,
snatch a brief holiday, they are to spend it at school. You
would not like to pass your honeymoon looking out of one
of those cheap undertakers' omnibuses which are half mourn-
ing-coach and half hearse, and which carry the body in the
boot. A gondola, when the picturesqueness of the thing has
worn off, is not much better. Brown, Jones, and Eobinson
can scarcely divest themselves of the idea that the contractor-
general for the Venetian gondolas is Mr. Shillibeer.
Again, it is not to be denied that Venice is damp, and
44 ROME AND VENICE.
that the hrighter is the weather the more abominable is the
stench emitted by its narrow canals. At low- water the stones
of Venice — that is to say, their sea-stones — remind Brown,
Jones, and Kobinson unpleasantly of the Fleet-ditch. Sani-
tary regulations notwithstanding, the canalazzo rolls a very
large tribute of dead dogs to the Adriatic. At the best of
times, the back-streets of Venice are not much superior to
a succession of Cranbourn - alleys ; and on a wet day, the
Venetian billiard - tables being impracticable to those who
play the English game, and there being no club, Brown,
Jones, and Kobinson are with difficulty restrained from cut-
ting their throats or jumping into the canals.
A cheery, healthful, youthful tourist taking his pleasure
wants amusement. The tomb of all the Capulets is not a
place for recreation ; and Venice is the family vault not alone
of the Capulets, but of the Montagues, and many other
noble families to boot. You grow tired at last of sitting
outside a cafe on St. Mark's Place, and listening to the
Austrian band playing schottisches and mazurkas. After a
week in Venice, Brown, Jones, and Eobinson come to know
all the officers in the Austrian garrison by sight. The per-
petual passing and repassing of those fair-haired, tight-waisted
men in white coats, with their eye-glasses and their jingling
spurs, grow as irritating at last as the sight of the man
tying his shoe was to the gamester. If you have managed
to scrape any acquaintance among the Austrians, not a single
Italian will speak to you ; if you know any Italians, they will
bore you to death about the woes of Venice.
Brown, Jones, and Kobinson did not come to Venice to
be bored. They very soon grow aware that not only a special
AUSTRIANS IN VENICE. 45
taste and a special aptitude, but a special education, and that
too of no common order, are needed before the beauties of
Venice can be properly appreciated, or her pictorial and
architectural wonders enjpyed. They engage a valet de plajoe,
and go through the usual round of sights ; but when they
have seen the ducal palace and the churches, the Arsenal and
the Academy, the Museum and the Armenian convent at San
Lazaro ; when they have tried all the cafes, and find that
only one kind of ice is sold in them until midsummer ; when
they have seen the pigeons fed in St. Mark's Place, and ad-
mired the equitation of the solitary horseman at the Giardino
Pubblico, and have been rowed about in a gondola till they
have caught a toothache, — they are apt to find Venice slow,
and to long for some city where there are carriages and
theatres, and balls and concerts, and where the people are
not trodden under the heel of the Austrian '' autograph."
The Eev. Mr. Eustace found Venice slow, and, moreover,
he failed to admire St. Mark's. " The five domes which
swell from its roof, and the paltry decorations" (those glorious
mosaics !) "which cumber its portico, give it externally the
appearance of an Eastern pagoda." Again: "A person ac-
customed to the rides, the walks, the activity of ordinary
towns, soon grows tired of the confinements of Venice, and
of the dull, indolent, see - saw motion of the gondolas. He
longs to expatiate in fields, and to range at large through
the streets without a boat and a retinue of gondoliers.'*
Which shows that Mr. Eustace did not know his Venice.
A lady may go out shopping in the streets of Venice for half-
a-dozen hours without stepping into a gondola.
n.
FKOM TRIESTE TO VIENNA,
Trieste, May 1.
I WAS once supercilious enough to laugh at the Spaniards
for announcing in their humbler fondas the advent of an
" arrogant' olla podrida'^ ten days beforehand. I might have
been taught a little humility had I remembered the old
gentlemen at the London clubs, who put their names
down for early slices of the roast sirloin of beef which is to
be ready at 6.45 p.m., and are furious if the undercut of fat
they have built their hopes upon be gone. Why should not
mankind speculate on an olla often days hence, and invest
in beef, so to speak, for the account? But what do you
think of a railway train which is a coming event, and casts
its shadow before ? How would your worships' patience
square itself to the necessity of waiting from Saturday until
Monday for a Schnellzug ? Yet this was my case when,
landing the other day from the Austrian Lloyd's steamer at
Trieste, I hoped to go upstairs without delay to Vienna.
Nobody cares about staying long at Trieste. It is the
Swindon of Austro - Levantine Europe, the junction from
which innumerable routes diverge, but at which you merely
gulp down a basinful of soup, and then scamper away to
Germany, or Italy, or the East.
And Trieste is, besides, something else that begins with
*' Swin" — to wit, the most swindling place in the way of
FKOM TRIESTE TO VIENNA. 47
hotel charges I ever entered, or, grumbling and plundered,
left. The armed rhinoceros and I have by this time become
brothers as regards toughness of epidermis. You might tan
my skin like old John Ziska's,* and beat the "Wedding
March" upon it; and the ordinary extortions of landlords run
off me as water off a duck's back ; but at Trieste, I confess, I
found that my hide was not impervious. I was flayed, and
felt it. " Everything at Trieste," quoth by way of consola-
tion the Italian Commissionaire, '' is carissimo.'' I was
indignant that so endearing a superlative should be applied
to this den of rapacity ; but I sullenly agreed that the place
was abominably dear. " The reason," continued the Com-
missionaire, '' is obvious. Trieste is a free port. Free ports
are always dear." So I was fain to content myself with this
fiscal paradox. 'Tis very odd ; but so it is. Free ports are
always dear, just as communities which are said to be irre-
mediably bankrupt are always steeped to the lips in luxury
and extravagance.
There are only two express trains a-week from Trieste to
Vienna, and the ordinary train is said to be so very slow and
sure as to give you time to visit the Grotto of Adelsberg, and
inspect the antiquities of Gratz ere you reach the capital.
The Germans prefer it to the Schnellzug, as it makes many
stoppages, and remains at intermediate stations long enough
for comfortably consuming those four substantial meals per
diem in which Teutons delight. Those four meals a-day
are, I am inclined to think, at the bottom of the deep hatred
which the Italians bear to the Austrians. " The Venetians
have no heart," said a genial German with whom I once
travelled from Trent to Roveredo. "You are half starved in.
48 ROME AND VENICE.
Venice. During twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four
you can get nothing but water, ices, and wafers."
A general tendency to abstinence is really remarkable in
Venice, when the eating and drinking customs of the peoi^lc
are compared with those of the convivial and ban vlvant
Germans, to whom heaps of Butterhrod between regular
meals are no more than a few cujaritos to the smoker who is
waiting for a pipe or a x^nro. But even the promise of
abundant Butterhi'od, and solemn stoppages for the four
traditional meals — even the charms of Adelsberg's wondrous
caves, with their dome of stalactite and their glancing
spiracles of stalagmite — even a laudable desire to inspect
the famous Old Hat preserved in the Landhaus at Gratz, and
worn by the Kaiser when he receives the allegiance of the
inhabitants of the Duchy of Styria — even a wish to turn off
to the quicksilver mines of Idria, and see the glowing cin-
nabar roasted, and the glittering mercury running away in
rivers, or to halt for a while at Laybach, and moralise upon
the doings of that defunct congress of kings and emperors
and plenipotentiaries which met forty-five years ago to settle
the affairs of Europe for ever and ever, and whose solemn
protocols are now so much waste paper — even these induce-
ments were powerless to make me forget that, for a great
many reasons, I was due in Vienna, and that I was bound to
hasten to the Kaiserstadt. It was rather an Irish way, I
o^Ti, of making haste, to wait three days for the express ;
but for that I had my reasons, too — reasons connected with
a crutch and a cut shoe — and so I put my name down
for the SchnellziKj, and was flayed by the innkeepers, and
blown down by the north-east wind, and blown up again
FEOM TRIESTE TO VIENNA. 49
by the south-east, until six o'clock on Monday morning
last.
It is one of the delights of Trieste that you always have
one of the above-named winds as a companion. The south-
easter is a Greco-Levantine wind, no other than the terrible
sirocco. It comes fraught with intolerable heat and clouds
of choking sand. The north-easter is the no-less-celebrated
**bora," the "burrasca" of the Italians, and the " bour-
rasque" of the Provengals. It is said to be generated in the
crannies of the mountains surrounding the desolate plain of
the Karst — of which more anon — for even winds, like railway
companies' accounts, must be concocted, and it comes down
to Trieste and blows your head off. It blew all my louis
d'ors into Austrian paper money. It blew up the innkeeper's
bill to the dimensions of the Nassau balloon. How the late
Dr. Keid, ventilator-general of the Houses of Parliament,
would have enjoyed a "bora"! According to ''Murray, "it will
blow people into the canal, upset wagons, and overturn ships
of large tonnage in the inner port. In fact, it is almost as
powerful as the historical wind at the Escorial, which once
lifted up an ambassador from the Low Countries, with his
coach-and-six and his entire retinue, and would not set him
down again till he was converted to the true faith. I have
seen it gravely stated that if you lean against this rude and
blustering railer he is absolutely strong enough to support
your reclining form; from which I conjecture that Boreas
must be of kindred to the fog you could cut with a knife. I
don't know whether this tremendous blast ever blows up-
wards as well as laterally, but if such were the case, when
the time came for sus. per coll. to be written against my
E
50 ROME AND YBNICE.
name, I think that I should like to be hanged with my feet
upon a " bora."
For a fourteen hours' journey, and that, too, of very com-
fortable and accelerated travelling, you have twenty minutes
at Steinbruck for breakfast, but at the other stations the
train never stops more than from three to six minutes. The
run from Trieste to Vienna may be safely backed as the most
astonishing in Europe. I was about to say in the whole
world, but I recall the awful passes of the Cumbres and
the first ravishing sight of the Valley of Mexico at Rio
Frio.
The route through Illyria and Styria to Vienna has a
threefold interest : you see so many changes in the earth's
surface, and so many varieties of man ; and finally you mark
so many gradations of speech. The geographer, the geo-
logist, the naturalist, and the artist, may take their fill of
mountain scenery, varied strata, complex vegetation, and
wonderful effects of aerial perspective. Nature is of all
hues, and all her caprices find record here ; now justifying
our Telbins and Pynes and Hollands; now proving that
Cooke and David Cox were in the right ; now causing you to
pin your faith to Linnell, and now to Eugene Isabey ; and
now forcing you to admit that the only true art-prophet was
good old Sam Prout. I would that more artists lost their
way between Gratz and Laybach; but these gentry are a
perverse race, with mental horizons painfully contracted, and
are no more to be weaned from beaten tracks than from
hackneyed books for subjects. Switzerland and South
Wales ; it is always South Wales and Switzerland in Suffolk-
street and Pall Mall, just as at the Academy it was always
FKOM TRIESTE TO VIENNA. 51
Gil Bias or Pepys's Diary, as now it is. the Idyls of the
King.
To him whose delight is in man, his manners, his ves-
ture, his habitation, and 'his language, this strange couiftry
is not less rife with matter for observation and thought. At
Trieste you leave a very Babel of tongues, a very Salmagundi
of humanity ; and the money-changers write up their will-
ingness to cheat you out of your gold and silver in Greek
more or less Attic, in Russ more or less sweet-flowing, in
the stubborn Teutonic black letter, and even in the quasi-
cufic, quasi-cuneiform Sclavonic character, all darts and
wedges and isosceles triangles. The railway clerk from
whom I took my ticket demanded ''Jiorini settanta-due ;" the
employe who gave me my baggage certificate told me there
were " achtzehn gllldenfllnfzig kreuzef' to pay — by the way,
he marked " sixteen" on the certificate and cheated me out
of two florins — whereas the driver of the omnibus from the
hotel was a Dalmatian, in a " snowy camise and a shaggy
capote," like a '' dark Suliote" — if the Suliotes wore shaggy
capotes, which they do not — and the porters who carried my
trunks to be weighed were unmistakable Sclaves, with flowing
tawny hair, blue eyes, and high cheekbones. We had as
travelling companions a Greek of the Hellenes, a Greek in a
braided jacket, baggy silk breeches, high boots, a fez cap,
and an umbrella — why will they always spoil their pic-
turesque Oriental costume with a Sangster's Best? — and a
Greek of the Rayahs, attired in the latest Parisian fashion.
The custom-house officer who searched our luggage — for, as
Trieste is a free port, they are very inquisitorial in their
quest for tobacco, salt, gunpowder, playing-cards, and pro-
6S HOME AND VENICE.
hibited books — was a fat, good-humoured Tedesco, an
adept in the admired Austrian custom of pulling off the cap
to everyone he met. The Austrian of the lower classes rarely
bows. He uncovers with both hands, and as though he
were offering you his head with all that was inside it. To
complete the (ethnological hotch-potch, we passed as we left
the terminus a whole regiment of Hungarian infantry drawn
up in battle array; pudgy little men in blue tights and
blucher boots. The lower extremities of a Hungarian soldier
always resemble, to my mind, those of the industrious sporting
gentlemen whom, with a parti-coloured kerchief round their
loins and scantily clad as to their upper anatomy, you meet
steaming along suburban roads in England, walking against
time, or Deerfoot, or somebody, or something, for five-and-
twenty pounds a-side.
The odd concourse of different nations at Trieste is ac-
cidental, and due to the fact that the great entrepot of the
Levantine mercantile navy is on Italian soil, and in the pos-
session of a German power. As you advance into the in-
terior, it is less a mixture than a succession of races which
becomes apparent, and the succession is graduated and
natural. The pure Triestinos are Italians — Venetians, in
fact — settled " over the way," swarthy, black-haired, dark-
eyed, vehement, and much gesticulating. Beyond Nabre-
sina, where the rail from Udine and Venice joins the main
line, the Italian element begins to disappear, and by the time
you reach Adelsberg it is entirely eradicated. The guide-
posts and police prohibitions no longer appear in the two
languages, and the railway guard speaks nothing but
German.
FROM TRIESTE TO VIENNA. 53
It would seem as though Nature herself,* the European
settlement of the Congress of Laybach notwithstanding, had
determined to erect a barrier between the stern north and
the sunny south ; for north of Adelsberg commences that
Neutral Ground of geographers, the wild and desolate ex-
panse called the Karst. It is an immense tract of gray lime-
stone, worked of old time to good purpose by the Venetians,
and known as Istrian marble. It starts here, at the east of
the Alpine spurs, and stretches away down Dalmatia and
Albania into Greece. I never saw a more hideous region :
it is more terrifying even in its barrenness than the great
stony desert of the north of Spain ; for there at least the
stones are broken, and heaped in wild disorder about the
landscape, offering all kinds of fantastic shapes, replete
with changes of light and shade. The Karst is one huge
piecrust of limestone. It is furrowed, riddled, and pierced
into caverns, clefts, gully-holes, rock basins, valleys that
have no outlets, and rivers without any perceptible sources
or reservoirs. But there are no debris. The covering is
hard, homogeneous, and as gray as Napoleon's greatcoat.
All life seems to have been suddenly become petril&ed ; or I
may best explain my meaning, perhaps, by saying that every-
thing seems covered by a crust of stone snow. The Karst is
just the place where you might imagine the limeburners in
Nathaniel Hawthorne's weird story had set up their kiln,
and where the remorseful gentleman who had committed the
unpardonable sin tried to calcine his heart by means of
strong caloric, but tried in vain. I should not like to walk
barefoot over the Karst in November. That awful Bora lives
on the Karst when he is at home. On this barren plateau he
54 ROME AND VENICE.
lashes himself into a rage, and after howling up and down for
a time, and sending any carts or country people spinning that
come in his way, rushes down to Trieste to blow up the na-
tives. For that is the way, my merry friends. Be sure you
get up your passion in the parlour. Then you can rush
down-stairs foaming to the kitchen, and kick the servants.
But that dear old Mother Nature of ours is not always in her
high tantivies in this howling wilderness. She can smile
sometimes. In a few out-of-the-way corners of the Karst the
vine and olive grow, and yield fruits of Italian sweetness and
savour ; nay, successful attempts have been made to cultivate
the Marasca cherry, the brother to the wild red cherry of the
Dalmatian hills, and from which is made the exquisite liqueur
called Maraschino — the real nectar of Olympus. Ladies —
albeit repudiating our harsh potations — can rarely resist it ;
and it was of Maraschino that Hebe took too much.
But why am I lingering on this blasted heath, or rather
quarry, where the wondrous pass of the Semmering Alp awaits
me ? On goes our train through enchanting mountain scenery,
now stem and sublime, now soft and smiling. You shall be
carried by towering viaducts over such valleys as you have
never seen before — valleys such as you thought had no ex-
istence off the stage of the opera. Here is one with a babbling
brook, and a tiny flossy skein of a waterfall, and a pretty
church half hidden among chestnut-trees, and a hoar old
donjon keep at the top of a high hill, and dozens of pretty
white cottages, nestling amid trellised vines — the vines are
grown here a Vltalienne, and not in the hard-hearted, spiky,
hop-pole, French fashion — and everything, down to the painted
effigy of the Virgin in its little penthouse in the foreground.
FKOM TKIESTE TO VIENNA. 55
brings back to my mind the happy valley in the second act
of the Night Dancers. Ah ! here is another valley, with
such chalets, such a village inn, and a real water-wheel. I
seem to see Amina in her nightgown coming over the rustic
causeway, to hear the candlestick come washing into the tor-
rent. There is poor Elvino with his hair dishevelled, and
his stockings down, and that artful wicked Lisa, and my lord
the Count, with his dyed moustache and his intolerable tra-
velling-cap with the gold band. Stay ! see ; there is Doctor
Dulcamara — scarlet coat, top-boots, flaxen perruque, and all^ —
who drives up to Poltschach Station, in that identical gig
with the white horse. He dismounts and hands Nemorino —
the station clerk, indeed — a little black bottle. Down in that
green nook I see Signor Lablache in the Gazza Ladra, come
creaking over the bridge in all the majesty of pedestal pride ;
and there, beyond in the antique village, a ruddy farm damsel,
in the shortest of petticoats, is milking her kine, and a love-
lorn swain notches her name on the roof-post, while the
thievish magpie runs away with the spoon. They come again,
those happy operatic days, when one paid so delightedly the
half-crown for the gallery at the opera, and listened with bliss
to Rubini and Grisi, though their voices had to travel a quarter
of a mile to reach us. Talk of Italy and Switzerland ! Bah !
they have become as prosaic as Norwood or Twickenham.
The only picturesque places left in Europe — I except Spain,
which is in Africa, you know — are Styria and Illyria.
When your train stops at some station you find the same
picturesque diversity — real notaries in black gowns and snowy
falling bands — the very notaries who sit at rickety little tables
in the Sonnambula and the Elisire d^Amore, and draw up the
M HOME AND VENICE.
marriage contracts ; real monks, with sliaveu crowns and san-
dalled feet and hempen girdles — and I am glad to admit that
the Austrian friars are the cleanest I have seen for a long
period ; Tjrrolese sharp-shooters and jiigers, Uhlans and Pan-
dours in all manner of wildly martial garh — for the Govern-
ment of the Kaiser seems to have as many nationalities in its
military pay as the Government of India; to crown all, a
"bold peasantry their country's pride," very comely and con-
tented in appearance, with an abundance of gold and silver
ornaments quite surprising in a country where a specie-cur-
rency is unkno^vn; working men wearing shaggy jackets with
half-dollars for buttons, parti-coloured gaiters and hats with
streaming ribbons; their wives and daughters in the most
coquettish of bodices, the brightest and briefest of petticoats,,
stockings of gay hues, and variegated cloaks.
Alas that there should be a reverse to this rosy picture ;
but the interests of truth compel me to state that it was only
on the platforms that the pretty villagers in their coquettish
costume were visible, and that by the roadside in all the cul-
tivated tracts they were to be seen in the fields bent double,,
ragged, mth foul clouts tied about their heads, hoeing and
weeding, digging and delving, and bending under baskets of
manure like beasts of burden. When I saw, as the train
stopped for a moment at a station, a young girl about fifteen
experiencing some difficulty in drawing a bucket from a well
— and when I observed a grim, gaunt man, presumably her
father, aiding her by the administration of a thwack across
her shoulders with a cudgel that looked big enough to fell a
bullock — I confess that my operatic reminiscences began to
fade away in a despondent haze, and the sad conviction fol-
FROM TRIESTE TO VIENNA. 67
lowed, that the condition of the female agricultural population
is much the same all over continental Europe — and insular
Europe too, for that matter.
It was my lot, ere the day was out, to witness a change in
the aspect of the scenery and the condition of the atmosphere
for which I was no more prepared than for the appearance of
a waterspout or the downfall of a shower of red-hot scoriae.
You will he pleased to recollect that this was the 22d of
April — midspring — and that we were in ahout the latitude of
Lyons. At Trieste, abating a touch of the "bora" on Sun-
day, the temperature had been well-nigh oppressive. So late
as ten o'clock that morning we had journeyed through a really
southern clime — for miles and miles by the blue and waveless
Adriatic, and through teeming regions of vines which, in
some cases, covered the very slopes of the railway cuttings
and embankments, through groves of figs and olives, and
fields of Indian corn. It needed but the orange to have
made me think I was back in Andalusia. We got to Gratz
about three in the afternoon, and plunged with an almost
appalling suddenness into the depth, or rather the height, of
winter. Mountains capped with snow — for these we were
prepared ; but the entire country was a mass of snow, the
rivulets were frozen, the tiny lakes were sheets of solid
ice, the snow lay thick in the village streets and on the roofs
of village houses. There was snow on the church-spire, and
snow on the cart-tilts in the farmyards — not snow having the
appearance of a passing storm, but snow that looked as
though it w^ere an old friend, and had come to stop.
The air was piercingly cold. And then sleet, and then
snow, came down, and continued falling until evening.
B8 ROME AND VENICE.
Under these hyperborean circumstances did we cross the
Semmering.
I have had my snow this winter, as the unhappy prisoner-
boy Josephs, in Mr. Charles Keade's wonderful novel, had
his castigations— by instalments. Keturning from blazing
sunshine — the south of Spain — I found all the northern
country between Avila and Burgos as white as the top of
a wedding-cake. This was about the first of April. " Well,"
I said, ** here at last is an end of winter." It was warm on
the shores of the Bay of Biscay, and warmer at Bordeaux,
and for one day in Paris I broiled. Then, going into Italy,
we had a smart fall of sleet at Chamberi. "It is nothing,"
I said; **I come to thee. Savoy; and thou art generally
shrouded in sleet or in a Scotch mist." But we had not
reached Lans-le-bourg, in our passage over Mont Cenis, ere
a grim winter — almost as grim as that which overtook us on
the Semmering — clutched us by the throat. We were trans-
ferred from the diligence to a sledge, and were going down to
Susa merrily enough on runners — we never bumped but one
of our lady-companions declared that we had met with an
avalanche, which in her opinion was a kind of ditch — when
we were fairly caught in a snow-drift, and had to be dug out
of it with pickaxes and shovels, and set running again by the
introduction of rollers underneath our sledge-irons. Turin
was still weeping bitterly for her fugitive Sovereign, her
recreant court, and her diminished house-rents — that is to
say, it was pouring cats and dogs, which it usually seems to
do at Turin. At Milan we had the usual allowance of
humanity — smiles and tears; more of the last perhaps than
of the first ; but it was April weather, anyhow, and to com-
FROM TRIESTE TO VIENNA. 59
plain would have been unreasonable. In fact, one or two
good soaking wet days a-week seem to do fhe incomparable
Duomo at Milan all the good in the world. The white mar-
ble turns, under the moisture, to a myriad varieties of hue ;
the wet searches all the little cunning crannies of the sculp-
ture and tracery; and when it dries up, and the sun comes
out again, the thousand-year-old fabric shines forth with
a fresh glory spick and span new, as though its first stone
had been laid but yesterday :
*' My heart leaps up, when I behold
A rainbow in the sky ;
So was it when my life began ;
So is it now I am a man ;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die."
For the "rainbow in the sky" Mr. Wordsworth might very
well have substituted the Duomo of Milan. It is a joy for
ever.
At Venice, I have already told you, we had the brightest
phases of the golden primavera ; and we had done with the
hateful winter, I thought, for good and all. I had left all my
furs and winter gear behind at Venice, and had indulged in
day-dreams of white ducks at Vienna. But I reckoned with-
out my host — and the Semmering.
After all, the combined influence of rain, sleet, and snow,
under which we accomplished the passage of the great Alp,
may not have been without a beneficial effect. The adverse-
ness of the circumstances to anything like sight-seeing ren-
dered it impossible for me to inflict on you a detailed account
of our sensations at the head of the Pass, the middle of the
Pass, and the tail of the Pass. Rejoice, therefore, at my im-
60 ROME AND VENICE.
potence to give you a yard and a half of fine writing about
the Semmeriug. That it is awful, majestic, and sublime I
make no doubt. Not being able, however, to see anything
but snow and rain and the steam of the engine from the car-
riage window, I went to sleep. So I have slept over other
Alps — over the Brenner and the Stelvio, over the Cordilleras
and the Sierra Morena. Where is the use of keeping awake
if you can't see anything from the window ?
When you wake up, and have hooked your travelling-lamp
to the padded head-rest, you may consult your " Murray,"
your ** Baedecker," or your " Guide Joanne" at your ease ;
and discover that at the head of the pass the engineers have
constructed a tunnel four thousand feet long through the
mountains, at a height of nearly three thousand feet above
the level of the sea, and that this is the loftiest railway in
the world. All astonishing as it is, the old post-and-carriage
road made under the Kaiser Karl VI. soars even higher. It
passes by artful zigzags right over the mountain, and directly
above the railway tunnel attains a height of three thousand
two hundred feet. These zigzags, forming in their integrity
an angular spiral, caused an old traveller to remark that the
road over the Semmering was the only one which enabled
a man going before you to see the nape of your neck. By
others the line has been called the Eetrospective Railway;
and if Lot's wife were among the passengers one might
expect to find all the telegraph-posts converted into pillars of
salt.
So by Gloggnitz and Wiener-Neustadt we came, about
half-past nine at night, to Vienna, and found the atmosphere
soft and balmy as that of a spring night should be.
III.
THE KAISEK.
Vienna, May 5.
I MADE one of a party, while in Vienna, bound for a
stroll in the gardens of Schonbrunn. The Kaiser and the
Kaiserin are in residence ; and while they are in the palace
the private apartments are not shown to the public. Other-
wise you are free to wander as you will about the imperial
domicile. No policemen warn you off the premises. The
possessor of all this splendour has seemingly arrived at the
sensible conclusion that beautiful things were made to be
looked at, and that although a thing of beauty is a joy for
ever, it is shorn of half its interest when its contemplation
is confined to a select few. So the gardens and the con-
servatories, the aviaries, the menagerie, the fish-ponds, the
artificial ruins, and the statues, are all very much at the
service of that public who, in the origin, paid for them ;
and as soon as the imperial family go back to Vienna, one
of the gorgeous flunkeys will take you through the rooms
in which they eat and drink and sleep. Well, we took our
fill of what was visible ; and, unhindered by minatory notices,
our carriage-wheels were permitted to crunch the gravel of
drives on which it would have been high treason in Eng^
land to impinge.
When we had seen the Gloriette and the Schonbrunn
62 ROME AND VENICE.
— the Beautiful Fountain itself — and watched the exquisite
effect of the sunUt green spring foliage chequering the mar-
ble form of the Hehe, who is perpetually dispensing to
thirsty sight-seers an element much purer than the nauseous
lime-impregnated stuff which passes for water in the hotels
of Vienna — when we had seen the wild heasts, including
the African lion, who was in a rage as usual because his
cage was too small; and the grisly hear, who was curled
up into a ball in the sun and sleeping tranquilly through
the European crisis ; and the fox, who was wide awake and
sitting on the top of a tree-bole, looking remarkably like
the busts of Count Bismark; and the Bengal tiger, who,
in consequence of the heat of the day, had retired to an
inner apartment, and only allowed one brindled paw to be
visible across the threshold of his den — when we had seen
the golden eagle, troubled in his mind and plumage by con-
science or by fleas ; also a very frolicsome ostrich, who was
executing in his paddock the precise " Sahara waltz" which
has furnished Mr. Carlyle with such a very valuable figure
of speech ; a peculiar crane, just imported, whose parti-
coloured head, with a quantity of yellow hair, presumably
false, behind, reminded one strongly of the last new thing
in bonnets; a most horribly ragged, morose, and depraved-
looking vulture, clad apparently in an old door -mat, who
was exhibiting such feats of strength with his beak in the
way of twisting and widening the interstices between the
wires of his cage as made the likelihood of his coming out
for a walk among the ladies and children rather a proxi-
mate and imminent one than otherwise — when we had seen
all these things, we halted for a time to rest ourselves under
THE KAISER. 63
one of the cool and shady archways of the inner peristyle
of the palace.
Suddenly we saw a carriage rapidly coming towards us
up the long, smooth, gravelled road. An officer on duty
made a courteous sign for us with his hand to move a little
on one side — quite as much, I think, with the view of pre-
venting our toes from being crushed as with that of pre-
serving the illustrious inmates of the carriage from the
contact of the vulgar. Up came the carriage, awakening a
hundred echoes from the archways. It was a simple equip-
age enough : an open caleche, black and yellow — the Austrian
colours — lined with drab; and the coachman and footman
in liveries of the same hue. It had two occupants, both
in full uniform — an officer in white and an officer in light
blue. He in light blue was the Emperor Francis Joseph.
No guard turned out, no drums beat to arms. The Kaiser
and his aide-de-camp alighted at a narrow side-door; and
I, going on my way, saw them no more.
A very different Kaiser was this from the gay, gallant
young man who, nearly twenty years ago, was called from
the camps of Italy to fill the throne vacated by the harm-
less but inane Ferdinand. Four months ago I saw King
William of Prussia driving imter den Linden in an equip-
age well-nigh as simple as this. There can be no mistake
about King "William's age. He looks what he is — a stub-
born, stiff-necked, obtuse, but withal genial and kind-hearted
old gentleman ; his mind thoroughly made up, and he him-
self quite easy in it. But I declare that Francis Joseph,
who comparatively speaking is a mere boy to William I.,
looks, by a dozen years, the older man. He is a comely
«4 ROME AND VENICE.
Kaiser, quite the gentleman in appearance, and should he
slim to dappeniess, with an alert, vivacious mien ; but, ah !
how weary and worn and wretched he looks, how furrowed
with premature wrinkles, how grizzled with untimely gray !
What a life of ceaseless worry, care, anxiety, must be his !
He cannot retire to an inner apartment like the royal Bengal
tiger, and allow only his Kaiserlich - Koniglich paw to be
Tisible. He must always be in evidence. He must be always
giving audiences. All day long he is being bored by some-
body — by generals, by ministers, by courtiers, by suppliants ;
and all the while the timbers of the ship of state are crealdng
and yawning, and the ship itself is rolling and pitching after
the manner of that much distraught barque which lay all the
day in the Bay of Biscay, ! Her pitchy seams are rent ;
the dismal wreck to view strikes horror to her crew ; but no
sail in sight appears.
::- Instead of a sail, the Medes and Persians are at the gate ;
^ * Bismark is gnawing at the wire fences of the Silesian border ;
the Italians are boiling and bubbling up at Pizzighettone like
the " tenere pece^^ in the Arsenal of Venice described by
Dante ; the Bohemians are beginning to murmur about Pan-
slavic unity and the dynasty of George Podiebrod ; the Hun-
garians, instead of crying as they did to Theresa, " Moriamur
pro rege nostro /" are squabbling in interminable consonants
about " legal continuity ;" Austrian credit is exhausted ; there
are half a million men in white to be boarded and lodged at
the Kaiser's expense every day ; the forced paper currency is
at fifteen per cent discount ; and the Emperor Napoleon de-
clines to avow his intentions. Surely this is enough to silver
the hair and furrow the cheeks of the amiable and well-mean-
THE KAISER. 65
ing middle-aged gentleman in the sky-blue tunic, whom I
saw step from his carriage at the side door, and, leaning on
the arm of his aide, plod wearily up the staircase of his grand
palace, not to enjoy rest or healthful occupation, but to be
badgered, and baited, and teased out of his life by telegrams,
and despatches, and rumours, true or false, to the effect that
everybody is arming against him, so that in sheer self-defence
he is compelled to arm against everybody too, and throw his
half-million of white-coated men — with never a penny in hard
cash to pay for their coats or their pumpernickel, or their
daily kreutzers of pay — into the melee.
Would you lead such a life even to be king and kaiser,
and imperial, and royal, and ''apostolic," and receive the
allegiance of the Estates of Styria with that celebrated Old
Hat upon your head ? Better to wear the most battered of
wideawakes, and, a knapsack at your back, go tramping up
and down the Ehineland, with a second-class return ticket
from London-bridge, grumbling because the gasthof-keepers
charge you ten silbergroschen, instead of eight, for a bottle
of Liebfraumilch. Better the workman's jacket, the peasant's
blouse, than that perpetually buttoned-up sky-blue tunic,
with a white-flannel tunic as tightly buttoned up by way of
a change.
It is the doom of honest and inoffensive Francis Joseph
to appear without cessation in the guise of a fire-eater. For
twenty years he has been in full uniform. There is a story
in Irving' s Wolferfs Boost of a piratical Dutchman who came
in a storm, and lived in a storm, and went away in a storm.
Two-thirds of the story would apply closely enough to Francis
Joseph. With boyish 'hand he was made to pick up the
F
66 EOME AND VENICE.
sceptre — as heavy and well-nigh as unpleasant to wield as a
red-hot poker — which the fatuous Ferdinand had suffered to
slide from his grasp. The echoes of Windischgratz's cannon,
the trampling of the terrible Ban Jellachich's chargers' hoofs
had scarcely died away when he found himself, in full uni-
form, installed in a Burg whose approaches had been but
half cleared from the barricades of red republicanism. He
has always worn that full uniform. What time, what oppor-
tunity has he had to go into mufti ? The non-military sec-
tion among his subjects murmur at this eternal apparition of
the drill-sergeant. They remember that Ferdinand — com-
mon-place, chip-in-porridge, as he was — used to stroll about
the Graben and the Kohlmarkt in the plainest of plain clothes.
It was a distinguished characteristic of the monarch, now
"retired from business," that he never wore gloves. The
Viennese, who are in general the slaves of a more than
Chinese etiquette, admired this touch of Bohemianism in
their Kaiser. "With even greater admiration they recall the
days of the old Emperor Francis, who was renowned for
wearing in the street a particularly shocking bad hat — not
the Styrian one, but a weather-beaten beaver — the brim of
which was quite worn away under the attrition of continual
responses to popular salutes.
But these pleasant bourgeois days are fled. The Emperor
is always in sky-blue. The Archdukes, whose name is legion,
are always in sky-blue or milky-white. It is a buttoned-up,
leathern-stocked age. The costume and the customs of the
barrack prevail ; but the fault is scarcely with the well-inten-
tioned Sovereign, who would like to reduce his army, encour-
age Uterature and the arts, and reign constitutionally; but
THE KAISER. 67
who came to the throne in a muddle, and has continued to
reign in a muddle ; who inherited nothing but empty gran-
deur, whited sepulchre, Chinese etiquette, half-a-million of
soldiers in white coats, debt, discontent, disunion, and bank-
ruptcy. It is not Francis Joseph's fault. '^C'est la faute
de lafatalite,^^ as M. Bovary observed.
I came back to Vienna to find the Prater full of rumours,
and the Kohlmarkt ripe with on dits, and the courtyard of
the Archduke Charles Hotel crammed with quidnuncs, all
asserting the most disastrous things. I pass by the reported
proclamation of war between Prussia and Austria, between
Prussia and Saxony, and between Austria and Italy. Of
such proclamations we have verbatim accounts at least half-
a-dozen times in the course of every day. I pass by the
*' joint note" of protest said to have been presented to Prussia
by England and Bavaria. England and Bavaria ! Eagles do
not habitually consort with tom-tits. I give, for what it is
worth, the story that the King of Italy, being lately at an
entertainment offered to him by the Municipality of his
Lombard capital, said in proposing the health of the Podesta,
" Gentlemen, you have given me a ball at Milan. Next year
I hope to return the compliment by giving you a supper at
Venice." I don't think this story very trustworthy. The
King of Italy is not in the habit of uttering " buncombe"
under any circumstances ; and he is too honest and sensible
a gentleman to plagiarise or to parody the famous sarcasm of
the daughter of Alexander VI. to the seven young nobleman
she had poisoned : ^'Messieurs, vous m'avez donne un hal a
Venise ; je vous rends un souper a Ferrare.''^ The imagina-
tive journalist who concocted that Milan story had probably
8 ROME AND VENICE.
just risen from the perusal of Victor Hugo's Lucrece
Borgia,
As to the repeated statement that Garibaldi has been
written for and telegraphed for to Caprera, that he is by this
time in Florence, busy enrolling volunteers, one cannot afford
to treat that with ridicule. It is as likely as not, and like-
lier. The grand old man in the red shirt has been used as
scurv'ily by the King he made as was blind old Belisarius by
the Emperor he saved. Thank God that Garibaldi has not
yet had to beg for the obolus. But he who conquered
Southern Italy, and who gave up the Dictatorship as calmly
as though he had been a one-armed commissionaire intrusted
with a parcel ; he who, while generals and placemen gathered
greedily round the rich spoil, went quietly off to Caprera to
live on five soldi' 8 worth of polenta and a little goat's-milk
cheese — just as when, installed in splendour at Stafford
House, he told one of the superb flunkeys who came to in-
form him that breakfast was ready, that he had breakfasted
two hours before — the meal being a morsel of bread and a
drop of stale beer, the remnants of the last night's repast —
he, whose only requital for services such as never before were
rendered by subject to Sovereign was to have his ankle
smashed and his name vilified — Giuseppe Garibaldi is too
much of a whole-souled Christian to bear malice, or to sulk
because he has been ill-treated.
" As for my life, it's the king's," says Jack, in Dib-
din's ballad. Garibaldi has shown a hundred times already
his willingness to lay down his life for Italy ; and if he is
wanted, he will be ready, no doubt, until the end and until
that epitaph be written over him to which so few aspire
THE KAISEE. 69
and which fewer still deserve, " Well done, thou good and
faithful servant."
Nor are rumours less numerous from the interior of Ger-
many, nor are some dry facts of a sufficiently ominous nature
wanting to back those rumours up. Poor ex-Emperor Ferdi-
nand, who for many years has been passing a quiet, hum-
drum, harmless existence in the Hradschin Palace, at Prague,
spending his vast wealth in gifts to the poor and donations
to churches and convents, has suddenly waked up, they say,
to the disagreeable consciousness that Prague is in Bohemia,
that Bohemia is unpleasantly close to Saxony, and that the
Saxon lamb is unmistakably menaced by the Prussian wolf.
Ex-Emperor Ferdinand has begun to opine that the Hrad-
schin at Prague is no longer a safe and comfortable retreat
for a monarch retired from business, undeniably pious and
charitable, but somewhat weak-minded. The very name of
Vienna is abhorred by the ex-Kaiser, who still sees, they
say, in imagination the sanguinolent phantom of red re-
publicanism roaring round the Burg, and hears Windisch-
gratz's big guns, and Jellachich's infinite troop-horses. To
the Kaiserstadt he will not return; but he is packing up
to leav6 the Hradschin, and intends to settle at Linz. Eight
large fourgons, padlocked, bolted, and barred, and crammed
with jewels, stars, crosses, and crucifixes of gold and silver,
are waiting, it is asserted, at the Prague railway-station,
ready to be sent- South when the evil day arrives. Poor old
gentleman — who only wants to say his prayers, and to be
tucked up comfortably at night and have a hot posset to send
him to sleep !
The King of Saxony is said to be in a quandary even
7* BOME AND VENICE.
more dire than that of ex-Kaiser Ferdinand. The language
used by Count Bismark to this respectable second-rate Sove-
reign would seem to be akin to that delicately qualified by
Emilia in Othello as tdrms such as a " beggar in his drink"
would not have used towards his " callet." I suppose it is
the right sort of thing to do — to be passably civil to the
Great Powers, but to bully the small Germans like pick-
pockets. Besides, it is the way of the world. When the
Baron Front de Boeuf made that prodigious haul of prisoners,
he discriminated in the usage to be shown to his captives.
The noble Athelstane and the Lady Rowena were conducted
to comfortable apartments, and treated in a manner befitting
their rank ; but Isaac of York was flung sans ceremonie into
the deepest dungeon beneath the castle moat, where the
baron presently waited upon him, and proposed, with the aid
of two heathen blackamoors, to broil him upon a gridiron,
unless he counted out on the dungeon -floor a thousand
pounds of silver. Bismark has used no more ceremony to-
wards the King of Saxony than the Norman baron did towards
the Jew of York. He has made no secret of his determina-
tion to seize upon Saxony. The King is said to have already
sent away his entire treasure — eight millions of silver dollars,
all the uncut Peruvian emeralds, the large oval sardonyx, the
famous green diamond, Rafaelle's '' Madonna di San Sisto,"
and the priceless rarities of the Green Vault. Forewarned is
forearmed, and the King of Saxony is resolved not to fall un-
prepared into the net of the Prussian fowler.
IV.
A FLIGHT FKOM VENICE.
I CAME down from Vienna to Trieste, and thence returned
to Venice — always in consequence of Bismark, whose conduct
was now growing outrageous — at the end of May; and on
Thursday evening, June 14, at half-past six o'clock, I left
Venice to follow Garibaldi and his fortunes. It was time.
The overt act of violence committed by the Prussians in Hol-
stein left no doubt of the imminence of war; and it was
thought likely in Venice that the Italian forces massed at
Piacenza and Bologna might at once cross the frontier, and
commence operations without waiting even for the launching
of Victor Emmanuel's proclamation, and his manifesto to the
Cabinets of Europe. There was no need, it was argued, for
any solemn declaration of war between the Kaiser and the Re
Galantuomo. They have been always at war, as the knights
of Rhodes were with the Turks. The kingdom of Italy has
never been recognised by the Power which was driven out of
Lombardy in 1859, and which the Italians hope to scourge
out of Venetia in 1866. With a denial of the existence of
the sun at noonday, which would be droll were it not pitiable,
the official gazetteers of Austria always speak of the united
country they hate and fear as II Regno di Sardegna, or
L' Italia Sarda; while the Italian Parliament is the "As-
sembly of Piedmont, sitting at Florence." What is there in
73 ROME AND VENICE.
a name, however? The Emperor of Austria calls himself,
on his silver coinage, "King of Lombardo-Venetia ;" and
behold, in the capital of his empire, not a single silver coin
is to be seen.
It was time for. me to go. The internal terrors of the
Ritter von Toggenburg, Luogotenente of Venice, had grown
too desperate for continence, and he was arresting people
right and left. Over a hundred domiciliary visits and as
many arrests had taken place, in Venice itself, on Wednesday
night. At Padua, too, there had been disturbances ; and
some fifty political prisoners, caught up by the Austrian
police, had been sent under a strong guard to the capital to
join their fellows in misfortune at San Giorgio Maggiore,
and, perhaps, to be subsequently transferred to Goritz or the
Spielburg. Toggenburg met them at the station, and doubt-
less experienced much innocent satisfaction at seeing them
coupled together. Finally, a number of Venetians of position
and influence — professors, medical men, advocates, artists,
noble ladies even — had been summarily ordered by the
Government to banish themselves from the Venetian territory.
They were scarcely allowed time to pack up a few necessaries.
They were not permitted to enter Italy by Bologna or by
Peschiera, but by a refinement of cruelty were forced to take
the long and wearisome route by Verona and Bolzano,
through the Tyrol into Switzerland. Even the Pass of the
Brenner is now closed and guarded by Austrian artillery.
Some of the involuntary emigrants were coerced into making
a promise that they would not seek a permanent refuge either
in Switzerland, Italy, or England — the atmosphere of free
countries is evidently mephitic to the olfactories of the Cava-
A FLIGHT FROM VENICE. 73
Here Toggenburg — which pTomise, so soon as they are well
out of the clutches of the double-headed eagle, it is to be
hoped those involuntary emigrants, with all convenient de-
spatch, will break, like so much pie-crust.
In favour of foreigners, it was stated, an exception was to
be made. Twenty-four hours' grace had been granted them
to get out of Venetia into Italy. On the strength of this
assurance, having my passport duly vised by the police in
Venice, I took a ticket to Padua, whence a branch line has
just been opened to Kovigo. At the last-named place a dili-
gence was to be in readiness to convey us to Ponte Lago
Oscuro. There the Po was to be crossed to Ferrara, and
thence we could take the Italian rail to Bologna. Nothing
could be more satisfactory than this theoretical itinerary.
In practice, however, it was quite another thing. On arriving
at Padua I received the grim intelligence that all the bridges
on the new branch line — it was only opened last Monday,
and these said bridges were regarded as triumphs of engineer-
ing skill — had been broken down ; that there were no means
of conveyance across the Po ; and that the Austrian engineers
were busy making preparations for inundating the surround-
ing country. Under these circumstances, nothing was to be
done but to go on to Verona, and sleep there.
We reached the fine old city, now converted into a frown-
ing fortress, garrisoned by thirty thousand men, at midnight.
It is a long drive from the Porta Vescova to the city gates,
and when we reached them they were closed for the night.
Only after infinite trouble, and the thrice-performed rite of
exhibiting our passports — first to a gendarme, whose lantern
went out; next to a German, who was drunk, and was for
74 ROME AND VENICE.
leaving us out in the cold ; and last to a Croat sergeant, who
could speak neither German nor Italian — were we allowed to
make our way to a most infamous hostelry, called La Colomba
d*Oro, where I remained until six in the morning, a prey to
bugs and anxiety as to how I was to proceed on my journey.
So soon as the clock struck six, having heard overnight that
the military authorities might perhaps grant permission to
foreigners to proceed by rail from Verona to Peschiera, and
knowing that the through train from Venice was due at
Verona at ten, I made the best of my way to the quarters of
the Commandant della Piazza. The urgency of the case
making me bold, I penetrated into a guard-room, where
there was an Austrian officer in bed, who, being awakened
from a sweet sleep, doubtless about the hutterbrods and
hierhallen of Vienna, swore at me. Nothing disheartened,
I woke another, who was civil, and directed me to the office
of the commandant of the place, a very fierce old Austrian
gentleman in a suit of whitey-brown holland, covered with
decorations, who, early as it was, had begun his day's work
and his day's allowance of cigars. I fold him I was a
foreigner, and wished to leave the Empire — at which he
nodded his head — and enter the kingdom of Italy, at which
he bent his fierce old brows — I should have said the kingdom
of Sardinia. Be it as it might, however, the commandant of
the place could do nothing. I must apply, he said, to the
commander of the army, the Ai'chduke Albert.
So off I went to his Imperial Highness's quarters, a
pretty villa, near the Porta Nuova, called the Casa Peris. It
was not yet seven, but the Archduke had been up an hour
past, and was away inspecting his troops in the citadel.
A FLIGHT FKOM VENICE. 75
Whatever faults the Austrians may have, the credit at least
must be given them of being very early risers. The Arch-
duke, a stout aide-de-camp told me, would be back at eight,
and then his adjutant-general might give me what I required.
So, to while away the time, I strolled along the great
square of Yerona, and its narrow streets and picturesque
market-places. The city is in a most deplorable condition.
Stagnation, and- the concomitant of stagnation, rottenness,
have marked it for their own. It is bad enough to see
palaces going to ruin, it is worse to see ruined shops, or such
mean stalls as are yet tenanted, seedy and forlorn, and
scarcely any stock to show. I do remember an apothecary I
saw on Friday morning in Verona, and I am sure that Romeo
must have seen him in the neighbouring city three hundred
years ago. There he stood, a pinched and disconsolate
starveling, at the door of his farmacia, and behind him
was his beggarly account of empty boxes. But not even
a customer came to ask him for a trifling draught. The
Austrians have their medical staff abundantly supplied, and
stand in no need t)f the services of Veronese apothecaries. At
Trieste, it is true, they have put forth an appeal to the public
at large for patriotic donations of lint, bandages, and lard for
ointment, but they have not had the conscience to ask the
Venetians for such succour. They have been content with
the infliction of the twelve-million " loan."
It was half-past seven, and I went into a caffe, the
grandest one in Verona, but like everything else in this war-
begone town, pitiably neglected and dilapidated. Waiters
without braces, slipshod, unshaven, and dirty ; coffee-cups
without saucers and without spoons, looking-glasses cracked
76 ROME AND VENICE.
across, columns split up the shaft, and chairs with three legs
— it was all of a piece. There is nothing new, nothing tidy
here but barracks and fortifications. The brand of Cain — of
the Austrain corporal's cane — is on everything. To anyone
who has known Verona in its good days — to anyone who has
turned over the pages of the sumptuous edition of Kogers's
Italy, with its exquisite illustrations by Turner — the actual
aspect of this historical and artistic place is most miserable.
You can scarcely believe that you are in Italy. From one
end of the town to the other there is the smell of the Austrian
cavalry stable, and the guttural jabbering of the Austrian
guard-room, and the white-coated Croats swarm like a plague
of lice. Only on the Piazza stands, defiant of time and
laughing at the little ways of men, the old Roman amphi-
theatre, well-nigh as complete now as when, eighteen centuries
since, the gladiators fought, or the Christians were thrown to
the lions in its arena. Black and seared and scarred it is,
like some great brand which has been thrust into the furnace
only to make it harder ; but it is yet solid and entire, with its
huge portico, its podium for the senators, its gracilis for the
mob, and its exterior haltei and pracinctiones and vomitoria.
The vaults in the basement of the outside walls have been let
out — as though they were arches on the Greenwich Railway
— to those who carry on petty trades. There are blacksmiths'
forges, and cobblers' stalls, and butchers' shops burrowing in
this one of the few unrivalled monuments left of the grandeur
of Imperial Rome ; but, its degradation notwithstanding, the
old amphitheatre still looks superb, and frowns down with in-
finite contempt on the biggest of the barracks which the
Austrians have built up in its vicinity.
A FLIGHT FROM VENICE. 77
Half-past seven a.m. is perhaps not too early in tlie morn-
ing to drink coffee, or, perhaps, if case-hardened and your
stomach will hear it, to indulge in the matutinal weed. You
may read the newspaper, too, appropriately over your coffee
and cigar ; hut it is a little too early, I think, to wear white-
kid gloves and strut about with an eye-glass stuck in your
optic muscles.
In goodness' name, for whom do these white-coated cap-
tains and lieutenants dandify themselves? Women are
said to dress for one another : not to please the eyes of
men, hut to strike envy to the hearts of their own sex.
So I suppose it is in mutual rivalry that the German
officers are such tremendous bucks. In most European
countries defective sight is held to be a disqualification
for military services ; but to judge from the number of eye-
glass wearers — many of them mere boys — I saw before eight
o'clock in the caffe, nearly half the garrison of Verona must
be purblind.
At eight I went to the Archduke's again. I had retained
since six, as a guide, an Italian lad, who was a kind of ostler
at La Colomba d'Oro. I think he must have been half-
witted. In any case, he was so desperately afraid of the
Austrian soldiers that he could not approach a corporal with-
out assuming the posture of adoration, or pass a sentry with-
out quivering like an aspen. This lily-livered wight being
rather an impediment than an assistance, I dismissed him in
peace, and prosecuted my further inquiries alone. But my
second journey to the Archduke was as fruitless as the first.
I was told that I must go to the police, as a preliminary
measure, to have my passport vised. The police-ofiice is in
78 ROME AND VENICE.
the Piazza dei Signori, a mile and a half away. Thither I
sped, to find it surrounded by troops, who with difficulty
allowed me to pass into a crowded and dirty room full of
Prussian shoemakers, French milliners, and Swiss couriers,
all begging and praying for their passports to be vised.
I had to wait in this den a full hour, and watch the
resuscitation of the whole hideous machinery of the passport
system, which, I had thought, was happily abolished for
ever. But it is astonishing how soon the memory of the
bad returns, and how easily we fall into the way of doing
evil. Give me but a fortnight to drill my men, and I would
undertake to furnish you with any number of sworn tor-
mentors or familiars of the Inquisition. Grubby registers
were consulted ; fresh entries were made ; you were teased
with trivial questions; the old muttering and mumbling,
and reading signatures upside down; the old stamping with
greasy blue ink, and scrawling illegible nonsense on honest
paper, and countersigning, and numbering, and sanding,
and blotting, and smearing took place ; and after every man
liad got somebody else's passport, and an amicable scramble
for a distribution of property had taken place, we scampered
back to the Archduke's for the final permission. Arrived at
the Casa Peris, we were allowed the entree of the back- stairs ;
and, after being repulsed at the doors of many military de-
partments, from the "Train Commando" to the " Hydro-
graphisches Bureau," — the Inundation Office, I suppose, —
we found, in a garret, Hauptmann von Somebody, and Ober-
lieutenant von Something else, breakfasting heavily on beef-
steak and cabbage. The Hauptmann turned his back upon
us, and the Oberlieutenant, taking our passports, and fling-
A FLIGHT FROM VENICE. 79
ing them on one side, ordered us peremptorily to wait '' down-
stairs."
As the staircase was barely wide enough for two persons
to pass one another, " down- stairs" would only mean the
coal-cellar ; but beefsteak and cabbage are holy things, and
will not bear interference. Not being able to find the cellar,
I chose the second-fioor landing for an ante-chamber, and
sitting down on the stairs, cooled my heels there until the
Hauptmann and the Oberlieutenant had finished their break-
fast. The capacity of the human stomach as a receptacle
for beef and cabbage is extensive ; but it has its limits.
Being full, the satiated functionaries addressed themselves
to our little business. Then the Adjutant -General, and
finally, I suppose, the Archduke, had to be consulted, and
we received our passports and a magic slip of paper attached
to each — a lascia passare, or permission to proceed by rail
from Verona to Peschiera. The Prussian shoemaker was
especially overjoyed, and seemed to be thankful as for some
special deliverance. I do not know that there exists in war
any particular prejudice against shoemakers — it is our tailors,
perhaps, whom we are more disposed to kill so soon as the
battle-trumpet sounds ; but this man was a Prussian as well
as a shoemaker, and he had seemed all the morning haunted
by an uneasy expectation of being fallen^upon and massacred
by the Austrians, merely because he was a countryman of the
abhorred Bismark.
The landlord of the Colomba d'Oro, having presented us
with his permission to quit the Austrian territory in the
shape of Beceipted bills, — whose amount, so far as my own
was concerned, led me to the conviction that the Clarendon
80 ROME AND VENICE.
in Bond-street is not such a dear hotel after all, — we started
in the hotel-omnibus for the railway-station. It was by this
time past ten ; but the landlord, as he took from us seventy
soldi apiece omnibus fare, gave us a solemn assurance that
the time-bill had been altered, and that the train did not
start until eleven. The man knew perfectly well that he
was telling a lie ; but seventy soldi a head, when you have
an omnibus-load of a dozen, are something in these times ;
and, besides, he had an ulterior object. A little Venetian,
who had carefully concealed from the authorities the fact
that he was one, and had somehow procured a French pass-
port, remarked solemnly, as we left the Colomba, " In this
same omnibus shall we have to travel to Peschiera." We
tried to think him a false prophet ; but his prediction turned
out to be true. When we reached the station, the porters
laughed in our faces, and told us that the train had left a
full hour before. Nothing was to be done but to return to
the Colomba d'Oro, abuse the landlord, hear him tell more
lies, and then fall to a-chaffering with him for the horsing
of the omnibus to Peschiera.
The war is not yet a day old, yet things seem to have
gone back a dozen years already. Here were the good old
times of haggling and bargaining with vettiirini — of threats,
recriminations, and vows of good faith as false as dicers'
oaths — come back as though by magic. At last, for the hire
of a rickety omnibus, drawn by two miserable spavined jades,
— one of them by Rosinante out of Galloping Dreary Dun,
the other brother to the celebrated candidate for the Cow-
cross Stakes, on which Petruchio rode to his marriage with
Katharine, — we agreed to pay about double the first-class
A FLIGHT FROM VENICE. 81
railway-fare between Verona and the frontier. But we were
lucky, as it turned out, to obtain any conveyance at all. An
interdict had been placed on all the diligences and post-
chaises. Nothing, in fact, save military baggage -wagons,
was allowed to circulate.
By two o'clock we were at Castelnuovo, and soon after-
wards came in sight of Peschiera. The drive along the shores
of the Lago di Garda is exquisitely beautiful. On this, a
lovely day in leafy June, the water looked so blue, the dis-
tant mountains were so glowing in purple and orange tints,
the sails of the fisher-boats glanced so snowy white, the tall
pines spread their velvet-green canopy of foliage so witchingly,
that the temptation to leap from the omnibus, produce a
sketch-book and a box of moist water-colours, and fall to
limning on the spot, was well-nigh irresistible. On reflection,
however, it appeared that a better time might be selected for
taking sketches on the Lago di Garda. In numerous conve-
nient eyries on its banks, Austrian soldiers are posted, and
more than one sketching civilian has been fired at lately, on
the assumption that he was " taking plans" of the fortifica-
tions of Peschiera. The anathemas of the Old and New
Societies of Painters in Water Colours rest on the fortifica-
tions of Peschiera !
The Austrian engineers are doing their best to ruin the
Lago di Garda. The foreground they have spoilt already.
As we journeyed onward we could feed our eyes on one side
with all the luxuriant beauty of the lake ; so calm, so blue, so
sunny, so happy. On the other, the bowels of the earth were
being ruthlessly dug up, and hordes of soldier-slaves in white
coats were heaping the sods into breastworks and strengthen-
G
HOME AND VENICE.
ing them with fascines. Most hideous did their picks and
mattocks and wheelbarrows look on the border of this Para-
dise. It was as though you saw Death digging his first grave
in a snug corner of Eden, and waiting with a leer for our
dear brother departed. On one side, then, you saw horrid,
ugly, devilish "War ; on the other, the inestimable beauty and
repose of the Peace of Nature, which is as the Peace of God,
and passeth all understanding.
Over moats and drawbridges we rattled into Peschiera,
which really is so very paltry a town that to fortify it seems
not like gilding refined gold, but locking up a brass farthing
in a silver casket. I suppose, however, that the strategic
position of Peschiera makes it of importance as a fortress. I
do not believe in fortresses myself, holding that there was
never a citadel so strong but that sooner or later it fell, and
that the final cause of all strongholds is to be taken. We
were very glad to get into Peschiera, and gladder still to get
out of it. Half an hour after our departure the Austrians
locked up the place for good and all, and neither natives nor
strangers are now allowed ingress or egress. On the whole,
I think I would rather be a cabin-boy on board a South-
Shields collier than Podesta of Peschiera.
After another examination of passports and a new bargain-
battle with the vetturino who was to take us to Desenzano,
we entered omnibus number two, and had another two hours'
drive to the frontier of the kingdom of Italy. I suppose W0
were favoured with the very laziest driver ever whelped. He
was not even^to_be moved into activity by the offer of a collec-
tive huonamuno of enormous extent, but lolled on his box in
a calm stateof semi-somnolence, sucking the butt-end of that
A FLIGHT FKOM VENICE. 83
whip the other extremity of which we should have so dearly
liked to apply to his own shoulders. My companion in the
coupe — for it was a double omnibus — was a fat German
gentleman whom I shall always remember from his hav-
ing presented me with one of the most execrable cigars
ever manufactured. He was very friendly, and at great pains
to assure his fellow-travellers that he was not an Austrian ;
but I have a shrewd suspicion that I had met him before as
a seller of meerschaum pipes in the Eauhenheim Strasse,
Yienna. His stock of Italian was limited to one word,
^'Suhito,'' which he dinned without intermission into the
driver's ears, who only slept the sounder. The German gen-
tleman's warnings of " Kein trinkgeldj kein tiinkgeld,^' were
quite thrown away on this dense oaf, whom not even the
promise in his own language of a bribe could arouse.
The frontier line between the dominions of Francis Joseph
and Victor Emmanuel is marked on the Austrian side only
by a post painted in the imperial colours, black and yellow^
and an oval signboard with the word grenze. I do not know,
as, a general rule, anything more insignificant to outward view
than the actual frontier line between two States. You may
play at hopscotch over it all day long without fear of the
resentment of hostile armies. It is only by common accord
to quarrel that certain points on the line have been fixed
upon as objective ; and it is only on the general's map and
at the green-table of diplomacy that the frontier assumes its
real importance.
At this grenze the last inspection of our passports — I
think it was the ninth that morning — took place. The
drowsy driver was just preparing to lunge into Italy, when a
84 ROME AND VENICE.
gendarme seized the horses' heads, and another asked us
half insinuatingly, half menacingly, if we knew anything of a
" Signer Bianchi." Nobody knew him, of course ; our pass-
ports were all scrupulously en regie, so there was no more to
be said. In another moment we were in Lombardy, — in the
Regno d' Italia. " Bianclii hat etwas gethan,'' said the
German gentleman, with a look of great wisdom. It was
clear that Bianchi was wanted, and that the Austrians would
have been very glad to get hold of him. I wonder whether
the little Venetian who had contrived to procure a French
passport was Bianchi. Small blame to him if he concealed
his identity. There are certain critical moments when it
becomes a moral duty to swear that black is white.
The jolly Italian doganieri at the King of Italy's custom-
house fifty yards on just took the trouble to ascertain from
our papers who we were, and made a perfunctory examination
of our luggage ; that is to say, of the luggage of my com-
panions. It is certain that the writer of this brought
nothing into the world, and it is equally certain that, were a
hostile bullet or an Austrian rope to send him out of it
presently, he would leave nothing behind him but a race-
glass and an Italian dictionary, and some socks and pocket-
handkerchiefs. That is all I have at present. I have put
off the old Adam, and begun the world afresh, and the
plunder of my effects would not fatten a flea. The inspec-
tion over, we shook hands all round, including the doganieri ;
and if I for one did not join in the shout of " Viva Italia /"
which arose from our wayworn group, it was because I was
adust, and, being a foreigner, afraid of taking liberties.
In the picturesque town of Desenzano, which stands in
A FLIGHT FEOM VENICE. 85
need of a little pulling down and building up again — and it
would be as well, perhaps, if the Desenzanian housemaids
made the beds before five in the afternoon ; for the sight of
mattresses and sheets hanging out of window at that hour,
in order, I suppose, to air them, and bake the fleas in the
afternoon sun, is not pretty — at Desenzano, I say, we found
the railway train waiting, and at nine o'clock on Friday
evening we were in Milan.
It was at this moment difficult to know where I could
find Garibaldi. It was not known with certainty at Milan.
His movements are rapid and secret. He had left Como, the
head-quarters of the Garibaldini, I was told. He had gone
to Lecco, to Bergamo, to Cremona, or even farther south to
Bari and Barletta, at which last point his son Menotti and
another considerable force of volunteers is stationed, ready to
go — no man can tell whither, and no man should know
whither, till the right time comes. On Saturday morning,
however, I took the train to Camerlata, and thence drove in
a carriage to Como, on the shore of the lake. Six thousand
volunteers were in garrison at Como, and, to my great satis-
faction, I found that Garibaldi had returned from his tour of
inspection, and was at Como too.
Note. Ihave very scrupulously suppressed the description of all that I saw
of actual hostile operations between the Italians and the Austrians in Venetia
and in the Tyrol in the months of June and July 1866. I am not a " mili-
tary critic ;" and I imagine, were I to venture on military criticism, that my
remarks would be equally offensive, both as to form and to foundation, to
soldiers and to civilians, to Italians and to Austrians.
V.
FERKAKA.
August 5.
I ARRIVED in this interesting Italian town early on Sunday
morning, in company with seven young Italian noblemen, my
intimate friends. Our mission was one of State ; indeed, we
formed the personnel of an embassy sent by the most
serene Republic of Venice to the equally illustrious Don
Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara. I may mention that our
train comprised the gallant Don Apostolo Gazzella, the grave
Giacopo Liverotto, and that lively little dog Maffeo Orsini,
who sings such rare drinking-songs, and has a face so beard-
less and so buxom, that you might easily mistake him for
a woman. From this you may judge that we were all very
gay cavaliers indeed, and made a very lively appearance as we
swaggered past the old Gastello and down the Strada de*
Mercanti, the velvet and satin of our doublets rustling, the
plumes swaling in our bonnets, and the hilts of our rapiers
glancing in the sun.
I know not whether it was the choice Lambrusco we had
quaffed at our collation at the sign of Le Tre Corone, or
some foregone predisposition to mischief which possessed me,
but as we were passing the Ducal Palace I must needs, and
in spite of the remonstrances of my companions, clamber up
to the plinth of one of the columns of the gateway, and,
standing on tiptoe, make a dash with my dagger at a big
FERRAEA. 67
letter B cut in stone, and which was indeed the first letter of
my Lady Duchess's name sculptured beneath her coat of
arms, the which was displayed by the side of her ^husband's,
in the midst of the architrave. Some of the young gallants
laughed at my madcap freak, but the grave Giacopo shook his
head, and opined that it was likely to prove a bad business.
If I remember aright, I had met the Duchess before, in the
gardens of the Grimani Palace at Venice, one night during
the carnival, and had had a few words with her.
The news of the mischief I had wrought soon reached the
ducal ears, and about an hour before dinner 1 was arrested by
a man in black, named Eustighello, was heavily fettered, and
thrown into the deepest dungeon beneath the ducal coal-
cellar. Later in the afternoon, a guard of halberdiers con-
ducted me to a splendid apartment in the palace, where I
found the Duke and Duchess. They also seemed to have had
words. The countenance of Don Alfonso wore a very evil ex-
pression, and the Duchess had apparently been crying. I
heard her mutter, as we entered, that the Duke was her
fourth husband, and that he had better take care. To my
astonishment, I was not ordered to immediate execution. I
was received, on the contrary, most affably. The politeness
of Don Alfonso was exquisite. He was good enough to
inquire into the history of my early life, and was so obliging
as to offer me a commission in the Ferrarese army; but I
thankfully declined the honour, having no reason to complain
of my then employers, the Most Serene Eepublic, and my
state of life, that of a captain in the Yenetian Heavy Horse.
The Duke, however, vowed by Hercules — one of his Grace's
ancestors — that I should drink with him. Eustighello, who
88 BOME AND VENICE.
was a kind of butler as well as sheriff's officer, brought in a
ilask of Asti spumantc ; and the Duke, who was in a sportive
humour, insisted that my Lady Duchess should fill the gob-
lots for us. This she did, her hand trembling strangely the
while. Don Alfonso looked toward me, and I wished him
luck, and I felt quite nice; for it is, after all, rather the
proper kind of thing to do, to drink with a live Duke. His
Grace did not say anything about t'other bottle ; but, with a
wish that what I had taken might do me good, bestowed on
me a paternal benediction, and, scowling at the Duchess,
went out for a little walk.
I observed that, as that scoundrelly catchpole Rustighello
followed his master, he opened his curiously- slashed sleeve
and laughed in it. No sooner had the pair quitted the apart-
ment, than the Duchess rushed to the door, locked it, and in-
formed me, in a rapid recitative, that the Duke was a villain,
that I had been poisone.d, and had not ten minutes to live.
At the same time she forced on my attention a small black
bottle, containing a quantity of Old Doctor Jacob Townsend's
sarsaparilla, and telling me that it was an antidote, bade me
drink it. I was at first reluctant to obey her, for there was
po end to the naughty fibs told by that woman, but eventually,
feeling as though I had a quantity of red-hot watchsprings
underneath my waistcoat, which were beginning to uncoil
themselves, I swallowed the mixture ; it was very nasty, but
made me quite well again. The Duchess then implored me
to leave Ferrara by the next train for Bologna, and with
a wish that she might never see me again — a wish cordially
reciprocated by the undersigned — attempted to kiss me. I
successfully resisted the indelicate attempt, and glad to be
FEEKARA. • 89
well out of this improper place, went for a stroll in the
Piazza de' Signori.
There, at the Caffe Tofana, I met Gazzella, Orsini, and
the rest, who told me that through the kind offices of a
Spanish gentleman of their acquaintance, named Guhetta,
they had been bidden to a hot supper that very evening, at
the Princess Negroni's. Her excellency lived on the first-
floor over the chemist and druggist's shop, next door to the
Ducal Palace. They proposed that, although uninvited, I
should join them. The linkboy of the Corriere della Mat-
tina, they said, would pass me in. Now, I know that I
ought at once to have driven to the station, and taken a
ticket for Bologna ; but hot suppers were always my weak-
ness, and, in an evil moment, I consented to wait on the
Princess.
We went, and had a very good time. There were
heccqfichi, there was pigeon pie, and" a delicious Nesselrode
pudding, which, however, had slightly too strong a flavour
of bitter almonds. The best chefs will sometimes err.
Francatelli has been known to nod. We were joined at
supper by several beautiful young ladies, in low-necked
dresses, who subsequently entertained us with music and
dancing. Apostolo Gazzella, who has a rich bass voice, gave
us " Mynheer van Dunk," and Mafi'eo Orsini sang a comic
song with a roaring chorus. I have forgotten its name, but it
was something about the way to be happy. Everybody had
proposed everybody else's health, and we were almost ripe
for " Auld lang syne," when, in the distance, the sounds of
a chant, which was anything but a comic song, became
audible. The voices came nearer and nearer, and I could
IK) ROME AND VENICE.
make out the words, "Nisi Dominm cedificat domum" to
which succeeded some most unpleasant extracts from the
Burial Service.
The young ladies in low dresses had all disappeared, and
the wax-candles went out one after another, leaving a dis-
agreeable odour behind. Presently the great folding-doors of
the saloon flew open, and there appeared on the threshold my
Lady Duchess, dressed all in black, attended by seven Capu-
chin monks, all in white, who, ranged in a row, were singing
" Down among the dead men." The Duchess came forward
and explained, that as we had once given her a ball at Venice
— she alluded to that little misunderstanding at the Grimani
Palace— she had deemed it her duty to return the compli-
ment by offering us a supper at Ferrara. She went on to
inform us that there was a pound and a half of strychnine
in the pigeon pie, and three-quarters of a pint of prussic acid
in the Nesselrode pudding. That abominable pudding ! — I
had partaken twice of it. Then, directing the monks to
draw on one side a little, she showed us that, in addition to
board, she had provided lodging for us in the shape of seven
patent coffins, adding that if we wanted washing, the seven
monks could supply us with any quantity of holy water. I
made bold to remark, in the most pointed manner, that her
accommodation was insufficient, seeing that we were eight in
number, and seeing that only coffins for seven, with Capu-
chins to follow, had been provided. Whereat she screamed,
and, bundling my young friends out of the room, once more
produced the black bottle, and prescribed the mixture as
before. I indignantly refused the antidote, and remarking
that I considered her a highly offensive person, not to be
FEREAEA. 91
permitted to go about any longer poisoning tlie junior
brandies of the nobility witli impunity, informed her that I
proposed to despatch her with the carving-knife, and without
further notice. This I presently did, and, as she gave up
the ghost, she told me that she was my Mother. Upon this,
with a disagreeable consciousness that several Pharaoh's
serpents were in a state of combustion at the pit of my
stomach, I sang a brief song, in the minor key, on the
subject of maternal love, and expired. At which the curtain
fell, and life's brief candle was blown out. I forgot to state
that my mother's name was Mademoiselle Tietjens — that is
to say, Lucrezia Borgia.
Now I do most conscientiously assure my readers that,
although I alighted from the through train from Milan to
Ferrara on this Sunday morning, in the company only of a
lively little lieutenant of G-aribaldini on leave from Creto di
Bona, and who was anxious to air his red shirt on a tour
through Yenetia — although I myself was clad in garments
not more romantic than a travelling- suit of brown hoUand
and a straw hat, and carried a perfectly modern carpet-bag
in my hand — and, finally, although I drove from the station
to the inn in a hack-cab, whose driver was slightly elevated
with perfectly modern rum — I did, during the whole of some
six hours' sojourn in Ferrara, experience all the sensations,
and see in imagination all the things to which I have alluded
above. To be sure, I was full of the Borgias when I came
hither, for I had seen some of the golden tresses of the beau-
tiful wicked daughter of La Vanozzi and Alexander the Sixth,
which are preserved at Milan, and a learned English medical
friend had been talking about some original letters of Donna
92 ROME AND VENICE.
Lncrezia which he had discovered in the municipal archives,
and which he proposed to translate and publish.*
But it was the town itself that took me back to the six-
teenth century, and the days of daggers, doublets, and mortal
doses. They have done wisely to erect the railway-station so
very far from Ferrara itself. The enormous Campo di Marte
intervenes between modern civilisation and the wholly me-
diaDval city of Lucrezia Borgia ; she walks in all the Piazzi ;
her shadow is on every wall. Rustighello and Gubetta are
lurking round every corner, dogging your footsteps to de-
struction. Pray, can you tell me why there are, to this day,
so many doctors' shops in Ferrara? Can you give me a
reason why the " Spezeria dei Fratelli Forzadura" — what a
name! — is a dark cavern, through whose shadows loom
ghostly -looking jars, containing, no doubt, aqua Tofana,
laurel - water, powdered glass — for flesh wounds and
Scheele's preparation, highly concentrated ? Can you tell me
why the Vicolo delle Catena — Chain-lane — should run out of
the Strada Oscura — Dark-street ; and why the Contrada dell'
Agonia — Agony-road — should be so very near the Piazza de'
Martiri? The whole place reeks of poison and carving-
knives, and masks and fetters, and man-traps and spring-
guns. Don't tell me that this is all idle fancy. Go and
look at Ferrara, and you will at once confess that it is the
abode of horror and the cave of despair. Bologna, with its
interminable porticoes, is gloomy enough ; but Ferrara is the
very quintessence of the Tenebra in architecture. The Cas-
tello strongly resembles the City Prison at HoUoway, em-
* Mr. William Gilbert has since published his elaborate vindication of
the terrible Duchess of Ferrara.
FERRAEA. 93
browned by the dust of ages, and the Albergo del Pellegrino
is as like Newgate as one pea is like unto another. Ferrara,
in one sense, may be said to rival the Escorial, for it is one
huge gridiron of window - bars ; and, curiously, the huge
cathedral is dedicated to San Lorenzo.
The heat of the sun being positively scorching on Sunday
morning, I could not walk half-a-dozen paces without being
reminded of the savoury saint, 7nuy huen asado y tostado,
with whom I made acquaintance last January in Spain.
Ferrara is one cage. Ferrara is barred by an undying statute
of architectural limitations. The windows of the palaces and
public buildings are all barred. Those of the private edifices
are closely grated. The fanlights over the doors are pro-
tected by iron rods ; the pleasant view of internal courtyards
and orange-trees — Seville oranges, doubtless, and very bitter
— is intercepted by heavy trelliswork. I saw a cobbler at
work, although it was Sunday morning. He was working
behind iron bars, like Mr. Benjamin Webster in the Bastille.
I saw a woman selling peaches and ripe figs behind bars.
The butchers' shops were simply twin brothers to the dens
of the wild beasts at the Zoological Gardens ; and the clerk
at the Post-office was asleep in the corner of his cage, and
had to be stirred up like the hyaena with the long pole of an
umbrella, before he would answer questions. Why all these
bars ? Are the mammas of Ferrara apprehensive that their
daughters will elope with the officers of the garrison, or their
housemaids run off with the baker's man ? Is the city in-
habited only by usurers, and do they fear that their strong
boxes may be invaded by some Italian Manteuffel ? Are the
houses full of starlings that *' can't get out" ?
04 ROME AND VENICE.
Ah, no ! Ferrara is bolted and barred up, and put, like
the Koh-i-noor, behind a wire fence, because the people arc
all so terribly afraid of Lucrezia Borgia. She fell in love
with the Camerine, at the Pellegrino, on Wednesday after-
noon, and by Saturday night he died of the cholera-morbus.
She asked the Archbishop of Ferrara to dinner on Friday,
and on the same evening his Grace was a cold corpse. They
said it was indigestion ; but it was only Donna Lucrezia.
For only a wink — a mere wink of disparagement — that un-
happy captain of the National Guard died of the colic the
day before yesterday ; and the wretched landlord of the Gaffe
Tofana, who ventured to observe to the notary that we lived
in ticklish times, was laid hold of by Rustighello and his
followers, and was hanged, they say, in the great tower of
the Castello this morning. Donna Lucrezia's brougham is
always standing before the Spezeria of the Brothers Forza-
dura; and she is strongly suspected of impregnating by
wholesale the cavours and virginias of the governmental to-
bacco-shops with opium and cocculus indicus. This is Fer-
rara. It smells of the cord, the dagger, and the poison-vial.
The legend beneath the city arms is, " Guai se ti sfugge un
moto.'' If you doubt my word, go and look at it.
Darkness is not an indispensable concomitant of horror.
There was ^' light enough, you know — although it was but
darkness visible — in that terrible place which Milton drew
and whither Dante went. Thus Ferrara seemed ten times
more horrible to me, because on Sunday morning the sun
shone so brightly on its grim houses and dismal rows of
dungeon bars. Shone ! The sun rather blazed, pierced you
with flaming glaives, came down upon you in a vulgarised
FEEEARA. 95
Danaean shower — red-hot coppers in lieu of new Mint tokens.
The dogs flatly refused to venture out in the sun. The very
cats were chary of hasking in it, and, peering from beneath
archways, put one paw forward into the blaze and then drew it
back again, broiled — the very converse of boys who test with
one foot the temperature of the stream in which they yearn
to bathe. Shadows of deepest blue did the barred projections
of the casements cast on the walls, whose laminae of lime had
been cracking and scaling off for centuries beneath these
pitiless rays. There was scarcely a soul abroad. Now and
then you saw something living glide along close to the wall,
pelted by the sun's darts, and disappear. If it was green, it
was a lizard ; if it was gray, it was a rat ; if it was black,
and wore a cassock and a shovel-hat, it was a priest.
The common object of myself and the little lieutenant of
Garibaldini was forthwith to cross the Po, and proceed through
Kovigo and Padua to Vicenza, where my companion had busi-
ness with the commissary of the King, Mordini. But to
enter the Venetian territory, even the portion evacuated three
weeks since by the Austrians and now occupied by the Ita-
lians, was a thing easier said than done. There is a bran-
new railway from Pontelagoscuro, on the Po, to Vicenza ; but
the Austrians smashed the bridge over the Po to pieces ere
they left, as a parting token of their affection for their quon-
dam subjects, and, kindly leaving the rails untouched, took
away all the locomotives and most of the carriages. A rail-
way without locomotives is as unsatisfactory as mustard with-
out beef. As Kome was not built in a day, so are things in
Italy never done in a hurry ; and it does not appear to have
yet occurred to the railway authorities that they might get
96 ROME AND VENICE.
a few locomotives down from Piacenza or Bologna to replace
those stolen by the Austrians. In any case, they have not
taken any such steps, and the railway from Ferrara being thus
quite useless, the jolly old diligence, cumbersome, uncomfort-
able, and barbarous, has been brought out again, and looks as
fresh as the paint of the year 1836, and the dirt of the year
1846, and the dust of the year 1856 can make it. So it is,
hey ! for the good old wheels whose tires are always coming
oflf, and the good old delays, stoppages, and breakdowns, and
the good old rope harness, and the good old postillion in a
mountebank's jacket, who winds the good old airs on the
cracked bugle-horn, and comes round at the end of every
stage, holding out his hat, and craving coppers like a com-
mon beggar. There are coincidences in this world. A Tory
Ministry, I perceive, has snatched the reins of power in Eng-
land ; and the diligcnza is to the fore again at Ferrara.
This truly Conservative slow coach was full on Sunday
morning, and we were bound to seek some other means of
conveyance into the Veneto. I was very anxious to get out
of Ferrara ; for, to tell truth, the plenitude of druggists' shops
had begun somewhat to alarm me, and I was not at all easy
in my mind about a certain cotelette di vitello, con zucchette,
on which I had just breakfasted at the restaurant adjoining the
station. The damsel who waited on me was far too fair, and
there was slightly too much of the red gold in the auburn of
her locks. Let it be assumed, for the sake of argument, that,
in a purely platonic spirit and before I ordered the veal chop,
I had winked at that young woman. Just imagine the con-
sequences, supposing her to have been married, and her
maiden name something beginning with a B. " Son le Lu-
FEREARA. 97
crezie rare a provar,^^ says the page in Maria di Rohan ; yet
may this young woman have been Lucrece.
The diligenza in default, the most obvious vehicle was a
gig. Kespectability would seem to be very rife in this part
of the country, for almost everybody drives a gig. The vettu-
rino who drove us from the station to a most cut-throat-look-
ing little hovel in the suburbs, which was his own livery-and-
bait stable indeed, offered to drive us to Vicenza, a distance
of forty-five miles, "like the wind," and with two fiery, and
most valiant horses, "freschi e valorississimi cavalli,'' for —
how much do you think? — a hundred and eighty francs.
*' Otto Marenghi,* Eccellenza, is the last price," quoth the
vetturino, throwing up his hands. "It is the just and exact
sum which a man of honour and of heart should ask for such
a journey."
I remembered in this conjuncture an anecdote I once
heard, of a gentleman who was accosted by one of the itine-
rant dealers in fine art who hang about the Royal Exchange
and Bartholomew-lane, with those wonderful daubs in oil,
surrounded by Dutch-gilt frames, representing the Eruption
of Mount Vesuvius, Tintern Abbey by Moonlight, and similar
subjects. For mere curiosity's sake, he asked the dealer how
much he would take for a pair of landscapes. The dealer,
probably assuming that his customer had just bought largely
* As I have already said, the gold Napoleon is called throughout Northern
Italy " un Marengo" It is curious to mark how indelible is the stamp im-
pressed by the first Napoleon on the customs, and even the thoughts, of a
people by whom perhaps the Bonapartes have been and are more scurri-
lously abused than by any other nation in Europe. No language is too foul
for an Italian to use when he speaks of the Emperor past or the Emperor
present ; yet there is scarcely an element in the modern civilisation or the
modern freedom of Italy which has not been rooted into the land by the
strong will of a Bonaparte.
98 EOME AND VENICE.
into the Funds or drawn his January dividends, replied, that
as a particular and personal favour he would part with the
two pictures for seventy guineas. "Ill give you thirty shil-
lings," said the gentleman. " They're yours, sir," cried the
dealer, in quite a transport of delight, and he subsequently
acknowledged that there was a clear profit of fifteen shillings
on the transaction.
So when the vettunno told me that eight Napoleons was
the lowest price he could possibly take, I told him that I
would give two, and no more. Eventually — that is to say,
after infinite haggling and chafiering — we struck a bargain
for forty-five francs, between which and the upset price of a
hundred and eighty-three there was, it will be admitted, a
slight difference. Most things in Italy, indeed, must be pur-
chased on the principle followed in a Dutch auction. You
must bid downwards, or you will be unconscionably swindled,
I told a tailor at Milan the other day to make me some white
waistcoats, for which, foolishly omitting to make a bargain
beforehand, he charged a price so ludicrously extortionate,
that I offered him just one-half, threatening in case of his
refusal to accept it to complain to the British ambassador in
Florence, and all the tribunals in the Kingdom of Italy. He
accepted the composition quite cheerfully, and I daresay,
had I persisted, would have submitted to a stiU further re-
duction. A born Italian, I doubt not, would have got the
things even cheaper than I did.
The complaisant vetturino had covenanted that he should
not be obliged to start till the afternoon heats were over.
So till five o'clock, and till it had cooled a little, we went to
the Pellegrino, — infamously filthy, like all Italian inns away
FERKARA. 99
from the great cities, — and lay down on a sofa in a darkened
room, vainly endeavouring to chase away the flies, and to
slake our thirst with lemonade and peaches. If I had carried
the cholera away with me from Ferrara, I should, 1 daresay,
have ascribed my mishap to the wicked wiles of Lucrezia
Borgia, which is the way of the world. It is always the
salmon, and never the wine. The terrible Duchess has done
it all. We quite forget the lemonade and the peaches.
VI.
FKOM FEKEARA TO KOVIGO.
August G.
In the Campo di Marte, at Ferrara, were parked a hun-
dred of the heaviest pieces of field - artillery. This was
the first sign I had seen, since leaving Milan, of Italy
being in the midst of war. Let me mention that for
the gig with which the vetturino originally contracted to
supply us had been substituted a carriage with four seats ;
and we had now two additional travelling -companions — a
merchant of Bologna, and a captain of artillery belonging to
the royal army. They were excellent company — civil, in-
telligent, and communicative ; indeed, a sulky Italian is
almost a monstrosity. I was not sorry to have an oppor-
tunity of conversing with an officer in the regulars ; for, on
the toujours • perdrix principle, I found myself growing
rather weary of the eternal self-laudations of the Garibaldini,
their bitter complaints against La Marmora and the Ministry,
and their incessant abuse of France and Napoleon. They
are very courageous, enthusiastic, and sincerely patriotic
fellows, these Red Shirts; but it is certain that they do
brag and bluster to an almost incredible extent — that they
quite forget that but for Magenta and Solferino, and the ally
whom they vilipend so vehemently, the Austrian^ would still
be in Milan, and the Monsignori still in the Legations ; in
fact, that but for their present bugbear, the Emperor Na-
FEOM FERKARA TO ROVlGO. 101
poleon, there would never have been a kingdom of Italy at
all.
''We want no foreign aid," scream the Garibaldini ;
" we have been long enough in a state of pupilage. We can
even do without Prussia. We will march to Vienna alone.
Faremo da noi.^^
Now, ^'Faremo da noV is a very terse and piquant ex-
pression ; only, if my memory serves me correctly, the people
of this beautiful peninsula were in the habit of screaming
for at least half a century, ^^ Italia far a da se.'' It was
found eventually that Italia could not do anything for her-
self, and that France had to do it for her. Ingratitude, I
suppose, is a political crime, whose prevalence is universal.
The present generation of Englishmen is, perhaps, not suffi-
ciently grateful to the good Tory statesmen who, according
to the Tory journals of the present day, abolished the corn-
laws, emancipated the Catholics, and carried parliamentary
and municipal reform. It may be that we have forgotten
who our real benefactors were, and that we are under quite
a mistaken impression in supposing that the Liberals, and
not the Conservatives, conferred on us the constitutional
benefits just mentioned. But Italy cannot plead a long
lapse of time as an excuse for h^r ingratitude to France.
1859 is not so long ago, after all ; and in 1859 the French-
man, now denounced, maligned, and scorned, was hailed as a
liberator and acknowledged as a protector. It is barely pos-
sible that ere long Italy will be forced to incur a fresh debt
of gratitude to France, and will as swiftly ignore it, as she
has ignored all previous claims.
The captain of artillery told us that some of the cannon
102 ROME AND VENICE.
we saw in the Campo di Marte had been at Borgoforte, and
had done good service there. It was a grand affair — a *^ gi-
omo cUfestaf'' he said. The guns were splendidly served;
and at night the rockets whizzed about in the beautiful blue
sky in a manner which might have made the fireworks pur-
veyors of Mabille and the Chateau des Fleurs frantic with
envy. With pardonable pride he pointed out the mathe-
matical accuracy with which the guns were ranged — " henis-
siine allineatif' as he said. There did not seem, indeed, to
be the deviation of an inch from the straight line in front,
or in the intervals between. The guns were burnished until
they shone like gold. Pretty little penthouses were built
over the touch-holes, to protect them from dust or moisture.
With hairbreadth exactitude the ammunition -wagons were
disposed behind. Wheels, bolts, chains, limbers, powder-
chests were all fitted with exquisite nicety, and kept in scru-
pulous tidiness. These hundred big guns had really a prim,
toyshop air. Murder became Quaker -like, and the acces-
sories of slaughter were finished with the patient elaboration
of a Chinese rice-paper miniature.
After all, there is nothing like pipeclay, and pipeclay's
twin -brother, apple-pie order, to which red tape, who is
sometimes disowned by 'the family, is cousin-german. As
an example of neatness and orderly arrangements, few things
can sui-pass a battery of artillery. Have you never seen such
a battery trotting by, the horses keeping time exactly to the
cheerful strains of the band? It is true that the drivers,
perched on those ammunition - chests, must have rather a
hard time of it, and should be earnest reformers so far as
concerns a redistribution of seats ; but how charming is the
FEOM FEEKAKA TO ROVIGO. 103
Spectacle, how coquettishly natty the details, how daintily
agreeable the whole eifect ! Spurs seem to jingle, chains to
clank, guns to gleam, buckets to wag, the very drivers even
to bump, in cadence. You talk about " lumbering"* cannon ;
yet these huge engines of destruction seem to be moved
as easily as though they were children's perambulators.
What a pity it is that when the time arrives for all
these pretty things to be put to their proper use — that
of destruction — all the mathematical accuracy, all the
toyshop primness, all the Quaker-like neatness, all the
sparkling, coquettish, natty features of the regiment and
the battery disappear !
The final cause of war is Anarchy, and on the battle-field
the old Anarch reasserts himself, and makes ducks and drakes
of the entire business. Chaos turned into a shambles — that
is a battle. Your Dirk Stoops and Vandermeulens, your
Horace Vernets and Geromes, your Bellanges and Armitages
— famous battle-painters were all these; yet do I question
whether any one of them ever drew a fight which resembled,
even in a remote degree, the actual occurrence. A battle on
canvas is to a battle in the real field as the brigands in Fra
Diavolo, with their velvet-jackets and steeple-crowned hats,
gay with parti - coloured streamers, are to the verminous
varlets who captured Mr. Moens. A battle is a Kow, with no
police to stop it ; and it is, besides, a row from which, even
in the most heroic conflicts, a great many of the combatants
run away.
It cannot be expected that the historians should tell the
■whole truth about a battle. They write, usually, many years
* I don't mean " limbering."
104 ROME AND VENICE.
after the thing has happened, at a long distance from the
spot, and with sources of information as to its scenes which
are, to say the least, imperfect. M. Adolphe Thiers, writing
The Consulate and the Empire in his luxurious library in the
Place St. Georges, can have at the best but a very dim and
uncertain notion of what Austerlitz and Wagram were really
like. Even Mr. Carlyle, wonderful word-painter andificture-
builder as he is, has not added much more to our stock of
knowledge about Fontenoy than we already possessed in the
brief, dry, poignant, sneering half-page in which Voltaire, in
the Siecle cle Louis Quatorze, sums up the great rout of the
English Guards. And I hope that those who desire to know
what a battle is like will not seek instruction at the mouth
of Mr. Kinglake. A battle is a shindy. A battle is Donny-
brook Fair, interspersed with long, dreary, dusty, hungry,
thirsty intervals of waiting. Wait, wait, wait ! The soldiers
in a battle have to wait as long as Mariana in the Moated
Grange. She waited until she wished that she were dead.
The soldier often waits until a ball comes whistling by, and
he falls dead without his wishes being consulted at all.
Perhaps the only artist ever fully qualified to paint battle
scenes was Salvator Kosa. The inextricable muddle and im-
broglio of his composition, with which his critics so bitterly
reproached him, were precisely suited to the delineation of
that greatest of all muddles — a battle. And Salvator's most
peaceable characters all look as though they wanted to fight.
In his rare religious pieces he has drawn the angel Gabriel
in the likeness of a swashbuckling sergeant, and has made of
Mary Magdalen a penitent baggage - wagon woman. He
would have painted Custozza or Bezzecca to the life.
FEOM FERRARA TO ROVIGO. 105
Do you know the mishap that turned the fortune of the
day at the first-named comhat against the Italians ? It was
not Durando's stupidity ; it was not La Marmora's obstinacy.
They are but scapegoats. It was not the Archduke Albert's
chivalrous powers. All the Austrian archdukes are chivalrous
and valiant, and the greater number of them are donkeys.
The battle of Custozzawas lost through a muddle. The huge
overloaded wagons, drawn by the slowest of white oxen be-
longing to the Treno-Borghese — a very picturesque name for
a very clodhopping concern — or Italian civil land-transport
corps, got between the advanced guard and the main body of
the King's army. The Austrian cannon began [to thunder,
and the dunderheaded wagoners of the Treno-Borghese, ter-
rified out of their few wits, cut the traces and decamped.
The Italian army was literally cut asunder by an impassable
barricade, and the Austrians were enabled to gobble up an
entire corps, without their comrades on the other side of the
wagons being able to rescue them.
Precisely the same thing occurred five years ago, in
America, at Bull Eun. The Federal wagoners in the rear
lost their senses, cut the traces, skedaddled ; and the Federal
army, which otherwise might have made an orderly retreat
to Alexandria, was thrown into hopeless confusion, and com-
pelled to stampede.
Very nearly the same thing took place on the 21st of
last month, with the Garibaldini, at Bezzecca. The com-
missariat wagons, whose march from Storo had been delayed
until the army was half-starved, came up in an endless
string of beef, biscuit, and wine carts, exactly at the wrong
moment, wedging up the road between Triano di Sotto
lOG ROME AND VENICE.
and Bezzecca, and nearly succeeded in converting the Gari-
"baldian movements into a scandalous rout.
All this, I trust, is not foreign to my original thesis that
no real picture of a battle has yet been drawn or written.
Do not look for such a picture from the pencil or the pen of
a professional soldier — even were his name Napier. He has
the honour of his calling, the prestige of his corps to main-
tain ; nor is he, as a rule, at all anxious to let civilians know
how many base and mean and grotesque elements are min-
gled with those which are grand and heroic in a battle. As
for the common soldier, as has been admirably pointed out
by Erckmann - Chatrian in the Conscrit de 1813, he sees
less than nothing, unless, indeed, he happens to get killed,
and then he sees something, but of a nature which he is not
permitted to communicate. Putting this and that together,
one is inclined to arrive at last at the conviction that the very
best account of a battle the world has yet seen is the narrative
of the onslaught on the Swedish fort by the Dutchmen in
Knickerbocker's veracious history. It is meant to be a bur-
lesque, but it reads terribly like truth for all that. Tipsy
sergeants, bawling trumpeters, and abusive trulls ; black eyes,
ensanguined noses, and luckless musketeers, tumbling about,
their falls broken by quagmires ''prepared for them by na-
ture, or some kindly cow ;" cursing, swearing, calling names,
dram-swigging, and running away ; these are the chief com-
ponents in Washington Irving's inimitable piece of drollery ;
and who shall deny that they form features very prominent
indeed in every battle ?
I have already warned you that the historians, with all
their learning and eloquence, and the professional soldiers,.
FROM FERRARA TO ROVIGO. 107
"vvith all their honourable candour, are but faintly to be trusted
in this respect. They are averse from spoiling a noble thing ;
they shrink from marring the recital of an honourable action
by the introduction of details painful, often ludicrous, but
true.
For example, there is now lying a prisoner in the
hospital at Brescia, and with no less than seventeen wounds
in him, an Austrian captain of foot by the name of Euccieka.
Mark his name well. It is worth remembering. This gen-
tleman fought like a Paladin — or perhaps much better than
Paladins ever fought — at the Caffaro. Garibaldino after
Garibaldino did he engage in single combat, smoking all
the time ; and ever and anon he would call out to his orderly,
not for help, but for a fresh cigar or a new lucifer-match.
At length, hacked, maimed, riddled, slashed, with bullets
and sword-gashes and bayonet-thrusts, his own sabre broken,
and the last cartridge for his revolver spent, he was over-
powered by numbers and made prisoner. His very clothes
were on fire, and I have seen one of the visiting-cards taken
out of his portmonnaie by his captors. It is scorched to an
oval form by the heat ; but the neat copperplate inscription,
"Hauptmann von Euccieka" is yet visible. The coup de
grace was given him by a Garibaldino, who thrust his bayonet
into him ; but the blow being given with all his force, and
the weapon being clumsily fixed to the barrel, it remained in
his body like the matador's rapier in a bull's neck. Captain
Euccieka, disdaining to be carried to the rear, with seventeen
wounds in him, walked proud and defiant to the last, with
the bayonet sticking in him — where do you think ? Why, just
where the lumbar vertebrsD of the spine should end and the
108 ROME AND VENICE.
caudal vertebne — even were we Niam-Niams instead of men —
should begin. They were afraid to pull the bayonet out till
a doctor came, and he walked several hundred yards with the
murderous thing stuck into that portion of the human frame
where the back changes its name and is called something
else..
Now where is the historian who would condescend to re-
cord this ungenteel but still more heroic fact, although candid
army surgeons will tell you that at least five-and-twenty per
cent of the wounds in a battle are, through no cowardice on
the part of the sufferers, in this unromantic region ? I am
glad to say that the brave Captain Euccieka is doing well,
and in a fair way towards convalescence. The two rough
soldiers who undressed and put him to bed knelt down by
the side of his pallet and kissed him on the forehead. The
Italian governor of Brescia has placed his carriage at his
disposal against the time when he shall be fit to take an
airing. The Italian ladies of Brescia have sent him so many
jellies, and so many packets of cigars, that he might open a
pastrycook's - shop, or a bureau de tahac, when he gets
well. He, the poor captive captain, is more honoured by his
enemies than John of France was by the Black Prince, or
our own hero. Sir William Williams of Kars, by Mouravieff ;
and when I last heard of Captain Euccieka he was sitting up
in bed at Brescia, all blood and bandages, but with his seven-
teen wounds healing kindly. He was reading the Neue Freie
Presse of Vienna, and smoking furiously ; which is a fact for
Mr. Pope and the United Anti-Tobacco Association to put
into their pipe, and smoke too. I hope the Kaiser will make
Captain Euccieka a colonel. I hope he will send him the
FEOM FEKKAEA TO ROVIGO. 109
star of sometliing studded with diamonds. But, fifty years
hence, will any historian venture to allude to the circum-
stance of his walking a hundred yards with a hayonet wag-
ging to and fro in the slnall of his hack? I very much
douht it.
August 7.
I am glad to own that for many of the reflections on the
actual aspect of war set down in my last I am indebted to
my friend the artillery captain, a most judicious gentleman,
of long experience and considerable information, and desti-
tute, besides, of many of those prejudices which we are led
to consider as well-nigh inseparable from professional sol-
diering. He had travelled much, and made many campaigns.
He had been in the Crimea, and at the Tchernaya. He
rendered full justice to the pluck and steadiness of the
English army, but he declared that their pas de charge
was a world too slow, and that, owing to the pedantic for-
mality of their movements in a charge, they always lost
twice as many men as the soldiers of the French and Italian
army.
"In mechanics," he said, "you cannot have too little
friction ; for war you cannot have too much. And, by the
bye," he continued, "when next you go to war, tell your
quartermasters' people to mark their mules. Through reject-
ing the simple plan of branding their hat animals, the
English must have lost in the Crimea hundreds of thousands
of francs. Everybody stole the English mules — Frenchmen,
Turks, Tartars, ed anche noi Italiani. I tell you that the
Crimean war was one great carnival of plunder. I do not
think your own officials steal. They are honest by nature
110 ROME AND VENICE.
and by choice; but they allow all the world to steal from
them, and that is just as bad."
I could not but sit corrected under the artillery captain's
strictures ; and I remembered, with an uneasy twitch, a
dashing young commissariat oflBcer of my acquaintance, who
bade fair to fulfil the most sanguine of the hopes we had
formed in his regard, but who was so unfortunate as to be
out a trifle in his accounts, to the extent of eleven thousand
gallons of rum before he had been a month in the service.
But there is no need to tell the story of Crimean mismanage-
ment over again. I may just hint, however, that some of
these days we may go to war once more, and then, perhaps,
the authorities may attend to such minutiae as marking their
mules. I know that the hint is one exceedingly impertinent
on my part, in the peculiarly invidious position I occupy;
for, not later than last Thursday, I heard a young English
gentleman, with very pink cheeks and without any beard,
and who had just been gazetted to the proud post of ensign
in a marching regiment, allude at a public dliote to the cor-
respondents of the English press who were with our forces
in the Crimea as "those cursed newspaper scribblers who
went about poking their noses into what didn't concern
them." But for the efforts of these " cursed scribblers," the
number of brave soldiers who were starved and frozen in the
Chersonese, and the number of beardless and pink-cheeked
young ensigns who rotted with dysentery in the hospitals of
Scutari, might have been considerably larger, I imagine.
I did not fail to compliment the captain on the very noble
behaviour of the small detachment of regular artillerymen
detailed to aid Garibaldi in his mountain operations, who.
FKOM FEKRAKA TO ROVIGO. Ill
witli weak numbers and very few guns, have saved the Eed
Shirts over and over again from thorough and disgraceful
discomfiture. Indeed, I saw so much of the courage, skill,
patience, and cheerfulness of the Italian artillerymen during
my brief campaign in high latitudes, that I always feel in-
clined to raise my hat when I pass a private in that most
plucky corps. The unprejudiced captain took the compli-
ment, and I subsequently saw that he appreciated it by
insisting on calling very late that night at Eovigo for a bottle
of Lambrusco, and drinking the health of the " valorissimous
British Army." But, on the present occasion, his candour
rose superior to flattery.
"We do what we can," he said; "but it is certain that
we brag tremendously. La blague is at the bottom of all
bravery. All soldiers brag. The Bersaglieri do ; so do the
Zouaves. So do the Kaiser-jagers and the Uhlans. So, I
daresay, do the Prussian Guards. We artillerymen crow
over the line. Do your Highlanders and riflemen crow over
your line? But la Hague has its advantages. It keeps a
regiment together. It is better than all the drums and all
the flags in the world. It encourages the waverer, and
makes the coward ashamed to fly. We are most of us
cowards when we begin. Real courage consists in doing
that which you are devilishly afraid of. La Hague, how-
ever, should be confined to the ranks. Among officers it is
ofi'ensive and contemptible. With them reason should supply
the place of boasting. For the rest, la blague is only one
of the innumerable varieties of fiction. It is surprising how
much lying there is, not only before and after a battle, but
during its continuance."
112 ROME AND VENICE.
I took occasion, furthermore, to express my admiration
for the sobriety, honesty, and civility shown by the Garibal-
dini to the populations of the villages through which they
passed ; but on this point the unprejudiced captain met me
with a degree of scepticism which was, to say the least, mor-
tifying.
" Where were you ?" he asked.
** At head-quarters," I replied.
"Good," he continued; *'you did not see the five thou-
sand men who lagged behind, who spread out like fans as
they straggled out of the ranks ; who built themselves com-
fortable huts in shady copses ; who went to bed for a couple
of days in barns and haystacks ; who sought out every remote
farmhouse, every solitary cottage, every sequestered tavern ;
who ate and drank, and beat the tavern-keeper when he asked
for payment ; who kissed his maid, and kicked his wife ; who
drove off his cows, and stole his poultry, and smashed his
crockeryware as a parting benediction. There are always
about five thousand men, more or less, according to the
strength of the main body, hanging about the skirts of every
army, regular or irregular, with which I have ever been
acquainted. I like the Garibaldini. I would put on a red
shirt myself if it were not my trade to wear a blue coat.
But the Garibaldini are not angels, and no army, save the
Angelic Host in your Paradise Lost, ever marched without a
fan-like fringe of stragglers and plunderers. They seek out
very quiet country places for their depredations, where they
steal, and break, and kill ; there are no newspapers printed,
and no gentry or priests to remonstrate. You, at head-
quarters, see only the good and true men, who are always to
FROM FEERARA TO ROVIGO. 113
the fore ; who march though . shoeless, who charge although
starving, and who get shot or stabhed without complaining.
When the battle is over, the stragglers and plunderers come
to the front gaily. They are rosy, well-fed, strong, and full
of spirits. They mount on the guard-room benches and tell
lies. 'I killed the Croat corporal,' shouts one who never
killed anything bigger than a gallina. * I should have the
epaulette for saving the colonel's life,' screams another ; on
the battle-day he was busy swilling up the milk in a dairy.
And so on, and so on. And so it is with all the armies in
the world. War would not be war else. Do you think that,
if I were suddenly to empty the audience at the Scala at
Milan, or better, the congregation at the Duomo any Sunday
morning, into a bag, and shake them well up together, there
would not be a great many rogues among them ? And do you
think that all the shaking in the world would turn the rogues
into honest men ? An army is an audience, an army is a
congregation, and neither better nor worse than other flocks
of human sheep."
Thus far the unprejudiced captain of artillery. You are
not to suppose, however, that the visible aspect of war, or the
merits or demerits of soldiers on the march, wholly fur-
nished matter for our conversation as we four drove from
Ferrara to Pontelagoscuro, on the shores of the broad and
bright river Po. The merchant from Bologna had a great
deal to say about the stagnation of commerce and the
financial embarrassments of the Government; but still he
deprecated the conclusion of an armistice, and wished the war
to continue, at any sacrifice, until a peace could be negotiated
on secure and honourable bases. The little Garibaldian lieu-
I
114 ROME AND VENICE.
tenant, who had been hopping about like a parched pea in a
fire-shovel on his seat while the captain had talked of the five
thousand plunderers in the trail of the Camicie Eosse, was of
course for war — war to the knife — war to the fork, the spoon,
the salt-cellar, and the pepper-castor — war to the last lira and
the last ragazzo — war to extermination — war to spiflication.
**G\ierra! guerrar There is a chorus, for men's voices,
with this title, and to a most exciting tune, in a well-known
ItaHan opera. We all joined hands and sang " Gueiraf
guerra /" till we were hoarse, and the vetturino turned round
on his seat and yelled *' Guerrar too ; and even the horses,
who were by this time growing rather distressed, snorted
fiercely and caracoled in a warlike manner.
To give them rest, and slake our own thirst, we halted at
a roadside inn and partook of some birrone di Marzo, After
the beer, and on calmer reflection, being asked for an opinion,
I stated that 'were I an Italian I should be of the opinion of
these gentlemen ; but that, happening to be an Englishman,
I was on the side of peace, and thought that the best
thing they could do was to accept it, and, saying grace before
meat, be thankful for the Yeneto and all other good things.
The captain of artillery, who wound up the discussion, said
that he was partly of my mind and partly of that of the
lieutenant and the merchant, but that there was a casting-
vote at^his^disposal, and that he gave it in favour of con-
tinued war.
" I give it," he said, " as a soldier and as an Italian, It
is all very well to talk of the blessings of peace, but we have
not conquered Venetia; and although we are to have it,
Austria flings it to us as a marrowbone is flung to a dog. It
FKOM FERKAEA TO EOVIGO. 115
is all very well to talk about our having fought bravely, and
of the honour of our arms being intact ; but everybody knows
that we were beaten at Custozza. Everybody knows, now, that
we were beaten at Lissa. Everybody will soon know that
Garibaldi's campaign has been virtually a failure. I want
war, and I am content to abide by the terrible chance of war
— alone, poor, and matched against a formidable enemy —
because I am proud, vain if you like, of my profession and
my country."
1^ I will give the captain's concluding words in his own
language.
*' I Tedeschi,'' he said, " dicono che noi siamo stati has-
tonati da loro, e questo mi fa mal al cuore.''^*
There was nothing to add to the captain's argument.
It was forcible enough and logical enough. It was far
more cogent than the little Garibaldino's denunciations
of La Marmora as a traitor, and of the Emperor of the
Erench as first cousin to Pontius Pilate. It is certain that
the Austrians are going about saying that they have thrashed
the Italians, and one cannot be angry with a brave and
sensitive people for wishing to retrieve their reverses in one
supreme conflict. Pending which we came to Pontela-
goscuro.
* " The Austrians say that we have been thrashed by them ; and that
they should have any reason to say so pains me to the heart."
vn.
PASSAGE OF THE PO.
August 8.
I LEFT you at Pontelagoscuro. It was from this same
Pontelagoscuro that I was repulsed by the Austrians on the
14th of last June, and bidden to make my way back to
Verona, there to crave permission of the Archduke Albert
to quit the " empire." How time and circumstances do alter
cases, to be sure; and into what remarkably small mince-
meat has the " empire" been chopped ! How sulkily did I
then wend my way back to Padua ! How eagerly am I push-
ing thitherward now ! In what a desperate hurry had I been
to get out of Venice ! To-day I would give my ears to find
myself once more on that bridge which traverses the La-
goons. Padua is but twenty miles from Venice ; yet Venice,
until the armistice merges into peace, is as good as a thou-
sand miles away. I should be thankful even for permis-
sion to enter that Verona, to be forced towards which I
deemed in June such a crying injustice.
With that slow, cruel, pigheaded pedantry which, above
all things, distinguishes the Austrian Government, they still
cling to Venice, although they know that its dominion has
passed away from them for ever, until the very last moment
that the deliberations of the plenipotentiaries at Prague will
permit them to occupy it. I daresay that Toggenburg is
carrying it with a high hand, even now, at the Luogotenenza,
PASSAGE OF THE PO. 117
and that Alemann is denouncing all kinds of dreadful penal-
ties against sucli Venetians as may presume before the hour
strikes, and the last Austrian Lloyd takes away the last
Austrian official, to fancy themselves free. Eead the last
proclamation of the military governor to the population over
whom the continuance of his sway may now be reckoned
by days. "Large purchases of coloured stuffs," says the
military governor, "have recently been made. Taken in
themselves these purchases have no signification; but the
undersigned thinks it his duty to inform the inhabitants
that if these stuffs — stoffe colorate — are made use of to serve
any purpose of political demonstration, those displaying them
will be punished with the utmost rigour of military law."
General Alemann knows as well as that he himself wears
a white coat upon his back that these stofe colorate are
simply so much green, red, and white silk or bunting, where-
with is formed the Italian tricolor, and that thousands of
fingers — some of them the fairest in Europe — are at this
moment busied in fashioning national flags to be hung out
from every window on St. Mark's Place, and from every
balcony on the Grand Canal, so soon as a good perspective
view is obtained of the Austrian back fading away beyond
the channel of Malamocco. But till this blissful consum-
mation arrives. General Alemann affects wholly to ignore the
fact that Venetians are no longer bond-servants to the Te-
desco. The officers will swagger about the caffes, the sav-
age Croats will scowl from the windows of the palaces, the
marines will mount guard on the Lido for many days to
come. I have no doubt that the Gazzetta Ufficiale cli Venezia
continues to enregister the sovrane resoluzioni, by which
118 ROME AND VENICE.
his Imperial Boyal and Apostolic Majesty has heen pleased
to confer fifth-rate decorations upon tenth-class Government
clerks ; and that until the very day before Victor Emmanuel
makes his entry into Venice the kingdom of Italy will be
referred to as the " Stati Sardi." After that I should think
the editor of the Gazzetta, a renegade Italian, who made
friends long since with the Mammon of Austrian unrighteous-
ness, will clear out with all possible despatch. Otherwise
it might be found that one of those tall masts before St.
Mark's might be capable of holding something else besides
a banner in a state of aerial suspension. B altar e in campo
azzuro is a very pretty locution, which, to the able editor
in question, might come to have rather a woful meaning.
I suppose that it is not entirely the fault of the Aus-
trians if they are unable to yield with grace or make the
best of a bad job. It is said that they intend to blow up
the fortifications of Verona, dismantle Mantua and Peschiera,
and altogether do as much mischief as ever they possibly
can to the territory they have been compelled to surrender.
I should not be surprised to learn when I reenter Venice
that, in addition to plundering the Biblioteca Marriana and
the archives of the Frari, they have stripped the arsenal
of Dandolo's sword, Cristoforo Moro's armour, Mahomet the
Conqueror's spurs, and Angelo of Padua's needle-pistol. I
should learn without astonishment that a captain of artillery
had come down on the Accademia delle Belle Arte, and
carried away Titian's Presentation of the Virgin and Paolo
Veronese's great pictorio - architectural "machines." The
Austrians are quite capable of these or similar vandalisms.
They belong to the essentially military mind, the guard-
PASSAGE OF THE PO. 119
room ethics, and the barrack-yard sentiment of the Tedeschi.
Even now the more excitable of the *' Party of Action" in
Italy are beginning to ask whether a fresh casus belli may
not very soon arise from the probable refusal of the Austrians
to give up the iron crown of Lombardy, which they carried
away from Monza in 1859, and which is now at Vienna or
Comorn.
I don't think they will give up the iron crown, and I
don't think 'that the Emperor Francis Joseph will cease to
call himself on his coins and in his public acts " King of
Lombardo-Venetia." " What's in a name ?" and he may
plead, in the last particular, that before the 'King of Pied-
mont came to that tremendous fortune which the Emperor
Napoleon and Joseph Garibaldi bestowed upon him, he used
to call himself King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, in addition
to Duke of Genoa and Savoy, Marquis of Monferrat, and
Count of Pignerol. Now he is only King of Italy. The
possession of the iron crown, and "Lomb: Ven: Eex'* on
the obverse of a florin, will not whistle Francis Joseph's
Italian kingdom back again; but the childish retention of
vain symbols and empty titles will only afford an additional
proof of the Austrian inability to comprehend the logic of
facts, and the surly dudgeon in which they take their ex-
pulsion from Venetia.
I will wager that, if by any underhanded intrigue or
cunning sleight-of-hand the thing be possible, the Kaiser
will avoid, in the treaty of peace now in preparation, the
formal recognition of the rival whom he hates and despises
as " King of Italy." Hatred and contempt are precisely
the feelings with which respectable. Conservative, well-but-
120 ROME AND VENICE.
toned-up, tightly-strapped Austria regards that free-and-easy
upstart, Young Italy. The Hapsburgs are no more able to
forget than are the Bourbons. It is impossible that a re-
spectable, Conservative, well-buttoned-up, tightly-strapped
Austrian general should not remember, even to the gnash-
ing of his teeth, that not seven years ago the people of
Lombardy did not dare to call their souls their own, and
that less than a month since a Venetian who ventured to
speak ill, write ill, or think ill of the Government might
be clapped up at once in San Giorgio Maggiore, or sent,
handcuffed, to write a new " edition of Le Mie Prigioni at
Goritz or the Spielberg. It is but natural that men who
have been accustomed for so many years to hector and domi-
neer over an enslaved population, to trample them under
foot, to gag and chain them, to meet discontent with the
bayonet and remonstrance with bombshells, should feel sore
when they are compelled to meet as equals those whom
they were wont to treat as serfs — to hang, and shoot, and
imprison, and flog, according to their good pleasure. The
Austrians feel for the Italians the mingled anger and scorn
which a South- Carolinian planter might feel were he to find
himself elbowed on the side-walk, and sued in the courts
of law, by the " buck-nigger" whom he bought for so many
dollars from the auction-block. The Italians feel for the
Austrians the deep and vindictive loathing with which an
emancipated New-Orleans quadroon might regard the quon-
dam master who used to send him, for a trifling fault, to
the whipping-house.
The exacerbation of feeling on the part of the Austrians
is aggravated, at present, by the knowledge that they have
PASSAGE OF THE PO. 121
lost Venetia, not by a fight, but tbrougb a fatality — tbat
Custozza and Lissa were of no use to them — and tbat, but for
their haughty and purblind stupidity, they might have conci-
liated Italy last May, sold Venetia to her for as many mil-
lions as ever they chose to mention — there is not an Italian
but who would have pawned his shirt to pay the covenanted
price — and dissociated her from the unnatural alliance with
Prussia. Now it is too late ; and Austria must be bitterly
aware that she is mastered diplomatically by the foe whom
she has undeniably beaten in the field. There would seem
to be no reason why, a sensible peace once made, and a defi-
nite frontier agreed upon, Italy and Austria should not
become as good friends as England and France. Every
country must have neighbours, and powerful ones too ; and
I set little store by the assertion that the Austrian fortresses
in the Tyrol and the Austrian fleet at Pola will be a con-
tinual menace and a continual peril to the Italians. They
will be able to pit Verona and the Quadrilateral against the
Tyrolese fortresses, and they must construct a port in the
Adriatic to keep Pola in check. This done, why should they
not shake hands? Politically they might well do so; but
socially many years must, it is to be feared, elapse ere the
Italian looks upon the Tedesco, or vice versa, with aught
but sour and malevolent hostility.
The social sores on either side as yet are raw. The
generation of Parisians who had seen the Highlanders mount-
ing guard at the Louvre, and the Scots Fusiliers encamped
in the Bois de Boulogne, really entertained a lively and
personal hatred towards Englishmen. If Blucher wanted
to blow up the bridge of Jena, it was principally because the
122 ROME AND VENICE.
misfortunes of Queen Charlotte and the theft of the Great
Frederick's sword were, to him, outrages of yesterday. So,
I apprehend, we must not expect to see Austrians and
Italians walking about, yet awhile, arm in arm. The Italian
whose father lay for long years in an Austrian dungeon,
whose brother was tried by court-martial at Brescia and shot,
whose sister was tied down to the cavaletto and scourged —
the Austrian officers standing by grinning, and smoking their
cigars — and who haff himself been imprisoned, exiled, and
ruined in purse by the Austrians, is not very likely to regard
a person of that nation in a very Evangelical spirit ; nor, on
the other hand, must we expect much cordiality or good-
fellowship on the part of the Tedesco towards the foreigner
who was so recently his thrall, and whom he has been for
nearly fifty years accustomed to coerce with gyves, and gags,
and rods, and halters.
It has been the misfortune of the Italians never to have
known the real people of South Germany — easy-going, good-
natured, warm-hearted creatures, as all those who have in-
habited Vienna must, in common justice, admit them to be.
Had the Kaiser planted a few colonies of Viennese bourgeois
or Lower -Austrian peasantry among his Italian subjects,
the result might have been different; but, as it was, the
Lombardo-Venetian saw the Austrian only in his most re_
pulsive aspect — in full uniform, and with a frowning coun-
tenance, his sword by his side, a cane in his hand, an
orderly-book under his arm, and the handcuffs jingling in
his coat-pocket. Nor was the Italian visible to his Austrian
master under an aspect much more favourable.
I was much amused some years ago by a Viennese, with
PASSAGE OF THE PO. 123
•wliom I travelled over tlie Brenner to Trent, telling me that
the Italians were a people " without heart." Poor Viennese !
it was not possible that the warmth and impulsiveness of
the Italian heart should be revealed to him. He saw only
the Italian in opposition — the seditious, scowling, conspiring
malcontent, who wouldn't listen to the Austrian bands, who
wouldn't smoke the Austrian tobacco, who wouldn't sit down
in the Austrian caffes, who wouldn't ask an Austrian to
dinner, but who was always ready to plot and to rebel, and
not unfrequently went to the extremity of stabbing an Aus-
trian soldier in his sentry-box. All of which is, I take it,
a very strong argument against the system of forcing stand-
ing armies down anybody's throat, and in favour of the na-
tions of the earth knowing each other a little better by means
of railways, telegraphs, newspapers, and other sensible inter-
communication. At present, however, we have to deal, not
with theories, but with facts; and the fact is, I am afraid,
as indubitable as it is melancholy that neither the Austrians
nor the Italians will retire from the conference-chamber at
Prague in that placable and mutually-forgiving mood which
so well befits honourable adversaries, who have submitted
their differences to the arbitrament of the sword. The Aus-
trians will continue to gnaw their fingers at the knowledge
that but for Koniggratz they might have held out in the
Quadrilateral for unnumbered months, and that " Dicono die
siamo stati hastonati da loro'" will continue to rankle in the
Italian mind.
Even during the brief continuance of the war, it was easy
to see that on neither side did there exist that frank and
courteous feeling which should obtain among soldiers for
124 ROME AND VENICE.
foemen worthy of their steel. The prisoners have, it is true,
been treated with humanity ; but, with this exception, hos-
tilities have been carried on in a savage, surly, snarling spirit.
The proclamations both of the Austrian and the Italian gene-
rals have been unusually personal and abusive. The Aus-
trian press has tried to throw ridicule on the Italian army,
and spoken of the Garibaldini as little better than footpads ;
while in Italy the army has been hounded on by the journals
towards a kind of crusade against ogres and cannibals. The
Austrians have been accused of deliberately shooting at the
poor drowning wretches with whom the waters of Lissa were
covered after the sinking of the Ke d' Italia ; and the Italians
exulted over the statement that the hands and arms of some
of the Austrian dead at Custozza were found to have been
bitten through and through by their enraged enemies. This
surely is not war, or the manner in which war among civilised
nations should be carried on ; although it quite bears out a
doctrine I venture to hold personally — that the most civilised
of your warriors, directly he has got on his war-paint and
danced his war-dance, becomes as brutal and savage as any
Choctaw or Potowatomie that ever screeched or slew his fel-
low-creatures.
There is at Pontelagoscuro on the Italian side — both sides
are Italian now, but I make the distinction for convenience'
sake — a very remarkable construction, resembling a Burling-
ton-arcade of colossal size, and in a most dilapidated condi-
tion, which had been lifted bodily, say by means of a balloon,
out of Piccadilly, and set down in the middle of a swamp
shelving to the shore of the Po. Beside this arcade, and
two or three hovels scattered about, there is no other village
PASSAGE OF THE PO. 125
of Pontelagoscuro ; or perhaps the real Pontelagoscuro is on
the opposite side. The whole affair is, however, to me,
hopelessly obscure.
I saw in Eussia once a village, termed of the " Wen-
dish" order; that is to say, the houses were built in a
circle, the windows and doors looking towards the centre,
and with but one narrow porch by which admission to the
interior of the hamlet could be obtained. This peculiar mode
of construction dated, I was told, from the time of the Teu-
tonic Knights, who were a kind of Christian highwaymen,
carrying the Bible in one hand and a centre-bit in the other,
and accustomed to sacking a village first and converting its
inhabitants to the true faith afterwards. But I never yet
saw a village built after the model of the Burlington-arcade.
There are some caffes, and wine-shops, and fruiterers, and old-
clothes stores in the arcade, and the entrance towards Ferrar.a
is made grand by means of a gate of terra-cotta and in the
Kenaissance style, with an inscription informing the world
that it was erected a.d. Sixteen Hundred and Forty-eight
by the munificence of Cardinal Donghi and the Monte di
Pieta.
Mystery ! what could Cardinal Donghi have had to do
with the national pawnbroker ? On reflection, however, I
remembered that the Mons Pietatis is in Italy an inscrutable
institution, whose attributes seem to be universal, and its
powers, like those of M. Ledru Eollin's Eepublican commis-
sioners, illimitable. It gives " secret consultations," it por-
tions orphans, pensions generals, and grants annuities to
deserving widows. The Monte Napoleone at Milan is a kind
of Lord Chancellor combined with the Society for the Relief
126 , ROME AND VENICE.
of Distress. In fact, there would appear to be no end to
that which My Uncle in Italy is able to do. But from the
fact of there being a bridge at the river-end of this arcade,
and of all vehicles as well as foot-passengers being compelled
to pass through it on their way to the Po, I was led to the
conclusion that such things as tolls haply formed part of the
Donghian scheme of munificence, and that the cardinalitian
portico was only a highly-ornamental kind of 'pike. Let me
not quit Arcadia without mentioning that the front of the
archway was decorated with some very handsome frescoes, as
sharp and glowing as though they had been painted yester-
day. The artist who executed them had indulged in one
very curious freak of imagination. Gates in his day were
generally prisons as well, but the Cardinal, doubtless a good-
natured ecclesiastic, had not desired his architect to build a
dungeon for the incarceration of those w^ho neglected to pay
toll. The Bishops of Antwerp were not so merciful. They
had not only a prison, but a chopping-block, for those who
strove to pass that 'pike without paying, and were empowered
to cut o£f the right hands of those who evaded the toll on
their bridge across the Scheldt. The artist at Pontelagoscuro
was, however, not to be balked in his notion of the proprie-
ties. He has painted on a convenient space of the wall
a most symmetrical dungeon-window, closely barred, and
through the bars you can just see the dim outline of a
human face. Thus has one barbarous Thought risen su-
perior to Time, and kept breast-high above the waves of
centuries.
We found no fewer than three bridges across the Po. They
were all of rough planks laid across boats, and were, indeed^.
PASSAGE OP THE PO. 127"
the bridges used by Cialdini for the passage of his army
across the river in his march on Borgoforte three weeks ago.
Although the biggest of guns had been transported by means
of these boat-bridges, we were fain, in obedience to the orders
of a sergeant's guard stationed at the end of the arcade, to
alight from our carriage, and traverse the particular bridge
pointed out to us on foot. The carriage was sent, at a snail's
pace, by another. Arrived at the opposite bank, we found
the only road blocked up by an enormous railway- carriage,
which eighteen white oxen were striving to drag towards the
railway, which is finished, but not in working order, from
here to Eovigo. A railway-car in a dusty road, and with a
string of oxen attached to it, and any number of Italian
teamsters screeching and gesticulating round it, is about as
manageable an object as a stranded whale would be in Han-
way-yard, or an elephant in the box-entrance to the Adelphi
Theatre. Except the one road just spoken of, all this part of
the shore of the Po is at this time of the year one fat, soggy
swamp, as treacherous as a rice-field in South Carolina, and
not at all practicable for wheeled vehicles. The probability,
therefore, of our passing the night on the agreeable brink of
this bog, which was not in the least Italian, but rather Dutch
in appearance, did not seem at all remote. Our captain of
artillery, however, proved equal to the emergency.
" When there are none to give orders," he remarked
pithily, '*it is I who take the command;" and so saying, he
leapt into the very midst of the eighteen white oxen and the
screeching and gesticulating drivers. It was a word here, a
blow there, and a kick for whoever was nearest. He smote
Pietro on the back ; he cuffed Gaetano on the cheek ; he sent
128 ROME AND VENICE.
Angelo sprawling; he called Beppo carogna ; and he said
uncomplimentary things about Giuseppe's, I hope deceased,
mother. Still, somehow, after about a quarter of an hour's
frensied effort, he did manage to get that railway-carriage,
its oxen, and its teamsters out of the way, and rejoined us,
smiling and calmly triumphant, mopping his manly face with
his handkerchief. What became of the huge impediment I
do not know. I should not wonder to hear that it had rolled,
bullocks and all, into the Po, never to rise again.
It made one very savage, amidst all this delay and dis-
comfort, to see, a few hundred feet away, the beautiful, bran-
new railway-bridge wrenched from its standfasts, and smashed
and crumpled up, as though it had been stricken by light-
ning. But no bolt from Heaven had ruined that noble
structure — only a few tons of gunpowder, and the monstrous
wickedness and stupidity of man, had sufficed to turn a
monument of labour and ingenuity, and what should have
been a guarantee of peace and goodwill, into a shapeless
structure. The bridge has been destroyed, I am told, for
" strategical reasons." May all " strategical reasons" go to
the Devil, their father, who had the begetting of them, say I.
For "strategical reasons" the world is to be thrown back,
forsooth, half a century, and anarchy, ruin, and pauperism
are to prevail where there should be prosperity and tran-
quillity. For " strategical reasons" an inconceivable old
Austrian blockhead, named General Kuhn, is going about
the Tyrol, hammering out loopholes in all the walls of all the
churches, convents, villas, and farmhouses he can get at;
planting cannon in every vineyard, and quartering soldiers in
every cottage, and declaring, with a sneer worthy of his
PASSAGE OF THE PO. 129
master, that, although he has heard of a thing called an
armistice, and although such another thing as a peace may-
spring from it, he has as yet received no official notification of
the fact, and meanwhile he intends to go on hammering out
loopholes and planting cannon.
How long is the world to continue under the sway of
these mischievous old dodderers, with stars on their hreasts
and cocked-hats on their heads? For how much longer
is some bloodthirsty, brainless old dotard — he he Italian
or German — to prevent honest men from going about their
lawful business ? We had an association for putting down
garotters. Who will start an association for putting down
generals of brigade, and hanging generals of division who
go about Europe robbing and murdering, and cutting down
standing crops, and blowing up bridges, with an associate
society for sending to penal servitude those sovereigns and
diplomatists who are proved accessories before the fact? We
have a society for the protection of young women and
children ; but where is the organisation for the protection
of peaceable men against the aggravated assaults of Methu-
saleh grown sanguinary ? It would be a different thing if
these murderous old gentlemen showed signs of military-
genius. But they prove themselves at the supreme moment
asses. They make the most lamentable blunders. They get
thrashed like sacks. They are knocked into cocked-hats, and
then, always for " strategical reasons," they devastate the
whole country round, and turn smiling fields into a desert.
There was some grim consolation in the appearance of
the late Austrian custom-house on the Po, which, for reasons
equally strategical, was occupied by Cialdini twenty-one days
180 ROME AND VENICE.
since in his advance. Over the frontier sign-post with the
legend of Dominip Veneto had been daubed the words
Regno cC Italia and the Lnperiale licale Dogana had
been very rudely transformed into a custom-house of his
Majesty Vittorio Emmanuele. The Imperial and Royal
Eagle had lost both his heads, and his claws, and his tail to
boot, and, torn down from his escutcheon, lay prostrate in
the mire, a most woful bird, while from the heraldic fir-
mament in which he lately shone now blazed the cross of
Savoy. Instead of the black-and-yellow banner, now flaunted
in the evening sun the Italian red, white, and green. The
Imperial and Royal Post-office and the Imperial and Royal
Tobacco-shop were transformed into the Bcg'ie Poste and
the Regi Sale e Tahacchi. I confess I did not look upon
the change from anything like an optimist point of view.
I am not " Italianissimo." I have had enough to do with
the brawling and wrangling of nationalities over the world
not to be " issimo" in anything. I only want to plant
my cabbages and eat my soup in quietness.
I was glad to witness the Teutonic collapse here, and
to read the first chapter of the " Finis Austriae," because
I know that wherever Austria is dominant, there the drill-
sergeant and the corporal with his stick, and the blockhead
general with his loopholes, and pride, ignorance, intolerance,
and cruelty, wiU prevail ; but I cannot see that a millennium
is imminent on the banks of the Po because the double eagle
has been superseded by the cross of Savoy. Jack goes up,
and Tom comes down, that is all. The King of Italy's
custom-house officers were already at work, spying into our
trunks and poking into the carriage-lining with their spiked
PASSAGE OF THE PO. 131
sticks in their own obsolete and idiotic manner. The
Austrian monopolies of salt, tobacco, and playing-cards had
given place to Italian monopolies of the same nature : and ere
long I will wager the towns of the Veneto will be in the full
enjoyment of the Royal Italian Lottery and the Eoyal Italian
paper money ; nor, I fancy, will they find the Royal Italian
taxes one whit less onerous than the Imperial and Royal
Austrian imposts. The people of the liberated provinces, so
far as I have come — for I am many miles from the Po as
I write this — do not, either, seem to be optimists as regards
their emancipation. There was an immense amount of cheer-
ing and shouting, it is true, at Rovigo and at Padua ; Gari-
baldi's Hymn is ground on every organ, and yelled in every
grog-shop ; but underneath all this there is a strong sub-
stratum of philosophy— the philosophy of the people, who
really don't care a centesimo who is uppermost, but content
themselves with extorting as much money as ever they
possibly can, in exchange for their services or their wares,
from all those who pass through their part of their country.
I think that if they show any preferential feeling in their
swindling, it is towards cheating their liberators more than
they were wont to cheat their tyrants. The tyrants had rods,
and beat them when they extorted too much.
One's sympathies, therefore, were pretty equally balanced
upon entering the Dominio Veneto. Anger with the
Austrians for smashing the railway-bridge was equipoised by
deep disgust at finding a new custom-house set up, and a
fresh tribe of doganieri plying their mischievously-imbecile
vocation. But as we proceeded through the low, fertile
country to Rovigo, anti-Austrianism reasserted itself, and far
183 ROME AND VENICE.
preponderated over every other sentiment. The Tedeschi
seem to have been determined to leave behind something
that the Venetians should remember them by. For " strate-
gical reasons" they have turned half this luxuriant region
into a howling wilderness. I will say nothing of the acres
upon acres of Indian corn and clover they have cut down for
forage. Cavalry horses and artillery mules must be fed, that
is certain, and fresh green-meat is very good for the animal
stomach at this season of the year. Thus, too, it may have
become necessaiy to carry off the wheat-ricks and to grub up
the flax, the hemp, the olives, and the vines. But what had
those poor mulberry-trees done, that they should be so ruth-
lessly cut down ? Surely the silkworms had not been anti-
Austrian. Surely the cocoons had not whispered sedition
against the Kaiser. Whole plantations of mulberries had,
however, disappeared, and an equally clean sweep had been
made of the tall straight poplars, double rows of which should
line the roads. It is a crueller act to cut down these trees
than to rob a poor man of his beer. The Austrians have
robbed the dusty, footsore, panting wayfarers of the ines-
timable blessing of shadow. To cut down a tree which
gives shade in a hot country is constructive murder. The
Spaniards cut down their trees, through hatred of the Moors
who had planted them. A just Providence punished them
for their ignorant malice, and where the trees are cut down
the rain comes no more, and there is a dust instead of green-
ness.
I was less grieved to mark between Pontelagoscuro and
Rovigo the ruins of no fewer than four formidable forts, with
huge earthworks and circular moats, erected by the Austrians
PASSAGE OF THE PO. 133
as outworks, and blown up by them ere they abandoned this
untenable portion of Venetia. The great heaps of dust and
clods and shattered masonry were very hideous to view, and
were the graves, I have no doubt, of many millions of florins
and hours of fruitless human labour ; but it is at least good
to look upon a ruined fort, as upon an abominable thing
which is gone, and which haply may never be replaced.
They have not yet rebuilt Sebastopol, and peaceful omnibuses
ply over the site of the Bastille.
vni.
THEATRE AT ROVIGO.
August 12.
Between supper-time and our taking coach again to Padua,
there was, after all, something to be done ; and to my sur-
prise I found out that there was such a thing as " life" in
Rovigo at that very witching hour of night when, if graves do
not exactly yawn, the inhabitants of Italian country towns
certainly do. As a rule, there is nothing under this firma-
ment duller than provincial existence in Italy. It is duller
than a tahle-dlwte dinner in Switzerland, where half the
guests are English, and the other half are Americans, and
both coldly stare at one another in grim silence, to the horror
of the one representative of the Latin race present — a con-
versational Frenchman, who, after vainly endeavouring to
engage the gentleman from New Hampshire on his left in
sociable talk, and offering the charmante miss on his right a
beautifully-peeled peach in a spoon, the which is frigidly
declined, shrugs his shoulders in agonised despair, and,
turning savagely to the waiter, who has become habituated
to Anglo-Saxon taciturnity, and has grown idiotic thereby,
says, in a voice which echoes through the dreary dining-
room, as that of a disappointed ghoul might through a
family-vault, " Donne-moi un verre de chartreuse, parhleu!
si tu ne veux pas qiieje meure du spleen." It is duller than
THEATEE AT ROVIGO. 135
a literary and scientific conversazione at Wimbledon, or the
first reading of a new domestic drama in tlie green-room of
the Theatre Eoyal Cumberland Market ; the influenza being
rife at the time, the popular dramatic author having an
impediment in his speech, the stage-manager being asleep,
and the walking gentleman not on speaking terms with the
leading lady.
For my part, I have never been able to understand how
it is that three-fourths of the town population of Italy escape
every year from being bored to death. Ennui should pro-
perly make amopg them ravages more fearful than those of
the cholera. After sunset, in Italy, there is literally nothing
to do but to go to the caffe, smoke, drink lenionade, and talk
politics. I suppose these constitute the dolce far niente we
used to hear so much about, and to envy, in cold, over-
worked England.
Italy is the home of the lyrical drama ; but at the season
of the year when English people usually go abroad they are
nearly sure to find all the Italian theatres closed. Italy is
the land of music ; yet one of the rarest things to be heard
in the peninsula is the sound of a tolerable band. For the
Austrians, politically, I think I have an afi'ection about as
passionate as that which Mr. Thaddeus Stephens might be
supposed to entertain for Mr. Andrew Johnson ; yet, on one
ground, I do most sincerely regret that Milan is no longer
occupied by the Tedeschi, and that the last days of their
sway in Venice are at hand. At least the white-coated
oppressors fed the Italians to repletion with first-rate instru-
mental music. Now that the tyrants are gone away, the
delicious strains of their bands are heard no more ; and the
136 ROME AND VENICE.
deprivation is felt with fuller force under actual circum-
Btances, when all that Italy has to show, in the way of mili-
tary music, is away with the army at the front. At most,
now, do you hear the tinkling of a cracked mandolin, as the
airs in the Trovatore are being pinched into fits, or you are
reminded by a tin platter being thrust under your nose for
coppers that the virtuoso who has been tootHng during the
last twenty minutes on the kerbrstone and on the flageolet,
or the hoarse-bawling woman in the large crinoline who has
been giving to '^Qual cuor tradistV the intonation of a Leith
fishwife and the expression of a Seven-Dials last dying speech
crier, expects reward for their performances.
Italy may be the land of song, but her singers seem to
fly a good many hundreds of miles away before they can pro-
perly tune up. I do not think, in fine, that I can give a
more convincing proof of the prevailing dulness of provincial
Italy, than by noticing the fact that from one end to the
other of this delightful country there is but one public garden
— ^the Giardino Pubblico at Milan. Many of the caffes have
gardens attached where you may dine and smoke; but the
garden I mean is that delightful combination of the park, the
caffe, and the casino — a sprightly Luxembourg grafted on
to a reputable Cremorne — which flourishes in the environs
of every continental town, even to the fifth-rate ones, except
in Italy. Here it is supposed that the blue sky and the
balmy air, the delicious sunsets, the vines, the olives, and
the figs, are to supply every material and intellectual want.
If the ladies lack amusement, they have religion and they
have love to fall back upon. If the gentlemen desire recrea-
tion, are there not caffes by scores, and any quantity of iced
THEATKE AT KOVIGO. 137
lemonade and cheap cavours, and the never-failing amuse-
ment of talking politics ?
But one cannot be perpetually telling one's beads, or
going to mass, or twirling one's fan, or setting one's veil at
the young men. You grow tired, at last, of swilling lemon-
ade, sucking up essential oil through convoluted tubes, and
declaring that La Marmora is a traitor, and that Persano
ought, forthwith, to suffer the fate of Admiral Byng. You
may read the newspapers ; but the whole of the Perseveranza
may be perused in about fifteen minutes. The Pimgolo does
not take five ; the contents of the Lomhardia may be mas-
tered in about eighty seconds, and the Sciolo is not worth
reading at all. The real leading -articles are roared, over
lemonade, from the lips of yonder leather - lunged patriots.
Leather - lunged patriotism bores you at last. There are
other countries in Europe besides Italy. If they would only
talk, for instance, about the Danubian Principalities, or
Spanish finance, which, I perceive, is cropping up again in
a promising manner ! but no. La Marmora and Persano,
Persano and La Marmora, form the invariable staple of dis-
course. Bother La Marmora and Persano ! If the first
lost his head at Custozza, why does he persist in walking and
talking without it, like King Charles in the nursery-saw, or
St. Denis in the Acta Sanctorum ? I am truly sorry that
the good ship Affondatore went down ; but one's grief might
have been mitigated had Persano been on board the ill-fated
craft, and sunk, full fathom five, for ever.
Kovigo, although it was talking politics until it was
purple in the face, offered a splendid contrast, so far as the
reproach of dulness extends, to the rest of Italy. Late as
188 ROME AND VENICE.
it was, the Theatre Royal Rovigo was open. The glad in-
telligence was brought us by the artillery captain, who had
ordered the supper. " Go there for half an hour, my chil-
dren," he said, " until the repast is ready. As for me, I
shall lie down on this sofa and sleep. Sleep is a thing to be
taken when you can get it." And with this remark — worthy,
perhaps, of being enshrined beside Moliere's apothegm as to
the expediency of taking your property wheresoever you find
it — the artillery captain lay down, shako, epaulettes, pouch,
sabre, and all, and began to snore.
The little Garibaldino lieutenant and I went off to the
theatre. The hardened Austrians had capped the climax of
their many crimes by cutting off the gas in the side thorough-
fares prior to their departure ; or perhaps the gas company
of Rovigo, being in the equivocal position of the donkey be-
tween two bundles of hay, — or, worse, of the donkey between
two empty pannier^, — and not quite certain as to whether
the next quarter's bill was to be sent to Francis Joseph,
Vienna, or Victor Emmanuel, Florence, had cut off the sup-
ply themselves, and were waiting to see what should turn
up, and whether King or Kaiser was to be the responsible
party. Behind the spangled gauze and coloured fire of the
great transformation-scene now taking place in the Venetian
provinces, there are a good many persons who have consci-
■entiously adopted this line of tactics. Pending a settlement,
the street leading from the inn of the Iron Crown to that
where the theatre is situated was as dark as a mass-meeting
of liberated Africans with the candle gone out.
We found, however, a patriot with a lantern, who showed
us the way, and cast a merry light upon our path, and was
THEATEE AT ROVIGO. 139
very anxious to know from the Garibaldino lieutenant what
had been the achievements during the war of a certain
Pastrucci Gaetano, native of Vicenza, who was a high private
in the ninth regiment of volunteers. In vain did the lieu-
tenant hint to him that out of thirty thousand men it was
rather too much to expect him to know every individual
Red Shirt, and that the acts and deeds of Pastrucci Gaetano
were entirely beyond his ken. *' Not know Gaetano!" cried
the patriot with the lantern; ''you must know him, Signor
Tenente. Gaetano from Vicenza. Sicuro I Why, his bro-
ther keeps a barber's - shop in the Sotto-Portici. Gaetano!
he is one of the most spirited young men of our city." We
repeated, however, that this member of the sprightly youth
of Vicenza was quite unknown to us ; whereupon the patriot
turned off the light of his lantern in dudgeon and left us.
Were you never asked whether you had met a Mrs. Caesar
Dodge in New York, and did an American never ask you if
you happened to be acquainted with a Mr. Sydney Smith in
London ? I believe there are five hundred Caesar Dodges in
the New- York Directory ; it is certain that you might fill the
smaller concert -room at St. James's Hall with Sydney
Smiths ; and at the Garibaldian roll-call the Pastrucci Gae-
tanos are, I have no doubt, as thick as leaves at Vallombrosa,
or as fleas at the inn adjoining that shady place.
The Theatre Royal Rovigo exteriorly much resembles a
county bank in an English town, real marble, however,
being substituted for stucco. On the squat Doric pediment
is graven the inscription, " Societas MDCCCXIX." Society
has done a good many things and seen not a few changes
since the year '19; and one felt inclined to ask to what
140 ROME AND VENICE.
order of society the Rovigan theatre was dedicated — whether
it was genteel society or middle-class society, society liberal
or society despotic and ultramontane. The portico was
draped in the Italian colours, and on either side a hersagliere
sentinel stood on guard, while the further safe custody of
the building was confided, as a compliment to patriotism,
to the freshly-improvised National Guard of Vicenza, who
were in a kind of Robinson-Crusoe costume, wearing military
forage-caps and scarlet-facings to their blouses, but adhering
otherwise to the waistcoats and pantaloons of civil life. They
were very proud, however, of their new muskets and bayonets,
and marched up and down with a janty elasticity pardonable
in citizens who for the last half century had been accus-
tomed to the unpleasant sight of tawny -faced persons in
white coats, and of Teuto-Sclavic extraction, mounting guard
with muskets and bayonets over them.
The very first thing done by a liberated foreigner is to
dress up as a sentinel and mount guard. No sooner is he
released from the despot's sway, than he takes up with an
employment which, ostensibly, is the most senseless and
wearisome in the world. The majority of civiUan English-
men being put to stand sentry for two mortal hours would,
before they were relieved, either go raving mad, or, throwing
their musket and bayonet over the nearest wall, go round
the corner to see what o'clock it was. Our rifle movement
would soon become unpopular, I fear, if mounting guard were
among the duties imposed on volunteers. But foreigners
seem to like it. Give them a shako and a cartouche-box,
and Brown Bess with a spike at the end of it, and they are
happy.
THEATRE AT EOYIGO. 141
At Milan just now there are no regular troops, and all
the sentries at the puhlic buildings are supplied by the Na-
tional Guards ; that is to say, hundreds of clerks and shop-
keepers are taken away from their legitimate business every
day to mount guard over that which cannot run away.
Surely theatres have not wings. Surely a post-office is not
the nimble stag. We have nearly got rid of the sentinel
nonsense in England, although we are still absurd enough
to keep a squad of grenadiers grinning into vacancy under
the porticoes of the opera-houses as they grinned lately in
front of the British Museum. But abroad this pitiable de-
lusion obtains as strongly as ever. Wherever there is a
vacant niche a sentry-box is popped into it, and a human
being set to waste his time. National-Guardism at Eovigo
I can understand. It is but since yesterday that the Vene-
tians have been allowed to carry arms at all. National-
Guardism anywhere I can appreciate and applaud when it
means drill, rifle-practice, and marching out; but I refuse
to acquiesce in the use of a multitude of sentries and a
plenitude of guard-room benches.
I have a shrewd suspicion that the reason why mounting
guard is so popular abroad is because, under the pretext of
doing something, it affords such a capital opportunity of
doing nothing. Saunter up and down with a stick over
your shoulder for two hours, or sit on a bench for two hours
more, twiddling your thumbs, gossiping, dozing, or ogling
the milliners' girls, and you will run some risk of being
called a lazy fellow. But put a forage-cap on your head,
shoulder a gun, and saunter in a measured manner, and
you are on guard; you are serving your country; you are
142 ROME AND VENICE.
a patriot and a soldier. Standing sentry is, in fact, only
the dolcc far niente put into uniform. I am afraid that the
Latin races are not to be weaned from this sad propensity
for idling in a military manner; but I would suggest, as a
middle course, that every sentinel should have a barrel-organ
at one end of his beat and a mangle at the other, and be
expected to grind alternately with keeping guard. For the
use of the warriors who twiddle their thumbs on the guard-
room bench, sewing-machines might be provided. At least
they would be kept out of mischief. Do you know to what
thumb-twiddling on guard-room benches has led in Spain?
To prominciamientos and revolts, to drumhead court-martials
and judicial massacres at the Principe Pio, to despotism and
Narvaez.
It was evidently a gala-night at the Kovigo theatre. The
Jioraje were in great force, and thrust bouquets into your
button-hole whether you would or not. The flower-girls of
Italy are nuisances nearly as intolerable as the mosquitoes.
If they were only pretty flower-girls; but, in most cases,
they are hard-featured females, with hoarse voices, and of
impudent aspect. You w^ould not, for instance, care about
having a rose thrust into your ribs by a free-and-easy pew-
opener or an afi'able orange-woman. You delight in flowers,,
of course ; the custom of presenting bouquets to strangers,
ostensibly for nothing, but really for the sake of as many
pence as the stranger can be pestered into giving, is a very
pretty one; but suppose your floral penchant is for roses,,
and the fioraja persists in ramming down your throat pinks
or geraniums which you abhor? Suppose that you have
long since given up buying bouquets, and that the only
THEATKE AT EOVIGO. 143
flower you care about is a certain camellia, once white and
blooming, but now lying in a very crushed and coffee-
coloured condition between the leaves of a Walton's Com-
Ijlete Angler, in a deal drawer, a thousand miles away? It
is the camellia you had the honour of purloining one night
in the year 1849 from the young lady in white glace silk,
who subsequently had the bad taste to marry a collector
of inland revenue. You have never cared for camellias since.
Why should you be made to swallow them, or any other
flower, and expected to pay for them too, on the grand stair-
case of the Theatre Koyal Eovigo ?
The house had a grand staircase — ay, one of exquisite
marble, the panels and ceilings painted in fresco — and the
theatre itself was a grand one to boot. Society knew what
it was about in the year '19. Vases of evergreens and flowers
which you were not expected to buy lined the corridor. Eich
carpets were underfoot. An usher, in silk shorts, a lace
frill, and a silver chain round his neck, came, with a low
bow, to ask us where our places were. They were for the
pit ; no others were to be obtained, for it was a gala-night,
and the house was crammed. Pushing aside a great curtain
of crimson velvet with a heavy fringe of bullion, we entered
the house, and I was astounded. I had been prepared for
such a modest little temple of music and the drama as you
might expect to find in an ordinary second-rate provincial
town abroad, say at Amiens, or Cologne, or Gratz. But
I found, instead, one of the handsomest theatres I had ever
beheld. The theatre at Eovigo is certainly very little inferior
in size to DruryXane, and has no fewer than five tiers of
boxes. Its architecture is stately, its decorations splendid;
144 ROME AND VENICE.
the ceiling, above all, is really a triumph of the difficult and
shamefully-undervalued art which Inigo Jones and Antonio
Canaletto and Charles Lebrun were not ashamed to practise,
but which in England, owing to Mr. Pope's genteel sneer
against the sprawling saints of Serrio and Laguerre, is now
accounted only a superior kind of plastering.
There was an enormous gas chandelier hung in the
centre ; but gas, that night, was fated to be at a discount in
all Rovigo. The theatre was lighted a giorno, as only the
Italians know how to light a theatre, with literally myriads
of wax-candles, in whose mellow, shadowless radiance shone
all the rank and all the beauty, and diamonds and epaulettes,
and pearls and swords, and necklaces and gauze, and lace
and embroidery, and white-kid gloves, of all that Eovigo
could muster of fair women and brave men. Every box was
occupied. The large one, right in the centre of the grand
tier, was the Royal box, and there, in a gorgeous framework
of velvet and bullion, Italian tricolors and wax-candles, sat,
with a brilliant suite, M. Allievi, the King of Italy's com-
missary for the city of Rovigo.
" Pepoli, Allievi, Mordini e Sella
Mangian allegri alia stessa gamella."
This is an opposition distich, directed against the Marquis
Pepoli, who is commissario regio at Padua, M. Mordini, who
fills the same functions at Vicenza, M. Allievi, who is here
at Rovigo, and M. Sella, who is at Udine. I am not quite
sure that I do right in quoting the disrespectful couplet.
But where are there not oppositions, and when will not your
opposition have its distich ?
The principal business of the King's commissary on this
THEATKE AT EOVIGO. 1-15
eventful evening was to rise up in his box — not like Jack,
but in an easy and degage manner, and bow. From time to
time he was expected to smile. Then it was evidently
thought the proper thing that he should lay his hand on his
heart. Then he would make believe to peruse his programme
for an instant. Then he would scrutinise somebody in the
third tier through his lorgnon ; after that he would repeat
the agreeable performance of rising, bowing, smiling, and
laying his hand on his heart. All this was hard work ; but
one cannot be King's commissary for nothing. That high
office has its duties as well as its privileges. M. Allievi, in
fact, was performing at the Theatre Royal Rovigo the duty
assigned in old times to the King of England's portrait in
the Grand Reception Hall of the Residenz at Herrenhausen,
near Hanover. His Britannic and Hanoverian Majesty being
away at Kensington, they used to stick his picture in an arm-
chair under a canopy at Herrenhausen. Chamberlains used
to stand by the side, and halberdiers mount guard over the
precious effigy, which was saluted by the courtiers with mul-
titudinous genuflections. Poor arm-chair at Herrenhausen^
your occupation is quite gone now ! Poor Hanoverian cour-
tiers, you must hinge the knee now to a very different kind
of king! M. Allievi had this advantage, however, over the
painted simulacrum at Herrenhausen, that he could mop,
and mow, and smirk, all of which he did with most com-
mendable zeal.
As to what was going on behind the footlights, nobody
seemed to care about that. It was a performance like
George Barnwell or Jane Shore on the first night of
L
146 BOME AND VENICE.
a pantomime, entirely in dumb-show. It seemed, so far as
I could make out, to be some description of vocal and in-
strumental concert ; and a gentleman attached to the fire
brigade standing by me whispered that had I come an hour
sooner I might have heard some " delicious fugues." As it
was, I could only make out that from time to time some
ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress walked on to the
stage in a ghostly manner, waved sheets of music-paper with
deprecating gestures, and addressed themselves to a grand
pianoforte, whereat sate, rapidly moving a pair of very large
hands, a solemn man in black and a white neckcloth, over
nineteen - twentieths of whose countenance a bushy beard
might have grown, but who had mercilessly swept the field
of his face with a razor, so that only the remaining twentieth
was permitted to show, in the shape of a moustache like an
overgorged leech — what the whole of his physiognomy might
have done under more favourable auspices. Whether any
" delicious fugues" were performed by the orchestra, or any
thrilling solos and duets performed by the vocalists, I am
unable to state. As at Her Majesty's Theatre, on the night
of the great Tamburini-CoUetti sedition,
" Fal de ral tit sang fol de rol lol ;
But scarce had he done when a row began ;"
SO kt the Theatre Koyal Rovigo was there a row going on all
the time. But it was a good-humoured row — a row of loyalty
and exultant joy. " Viva Italia r ''Viva il Re T ''Viva
il Principe UmherU) T "Viva V Esercito T "Viva V Indi-
jpendenzaT These were the cries shouted forth with but
brief intervals, and to each " sentiment," as the Americans
THEATRE AT ROVIGO. 147
would say, succeeded a deafening din of cheering, hand-
clapping, and stick-rapping. The movements of the King's
commissary became more and more like those of the lithe
performers in that admirable entertainment known as the
"Fantoccini." He was all nods, and becks, and wreathed
smiles ; but he was rewarded by the ladies waving their
handkerchiefs at him, by one man in the far-oiff distance
crying, " Viva AlUevi /" and by an enthusiastic lady in the
box above him dropping a bouquet in his direction, which,
narrowly escaping the flame of a wax-candle, hit the com-
missario regio fortuitously on the nose.
Nothing could be nicer, and all went merry as a marriage
bell ; only the oft-repeated sentiments seemed to issue with
a regularity rather too narrrowly approaching the mechanical
from the stentorian lungs of ar knot of gentlemen not very
clean in appearance, and rather forbidding in mien, stationed
in the pit just underneath the royal box. '' Gente clella
questura, ban-dogs of the police," muttered the little Gari-
baldino lieutenant. " They would cry, * Viva Francesco
Giuseppe P just as loud to-morrow for fifty centesimi. Just
wait a moment; I think I know that family in the second
tier. We will see if I can't give them something else to shout
about."
We were blocked up in the platea, where there was only
standing room, and the little lieutenant was lost and un-
noticed in the throng ; but he , managed to elbow his way
out, and presently I saw him in a box, evidently the centre of
the admiration of three very pretty young ladies and a tall
mamma in diamonds rather camelleopardish, but still stately.
Anon the unabashed Garibaldino came to the very front
H8 ROME AND VENICE.
of the box, and swept the house with martial glances. " I
am here," he seemed to say. *'Son lo. I, the hero of
Monte Suello, of Bagolino, of Rocca Pagano, and of Bezzecca.
In stature I am a manikin; but in heart a Colossus. I
salute you. Be good enough to return the compliment."
They did, and in a manner which must have rather asto-
nished the King's commissary, if it failed altogether to please
him. The little lieutenant's was the first red shirt that had
been seen at Rovigo. The whole house rose at him, and one
huge thunderous cry was heard oi " Viva Garibaldi T^ To
these succeeded shouts of " Vivan' le Camicie Rosse /" " Viva
la Guerra /" The police-people in the pit tried to get up the
stereot}^ed and governmental cries ; but their hour was past,
and when I had succeeded in reaching the corridor and drag-
ging away the little lieutenant, who was sobbing for joy, and
had already accepted in a maniacal manner about a dozen invi-
tations to supper, bed, and breakfast, to say nothing of imme-
diate ices and lemonade, the name of Garibaldi was still lord
of the ascendant. As it was, we were accompanied back to
the Iron Crown by a patriotic mob shouting " Viva Gari-
baldi r
After supper, and when our vettiirino had tackled to
again, and we were jolting in the cold gray morning along
the road to Padua, it was curious enough to contrast the
brilliant and luxurious scene we had so lately quitted with
the drifting mass of baggage-wagons, and tumbrils, and can-
non, and plodding soldiers, on whom the dawn threw an un-
certain and spectral light. We were in the trail of the great
war-serpent again ; and in the horizon there loomed, like an
inky cloud, the bare possibility that after all these gay doings
THEATRE AT ROVIGO. 149
the Austrians 7night come back, and tlie Dominio Veneto not
be won without more hard fighting. But the strangest thing
to note in this strange evening was this — that the splendid
theatre, sumptuously decorated, lighted a giorno, filled with
rank and beauty, had been opened that night for the first
time during twenty years. During th^ Austrian occupation
it had remained a silent and deserted sepulchre. There are
more silent and deserted theatres in Venetia which will spring
up into life and splendour when the Austrian back is seen
for good. Among them is a certain house at Venice called
La Fenice. A gondolier took me thither last May. All, how
damp and dreary and ghastly it seemed ! May another gon-
dolier take me once more to La Fenice this coming Septem-
ber, and may I see it lit up and filled with beautiful Vene-
tians, and I will not grudge my oarsman double fare !
IX.
THE IDLE LAKE.
On the Lake of Como, between Cernobbio and the
Villa d'Este, August 20.
HuiWBLY emulous of the ubiquity of the bad halfpenny, this
is where I have, for the moment, the honour to turn up. I
am on the sweet shores of the Idle Lake, and I intended to
remain here and hereabouts for a week, thinking that I might
tempt some of those English tourists who, to the despair of
the Continental innkeepers, are so slow in coming abroad
this year — is it the cholera, or reform, or the smash of the
limited-liability delusion, or the dread of another European
war that keeps them at home ? — to explore this most delight-
ful region, to visit the exquisite villeggiatiire of the lake, to
shake hands once more with Bellaggio, and kiss Como on her
comely cheek. Elle en rant la peine. Not that any pane-
g}^rics of mine are necessary to make English tourists in love
with this enchanting district ; they know the Lake of old.
Did not the Keverend Doctor Stanhope, with his interesting
family, here expend his prebendal revenues, shamefully neg-
lecting his duties at the cathedral of Barchester ? Still, well
known as it is to the affluent, and the indolent, and the lovers
of the picturesque, it is certain that as yet neither Dr. Stan-
hope nor Dr. Syntax has started on his autumnal tour Como-
wards. It is the worst year, the hotel landlords declare with
THE IDLE LAKE. 15^
a groan, that they have known for years. Dove sono ? Where
are they, those forestieri ? The clean and comfortable hotels
of the Lake shores present a beggarly account of empty bed-
rooms. At the tables cVhote there is nobody but the host
himself to dine. Padrones, who in times of prosperity are
deadly enemies, are fain, in order to escape a Robinson
Crusoe-like isolation, to strike up a sulky friendship, and
play billiards and sip their coffee at each other's inns.
There was a courier who came with me in the train from
Milan to Como on Friday. He was a big-whiskered courier,
wdth much braid and very bright gold earrings, and looked
as though he had served many milords. He had no sooner
embarked on board the four-o'clock steamer for Colico than
the Lake landlords smelt him. He had come, they doubted
not, to make arrangements for the sojourn of his Excellency
the Lord Smith, of the iiregiatissima, nobilissima, e gentilis-
sima Signora Lady Brown, his wife, and of the fifty amahilis'
sime Donzelle the Ladies Robinson, his daughters. The
noble family would want rooms — two suites of rooms, twenty
suites of rooms, a flotilla of pleasure-boats, and a whole regi-
ment of guides. The good time was approaching, the halcyon
epoch of low bows and long bills. But the courier coolly
mentioned to the captain of the boat that he was just then
unattached, and on his way to Coire to visit his grandmother,
who was sick of the rheumatism. As for the forestieri, he
did not think there would be any to speak of on the Lake
this year. I wonder the landlords, or the touts, or the in-
terpreters, or the guides, et hoc genus omne, did not forth-
with make as short an end of that bird of ill omen as
Mrs. Helen Macgregor did of the wretched Morris in the
152 ROME AND VENICE.
Scottish loch. They forbore to fling the courier overboard ;
but they left off treating him to coffee and cavours. The man
at the wheel, who, although not to be spoken to, sometimes
speaks, murmured against him as a hestia propiia, and the
captain peremptorily ordered him off the bridge. So fall the
mightiest. I was glad to land at Cernobbio, and be quit of
the company of this unattached Jonah ; and it strikes me
now that, with his blacking-brush whiskers, blue upper lip,
and dark eye, he bore a strong resemblance to the late Ben-
jamin Courvoisier.
It is not my intention at present to detain you on the
Idle Lake, although worse quarters might be found during
this latter part of August. I only mention, en imssant, that
I have arrived here, as a prelude to the information that I
am going forthwith back to Venetia again. It has pleased
the Austrian authorities — so, at least, I learn from a sure
source — to allow civilians coming from Padua and Mestre to
enter Venice. When I left Padua the feat was no more pos-
sible of accomplishment than would be the passage of the
Niagara Eapids in a washing-tub. At present, however, they
tell me the thing is to be done, and I must do it. So I shall
once more return to Milan, and to Piacenza, and Bologna,
and Ferrara, and Pontelagoscuro, and Kovigo, and Padua —
in fact, I must travel round three sides of the square again
to ^arrive at the fourth angle, and journey about a hundred
and seventy-five miles in order to reach that which is over
the way.
My next letter, I hope, will be dated from Venice. To-
day I* propose to conclude the narrative of my travelling
impressions during that tour through Venetia which, for the
THE IDLE LAKE. 153
fiftli time in three montLis, I am about to recommence. Had
I never read a line of Mr. Euskin, it would be possible for
me in the end, I think, to know all the stones of Venice, or
at least of Venetia, by heart.
We came from Rovigo to Padua. It was early morning.
Eovigo, as I have already remarked, had not shown any
symptoms of a desire to go to bed. Padua, on the other
hand, had evidently not been to bed at all, but had kept
it up all night. Padua, I submit, ought to know better.
She is an old, a very old, a venerable city, and is bound to
take care of herself. She looked, it must be admitted, after
her protracted orgie, shaky, not to say dissipated. These
high jinks ill beseem the aged.
Do you remember that inimitable description of poor old
Major Pendennis, as he appeared at early dawn after dancing
attendance all night on Lady Clavering and her daughter at
a great London ball ? He presented a sight lamentable to
view. His beard had grown during the small hours, and
pierced bright and stubbly from his aged chin. His cheeks
were sunken, his jaw had dropped. The parting of his wig
was painfully unnatural, and there were dark rings of bistre
round his bloodshot eyes. His nose was as sharp as a pen,
and the crow's-feet in his countenance could be counted by
scores. Flaccid was his white cravat, and dingily yellow
looked the shirt-front yesterday so spotless. In a word,
rouge, starch, patent varnish, tight-cingled girths, padding,
pomatum, Rowland's kalydor and Bully's toilet vinegar, false
teeth, and eau-de-Cologne, had all fallen through, and only
seventy years and sciatica, and the palsy in perspective,
remained. This was Major Pendennis ; and this was Padua
IH liOME AND VENICE.
as I saw her under the pressure of Aurora's rosy fingers^
Otherwise the bright August morning sun.
The antiquity of Padua is, as you know, immense ; and
the city really looks its age. She is scarred; she is fur-
rowed ; her cornices and architraves have lost all their sharp
lines; her walls crumble; the foliage of the old capitals of
her old pillars has faded away, and the plinths of the columns
themselves have settled down into the earth. Her old in-
scriptions are three parts illegible ; her old gates are rusty ;
her old windows are boarded up. She is, in fine, a decrepit
old place, highly interesting and respectable no doubt, but
still belonging to the centuries that shall return no more.
Padua yet boasts a famous university, but from its gates you
expect to see issue only grave doctors in hexagonal caps and
gowns of striped black-and-buff velvet, sages learned in the
Taliacotian operation, and demonstrators of anatomy who
had once given lessons to Dr. William Harvey. Padua is a
city where mediaeval shrews might be tamed ; where Petru-
chio might ride to his wedding on a horse wind - galled,
shoulder-shotten, far gone in the botts, and irrevocably at-
tacked with farcy; and Grumio confer with the woman's
tailor on the subject of slashed farthingales and bombasted
kirtles : but Padua is not at all the kind of place in which
to look for that frivolous and hysterical order of recreation
known as '' going on anyhow."
It was this mode of progression, however, in which Padua
had chosen to move during the past three weeks ; and I have
little doubt that when I return I shall still find the incor-
rigible old place " going on anyhow." Festa had succeeded
festa, and one illumination had followed close on the heels of
THE IDLE LAKE. 155-
another. Padua, in sliort, was still in the heyday of that
ecstasy of delight which followed the departure of the Aus-
trians : a people who at home — say at Vienna, or Gratz, or
Briinn — are the joUiest, hest-natured, and most placable
to be found anywhere between Cape Cod and the Carpathian
Mountains, but who, abroad, rarely fail in making themselves
as nauseous as nicotine and as insufferable as asafoetida.
The King of Italy was at Padua, and there, or in the
neighbourhood, his Majesty will remain, it is to be presumed,
until the ratifications of the much-bungled treaty of peace
are exchanged, and he can enter Venice at the head of the
Italian army. It is not, I should opine, proposed to march
the Italian dragoons and hussars and horse-artillery into St.
Mark's Place ; yet, by the aid of a flotilla of flat-bottomed
barges, the invasion of the Lagoons by cavalry might be
practicable. The spell which hitherto tabooed the entry into
Venice of anything four-footed that was bigger than a poodle
has been broken within these latter days by the Austrians.
I hear that there are at present not fewer than three thou-
sand troop-horses picketed in the Giardino Pubblico at Venice.
The Uhlans pertaining to these chargers are likewise, I sup-
pose, on the spot ; but it may be asked what on earth General
Alemann thought of doing with three thousand dragoons in
the City of the Sea!*
I have an old book of Venetian costumes, drawn by one
Cesare Vecellio, Titian's nephew, a.d. 1590, and the volume
contains a curious view of the Piazzetta, with a bull-ring at
the foot of the Campanile, and the citizens of the Most
Serene Eepublic actively engaged in baiting the infuriated
* The report was utterly false.
156 ROME AND VENICE.
animal. One bull, however, went far enough in those days ;
but three thousand dragoons in the Giardino Pubblico pass
my comprehension. It is impossible to charge along the
Hiva di Schiavoni ; for the Ponte della Paglia, and a dozen
more canals and bridges, are in the way. St. Mark's Place
would hold as many regiments of horse as the great winter
riding-school at Moscow ; but you must get your horses there
first ere they can manoeuvre, just as you must catch your
hare before you can cook him. When I was at Venice in the
spring, there was but one horse, a meek hack, let out at so
much an hour in the Giardino. Ex-Modena used to ride
him, before he went to Vienna to carry candles at the feast
of Corpus Christi. Ex-Bordeaux would have a trot now and
then. Janty Austrian aide-de-camps would bestride the
one saddle-horse of Venice, and make believe that they were
caracoling along the Prater. He was everybody's horse — a
quiet, resigned-looking Dobbin, with a round nose, a switch
tail, and a cold-boiled eye in which there was no speculation.
Peace to his mane ! He has gone to the dogs long since, I
fear ; and now three thousand fiery steeds neigh and prance
where erst he so tranquilly hobbled.
I should have very much liked to stay in Padua, say a
couple of days ; for I love the picturesque city, with its shady
arcades, and its steep flights of stairs, and its fa9ades rich in
storied sculpture and heraldic achievements of a proud no-
bility long since fallen into the portion of weeds and outworn
faces. There was one capital impediment, however, to
making any lengthened sojourn in Padua — and that was the
absence of any place whereat one could stay. The presence
of Eoyalty is usually effectual in raising house-rent; but
THE IDLE LAKE. 15T
there were no more houses, and no more rooms, and no more
beds in Padua to be rented. There was nothing to let. All
the hotels were full. After Eocca d'Anfo* I should not have
been mighty particular as to the kind of accommodation to be
found ; but I did not hear of a stable, or a billiard-table, or
a cupboard, or even a cottage-floor that was vacant at Padua
and open to take in lodgers. And, talking of stables, will
someone learned in the Italian language tell me the differ-
ence between a stallaggio and a stallazzo ? Both are aug-
mentatives of stalla ; but I want to know the nice distinction
between the aggio and the azzo.
Beds being unobtainable, there was nothing to do but to
walk about Padua, and make believe that you lived there, and
were something else besides a homeless vagabond. I confided
my valise to an entire stranger — a facchino at the diligence-
of&ce — simply for the reason that he had not mounted an
Italian cockade in his cap. All the other fa echini were
flaming in the tricolor, and, in the intervals of fardel-carry-
ing, lurched in and out of the wine-shops grunting " Viva
Italia r' or '' Viva Garibaldi T' The uncockaded porter did
not cry viva anybody, but stood with his arms folded, passing
sad, waiting until a kind Providence should send him a
traveller and the chance of earning a few soldi. He was an
old facchino and a gray, and had been sweating under
burdens, I daresay, for half a century. It did not much
matter to him, perhaps, whether it was beneath the trunk of
an English tourist or a German hauptmann that he per-
spired. When you have been carrying heavy loads on your
* In the Tyrol. For some weeks, during the campaign of the GariLal-
dini, my lodging was habitually " on the cold ground."
168 ROME AND VENICE.
spinal column since the year eighteen hundred and sixteen
you are apt to become indifferent to the nationality of your
masters. Perhaps the facchino sympathised with the de-
parted Tedeschi. Robespierre's landlord wept for him.
Hajrnau was beloved by his valet-de-chambre. The Germans
may have been more liberal in trinkgeld than the Italians in
the huona mano to this uncockaded man. At all events,
there was something about him that impelled me to confide
to him, without exacting any security or guarantee, the
precious depository of my other shirt, my socks, and that
dictionary. "There is a man," I said, "who is verging
on threescore and ten, who is poor and shabby, and yet
has courage enough to avow his opinions, and to disdain
to screech with the rabble rout. He will not prove a
fraudulent bailee. He will not steal my other shirt, nor
sell my dictionary to the Egyptians." Nor did he.
The King was lodged in the Great Place, and the entire
frontage of the rooms he occupied was hung with crimson
velvet and gold lace. In the principal streets* the inhabitants
had likewise testified their sense of the festal nature of the
times by hanging their carpets out of the windows. An un-
initiated person might have imagined that all Padua had got
the brokers in, and was about to be sold up ; but the general
effect of this variegated display of tapestry was undeniably
pleasing. Early as it was the flower-girls were afoot — bare-
foot be it understood — and made fierce lunges at the button-
holes of every passer-by. Shame upon me ! the lovers of the
romantic wiU cry, because I look on these bold wenches as
nuisances, little inferior in nastiness to the ragged boys who
turn soiibresauts and the raggeder girls who sell cigar-lights
THE IDLE LAKE.
in London streets. But an Italian flower-girl ! she must be,
from the romantic point of view, full of poetry, witching
sentiment, and all that kind of thing. Only consider Lord
Lytton's Blind Girl in the Last Days of Pompeii. What
exquisite songs she sings ; how we sympathise with her when
her brutal mistress whips her with leathern thongs ! Alas,
were the truth known, I daresay that Pompeian blind girl
was a slipshod slut who didn't comb her hair, and bored the
life out of Glaucus and Diomed and the young Pompeian
nobility to buy her stale bouquets.
I was not in a charitable mood when I made these reflec-
tions upon flower-girls in general and the fioraje of Padua in
particular occurred to me. When you have been travelling
all night, and fail to secure a place whereon to lay your head
in the morning, the milk of your human kindness is very
much given to turn to curds-and-whey. I was irritated, too,
to find that the good shops were as yet closed, and that there
were at least five hundred establishments open for the sale of
bad wine, worse cigars, and postage-stamps ; which last are
very useful things in their way, but do not go far towards
supplying a tired and hungry man with bed and breakfast.
Nor does there lack something essentially unpleasant in the
sight of the extreme alacrity with which the collectors of the
internal revenue of the kingdom of Italy have swooped down
on the newly-liberated provinces. We must have the tax-
gatherer, I suppose, like the poor, with us always. It is our
lot to be taxed from the cradle to the grave; yet might
perhaps some means be devised, when a country is newly
rescued from the grasp of the stranger, for gilding the piU a
little, and making the taxes look like something else.
160 KOME AND VENICE.
The Italians have not been at these pains, and the
Venetians are told, rudely enough, that the first thing thoy
have to do is to pay. They may shout as much as they like,
and hoist flags and hang their carpets out of window ; but
they naust part with their lire and centesimi nevertheless.
The Liberators, it may be whispered, are sadly in want of
ready cash. Liberty is proverbially hard up ; and the first
and not very agreeable results of the annexation of Venetia to
Italy are an intimate acquaintance with a constitutional
Government blessed with an enormous national debt — a Go-
vernment which has been spending for the last five years on
an average about seventy-five per cent above its annual
income — which has had as ministers of finance a succession
of gentlemen deeply versed in poetry, the fine arts, philo-
sophy, and jurisprudence, but wholly ignorant of the simple
rules of arithmetic as taught by the late Mr. Edward Cocker
— a Government, in fine, which is pecuniarily about as deeply
dipped as the Sublime Porte, and experiences an equal diffi-
culty in making both ends meet.
However, the Venetians and all other Italians may hope
for the best. Peace, retrenchment, economy, good manage-
ment, will do a great deal in a very short time towards
retrieving the finances of a magnificently productive country.
Only, if it is to be peace, let it be peace in good earnest, and
not another seven years' spasm of feverish agitation, with
a congested army and an inflated navy, and a perpetual growl
of " Guerra al Tcdesco T To render such a peace possible,
plead the Italians, Italy must have its "natural confines,"
the Trentino, Ischia, and the rest of it. But suppose France
had refused to make peace with us until she got back Guern-
THE IDLE LAKE. 101
sey, Jersey, Alderney, and Sark, which, as all the world
knows, are bits of Normandy chipped off the French cake by
perfidious Albion ; and suppose England persisted in me-
nacing France with war until the latter Power surrendered
Brittany, which is palpably a part of the ancient Armorica —
where the very cows speak Welsh, and where the female
peasantry, after selling their luxuriant tresses to the Parisian
manufacturers of chignons, cover the nakedness of their heads
with Welsh wigs. Which is a fact not generally known.
I should have left Padua with but a sorrowful impres-
sion as to its hospitality — even to that hospitality, most
cosmopolitan, which is to be obtained by paying for it —
had not the Caffe Pedrocchi been open. The Gaffe Pe-
drocchi is the stateliest coffee-house in Italy. It is one of the
institutions of Padua, and as famous almost as its time-
honoured university. It is a great many stories high, and
is I know not how many hundred feet broad and long, and
contains I have forgotten how many score apartments, large
and small — some of them, especially the one called La Sala
Chinesa, magnificently decorated. In fact, if you wish to
see something " right-down handsome" in the way of Co-
rinthian columns, chandeliers, plate-glass, marble tables,
crimson -velvet settees, niches with statuettes, and mosaic
pavements, you should visit the Caffe Pedrocchi. It is the
Alhambra, the Alcazar of Padua ; and the Padovesi are never
tired of sauntering in its marble halls, and lounging on its
marble staircases, and admiring its frescoed ceilings, and
expatiating on the glories of its Sala Chinesa. Who Pe-
drocchi was, although there is a vague story about him in
'' Murray," I know not. There is a casino upstairs, which is
M
162 ROME AND VENICE.
opened only at the time of the Carnival, when a ridotto is
held there. Now, what is a ridotto ? or, if you come to
that, what is a casino, taken in its signification as a place
of popular recreation ? A ridotto is, I believe, a land rela-
tive of a regata ; and both are what the Spaniards term a
funcion, and the Americans a " shake up and break down
of the High She Quality." Have I made myself understood
with sufficient clearness ?
The most marked peculiarity of the Gaffe Pedrocchi is this
— ^that, like its brethren at Venice yonder, it never closes.
From the 1st of January until the 31st of December — morn-
ing, noon, and night — all the year round, you can obtain
refreshment at this large-hearted and indefatigable establish-
ment. You may breakfast, lunch, and sup at the Caffe
Pedrocchi; but at no time, I believe, during its existence —
which dates from the invasion of Italy by Attila, King of
the Huns — was ever anybody known to dine there. It was
at Florian's, in th^ Piazza San Marco, that the discrowned
royalties immortalised in Candide met ; every one of whom
had come to see the Carnival of Venice, and not one of
whom had money enough to pay for his supper. The
dethroned princes, I have heard, subsequently came on
to Padua, and regaled on demi-tasses and petits verves at
the Caffe Pedrocchi. Their score remains unpaid to this day.
It was the then head-waiter's great-grandson who told me
so. The unfortunate Charles Edward Stuart consumed a
monstrous quantity of cognac on credit ; and Theodore, King
of Corsica, was shabby enough to fill the pockets of his
threadbare surtout with cigars ere he took diligence en route
for Gerard-street, Soho, and the London Insolvent Court.
THE IDLE LAKE. 163
These are shadows, vague and improbahle enough if you
please ; but can any shadows I can conjure up vie with the
real historical ghosts which yet linger on the threshold of
this enormous tavern ? But twenty days since, and the Aus-
trians were here. Legions of white-coated phantoms seem
stalking about the halls, now thronged by the jovial and
gesticulating Italian officers. I hear guttural cries of "Kell-
ner." I see spectral copies of the Neue Freie Presse and
the Wiener Zeitung bestrewing the marble tables. Alas,
poor ghosts ! Their spurs are to jingle, their swords to
clank, no more in this delicious land. The Tedeschi really
liked Italy — the country, the blue sky, the soft climate, the
golden groves of citron, the purple vines, the mountains
and the lakes — the ices, the macaroni, the vino d'Asti, the
picture-galleries and palaces, the caffes and the operatic
music. They liked the Italian ladies very much indeed..
The only hitch was that the Italians didn't like them.
Still, in this lachrymose age, when everybody is blub-
bering about something, I think we ought to squeeze out a
tear for the Tedeschi. " Laissez - moi pleurer cette race-
morte,'' said M. Victor Hugo of the Bourbons, taking out
his pocket-handkerchief and weeping bitterly, while all France
was clapping its hands for joy to think that the Bourbons
had been kicked out. If you please, I will drop the silent
tear over two niches on either side the bar or comptoir of
the Caffe Pedro cchi — niches hung with crimson drapery of
richest damask — niches which of old time contained the
highly framed and glazed lithograph effigies of the Kaiser
Francis Joseph and his pretty Kaiserinn ; and now, in these
niches, in lieu of their Imperial, Royal, and Apostolic Ma-
164 ROME AND VENICE. ^
jesties, I behold the burly physiognomy and incredible
moustaches of Victor Emmanuel, side by side with a most
ungenteel-looking individual in a red-flannel shirt, by the
name of Garibaldi. It is a world of ups and downs, and
the Caffe Pedrocchi is not exempt from the common see-
saw.
X.
PONTE D'AKANA.
August 24.
To think that I should have come to Ferrara again on my
second journey of discovery through Venetia, and passed
once more the noon-tide heats in a darkened room, waiting
for a carriage to take me to Padua, and never have known
that this was " la citta bene avventuratoC of Ariosto, and " la
gran Donna del Po" of Tassoni; that here the immortal
Torquato himself had a commission de lunatico, consisting
of one despot, taken out against him ; that here was the
retreat of that sweet bird of song, Giiarini ; that the walls
of Ferrara were built in the sixth century by the Exarchs
of Eavenna, who incorporated with the newly-founded city
the bishopric of Vigovenza ; that during the sixteenth cen-
tury the Court of Ferrara was unsurpassed by any in Europe
for intelligence and refinement — I had only remembered it
for its propensity to poison people; that there were once
so many English students in the University of Ferrara as
to form, as they did at Bologna, a distinct "nation" in that
learned body; that the Ferrarese school of painting num-
bered among its illustrations the accomplished Galasso Ga-
lassi and the gifted Dosso Dossi; that the high-minded
Duchess Renee, daughter of Louis XII. of France, and wife
of Hercules 11. , Duke of Ferrara, afforded protection and
asylum to Calvin and Marot, and other lights of the Re-
166 ROME AND VENICE.
formed Faith ; and that in the ducal mlace at Fcrrara was
educated the famous Olympia Morata, the queen of strong-
minded ladies, "who here acquired that knowledge of the
Gospel which supported her mind under the privations and
hardships which she afterwards had to endure !" Twice had
I been to Ferrara, and of all this I had known nothing.
Equally ignorant was I of the fact that in the north-east
tower of the grim old brick castello, and in a dungeon several
feet under low water -mark, Parisina and her guilty lover
were put to death ; for the details of which dreadful tragedy
vide Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Lord Byron's poems,
and Frizzi's history of Ferrara, passim. It was in a hole
underneath the chamber called the " Aurora," " at the foot
of the Lions' Tower, at the top of the street called the
Giovecca, and on the night of the 21st of May, that first
Ugo and afterwards Parisina were beheaded." The extreme
severity shown to this unfortunate female has always sur-
prised me. Even as the historian of fiction, in recording
the cii-cumstance that Mr. Sampson Brass, attorney, of
Bevis Marks, was struck off the rolls, has remarked that
there must have been something special and extraordinary in
his culpability, seeing how many rascals yet remain unexcised
upon those same rolls ; so would it appear that in Parisina' s
case there must have been an extra and unpardonable degree
of naughtiness which led the Sir James Wilde of the period
to chop off her head for that which at least fifty per cent
of the married ladies of Italy were then in the habit of doing,
with complete impunity.
The fact is, that when I went to Ferrara I was quite
unread in the history and antiquities of the city, beyond
PONTE D'AEANA. 167
the highly -coloured episodes in M. Hugo's melodrama, a
work of genius now generally held to be " unhistorical." I
know all these things now; but it is too late to utilise my
information, for it is not probable that I shall ever return to
Ferrara. The air is not good. It smells of henbane and
strychnine. We all of us experience a certain amount of
vague and unaccountable terror at something, I confess
that I am frightened at Ferrara. Nor, perhaps, should I
have become acquainted with what I have set down above —
notably for the information respecting La Stella d'Oro — had
I not recently become the proud possessor of Murray's Hand-
hook for Travellers in Northern Italy. The work cost me
fifteen francs, and was in a dilapidated condition; but a
*' Murray" in a strange land is a thing of beauty and a joy for
ever. I have had something more to do lately than to study
" Murray." The instruction I have acquired has been purely
of the viva-voce order. My recent education has been essen-
tially un-Aristotelian, and based on the canons laid down
by Lord Bacon. Everything has been done by induction.
I have been taught botany as the young gentlemen at Dothe-
boys' Hall were taught it, viz. by being sent into a field to
hoe potatoes. So soon as 1 have spelt a word, I have " gone
and done it." I know that there is no butcher's meat at
Salo, and that there are thieves who steal breastpins at
Eocca d'Anfo.
In the interest of all travellers in the less-frequented
parts of Italy, I must insist on the necessity of some guide or
handbook, be it a "Murray," a "Bradshaw," or a "Baedecker."
In other countries you may sometimes dispense with such
assistance, or you make shift with the local guides; but in
168 EOME AND VENICE.
Italy you must have a printed finger-post, and, preferably,
that finger-post should be an Anglo-Saxon one. Only an
Englishman writing for Englishmen can properly understand
the requirements of his own countrymen and countrywomen,
and direct them to where they can procure decent and com-
fortable accommodation, as the words decency and comfort
are understood in the British Isles. Away from the great
cities the Italian inns are certainly the filthiest and most
infamous which I have ever seen — not even excepting those
of Spain and Mexico, The Italian alhergo seems to have
changed very little indeed from what it was in the days of
Cicero. The Eoman " Caupona," according to Horace and
Aulus Gellius, was patronised only by those who were desti-
tute of letters of introduction to private houses; and the
modern edition of the " Caupona" is patronised only by
pedlars and farmers, and such unhappy foreign tourists as,
being strangers in the land, know not where else to hide
their heads. An Italian of rank or refinement is rarely to be
found at a provincial inn. He has acquaintances in the
neighbourhood. Italians of the middle class, unless they
have visited England, are absolutely ignorant of what com-
fort, cleanliness, or common decency mean.
An innkeeper at Bergamo was insolent enough to tell me
that the incredibly horrible nature of his domestic arrange-
ments was thought good enough for Italians, and, by the same
rule, ought to suit English people. But I told him that his inn
could not have been intended for Italians, whom I respected
as a noble and intelligent people, seeing that his house was
fit only for skunks and swine, of whom I added, as a compli-
ment, he was one or both. Whereat he looked as though he
PONTE D'AKANA. 1Q9
would have stabbed me, but ultimately subsided into a
kitchen, there to fry in rancid oil some entrails — the famous
frittura, indeed — ^which somebody had ordered for lunch.
I am afraid, however, that to the great majority of Ita-
lians such a sty as that of Bergamo would have been looked
upon as a perfectly tolerable place in which to abide. I am
afraid that they like dirt, darkness, stench, inattention, lazi-
ness, and coarse food badly cooked. What does your middle-
class Italian want? His needs are simple. First, alloggio
— that means a room, or half a room, or half, or a third of
a bed, if it comes to that ; anything, in short, where he can
lie down and sleep, with or without taking off his clothes.
Very little water, and the corner of a post-octavo towel, will
serve his turn. In the morning he wants a cup of black
coffee and a morsel of bread. Some, but by no means the
mass of Italians, take the collazione or dejeuner a la four-
chette, but many prefer to wait until five or six o'clock, when
they dine heavily and indigestibly on macaroni or some
other paste swimming in grease and gravy, or minestra, a
stodge of hrodo and rice ; boiled beef, roast veal, tomatoes,
zucchetti, and fried entrails. Without the frittura it is no
dinner at all. This, with some excellent cheese and some
delicious fruit, is the kind of dinner you get in nine out
of ten provincial inns in Italy ; but the revolting coarseness
of the viands, and the gross carelessness shown in their
preparation, are ill compensated by the piquant savour of
Parmesan and the dulcet suavity of ripe peaches. If you
asked for a houillon, they would stare ; if you wanted a cup
of tea, they would either tell you there was none, or send
round to the doctor's shop for some simples of noxious
170 ROME AND VENICE.
odour, apparently culled by the late King Nebuchadnezzar
in his botanising days, and from them make a decoction fit
to turn the stomach of an ostrich. The Italian, of course,
does not require such luxuries. After he has fed, at five
or six, he requires absolutely nothing more save the privilege
of smoking whensoever he pleases.
It may be urged that strangers are bound to put up with
the customs of the country in which they travel ; but it is
my duty to remark that directly the Italian innkeeper finds
out that you are a foreigner, and especially that you are an
Englishman or an American, he charges you four francs for
the dinner, or six francs for the room, which a native would
get for two. Over and over again have I been presented with
a bill for twenty lire when I had had the lodging of a brute.
I have put down ten francs and buttoned up my pocket, and
After many " Per Dios /" and infinite shrugs and grimaces on
the part of the landlord, the composition of ten shillings in
the pound has been thankfully accepted.
They do not use you so in. Spain. For comfort in the
great cities you must pay extravagantly; but away from
Madrid or Seville, at the misevsMe fondas, ventas) or mesons,
where you can only obtain that which nature needs, you will
find that "man's life is cheap as beast's.'" The twopence
which the good Samaritan left at the inft for the wounded
man would, translated into reals and cuartos, very nearly pay
for all that a Spanish innkeeper can let you have. Moreover,
you do not expect to find comfort or even adequate sustenance
in the Spanish provinces ; and when you get accustomed to
the countiy you never venture on a journey without taking
provisions with you.
PONTE D'AEANA. 171
But the case is different in "Bootia Felix." Italy is not
half Moorish. Africa does not begin at the Alps, as it does
at the Pyrenees. Italy should be as civilised and polished a
land as any in Europe ; but I repeat that in the provincial
towns the customs of the people are atrocious. Liberty is a
grand thing. The remark cannot be repeated too often ; but
first learn to live less offensively, and then go in as much
as you please for liberty. The only clean and comfort-
able villages I have yet seen in Italy are those in the
immediate neighbourhood of Milan, and on the shores of the
Lake of Como.
These few words of warning will, I trust, suffice to im-
press on the mere tourist for pleasure — for he who travels by
compulsion or on business must needs take things as he finds
them, and be thankful they are not worse — the necessity of
coming to Italy armed with some kind of guide-books which
shall tell him where inns, fit for civilised Christians rather
than savage Yahoos, to live and sleep in may be found. And
where such inns are not to be found, let him avoid the town
or district, however rich in pictures and antiquities, alto-
gether. There is always a sufficient stock of professional
travellers and antiquaries who do not mind roughing it ; but
I do not see that a peaceable and polished layman, accus-
tomed to clean linen, wholesome food, three-pronged forks,
and plenty of cold water, has any call, merely for the purpose
of publishing an octavo volume, or telling his friends at the
Sybarite Club that he has seen such and such a fresco, or
'' done" such and such a lion, to undergo the hardship of a
Speke, a Livingstone, or a Burton.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan once pointed out to his son
172 ROME AND VENICE.
Tom the inutility of going down a coalpit. Could he not say
he had heen down one ? he hinted. The insinuation was im-
moral, and truth is precious ; hut the modern code of ethics
accepted by society affords many convenient loopholes by
means of which a man may evade an embarrassing confession
without positively telling a fib. When you have been asked,
for instance, if you know Bergamo, you may hum and hah,
and dexterously turn the conversation into a different channel
by remarking that the Pension Suisse at Bologna is an ex-
cellent house ; and he who has been to Naples has a clear
right, in equity, to lead to the inference that he is inti-
mately acquainted with Sorrento.
Under ordinary circumstances trust to a guide-book that
does not puff, and give all towns where the inns are not
marked as "clean and good" a wide berth. Again, never be
led by what your courier tells you, or patronise the hostelries
which he most strongly recommends. This morsel of advice
may seem to some superfluous ; for in these days of railways
and universal education it would appear as useless to travel
with a courier as with a guard of halberdiers. Kailways
and universal education notwithstanding, there are still some
thousands of miles in Europe to be travelled only by stage or
post ; and there are yet numbers of persons, male and female,
of mature age and of ample means, who go abroad without
a larger stock of foreign words than that in the French vo-
cabulary of Albert Smith's old lady : " Garsong, donnez-moy
— some 'am."
If you are so unfortunate as to be compelled to engage a
foreign travelling servant, you will act well, as a rule, never
to believe a word he says, and always to do the exact con-
PONTE D'ARANA. 173
trary to that which he advises you ; but, in particular, mis-
trust his counsel concerning hotels. If you have no guide-
book you are of course in his hands, and must go to the inn
he selects as a fool would to the correction of the stocks ; but
have a guide-book, and he need not make a fool of you, nor
you a fool of yourself. Couriers — the Italian ones especially
— are almost sure to be in league with the landlord, who is
generally an old courier and a great rogue ; so Boniface and
Sganarelle play into each other's hands. Nor are the inns
kept by ex-couriers, although they never fail in being extor-
tionately dear, always the cleanest or the best. Finally, let
me entreat the traveller never to stay at the hotel where the
diligence starts or where it halts. Coaching inns in England
used to be good and comfortable; but the alhergo delle
diligenze in Italy is, with scarcely an exception, abominable
in every respect. The conducteur of the diligence — usually
a civil, specious, rascally fellow — will of course earnestly
entreat your excellency to descend at the coaching inn. He
is in the landlord's pay, and gets a regular commission on
every traveller he brings. A middle-class Italian who has
not travelled bejfend the limits of his own country is a coun-
sellor quite as pernicious. He, poor benighted being, knows
that at the alhergo della diligenza such bare necessaries may
be had as alloggio, the minestra, the frittura, and the vino
del paese — the common wine of the country, very like a
beverage they used to sell at a gin-palace in Whitechapel,
called " Imperial Black Stuff, very nobby," and apparently
a mixture of logwood, vinegar, treacle, and blacking ; and of
anything beyond these he does not dream.
Therefore, by all means, carry your ** Murray," your "Brad-
174 ROME AND VENICE.
shaw," or your " Baedecker" as a precious burden ; but if you
lose it, or can find no bibliopole who sells handbooks, take
care, ere you leave the clean and comfortable house in which
you may be stopping in Milan, or Florence, or Venice, to
inquire for the names of the hotels iti the towns you propose
to visit with which your Milanese or Florentine landlord is in
" correspondence." He will know at once the kind of inn you
require ; and he will not dare to recommend an inferior one,
hoping as he does that you will return, and apprehensive as
he is that you will devote him to the infernal gods when you
find that he has misled you.*
* I wrote this at Ponte d'Arana, a few miles from Padua ; but of Ponte
d'Arana itself I have nothing to say that is good. Well may they call it
Ponte d'Arana, as my countryman said of Stoney- Stratford — for I was most
terribly bitten by fleas there.
XI.
GAFFES.
August 25.
Not easily shall I forget an incident which I witnessed one
evening just before I left Yicenjsa — an incident trifling in
itself, and which, as things progress, will every day become
more common, but which to me was a straw showing unmis-
takably the way the wind had begun to blow, and was elo-
quent as to the commencement of the new era, including new
men, new measures, new clothes, and new brooms. There
is a very handsome caffe at Vicenza, in the Piazza called de'
Signori, the said Piazza being a miniature copy of the Piazza
San Marco, with two tiny columns crowned with statues, and
a Liliputian Ducal Palace, and a microscopic Broglio for the
proud signori to walk upon in scarlet gowns, to the exclusion
from the flags of meaner mortals, and a baby Torre dell' Oro-
logio, or clock-tower, and three slender little masts for the
banners of the Venetian Dominion to float from, and a brace
of diminutive fagades, rivalling, on the scale of two inches to
a foot, the Procuratii Nuovi and the Procuratii Vecchj of the
mother city, Venice. And everywhere that space can be found
for a statuette or a bas-relief, the Lion of St. Mark, reduced
to the proportions of a Maltese lap-dog, wags his little tail,
and flutters his little wings, and shakes a little mane en
papillotte, and cons his eternal hornbook.
The old Venetians were very fond of setting up in their
176 ROME AND VENICE.
provincial towns minified copies of the Superb and Serene
Place. Little columns, little piazzettas, little masts, little
basilicas, are scattered all over Venetia ; and even at Pola,
and Istria, and Fiume, and other spots on the Ischian and
Dalmatian shores, there linger reminiscences of Venetian
architecture which might be carried away on a porter's
shoulders, and ducal palaces that might be put into a pint-
pot. These things are not to be laughed at, however.
Though infinitesimal, they are beautiful as those tiny models
of state-coaches and miniature broughams which skilful arti-
sans in Long-acre construct, and which may be seen in shop-
windows side by side with the mightiest coach -building esta-
blishments. At Vicenza, for instance, the pretty little tiny
kickshaws on the Piazza de' Signori are mainly from the de-
signs of Palladio and Scamozzi — illustrious architects who,
after here luxuriating in carving cherry-stones and reducing
bas-reliefs to the dimensions of postage-stamps, crossed the
lagoons, and at Venice built staircases for giants, and stately
houses for the senators of the greatest republic in the world,
and tombs for doges supported by caryatides seventy feet
high.
Genius the most colossal must disport itself sometimes in
an infantile manner, and take delight in little things. I have
heard of a grave historian, a famous novelist, and a fellow
of the Koyal Society, who were wont to indulge every Sunday
afternoon, and on a lawn at Putney, in a game at leapfrog.
Sometimes they admitted an epic poet and an eminent tra-
gedian to their company, nor do I think it would have done
the Lord High Chancellor or the Archbishop of Canterbury
much harm to have joined that social circle. We must have
GAFFES. 17T
an admixture of the funny, the playful, the nonsensical if you
please, in the dismal course of daily life. The sages, scholars,
and philosophers, who with such lamentable frequency go
raving mad, are precisely those who have never made fools of
themselves. It is good to be a young donkey sometimes, or
a frolicsome kitten, or an impudent puppy. Your Eldon-like
owl sits perpetually in the ruined keep at Arundel, looking
unutterably wise ; but everybody knows that he is really as
blind as a bat, and is always running his head against wrong
points of law. So I greet those baby Venices whenever I see
them, and only regret that hydraulic engineers have been
unable to bring up an Adriatic no bigger than the Serpentine
to their doors.
Vicenza is not all Liliputian. It boasts a score of palaces
as vast and sumptuous as any to be found in Venetia or
Lombardy, and has, besides, a Palazzo della Ragione, or law-
courts, a Pinacoteca, a Duomo — in which the Council of
Trent held some supplementary sittings, and did much to
embroil the world — and one of the handsomest pawnbrokers*
shops I ever saw. It is three stories high, of the Doric,
Ionic, and Corinthian in due progression, and inside is
prettily decorated with subjects from Roman history, painted
by Signer Fassola. I did not narrowly inspect these objects
of art, having no intimate business to transact with the
Monte di Pieta, so I am puzzled to know what events in
the history of old Rome could be tortured into any connec-
tion with My Uncle. "Cornelia disposing of her jewels;"
'' Caesar's wife entering by the back-door in order to be above
suspicion;" " Vespasian remarking that thirty per cent from
the poor was good money, and had no vile smell;" "Cali-
N
IW ROME AND VENICE.
gula's groom pawning the gilt oats of the consular horse ;"
or ** Virginius consigning the urn containing his daughter's
ashes to the care of Mr. Attenborough" — these are the only
Koman subjects I can think of which suitably might adorn
the avuncular palace at Vicenza. The roof, I may observe,
is beautified by no less than four splendidly-carved columns
of funnel form — ostensibly chimneys, but which I imagine to
be spouts ; and under the principal fa9ade there is a lion's-
mouth letter-box, with the directions, " Consulte segrete,^*
above it. What secret consultations can be needed in the
course of negotiations with My Uncle ? Are any of the noble
signori of Vicenza in the habit of confiding to the letter-box
their applications concerning the backing of tickets ? One
thing is certain. The king of beasts has a mighty capacity
for swallowing ; but you cannot " pop" a flat-iron in a lion's
mouth.
Much more might I say about Vicenza ; but I remember
my own perhaps not over-discreet avowal as to the facilities
for cramming which " Murray" gives you ; and so, carefully
eschewing the historical and the antiquarian, I will make my
way to that caffe on the Piazza de' Signori, where I witnessed
that incident which I was about without further digression to
narrate — only, as often happens, some reflections more or
less pertinent stood in the way. The little Garibaldian lieu-
tenant who had been " ovated" at the theatre at Eovigo, and
your humble servant, were using the caffe in question very
late one night. Vicenza is holding incessant festival, after
the manner of Padua, Eovigo, and Udine, and all other places
in the Dominio Veneto freshly emancipated from the Austrian
rule ; and the caffe was crowded. The Venetians, ordinarily
GAFFES. 179-
nearly as sober a nation as the Spaniards, have now been
tipsy for three weeks — really tipsy, on alcoholic preparations.
There is not a bottle of champagne to be had between Goito
and Mestre. Patriotism has drunk it all up in toasts to the
King, Garibaldi, and the unity of Italy. So much of the
genuine old " black-strap" or vino del paese of last year has
been consumed in patriotic liquoring-up, and so little pro-
mises to be made this year, in consequence, of the general
confusion springing from the war, that the market-price of
ordinary wine has risen fifty per cent.
On this night I speak of, Vicenza was even more than
usually thirsty. All the oranges and lemons of all the golden
groves in Arcadia seemed to have been converted into limonate
and aranciate ; and if all the coffee which, with milk and with-
out milk, and hot and cold, was frantically asked for came
from the Antilles and from Mocha, it is certain that the West
Indies are not yet ruined, and there is yet a land called Arabia
Felix. As for the seltzer-water, I am afraid that the Aus-
trians must have blown up by means of their own gases all
the effervescing-drink manufactories before they evacuated
this part of the country, for there is not a drop of seltzer or
soda to be obtained north of Ferrara. I suppose the caffe-
keepers at Vicenza and elsewhere are all making rapid for-
tunes. I do not envy them their new-found riches, but I
may impress on them the expediency of cleaning their spoons,
and of putting a smaller quantity of ground-rice into their
cream, so soon as the regime of constitutional liberty and
representative institutions has been settled on a firm basis.
At present the chief characteristics of the Italian caffes I
have seen are sloppiness and muddiness. They, indeed, re-
180 ROME AND VENICE.
Bemble the penny-ice shops of the low London neighbour-
hoods on an extended scale ; and this I say without wishing
to cast the slightest reflection on the esteemed M. Gatti, who
has, in his generation, by combating the beer-shop, and com-
peting even with the gin-palace, done an immense deal of
good in London; as much good, perhaps, as the multiplicity
of caffes in Italy, and their absurd cheapness, has done
harm.
This looks like a paradox, I admit; but it is one that
will hold water. The Italian caffes are all too cheap, and
their proprietors are all far too tolerant in permitting persons
of the genus "loafer" to remain for hours together, consum-
ing nothing more expensive than a cup of black coffee, price
four sous, or a glass of iced water. You may also remain in
an Italian caffe for as long as ever you like without taking
anything at aU, and neither landlord nor waiter will venture
to drop a hint as to the propriety of consuming anything for
the good of the house. Those of the guests who smoke —
and nearly all do — bring their own tobacco, so the house
makes nothing out of nicotine. All this may conduce to-
wards sobriety ; and in England, places where you might sit,
smoke, gossip, and sip cold water or weak tea, without being
compelled to get drunk for the benefit of a member of the
Licensed Victuallers' Society, would be a boon well-nigh in-
estimable to the poorer classes. The penny-ice shops go a
great way towards it ; but the London proprietor of the penny-
ice shop, looking towards his rent, taxes, and poor-rates,
would naturally turn somewhat sullen if you did not order a
penny ice say once in every half-hour. The end of the con-
tinual consumer of cheap lemons and vanillas might equal
GAFFES. 181
in horror that of the over-zealous teetotaller, whose stomach
on post-mortem examination was found to contain nothing
but tea-leaves and snowballs.
There should be a golden mean in everything. That
mean is not to be found, so far as I am aware, in any country
under the sun. In England the cheap caffe would be a
blessing, and out of the palatial clubs of Pall-mall it is rarely
to be found.* In Italy the cheap caffe abounds, and is open
to all, and I look upon it as a kind of curse, and one of the
chief causes of the backwardness, the laziness, and the
general impracticability of the Italian people. They swarm
into these caffes, where their outlay need never exceed a few
halfpence, and there they pass at least half their existence,
ruining their digestion with black coffee and blacker cigars
taken on fasting stomachs, neglecting their business, wasting
their time, and mag, mag, mag, endlessly magging, on one
invariable theme — politics. Here they graduate in gesticu-
lation ; here they learn to blaspheme — and in blasphemy an
Italian will beat an American, which is saying a great deal;
here they learn to repeat the canard, to give the lie, to
* The London " cofEee-shops," properly so called, although excellent in
many respects, and provided with a store of newspapers and periodicals
which many a continental casino dc' nohlU might envy, are for the most
part dark, stuffy, and uncomfortable, and cut up into gloomy "boxes" little
better than the compartments of a cellular van. The penny-ice shops— of
which I am very glad to recognise the unpretentious value, from a tem-
perance point of view — are rendered intolerable to grown-up persons by
swarms of blackguard little boys and girls, restless, impudent, and pre-
cociously vicious; while at the West-end too many of the really handsome
cafes on the Parisian model which have been started — I daresay with the
most innocent and laudable intent — have within a very brief period become
the resort of " fast men" and of more than questionable women. Those
whose proprietors are determined to continue respectable in every sense are
constrained to adopt a tariff so high as to be well-nigh prohibitory, in order
to exclude " gay" — that is to say, abominable — company.
182 ROME AND VENICE.
denounce their own Government, and malign those of other
countries. Any other more solid information I do not see
that they can acquire. One man just skims the contents of
a little flysheet called hy courtesy a newspaper, and spouts
what he has read to half-a-dozen companions, and the rest
screech and yell, and assert and deny, and thump the table
till they make the cups and saucers dance. From time to
time some patriotic gentleman may remember that he has his
livelihood to earn, say breeches to make, or bellows to mend,
or boots to cobble, or young lambs to sell — for Italy is really
a democratic country, and there is a curious equalisation of
rank in the caffe — and away he goes to take a short spell of
work. But he speedily returns, to light more cavours and
drink more thin swizzle, to mouth and rant more nonsense.
This, then, is my position : Your ca/^ -frequenter spends
but little money; but he spends an enormous amount of
time. Which is thfe most precious? The time, I think.
He keeps sober, so far as alcohol is concerned, but gets most
drunk in the way of gesticulation and argument. He talks
much and learns little, if anything. Finally, the caffe is to
him as a sort of garment which covers all manner of deadly
sins. In England a man who is not an incorrigible drunkard
or idler experiences a certain amount of shame if his friends
meet him continually going in or coming out of a tavern.
The public-house door, like the pawnbroker's, is, after all, a
portal of ignominy, and of close parentage to the debtor's
door. We even rally the decorous old gentlemen who are
always wandering in and out of their clubs. But no shame
attaches to the foreigner who, from morn to dewy eve, strolls
backwards and forwards between his house and his caffe. It
p
GAFFES. 183
lias many doors, they are all wide open, and you may float in
d out unperceived. You may be only going to write a
letter, to repose yourself after a long walk, to meet a friend,
to keep a business appointment. In England the thoroughly
idle man scarcely escapes detection at the hands of those who
work. We know what tavern he ''uses," or what club he
haunts. But in Italy the idlers and the workers are so inti-
mately mingled, that, seeing the caffes at all times crowded,
you are puzzled to know when it is that the people work at
all, and whether they were given to hang about caffes in the
days when Palladio built, and Buonaroti carved, and Sanzio
painted, and Ariosto wrote.
Pray understand that I exempt the cafes of France from
these strictures. They are thronged only at certain hours of
the day, and they are not so cheap as to encourage the loafer
and the lotus-eater. The French dame de comptoir has a
very keen scent for unprofitable customers ; and the gargon,
from a corner of his little eye, can very soon discern the
habitues who sit long and order nothing. The necessity of
''la consommation" — a terrible word — is a check on the
stingy idler in France. I have heard a French waiter — in a
third-rate cafe, be it understood — cry out when orders were
languid, " Consomme z ! il faut consommer, messieurs.''^ An
Italian waiter who ventured to utter such a remonstrance
would be skinned alive by the indignant company.
Your Italian waiter is, under most circumstances, a
shambling, shiftless creature, perfectly affable and urbane,
but with a painfully-defective memory, and a general defi-
ciency in the qualities we ordinarily expect to find in persons
of his calling. He is much given to yawning, without taking
184 ROME Al^D VENICE.
the trouble to veil his sepulchral mouth with the palm of his
hand ; he is usually slipshod ; and one end of his napkin,
which is seldom clean, is tucked into the waistband of his
pantaloons. He 7cill not wear braces. You can see that he
has a hard time of it, between the flies, which insects he is
continually flacking away, and the padrona, who has a deuce
of a temper, and the customers, who are constantly calling
for zolfancUi wherewith to light their cavours, but are not
over-generous in the bestowal of copper gratuities. If you put
down say a two-franc piece in payment of what you have had,
he brings you as much small change as the subdivisions of
the Italian currency will permit, and they even comprise the
ccntesimo, or the hundredth part of ninepence- halfpenny, .
which he places before you on a little electro-plated tray.
The Italians, who certainly take care of the pence if they
do not trouble themselves about the pounds, and in their
minor dealings are an unpleasantly thrifty race, generally
shovel the entire contents of the tray into their pockets, and
stalk away without further parley. They have an excuse for
this niggardliness. Were they to give but a couple of cents
to all who asked, they might give away their incomes, at the
rate of five hundred pounds a-year, every day. There is no
end to the beggars, licensed and unlicensed, who tug at your
purse-strings in an Italian caffe.
To the waiters it does not appear to be the custom to
give fees. Foreigners may fee them, but the natives only
bestow on them a "huon giorno'*^ or a " riverisco,^^ which
are graceful salutations, soothing to the spirit, and costing
nothing. Now and then I have seen a large-hearted Italian
customer pick out from his trayful of small change the
GAFFES. 183
smallest coin discoverable, and hand it to the waiter with a
glance of proud philanthropy, such as we might suppose the
Chevalier Bayard might have put on when he handed the
twenty-five hundred silver crowns to the two beauteous dam-
sels of Breschia. The hottega has received the lowly copper
with a shuffle of pleasure and a yawn of gratitude. I am
sure the waiters are grateful for their scant allowance of
halfpence ; for I have always found the waiter whom I have
fee'd, when I asked for a light for a cigar, insist on lighting
it himself, and in his own peculiar fashion, which consists
in placing the weed in the cleft of a long slender pole, and
holding it up to a gas-jet. After a little dexterous twiddling,
the end of the cigar is kindled to perfection, and the waiter
then, with a friendly nod, and a yawn signifying that he is
glad to have discharged his office and to be well out of it,
hands you the cleft stick and the burning brand.
Surely these waiters are the laziest mortals alive, always
excepting emancipated negroes and officers in the Light
Cavalry. There is much latitude as to the way in which to
summon an Italian waiter. You may cry ^'BottegaP' or
" Cameriere /" although the latter would the rather signify
a waiter at an hotel; and he will even understand " g argon,''
Italianised into " garzone.'' In Milan he comprehends the
oriental call of clapping the hands, doubtless imported by
the Spaniards, and used by them during their long occupa-
tion of Lombardy. I have likewise tried the Spanish sibi-
lation ^' Pss-Pss ;'' but I do not think Italian waiters like
that way of being called. Often the noise in the caffe is so
great, that your voice is drowned by the screams of neigh-
bouring politicians. The best manner, then, in order to
18C ROME AND VENICE.
attract attention is to hammer on the table with a knife, or
bang a spoon violently against a glass. As a rule, the
Italian waiter does not come when you do call to him. He
looks over his shoulder, regards you sleepily, and says,
"Eccomi/" — "Behold me;" or, as we should say, "Here
I am." Two thousand years ago I suppose he said " AdsurrC*
when the customer in the toga began to grow impatient.
But ** EccomV does not mean that he is coming. It means
simply that he is still devoted to your interests, of course,
but not disposed to stir an inch until you call him again.
This you do, to which he responds, " Suhito,** or, to save
trouble, ** Suhit" banging several trays on a neighbouring
table to give you a proper impression of his alacrity of move-
ment, and also, I presume, to waken himself up. But he
does not come. At last you roar and hammer and bang,
and, if you are of the Latin race, invoke Bacchus and the
Madonna and several saints. Then does your waiter shuffle
towards you, flacking the flies away, yawning, and smiling
sweetly. It is impossible to be angry with him, his " Com-
manda," or "What is she pleased to order?" is always put
so afi'ably, " she" being the pronoun used for the courteous
abstraction of your " lordship," which, among Italian nouns,
figures as the feminine substantive " Signoria." Besides,
Italy is a country where time is of no account ; and a caffe
is a place where you are bound to waste as much of the
great old dust-contractor's sand as ever you possibly can.
There is no rule without an exception. In the four eman-
cipated cities of Yenetia, the w-aiters neither ya^vn nor shuffle,
nor flack the flies away. They run like the nimble stag;
they leap like troutlings in a pool ; they fly like \E*eter Wil-
GAFFES. 187
kins ; they are glib of speecli ; they give change with light-
ning rapidity ; they rival American bar-keepers in the celerity
with which they serve cool drinks — to be sure they only serve,
and do not compound them ; they are here, there, and every-
where, like Figaro in the opera. They never go to bed — at
least it is unlikely that anybody in Vicenza has been to bed
since the twenty-fifth of July. It is a marvel how they keep
awake. Voltaire, you know, had become so entirely intel-
lectual, — having brains even in the tips of his fingers, like
the inhabitants of the Island of Ilicichi, — and drank so much
black coffee, that when he had come to be about eighty-five
years of age he had ceased to be able to sleep at all. He was
always up and doing, always drinking black coffee, always
writing, always sneering away religion and royalty, and the
rest of it. He would have gone on, perhaps, drinking coffee
and denying things, sleeplessly, to this day, had he not
tumbled one evening into that great sound sleep which knits
up the ravelled sleeves of everybody's cares — death.
I fancy the Yicenzan waiters must be kept up by means
somewhat similar. The properties of coffee were, I believe,
first discovered by an Arab farmer, who noticed that his
camels, after browsing on the berries of a certain shrub, were
unusually frisky and preternaturally wide-awake. What may
be good for camels may serve the turn of waiters. Green tea
is a capital thing to banish sleep withal ; but it is too ex-
pensive in Venetia for ordinary consumption. I imagine
that the hard-hearted proprietor of the caffe at Vicenza ad-
ministers copious doses of double-distilled essence of coffee
to his waiters every half-hour, otherwise I really do not see
how they could keep up. But this sort of thing cannot last.
188 ROME AND VENICE.
Eeaction, collapse, must follow every kind of excess. Those
high -pressure waiters must crever at last, and despair and
die, as the sleepless old Arouet did.
And my incident ? It is but a trifle — the barest baga-
telle. I made its mention, at the commencement of this
paper, only a pretext for telling my readers something about
Italian caffes. In this one at Vicenza I lingered very late —
far into the small hours, I am afraid ; for until this moment
so rapid have been one's movements, so troublous the times,
and so confused one's impressions of travel, that I am not
quite certain as to whether I lived anywhere at Vicenza, or
whether I had merely the day occupancy of a room, after the
manner immortalised in Box and Cox, and, being Box, was
bound to walk the streets or haunt the caffes during the
hours that Cox was slumbering on the pallet, which at 8 a.m.
once more became mine. I can remember, vaguely, some
hours of feverish tossing and perturbed day-dreams, among
a colony of fleas, and some wretched breakfasts and wretch-
eder dinners at the Three Moors, or the Two Wheels, or the
Iron Crown, or the Golden Star — I am sure I forget the
exact name of mine inn at Vicenza ; but I know I did not
go to bed as Christian men should do, and that I haunted
the caffes fearfully.
The performance at the Theatre Eoyal Vicenza was over.
Like its brother at Kovigo, it had been closed for I know not
how many years ; but now the new era had commenced, and
the new impresario — let us call him Angelo Scartafifacci —
had reopened the establishment with a troupe that drew
crowded audiences. Scartaff'acci's prospectus was wonderful
to read. "Long," he wrote, "has the noble and elevating
GAFFES. 189
dramatic art been crushed beneath the iron heel of the usurp-
ing stranger. Despotism has watched with a jealous eye the
efforts of that grandiose profession whose aim is the portrayal
of human passions, the delineation of human sentiment, and
the inculcation of all that can delight, refine, and elevate the
mind. Long has the tyrant, sword in hand, and the clerical
censor, brandishing his scissors, forbidden the representation
of some of the noblest masterpieces of human genius. The
drama, like everything else in Italy, has been gagged, stifled,,
shackled by the accursed Tedesco. But the reign of liberty
and progress has begun. The Stranger is no more — La
straniero non e piu. Therefore the director and dramatic
artist, Angelo Scartaffacci, has the honour to inform the in-
telligent and gentle Signoria of Vicenza that the performance
will commence this evening with a grand drama, in four acts,
translated from La Dame aux Camellias, by Alexandre
Dumas j^Zs." Yes, there is such a thing as a bathos even in
prospectus-writing, Angelo Scartaffacci !
The performance of so much vaunted promise was at an
end, and the audience came pouring into all the caffes for
ices and cool drinks. There was no incident in this, you
will say. But in this there was : that, amidst a great
rustling and fluttering of silks and gauzes, there was in-
ducted into this public coffee-house a party of no less than
five elegantly-dressed ladies. Ay, there were mamma and
her daughters, and there was grandmamma too, if I mistake
not ; and age was venerable, and youth ravishingly beautiful,
of course. It was a radiant vision of bare necks and
shoulders and arms, and dainty hands enclosed in white-kid
gloves, and daintier feet in pink-silk hose and white-satin
190 ROME AND VENICE.
shoes, and wreaths, and veils, and bouquets, and fans, and
bracelets, and flashing gems. For all escort they had but
one weak-kneed little old gentleman in evening dress, a tall
white cravat, and a sprinkling of powder on his head. They
were soon surrounded by a bevy of Italian officers, who
fluttered like moths around them ; and then there were
smiles, and bows, and tappings of fans, and waving of finger-
tips.
This is my incident, pure and simple. There is nothing
in it, you will say. Why should not a party of ladies come
to a cafe and eat ices after the play ? But to those who
have known this country of aforetime there would be a volume
in the sight I saw. No fact could be more significant of the
thorough and definitive shut-up of Austria, and of the com-
plete plucking of the double-headed eagle, than this appari-
tion of Italian women of station, in full dress, and in a public
coffee-house so lately the resort of Austrian officers. When
tiie Tedeschi were here, an Italian lady who had so shown
herself in the company of Germans would have been, both by
her countrymen and her own sex, as bitterly scorned as
would be a Mahometan woman who, casting aside haick and
serroualj walked down the Kue Babazzoun at Algiers, with
Balmoral boots, a porkpie - hat, and a chignon, arm in
arm with a French sergeant of sappers. But such a thing
would be impossible at El Djezzir. The very stones would
rise and cry aloud against the unveiled one. As morally
impossible would have been the appearance of an Italian
signora in a caffe " used" by the Tedeschi. The times have
altered. Those who scowled and made faces at John a'Nokes
have no looks too bright, and no words too sweet, for John
GAFFES. 191
a' Styles. Ojalaf May the galley row bravely into port ! May
the " Carnival of Venice" once more become the most en-
chanting air that ever was played on the fiddle ; and may the
new brooms, when they grow old, continue to sweep as deftly
as they do now !
xn.
VENETIA.
Ponte d'Arana, Venetia, August 31.
Here we are on the brink of the piping times of peace
— until war breaks out again somewhere else. The winter
of our discontent is made glorious summer by the sun of
Prague, and the "Empire is peace" — until next time — and
the Paris Exhibition of 1867 will be its profit. Now has
your helmet become a hive of bees, and you must live on
prayers, which are old age's alms. Now is the time for
the lute and the dulcimer, and the lady's chamber ; and the
traveller who gnawed mouldy bread and weevilly biscuit till
he fell ill of dysentery blows up the head-waiter at the table-
dilate because, for two days running, there has been no
clear soup for dinner. Now do you, the homeless tatterde-
malion, threaten to leave your hotel because there is a hole
in the mosquito-curtains. Now do you, who went content-
edly as tattered and torn as the man whom the shaven -
and-shorn priest married to that all-forlorn maiden, who
milked that crumpled-horned cow, immortalised in nursery
anthology in connection with a dog, a cat, a rat, and some
malt that lay in a house built by one Jack, shudder to be
seen in the Giardino Pubblico in a wideawake, affect light-
kid gloves in the Corso, and become very particular about
the cut of your pantaloons. Pantaloons ! last July you were
nearly as destitute of pantaloons as Evan Dhu Maccoimbich.
VENETIA. 193
Now do you, as is the way of the world, begin to forget
that you were ever poor, ever hungry, ever dirty and ragged,
and as full of sores as that just man of the land of Uz. Now,
finally, is the time to lead the "gentle life" — by which I
I mean that you can travel like a gentleman, order people
about, give yourself airs, and be quite oblivious of those
not very remote days wiien, from day to day, it was on the
cards for you to be shot by misadventure, or hung for a
spy.
With paper on which you can write, ink that mil flow,
a pen that will spell, a roof over your head, and the cer-
tainty that there will be something hot for dinner, and that
the Austrians will not drop in on you before bedtime and
steal your greatcoat, you naturally feel inclined for study
and reflection of a light and elegant kind, to polish your
sentences, and look up your dates and illustrations. It is
impossible to be grammatical in time of war. Bellona has
a standing feud with Priscian, and breaks his head when-
ever she comes across him. I must have written this
summer many incoherent and ill-spelt letters ; but in future
— always until next time — you may look for literary eiforts
of the most elaborate nature. I proudly point to my last
notice of Ferrara as a sample of what may be done in this
line. It is true that to the initiated the exercitation in
question may bear some slight traces of ''cram;" and I
honestly confess that all the literary and historical facts are
taken bodily out of ''Murray." But what of that ? Murray's
cram is the most digestible I know ; and he enables you to
quote Dante and Guicciardini and Frizzi, without having
actually read a line of those admired authors. The sole in-
o
194 BOMB AND VENICE.
convenience connected with this mode of study is that you
are apt to forget all your cramming within twenty-four hours
of your having crammed it.
I remember hearing of a gentleman, a barrister, accus-
tomed to **getting-up cases" between dinner- and bed-
time, who was invited to spend a couple of days down in
Yorkshire, with a worthy squire, M.P. for a Riding, and a
great authority on all agricultural matters. So, ere the in-
vited guest stepped into the train at King's-cross, he pro-
vided himself with the volume of the Encyclopcedia Britan-
Qiica containing the article "Agriculture," and with Stephens,
and Caird, and Jethro Tull, and Our Farm of Four Acres.
"With these invaluable treatises he crammed himself for a
couple of hundred miles, and by the time the train reached
York he almost ran over with deep drainage, subsoiling,
liquid manure, rotations of crops, and sliced mangold-wurzel.
His first dinner was a great success. His host was delighted.
Never, he said, had he met with a person so thoroughly
well-informed on agricultural matters. He insisted that his
guest should prolong his stay to a week at least, and in
an evil hour the barrister consented. The great county
families were invited to meet him. There came the cele-
brated protectionist Sir Bos Bovis, Bart. ; Mr. Sheepskin,
the eminent conveyancer from Doncaster, who has made
thousands of broad acres change hands ; and old Lady Acres,
of Pomona Court, who presents a new smockfrock once in
every five years to the bold peasant who has been hedging
and ditching for half a century, and has brought up a family
of not less than nine children in the principles of the Church
of England, and without receiving parochial relief. With
VENETIA. 195
these came the eminent philanthropist, Mr. Gates, of Titus
Park, who, out of his great bounty, " built a new bridge
at the cost of the county;" and the rector of Lambswool-
Parva, with all the Miss Ramsbottoms. They were all eager
to hear the brilliant London barrister, who knew so much
about farming. Unhappily he had left the Encylopsedia and
Jethro TuU and the rest in the railway carriage, and in the
course of three days, woful to relate, the cram had all gone
out of him. At the state dinner he hadn't a word to say
about pigs ; broke down altogether on steam-ploughs ; and,
on going out the next morning on horseback, didn't know
wheat from barley. I need not say that his reputation col-
lapsed dismally, and that he ever afterwards eschewed the
Northern Circuit.
I recalled this anecdote and meditated much upon it,
when, sitting down at Como lately to write a letter about
Vicenza, I found that I had left my much-prized " Murray"
behind me at Milan. I have recovered it by this time, and
brought it with me to Padua, and further still to Ponte
d'Arana, on the very verge of the Austrian outposts ; but
on reflection I have thought it best to tell you only what I
saw at Vicenza, without the aid of Murray," and to leave the
public at home to interpolate the cramming as condiment
if they choose. This is an age of liberty, and I am not so
unreasonable as the man in Mathews's At Home, who in-
sisted that his neighbour should take mustard with his
beef.
I found young Italy actively employed in sweeping Vicenza
clean with the very newest of brooms. The peculiar virtues
of unworn besoms have become proverbial. The principal
190 ROME AND VENICE.
energies of the Vicensi seemed to be devoted to the oblitera-
tion of all signs and symptoms which could by any means
recall the memory of the late Austrian dominion. The
Tedeschi themselves, their financial embarrassments notwith-
standing, are a thrifty race, and, ere they vanished, they
carefully removed all the governmental archives, all the plate
and linen in the official residences, all the black-and-yellow
flags which were wont to float so proudly over the public
buildings, and so many of the ensigns and scutcheons bearing
the effigy of Francis Joseph or the double eagle as were
portable. But veiy many of the latter were too firmly fixed,
or were cut in stone, or painted in fresco, and these the
patriots of Vicenza had been during the last fortnight inde-
fatigably hacking, hewing, rubbing, painting, and scraping
out. Imperialism was at a discount. Eoyalty was in the
ascendant, and the Kaiserliche Adler nowhere.
Watching the anti-Cesarean operation so ruthlessly per-
formed on the bird of love, I could hardly persuade myself
that I had not lately been reading PauVs Letters to his
Kinsfolk; that this was not Paris in 1815, instead of Vicenza
in 1866 ; and that all these scrapers and erasers were not
rubbing out the symbols of the Bonaparte, and putting up
the emblems of the Bourbon. Down with the eagle and up
with the fleur-de-lys, or the cross of Savoy; it does not
matter which. Death to the man who cries " Vive VEmpe-
?-e7tr," and let everybody, on pain of extermination, shout " Viva
il Re r If one must needs shout, I prefer the grido of
the French philosopher who cried " Vive le Boi/ ma femme
ctmoi;'' or, better still, that shout of shouts, " Viveujious
autres / a has les autres /" in which I take it the whole
VENETIA. 197
philosophy of patriotism is composed. For there is nothing
new under the sun, and viva anybody, seeing that we know
he must die, and that probably to-morrow we shall denounce
him as a humbug.
Meanwhile, the Vicenzesi went on scraping Yaliantly.
Streets had changed their names. Garibaldi stood sponsor
for some, the King and the Principe Umberto for others.
Not a blind alley would condescend to ask Francesco Giu-
seppe to hold it at the font, or foreswear, on its behalf, the
devil and all his works and the pomps and vanities of this
wicked world. I had a godmother once, who thus vrent bail
for me. She is alive, I believe, and I hope she does not
suffer much anguish through the knowledge of the mess her
godson has made of things generally, and of the fine market
to which he has brought his pigs.
All being vanity here below, one could scarcely refuse the
sardonic grin to see how very easily the King went up and
the Kaiser went down. Take this police-office ; for instance,
"J. R. Divizione di Sicurezza Puhhlica'" was written up here
on the plaster three weeks ago. There was a world of mean-
ing in those two letters. ''I. E." meant ''Imperiale Reale"
— Austrian despotism, Viennese bureaucracy, standing army.
Quadrilateral, conscription, forced loans, spy system, Spiel-
berg, priestcraft, bastinado, willow-rods, chains, courts-mar-
tial, white coats, anything you please. Under the ''I. R."
two million of people wept and groaned, tore their hair and
beat their breasts, were scourged and imprisoned, and exiled,
and hanged, and shot. And now comes a journeyman house-
painter, at four lire a-day, and a tricolored cockade in his
cap. He mounts a ladder and scrapes out the letter "I."
198 ROME AND VENICE.
from the plaster. Hey, presto! the thing is done. Bas-
tinado and white coats, spies and Spielberg, chains and
bureaucrats, sink through the central trap, surrounded by
lurid flames, like wicked Don Juan in the pantomime ; and
the genius of Hberty, accompanied by flying spirits, dexte-
rously supported by iron rods affixed to occult parts of their
anatomy, stands on one leg in the centre of a revolving star,
in front of a magnificent transformation-scene. How much
used Mr. E. T. Smith's pantomimes at Old Drury to cost
him ? A pretty penny, I imagine ; but here a few coppers
and the touch of a trowel have sufficed to transform the Dark
Domain of Despotism and Despair into the Kadiant Eealms
of Kegal Kegeneration. Despotism has had its "I" knocked
out, and the *' Reale Divizione di Puhblica Sicurezza,^ a
strictly liberal and constitutional institution, remains. In
many cases the workmen had not been at the pains of scrap-
ing out the objectionable letter, and had merely covered it
with a coat of white paint, through which, yet damp, it
loomed a ghastly blue, like an alphabetical ghost.
Wagon-loads of pictures of the King, the Eoyal Family,
Garibaldi, Cialdini, and Medici, and "the rest of the loyal
and patriotic toasts," must have come down from Bologna, or
else the printsellers must have kept a large stock of pro-
hibited portraits in reserve. I did not see any pictorial
representations of La Marmora or Persano. I wondered what
had become of all the Kaisers and Kaiserinns, of Benedek
and Clam-Gallas, and of the archdukes whose name is legion.
Hapless Erzherzogs ! There are so many of them that the
Austrian Government, hot in its new-born zeal for retrench-
ment, is about to cut down their handsome annual allowances
VENETIA. 199
by one-half. The nation, looking with dismay on the pro-
digious number of princes of the blood, insists on a pecuniary
" reduction on taking a quantity." It will come to this, that
at last an archduke will have to work for his living. Yet,
three weeks ago, they, and Albrecht, "victor of Custozza,"
and Benedek — whom it is proposed to make Prince of Frin-
desland — and the rest, swaggered in their white coats and
twirled their moustaches in a hundred cartes de visite in the
Vicenza shop-windows. That wonderful transformation-scene
has swallowed them all up.
xm. .
FINIS AUSTRIiE.
Venice, September 22.
The cruel and unreasonable delay in the transfer of Venice
from foreign to native rule is beginning to bear evil fruit.
Every day a more bitter feeling is shown by the townspeople
towards the Austrian soldiery — a feeling which, so far as
the common soldiers are concerned, is reciprocated, and with
interest. The flux of proclamations from the inexhaustible
Director Frank — for police avvisl are continually appearing —
seems rather to aggravate than to assuage public irritation.
The Venetians urge, not without reason, that if the Austrians
have ceded Venetia to France, they have no longer any legal
locus standi in Venice; and that enactments respecting the
police of the city should properly issue either from the
French Commissioner or from the Venetian municipality.
Again, when the Austrians plead that they only publish
exasperating manifestoes and keep their patrols prowling
about for the pui-pose of preserving publiqn tranquillity, they
are reminded that their own presence in the city constitutes
in itself the sole obstacle to the maintenance of good order.
If they would evacuate the place, or at least withdraw their
troops to the forts until matters at Vienna were arranged,
the chances of discontent and outbreak among the population
of Venice would be very much reduced. As it is, the smoul-
dering hatred with which the lower classes here regard the
FINIS AUSTKI^. 201
foreigners who, after formally surrendering their suzerain
rights, still claim to be de-facto masters, may blaze forth any
day in open revolt, and the wishes of the most bigoted Aus-
triacanti who yearn for a little shedding of Italian blood
may thus be gratified.
It is reported in town this morning that a serious riot
took place in the course of yesterday afternoon on the' quay
called the Canareggio, a very poor and populous quarter close
to the railway terminus, and one which — always substituting
a waterway for a roadway — may be qualified as the White-
chapel of Venice, just as the Calle Larga Maritima, hard by
to the Giardino Pubblico, may be described as its Katcliff-
highway. There was a row, then, yesterday, so they say,
between the Austrian jpolizei, who are armed and accoutred
in every respect as soldiers, and some gondoliers and long-
shore men. A good deal of bad language was exchanged,
and thence a transition took place to blows, which is by no
means usual, the bargee class in Venice being renowned for
slanging much but hitting seldom. The gendarmes drew
their cutlasses ; one of the prowling patrols came up to help
them; a round game of sword, dagger, and bayonet took
place ; and the end of the fray was the killing of one Italian,
and the wounding of four. It is all but impossible to get
at the rights of this story, and therefore I tell it under all
possible reserve. There may have been a mere street-row on
the Canareggio, and there may have been a really sanguinary
riot. You must not expect to hear the truth about it from
anybody. The Gazzetta Uffiziale will take care to preserve
a discreet silence on the matter ; the Austrian police, were
you to ask them for any information, would return an " eva-
202 ROME AND. VENICE.
sive answer" — equivalent to telling you to mind your own
business ; and any Venetian account of the transaction would
be untrustworthy, from the deep - seated propensity in the
Venetian mind to exaggerate and misrepresent everything
in which the Austrians are interested.
There have been published about the alien rulers of
Venice in the Italian papers, and within the last four months,
a series of lies perhaps the most prodigious ever known since
the immortal American bulletins of General Joseph Hooker.
As a rule, I have been very cautious in repeating the stories
I have heard; but if Homer, the original special corre-
spondent who " did" the siege of Troy, occasionally nods, his
humbler followers in prose may be allowed a nap now and
then ; and on two or three occasions I have been taken in by
the circumstantial fibs told by the Italian press. For in-
stance, there was a particular village in the Tyrol said to
have been burnt by General Garibaldi after he had left Rocca
d'Anfo. There never was such a village, and General Gari-
baldi never burnt it. Again, there were the three thousand
cavalry horses reported to be stabled in the Giardini Pubblici
at Venice. I went straight to the Public Gardens the last
time I came to Venice, and found not a square inch of stable
nor the ghost of a troop-horse there. It was only a lively lie
on the part of some Tedesco-hating journalist.
Again, at Milan, the other day, I read in a very well-
accredited Italian paper the story of a " deplorable tragedy"
said to have occurred on a certain day at Verona, and to
which I might have attached some degree of credence, had
I not happened to have been at Verona on the very day in
question, and to know very well that no such deplorable
FINIS AUSTRIiE. 203
tragedy had taken place. Three little boys, the imaginative
scribe set forth, had been brought by their fond parents on
a visit to the fair city on the Adige, and were taken for a
walk on the Piazza d'Armi, attired in mimic Garibaldino
costume. The tiny redshirts were pounced upon by a squad
of Austrian gendarmes, and forthwith arrested. Thereupon
a stout Veronese butcher, standing with his arms akimbo at
his shop-door, remarked in a taunting tone to the polizei that
against mere infants they were very valorous, but that, were
they confronted with real Garibaldini, they would take to
their heels and run. The remark of the fabulous butcher
was as inappropriate as it was uncomplimentary, seeing that,
on the rare occasions when white coats and red shirts have
been confronted, the Garibaldini itAvas, in most cases, and
not the Tedeschi, who ran away. Let this pass, however.
An Austrian gendarme, the scribe continued, maddened by
the butcher's sarcasm, drew his bayonet and stabbed him
fuor fuori — through and through. He died on the spot.
What became of the three children is not stated. Perhaps
they were cast into a fiery furnace, or forcibly enlisted into
the Kaiser-jager regiment, or taken to the Castello, there to
expire under the bastinado. Now the whole of this story was
a lie, pure and simple. No such disturbance took place, and
no such deeds were committed.
I hope the encounter on the Canareggio, if not entirely
disproved, may be reduced to harmless proportions. Hitherto
the bad blood existing between the Austrians and the Vene-
tians has shown itself more under a grotesque than a fero-
cious aspect. Coarse allusions to " Cecco Beppo,'' the dis-
paraging diminutive for Francesco Giuseppe of Austria, may
204 ROME AND VENICE.
be found scrawled on a few dead walls; and on the Cana-
reggio, I am told, some provocative persons have, with despe-
rate charcoal, written up '' Morte agl'i AustrlacJiV on the
wine- shop shutters ; but these wall-scribblings, after all, are
but effete and contemptible things. Wise governors would
do well to take no notice of them. But wisdom in the go-
vernment of the world, or in the government of cities or
parishes, is not often to be found. I don't think that the
personal comforts or the mental serenity of the Croats, or
the Magyars, or the Czechs, or the Poles, who happen to be
soldiers in the Austrian army and in garrison at Venice, are,
to any appreciable extent, disturbed by the graffiti of a few
desperate bargees.
The Austrian soldietB when off duty preserve a remark-
ably philosophic, not to say stolid, countenance, and seem to
care a great deal less about politics than about procuring
as large a quantity of beer, ripe figs, and tobacco as is con-
sistent with the exiguity of their daily pay. Moreover, a
large proportion of their number are wholly ignorant of the
Italian language; and, could they speak it, their limited
acquaintance with Lord Palmerston's *' three r's" would
render them incompetent to understand the libels indicted
against them on the dead walls. I think we are apt to
assume rather too much as regards the mental susceptibi-
lities of private sentinels. I have heard of godly Scotch
Presbyterian regiments in Malta whose souls were harrowed
at having to present arms when a Koman- Catholic procession
passed by ; but I doubt whether the Onety-Oneth regiment,
in the aggregate, troubles its head much about the religious
bickerings of Peter, Jack, or Martin.
%
FINIS AUSTRIA. 205
*'He is risen," said the Czar Nicholas, issuing from his
palace on the morning of Easter-day, and saluting with the
customary embrace the grenadier on guard.
" So they say," replied the grenadier sententiously. Now
it was his duty, as a soldier of the Orthodox Greek Church,
to have responded, "He is risen indeed."
The Czar was appalled at the man's impiety. ** Nephew
of a dog — " he began.
" May it please your Majesty," urged the soldier, " I am
number seventeen in company B, second battalion ; I come
from Yorghi-Karai in Krim Tartary, and I am a Maho-
metan."
The Autocrat passed on ; but I even wonder that he did
not forthwith issue an order of the day commanding all his
Mahometan troops forthwith to embrace Christianity under
pain of running the gauntlet in case of recusancy.
As with religion, so it may be with politics. The white-
coated soldier who reads — if he can read at all — '* Death to
the Austrians" on the walls of Venice will not necessarily be
lashed to frenzy. The insult may not be addressed to him.
He is, as likely as not, the very reverse of an Austrian. He
may be a Slav, a Magyar, a Polack, a Czech, an Italian Ty-
rolese, an Istrian, a Dalmatian. More than all this, in his
heart of hearts, deep down under dense and dull layers of
concrete ignorance, stupidity, and the mechanical apathy be-
gotten of drill and heavy marching order and field-days and
outpost duty (the whole consolidated by bullying and the
stick), there may be an obscure kind of consciousness that he
has no business in Venice, and that he is helping to oppress
a nationality there.
206 ROME AND VENICE.
More obscure, but still latent, may there be in that poor
man-machine's mind the conviction that he himself is also,
after a fashion, an oppressed nationality. They read out to
him yesterday in the barrack-yard a general order, in which
he was told that he loved the Kaiser passionately, that he
was always ready to shed his blood for the good cause and
the sacred rights of the House of Hapsburg. The Kaiser
thanked him with all his heart ; but ten minutes afterwards
Fritz Schweinbein, sergeant, threatened him with the black
hole for not turning out his toes properly while the general
order was being read. What is the general order to him ?
what is the good cause ? what does he care about the sacred
rights of the House of Hapsburg ? Somebody violated his
sacred rights when they took him away from his old mother
and the cottage where he was born, and cropped his head and
made a soldier of him. Piet and Jan, who essayed to revin-
dicate their sacred rights by running back to their cottages,
were caught and put into the dark dungeon. Piet they laid
across a truss of straw and larruped with cudgels, and Jan
they shot. The sumvor does not run away; he will turn
out his toes when the sergeant tells him ; he will fire off his
gun or shove with his bayonet when the Hauptmann gives
the word, because he has been taught to do it, because he
does not know any better, because he cannot help himself,
because he does not wish to share the fate of Piet or Jan.
As for the Kaiser, whom he never saw, and of whom he
knows no more than the Welsh school-child who told the
examiner that the King of England was an *' old man who
lived in London in a house of gold, and ate taxes," I don't
think the Kaiser's love for his soldiers, or the soldiers' love
FINIS AUSTEI^. 207
for their Kaiser, enters much into the actual state of affairs,
which sends armies raised by merciless conscriptions to fight
in quarrels to whose merits nine-tenths of the fighters must
be utterly indifferent.
The persons who are really annoyed at the taunts of the
Venetians, at the denunciations and libels, at the seditious
cries of the barcaroli and the wall-scribblings of "Moi^te agli
Austriachi''^ and " Vogliamo Vittorio Emmanuele per nostra
Be" are mainly Austriacanti, foreign sympathisers with the .
expiring (Jynasty, and as a rule more Austrian than the Aus-
trians themselves. Have you not frequently been aware of
people who were good enough to trouble themselves much
more about your private affairs than you yourself were in the
habit of doing ? There is more than one English exquisite
of the "haw-haw" order, more than one dignified lady akin
to that distinguished member of the Tite-Barnacle family, who
opined that the disasters of Catholic Emancipation and the
scandal of Parliamentary Keform might have been averted had
George Barnacle only possessed the firmness of mind to " call
out the cavalry," and who are now inconsolable to think that the
Austrian domination in Venetia is really about to cease, but
who rejoice with unholy glee over every day of its unnecessary
protraction, and who would like to see the Venetians bullied,
gagged, and if possible scourged, until the very last moment
allowed by the Law of Force. These are the ladies and gen-
tlemen who are so very irate at the natural restiveness of a
population who feel that the hour of their enfranchisement is
at hand, and who resent, as a wanton insult, the parading of
bilboes and shackles, and the flourishing of a cowhide over
their heads, when it is patent that the public opinion of
208 ROME AND VENICE.
Europe would no longer permit the nigger-driver to apply
those engines of torture to their limbs.
A lady sympathiser with the *' Expiring Anaconda" — if I
may be permitted to cull a beauteous trope from Yankeeland
— recently distinguished herself in a very funny manner in
Venice. A pork-pie hat on her head, and a parasol in her
hand, she was taking a walk in the Merceria dell' Orologio,
when she espied at a street-corner one of those wicked
little placards headed, '^Vogliamo Vittorio Emmanuele, d-c.
dc. dec.'' This was too much for her Austriacantis^l, and in-
continent she proceeded to an overt act of suppression. With
the ferrule of her parasol she essayed to dig the obnoxious
placard from the wall ; nay, if report speaks true, she enlisted
her fair finger-nails, protected, let us hope, by gloves, in the
good work. A nice employment for a lady; but politics,
although the fact may have escaped the notice of Mr. J. S.
Mill, have an almost infallible tendency towards unsexing
the better sex. A crowd of idlers gathered round the zealous
sympathiser. Grunts and groans were heard ; and the vulgar
little boys became pointedly personal, as vulgar little boys
are apt to do everywhere. To them speedily entered an Aus-
trian officer, who, in lieu of advising the lady to go home,
aided her, with the pummel of his sword-hilt, to erase the
terrible little bill, and the pair then withdrew, amidst much
hooting and hissing.
All this is nonsensical enough ; but carried to excess may
bring about some very ugly complications. The blame in
the matter lies, I cannot help thinking, at the Austrian door,
or at least at that of the diplomatists at Vienna. Venice
should have been evacuated at least three weeks ago. The
FINIS AUSTRIA. 209
surrender by Austria has long been a fait accompli. The
necessity of pecuniary compensation was admitted by Italy
as one of the bases of the armistice, and the mere question
of amount would have been as well settled subsequently as
prior to the evacuation. Were the Venetians men of marble
or snow, they might have managed to suppress their real
feelings, and to disguise their real wishes until the last Aus-
trian "pyroscaphe" had cleared out from Malamocco; but as
they happen only to be made of flesh and blood, elements
which, at a certain temperature, are apt to melt and boil, I
cannot but regard the continued system of tacit provocation
resulting from the Austrian presence here as a very perilous
experiment. No good ever came of tying down the safety-
valves of high-pressure engines with whipcord. I have seen
more than one boiler burst through the employment of those,
means.
XIV.
THE SURKENDER OF VENICE.
October 18.
At six o'clock this morning the Austrian dominion in Venice
ended, so far as human prescience can foresee, for ever. The
last bands of German soldiers who, by a blundering policy,
had been permitted to linger in the barracks and the public
buildings, and whose continued presence was a source of
legitimate irritation to the Venetians, packed up their need-
ments and slunk away during the night of the 16th. I do
not remember to have witnessed a spectacle more melan-
choly, and at the same time more suggestive, than that
whieh I saw about midnight yesterday under thp colonnade
of St. Mark's Place. A young Austrian officer — a captain —
liad got his route. There was a war-steamer waiting for him
somewhere, to ta^e him to the land of the Teuton ; but he
did not know exactly where she lay. He was wandering in
a pitiably desultory manner about the sotto portici, two or-
derlies following him in obsequious but uncertain obedience ;
one bearing on his brawny shoulders the captain's port-
manteau, the other laden with his shako, his holsters, and
his sword-case. The poor young gentleman was evidently
lost in Venice. He no longer recognised the capital whose
inhabitants he had so long trampled under foot. In vain, by
dint of his eye-glass did he strive to discern one friendly face
THE SUEEENDER OF VENICE. 211
of whose possessor lie might ask the way to a place where he
could take oars and go away for good.
" Eetributive justice, Captain," I thought; and I dare-
say that my thoughts were echoed, unconsciously, by a good
many Venetians. " Eetributive justice ! The poisoned
chalice is at last commended to your own lips ! Within
these last few days the handwriting has come out on the
wall, and the fingers of a man's hand have written, as in
sand, that the Medes and Persians are at Meatre, waiting
to cross the railway-bridge which you vainly threatened to
blow up with gunpowder, and that your kingdom is given to
another."
I know that there is nothing meaner or shabbier than to
exult over a fallen enemy. I know that the Austrians have
many good and estimable points. I know that it is through
the default of their own stupid and headstrong Government
that they have lost the fairest province upon which God's
sun ever shone ; and yet I confess that I did not feel at all
sorry when I saw the Austrian captain wandering about like
a strayed puppy under the sotto portici. My thoughts
carried me back just four months, miniie three days. I
remembered that on the 14th of June 1866, I had to bend
the neck and hinge the knee to the Archduke Albert for
permission to leave Venetia, and was repulsed from the outer
rooms of the Austrian Hauptmann, his aide-de-camp, who
was wolfing beef and cabbage at Yerona, at eight o'clock in
the morning. He told me to " wait down-stairs," did he ?
until he chose to consider my petition to be allowed to quit
the "Austrian Empire." Aha ! it is the aide-de-camp, now,
who has to " wait down-stairs" in the cold, and is of less
212 HOME AND VENICE.
account than the meanest creature on the Canareggio. This
is, I am aware, very unchristian and very uncharitable ; but
it is human nature ; and if you will be good enough to mul-
tiply by five thousand the feelings of annoyance I Buffered
through a temporary slight in the citadel of Verona last June,
and add to the product a long-accumulated score of hatred
and disgust, you may form some idea of the sentiment en-
tertained by the Venetians for the now ousted Government
by which they have been, for so many years, bullied, out-
raged, and oppressed.
I was at Florian's until very late, and at the Specchi until
later, and at Quadri's, and, indeed, wherever there was a
chance of seeing Venetian life on the Eve of Liberation ; but
up to the time I went to bed, which was at a most unholy
hour, there were Austrian officers about. Wrapped in their
gray gaberdines, their lorgnons faithful to their mild blue
eyes, their sabres still clanking, their spurs still jingling
on the pavement, their white teeth, blonde whiskers, and
fresh complexions still gleaming in the gas, they continued,
until the night was very old, to vindicate their claim to be
the best " set-up," most soldier-like, and most gentlemanly-
looking officers in Europe. Somehow or another, between
the time I retired to rest and the time I got up again,
they disappeared.
There is a vague and mysterious period during the small
hours, so Mr. Greenwood tells us in his beautiful Essay
iviihout End, during which all kinds of curious things are
done — during which the Palpable fades into the Impalpable —
and sick men preferably die, and infants elect to live. It must
have been in this shadowy time that the Tedeschi went away,
THE SURRENDER OP VENICE. 213
to return, I hope, no more. It was a great astonisliment, a
vast relief, to walk forth on to the Piazzetta in the bright
October sun, and find that there were no more Croats under
the arcade of the Palazzo Ducale. The Cancellate, that grim
range of dungeon-bars, which screened the colonnade, and
behind v/hich the Austrian drums and the Austrian banner,
the hated ScJuvarz-gelh, used to rest — behind which the
Austrian bayonets used to be piled — behind which the
Austrian soldiers used to squat on their benches, puffing at
their meerschaums, and contemplating the Imperiale e Keale
Zecca opposite "vvith a stale and accustomed look — behind
which, in fine, were ranged those six-pounders whose trail
was so terrific, and which w^ere to blow the Venetians into
peelings of onions if they dared to misbehave themselves —
the Cancellate, those most obnoxious of iron railings, were
gone. They had been torn up bodily by a suddenly enfran-
chised people. Gondoliers, Graribaldini, beggars even, had lent
a hand to wrench those prison stockades from their sockets.
Even strangers and chance visitors, yielding to an impulse
of enthusiasm, had rushed forward to help unroot the ugly
signs of Austrian rule.
Was there not, as historians tell us, a turbaned Turk
among the fierce French patriots who assaulted the Bastille ?
He could have known nothing about lettres de cachet, or La-
tude, or the Man with the Iron Mask, that muslin-kerchiefed
Moslem ; yet, when the time came, he tucked up his sleeves,
and went to work with a will to pull down that horrible old
castle of the Devil.
The Cancellate w^ere the last outward and visible signs
that remained of the Austrian rule in Venice. The double
214 ROME AND VENICE.
eagle had disappeared some days since from the ensigns of
the tobacconists. The Imperial "I" had been divorced from
the Eoyal " R" on the fa9ades of the Police- and Post-office,
as it had been at Rovigo, at Padua, and at Vicenza. The
Venetian National Guard had been suffered to stand sentry at
that grand Paviglione behind the Palazzo Reale which, of old
time, was only allowed to be tenanted when Majesty itself, or
at least an Austrian Archduke, was resident in Venice. The
Arsenal, the Mint, the Tobacco-factory, the Finances, the
Monte di Pieta, had been given up. But to the guard-house
under the Ducal Palace, with its unsightly Wombwell's"
show-like Cancellate, the Tedeschi stuck until the very last
moment. Wlien they gave up that, they gave up every-
thing.
At six o'clock on this instant, Friday, General Alemann,
whilom miHtary governor of this city and fortress, bade a
long farewell to Venice. It was time for him, like Ferdinand
in the Tempest, to break his staff, burn his book, and abjure
his magic. A war-steamer waited for him, too ; but it was a
bright and beautiful morning, and he knew full well where to
find her. He came from under the Piazzetta porch of the
royal palace as the clock struck six, rosy, clean-shaven, alert,
and smiling, in that familiar sky-blue tunic, and with that
weU-remembered diamond cross on his brave old breast I had
seen so often in the hot, hopeless nights on the Molo, when
Alemann trotted about monarch of all he surveyed, but very
likely wishing most devoutly that any monarchy but the un-
thankful Venetian one was his to survey. Early as was the
time of his embarkation the Piazzetta was thronged. There
were there a motley crowd: harcaruoliy fishermen, bargees,
THE SURKENDER OF VENICE. 215
blackguards — the raff and scum of Venice, indeed, mingled
with the early-rising toilers.
It was a grand opportunity, a fine occasion whereon to
hoot and yell and screech, and mob a deposed ruler who had
no longer any bayonets at his back. I rejoice to say that as
the ex-governor stepped into his gondola there arose from
the ragged and rough multitude a great, hearty, honest
Evviva f Yes, they cheered him lustily. He had never
done them any harm, and had always striven to do them
good. The valiant and loyal little old gentle-man had at first
only raised his cocked-hat in military punctilio, but when he
heard that sounding shout of " Good-bye, and God be with
you !" he took out his white handkerchief and waved it cheerily
in acknowledgment of the salute. Austrian generals are but
mortals after all, and who shall say that he did not after-
wards convey the cambric to his eyes, to stanch the witness
of " unfamiliar brine" ? Good-bye, brave and trim little cap-
tain, ever ready in the forefront of the battle, but ever kind
and gentle and courteous. The Venetians are good haters ;
but they will long keep a pleasant corner in their hearts
for " Guglielmo Barone di Alemann."
The Venetian population, I opine, would not have pre-
served a demeanour quite so placable had any of the minor
agents of Austriati tyranny ventured upon a public depar-
ture. I verily believe that they would have torn Toggenburg
to pieces. That." indegno cavaliere,'^ as Masetto called Don
Giovanni, was wise enough to steal away many weeks since
to Verona, and thence across the Brenner into Austria. He
did not care about exchanging adieux with the Veneziani.
They might have been apt to remember that the Cavaliere
216 HOME AND VENICE.
Toggenburg's favourite amusement was to go down to the
railway -station, and gloat over the convoys of political
prisoners arriving, handcuffed, from every part of Venetia,
on their way to the Spielburg. I wonder what they will do
with Toggenburg now. Will they find out some petty town in
St^Tia that wants bullying, or will they give him employment
at Trent or Roveredo, where, by a great stretch of imagina-
tion, he may yet fancy he is in the Veneto, and play the
tyrant in the Italian language ?
There have been other subordinate despots in Venice who
did not so timeously retreat as did Toggenburg. Rats will
desert a sinking ship, but there are always some rats who
will remain until the leak assumes alarming proportions. It
was difficult to make the German polizzotti understand that
their presence had become an abomination in a free Italian
ioym. With infinite reluctance did ex-Director Frank pack
up and clear out. During the whole of this week the Italian
National Guard — who have been most indefatigable in main-
taining order and tranquillity — have had hard work in rescuing
the Austrian gendarmes and detectives from the effects of
patriotic indignation. The private policemen have been only
hooted and pelted; but the crowd have on more than one
occasion evinced a lively desire to have the heart's blood of
the police captains and commissaries who were wont to do-
mineer over them.
The day before yesterday one Ramponi, who had been
a terrible tyrant in his time, was within an inch of being
murdered. The crowd discovered him (pretty much as George
Lord Jefferies was discovered looking out of the window of
an ale-house at Wapping) in some obscure caffe of the Cana-
THE SURRENDER OF VENICE. 217
reggio. I am sure I don't know what lie was doing there.
The miserable man had perhaps a monomania for espionage,
and was prowling about, even after his power had departed,
in the hope of ''taking up" somebody. The mob were down
upon him at once ; he was dragged from his lurking-place,
hustled, spat upon, half- stripped, and brought into dangerous
propinquity with a canal, when the National Guard, arriving
in force, rescued him from the horrible fate which befell the
wretched Anviti, elsewhere, seven years ago, and which in all
probability, but for their intervention, would have been Kam-
poni's on "Wednesday. For safety they took him, for a while, to
the nearest guard-house, and then put him on board a gondola,
and transported him to the railway-station, advising him, if
he valued his own skin, to leave Venice by the very next
train. The man put forth a piteous plea to be allowed to
see his wife and children before he left; upon which the
Commandant of the National Guard observed to him that he
must forego that indulgence. "You might remember. Signer
Eamponi," he added, "that when you arrested the Venetians
at dead of night, and put them on board the steamers which
conveyed them to imprisonment or exile, you were not in the
habit of asking them whether they wished to bid farewell to
their wives and families."
All Venice had learnt by heart, on the 15th and 16th,
the official programme put forth by the Congregazione Munici-
pale of Venice as to the order of proceedings to be observed
on this momentous Friday. The Austrians, it v/as stated,,
would have entirely evacuated the city by daybreak. The
formal surrender of the keys by the Austrian General Moring
to the French General Lebceuf, and by him to the Italian
218 ROME AND VENICE.
General Revel, would then take place. At nine o'clock pre-
cisely, amidst a salvo of artillery, the Italian banner would
be hoisted from the three tall masts in the Piazzo San Marco,
which in bygone days bore the symbols of the dominion of
the Most Serene Republic over Venice, Cyprus, and the Morea.
At ten a corps of five thousand Italian troops, under the
command of General Medici, would arrive from the mainland
at the railway-terminus, and would enter the city in three
different bodies and by three different routes ; one body em-
barking in barges, and proceeding straight along the Canal
Grande to the Piazzetta; another coming round, also by
water, by the channel of the Zattare ; the third crossing and
recrossing the two iron bridges, and marching through the
streets — not one of which is wider than old Cranbourn-alley
—to St. Mark's.
The hoisting of the Italian standard was a brief but most
impressive ceremony. From earliest dawn St. Mark's Place
had been thronged ; indeed, I have no doubt that many hun-
dreds of patriots had been bivouacking at Florian's, or among
the benches of the sotto poj^tici, all night. I am not pre-
pared to state that the Piazza, by nine o'clock in the morn-
ing, was full, because it is to me a matter of extreme un-
certainty whether any number of human beings congregated
together, short of the number who were dispersed at the
Tower of Babel, would be sufficient to fill St. Mark's Place.
It is like the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is said
to be big enough to hold all the navies of the world, but
opening out of which is a supplementary harbour, capable of
holding any number of additional navies. So has the Piazza
its supplementary port in the shape of the Piazzetta. A co-
THE SUKEENDER OF VENICE. 219
dino friend who was with me — that is to say, a gentleman
whose s}Tiipathies lay less on the Italian than on the Aus-
trian side of the hedge — declared that there was scarcely any-
body on the Place, and that he had seen more loungers there
any fine afternoon in the days of occupation, when the Aus-
trian military bands used to play such beautiful waltzes and
mazurkas. I did not care to contradict him ; yet I fancied
that between the Procuratie Nuove and the Procuratie Yecchie
there must have been congregated at least ten thousand
souls.
St. Mark's itself was all alive. The platform above the
fa9ade was black with humanity, who did everything but be-
stride those immortal horses of St. Mark, which came from
Corinth, which have been at Byzantium, which have been at
Paris, which have been at Vienna, which may go to St.
Petersburg or to New York, for aught we know, before this
Human Comedy is finished, but which I was pleased to look
upon this morning, preserving, even in their grimmest and
bronziest aspect, a jocose and Astley's-like look, and un-
murmuringly performing their eternal trot. Those marvellous
semi-circular fringes to St. Mark's frontage, surmounted by
sculptured crockets, which Mr. Euskin has eloquently but fan-
tastically compared to the twisted and petrified foam of the
sea, were on the present occasion obscured by adventurous
climbers. The balconies and loggie of the ducal palace were
one mass of life ; and I am sorry to say that the Yenetian
gmnins had been permitted to invade the tiny courtyard of
the exquisite Loggetta at the foot of the Campanile, and to
climb over the beautiful bronze gates, the which to see is at
once to conceive the desire of committing robbery in a dwell-
220 ROME AND VBNICE.
ing-liouse, by carrying them off to England. When I saw the
ruthless feet of those young barbarians trampling upon the
delicate foliage and delicious scroll-work of the unequalled
grille, I shuddered. I earnestly wished that the shins of the
desecrators might be galled most sorely by contact with the
bronze ; and I shall revisit the Loggetta to-morrow full of
neiTous apprehension as to the amount of damage in-
flicted on an unequalled work of art by those incipient
Goths.
Nine o'clock strikes from the Torre dell' Orologio.
With the last chime you see something like a fractured
rainbow battling with the air. Then three great masses of
colour spring up, droop, hang, raise themselves again, de-
velop, and at last flame out broad and triumphant against
the blue. It is done. A band strikes up. The multitude
give a cry of joy that is almost a sob. The cannon thunders
from San Giorgio Maggiore, now an Italian fortress. From
the three great masts streams out the standard of twenty-
five millions of human souls who are *' united and equal."
The cannon thunder again. At the Hotel de la Ville General
Moring has exchanged the last protocol with General Le-
boeuf. The Surrender of Venice is accomplished, and Italy
is free " from the Alps to the Adriatic." Will it last ?
After this, although the month be October, all is mid-
summer madness. Venice goes clean out of her min(^
Venice is stark staring mad as I sit down to pen these lines.
Venice will be suff'ering, I have no doubt, from acute mania
when I take this letter to the post, and will not recover her
sanity for many moons to come. I had taken the precaution
to engage a two-oared gondola for the entire day, and to
THE SURRENDER OF VENICE. 221
stipulate with the chief boatman that a very large Italian
flag should be displayed at the stern. I hurried back from
St. Mark's Place to the Hotel Victoria, where my bark was
to be in waiting; but, during even the brief period of my
absence, Venice had become transformed. Flags by hun-
dreds, flags by thousands, flags by myriads, had cropped
up and out from every housetop, from every eave, from every
waterspout, from every lamp-iron, from every bourne-stone,
from every railing, from every window, from every balcony,
from every door, from every hole, from every corner in this
city which is full of holes and corners. La cittct era im-
handierata; that is to say, everybody who possessed a morsel
of red, white, and green was displaying it. The stoffe colo-
rate, against which that most deplorable police director
Frank used to fulminate, had at last asserted them-
selves.
The scene on the Grand Canal was astounding. The
municipality had entreated the citizens to confine the mani-
festation of their enthusiasm on this particular Friday to
flags and streamers, and to reserve the more gorgeous and
more peculiarly Venetian display of tapestry, carpets, and
window-curtains hung out of the windows for the occasion
of the arrival of the King of Italy ; but popular enthusiasm
had been deaf to the voice of the municipality, and the woven
wealth that is within Venetian palaces had to a great ex-
tent run o'er. The spectacle of a ''house out of windows"
was performed a hundred times a minute on the Grand
Canal. Out came the Brussels and the Aubussons, the
Kidderminsters and the printed druggets ; out came hearth-
rugs and damask-curtains, all mingled with wondrous tapes-
aM ROME AND VENICE.
tries of the sixteenth century — ^the chefs-d'oeuvre ^ it may be,
of the looms of Courtray and Arras. Next to the display
of textile fabrics was the lavish exposure of pocket-handker-
chiefs. Everybody seemed to have at least three, not to
apply to their legitimate use, but to wave in a frantically
patriotic manner.
I have somewhere read that when Catherine Malcolm, a
horrible old woman who murdered a gentleman in the Temple
in the reign of Queen Anne, was executed at the Middle
Temple-gate, the crowd in Fleet-street was so great that an
industrious tradesman who sold hot mutton-pies by retail
walked, without stumbling, over the close-packed heads of
the multitude from where is now the shop of Messrs. Butter-
worth, the law booksellers, to the corner of Chancery-lane,
where he disposed of a hot "twopenny" to a gentleman from
Lincoln' s-inn, who had adventitiously hailed him. With-
out vouching for the historical truth of this anecdote, I am
perfectly willing to take my affidavit before any sworn com-
missioner appointed for that purpose, that I could have
walked dryfooted, at noon on this instant 18th of October,
over any part of the Grand Canal between the railway-station
and Santa Maria della Salute.
The great waterway was paved with boats. There were
gondolas everywhere ; and the few interstices which pre-
sented themselves were filled with skiffs and barges. It
was an enormous and glowing parterre of pleasure-boats, of
banners and streamers, of gay costumes, of gondoliers in
new apparel, of flowers and bright carpets. There were
public gondolas and private gondolas ; there were men, there
were women, there were children, there were soldiers and
THE SUREENDER OF VENICE. 223
sailors ; there were brown-cowled monks peeping from the
casements of convents ; there was a great kaleidoscopic
jumble of life and noise, and movement and colour, and
light and shade, and reflection and refraction ; there was
the Tohubohu of the Hebrews ; there was a pictorial come-
and-go, a mingling and a massing, a surging and weltering
of chromatic caprice, there was a sea of gold and purple
glory such as the Venetian painter Canaletto never imagined,
such as the Venetian painter Guardi never realised, such
as the Englishmen Joseph Turner and John Euskin,
with all their magic power of pen and pencil, with all
their bright poetic insight, never approached, such as no
human limner, no human scribe, can ever hope completely
to portray.
I saw it — dulled and hardened as I have been to
shows and sights all over the world — I saw it, and felt
inclined to cry because I knew that I could never convey
one-tenth part of the immensity of its real aspect to you
in England. I see it now, clear and distinct in my mind,
as the faces of those who are dead, and who come to me
in my dreams ; and I am ashamed of my impotence to trans-
late into language the ideas of which my heart is full —
I am ashamed to blunder over that which at its very best
must be a lame and halting narrative of a sight which I
shall never behold again.
In the midst of this tremendous sea of happy holiday
people, laughing and shouting and embracing, came, slow
and stately, half a dozen great galleys, decked with flags,
brave in draperies, full from stem to stern of Italian soldiers.
As the clock struck noon the guests of the day marched
224 EOME AND VENICE.
out of the railway-station, and down its noble staircase into
the barks appointed to receive them. There is the clash
of martial music. There is Garibaldi's Hymn. There is
the Royal Anthem. There is the grido di guerra. Now
comes, swan-like, a great Argo, laden with National Guards.
Then follow the Carahinieri, the picked men, the boldest,
bravest of Italians, the bene meriti delV armata, the only
police force perhaps in Europe who are not unpopular. Like
doves from a thousand arks, the white handkerchiefs of the
women in the balconies fly out to greet these good, solid
men. Now come the Bersaglieri, bronzed and saucy-look-
ing, but eminently serviceable. To these succeed many boats
full of Italian infantry, and gondolas conveying officers of
all arms in full uniform. The pace at which the flotilla
moves is but a snail's one ; but it is all too rapid for the
spectators, who cannot dwell too long or too lovingly on the
soldiers, who, to them, represent their restoration to national
existence, and their deliverance from a cruel and galling
servitude.
We crept ahead and got into a fresh crowd of gondolas,
but eventually landing at the Molo, crossed the Piazzetta to
the Clock Tower, where I was fortunate enough to have
secured a front place at a first-floor window. Thence at
my leisure I saw the disembarkation of the troops, their
march past the Ducal Palace, and heard the frantic accla-
mations by which they were greeted by the crowd. And
then, I am constrained to say, it being close on four o'clock
in the afternoon — we had been three hours and a half coming
from the terminus to the Molo — and remembering that the
pest for England went out at eight, I left the Venetians
THE SURRENDER OF VENICE. 225
together in their glory, and, diving dexterously through a
labyrinth of by-lanes, returned to mine inn, there to set down
so much as time would allow me of what I had seen on this
most memorable day.
XV.
EVE IN ST. MARK.
* Venice, October 21.
Lady Holland, in her charming life of her witty father, tells
us that when the Canon of St. Paul's was old and infirm, he
was wont, on fine mornings, to bid his domestics *' throw
open the shutters and glorify the room." By which the Bev,
Sydney Smith simply meant that his servants should let in
the sun. Under the sun he had beheld, in his long life,
much madness and folly ; but he loved to look upon the lu-
minary, and to warm his good old face in it, and to be thank-
ful for sunshine, until the end. The sun is the patrimony of
age ; all, save the blind, can bask in its rays when all other
wealth is spent, and even Blind Tobias can feel its
warmth. " Vieux vagabond, le soleil est a moi,'' cries
Beranger's worn-out mendicant, from his ditch. So Mira-
beau, writhing on his bed of death, and vainly striving to
stifle agony with spiced meats and fiery wines, bade them
open the window, that he might gaze upon the sun — if not
the Deity Himself, at least his cousin-german. So Jean
Jacques, at Ermenonville, in the evening of his career of
miserable glory — poor, neglected, half-poisoned, may be —
bade Therese unfasten the window-latch, that he might fill
his soul for the last time with the rays of " the Master of the
"World ; the only master who is adored without flattery, and
without greed of temporal reward." For you get nothing by
toadying the Sun. It is a matter of mathematical calculation,
EVE IN ST. MARK. 227
as we were once assured on illustrious authority, that he will
rise to-morrow morning ; and the chances are ten millions to
one in favour of humanity that he Will so rise. But it is a
matter of certainty as mathematical that he is not to be pro-
pitiated by odes, or won to the side of gentility by corpora-
tion addresses ; that he will shine with impartial munificence
upon David's enemies as upon David himself; and that, if
he intends to veil his face, not all the psalms, supplications,
or adjurations in the world can conjure his clouds away.
There is a certain time in the afternoon, at this autumnal
season, when a certain part of the basilica of St. Mark — the
most gorgeous, but the darkest church in Europe — is " glori-
fied" by the sun. Worshippers there are in St. Mark's at all
hours ; but at about ten minutes to five every afternoon, when
the weather is fine, a number of loungers are sure to drop into
the church to see the apsis behind the high altar " glorified."
The contrast which they come to see is all the more striking,
as by four o'clock three-fourths of the basilica have become a
gloomy wilderness, through which you might wander long
ere you discovered that all around you rose columns of por-
phyry and malachite and verd-antique, panels glowing with
gold and gems, pavements dazzling in vermiculato and mo-
saic work. Lost in umbrageous dimness are the sumptuous
Baptistery, the jewel -crowded chapel of the Madonna de'
Mascoli, the two fanciful pale that flank the high altar ; nay,
even the famous Icone Bisantina and the stately baldacchino
have but a pale and uncertain glimmer. From between the
intercolumniations of the windows sweep down great dark
shadows, so thick that they seem well-nigh palpable, and you
fear to stumble over them, as though they were half-hung
238? ROME AND VENICE.
draperies left there by undertakers* men who were preparing
to hang St. Mark's in black for the obsequies of Day, but had
knocked oif from work for a spell to lounge out into the
Piazza and see the sunset.
I should counsel you to keep your eyes till the proper
moment bent downwards or relieve them amidst the sha-
dows. The change you are about to see will be all the
stronger. As the chimes from the Torre dell' Orologio
strike the three-quarters, do you, standing right in front of
the rood-screen, look up boldly towards the east. As boldly
as you may ; but the strongest vision will but feebly with-
stand the astonishing spectacle you will witness. At this
moment the sun is in the west, on a level with the centre of
the fagade added by Eugene Beauharnais to the Palazzo Reale.
Using that facade as a fulcrum, the master- Archimedes sends
a gigantic lever of sun-ray slanting across the entire Piazza.
The ray rushes through the central window, just tips the
summits of the Evangelists' statues on the rood-loft, touches
the topmost grating of the altar-screen, and ends in the apsis
or semicircular recess behind the altar.
I called it a lever. It is surely one which should lift the
whole world up to Faith. The great recess is all at once in
a blaze. Looking out of the darkness you might fancy the
high altar to be on fire. Understand that this apsis is wholly
covered with golden mosaic, and that in its centre is a colos-
sal figure of the Redeemer. This golden alcove of glory, this
inexhaustible treasure-chamber, this stupendous shrine glit-
tering and trembling in its abundance of radiance, fills you
at first with unspeakable awe and veneration. You do not
wonder that the poor people who come here to pray, and who
EVE IN ST. MARK. 229
are crouching humbly in the tenebrous nave, muttering their
orisons, should accept in this a sure and visible symbol of
their salvation — that, abject, poverty-stricken, oppressed,
ragged, and hungry, they should svv^athe their souls in those
golden cerements, anointed to them, with blessed balm —
that, after a toilsome day and scant pay, these weary water-
carriers, and flower-girls, and gondoliers, and fishermen,
should find, in the contemplation of the glorified shrine,
peace, consolation, and hope. It is very edifying, subse-
quently, to reflect that the glorification of the apsis is, after
all, only the result of mathematical calculation — that the
architects of the church knew full well that at a certain hour,
at a certain time of the year, the sun would send a most
mathematical ray through the great west window^ to the east-
ern extremity of the church. So they covered the eastern
extremity of the church with a rich ground of gold mosaic to
be lit up by the sun's rays, accordingly.
I have watched this grand sight many and many a^time,
early and late ; for I need scarcely say that it is not always
at a quarter to five p.m. that Phoebus-Archimedes chooses to
use the centre of Eugene Beauharnais' facade as a fulcrum
for his lever. I have watched the apsis turn into golden glory
in the darkest days of Venice, when the oppressor's hand was
upon her throat with a clutch which, in human likelihood,
would never be relaxed — when nearly all hope of her deliver-
ance and her resuscitation had been abandoned by a genera-
tion worn out and heartsick with continued disappointment.
The great door of St. Mark's, leading to the vestibule where
the storyof the Creation and the Fall, andihe Deluge are told,
in mosaic, with such quaint yet touching' naivete, is always
S80 ROME AND VENICE.
open. To keep the radiating heat out in summer and the
radiating cold out in winter, a mighty veil hangs before the
sumptuous tabernacle. Towards sunset this curtain is drawn
aside and looped up, to admit some cheerfulness into a church
which always stands in need of daylight. Often and often,
standing beneath the great cross pendent from the central
cupola, and which on festival days becomes a cross of a thou-
sand lamps — often and often, waiting for the sun's time to
come and for the apsis to be " glorified," have I turned my
face towards the great entrance-portal, and looked far through
the vestibule across St. Mark's Place, all blank and deserted,
like some vast, calm, shipless sea which had been turned to
stone.
St. Mark's, given up to utter emptiness, is more oppres-
sive in its loneliness than the Crystal Palace on a wet Sunday
afternoon when there are no shareholders about — than even
the reading-room of the British Museum when the last book-
worm has been politely persuaded to depart, and the last
hardworked attendant has wheeled the last truckload of books
along the gilded galleries. And I have seen St. Mark's in
broad daylight quite empty. This has generally been the
time when the Austrian band had finished playing — when
the hotel-bells had summoned the few foreign visitors to the
tables -d'hote J and when the fewer Venetians who chose to
walk abroad had retired to sip lemonade and murmur discon-
tent in the sotto portici of the Procuratie, and in Florian's or
the Specchi's shady groves. They hang secular veils between
the columns before the caffes to keep out extreme heat and ex-
treme cold, as they do at St. Mark's, and these draperies have
contributed still further to increase the desolation of the Place.
EVE IN ST. MARK. 231
Once I remember seeing, a solitary poodle with tlie whole
of the Piazza San Marco to himself. I saw a kindred bow-
wow once in the middle of the Admiralty-square, at St.
Petersburg, by moonlight. The Kussian dog squatted down
on his haunches, and, lifting his head towards the moon,
howled at it dismally. The Venetian poodle trotted about
the deserted stones of St. Mark's, worn to glassy smoothness
by so many millions of human footsteps. He trotted to the
three tall masts which stood all of a row in front of St.
Mark's, bannerless. He sniffed at Alessandro Leopardi's
bronze bases, as though to inquire what had become of the
three gonfalons of the Kepublic — of Venice, Cyprus, and the
Morea. He did not howl, or seem to lament that, like Icha-
bod, his glory had departed. He fell, instead, into a merry
mood, and happening to remember that he had a tail, began
an exciting chase after that caudal appendage, gambolling in
unseemly and unpatriotic gyrations, as though all were going
as merrily as a marriage-bell — as though Marino Faliero's
head had never rolled upon the scaffold, and the Two
Foscari had never lived — as though the Most Serene
Kepublic had never come to grief and shame, and the Aus-
trian eagle, cruellest of birds, had not clawed out the eyes
of the Lion of St. Mark. An inconsequent poodle ; but he
had the whole of the Piazza to himself.
Now yesterday I looked through the great entrance-portal,
and all was changed. The vast expanse was full of human
movement. It was as though a whole federation of ant-hills
had spumed forth their teeming commonwealths upon one vast
marble slab. I emerged into the Place, and I strove to look
upon the strange and unaccustomed spectacle, first from the
282 ROME AND VENICE.
enthusiastic, next from the morose point of view. Regarding
it from the first, the sight was glorious. It made one's heart
leap for joy. Gone, for ever, were the Austrian sentries from
before the Zeeca and the royal palace. Gone were the de-
testable patrols, whose bayonets were continually, morally
speaking, prying over your shoulders, or poking into your
loins. There were no more g^-ay-coated, bandy-legged Croats,
sulldng or grinning behind the hideous bars of the Cancellate,
like hyaenas in their dens. That aggressive standard of black
and yellow was furled for ever. Those two murderous field-
pieces had ceased to point menacingly across the Piazzetta.
They had been unlimbered for good, and packed, with other
rubbishing marine - stores, on board an Austrian Lloyd's
bound for Trieste. The two monstrous gilt eagles that used
to flap their domineering wings from twin pedestals in the
palace-garden had taken away their four ugly heads to other
eyiies. The Austrian military band had uttered their last
toot, and migrated to more congenial orchestras. There were
no more white-tunicked or sky-blue-coated Tedeschi to loll
over the tables at Quadri's, or promenade up and down the
Piazza with their much-bedizened Frauen, eyeing the Vene-
tians, half with a scowl of hatred, half with a sneer of super-
cilious contempt. There were no more skulking gendarmes,
with murderous-looking cutlasses stuck in their rusty belts,
like those of the hravi in the Promessi Sposi.
In their place I saw, for the first time in Venice, the real
Italian people, enjoying themselves to their heart's content.
Soldiers walking arm-in-arm ^\ith gondoliers ; Garibaldini in
their red shirts, followed by cheering and applauding groups ;
National Guards, belonging mostly to the club and shop-
EVE IN ST. MARK. 233
keeping class, and who, a fortnight since, would have no
more presumed to handle a musket and bayonet than to
climb the three tall masts under the nose of an Austrian
patrol, and hoist the Italian tricolor there. In their place
I saw dozens of organ-grinders playing Garibaldi's Hymn ;
booksellers' shops full of the portraits of the King, the
Princes, and Garibaldi ; legions of ballad-singers, yelling
patriotic lyrics ; and from every window a kaleidoscopic dis-
play of the national colours. Among the people nine out of
every ten men you met had the tricolor arranged as a
cockade for their caps or a rosette for their button-holes ; the
women had scarves and neckbows of the three hues ; the
children wore frocks and petticoats of red, white, and green ;
and almost every adult, gentle or simple, wore in his hat, or
pinned to his breast, a little piece of white cardboard, bear-
ing the monosyllable "Si," and signifying that his electoral
mind was firmly made up, and that on Sunday next, when
the solemn vote or ])lehiscitum will be taken, he intended to
return to the elaborate question, '^Are you desirous that
Venetia should be united to the kingdom of Italy under the
rule of Victor Emmanuel the Second ?" one conclusive and
sonorous " Yes."
So much for the enthusiastic side of the picture. Ee-
membering, as I did, that I had known Venice as an old
curiosity-shop, as a museum of antiquities, as a barrack-yard
governed only by the bayonet and the stick, as a city in a
state of siege, as a dungeon, as a tomb, I felt very much
inclined to fling up my cap and burst forth in a series of
ecstatic evvivas for Victor Emmanuel, for United Italy, for
Giuseppe Garibaldi, for la hella famiglia, which is an Italian
SH ROME AND VENICE.
equivalent for " our noble selves," for the Lion of St. Mark,
St. Theodore, St. Zuliano, San Moise, and all our Venetian
Saints. The aspect of so many newspapers, where once
newspapers were all but entirely prohibited, filled me, in
particular, with feelings of the liveliest gratification. It was
a sight for sore eyes to see the ragged little newsboys run-
ning about barefoot, their wallet of intelligence, damp from
the press, under their arms, and screeching out the names of
the hundred and one newspapers which, in a deluge of typo-
gi-aphy, have fallen on Venice. There is Daniele Manin
number one, and a rival Daniele Manin number two. There
is the Conte Cavour, the Piingolo, the Perseveranza, the
Opinione, the Sole, the Sciolo, the Gazzetta del Popolo, and
the Unione ; and in particular there is the Gazzetta di Vene-
zia, once the terrible Gazzetta JJfficlale, but which is now
bereft of the effigy of the double-headed eagle, and which the
little newsboys, who are arch wags, cry about as senza gal-
Una — without the cock-a-doodle-doo — or as La Paolona Pen-
tita, la Paolona being the traditional Scarlet Woman whose
repentance once equally amused and scandalised Venice.
It was as well that I did not fling up my cap, and that I
did not break forth into evvivas. 1 recollected that it was
no affair at all of mine ; and, five minutes afterwards I met
an English friend, moving in the very first circles, and of
a decidedly codino way of thinking — that is to say, in his
political sympathies, Tory to the backbone. He pointed
out to me that Venice was entirely spoilt; that it had be-
come quite a vulgar and uproarious place ; that the most
beautiful architectural monuments were defaced by placards
and handbills ; that now the volunteer force was disbanded
EVE IN ST. MARK. 235
it had become as ridiculous as it was offensive for the Gari-
baldini to walk about Venice in their red shirts; that the
Italian regular officers gave themselves too many airs, and
were not half so gentlemanly in appearance as the Austrians ;
that Florian's and Quadri's were now thronged all day by the
merest rabble ; that the plebiscitum was a sorry farce, seeing
that everybody who dared to give a negative vote would in-
fallibly be mobbed, and probably murdered; that very few
English visitors had arrived ; that fewer wealthy Italian
families were expected; that all the enthusiasm of which
the Venetians were capable had been expended on the entry
of the troops ; and that the visit of the King — if it ever took
place, the which he considered to be exceedingly improbable
— would be a miserable fiasco. My codino friend was good
enough to add, as with a melancholy grasp of the hand he
bade me farewell, that none of the hotels of Venice were
more than half full ; that the misery and destitution among
the poor of the Canareggio was hourly on the increase ; and
that the cholera was more virulent than ever in the narrow
and crowded calli of the Guidecca.
This was the picture painted from the morose point of
view. But, from what I have seen with my own eyes, and
heard with my own ears, I prefer to elect the tableau painted
from the standpoint of enthusiasm as the genuine one. For
the present, at least.
XVI.
THE PLEBISCITUM.
Venice, October 24.
The plehiscitum, by means of which the Yenetiau people were
to make their political wishes at once and for ever known,
took place on Sunday and Monday last. . The electoral lists
in the city of Venice itself contained the names of about
forty thousand voters ; and some thirty-six thousand pre-
sented themselves at the polling-places. The votes have yet
to be formally examined by scrutineers appointed for the pur-
pose, and some days must elapse before the result is officially
made known ; but it is generally stated in Venice that among
the whole thirty-six thousand suffrages recorded there were
only half-a-dozen "noes." As in London club elections a
candidate may always reckon upon at least one nervous, or
stupid, or sleepy member, who (otherwise very well affected
towards the aspirant) will blackball him by mistake, so it is
extremely probable that the six " noes" spoken of above were
popped into the box through absence of mind or imperfect
comprehension, on the part of the voters, of the difference ex-
isting between a negative and an affirmative. At Verona, I
have heard, but one solitary "no" was given. At Vicenza
and Padua there was a unanimous "yes."
Everybody knows that in all these towns, as in Venice,
there is a considerable number of persons who would have
dearly liked to answer "no" to the question propounded to
THE PLEBISCITUM. 237
them, and who are strongly, and I daresay conscientiously,
adverse to the union of Venetia to the kingdom of Italy.
These persons have prohably abstained from voting alto-
gether. Where universal suffrage prevails, the people have
a curious intuitive faculty for discovering electors who in-
tend to vote the wrong way; and when the division to be
taken is one as between liberty and despotism, and nine
hundred and ninety-nine persons out of every thousand have
made up their minds to vote the "liberty ticket," the part
played by the supporters of despotism becomes a very in-
vidious, not to say a slightly dangerous one. Had I been a
Codino, or a Papalino, or an Austriacante, or in some way
or another an opponent of the House of Savoy — had I wished
to see Yenetia erected into an independent republic under a
new Doge, or into a separate kingdom under the rule of a
Hapsburg, or a Hohenzollern, or a Coburg, or a Bourbon —
it does not much matter whom — I should decidedly have kept
away from the electoral colleges last Sunday and Monday.
I should have known perfectly well that neither my vote, nor
that of five hundred politicians of my way of thinking — did
such a number exist — would have sufficed to turn the scale
against the enormous majority on the other side; that my
negative protest would have no moral weight; and that it
was as well on the whole to keep my political sympathies to
myself until calmer times arrived. Mawworm may have
liked to be despised, but, in general, quiet and sensible
folks are chary of courting public derision and execration.
I do not think that the populace congregated round the
voting-places on Sunday would have at once proceeded to tear
a notorious Codino to pieces, or would even have gone so far
28t ROME AND VENICE.
as to make him eat his printed "no," after the manner of
Irish peasants in the case of obnoxious process-servers, and
then enable him to wash down his meal by throwing him into
the nearest canal; but things in general might not have
gone pleasantly. An American writer has regarded the dis-
inclination entertained by the majority of mankind to being
kicked downstairs as a convincing proof of the Immortality
of the Soul, and the constant aspirations of humanity towards
Higher Things. Be this as it may, there are very few of us
who much like being hooted or groaned at, or pelted, when we
are only conscious of doing our duty, and when we have got our
Sunday clothes on. It is all very well to be stoical, and to
disdain the vile rabble ; but, taking one thing with the other,
dead cats and rotten eggs are not so nice as showers of roses
and triple salvoes of huzzahs. Ask the Eight Honourable
Benjamin Disraeli. Ask the Eight Honourable Eobert Lowe.
Ask anybody who on Monday evening has had a piece of
plate presented to him at a public dinner at the Freemason's,
and on Tuesday morning has had to face a ruffianly mob in
Clerken well-green.
The conviction, however, that it was humanly impossible,
just now, to mend the matter, must have been the strongest
incentive which kept those disaffected to the new state of
things away from the poll-booths. There is nothing to be
gained, and there is everything to be lost, by overt opposition
to Italian unity. This the Codini know full well.
This, perhaps, his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop,
Patriarch of Venice, knows better than any other sympathiser
with the bygone rulers of Venice. Monsignor Trevisinato,
who, as a Venetian born and one sprung from the ranks of
THE PLEBISCITUM. 239
the people, and as a prelate distinguished by unfeigned piety,
extensive charity, and vast learning, — especially in the Ori-
ental languages, — has every claim to be regarded with esteem
and veneration by his flock, but who is, for political reasons,
most cordially hated, — has just put forth a Pastoral, a copy
of which, in a neat ebony frame, and protected by a screen of
wirework, is visible to the faithful on one of the door-jambs
of the vestibule of St. Mark's, and is the subject of much
satirical comment on the part of the gondoliers and fisher-
men who are generally to be found lounging about the sacred
precincts. His Eminence has made a copious collection of
very good set phrases in choice Italian ; and the gist of his
pastoral is that, for the greater glory of Heaven and the ad-
vantage of the Church, it is desirable for everybody to pre-
serve a peaceable demeanour, cultivate a quiet mind, and,
forgetting all bygone differences, acquiesce in the union of
Venetia to the constitutional monarchy of Victor Emma-
nuel II. Apart from the set phrases and the choice Italian,
the Cardinalitian discourse means little more than that the
best must be made of a bad job. However, the Patriarch
may now say, " Liberavi animam meam.'^ His pastoral may
be accepted as at once a confession, a recantation, and an
assurance that politically he is what is termed, in American
parlance, " sound on the goose;" and when Victor Emmanuel
comes to Venice, Cardinal Trevisinato may, with a very
good grace, receive the King of Italy under the great baldac-
chino of St. Mark, authorise the customary Te Deum, and
solemnise the customary high mass.
" 1 was the last man in England," said George III. to the
first American Minister who came to the Court of St. James's,
240 ROME AND VENICE.
*' to acquiesce in American independence ; but I will also be
the last to do aught to injure the liberties of the United
States." It is to be hoped that the Patriarch of Venice may
eventually fall into a frame of mind as honest and as Cliris-
tianlike as that of George III. It is sufficiently hard, how-
ever, in one's old age, to have to go into an entirely new set
of harness, and to pull from the collar where hitherto one has
been accustomed to pull from the loins. The Patriarch owes
his mitre, and his red hat to boot, to his steady Austria-
cantism. He has been fed upon good Viennese sauerkraut
from his youth upwards. It is pitiable to see him now, con-
demned to a diet of Savoy cabbage.
He is the successor, although not the immediate one, of
that Patriarch of Venice who, in 1849, was mainly instru-
mental in bringing about the capitulation which led to the
reoccupation of Venice by the Austrians. The Venetians,
although suffering, and having suffered for months, under
the triple scourge of a famine, a pestilence, and a bombard-
ment, were not in the least desirous to surrender. It was
their desire to fight until the last Venetian should die in the
last canal of the Guidecca. The Cardinal, however, as a man
of peace, his paternal heart bleeding at the spectacle of the
misery he saw around him, so managed matters as, by dex-
terous counsel and soft persuasion, to pave the way for sur-
render and the return of the Tedeschi. Before they returned,
however, the Venetian people gutted the patriarchal palace,
threw half the furniture into the canal, and burnt the rest.
The Patriarch died soon after the reinstallation of the Aus-
trians, and Monsignor Trevisinato, then only an archpriest,
had to deliver a funeral oration over his remains. This ora-
THE PLEBISCITUM. 241
tion was spoken in the Basilica, and in the presence of two
Austrian archdukes. The preacher was so eloquent, alluded
so touchingly to the onslaught on the late Patriarch's palace,
and the holocaust made of his chairs and tables ; he said so
many beautiful, orthodox, and truly conservative things con-
cerning the evils of revolutionary passions and the deplorable
effects of mob violence ; in a word, he contrived, by impli-
cation, so fervently to laud the advantages of the Austrian
domination in Yenetia, that the archducal heart was touched.
Both Erzherzogs, indeed, were moved to tears ; and the in-
genious archpriest was so strongly recommended at Vienna,
that he was soon afterwards made bishop of some unim-
portant place. He was next proposed to the Pope for the
Archbishopric of Udine, the sure and safe stepping-stone to
the more sumptuous see of Venice. Then came the patri-
archate, and ultimately the cappello rosso ; and, if his Emi-
nence takes care, he may find himself some day in the chair
of St. Peter — if, indeed, St. Peter, whose circumstances are
becoming every day more embarrassed, have any chair left
by the time Cardinal Trevisinato is haply deemed worthy to
sit in it.
He is not the first Church dignitary who has obtained
the highest prizes in his profession by preaching a clever
funeral sermon. Dubois, it is true, owed his scarlet to his
impudence and the Duchess of Kendal. Alberoni got his
through knowing how to dress cauliflowers with Parmesan
cheese. Ganganelli rose by merit, Borgia by profligacy, and
Aquapendente by accident ; but, as a rule, the funeral sermon
may be hailed as a moyen de parvenir. De mortuis nil nisi
hoiium : let the aspirant for ecclesiastical preferment bear
242 HOME AND VENICE.
that axiom well in mind, and the odds are twenty to one
that the living will give him something worth having.
The Venetians have pretty good memories, and they are
not likely to forget their Patriarch's antecedents. He has
never, however, been actively mischievous ; and as it was his
great good luck to be neither an Austrian general nor a com-
missary of police, the dislike he has inspired has been more
passive than active. For the rest, the good man only wanted
to get on in the world; and he got on. His revenues are
large, and he gives away a good deal to the poor. The Vene-
tians chose rather to remember that he was old and charit-
able, and a capital Sanscrit scholar, than that he was a
creature of the stranger and an adherent of tyranny. There
has, then, been little desire to mob, to denounce, or even to
insult him. Some wags have, from time to time, played a
harmless practical joke on his Eminence; but there has
always been a vast fund of drollery latent in the Italian
character — witness the waggeries of the Decamerone — and
the Venetians are perhaps, next to the Neapolitans, the
funniest people in all Italy,
For example, when the cession of Venetia by Austria
began first to be talked about last July, and provisions of the
stoffe colorate, so fiercely denounced by the now obsolete
Director Frank, were laid in, with a view to future banner-
displays, it was rumoured that the Cardinal Patriarch had
suddenly become imbued with popular sympathies, and was
having a tricoloured flag made. It was ascertained, on in-
quiry, that the flag was actually in course of manufacture,
and was a very grand affair indeed, of silk and gold fringe.
"When a sufficient time for completion had elapsed, a face-
THE PLEBISCITUM. 243
tious person went to the maker, and, professing to be the
bearer of a message from the Patriarch, demanded his Emi-
nence's flag. The maker, suspecting nothing, gave it up.
The facetious but fraudulent messenger went away, and from
that day to this the splendid standard of silk and bullion has
never been seen. It may have been displayed last Friday
from the window of some hovel on the Canareggio, but from
any balcony of the patriarchal palace it certainly did not
flaunt.
Nothing discouraged, and foreseeing that the children of
Belial must eventually prevail, Monsignor Trevisinato had
another flag made — nay, three flags, and even four or five ;
and on the momentous morning of emancipation his lacqueys
were ready to make his whole palace brave in tricoloured
bunting. But the Venetians were determined that their
codino Patriarch should not sympathise with the cause of
Italian unity. A highly-respectable deputation of harcaruoli
and macellaji waited, at nine o'clock a.m.^ on the Patriarch,
and respectfully but firmly desired him to take his flags in.
His Eminence's major-domo pleaded the fervent patriotism
of his master; but the deputation intimated that it was
rather late in the day, and that they preferred that he should
keep his patriotism to himself. Little good is to be obtained
from arguing with a deputation — least of all when it is com-
posed of boatmen and butchers. The signs of patriotism
disappeared, and, on the day of the entry of the Italian
troops into Venice, the only house undecorated with the
Italian colours was the palace of the Patriarch of Venice.
I have dwelt at some length on matters ecclesiastical for
the reason that my readers may be desirous to learn what is
244 ROME AND VENICE.
the precise "attitude" of the Venetian clergy, in view of the
astonishing change of public things which has come down
upon them very much after the manner of a cart-load of
bricks. I remember that Mr. Dickens, in his American
Notes, mentions an inquisitive Yankee, who, occupying the
next state-room to him on board a steamer, was very uneasy
in his mind at the undemonstrative course of conduct pur-
sued by his illustrious fellow-traveller. " Boz keeps himself
very quiet, my dear," he was heard, through the bulkhead,
to observe to his wife. The truth was that Boz had a bilious
headache, and was lying down in his berth. The black Boz
in Venice is keeping, just now, very quiet indeed. The black
panther is couchant — not rampant. So have I seen the real
panther at the Jardin des Plantes, curled up in a corner of
his den, lazily blinking in the sunshine, and disdaining to
roar, to glare, or to spring, when the naughty little gamins
threw nutshells at him. Could he be the real panther of
Java who bounds through the air, and makes a man into a
mummy in one squeeze and one crunch? Yes, he is the
same old Beast, only the day is warm, and the times are dull,
and he does not exactly see what good might come out of
tearing up the planks of the den or dashing his head against
those iron bars. He waits. A bright time may come when
he may crunch bones, and suck marrow, and eat Man again.
This is about the attitude of the priesthood. They are
quiescent. They crouch in the corner of the cage. They
fear the popular beast-tamer, with his gutta-percha whip or
his stronger crowbar. They wait.
In common, I hope, mth most Englishmen born and
bred in an atmosphere of respectable sectarian prejudice, I
THE PLEBISCITUM. 245
have been much shocked to see that Venice has gotten her
liberty, that the Austrians have gone away, that the Italian
banner has been hoisted, and that the Italian troops have
piled arms on St. Mark's Place, without a single Te Deum,
without the tingle of a single bell or the smoke of a single
censer, or the flare of a single taper, or the apparition of
a single stole, alb, or dalmatic. What has become of the
Church of Kome in the Italian peninsula ? Where is it ?
Who believes in it ? Who asks for it ? Who looks for the
priest to bless the work, to utter a prayer over the newly-
unfurled banner of freedom ? Certainly not the Italians.
If you really wish to know where Eome's friends are,
you must inquire at Munich or at Madrid, in the Graben,
or of the beadle of St. Germain I'Auxerrois. You must ask
at Baltimore, or at Brompton. Were you to address yourself
to the majority of people in Italy, you would be told that the
Church of Eome did not lodge there. This is the naked,
unpalatable, and incontestable truth. In the hearts of most
Italians — save some ignorant peasants, some savage brigands,
some half-imbecile old women, and some sour men in shovel-
hats — the Eomish idolatry is Dead. It is as dead as any
dog that ever hung. It is dead notwithstanding the exist-
ence of some clerical jourifals — notwithstanding the per-
formance of the usual incantations in the all-but-deserted
churches — notwithstanding the fact that there are here and
there half-demented people who tell their beads, who make
votive offerings of silver ears and noses in gratitude for their
recovery from deafness or polypus, and make pilgrimages,
with peas in their shoes, to the shrine of St. Bosfursus, or
rub their bellies with a portrait of St. Joachim to keep away
246 ROME AND VENICE.
the cholera morbus. You may buy these same portraits in
the city of Venice itself. Tliey are printed on thick flannel.
Everybody knows that friction with yroollen stuff is an excel-
lent stomachic; but I am inclined to think that the effigy
of Mr. Stead, the Perfect Cure, would be quite as efficacious
as that of St. Joseph on the strip of flannel. The fraudulent
intent is, however, delicious. A'ule toi — with a flannel belly-
band ; et le del faidera — with the portrait of St. Joseph.
There are Italian-born and Italian-speaking people who
continue to place faith in these mummeries ; but they do not
constitute the nation. The nation has utterly and entirely
repudiated Papistry — Paganism's eldest daughter. They
have done with the barbarous swindling system altogether.
I do not believe that Voltairianism, Straussism, Hegelism,
Kenanism, or any other particular "ism," is making much
way in Italy. The people have simply abandoned one reli-
gion because they have discovered it to be wicked, mis-
chievous, and useless ; and they are looking out for another.
I hope they may find a good one.
XVII.
VENICE EESTOKED.
November 1.
The Fenice opened last niglit with Verdi's opera of Un Ballo
in Maschera. The historian regrets to have to record the
fact that the entire performance was a fiasco of a most ex-
tensive nature. The catastrophe is, for numerous reasons, to
be deplored. The chief one certainly is that the Fenice has
been closed for a period of eight years ; that its long-con-
tinued surcease was inseparably connected with the gloomy
memories of the Austrian rule in Venice ; and that its re-
opening was looked upon on all sides as a symbol that the
dark and bitter days were past, and as a harbinger of a
brighter era in store. La Fenice once reopened, Venice was
forthwith to become gay, prosperous, and happy. True to
its name, the Adriatic Phoenix was to arise from its ashes,
and shine very brightly indeed, for the edification of the
lovers of Italy in general, and of the lyrico-dramatic art in
particular. The importance, moreover, of the operatic ele-
ment in bringing about that Venetian rinascimento or new
birth which we all so ardently desire, should not by any means
be underrated.
In England operas and theatres are mere accessories and
adjuncts of civilisation ; and in the opinion of very many
worthy people we should be much better off were we to abolish
operas and theatres in block, and, following the counsel of
248 ROME AND VENICE.
the sour old Puritan poet, " turn the minstrels out of doors,
with all their rascal company." But among the Latin races
generally, and especially among Italians, the stage is an in-
stitution, a power, a hierarchy, a component part of the lies
Publica. The forum must ever have the theatre close to it.
The theatres of Venice, are as replete with historic associa-
tions as its Procuratie or its palaces. The Fenice, the San
Benedetto, the San Samuele, even the puppet theatre of San
Moise can all show a highly-respectable antiquity, have all a
glorious and varied record, all claim their part in the fasti of
the Most Serene Republic — are all joints, as it were, in the
immortal tail of the Lion of St. Mark. The Carnival of
Venice, without the theatres, would have been shorn of two-
thirds of its attractions. Regate and ridottl were all very
well in their way; but the veglioni, or theatrical masked
balls, were the most favourite haunts of the dissipated patri-
cians, and the scarcely less dissipated clergy and burgesses,
whom the scandalous but graphic pencil of Casanova has
drawn in undying chlaro scuro. During the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries Venice, as a nursery for lyric art, was
more renowned than either Rome or Naples or Milan.
The boundless wealth and the inexhaustible good-nature
of the Venetians led them to crowd their beautiful city with
charitable institutions. If we wish to see orphan asylums
now in their fullest plenitude — even to redundance sometimes
— we must turn to England, or to the United States ; but,
two hundred years ago, the Queen of the Adriatic was the
most bounteous nursing -mother to the fatherless and the
destitute to be found the whole world over. The Conserva-
torio di Musica is a Venetian invention, and in its origin was
VENICE RE STOKED. ^'"^''^
a purely eleemosynary one, and the musical conservatories of
Venice flourished generations before similar establishments
were dreamt of in other parts of the Continent.
Venice had at one time so many little children under her
charge, that, like the old woman who lived in a shoe, she
did not know what to do with them. To give them broth
without bread, and, whipping them all round, dismiss them
to rest, was not part of her scheme. In other words, she
was at no time so bigoted to the Koman Catholic faith as to
be content with giving a semi-monastic training to her in-
finite orphans. The demands of her army and navy were not
onerous enough to cause her to regard her orphan asylums
as nurseries for future heroes ; and it may be hinted that the
Most Serene, being likewise infinitely sagacious, much pre-
ferred, as a rule, Slavonic or Teutonic mercenaries, for soldiers
and sailors, to her own children. The mercenaries' lives were
of less value — and they fought better. Eminent as Venice
was in arts and manufactures, the beaver-dam-like structure
of the city, and the difiiculty of greatly extending it, made a
discreet restriction of the number of skilled artisans a matter
of public policy. It was not deemed wise to bring up all the
proteges of the State as painters, or carvers, or glass-blowers,
or velvet- weavers, or mosaic-workers. What then was to be
done with them ? The Most Serene determined, in its wis-
dom, that they should all be taught music — vocal if they
had any voices, instrumental if they had hands ; both if they
had one and the other. At least, they argued, he who can
play on the fiddle need never starve. The Most Serene went
even further. They solved the problem which in this nine-
teenth century is puzzling us so sorely. They found a suit-
250 ROME AND VENICE.
able and remunerative employment for women. The female
orphans were taught to play on the fiddle ; yea, even on the
piccolo and on the bass viol.
The good old professor who comes to me every morning
and endeavours to indoctrinate me in the beauties of Italian
poetry tells me that when he was young almost every girl
in Venice could play on the violoncello. In these genteel
days, he adds with a sigh, the possession of such an accom-
plishment by the damigelle of Venice would be deemed
** shocking." It is, in truth, difficult to reconcile with your
notions of feminine refinement the idea of the adored one of
your heart sitting on a three-legged stool, and sawing away
at the double bass. Why not ? In England we talk a vast
deal of stuff about feminine delicacy as applied to occupations
by means of which women might earn their bread. We are
selfish and brutal enough to allow women to work as bar-
maids in public-houses, drawing pots of beer and serving
noggins of gin to drunken costermongers ; but what an out-
cry there would be if we had female waiters at the Clarendon
or Mivart's, or a few lady-clerks at the Post Office and Somer-
set House !
It is about a year since I was coming from Manchester
to London with a professed philanthropist, economist, so-
cial-science-congressman, and so forth, who was pluming
himself mightily on the efforts he had made to persuade the
guardians of some union in the North to " train" their young
pauper girls as nurses. " There is an intuitive delicacy and
sympathy," et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, "it is an employ-
ment at once so Christian and so eminently suitable," et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera, he was maundering on, when I
VENICE EESTORED. 251
took the liberty of interrupting him. " Good God, sir," I
said, "what right have you to condemn fresh young girls of
fourteen and fifteen — healthful, cheerful, hopeful, feeling
their life in every limb, to a hideous treadmill - existence
among ulcers and poultices and pills and sleeping-draughts,
and the bandages which tie up the jaws of death ? Who are
you, that you should presume to settle the future of your
young pauper girl ? Suppose she wants to fall in love and
be married — whom is she to marry ? The workhouse porter
or the parish undertaker? Suppose she wants to paint in
water-colours, or to write stanzas in the ottava rima, or to
drive a cab ? Wliy don't you go and ask Lady Clara Yere de
Vere if she would like to poultice scald heads or stick plasters
on sore shins all the days of her life ?" But this has nothing
to do, I apprehend, with the progress of lyric art in Italy and
last night's fiasco at La Fenice.
My professor, I suppose, was born long after the collapse
of the Most Serene, and the prevalence of big fiddling among
the young ladies of his acquaintance may have been but the
dim continuance of an esteemed tradition. Music, however,
vocal and instrumental, had been at one time taught uni-
versally and systematically to the children of the poor,
both boys and girls. Almost every Italian is a musician
born, to begin with — that is to say, he or she has an ear,
and sympathy, and taste. Proficiency in the practice of
music served to relieve weakly boys from the drudgery of
mechanical labour — to enfranchise girls from the abhorrent
bondage of the needle.
The demand for such proficients was quite equal to the
supply, although the Italian operas of London, New York,
253 ROME AND VENICE.
San Francisco, and St. Petersburg were as yet uncreate.
Italy could take as many good performers, male and female,
as the consen-atories of Venice could furnish. Poverty and
oppression had not then made the Italians a nation of shabby
niggards. They were a hospitable people. They lived
largely. They feasted frequently, and on as sumptuous a
scale as is represented in the vasty canvases of Tintoretto
and Veronese. The works of the great Venetian masters are
full of lutes, hautboys, sackbuts, and all kinds of psaltery.
You never see the wedding guest but you hear the loud
bassoon. They were good players themselves, as the great
Dutchmen were. Wlien Gerard Douw has finished touching
up his pots and pans, he takes up his Stradivarius and dis-
courses sweetly upon it. The bass viol has an honoured
place by the easel of Palmavecchio. Giorgione clashes the
cymbals, and Titian pinches the chords of the harp. Simple
Catholic men, they carry their love for music up to the very
heavens. They show us saints and martyrs sounding the
French horn, and angels performing on the big drum. In
those bright orchestral days, what a charivari there must
have been from the Alps to the Adriatic, and from the Lago
Maggiore to the Gulf of Sorrento ! Every great noble had
a band of " musicianers" in his train. Not a lord but had
his chamber singers. Not a lady but had her lute-boy. Not
a municipal solemnity but needed some braying and banging
of metallic harmony.
The Church had stomach for a whole mine of music ; nor
in the Venetian fanes were female voices banished from the
mass, as, from the pathetic Latin lament of the Maestro
Kossini to the Pope, we learn that they now are throughout
VENICE RESTORED. 253
the Peninsula. Choristers were eagerly sought for by the
priests of a religion which, when it ceases to appeal to
the senses, falls at once before the cruel logic of reason ; nay,
so incessant was the demand for shrill treble voices that
there arose, prompted by the Devil, that hideous manufacture
of soprani of which Yelluti was the last-known type in Eng-
land. ^' Faites-moi cesser, promptement, ces etres la T' Na-
poleon wrote sternly to his viceroy Beauharnais at Milan ; "
and the manufacture of soprani ceased for ever.
Apart from the Church-needs, and those of banquets
and festivals, and pomps and vanities without end, there
were concerts and oratorios and theatres all hungering and
thirsting for ''musicianers." These were largely recruited
from the Conservatories of Venice. They, however, and the
Most Serene Republic herself, came to a sorry, shameful
end. The Austrians, it must be admitted, brought with
them into Venetia the best military bands that had ever
been heard in Italy ; but, their waltzes and mazurkas in
St. Mark's Place notwithstanding, they contrived to strangle,
suffocate, and sit down upon the musical profession in their
unjustly-acquired kingdom. The Scala at Milan, it is true,
they never succeeded in destroying. The Conservatory of
the capital of Lombardy continued to flourish as a musical
university, whither repaired students from all parts of Eu-
rope ; but music in Venice the Tedeschi utterly ruined. I
daresay they had not the slightest intention of doing the
Venetians any such evil turn. It was not their fault. It
was their system, it was politics, it was fatality, which was
to blame. Still, in any case, sure enough was it that the
Conservatorij of Venice went out, one after the other, like
254 ROME AND VENICE.
exhausted tapers, and that the decay of La Fenice and the
San Benedetto kept pace with the decay of commerce and
navigation — of arts and arms — of cultivated society and ma-
terial prosperity — of everything, in fact, which could be
blighted and withered by an unbending military despotism
and a pig-headed bureaucracy.
The Fenice struggled for a time, flickered, burnt up
"again for a brief season when Maximilian was viceroy, then
sank into the socket and utter darkness. No sooner was
the cession of Venetia to Italy talked about last July than
the Venetians began to talk about reopening La Fenice. The
resuscitation of the famous old house was looked upon as
a natural and inevitable consequence of the emancipation
of the city. An army of upholsterers and painters began
quietly to rub up the gilding, clean the ceiling, refurnish
the boxes, and mend the holes in the stage, at about the
same time that the middle classes began to enrol themselves
in the National Guard and exercise with wooden muskets
in the halls of deserted palaces, and the Venetian ladies
began to hem tricoloured flags and stitch cockades together.
The preparations for the Feast of Liberty went on con-
currently. Then the Austrians vanished for good, and it
was announced that the Fenice would be opened on the
thirty-first of October. Some people thought it would be
more loyal and decorous to wait for the arrival of King Victor
Emmanuel, and solemnly inaugurate the new era with a gala
performance, and the Fenice lighted a giorno ; but the Vene-
tians were impatient to look upon their beloved opera-house
once more, and the date of the thirty-first was adhered to.
I heard, for a full fortnight, almost as much bragging and
VENICE RESTOEED. 255
boasting about tbe primo tenore and tbe prime donne, and
the band and the chorus, and the new scenery, dresses,
and decorations, which we were to see by the thirty-first, as
before the war we used to hear about what nostri prodi meant
to do in the Quadrilateral, and nostre camicie rosse in the
Tyrol. The Italians are as fond of the use of the first person
plural as are the Spaniards with their incessant ^' nosotros.''
When an Italian cannot possibly do anything without extra-
neous assistance, he is sure to scream " Fairmo da noiJ"
Hope rose to a most exciting point, and was kept at fever
heat by the announcement that the management of the
Fenice had been confided by the committee of noble pro-
prietors — the same patriotic patricians who so sternly refused
to open the house at the invitation of the tyrant Toggenburg,
backed as his ofi'er was by the offer of fifty thousand florins
by way of subvention — to the experienced hands of the
impresario of La Scala at Milan. We were to have a first-
rate troupe, a tenor hors ligne, a ballet recruited at once
from Mahomet's paradise of houris and from the Eeale
Scuola di Danza, and a prima donna assoluta who should
recall the last operatic glories of Venice prior to '59, when
the great Alboni could be heard for a zwanziger. The
magical name even of the incomparable Adelina Patti was
whispered abroad ; and the cognoscenti trembled with ecsta-
tic expectation.
One night, very late, a gondola arrived at the Hotel
Victoria ; a vast quantity of luggage, a lady of a certain age,
and another of an uncertain age, the former being the mamma
of the latter, were discharged therefrom ; and the shrill tones
of a female voice were heard in the marble halls inquiring,
25G ROME AND VENICE.
"La prbna luima ? Dov' e la prima mimaV It was the
seconds mima, the second pet of the ballet, who had arrived,
and to whom the first mima had given rendezvous at the
Victoria. I call her age uncertain, because in stature she
did not appear to be much over nine, whereas in agility she
was nineteen, and in facial expression ninety. The next day
came the primo tenore, who was stout, and a sufferer from
the toothache, they said. He retired to his apartments and
rang the bell up till one in the morning, demanding mint,
tea, chloroform, laudanum, onion - peel, creosote, tobacco,
cloves, cotton-wool, and other remedies for his ailment. We
were joined, however, at the tahle-d'hote by the prima donna,
who was thickly swathed in shawls, and the tip of whose
nose — which was about the only part of her person visible —
did not look quite so young as it might have done. The
footlights, however, make a wonderful difference in these
play-acting folks ; and it is certain that their profession is a
very trying one for the complexion.
We next heard that they were rehearsing at the Fenice,
and that the Ballo in Maschera would be produced on the
appointed night, on a scale of splendour and artistic com-
pleteness yet unheard of in Venetian annals. Boxes and stall-
tickets were, of course, at a premium ; at least, foreigners
were industriously told that admittance could be obtained
scarcely for love or for money; and several worthy forestieri
of my acquaintance were only too glad to disburse sums
varying from twelve to twenty-five francs a-head for tickets
entitling them only to standing-room. I may here mention,
en passant, and with many apologies for being so rude, that
the only one genuine thing connected with the Italian opera
VENICE KESTORED. 257
in Italy is the opera itself.. That cannot be adulterated,
sophisticated, tricked, cooked, and doctored ; but, apart from
the actual production of the gifted composer, everything else
is an ingenious, artistic, and shameless swindle. In Eng-
land, our most shining abilities in the way of swindling are
ordinarily devoted to the buying and selling of horses, and
the promotion of joint -stock companies. In Italy, Jeremy
Diddler becomes an operatic manager ; Eobert Macaire writes
theatrical critiques, and extorts black-mail from the artists
he criticises; Jack Sheppard turns music -publisher; and
Jonathan Wild does a neat little business as box book-
keeper, with Blueskin as assistant ticket-agent.
Having been myself, on innumerable occasions, bitten in
regard to the purchase of tickets for first nights, and with a
keen remembrance of having paid about two hundred and
fifty per cent above cost price to see the Africaine in the
principal theatres in Europe, I made no efforts to secure
stalls or front rows for the thirty-first. I waited to see whe-
ther anything would turn up. Sure enough something did.
A revolution of Fortune's wheel brought me an invitation
on the part of the committee of shareholders to witness the
%}rova generate, or full-dress rehearsal of the opera, which
was to take place on the evening of the twenty-ninth. I
esteemed this favour the more highly as I was told that only
the committee and a select number of the Venetian aristo-
cracy were to be present, and that persons of the journalistic
profession were specially to be ''non-recipients of invites,"
to quote the delicate phrase employed by American reporters
to signify that they haven't been asked to supper. The press
taboo, however, did not prevent my next neighbour from being
S
268 ROME AND VENICE.
the sprightly correspondent in Venice of the Milan Perscrcr-
nii: ^ an accomplished musician, but a terribly bitter critic,
and an honest one, which is saying much when criticism is
mentioned.
I found the old Fenice not very much changed. It had
been, like an antique silver salver, diligently rubbed up with
whitening and wash-leather, but that was all ; and its tasteful,
albeit somewhat old-fashioned, decorations were perhaps no
worse for having had so little done to them. I should be
loth to assume that the genius and skill in those decorative
arts in which Italy once excelled have abandoned her for
ever; but I must confess that since I have been in this
country I have seen little or nothing in the way of public
decoration to remind me that I was in a land once rendered
illustrious by the performances of Bramante and Palladio,
Donate and Sansovino.
The architectural remains of Venice are magnificent,
but they all belong to the remote past. They are, in
the strictest sense, funeral baked meats, and, to tell truth,
do somewhat coldly furnish forth the marriage table.
A trifle of colour, in the way of a potage, or a hors
d^oeuvre cjiaud, would be most welcome. The old gilding,
4;he old scrolls and wreaths, the old girandoles, the old medal-
lions of poets and composers, the old ceiling in tempera,
"showing the nine Muses, the Graces, the Hours, the Seasons,
and the Passions, all with scarcely a rag on, balancing them-
selves in the ethereal blue, had been carefully bread-crumbed
and sedulously polished ; and a few books of gold-leaf had been
bestowed on the tarnished frames of the mirrors in the royal
box ; and those plates of glass which were hopelessly cracked
VENICE RESTORED. 259
had been replaced by new ones. Perhaps a gross of glass
drops had been added to the chandelier, and some of the
stalls had been re-covered.
There is, however, a rich and subdued harmony about the
interior of the Fenice not surpassed by any other theatre I
have seen ; and the paucity of fresh adornment was, there-
fore, a thing more to be rejoiced over than lamented. It
unfortunately happened that what was really new was not
good, but- in the very worst possible taste. I could have
borne with an old act-drop, however faded and rococo. It
might have been a drop a hundred years old for aught I
cared; for a hundred years ago the names of the scene-
painters at the Fenice were Canaletto and Guardi. I don't
think we should grumble at home if at Drury Lane Mr.
Chatterton gave us now and then some odds and ends from
his scene-room, painted, thirty years ago, by Clarkson Stan-
field and David Eoberts. The management of the Fenice
presented the audience with a tawdry curtain of blue cotton-
velvet, powdered with tawdrier stars in gilt-foil paper. This
was bad to begin with, but worse remained before. Over the
royal box there had been nailed up a most unsightly trophy,
composed of tricoloured flags of the commonest bunting, with
the royal crown, escutcheon, and cross of Savoy in the
middle. The part which should have been gold was of the'
coarsest Dutch metal ; and the cross of Savoy was of a silver
so strident, glaring, and burnished-tin-like in tone, that it
utterly destroyed the effect of the time-mellowed old gilding
round it, and could suggest only one possible companion.
^^ Sale e Tabacchi,'' whispered the Milanese critic. It was
indeed, for all the world, the image of th« garish heraldic
260 BOME AND VENICE.
signboard hung up in front of the Government salt -and
tobacco-shops.
There chanced to sit by us the scenic artist of the Fenice,
and I took the liberty, as an old apprentice of the distemper-
painting craft, to hint to him that just the merest coat of
" size" washed over the silver cross would ** kill" its tin-pot
brightness, and make it harmonise tolerably with the half-
dead gold around. He acknowledged that the effect was bad ;
but explained that it was to be amended, and that to-morrow
the cross would be of gold instead of silver. I ventured to
hint, again, that there was such a thing as accuracy in
heraldic blazonry, and that the cross of Savoy was a cross
argent, which must blazonically be translated either by silver
or by pure white. He shrugged his shoulders. The com-
mittee of proprietors had ordered that it should be tutto oro ;
and — " cosa voleteV he concluded. It is " cosa voleteV
indeed. I think the public had a right to expect the com-
mittee of proprietors to spend a few thousand more francs on
the redecoration of La Fenice. In this case the plea of
poverty, so industriously brought forward when Italian stingi-
ness is censured, will not avail. Among the proprietors of
the Fenice are a number of Venetian noblemen, with fortunes
such as English peers of the realm would not be ashamed
to own.
Soon after eight the rehearsal began. The band played
in tune and time, and with expression. The chorus was
excellent. The scenery was old, and good ; the dresses were
^i^ew, and bad. I must make one exception, however, as re-
gards the costume of the young lady who played the page,
and who, with her black hair dressed like a boy's, and her
VENICE EESTORED. 261
pretty form arrayed in a silver-laced velvet doublet, pink-
silk hose, and the most ravishing pair of sky-blue satin
smallclothes ever beheld since the days when our grand-
fathers went mad over Madame Catalani in pantaloons, quite
made me oblivious, for a season, of the unpleasing fact that
she could neither act nor sing. "Were I Nostradamus,"
muttered the critic at my side, "I would predict that yonder
page will be hissed off the stage the night after to-morrow."
He subsequently remarked that were he Duns Scotus he would
prophesy a similar fate as in store for a cadaverous baritone
in black velvet, a point-lace collar, and jack-boots a la Sub-
way or Thames - Embankment fashion. I am no judge of
music, otherwise it might have occurred to me too, that I
was Cassandra or Doctor Gumming, and that it was my mis-
sion to foretell the utter discomfiture on the night of the
thirty-first of the stout tenor with the toothache, and the
prima donna whose nose, as visible through her shawls, had
not looked quite so young as it might have done.
I saw the rehearsal through, and went away, grateful for
my entertainment, but full of the most melancholy forebod-
ings ; only the remembrance that there was to be a ballet
somewhat reassured me. The prova of the choregraphic
performance did not take place until the evening of the
thirtieth, and we had the advantage of beholding the prima
ballerina in person, and in the ordinary walking -dress of
private life, taking her place in the stalls, and assisting as
a privileged spectator at the rehearsal of the Ballo in Mas-
chera. I like to see ballet-dancers in long clothes. I like
to see the Sylphide eating a pork-chop, and Giselle walking
down Eegent-street, very nervous at the crossing by the
262 ROME AND VENICE.
Piccadilly Circus lest her ankles should be seen by the pro-
fane. I like to see Esmeralda reading the Family Herald,
and La Jolie Fille de Gand nursing her first baby. Take my
word for it, my young friend from the university — you who
are so anxious to see "fast" life and to go "behind the
scenes" — that the pets of the ballet, all over the world, are
a great deal better than you ordinarily give them credit for
being.
More than twenty years have passed since I earned my
livelihood in a London theatre, and enjoyed a familiar ac-
quaintance with at least five-and-thirty pets of the ballet.
Pleasant memories do I preserve of the threehalfpenny-
worths of toffy and almond-rock, and the bottles of ginger-
beer — some even would accept the modest half-pint of porter
— to which I have treated, after treasury-time on Saturday,
those hard-working, honest - minded, much -belied girls.
There was a Sylphide who used to mend my socks. I have
lent Esmeralda Mrs. Inchbald's Simple Story ; and I am
glad to know now a Giselle who keeps a lodging-house in
Camden Town, and does extremely well ; and a Jolie Fille
de Gand who has married a master carpenter, and has eight
children.
Our prima ballerina at the Fenice was the observed of
all observers. No sooner did she glide — I mean, did she
float — I would say, was she wafted — at any rate, did she
gracefully sail, into the stalls, than I quite forgot the bare
existence of the young person in the pink-silk hose and the
sky-blue satin unwhisperables. This was the most charm-
ing little creature that eyes ever feasted on. Her curly poll,
her diamonds, her little pork-pie hat, her little roguish
VENICE EE STORED. 263
chlffonnee face, her zouave jacket, her doU's-gloves, her Li-
liputian bronze boots, visible for one brief moment as she
tripped down the aisle between the seats, made up an en-
semble at once peerless, perfect — and perilous. Good Doctor
Johnson told Garrick why he would no more come behind
the scenes. This prima ballerina was clearly a Scylla, a
Charybdis, a Siren, like unto those dangerous young women
of the sea whom the heathen man did stop his ears against.
She was accompanied by two females of mouldy aspect. I
did not ask her name ; I did not want to know her name ;
but, I thought, as I left the Fenice, and crossing the great
stone bridge and losing my way, as a matter of course did
not find it again till I brought up suddenly, long after mid-
night, in the Merceria San Salvador — " There is no fear of
their hissing you, little one, any way."
The long-expected thirty-first arrived, and the Fenice
was opened. The house was not at any time during the
evening more than half-full. The foreigners in Venice had
been cosened into paying exorbitant prices for their seats,
but the Venetians had obtained their tickets at the ordinary
tariff, and not a tithe of what may be considered good society
in Venice was present at the Fenice at all. A sufficient num-
ber of cognoscenti were, however, in evidence to deliver an
authoritative verdict that the entire performance was atro-
ciously bad, and, from the beginning of the second scene,
to " goose" it most thoroughly. The whole auditorium,
indeed, reeked with the odour of sage and onions. The
" goose" was complete. All the predictions of my Milan-
ese friends were verified. When the young lady in the
sky-blue satin inexpressibles had recited two bars, the
264 ROME AND VENICE.
pittites began to blow into latch-keys and to whistle profane
airs — that is to say, that nobody would listen to the stout
tenor with the toothache. As for the baritone, they made light
of the pallor of his countenance and turned his jack-boots
into derision. It was discovered that the prima donna was
fifty-five years of age — I will not be so ungallant as to men-
tion her name — and that she had been " goosed" at the San
Samuele in the year '48. After this the cause of tin Ballo
in Maschera was hopeless.
It is not at any time an inviting opera. Homer some-
times nods ; and I think that were the opinion of Mr.
Artemus Ward asked in this matter, it would be to the
effect that Signer Verdi had gone out for a walk and got
some Bourbon in his hair when he wrote Un Ballo. The
poverty of the music is rendered even more apparent by the
absolute wretchedness of the libretto. The story of Un Ballo
is, in reality, that of MM. Scribe and Auber's Gustavus III. ;
but as, in despotic countries it would never do to have a
royal personage assassinated by Count Ankerstrom, the
scene is changed to ^'America nel secolo XVII.,'' and Gus-
tavus becomes a " Govematore di Boston,'' and the weird
woman who foretells his assassination an Indian sorceress.
The general result is bald, crass, concrete absurdity. It is
just the kind of piece — apart from its musical merits, which
are considerable, but unequal — to be ''goosed;" and goosed
it accordiAgly was.
The disturbance towards the end of the first act had
gro-ftTi so tumultuous — there was such a storm oifischiettl,
of screeching, hooting, yelling, stamping, and roaring
^'Fiiori I fuori /" — that " Doldrum the manager," or what-
VENICE RESTORED. 265
ever tlie impresario's name may be, had, in Hs opera-hat
and opera-tights, to advance to the footlights, and submit
the terms of a compromise.
He proposed that the first act should be allowed to
conclude ; next that the National Hymn should be sung ;
then that the ballet should be given ; and, finally, that
the remainder of Un Ballo in Maschera should be
presented. The audience demurred to the totality of
these terms. They were willing to hear the hymn, and see
the ballet, but they would not hear any more opera; and
when the dolorous man in jack-boots essayed once more a
piteous stave, he was met with such a universal howl of
'' Basta I Basta /" " Enough ! enough !" that the blue
cotton-velvet curtain dropped, as though of its own volition,
on the painful scene, and the suggeritore or prompter duckexi
his head, as though to evade the storm of orange-peel, or
potatoes, or halfpence, or some other form of annihilation
which might probably be directed to his dress by the out-
raged amateurs of Venice. Nobody threw anything, how-
ever. There was no need to call in the police. The people,
so far as the present historian is concerned, were, towards
eleven p.m., " left hooting ;" but I am told by more persistent
spectators, who did not leave the theatre until one in the
morning, that after the hymn had been sung and the ballet
danced — and I am delighted to say that not one sibillation
assailed my Siren-sylphide with the curly poll — the fag-end of
Un Ballo in Maschera did, in a most disjointed and draggled
manner, wriggle itself, in the midst of fearful opprobrium
and scorn, to an unhonoured close.
Such was the great fiasco of the Fenice on the 31st
266 ROME AND VENICE,
October 1866. I think they had better have kept the
theatre closed for another eight years than have opened it
in this shabby fashion, and with this worn-out troupe ; and
if the management intend to give Victor Emmanuel, on the
grand gala-night when he goes to the theatre in state, a
repetition of the Ballo in Maschera, it will certainly be a
pretty dish to set before a king.
XVIII.
ENTRY OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO
VENICE.
November 7.
It is done. The grand show is over. L' Italia e fatta, se
non compiuta. Such were the words addressed by the King
of Italy to the deputation who waited on him at the end of
last week, to invite his Majesty to visit his newly-acquired
city of Venice ; and few can question the logical correctness
of the royal reply. Italy is indeed " made," although she
lacks, to produce completeness, the trifling addition of the
Capitol of Rome. But she has become a great fact not-
withstanding. The Peninsula, once cynically defined by the
sneering statesman, as a "geographical* expression," is now
one of the great Powers of Europe, with a population of
twenty-five million souls. The land which was once only
the resort of tourists and dilettanti — " potted for the anti-
quary," as Mr. Ford would say — is now a living, breathing
commonwealth, enjoying all the advantages and labouring
under all the difficulties which are the lot of communities
which, although strong, are young, and must learn to work
in order that they may prosper.
There are those, and I have been of them, who are never
tired of girding at the idea of Italian unity, but who choose
to forget that it is only since the day before yesterday that
the atoms of the Italian structure fortuitously came together.
There are those who sneer at the Italian people because they
268 BOMB AND VENICE.
are mendacious, parsimonious, and inhospitable ; but these
critics forget that centuries of slavery are sure to produce the
first of the vices of slavery, untruth, and that the people who
have been so long accustomed to see their little all wrested
from them in ruinous imposts and forced loans, are reluc-
tant to give, voluntarily, that which was habitually extorted
from them by force. There are those who decry the Italians,
as a nation, because they are somewhat over-given to bark-
ing, and bite little, if at all — because, in the day of battle,
their soldiers ordinarily run away, and their ships sheer off :
but we are bound, I think, under any circumstances, to
remember that what great, noble, and heroic qualities they
may have originally possessed have been systematically suf-
focated and strangled by succeeding generations of tyrants
and barbarians ; that their bad qualities — of which the name
is surely legion — must be put down to the account of the
Gauls, the Franks,, the Huns, the Vandals, the Goths, the
Visigoths, and the Ostrogoths ; whereas their good qualities,
the which, at present, a double-million magnifier is needed
to discern, will doubtless be developed to colossal propor-
tions under a constitutional government and an equitable
administration.
Meanwhile it is done. " Italy," as I heard an American
gentleman, under the influence of patriotic sympathy and
cunningly concocted maraschino punch, declare last night
at Florian's, " Italy is free from the Andes to the Hima-
layas, and the Austrian holocaust no longer indoctrinates
the city of the Quadroons." He omitted to state that the
home of Venice was in the setting sun, but I daresay he
meant it. Discourses, however far more ornately rhetorical
ENTRY OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO VENICE. 2G9
than the Pogram oration, might have been tolerated last
night in " the city of the Quadroons," or lagoons. Yenice
went mad about nine o'clock p.m., and continued in a state
of acute but joyous delirium all night long. The waiters
at Florian's, if they had the barest idea of knowing their
customers, flatly refused to take money, and, saying, ''Ex-
cellency, pay next week," darted off wildly to execute the
orders of utter strangers. Distinctions of rank disappeared.
Political animosities were drowned in the flowing bowl. I
was asked to dinner, at two in the morning, by a Black
Piepublican from Massachusetts. A person with ill-made
trousers, and with an Irish accent, asked me for my auto-
graph. All kinds of subversive things took place ; all kinds
of ultra-democratic rumours were current. A report ran
that Earl Russell was witnessing the performance of Punch
on the Riva de' Schiavoni, and that Mr. Austin Henry Lay-
ard was tossing up " heads I win" with a vendor of hot
chestnuts in the Spadaria. I saw myself a British peer of
the realm whispering soft nothings to a fioraja at the corner
of the Frezzeria. I will not mention his lordship's name,
as I have not yet lost the hope of being invited, some of
these days, to pass a week at House.
In a word, the city was insane. The hotels, which were
full on Monday, ran over on the Tuesday. The tahles-cVhote
became mere scrambles for scraps of food. Bedrooms were
let by the square foot, and beds by the inch, and at their
weight in gold. An estimable English lady, a widow, but
affable, left us this morning for Milan. *' I wanted to see
the King's entry," she remarked piteously, " and I am an
old traveller, and can bear a great deal ; but I cannot sleep
270 ROME AND VENICJ).
until next Tuesday in a bath-room. That is where I passed
last night. At Danieli's they offered me a mantelpiece, and
:i{ \]]o Europa a dust-bin. I shall go." The sterner sex,
however, could afford to laugh at the paucity of sleeping
accommodation. Florian's, Quadri's, Suttil's, the Specchi
never intended to close ; and if the worst came to the worst,
they could bivouac on the steps of St. Mark, or between
the columns on the Molo. I do believe that very many
respectable persons so passed the night on the 6th of No-
vember. There was some fear, however, of catching cold.
A pretty sharp sirocco of the previous day had been followed
by one of those warm, moist, muggy evenings peculiar to
Venice. It is moist and muggy only in the shade. Where
any rays of light fall, the pavement is as dry as a bone ; but
wherever there is a shadow the stones are covered by a
greasy, humid film, perilous to the footsteps, and distilling
bronchitis and diphtheria. This is the real choke-damp of
Venice. Neophytes to the place ignorantly imagine that
the vicinage of so many canals must be injurious to health.
This is not necessarily the case. The canals are full of
sea-water, and salt moisture rarely gives cold. It is the
deadly clamminess of the after-damp, brought on to the
stones by the sirocco, which is to be dreaded. I sincerely
trust that the persons who were compelled thus to sleep
a la belle etoile did not find themselves any the worse for
their alfresco slumber this morning.
Sleeping or waking, however, the madness of St. Mark's
knew no surcease last night. Faces that had not been seen
at Venice for years appeared, to be familiarly greeted. Poli-
tical prisoners long held under Austrian bolts, and long
ENTKY OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO VENICE. 271
believed to be dead, started up as in a premature resurrec-
tion. Old cliques were formed again, old flirtations re-
newed. The natural talent for improvisation innate in most
Italians asserted itself under the oddest circumstances.
Venerable females were discovered uttering incoherent rhap-
sodies, of which the gist was the unity of Italy, on out-of-
the-way bridges ; and staid old gentlemen of three-score-
and-ten snapped their fingers and cut six on their way home-
wards. The bonds of etiquette were loosened; but those
of decorum and good-nature relaxed nothing of their strin-
gency. I heard at an early period of the evening that an
Austrian soldier — there are still a few lingering here — had
been mobbed in the Merceria; but I learnt subsequently
that the supposed Tedesco was only an organ-grinder, who,
by mere force of habit, had proceeded to grind the Austrian
anthem after Garibaldi's Hymn. There have been really one
or two of these mobbing cases, quite cowardly and unjusti-
fiable lately, and the much-beset Croats have been time-
ously rescued by the National Guard; but I much doubt
whether, last night, any Venetian, even to the lowest and
roughest of the population, would have thought it worth his
while to insult the shadow of his ancient enemy. Every-
body was too happy. The King was coming on Wednesday
morning. That announcement was sufficient to cause all
differences to be forgotten, and all hands to be clasped in
amity.
To see a city overjoyed — to gaze upon a multitude unani-
mous in making merry, and from whom there escapes one
gigantic chorus of "So say all of us" — does not often fall
to the lot of the contemporary historian. I will venture to
272 ROME AND VENICE.
surmise, however, that the people in Venice who were not
glad on the night of the 6th of Novemher could have been
counted, if not on one's digits, at least on the fingers and
the toes combined. And who shall say that in the stillness
of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, there were
not men who, although poor and miserable, were full of joy at
the thought of that coming to pass which the decrees of Fate,
or their sins, or their infirmities forbade them to witness?
Who shall say that there were not last night in Venice blind
men who beat their hands together for glee, and cripples
who struck their crutches against the wall and wagged their
stumps in exultation, and beggars who rose up exultant from
their lairs of rags and shavings — ay, and captives, even, in
the dungeon - cell, doomed ever to rattle their fetters and
stare at that intolerable iron door which only opens to
admit the gaoler or the chaplain — who felt a thrill of
gladness at the thought that to-morrow was to bring about
the making of Italy, and the coming-in of Italy's chosen
king ?
The only fear was for the weather. That sirocco — that
warm and muggy film on the marbles of the Broglio and the
Procuratie — made the weather-wise anxious. The King of
Italy has not the best reputation in the world for bringing
sunshine with him. Theodore Hook said of Charles X. that
he reigned as long as he could, and then mizzled ; but Victor
Emmanuel, with sad frequency, not only reigns, but pours.
Turin is perhaps, with the exception of Eouen and Man-
chester, the wettest city in Europe ; and the sovereigns of the
House of Savoy seem to have transplanted the pluvial in-
fluences of their quondam capital to Florence, Naples, and
ENTKY OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO VENICE. 273
whatever other town they have yet honoured by their pre-
sence.
The evil predictions of Tuesday evening were partially,
but happily not entirely, verified on Wednesday morning.
The day was raw and cold, and the whole city was enveloped
in a villanous white fog. It w^as a Scotch mist aggravated
bj" a Dutch haze. Venice was all at once metamorphosed
into Kotterdam, and became absolutely vulgar. I almost
fancied that I smelt about the smaller canals that odour
of cheese, schnapps, and red-herrings so inalienable from the
water-ways of the Batavian republic. Certainly, this Venice,
pictorially speaking, had been painted by Vandervelde or
Backhuysen, and not by Turner. St. Mark's Place was
wrapped in a fleecy blanket, out of which the cathedral
blinked, with its great semicircular facades, like some mon-
strous mouse-trap in triplicate. There w^ere plenty of flags
streaming from the windows ; but the three colours had,
under the foggy blight, a dull and spiritless look. They
accorded only too well with the habitues you met at Florian's
and the Specchi, dipping their milk-bread into their
morning coffee, or kindling their after-breakfast cigar, and
who all wore an unmistakable air of having been up all
night.
This was about half-past eight in the morning ; at half-
past nine I prepared for the labours of the day by installing
myself, in company with a number of railway-rugs, shawls,
wrappers, and comforters, in a two-oared gondola. A fur-
cap, a pair of sealskin gloves, and a case-bottle containing
something comfortable, would not, under the unpleasantly
sharp meteorological circumstances, have been amiss. Who
T
274 ROME AND VENICE.
would have imagined that this was "beautiful Venice, city of
sunshine" ? Her " light colonnades" were all wreathed in
opaque vapour, and the "pride of the sea" was decidedly of
the most muddled complexion.
I may mention that at this conjuncture I fell into a very
mixed condition of mind. The local colour had set in dead
against the attainment of any intellectual consistency, '^t
first I fancied that I was going to the Derby, and that my
barouche and four was waiting for me at Mr. Newman's
livery-stables in Regent-street. The number of aristocratic
equipages about at such an early hour rather favoured this
impression ; but then, I remembered, people go to the Derby
in carriages, not in canoes, and there is an appreciable differ-
ence between your civil, waggish gondolier and your postilion
in his blue jacket, leathers, and fluffy white hat, with his un-
alterable persuasion that Cheam gate is preferable to Ewell,
and his incorrigible propensity to become prematurely in-
toxicated. How does your post-boy get tipsy? You are
aware of his w^eakness, and are armed in triple mail against
it. You don't allow him to get down. He cannot have any
supernatural means of access to the Fortnum and Mason's
hamper — which, besides, is strapped behind the barouche.
You are certain, from narrow ocular inspection, that he does
not carry a private flask. Yet who has not known post-boys
who, starting from Jermyn-street, St. James's, as sober as
judges, have become, and without stirring from their
saddles, before they reach Clapham-common, as drunk
as lords ?
Dismissing the Epsom-race theory, I tried to persuade
myself for a season that I was bound for the Oxford and
ENTRY OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO VENICE. 275
Cambridge boat-race; but, not being run down by a penny
steamer ere I reached the Foscari Palace, or bullied by the
Thames Police as I passed under the Eialto, I changed the
venue, and imagined that I was waiting in the Mall of St.
James's Park to see her Majesty pass to open Parliament.
This idea was soon scattered to the winds by the absence of
the U£q- Guards Blue. Amphibious as Venice may be, she
has not yet " called out the cavalry" or organised a corps of
horse-marines, and the office of riding-master to the Doge of
Yenice is still a sinecure.
Ten o'clock had barely struck, however, before I found
out very unmistakably in what place my lines were cast. This
was indeed Venice, but Venice restored — Venice revivified —
Venice herself again. To salute the great triumph of the
nineteenth century, she had gone back three hundred years.
The gorgeous fantastic costumes and usages of the old Ee-
public of Venice had come back again, but to usher in a
tangible and beneficial rule, and not to sanction the mum-
mery of a chief magistrate's throwing a ring into the sea. It
was not the Doge who was about to wed the Adriatic, but the
King of Italy who was about to marry Venice. There, how-
ever — strange anachronism ! — off the steps of the railway-ter-
minus lay the Bucentaur of 1866. Not the original Bucen-
taur. That hapless caravel, first scraped bare of its gold leaf
by the French, then converted into a floating prison, fell at
last a prey to an accidental fire.
It is best not to inquire too narrowly into what has be-
come of the grand pieces of furniture, aquatic and otherwise,
which once embellished Venice. In the last days of its de-
cline, the Most Serene Eepublic sold by auction, at eight-
276 HOME AND VENICE.
pence-halfpenny the square yard, tapestries which had been
designed by Rafaelle, and woven at Arras. The rarest
pictures of Titian and Tintoretto have found their way to the
marine-store shops of the Ghetto. Not a month since, the
Austrian s were selling in the Royal Palace to the vilest
brokers, and for a few florins, sumptuous hangings and
gorgeous cornices which had cost thousands of ducats. Not a
fortnight since, the porter at one of the Venice hotels bought
as a speculation, for forty pounds, a lot of gondolas, among
which was the identical one, all shimmering with faded gild-
ing, which served for the state entry into Venice, in 1811, of
Napoleon I. and Maria Louisa.
The municipality had done their best to replace the
original Bucentaur. There has been built at the Arsenal,
within the last few weeks, a most glorious galley, for the
reception of Italy's chosen monarch. I will not attempt to
describe in detail its architectural proportions or particular
style of decoration ; let it suffice to say that it is a kind of
radiant vision of carving and gilding, silk, embroidery,
crimson velvet, and bullion tassels, with a towering gonfalon
of white silk edged with blue, and displaying in the centre
the escutcheon of the House of Savoy, at the prow. Sur-
mount the deck with eighteen lusty rowers clad in cloth of
gold, with a canopy of satin, velvet, and gold for the King
to stand under, and jou may gain some faint idea of *' la
Lancia Reale." If further aid to the imagination be needed,
please to picture the Lord Mayor's barge in the old days,
when the Coi-poration were the conservators of the Thames,
and the water procession from Blackfriars to Westminster
used to delight the long-shore population; or, best of all,
ENTRY OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO VENICE. 277
turn up the good old passage in Antony ancl Cleopatra and
read :
" The barge he sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water : the poop was beaten gold ;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them ; the oars were silver.
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster."
You will see that I have taken the liberty of substituting
" he" for " she ;" and indeed I cannot, with any illusive pro-
priety, follow the quotation further ; for the robust and some-
what pugnacious - looking Majesty of Italy is anything but
twin-brother to the '^ Serpent of old Nile;" nor of him could
I venture to say that
" It beggar'd all description ; she did lie
In her pavilion — cloth of gold of tissue —
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature."
And yet, abating the fact that, later in the day, a portly jolly-
looking gentleman in military uniform was fain to serve for
Egypt's beauteous dusky queen, the wonderful word-picture
conjured up by Shakespeare was more than realised on the
Canalazzo. There were the "gentlewomen like the Nereids;"
but they were in a hundred gondolas, instead of one. There
were the " pretty dimpled boys like smiling Cupids ;" but they
were carved in wood or cast in plaster, and blazed in Dutch
metal. There was the *' seeming mermaid steering at the
helm ;" but he was a stout Venetian harcarolo arrayed in
fancy costume. There was the " silken tackle;" there was the
" strange invisible perfume that hit the sense of the adjacent
wharves ;" there, in short, was one of those marvellous pro-
278 ROME AND VENICE.
cessions of decorated boats which the French, with their
lordly contempt for zoological propriety, would merely term
a cavalcade, but for which I can find no other likeness than
that of an immense mob of aquatic splendour.
I had been told some days before that, brilliant as was
the spectacle on the occasion of the Austrian evacuation and
the arrival of the Italian troops, there had been reserved for
the entry of Victor Emmanuel some novelties in the way of
decoration which would literally astound me. I was curious
to know what these novelties might be. Everything in the
way of hanging out flags, carpets, and tapestries seemed to
have been done on the 19th ; and it was certainly difficult to
imagine anything in the way of an increase of popular enthu-
siasm. But I did not yet know what Venice could do. I
know now. I have seen to-day the full extent of her capacity
for a nautic show. Along the whole of the Grand Canal,
from Santa Maria della Salute to the Second Iron Bridge,
there was one enormous concourse of magnificent equi-
pages.
The old sumptuary laws of the Kepublic, which, in order
to check mischievous emulation among the wealthy, imposed
a uniform covering of funereal sable on all gondolas, had
been summarily ignored, and the reins had been thrown on
the neck of decorative extravagance. The Municipality, the
Chamber of Commerce, the Congregations of the different
districts, set the example in boating splendour, and the
Venetian aristocracy boldly followed the lead. There were
galleys blazoned in gold, and galleys whose timbers shone with
silver. White -satin canopies hung in air; crimson -velvet
draperies floated on the water. There were oars as splendid
ENTET OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO VENICE. 279
as the sceptre of the King of Thule. There were "Bissones,"
and " Peotes," and barks, with all manner of strange names
and of all manner of strange shapes, bristling with scrolls
and scutcheons, rustling with brocade and satin, spangled
and festooned and bannered, and crowned at helm and prow
with garlands of fresh flowers.
The supernumeraries of a hundred Drury-lane spectacles,
the madcap revellers of a hundred Parisian masked balls,
seemed to have been enlisted for the day as gondoliers. Here
was an eight-oar manned by Albanian Greeks, in snowy
camise and shaggy capote and scarlet tarbouche. Here was
a caique full of Turks, in baggy galligaskins of silver lama
and turbans of crimson twisted with gold. Now came a
sombre yet splendid barque, all black and gold ; the rowers
in short pourpoints, red-trunk hose, and with cock's-feathers in
their bonnets, and looking very much like so many animated
cartes-de-visite of Mr. Charles Kean as Mephistopheles in
Faust and Marguerite. Gondoliers dressed like the Gevar-
tius of Yandyke, gondoliers attired like the halberdiers of
Hans Holbein, gondoliers dressed like the algua9ils of Velas-
quez, and mingled in incongruous yet picturesque chaos with
men-o'-war's men in their snowy frocks and shiny hats, and
those amphibious flunkeys whom a portion of the Venetian
nobility will persist in allowing to infest their gondolas,
clad in plush breeches, laced hats, and big-buttoned swallow-
tailed coats; all these, with the boats full of staff-officers,
cavalry-officers, infantry-officers, and Garibaldians in every
conceivable variety of cocked-hat, helmet, shako, kepi, plume,
tuft, ribbon, and cockade ; all these, with the multitudinous
vessels, from heavy market-barges to tiny skiffs and dingies,
280 . ROME AND VENICE.
crammed by sight-seers, foreign tourists, and the common,
ragged, merry, and overjoyed Venetian people ; all these,
with every inch of quay thronged by humanity — the Rialto
groaning under the weight of life — with the Grimani, the
Pesaro, the Contarini, the Foscari, the Vendramini, the
Grassi, the Balbi, the Ca* d'Oro, the Fondaco de' Turchi,
^nd the very governmental pawn-shop itself, crowded by
ladies and gentlemen, waving their handkerchiefs ; all these,
in fine, with the jostling and the squeezing on the land, and
the "Evvivas". and the "per Bios,'" and the jests of the
gondoliers, and the gabble of voices on the water, as of a
million ducks, made up a whole that only needed, to attain
the summit of spectacular perfection, one little thing — to
wit, the blessed sun. But the sun was surly, and kept him-
self to himself most persistently.
It was twenty minutes past eleven when the booming of
cannon announced the arrival of the King of Italy at the
railway- terminus. My gondola had taken up a capital posi-
tion, about five hundred yards above the Rialto, and I had
not long to wait ere the royal galley hove majestically in
sight.
A regular military escort was, of course, quite out of
the question. What better escort could the King of Italy
have than his own people ? He came along, then, hemmed
and girt about by a tumultuous throng of boats, in the midst
of one overwhelming surging tide of firantic people, shouting
and laughing and weeping, and crying God bless him ! till
the good royal gentleman in uniform under the canopy of
crimson and gold might have had every excuse to weep a
little himself, and be thankful that he had lived to see such
ENTEY OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO VENICE. 281
a day. "Quelle chancer' a Frenchman by me said. Yes;
the luck has indeed been tremendous.
It is the will of the Almighty Disposer of events that
our joys shall be, as a rule, transitory, and that few of us
shall know complete bliss here below. " The circles of our
felicities," says the good Knight of Norwich, '' make but
short arches." To some is given the full span, the immense
ellipse which bridges the whole of life with fortune. Su-
premely happy, surely, he yonder, under those velvet hangings !
Supremely happy, at least for this day, and in this hour !
Gazing for the first time in his life on this incomparably
beautiful city, on this priceless appanage to his empire,
which has fallen into his mouth like a ripe nectarine shaken
from an espalier, Victor Emmanuel of Savoy must have known
that Venice had to-day but one voice, a voice to shout his
praise — but one heart, a heart that beat for him — but one
wish, a wish that he and his race might reign over Italy in
peace and prosperity, and do that which was fair and true,
like the good French King who sat under the oak at Vin-
cennes to mete out justice, and dry the widow's tears, and
take care that the orphan should enjoy his father's goods
after his father's days.
And if, as I firmly believe, there is infinite happiness in
beholding the happiness of others, surely we, the countless
thousands on whom no crowns had fallen, but whose crosses
perhaps had been lighter than even that burly man's, were
warranted in waving our hats and shouting, "Evviva Vittorio
Emmanuele /" until we were hoarse. For he is a King, after
all, worth shouting for. Not a very bright genius, perhaps ;
not a great general ; not a crafty counsellor ; but a plain,
283 ROME AND VENICE.
simple-minded gentleman, who keeps .his promises and tells
no lies.
Indescribable enthusiasm attended the King throughout
his entire passage. The royal galley was less rowed than
allowed to drift down the Grand Canal with the tide, which
was at ebb ; and at a few minutes after one Victor Emmanuel
the Second, by the grace of God and the national will King
of Italy, landed at the Piazzetta. His Majesty, who looked
in admirable health and spirits, was accompanied by his
royal cousin. Prince Eugene of Savoy-Carignan, who has
been Regent of the kingdom since last June, and by his two
sons, the Princes Humbert and Amadeus of Savoy. The
National Guard, who to-day mounted for the first time their
uniforms, and looked remarkably smart in their gray tunics
and scarlet epaulettes, were drawn up on the Molo to receive
his Majesty, and formed a double line along the Piazzetta,
and by the Loggetta to the cathedral of St. Mark. Bare-
headed and smiling, and with a firm quick step, the most
popular, the most accessible, and the most unassuming King
in Europe walked by his cousin's side, followed by his sons
and a brilliant staff, to the cathedral, where a solemn Tc
Deiim was to be performed ; the Cardinal Patriarch of Venice
officiating. The arcades of the Ducal Palace were crammed ;
the windows of the Library of St. Mark and the Zecca were
blocked with faces ; every point of espial in the Piazza was
occupied ; the roof of the Loggetta was tiled with human
heads ; only the huge Campanile was half hidden by mist,
and veiled his towering head in vapour ; while in the back-
ground seawards the Italian war-ships, all dressed in colours
and their yards manned, loomed spectrally through the haze
ENTRY OF THE KING OF ITALY INTO VENICE. 283
like SO many Flying Dutchmen. There was nothing spectral
about the cannon, however, or about the shouting of the
multitude, who disputed with each other in rival peals of
thunder until Victor Emmanuel set foot within the portal of
St. Mark's.
XIX.
PASSING THROUGH FLORENCE.
November 24th.
A Conservative critic once undertook to prove — and did
prove to his own entire satisfaction, if not to that of his
readers — that the great work of Lord Macaulay was anything
but that which it professed to be. He was willing to grant
it a romance, a fable, an epic poem, a collection of memoirs,
a budget of anecdotes, a repertory of statistics, a dictionary
of dates, a bundle of sonnets, or a grand Christmas panto-
mime; but it could not be considered, so the sage Ai-is-
tarchus held, a History of England. The world did not
agree with Aristarchus ; still his snarl remains, to be taken
for what it is worth. Did I ever venture upon criticising
works and things immensely above my comprehension, I
should be sorely tempted to take up, with regard to the
interesting city to which I am paying a flying visit, the line
of argument adopted by the Conservative caviller. I might
say that Florence is one of the most charming towns I have
ever seen, that the beauty of its site can scarcely be rivalled,
and that its treasures of art are inexliaustible. I might call
it a glorious museum, an unequalled picture-gallery, a re-
fined and cultivated place, a fashionable resort, a picturesque
lounge ; in short, I might call it everything but that which
it calls itself, and that which the solemn decree of the Na-
tional Legislature has declared it to be — the Capital of Italy.
PASSma THROUGH FLORENCE. 285
No ; it does not look like a capital ; and not all the foreigners
who are resident or are visitors here ; not all the presence of
King, Court, Parliament, and diplomatic body; not all the
efforts of the pushing and energetic Milanese, Piedmontese,
and Swiss shopkeepers, who have removed their wares hither
from Turin, — will ever give to Florence a real metropolitan
aspect.
You cannot create capitals, any more than you can
establish religions, by Act of Parliament. Attempts in that
direction have been made over and over again, but the result
has generally been a more or less humiliating failure ; wit-
ness Washington and Ottawa. When Napoleon I. chose to
create the kingdom of Westphalia for his brother Jerome,
he, unconsciously imitating Mr. Haller in The Stranger,
" fixed on Cassel for his abode ;" but all the cooks, aides-de-
camp, play-actors, milliners, chamberlains, and ballet-girls,
imported wholesale from Paris, failed to make Cassel a capi-
tal, and it remained, until the kingdom of Westphalia itself
tumbled to pieces, a dismal, " one-horse" town, pretentious
but contemptible. Time was, in our own country, when an
adventurous spirit, now by fame forgotten, but once probably
well known in the building trade, declared defiantly that
Southend should be the Queen of Watering-places. He built
it ; he advertised it ; he pufied it ; he ran steamers ; he ca-
joled railways; he beckoned to lodging-house keepers to
come and extort ; he off'ered gratuitous board and lodging to
those interesting members of the insect world without whose
presence no watering-place is complete ; he positively induced
shrimps to frequent Southend, and was suspected of empty-
ing a ton of salt into the water every morning to take off its
286 ROME AND VENICE.
brackishness ; but the thing wouldn't do. Southend was not
arbitrarily to be invested with a robe of brine and a diadem
of seaweed, and she continues to sit solitary and seedy on
the sandhills, while Margate and Ramsgate laugh Ha, ha !
in derision, and even Broadstairs genteelly simpers, and
Heme Bay sardonically sneers at the claims of her sandy
sister.
Agamemnon was strong, so was Samson, likewise Bel-
zoni. The power of human volition is tremendous. Faith
will remove mountains, and continuous drippings from wet
umbrellas wear out the Duke of York's steps ; but there are
some tasks which baffle proud man, and induce a painful
conviction of his impotence. He cannot propound a uni-
versal theorem ; and he never could make Hungerford Market
popular. He has been unable to solve the problem of aerial
navigation, and he has not yet succeeded in turning her Ma-
jesty's Theatre into a paying concern. He may make a poet
of Tupper, and a painter of Raphael Mengs ; he may tunnel
the Alps, and bridge the Straits of Dover; he may induce
the British working-man to drink Bordeaux instead of beer,
and banish the pernicious custom of smoking from railway-
carriages; he may abolish crinoline and inland custom-
houses ; pull down Holywell-street, finish the Record Office,
and make cabmen and grand-hotel managers civil ; he may
revive the use of embroidered copes in Westminster Abbey,
and turn the beadle of St. Clement's Danes into a thurifer,
or an acolyte, or a protospathairos ; but he will never, so far
as human likelihood is concerned, make the real capital of
Italy at Florence.
It is a country town ; it always has been a country town.
PASSING THROUGH FLORENCE. 287
and a country town it will continue, until the whole of this
orb reverts to the original Proprietor, and all is country,
without any towns at all. Of the myriads of travelling
Britons who have been here, and kept diaries, and printed
them, and gone into ecstasies about the Venus and the Faun,
the Flora and the Madonna della Seggiola, I do not know if
there have yet been any who have been stricken with the
amazing likeness existing between Florence and a very me-
morable, but purely provincial, English city — I mean Oxford.
At first sight the resemblance may not be striking, and the
analogy may be imperfect. Florence may vie with Eome as
the studio, and surpass her as the workshop of Italy; but
Galileo's manuscripts and the bibliomania of Magliabecchi
notwithstanding, Firenze la hella must yield the palm of
deep erudition and varied lore to Pisa, Bologna, and Padua.
You see no capped-and-gowned undergraduates in the Via de
Tornabuoni or the Cerretani., No dons awe you in the Sig-
noria or the Piazza Granduca. No proctors in velvet sleeves
prowl about accompanied by watchful bulldogs. The Arno
is certainly not the Isis ; for the hue of the last-named
stream is blue, and of the first a muddy yellow. A violent
effort of the imagination would be needed to transform the
verdant labyrinths of the Cascine into Christ- Church Mea-
dows ; and the Tuscan boatmen are a weak and puny race,
who, although they might, like all other Italians, bear away
the bell for blasphemy, would soon be vanquished, if strength
of lung could carry the day, by the bargees of Iffley Lock.
Nor is the architecture of Florence very Oxonian. You
seek in vain for venerable piles of florid Gothic, or for vast
fa9ades in the Palladian style. Apart from the Duomo, with
288 ROME AND VENICE.
its towering Campanile, exterioriy a gigantic and most as-
tounding jossliouse of variegated marble, which, were the
thing practicable, should be at once put under a glass-case,
and packed off to Paris for the Exhibition of '67, and which
inside is as bare and cold-looking as the old Dutch church
in Austinfriars ; apart from this, and the Baptistery, the
Florentine churches are singularly mean and shabby in out-
ward appearance. In domestic structures, Florence has its
own peculiar style of architecture, and that certainly does not
remind the tourist of Oxford. It rather suggests to him
thoughts of the Old Bailey. The Medici, the Strozzi, the
Gherardeschi, the Buonarotti, are names familiar as
Guelph or Ghibelline in the annals of Florence ; but I fancy
there must be some erasures in the Florentine Uhro croro,
and that the hiatus might properly be filled up with the
name of a Jonas. Assuredly the palaces of the old nobility
here look very much as though they had been originally in-
tended as residences of the Governor of Newgate, with private
apartments for the Governor's guests on each side. The
illustrious Strozzi dwell, for example, in a veritable gaol — a
colossal pile of granite boulders and barred casements, with
a narrow portal uncomfortably suggestive of the debtors'
door. I do not know whether the lady of the actual pos-
sessor of the palace and title gives "Wednesday evenings" in
London West -end fashion; but the mediaeval Strozzi, to
judge from the style of his habitation, must have been very
punctual with his Monday mornings — "hang at eight and
breakfast at nine," with II Signore Calcraft as chief butler.
Ferrara is the most murderous town I have yet seen in
Italy, and Bologna the most funereal. It strikes me that
PASSING THROUGH FLORENCE. 289
in those middle ages, of which we talk so much and know so
little, that it was at Ferrara you were preferably poisoned.
At Bologna they buried you, and your assassin was brought
to Florence to be fully committed, tried, and executed. To
carry out the Newgate-cum-Horsemonger-lane illusion in the
Florentine palaces, the walls are adorned, at a height of
about five feet from the ground, with a series of enormous
iron rings, pendent to links, and secured by strong staples to
the stone. You are informed that these rings were used in
the middle ages for securing horses by the bridle, while their
cavaliers transacted business with the nobles within. This
may or may not be true; but I imagine that animals of a
superior race to the equine have been of old time tethered to
these grim rings. The Florentines seem very proud of them ;
and I notice in a new palace, closely resembling Whitecross-
street Prison whitewashed, which is in course of erection close
to the Strozzi, that copies of the time-honoured Newgate
bracelets have been let into the walls.
There is another marked peculiarity of Florentine archi-
tecture which I may briefly notice — the extraordinary pro-
jecting eaves of the houses in the older streets. With their
preposterous eaves and tiny windows the houses look like
exaggerated pigeon-cotes. Florence has always been re-
nowned as a great place for gossip and cancans. May not
that term of ''eavesdropper," which has for so long a period
bitterly perplexed the learned and chatty correspondents of
Notes and Queries, spring from the overhanging eaves of
Florence, and the necessarily incessant droppings therefrom ?
But if there are no undergraduates, no dons, no bulldogs,
no town-and-gown rows, how comes it, then, that Florence
u
290 i;oM!: AND VENICE.
scarcely ever fails to remind an Englishman of Oxford ? For
this reason, I take it, that its pure provincialism — which is
provincial to the pettiest of Little Peddlingtonism, and coun-
trified to almost rusticity — is oddly intermingled with the
flashy splendour and meretricious bustle of the most expen-
sive town life. By the side of palaces, museums, and churches
are little hucksters'-stalls and poor chandlery-shops ; and then
come the establishments of tradesmen selling the most sump-
tuous jewelry, the grandest haberdashery and millinery, the
rarest books and engravings, the most brilliant and elaborate
nicknacks, at prices which even in Oxford would be thought
extortionate. 1 am not aware whether "tick," either as
a word or an institution, has yet become naturalised in Flo-
rence; but the tarijBf adopted by the Florentine jewellers,
tailors, and milliners is certainly suggestive of the largest
ledgers and the longest credit. Thoroughly Oxonian, also,
is the admixture in the streets of individuals whom you know
must belong to the cream of the countiy, with the stolid, list-
less, narrow-minded bourgeoisie of a country town.
Here, in fact, as in Oxford, extremes meet. You have
the social steam at its highest pressure, and a considerable
quantity of the tepidest water. You have a bottle of Moet's
champagne just uncorked and flying all abroad in the face of
the smallest of small beer. The carriages and pair of the
aristocracy, with splendidly-harnessed horses, and coachmen
in spun-glass wigs, the fours-in-hand, the tandems and the
breaks of Florentine " fast men," the broughams of senators,
the basket -phaetons and wicked little black ponies of the
Anonymous Estate on their way to the Cascine are jostled,
in beggarly by-lanes, by bullock-drays and mules laden with
PASSING THKOUGH FLORENCE. 291
forage, and humble donkej^-carts containing tlie stock-in-trade
of travelling tinkers.
Florence is Oxford during Commemoration, and all the
big-wigs and gros bonnets of the land are holding festival
here ; but you know that the Long Vacation is coming — you
know that there are very many weeks in every year when not
a big -wig is to be seen in the deserted streets; when the
flashy tradesmen are unable from month's end to month's
end to swindle a customer ; when the petty hucksters'-stalls
and the little chandlery-shops will reassert their legitimate
influence; when the principal event in each week will be
market-day ; when the hotels will become inns, the ristora-
tores farmers' ordinaries, and the caffes taprooms ; when his
worship the Mayor — they call him a " Gonfaloniere" here —
wdll be the greatest personage in the place; and when, in
fine, Florence will revert to that which it is really entitled to
be called — a town replete with the most exquisite monuments
of painting and sculpture, but always a provincial of the
provincials. Blaise Pascal might have written his letters
from the Boboli gardens ; but you can't make it a capital,
try your hardest. As well might Dulwich claim equal rank
with Piccadilly because it possesses Alleyn's college and Sir
Francis Bourgeois's gallery.
XX.
THE ROAD TO ROME,
December 1.
" Every road," we are told, leads " to Rome ;" and, as is
generally the case, a good sound substructure of sense and
truth underlies the proverb. When Rome was the mistress
and the metropolis of the world, the channels of communica-
tion with her were necessarily innumerable. From the utter-
most limits of the empire, he who wished to appeal unto
Caesar, found posts, and relays, and a beaten track to conduct
him to Caesar's judgment-seat. There were P. and O.'s two
thousand years ago, little dreamt of in your philosophy ; and
who shall say that, in its time, some Antioch, Corinth, and
Rome Chariot and Galley Transit Company (Unlimited) did
not convert as many talents of silver into ducks and drakes
as that stupendous Kentish undertaking has done whose line
and whose branches were to go everywhere — and have gone
everywhere, even unto the land which is called Smash ?
The Barbarians who overthrew the Caesars did their best
likewise to demolish all trace of the roads which led to
Rome ; and the assiduity of rapine and desolation with which
they grubbed up the fertile Campagna, grinding its flourish-
ing cities to powder, and rooting up their very foundations,
as though themselves had been pigs hunting truffles, till the
whole became one bare waste, is much to be commended.
The Barbarians have been succeeded by many generations of
THE ROAD TO ROME. 293
liiglily-civilised invaders, who, clad it may be in chain-mail,
in Milan steel, and eke in military garb of modern cut, have
done their best to ruin Eome and to obliterate the highways
leading to it. The City of Eternity, however, is inextinguish-
able. She is not to be wiped out. The Seven Hills have
been of the hydra kind. As fast as one was laid waste
another grew into life again, and the definitive brand which
is to sear Rome out for ever has not yet been found. Still
is Rome a metropolis and a puissance, and a marvel of mar-
vels ; and still are there more roads leading to Rome than to
any other Italian city.
If you have any doubts on this head I beg to refer you to
Bradshmv. Vast as are his resources as a constructor of
skeleton through-routes, he can only point out two ways of
journeying to Jerusalem, via Paris and via Trieste. But
turn to Rome, and you will find no fewer than five skeletons
placed at your command by the obliging myth who is to be
heard of — care of Mr. W. J. Adams, at 59 Fleet-street, E.G.
You may travel to Rome from London by Paris, Marseilles, and
Civita Yecchia ; or by Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence,
and Ghiusi ; or by Macon, St. Michel, Mont Genis, and Turin ;
or by Switzerland, coming over any one of the seven Alpine
passes you choose to Milan ; or, finally, by Vienna, Trieste, and
Ancona. This is indeed, viatorially, an emharras de richesses.
Let it be assumed, however, that purposing for Rome you
happen on the 29th of November, in a given year, to be, not
in London, but in Florence. This was my case the day be-
fore yesterday. I sought counsel of Bradshaw, but his skele-
tons, albeit beautiful in anatomical articulation, were want-
ing, somehow, in sinew, and muscle, and adipose membrane.
2H ROME AND VENICE.
I knew that there were a great many roads leading from
Florence to Rome, but I experienced very great difficulty iu
ascertaining which was the shortest and the best. I was
told that I could go by way of Leghorn, by way of Ancona,
by way of Nunziatella, by way of Civita Vecchia, but that in
one case I must be prepared for seven hours' diligence-travel-
ling, in another for nine, and in a third for twelve of that
torture. As for reaching Rome without staying somewhere
on the road for a whole night, it was out of the question.
There was no trustw^orthy information on the subject to
be obtained in Florence. Either the Florentines do not know
much, or else they are singularly uncommunicative. The
entire energies of the hotel-keepers are seemingly absorbed by
the task of making out extortionate bills against their guests ;
and if they have any leisure, they employ it in milking pav-
ing-stones and skinning fleas for the hide and fat.* I asked
people who had been resident for years in Florence, but as a
* Meanness, shabbiness, and stinginess, in the capital of the kingdom of
Italy, have grown to be more than an art ; they have attained the propor-
tions of a science. I thought I had already seen some samples of pretty
close shaving in North Italy ; but when, going to a fashionable stationer's
in Florence to purchase some photographs, I saw a tremendous dandy, with
a watch-chain as big^as Queen Guinevere's girdle, ask for one enveloj^e, ten-
der a sou — one halfpenny — in payment, and receive /owr centesimi in change,
I saw that I had gotten among a race whose close-fistedness was colossal.
Florence is nearly the^^only city where you meet the centesimo, the fifth part
of the halfpenny, in active currency. Even the Spaniards are ashamed of
anything under four reals. The Florentines have a sliding scale of parsi-
mony worthy of Elwes the miser, who burnt rushlights on weekdays and
halfpenny dips on Sunday, and one short six on Christmas-day. Thus, at
Doney's, the most aristocratic caffe in Florence, if you ask for cafe ordi-
nario, they bring you a very washy decoction, with white sugar in dust ; but
if you pay an extra halfpenny, you can have caffe aj)j?osto, which is slightly
stronger, and accompanied by sugar in small lumps ; and, finally, by order-
ing the mighty caffe expresso, you are entitled to a positively palatable cup
of coffee and four big lumps of sugar. According to Sir Pitt Crawley's char-
woman in Vanity Fair, " it's only baronets as cares for fardens ;" but to
THE ROAD TO EOME. 295
rule tliey shrugged their shoulders, and observed that really
there were so many roads leading to Eome, that they scarcely
knew which one to recommend as the best. I remembered that
there is a Murray's Handbook to Central Italy, but the vol-
ume I purchased for twelve franchi fifty centesimi at the first
English bookseller's in Florence turned out to be " Murray"
for the year 1864. As we are close upon 1867, and at least
three different routes have been opened during the last three
years, I did not take much by my motion in regard to Albemarle-
street. The information given was excellent ; but as in its
Roman section it chiefly referred to the tariff for post-horses
between Florence and Rome, and the best way of mollifying
the Custom-house officers at the Porta del Popolo, when you
were travelling in your own carriage, it was scarcely of a
nature to afford relief in my particular case.
At the inns, as I have remarked, they will tell you no-
thing that they cannot charge for in the bill. It is for that
reason, I conjecture, that they don't give you any menu at
the table-cVhote of the Albergo di Nuova York, and that there
is not a clock to be seen in any part of the house. " Naething
for naething" is a locution proverbial in North Britain.
Translate that discreet dictum into the Lingua Toscana,
and you have the sum of Florentine social philosophy. On
the other hand, there is always a tribe of valets-de-place
this thrifty class must be added the descendants of the Medici and the
Strozzi. It would appear that the Florentines are anxious to make up for
the extravagance of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and for the last three cen-
turies have been striving, by pinching and paring, to repair the deficit in
Tuscan finances caused by the prodigality of that expensive person. They
have quite a microscopic vision for economics ; and at the caffes at night, if
a waiter sees that one side of the room is deserted by guests, he forthwith
turns ofE the gas in that part.
296 ROME AND VENICE.
hanging about, burning to show and tell you everything —
from Ghiberti's gates to the time of day ; from the tombs of
the Medici to the hours of the departure and arrival of the
raihvay-trains. It is scarcely worth while perhaps to pay
five francs to obtain instructions which, in the majority of
cases, are incorrect, for the mind of the valet-de-place is
sadly given to incoherence, and you must not be at all sur-
prised to learn from him that the Madonna della Seggiola
was painted at twelve forty-five, or that the express for Leg-
horn started at the end of the seventeenth centuiy.
The situation of aff'airs was growing very embarrassing,
v.hen I fortunately heard from some English friends that
they purposed starting next morning for Kome, by railway as
far as Ellera, thence by carriage to Perugia and Foligno,
halting at the first-named place to sleep, and at the last
catching the train from Ancona to Eome. This was encour-
aging. They had heard from another English family that
the journey was to be accomplished in thirty hours, including
a good night's rest at Perugia.
In no guide-book that I have yet seen is this road — the
best and most interesting which offers itself to the traveller
— distinctly and contemporaneously laid down, that is to say,
with due notice of the latest railway developments. The
plain truth is that our guides and handbooks, professing to
come down to the exact month or year printed on their title-
pages, are, with melancholy frequency, whole months, and
sometimes whole years, behindhand. In the November Brad-
sliaw, for instance, we are twice directed to page 167 for the
trains between Kome and Corese — the line I came by yester-
day — but there is not the slightest mention of either Eome
THE EOAD TO ROME. 297
or Corese at page 167, or anywhere else that I can discover.
It is also rather too bad, after all that Bismark and the
needle-gun (burn them both !) have done towards revolution-
ising North Germany, to be told by Bradshaw, four months
subsequent to the conclusion of peace, that " Hanover-on-the-
Leine is the residence of the King of Hanover," and that
'' Frankfort-on-the-Maine is a free town, seat of the German
Diet, and garrisoned by 5000 troops, Austrians, Bavarians,
and Prussians." I caused a new Bradshatv for November to
be sent out to me from England regardless of expense, in
view of the political changes on the Continent. You may
imagine my dismay when I discovered that a Bradshaw for
last July would have served my turn quite as well.*
Having settled to go to Kome via Perugia and Foligno,
I inquired at the Albergo di Nuova York at what hour the
train started, and was informed by the porter that it left at
noon precisely. So, being wofully encumbered with baggage,
I duly found myself at the terminus at half -past eleven, and
then learnt that it was the Leghorn train which started at
noon, and that the Ellera one did not leave until a quarter
to one. There is no use in being angry under such cii'cum-
* In Bradshaw''s Continental Bailway Guide for November 1866, it is
stated — article "Eome," p. 391 — that the journey from Eome to Florence,
passing by Nemi, Terni, Spoleto, Foligno, Assisi, Perugia, Lake of Thra-
symene, Arezzo, &c., " is at present performed in two days, the railway not
being completed." The statement would be slightly more serviceable to
travellers were it accompanied by information as to how far the rail is com-
pleted, where it begins, and where it ends. In this present month of Novem-
ber, the purchasers of Bradshaw may fairly expect to be told that from
Florence to Ellera the direct Roman Railway is complete ; that there then
occurs a break which may be tided over in three hours, by diligence or pri-
vate carriage, to Ponte San Giovanni ; and that thence to Rome the railway
communication is uninterrupted. I hope (in 1869) all this has been made
right.
298 BOMB AND VENICE.
stances. If hotel servants tell you fibs or give you wrong
counsel, it is the fault of the Grand Dukes, with their wicked
Austrian connections and sympathies. If the landlord swin-
dles you, it is the fault of Attila, Genseric, Theodoric and
Frederic Barbarossa. If for four successive days there is
no fish at dinner, the Normans and the Longobardi are to
blame. If the ways of Florence are Chinese in their petti-
ness, and Abderitan in their slowness, it is the fault of the
Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. " C'est la f aide cle Rousseau ;
c'est la faute de Voltaire, ^^ as the Jesuit preacher remarked
of the vine-disease, the cattle-plague, the cholera, and trichi-
nosis in pork-sausages.
The railway-terminus at Florence, after the sumptuous
structures one sees at Turin, Genoa, and Milan, is a very
mild and provincial kind of afi'air indeed, as quiet and tame
as a station, say on some remote branch in North Devon,
constructed solely at the instigation of the sharp solicitor of
a company, to spite the solicitor of a rival line. There is a
cheerful central hall, with very many doors opening out of it
on either side, and with flourishing inscriptions denoting the
departments into which they are supposed to lead ; but, on
trying them, I found most of these portals fast locked. The
"departments," I am afraid, are akin to the Barmecide
bottles one sees in some doctors' shops, and the dummy
cigar-boxes laid in by tobacconists just starting in business.
Let me whisper, however, that the waiting-room "accom-
modation" for the public at the central railway-terminus of
the capital of Italy is as infamous as at Desenzano, and
would be most fitly found in connection with a village in
Dahome. I can scarcely imagine that the Grand Dukes, or
THE ROAD TO ROME. 299
the Austrians, or the Visigoths are responsible for this.
May not the inconceivably lazy, slovenly, and filthy habits
of the people have something to do with it ?
The Eoman Eailway is on the narrowest of gauges, and
the carriages are remarkably small, hard, and uncomfortable ;
but the environs of Florence are exquisitely beautiful, and
the scenery in the Yal d' Arno di Sopra is glorious. At
Pontessieve we saw the river Sieve descending from the
Apennines to empty itself into the Arno. It must have
emptied itself there very completely a long time ago, or else
its name of '' Sieve" must be taken literally in English, for
not a drop of water was there to be seen in this doubtless
whilom noble stream. The Arno itself is not remarkable
for a good water supply; but the municipality always con-
trive to maintain a decent depth, of a tolerable hue, between
the Ponte Yecchio and the Ponte della Trinita, from Christ-
mas to Easter, when aristocratic English visitors most fre-
quently tenant the suites of apartments en the quay. The
which accounts for the many ejaculations you hear of ''Dear
Florence!" and ''that sweet Lung' Arno I" from the fair
lips of members of the very first families travelling abroad.
The whole road is rife with historic and artistic associa-
tions. Close to the station of Incisa the family of Petrarch
lived. Between Figline and Montevarchi have been disco-
vered immense quantities of fossil bones, which the Italian
antiquaries have conjectured to be those of the sumpter-
elephants of Hannibal's army, an hypothesis scarcely ad-
mitted, I should say, by Professor Owen and Mr. Waterhouse
Hawkins. The mighty Carthaginian did not presumably
have mastodons and hippopotami attached to his military
\
800 ROME AND VENICE.
train; and relics of both have been found in the plain of
Arezzo. Tigers and freshwater testacea have also cropped
up in a fossil state. At San Giovanni the painter Masaccio
was born. Arezzo, once the most powerful city of the Etrus-
can league, was the birthplace of Mtecenas, of Petrarch, of .
Vasari, and almost of Michel Angelo, who was born at Ca-
prese, in the neighbourhood — of Heliogabalus and Jack the
Painter, too, for aught I know. What does it matter, when
you are scampering through a country by railway? The
iron has entered into the soul of the picturesque, and killed
it. Cuttings and embankments, switches, sleepers, and
signal-posts form the foreground of every landscape, and the
middle distance and the extreme are so fleeting and shifting
and unsubstantial, that the best way, perhaps, to see the
country, is to pull down the blinds and shut your eyes till
you reach some place where you can unpack your boxes, and,
with the aid of your guide-books and photograph-albums,
read up the district through which you have been passing.
I may add, too, that when I journeyed through the Val
d' Arno it rained, not in torrents, but in a minute, cautious,
thoroughly permeating drizzle — a Scotch mist, which had
taken service, like Quentin Durward, under a foreign poten-
tate. It rained at Arezzo, it rained at Assisi, it rained at
Montevarchi ; and when we reached EUera, seven hours after
our departure from Florence, it was snowing thickly, and
was bitterly cold. Here there is a break in the railway, and
a sufficiently steep mountain to ascend. It was horribly
cold, sloppy, and snowy, and the station was of the darkest
and dismalest. I shall long remember Ellera, and have
marked it in my diary with the blackest of stones, for the
THE KOAD TO KOME. 301
reason that I had scarcely alighted on the platform when I
lost a very choice sealskin cap, which had cost me many
dollars in Canada East, and, in its time, had been much
admired in skating "rinks" and sleighing trips. It could
have hardly touched earth when it disappeared — snapped up,
I opine, by some chilly but dishonest Ellerite. I must own
that all the railway-porters ran to and fro for ten minutes
with lanterns, in their zeal to find the missing article, thus
clearly earning the huona mano which they took care shortly
afterwards most pressingly to solicit ; and an ancient beggar
even demanded alms of me as *' II Signore chi ha perduto
la sua berretta'' — the gentleman who has lost his cap ; but I
did not find my sealskin for all that. I don't know of whom
Ellera has been the birthplace, or what illustrious person-
ages ever flourished there. I should say — remembering my
sealskin — Sixteen-string Jack or the Artful Dodger.
A so-called diligence took us in the dark to Perugia. I
am in the fashion in speaking of " so-called" institutions,
for the Osservatore Romano always speaks of the country
united under Victor Emmanuel II. as cib che chiamasi V Italia
— that which calls itself Italy. The so-called was a wooden
box, on a plurality of wheels, not always, so it seemed, of
the same size on the same side, for we bumped terribly. Into
this box they packed six ladies and gentlemen. We packed
closely, like sardines, without the oil. The conductor pru-
dently obviated the possibility of remonstrance or mutiny,
by banging-to the door so closely that it could not be opened,
by forcing up the window-sashes so tightly that they could
not be let down, and by taking away the flight of steps which
was our only means of communication with the terrestrial
K
802 EOME AND VENICE.
globe outside. Then, with not so much as the ghost of a
lamp or lantern, the wheels of unequal size began to revolve,
and the luggage piled upon the roof began its admired and
well-known series of performances, in trying to assert its
ponderosity and smash down upon our skulls, and we were
off. I was not bom at the time of the Black-Hole-at-Cal-
cutta tragedy, and I have not yet, as a life convict, heavily
chained, performed in a cellular van the journey between
Paris and Toulon ; but, next to the torture I endured when
crossing the Col di Tenda last September, must be placed
the agony of the drive in the " so-called" diligence between
Ellera and Perugia.
We were a very merry party notwithstanding — that is to
say, four of our number were Italians, who chattered con-
tinually and laughed consumedly, and, as it seemed to me,
in the dark, romped. I think something of the form and
texture of a lady's hat with a feather in it hit me at one
stage of the journey on the nose. It may have been dis-
placed by the jolting of the vehicle. To a like cause may be
attributed divers noises, as of scuffling, in a distant comer,
much giggling, decidedly feminine, and a sound resembling
" applause," as the biographer of that admirable parent,
Mrs. M'Stinger, in Domhey, would observe. We grew very
friendly in the dark, and the female voice — presumably that
which had giggled — asked me what was the English for ca-
vallo. When I replied that it was " horse," a male voice re-
marked that the accentuation of the English language was
very harsh. Whereupon I ventured to ask why the Floren-
tines always pronounced cavallo as havallo, laying the harsh-
est possible stress on the misplaced h, upon which the voice
THE KOAD TO KOME. 303
was mute, and, I opine, shut up. Then two gentlemen sang
a duet. Then we all fell into one another's laps. Then we
had an argument on the Koman question, the temporal power
of the Pope, and the mission of the Commendatore Ve-
gezzi.
So far as I was concerned, I varied these proceedings by
groaning and bewailing my miserable condition ; but we had,
fortunately, a cheery and sanguine spirit among us, who,
mentally at least — he could not see an inch before him phy-
sically — always looked to the bright side of things, and who,
whenever we bumped so frightfully as to render our overturn-
ing a matter of extreme imminence, or stuck in the snow, or
came to a dead halt, declared that we were at mezza strada,
or half-way to Perugia.
I believe that the horses expired miserably at an early
stage of the journey, and that for the greater portion thereof
the so-called diligence was dragged by oxen ; but I know that
we were all turned out into the snow, at the door of a detest-
able little diligence-office, illumined by two tallow-candles,
at ten o'clock at night, and were told that this was Perugia.
The diligence was to resume its journey at half-past five the
next morning for Ponte San Giovanni, the railway- station for
Foligno, and until that time we were free to enjoy a game at
snowballing, or to inspect the antiquities of Perugia, which
are both rich and numerous. It may not be generally known
that Perugia is the ancient Perosche of the Etruscans, that it
was rebuilt by Auguctus, that it was annexed to Napoleon the
First's " so-called" Italian kingdom as chief town of the de-
partment of the Thrasymene, that here flourished the famous
Braccio di Mentone Fortebraccio, the rival of Sforza, and that
<.
804 ROME AND VENICE.
in the year 1624 the illustrious painter, Peter Perugino,
master of Rafaelle, died here of the plague.
I ara afraid that these pleasing facts did not interest mo
much at ten o'clock on the night of November the thirtieth.
Sierra Nevada ! how it snowed ! It fortunately occurred to
me that there was an inn at Perugia, called the Albergo dellu
Posta, which from private information I knew to be dear, but
clean and comfortable. So repudiating the icy notion of
setting out at half after five in the morning in the diligence
for Ponte San Giovanni, I determined to sup and sleep, and
take mine ease at mine inn till ten o'clock on the first, and
so hired, at a not very extravagant rate, a good travelling-
carriage to convey myself and my impedimenta all the way to
Foligno — a four hours' drive. I sacrificed a morsel of rail-
way by the adoption of this plan ; but, otherwise, the advan-
tage was altogether on the private-conveyance side. The un-
happy persons who were to pursue their journey at early
morn would arrive at Ponte San Giovanni at half-past six,
and at Foligno at eight, and then have to wait six hours and
a half for the train to Rome. By leaving at ten, one had
more road to traverse, but one killed time, evaded another
inn, and got to Foligno in easy time to "make connections"
with the train.
The Albergo della Posta proved to be all that it had been
described, and more. I have seldom met with a cleaner
house, so far as its guest-chambers are concerned. They are
oases in the midst of a desert of dirty staircases and dirtier
corridors. I never hope to pass a night in a more comfort-
able inn, and I think I might travel far before meeting with a
more expensive one. The proprietor evidently reckons for
THE EOAD TO ROME. 305
remunerative patronage upon English people who don't care
about getting up at five o'clock in the morning, and frames
his measures and his bills accordingly. Perhaps he and the
diligence-conductors have a private understanding. Why
not ? It was by means of a private understanding that my
grandmother's cousin-german obtained the privilege of sup-
plying the Crown and Anchor tavern with anchovy- sauce, and
made that fortune which he so unkindly bequeathed to quite
a different branch of the family.
Directly I was introduced to the proprietor of the Albergo
della Posta I saw that I was in for it. He made me his
lowest bow ; the kind of bow which is put, under another
name, in the bill. Surveying me with an eye full of defer-
ence, he proposed to wait upon us himself, and ordered his
head-waiter, in a steady voice, to bring out *'the plate."
Upon this, I cast myself over the Tarpeian rock, crossed the
Rubicon, broke my bridges, and burned my ships, and com-
mended myself to the Saints. "You will give us," I said,
" the best room in the house, and the best supper that can
be obtained in Perugia." I had a good mind to write myself
down " Lord Smith, Baronetto Inglese," in the travellers'
book. It would not have made much difference. It is better
to be hanged for breaking into the Jewel Office than for
stealing an extinguisher. I was in for it. As well over
boots as over shoes. The proprietor behaved in a peerless
manner. Slaves of the lamp, male and female, appeared at
his beck, darted hither and thither at his command, and
transformed an apartment on the second-floor into a bower of
bliss surpassing in splendour the *' bridal chamber" on board
a Yankee steamboat.
X
30G EOME AND VENICE.
The best room in the house was engaged, I presume, by
Earl Brown, or the Patriarch of Constantinople, or the
General of the Jesuits, or a lucky speculator from the Penn-
sylvanian oil-regions; but we had the second-best. They
brought us a new sofa ; they laid down a fresh carpet ; they
heaped the hearth with blazing logs. They brought us, in a
species of Roman triumph, a wash-hand jug, a tooth-glass,
and a foot-bath. There was no end of towels. By asking
for it we might, I daresay, have had a coal-scuttle. They
sate us down to a supper fit for a Cardinal or an Apostolic
Censor. There was a beefsteak so tender and so fragrantly
odorous that I fancied it had been cut from a golden bull
long stabled in the Vatican, and fed on myrrh, frankincense,
and boiled heretics. They gave us a bottle of the very oldest
Montepulciano wine — an Est, est, est vintage, almost equal to
the Montefiascone, a dark, full wine, like melted rubies,
mingled with laudanum, as rich and soft as Genoa velvet, as
strong and yet as generous as he who slew the Erymanthian
boar and tamed the mares of Diomed. They gave us a fat
little bird, such as Brillat Savarin would have gloated upon,
and longed to eat with his fingers — a deceptive little fellow,
even as the marble cherubs in St. Peter's, who appear to
be six inches, but are really six feet in height. He looked
no bigger than a linnet, yet on his well -cushioned breast
there was more than a supper for two.
In the morning the proprietor, after much stringent per-
suasion, was induced to make out his bill. It was delivered
at the very last moment, and when the carriage was all ready
packed and the postboy eager to start. Thus there was no
time to dispute it. After presenting us with this document
THE KOAD TO ROME. 307
on a silver salver, the proprietor retired to his private apart-
ments, double-locking himself in, and leaving to the head-
waiter the task of fighting the matter out. You might have
fancied that he was Guy Fawkes after his last pinch of powder
had been laid, and prudently retiring behind the Speaker's
chair, in view of a tremendous blow-up. The landlord had
certainly done his utmost, but the damage on the whole was
not alarming. It was something under thirty shillings, and
I never grudged the outlay of one-pound-ten less in my
life.
We travelled through the snow to Foligno, and at two
o'clock reached the station. A few minutes afterwards the
train from Ancona rumbled in, and at five -and -twenty
minutes to three we started for Corese. I should have very
much liked to gaze upon that famous Campagna of Kome, on
the grimness of whose desolation so much eloquence has been
bestov/ed ; but Cosa volete ? It was pitch dark by five, and
the Campagna was invisible. The snow, however, gave place
to rain before we crossed the Pontifical frontier, where, by a
very courteous Pontifical functionary, we were deprived of
our passports. The clock had just struck nine when our
train came to a final halt, and an Italian gentleman who had
been fidgeting about the carriage in a most excited manner
for the last half-hour, and rubbing his nose against the
window-panes, in a vain attempt to make out the Campagna
through the darkness and the rain, clapped his hands to-
gether and cried, " Roma f Roma! SiamoaRomaT' This
was indeed the Rome to which all roads lead ; and my first
experience of the Eternal City was being met by the Com-
missionaire from the Hotel d'Angleterre, and asked whether
SOS ROME AND VENICE.
I would proceed by the omnibus or in a cab to my destina-
tion. An omnibus ! Coulan't they keep a decemjugls or a
Imrmamaxa at the terminus, for the sake of appearances ?
Mrs. Hemans was right. Eome is no more as she has
been.
XXI.
ROMA URBS.
" On the heights above Baccano," writes an old traveller,
''the postillion stopped, and, pointing to a pinnacle which
appeared between two hills, exclaimed, * Roma !' That pin-
nacle was the cross of St. Peter's. The Eternal City vras
before us."
I suppose no man — ^not being a born idiot or a German
bagman, next to an imbecile the most unimpressionable
creature in the world, perhaps — ever beheld that cross on
the dome of St. Peter's or entered Rome for the first time,
without feeling his heart, in some manner or another, stirred
up within him. "Moab may howl for Moab : everyone shall
howl;" but you have longed, and sighed, and prayed to look
upon Rome ; and noAV your desire is come, and you are full
of a happy thankfulness. The image of Rome has been set,
long since, " as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine
arm;" and as "manj^ waters cannot quench love, neither
can the floods drown it," so is the love for Rome intuitive,
indomitable, and inextinguishable.
English grooms and flunkeys are not given, generally, to
become very enthusiastic at the sight of strange cities, and I
have known the British flunkey take St. Mark's Place, by
moonlight, very coolly, and My Lord's valet de chamhre bear
the Kremlin with perfect equanimity. Nay, I have known a
310 ROME AND VENICE.
lady's-maid speak superciliously of Seville even during the
feria week, and pronounce Constantinople to be a *' nasty
dirty hole." Why should not such criticisms be uttered by
our domestics ? They have, very probably, quite enough to
do with attending to the wants, wishes, and caprices of their
masters and mistresses; their education, with regard to
history, antiquities, poetry, mythology, and the fine arts,
has ordinarily been neglected, and they are seldom expected,
on their return home, to write octavo volumes descriptive of
the sights they have seen abroad. Not but that the impres-
sions de voyage of a lacquey might be worth reading. Con-
stant's Memoirs of Napoleon are mendacious, but eminently
amusing ; and who would not like to read a life of Shake-
speare by his body-servant — if he ever had one, or a body to
be served, or anything tangible, or palpable, or unmythical
at all ? I say that the usual train of menials who go abroad
with our tourists are perfectly indifferent to the sights they
see. There is, in most continental cities, some establish-
ment of the nature of an English public-house. Thither
the valetaille repair in their leisure moments to smoke and
drink, and not to compare notes as to the monuments of the
city in which they are sojourning, but to grumble at and
abuse their employers, precisely as they would do at the
bars of the dim little taverns which nestle in the purlieus of
Grosvenor- and Belgrave - squares. With all this, I have
known gentlemen's gentlemen fall into raptures about Eome,
and talk quite learnedly of the Muta Sudans and the Forum
of Trajan. By far the most fervent British enthusiast on
things Eoman occupying a humble sphere of life was a
hostler. '* There's heverything you can wish for in Eome,"
EOMA UEBS. 311
quoth he. '* Hemperors and Popes, and temples and churches,
and the Colosseum and the Wattican ; and, bless yer, there
aint a 'ossier place out. After 'Igh Park give me the Pincian
'111." Rome is " 'ossy" or "horsey" in good sooth; but 'tis
the English who have made it so.
Everybody is delighted to find himself in Rome, The
citizen of the kingdom of Italy, because he feels within him-
self a grim persuasion that at no distant date the city will
belong to Italy, and Victor Emmanuel will be crowned King
in the Capitol. La vieille patraque, the Papacy, he argues,
cannot last long. Napoleon's battalions must clear out of
Civita Vecchia sooner or later. Mentana will be avenged.
At Rome he lives in continual hopes, and rubs his hands
with glee, when he proceeds southward to Naples, to think
that he has contrived to smuggle a few photographs of Gari-
baldi into the Eternal City, or to deliver some Mazzinian
message to a member of the Comitato, or in some way or
another to drive a nail into the coffin of la vieille patraque.
He looks on Rome with very different feelings from those with
which patriotic Italians were wont to regard Venice in the
days of captivity. They did really, at times, utterly despair
of the Queen of the Adriatic ever recovering her freedom ; the
Austrian rule seemed so strong, so decided, so implacable.
In a few hours more and more Austria could swoop down on
Venetia from over the Brenner or over the Semmering. There
was no doubting the sincerity of the Austrian intention to
keep the tightest of holds on Venice ; whereas, although the
red-breeched French troops have been in the patrimony of
St. Peter's, off and on, these twenty years, the Italians have
never ceased from hoping — yea, and of believing — that '* some
812 ROME AND VENICE.
day next week*' was at hand when Napoleon would coolly give
the Pope the go-by, pull his bayonets from beneath the tot-
tering throne of St. Peter, and beckon to Victor Emmanuel
to come up the Capitol staircase, and enter the metropoUs of
Italy and the world. ^
The fervent Catholic rejoices at Rome. It is his Mecca,
his Medina, in one. Kome is to him more than Jerusalem ;
for in Rome he is still master, and there are no hated Greeks,
no loathed schismatics to jostle him while he worships at the
Holy Places. Has he not at Rome the Scala Santa, the very
steps of Pilate's house ? Is not the Holy Cratch, the manger-
board, at Rome? Are not the Apostle's chains here? and
the very prisons and the tombs of Peter and St. Paul : not
in the insolent keeping of a Turkish pasha, but under the
sacred guardianship of the successor of St. Peter himself?
The Romanist at Rome est dans son pays. He is monarch
of all. he surveys. To M. Louis Veuillot the foul stenches
and miasma of modern Rome are so many sweet perfumes
— "Parfum de Rome;" whereas in the boudoirs of the
Chaussee d'Antin and the parterres of Madame Prevost the
austere moralist can scent only the most shocking odours.
He plumes himself on Rome, for it is the only city in Europe
where the shovelled hat takes precedence of the lady's bonnet ;
where men in petticoats have the pas over women in the like
articles ; where a snuffy old Monsignore is a greater leader
of fashion than a Russian princess ; or a parchment-faced
vicar-general from Peru is more run after than a Japanese
ambassador. It is nearly the only city where swarms of
cowled - and - shaven monks are permitted to pervade the
streets ; and where once a year a wooden idol — the Bambino
KOMA URBS. 313
— with twenty thousand pounds' worth of jewels on its
wretched little block of a body, is held up by bishops to the
adoration of twenty thousand people, in defiance of the pagan
memory of Jupiter Capitolinus hard by. (When I first saw
this wooden stock of a Bambino, I,observed to a friend stand-
ing by me on the stairs of the Ara Coeli that, sooner than
worship that little figure-head, I would say a mouthful of
prayers to Jupiter Capitolinus, could I find any vestiges of
his temple sufficient for the purpose ; whereat my friend, a
very high churchman, but no Komanist, was shocked.) In
a word, the Komanist at Kome is in his element. If in his
heart and soul he unfeignedly believes — and how shall I
DARE to say that he does not ? — that the good old Pope is
the Vicar of &c. &c. and the Successor of &c. &c., the be-
liever must feel, while he is in Eome, that he is sojourning
in an actual earthly paradise ; for he may see the super-
natural Being (elected periodically, by the way, through a
conspiracy on the part of several old gentlemen in scarlet
petticoats, and one or more foreign ambassadors) driving out
daily in a coach-and-four, or trotting about the slopes of the
Pincian in a white-flannel dressing-gown and a scarlet-velvet
shovel. Fancy the delight of a Moslem at being able to meet
Mahomet every day, taking his drives and walks abroad ; and
what is the dogma of an uninterrupted succession of Infal-
lible Popes, but a dogma of a perpetual succession of Ma-
homets ? "
The fervent Protestant glories in Rome, but darkly, fur-
tively, and, I fear,' somewhat vengefully. His worst fears
are now realised ; his darkest anticipations are verified ;
and a pretty tale he will have to tell Exeter Hall and the
814 ROME AND VENICE.
Clapham tea-tables when he reaches home. Idolatry, Pa-
ganism, the Scarlet Lady, the Mystery of Iniquity : but it
is needless to pursue the theme. The fervent Protestant is
shocked, but he takes copious notes. He is horror-struck
at the very idea of the Pojje, but he is not averse to throw-
ing himself in his way ; and with the pride of conscious recti-
tude he relates (when he reaches Clapham) how resolutely
he refused to uncover and to kneel as the idolatrous crowds
around him did, when the Pope alighted from his carriage
on the Pincian for his afternoon trot. Good old gentleman !
I have gone down on my marrowbones when he has passed
scores of times, and I hope I have had my share in the bene-
dictions he has so liberally dispensed with his two fingers.
There is something, I take it, abominably revolting in crouch-
ing down before a hewn idol — the African savage can do no
more ; and the Bambino is as hideous as Mumbo Jumbo :
but surely there is no harm in an act of reverential courtesy
to a patriarchal old priest, whose purity of life and goodness
of heart are acknowledged by all the world. You kneel to
a good woman, don't you ? You kneel to the Queen. The
Pope is king here, and so long as he can keep his Three
Crowns, has a right to the customary obeisances. And
finally, as the Pope himself once tersely put it to a recal-
citrant heretic, the blessing of an old man cannot do any-
body any harm. As for kissing his toe, that is quite another
matter : although I have known many fervent Protestants
(of a toady way of thinking) ready, and even eager, to per-
form that ceremony. To sum up, the red-hot and bilious
Protestant is rather in a hurry to get away from Eome, in
order that Clapham, and the columns of his favourite red-
KOMA URBS. 315
hot periodicals, shall be speedily enlightened as to the Idol-
atry and the Mystery of Iniquity. Abating the Bambino —
which idol is to me utterly horrible and sickening — there does
not seem to be much that is iniquitous about the silly mum-
meries and superstitions of ecclesiastical Eome. Everybody
who has travelled in Spain, and especially in Mexico, must
have witnessed tomfooleries ten times more preposterous and
ten times more blasphemous in those countries. I spent
the Holy Week of the year 1864 in Mexico City; and to
this day I have never dared — even could I find a bookseller
bold enough to publish what I wrote — to write a literal
account of what goes on in Jurves and Viernes Santo in Te-
nostitlan.
The English Ritualist makes a joyful pilgrimage to Rome.
His heart leaps up when he beholds it. He is mad to see
the ''functions" of Passion -week, and Easter, and Christmas,
and St. Peter's-day. And after that ? Well, I do thoroughly
believe that it would be an excellent thing for the old-
fashioned Church of England (as you, my good old friend
Squaretoes, understand the doctrine and ritual of that
Church) could all the ardent young Eitualists in Britain be
taken to Eome in a rapid succession of Cook's tours, and be
"put through" all the "functions," provided always that
they took with them a Dr. William Smith, or an Anthony
Rich's Dictionary of Roman Antiquities {Muratori or Mont-
faucon would be too cumbrous), and carefully collated all
the Popish " functions" they witnessed with the descriptions
of the ceremonies of Paganism. There are many grave and
earnest Eitualists, no doubt — ay, and shrewd and learned
men — who have visited Eome repeatedly, and whose extreme
316 EOME AND VENICE.
views have been rather confirmed than shaken by the inves-
tigations of each successive visit ; but I incline very strongly
to the belief that among the young fry of Ritualists sheer
ignorance and innocent vanity are to an astonishing degree
prevalent, and that they know scarcely anything about the
model which they profess to copy. And not every ardent
young Ritualist can go to Rome. Let them all go, I say, if
it be practicable. Let them see the Real Thing — "all the
Fun of the Fair" — for I do maintain that at certain periods
of the year ecclesiastical Rome resembles nothing so much
as a fair: waxwork shows, giants and dwarfs, gingerbread-
nuts, and all. I apprehend that if all the frank, cheery,
intelligent Englishmen and Englishwomen, who are not run-
ning crazy about Ritualism, were conscientiously to study 0)1
the spot the aspect of Ritualism's prototype, the scales would,
in a vast number of instances, fall from their eyes, and they
would recognise what a sorry tawdry simulacrum of rags and
bones and staring paint they had been gazing at and taking
for a portent.
But a truce to the odium theologicum. Whom else de-
lights in Rome ? Whom more than the American ? And
why? For the reason, I conceive, that Rome is so veiy,
very old, and that he is so veiy, very new. I have studied
American tourists in every country in Europe, and in every
province of Italy; but I never saw them so thoroughly en-
tertained and interested as in Rome. The ancient and the
modern city have alike absorbing attractions for them. In
very rare instances does the average American care anything
about antiquity per se — any more, indeed, than does our own
Mrs. Ramsbottom ; yet the gray old stones of the Forum and
ROMA URBS. 317
the Colosseum seem to exercise over the Transatlantic mind
an irresistible fascination. They are always poking about
the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or mooning about the Catacombs,
querulously anxious to know what has become of the bodies,
and gladdening the hearts of the friar-guides with munificent
donations ; or gathering wild-flowers, and risking their necks
on the summits of the arches of the Baths of Caracalla ; or
craning their necks to see the frescoes in the Palace of Titus ;
or poking at the pavement with their walking-sticks in the
Thermae of Diocletian ; or vainly " guessing" at the sepul-
chral inscriptions in the Columbaria. They never seem tired
of the statues in the Vatican and the Campidoglio. English
visitors I have often seen unmistakably bored at these spec-
tacles ; and many English ladies resolutely refuse to do the
antique lions of Eome after the first fortnight ; but the Ame-
ricans are indefatigable and insatiable. They are up early
and late. They spend more money in Eome than any other
foreign nation. They are the good geniuses of photographers,
cameo- and bronze-dealers, statuaries, picture-copyists, and
livery-stable-keepers. Their behaviour at the ecclesiastical
" functions" is as the behaviour of most Protestant tourists
of the Anglo-Saxon race — simply and brutally indecent.
They check off the ceremonies in the Sistine by means of a
Murray or an Appleton's Guide-hook, and scrutinise the
genuflexions of the celebrants through a double-barrelled
eyeglass. During the Carnival, they have the best windows
on the Corso ; their equipages are the most splendid to be
seen on the Pincian. Until lately, the United- States Go-
vernment maintained a minister at Eome — not .that there
was any business to be transacted between the Papal See and
818 ROME AND VENICE.
the United States of America ; but for the express purpose
of "putting through" all Americans who wanted to see the
Pope and take tea with the Cardinals. I have known Ame-
ricans come straight from San Francisco to Kome, and go
home again without seeing Paris or London. In addition to
a numerous floating population from the States, there is in
Kome a resident colony of refined, erudite, and cultivated
Americans. An American, Mr. Storey, a distinguished
sculptor, antiquary, and scholar, has written the best book
{Roha di lloma) on social and picturesque life in the
Eternal City that is extant. But even the floating Ameri-
cans seem at home in Rome, and come back to the dear old
Via Condotti and the jovial Hotel d'Angleterre over and over
again
The artist in Rome. Why, he is in Eden; for is not
here the Tree of Knowledge ; and may he not shake it to the
last twig without sin? Everything appertaining to art is
best learnt in Rome. Whatever your graphic vocation may
be — are you a painter of history, of genre, of portrait, or of
landscape, a sculptor, a modeller, a decorator, an architect,
an engraver of gems or an engraver of metals, or a mere
draughtsman of maps and plans, — you will find exemplars
ready to your hand in Rome. If you seek tuition, you will
find a master; if you are a master, you wiU find disciples.
Rome is the inexhaustible milch-cow : no babe need be with-
out a teat. She has mammce for all. And moreover, in
Rome, the poorest artist is somebody. The scald word ** Bo-
hemian" does not stick to ragged Dick Tinto. On the Seven
Hills it is. an honourable thing to be a citizen of Prague.
The artists of Rome keep no state, live no grand lives, outvie
EOMA UEBS. 319
one another in no vain rivalries of dress or equipage. The
artist is here, in fact, the secular priest, and his blouse and
working -cap carry, in their sphere, as much weight as in
another do the shovel-hat, the shaven crown, the cowl, and
the hempen girdle.
My Lord loves Rome. Our Lord, you know — his lordship
who owns our land, our skies — at least, the fowls that fly in
them — and will not allow us, Higgs and sons of Snell as we
are, to shoot our rabbits, which, he says, are his. My Lord
winters in Kome, and has wintered here any time these
twenty years; you may see his sumptuous open carriage,
with the bright bays, any day on the Pincian. My Lady and
her ladyship's daughters love Kome quite as well ; for here
they find the shopping, the society, and the "scan, mag." of
London, Brighton, Bath, Cheltenham, Hastings, and Tun-
bridge Wells.
In a word, who is not charmed with Roma urbs ? The
classical scholar and the lover of English black-draughts and
blue -pills, the antiquary and the connoisseur in painting,
the admirer of field-sports and the amateur of monastic insti-
tutions, can all find their peculiar tastes ministered to in
Rome. Whether you study the bas-relief on a column from a
Montfaucon's point of view, or sit yourself on the top thereof
and chant doxologies for thirty years as Simon Sty lites did ;
whether your sympathies lie in the direction of ancient
sculpture, of moonlight picnics, of pound-cakes, of palimp-
sests, or of mulligatawny soup — they have the righ t sort : an
oriental -club recipe, communicated by a perverted under-
butler at Spielmann's restaurant — whether you like English
Bath chaps, or Dunville's V.R. Whisky, or alabaster statuettes,
820 ROME AND VENICE.
or gilt bronzes, or Egyptian obelisks, or the Acta Sanctorum,
or stewed porcupine, or photographs, or cameos, — you have
only to ask for the particular dainty you require in Eome,
and, so long as you have plenty of money, your wish will be
gratified in a moment.
And can there be no individuals to dislike this wonderful
place ? Well, I don't think the officers of the French army
of occupation care much about it : and I am afraid that there
are a vast number of born Eomans who dislike Kome in-
tensely, and will continue so to dislike it while the Pope is
king, as well as pontiff, at the Vatican.
XXII.
A ROMAN FESTIVAL.
December 8.
To-day is tlie Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The
shops are shut, the church-bells are ringing incessantly, and
it is raining hard. The time has gone by when the Feasts
of the Roman- Catholic Church were concurrent with the
merry-makings of the people. A Church-holiday, originally,
was surely intended to be a season when, the religious cere-
monies of the occasion being duly performed, everybody
proceeded to enjoy himself — when there were games and
junketings, jousts and pastimes, as well as solemn rites and
imposing processions — when the miracle-play was often acted
in the very same fane where the mass had been sung — when
banqueting-tables were spread, and good cheer was the sub-
stantial sign of the joy which, in those simple ages of Faith,
filled the hearts of men who were content to believe and be
thankful, and left reading and writing — perilous accomplish-
ments at best — to their betters ; that is to say, to the clergy.
There is a Marriage of Cana, as we all know, at the Louvre,
and another Marriage, by an early German painter, in the
Berlin Gallery, in which this primitive notion of a festival is
very unmistakably conveyed. The German has painted a
marvellous kitchen interior, just as the Venetian has painted
an equally- wonderful representation of the banqueting-board
itself. You see very clearly what the feast means. It means
Y
322 ROME AND VENICE.
Toast-goose, wild-boar's head, fat capons, raised-pie, grapes
and peaches, and nuts and oranges, and an abundance of
Bound Ehenish and generous Aleatico to wash the dainties
down. Only the faintest reflex of these feasts, half-pious,
half-convivial, is visible in modem civilisation. English
people over-eat themselves, traditionally, at Christmas ; and
Americans consume vast quantities of roast-turkey, stewed-
oysters, and " sass" on Thanksgiving-day. For the rest, the
majority of Catholics have forgotten how to feast, just as the
ordinary run of Protestants have forgotten how to fast.
Asceticism may linger in some remote corners ; and it may
1)0 that Messrs. Thresher and Glenny keep a few hair-shirts
in stock for old customers ; but, save from affectation, who
mortifies himself on Ash Wednesday or Good Friday ? To
Tery many thousands of very good Protestants those fasts
have become virtual feasts, dedicated to excursion-trains and
pigeon-shooting at Hornsey Wood.
In the capital of Christianity there are few days without
■at least a couple of saints, and sometimes half-a-dozen, spe-
cially appointed to take care of them ; but the period between
Advent and Easter bristles with fasts and feasts. Last Sun-
day, the first in Advent, there was a Pontifical High Mass at
the Sistine Chapel. The Pope and the Armenian Patriarch
of Constantinople officiated, and the Host was carried proces-
^ionally to the Capella Paolina. A forty-hours' exposition of
the sacrament has been going on in the different churches
of Eome all the week. On Tuesday was the Feast of St.
Barbara. This saint is the patroness of artillerymen ! As
she flourished many centuries before the infernal invention
of the Eeverend Father Schwarz (or somebody else, who has
A EOMAN FESTIVAL. 323
been, for a long time, "having it hot" in the career inferior
of Hades, for his benevolent invention's sake) was adapted to
the destruction of humanity, it is difficult to see how St.
Barbara became the protector of gunners and drivers and
eighteen-pounders. Her status at the Ordnance Office seems
an anachronism as glaring as the employment of heavy artil-
lery in the celestial warfare in Paradise Lost,
Both inconsistencies may of course be reconciled by the
use of that stick which has only one end — the miracle ; but
I have had the mystery of St. Barbara explained to me in
another way. Before the discovery of gunpowder, her saint-
ship looked after mines and miners, kindly settling all mat-
ters connected with ventilation and choke-damp, and chasing
away the gnomes and kobolds, and other maleficent sprites,
who, as is well known, haunt deserted "goafs," and prevent
the working of rich veins. When gunpowder was discovered,
it occurred to some bright genius that it might be made sub-
servient to other purposes than murdering mankind. It was
used in mines for blasting. The devout pitmen, previous to
applying the match to a charge, naturally murmured an in-
vocation to St. Barbara. Thus associated with nitrous explo-
sion, the transition to big guns was obvious, and St. Barbara
has ever since been the saint par exeellence of the Special Arm
of the Service. It is to be feared that she receives but scant
homage at Woolwich, but at Piome she is treated with every
possible honour. The guns of the castle of St. Angelo thun-
dered forth, on the morning of the fourth, a salute to the
explosive saint. I was walking in the afternoon by the
Campo Yaccino towards the arch of Titus, when, close to St.
Cosmo Damiano, I came upon a tolerably large crowd, and
324 ROME AND VENICE.
heard a series of most terrific reverberations. I found that
it was only a select party of French private soldiers, who had
economised their pocket-money for a blow-up on St. Barbara's-
day, and were exploding a series of petards, each about the
the size of a pint-pot, on the muddy waste ground.
I may add that the road from the Capitol to the Colos-
seum, taking in the Forum Eomanum and the Campo Vaccino
aforesaid, bears a very striking resemblance to Glasgow-green
— assuming about two-thirds of the population of the "paw-
kie" city of North Britain to be dead of the cholera. It is as
grimy, as filthy, as tumbledown, as forlorn, and as unplea-
santly redolent of old clothes, old marine-stores, and old wo-
men, who were washerwomen once upon a time, but have long
since foresworn soap, either for their own or for other's use.
That the temples and palaces of the Forum and the Capitol
should be dilapidated and decrepit is in the nature of things,
and ofiers no pretext for grumbling. I do not feel inclined to
echo the opinion of the American tourist who described Rome
as '' quite a nice place, but the public buildings much out of
repair." The tumbledown structures of the Forum and
Capitol I mean are the modern ones. The classical ruins
are ruins, and behave as such. The domestic edifices all
look as though they had been first half demolished by the
Goths, then sacked by the Connetable de Bourbon, then gutted
by Gualtiero di Monreale, and finally bombarded by General
Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely in 1849.
But their dilapidation is not picturesque, and their decre-
pitude is not venerable. Blind Belisarius begging for an
oholiis at the Porta del Popolo is a noble ruin ; but you don't
care much about a nasty old man with a fine Roman mosaic of
A EOMAN FESTIVAL. 325
dirt tesselated into the baldness of his skull, who importunes
you, under the adjuration of many saints, for two hajocchi,
the which he presently spends on a hiccliierino of rum, at the
grog-shop round the corner. Eum in Rome ! It has come
to this. Rum is the favourite beverage of the lower classes
in the Eternal City. No modern stimulants, however, can
make either the people or their dwellings look young. They
do not even pertain to the Middle Ages, from the Hallam and
Victor-Hugo point of view. They have nothing to do with
the interesting antiquity of the Republican or the Imperial
epochs. They are simply nastily old, grubbily antique, scan-
dalously ruinous, like the ragfair shanties of Glasgow, or the
filthy Towers of Babel in the Canongate at Edinburgh, or
the rookeries of the Coomb in Dublin, or those abominable
houses at the corner of Stamford-street, Blackfriars, or any
other unsightly, noisome slums you like to mention.
On every monument of the classical past in Rome, on
almost every bust and statue in the Vatican, you may find a
pompous inscription setting forth that now, purged from all
pagan impieties, the relic has been dedicated to the service
of a purer faith, " through the munificence" of this or that
Clement, Gregory, or Pius. How dearly should I like to see,
on the places where the modern Romans vegetate, here and
there a brass-plate, or a marble -tablet, or even a simply-
painted wooden board, proclaiming that in such or such a
year this pigstye had been reformed, this guilt-garden puri-
fied, that rotten mass of hovels converted into a model
lodging-house, or those other hideous rookeries swept and
garnished, and dedicated to St. Saponax and St. Aquarius — ^^
all " through the munificence" of the Pontifex Maximus for
826 EOME AND VENICE.
the time being ! If Mr. Peabody, now, would only change
his creed, what a capital Pope he would make ! What a St.
George would he be to destroy the old Roman dragon of
rubbish and stinks and malaria ! Surely a longer lease might
be granted to the Imperial Power, if they would only wash
the Santa Sede clean, and pull down some of the unutterable
Gehennas that fringe the very gardens of the Vatican.
In lieu of this, at the top of the Corso, the most fashion-
able thoroughfare in Rome, and at the corner of a street lead-
ing directly to the Capitoline Hill, there is a public laystall
of the most revolting kind, with this cool announcement
nailed to the wall : " Deposito provvisorio delle immondezze
per la notte." I do not pretend to understand anything
about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception any more
than I do that of the Incarnation of Vishnu ; but I have read
somewhere that cleanliness is next to godliness, and that
dictum might, with advantage I think, be tacked to the
Thirty-nine Articles. If Pio None would only proclaim the
dogma of immaculate cleanliness in common life as a means
of salvation, he would find a great many more people willing
to listen to him than, I fear, can be found in Italy just now.
Meanwhile the French artillerymen were holding their
harmless festival on the Colosseum-road, to the intense de-
light of the Roman gamins, who were allowed to scramble
for the petards after each explosion, and clawed and cuffed,
and tumbled one another in the mud, very much as it is the
fashion for little blackguard boys to do the whole world over.
The artillerymen had been to church in the morning, and in
full uniform, to return thanks to St. Barbara for past favours,
and solicit a renewal of her kind patronage. Officers and
A KOMAN FESTIVAL. 327
men dined together in the evening, so that there has been
one festival at least in Advent, with an accompaniment of
cakes and ale. I suppose that there is not much harm in
firing-off big guns and bursting pint-pots in honour of St.
Barbara. The dear good lady would probably be frightened
out of her wits at the sound of a pocket-pistol, and may have
about as much to do with the Eoyal Artillery as St. Catherine
has with the fireworks at Cremorne, or St. Vitus with the
shocking malady which bears his name. But what does it
matter, after all ? Thousands of good people go every year
to say their prayers at St. Martin's Church, in London.
Does one in ten thousand know who St. Martin was ? or
care much, at this time of day ?
Moreover, when you come to gunpowder, logic flies out
at the window. There is inherent in humanity the desire
to make from time to time a thundering noise. Before
gunpowder the world could only cheer, and ring bells, and
flourish trumpets : one grows hoarse with hallooing, how-
ever, and trumpeters and bell-ringers are apt to grow tired.
The blazing and banging properties of gunpowder have long;
since secured for it the palm in creating a disturbance.
There is seldom any real meaning in the explosion of gun^
powder, always excepting when the Hounslow mills '' go ofi","
and a battle is perhaps the most illogical thing in existence ;
but we have the thundering noise, and that is what most
people require. In the Miscellaneous Estimates every year
in England, you will find that a sum of from twelve to fifteen
hundred pounds is blown away in gunpowder in the form of
salutes to royal and distinguished personages who come to
or go away from Dover. Some of these royal and distin-
328 KOME AND VENICE.
guished ones have lately been wiped out by Bismark. To
fire twenty -one blank charges after a Grand Duke or an
Hereditary Small German cannot do him any good ; but then
it does nobody any harm, save an occasional artilleryman
who is blown up by a bursten gun, or has his arm broken by
its recoil. But we are a wealthy nation, and can afford to
throw money into the kennel. Fifteen hundred pounds a-
year, for instance, would not be of the slightest service as an
endowment for educational, literary, or artistic purposes. It
is a fleabite, and may, as well as not, be blown away in gun-
powder.
There is another Capella Papale or Pontifical High Mass
to-day at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican : mass to be
sung by the Cardinal Protector of the Borghesian College,
in Santa Maria Maggiore, and a sermon to be preached by
an alumnus of the Pian Seminary ; there is a festival at
Santa Maria d' Aracoeli, and at the Church of the Twelve
Apostles an octave and a discourse ; at twenty-three o'clock
(sic) there will be a panegyric and a benediction in Sant'
Andrea della Valle ; panegyrics will also be delivered at San
Francesco Kipa, at the Church of the Capuchins at the Gesu,
at St. Cosmo and Damiano, at San Carlo in the Corso, at St.
Maria of the Via Lata, at St. Lucia de' Ginnasi, and about a
hundred more of the three-hundred-and-sixty-four churches
with which Piome is blessed. At the Oratory of San Giro-
lama della Carita there -will be a musical litany to which
ladies are admitted — a grateful notification, the fair sex be-
ing excluded from very many interesting /wnciowes in Rome.
They are not even allowed to visit the subterranean church
of St. Peter's save on Whit Monday, or on presentation of a
A EOMAN FESTIVAL. 329
solemn petition to the Pope through the Cardinal Datario.
Ladies as well as gentlemen were granted free ingress to the
Sistine last Sunday, but " opera-dress" was de rigueur : that
is to say, the gentlemen were to appear in black dress-coats,
and the ladies in black dresses and black-lace veils.
I have mentioned some of the ceremonies consequent on
this Feast of the Immaculate Conception, about which, one
way or the other, the poor old Pope of Eome probably knows
as much or as little as does one of his own Swiss Guard, and
the doctrinal assertion of which, independent of the infalli-
bility claimed for the Holy Father, is of no more weight than
would be the affirmation that the form of the earth is a poly-
hedron, or that the normal hue of a Bengal tiger is pea-
green. The manner in which the festival of the Immaculate
has been celebrated — for the shades of evening have closed
in since I commenced this letter — is on a par with the
rationality of the dogma itself. The day has been kept in
the fashion defined by Americans as "a little mixed."
Thus, while the Romans of the upper classes have judici-
ously stayed away from the church celebrations, the most
fervent worshippers of Eomanist shrines to-day have been
the Protestant foreigners, chiefly ladies, staying in the dif-
ferent hotels of the capital. Stiff silk-skirts and elaborate
veils of sable hue were at a premium this morning, and
the conversation at the tahle-dliote was all about incense
and organs, stoles and dalmatics, acolytes and thurifers.
Surely there is not much to wonder at if the minds of
some silly women and sillier men at home are running crazy
just now on Ritualism. It is, after all, only a matter of
music and millinery, which are both things very dear to the
330 ROME AND VENICE.
feminine mind. We may live in hope of seeing Ritualistic
rectors stand on the steps of the altar in zouave jackets and
Pamela bonnets, and the clerk give out a sonnet by Swin-
burne, as a psalm, to the music of the Guards' waltz. I
see no reason to the contrary. I have heard, in a Spanish
church, in Holy Week, a set of variations on the music of
the Trovatore performed on the grand pianoforte; and to the
poor peasants who formed the majority of the congregation
Signer Verdi's spasmodic strophes were as soul-entrancing
as though they had formed part of the music of the spheres.
It is at Rome, however, that ecclesiastical music and
ecclesiastical millinery are seen in their highest perfection;
it is at Rome that the frivolous and the meretricious become
colossal, and Imposture rises to the sublime. The church-
music at Rome is really magnificent ; the grandeur of the
scenery is beyond all praise — the scenic artists are, in many
cases, be it remembered, Rafaelle and Michel Angelo; the
decorations are superb, the dresses sumptuous, the stage-
management perfect, the supernumeraries admirably drilled.
The difference between the servitor in a purple gaberdine
and violet stockings who on Sunday last popped hither and
thither among the artificial rocks and sham columns of the
Capella Paolina, lighting up the lamps, and the gentleman
in a paper-cap and shirt-sleeves who kindles the gas-battens
behind the set pieces in one of Mr. Beverley's spectacles at
Drury Lane, is perhaps hard to discover; but the alacrity
with which genteel British Protestants, who at home are
never tired of girding at the Scarlet Woman of Babylon and
the Mystery of Iniquity, throw themselves into the voluptu-
ousness of church music and millinery at Rome is, to say
A KOMAN FESTIVAL. 331
the least, edifying. They appear to regard the Pope as a
kind of show provided by the Eoman hotel-keepers, and to
be enjoyed by the superior classes in common with cameos,
mosaics, Castellani's antique jewelry, Piale's reading-room,
and the statues in the Museo Chiaramonti by moonlight.
They would walk in and out of the Vatican, if they could,
as they do in and out of the painters' and sculptors' studios
— half as patrons, half as sneering critics. They would take
stock of the benighted old gentleman's furniture, and inquire
if he wears a crinoline under his white- flannel petticoat, and
gaze curiously on the enormous red-silk pocket-handkerchief
with which he mops up the quantity of snuff which he be-
stows on his venerable countenance. *' Ehhene, Signore,'^
said a Roman cardinal to the philosopher John Locke, at the
conclusion of one of the most awful ceremonies in Passion-
week; " che pensa ella di tutte queste coglionerie V Who
is in more evil case, I wonder : the cynical flamen who ^' rails
against the quality of flesh, and not believes himself," or the
gaping show-hunter who mobs the Pope, and scrutinises the
elevation of the Host through a double eyeglass ?
To me Romanism in Rome is at once a ludicrous and a
melancholy spectacle ; ludicrous from the infinite tomfoolery
in which the celebrants indulge, the barefaced imposture
which is palmed on the credulous, the impudent plagiar-
isms from pagan rites which it presents — plagiarisms so
close and literal that, with the assistance of a Dictionary
of Antiquities, nothing is easier than to keep a register of
these mummeries by double entry, the Romish ceremony in
one column, and the heathen ceremony, from which it has
been obviously copied, in the other. There has been mean-
332 ROME AND VENICE.
dering about Eome, for instance, all this afternoon, an exact
reproduction of the procession of the Bona Dea, or Venus
Salammbo. For the Bona Dea was simply substituted a
gigantic figure, enthroned, of the Virgin Maiy. Before and
behind was an interminable train of monks and friars, priests
and choir-boys, gendarmes and Papal dragoons, with innu-
merable banners, and two military bands.
The whole thing, as I have said, is a "little mixed."
Ophicleides and drawn sabres, epaulettes and jackboots, will
get mingled, somehow, with pyxes and crosses, shaven crowns
and bare feet. But the entirety is but a palimpsest of the
pagan, notwithstanding. This is the ludicrous side. It is
ludicrous to know that while these monks are wandering with
their idol about a city of a hundred-and-fifty-thousand inha-
bitants, the most interested sightseers are a few groups of
foreign heretics, who, in their heart of hearts, know well
enough that the whole thing is a Humbug, yet who suck it
up greedily, as they would the sight of Blondin on the tight-
rope, or the Widow Stodare with her Sphinx. It is ludicrous
to know that, although the shops are shut, the caffes are all
wide open, and full of French officers, who — all eldest chil-
dren of the Church as they are — prefer to imbibe their ab-
sinthe and smoke their cigars, and let the Bona Dea meander
by in peace. So much is ludicrous ; but there is much more
that is melancholy in the sight of an enormous machine
falling daily out of gear, of a house whose foundations are
being daily sapped, of a priesthood whose legitimate influence
is hourly dwindling away from them, of a Pontiff who is
staggering to and fro like a drunken man. There could not
be a more significant commentary on the Feast of the Imma-
A ROMAN FESTIVAL. 333
culate Conception in Eome than the fact that, on Thursday,
the officers of the French corps of occupation, headed hy
General de Montehello, had their audience of leave of the
Pope ; that on Friday the 71st French regiment of the line
steamed out of the harbour of Civita Vecchia ; that on Monday
another regiment goes away ; and that by this day week the
Pope will have to shift for himself.*
* But he could do nothing of, or by, or for himself, poor " infallible"
old man, and his French patrons were fain to come back and help him.
xxni.
THE POPE.
December 12.
This is the twelfth of December : the French programme
is accomplished to the letter, and not a French soldier or a
scrap of French bunting is to be seen anywhere in Eome.
A few clerks in charge of commissariat stores, and a few
employes of the special French department of the Eoman
Post-office will remain for a time to balance their books and
arrange the affairs of their bureaux ; but by New-year's-day
the seventeen years' occupation of the Papal States by Napo-
leon m. will have become as entirely a thing of the past as
that other occupation under Napoleon I., when the Prefect
of the Tiber resided at the Quirinal — when Perugia was the
chef lieu of the department of the Thrasymene — and when
Pasquin, alluding to the desolation of the city by a severe
storm, and the promulgation of divers rigorous decrees from
Paris, broke out in his memorable quatrain :
" L' altissimo Id sii ci manda la tempesta,
L' altissimo Id giii ci toglia quel cite resta ;
E f ra li due altissimi,
Siamo noi malissimi."
From Jupiter above come hail and thunder,
From Jupiter below edicts for plunder,
And what with one and t'other Zeus,
Poor Eome is going to the deuce.
You will pardon the freedom of the translation I have here
attempted; but the Italian text, as is ordinarily the case
THE POPE. 335
with Peninsular humour, is even more free, and, literally
rendered into English, might not be very welcome to Pro-
testant ears.
I should be wrong, at the same time, in saying that,
although the French army have thoroughly decamped, there
are no more French uniforms to be seen in the streets of
Eome. You can scarcely walk ten paces indeed, to-day, in
any frequented thoroughfare without meeting a pale and
feeble phantom of the zou-zou, the piou-piou, and the pousse-
caillou of La Belle France. It has occurred to the Papal
Government, in its wisdom, that the Eomans might be kept
in good order after the departure of the stern monitors who
have so long watched ove* them, if it dressed up its own
warriors in the likeness of French soldiers. Thus the Pon-
tifical gendarmes, to the exact measurement of the angles
of their cocked -hats, and the minutest inflections of the
curves of their moustaches, are copied from the French
model ; the last real types of which left Ci\ita Vecchia yes-
terday, per war- steamer for Toulon.
The Antibes legion — if sundry ill-looking scamps I have
met prowling about belong to that notable corps — are got up
in imitation of French chasseurs, and the sentry-boxes are
occupied to-day by fusiliers of all sizes and all ages, and
with the cross-keys on their shakoes, but otherwise arrayed
in the blue tunics, red - worsted epaulettes, and pantalons
garance of Gaul. The simulacrum is as commendable as a
chalk-drawing from the Apollo Belvedere, and quite as un-
satisfactory. These presumably valiant persons produce a
lively effect, but they are evidently not the genuine article.
They are sickly, shambling, slovenly - looking creatures at
886 ROME AND VENICE.
the best, many almost dwarfish in stature, others preter-
naturally lanky, and with not more than a pound and a half
of real fighting-looking muscle to each half-dozen privates.
They are very dirty, and the successor of the apostles has
not yet provided his legionaries with pocket-handkerchiefs.
Their speech is polyglot, and they stare in at the jewellers'
shop-windows in a manner which may well inspire the h'ni'iot-
tlcri of Kome with an intense desire to put up their shutters
till the Koman question is definitively settled. The accuracy
with which their uniforms have been "taken from the French"
would do honour to a London playwright, but in essentials
they no more resemble French soldiers than the Game of
Speculation resembles Mercadet.
The Pontifical War-office, like some unscrupulous retail
dealers at home, has resorted to " the untradesmanlike
device of saying it is the same concern ;" but Rome and
Italy will hardly be taken in by the imposture. The Zouaves
are a better-looking set of fellows altogether ; but they are
too young and too weedy. Of course the primeval stock of
the Zouave were the Duke d'Aumale's enfants perdus, mo-
delled on the indigenous Spahis of Algeria : for take the
white burnouse off a Spahi, and you will find that he is a
Zouave underneath; but the Roman specimens I have seen
appear to have been more closely studied from the Trans-
atlantic variety so familiar in the Zouaves of Colonel Billy
Wilson, who never could be persuaded to garrison West
Point, because it was so very near Sing Sing, and who were
so signally routed in their first encounter with the rebels,
through the cunning of the Confederate commander, who
simply caused a banner to be hoisted in front of his line
THE POPE. 337
bearing this inscription, " The police are coming." Billy-
Wilson's Zouaves needed no second warning, but stampeded
at once.
The Papal Zouaves are clad in gray, with a deep-red
sash round their loins, but the former hue is the prevailing
one, and on the whole it has a Portland- cum -Pentonville
look, and, with their very baggy knickerbockers, gives them
the air of convicts " on the loose." There are a good many of
them also who march wide between the legs as though they
had gyves on, and the very sensible system followed of
abolishing the choking leathern stock, and allowing them
to go bare-necked, does not fail to induce a theory painfully
suggestive of the absence of under-linen, as in the case of
Sir John Falstaff 's Own, or Coventry Rangers, in the whole
of which distinguished regiment I believe there was but a
shirt and a half, the shirt stolen from an innkeeper at Daven-
try, and the half- shirt a towel, worn across the shoulders
after the manner of a herald's tabard. The P. Z.'s, I fear,
will have some difficulty in finding linen on the hedges.
Nothing seems to grow on the Campagna of Rome, except
acanthus -leaves, wild-flowers, and buffaloes; and even the
Cotton Supply Association would be puzzled to make shirts
out of them.
I wonder whether the Pope's sham French gendarmes,
sham Chasseurs, sham Dragoons, and sham Zouaves, will
be of any avail in propping-up the Holy Father's rule over
his 800,000 subjects, and averting, for any considerable
length of time, that political collapse which, in the nature
of things, seems inevitable ? As for the Roman - Catholic
religion and its priests, non ragioniam di lor» It may take
z
88S KOME AND VENICE.
a hundred, and it may take a thousand, it may take eve]
two thousand years to extirpate ignorance, credulity, an<
superstition from the minds of humanity ; and so long a
ignorance, credulity, and superstition last, the Koman-Cathc
lie religion will endure, and spiritually flourish. But th
temporal power is a thing whose decay can be more visibl
gauged, and the time of whose demolition can be more easil
calculated. It is not a question of centuries ; it may not b
a question of days or months ; but it is assuredly one to b
determined within a very few years. There is nothing pai
ticularly mischievous, or wicked, or fraudulent about it, a
there is about the Komish idolatry, which, in proportion t
its wickedness and falsity, is likely to last the longer.
The little tinpot supremacy of the Pope as a king is no
a much greater nuisance than many which, within the me
mory of men still living, we bore for years, but which w
were at last irritated into sweeping away. Highway robbery
Dead-body snatching, Algerine piracy, Gretna-green marriages
Sanctuary at Holyrood, the Eules of the Bench, West-India:
slavery, the Laws of Mortmain and Deodand, French pase
ports and personal search at the Custom-houses, the Duk
of Athol's rights as a king in the Isle of Man, Climbing-boys
the Sound -dues, Eighteenpenny inland postage, the Palac
Court, Smithfield Market, Intramural interments, Joseph Ady
and the Corn - laws : one need not be more than a middle
aged man to remember aU those plagues. I don't think thi
Roman shoe pinches the Roman people more tightly thai
any of the inflictions I have set down above. I have livec
abroad under more than one despotic government, with slavei
to wait upon me, no free press, no representative institutions
THE POPE. 339
no inviolability of correspondence, and spies dogging my every
footstep; yet I have found existence exceedingly tolerable,
and, so long as the bankers didn't break, had quite a nice
time.
Many years have elapsed since Lord John Eussell de-
nounced the Government of the Pope as the very worst in
Europe, and, save in a few insignificant particulars, it has
not changed since the period of his lordship's denunciation.
A comparison of Eoman institutions with the governments
of other European countries must lead us, in 1866, to very
nearly the same conclusion. The Government of the States
of the Church is worse even than that of Greece, whose last-
king, when he was kicked out, did not at least claim im-
munity on the score of being the Yicar of Heaven and a
supernatural personage — worse even than that of Turkey,,
where there are at least religious toleration and commercial
freedom. But, for all its intrinsic badness, one is puzzled,
at first to tell in what precise manner Eome is misgoverned,,
or the Eomans themselves oppressed and ground down..
There are few, if any, Protestant natives here, so that the
impudent bigotry which, in the face of Eoman -Catholic
emancipation in England, forbids the celebration of Pro-
testant worship within the walls of Eome, cannot press very
hardly on the inhabitants. The Eoman police, so far as I
know, are not in the habit of opening letters at the post-
office, or of paying domiciliary visits, or of arresting persons
on the most frivolous pretences, or of dragging people out-
of their beds in order to beat them with sticks ; a practice
long followed, and up to a very recent date, both by the
Austrian, and the Eussian police. There are certainly na-
S40 KOME AND VENICE.
political criminals in the casemates of St. Angelo.* Tlier^
are as certainly no captives for conscience' sake in the dun-
fi^eons of the Inquisition, there are no political convicts in
the hagnl of Civita Vecchia — at least, none that I have heard
of — save brigands, whose claim to be considered politicians
is at least questionable. I have heard some horrible storief
against the Papal sbirri, but beyond a fondness for doin^^
nothing, and for cheating anybody out of ten bajocchi when
they have a chance, I don't suppose they are worse than
other policemen elsewhere.
Of what, then, have the Eomans to complain ? Wherein
lies the gravamen of their doleance ? "What is the grindinc
oppression under which they suffer ? Their taxation is nol
so heavy as it is in free Italy. The Papal tobacco, I agair
hasten to own, is infinitely superior to the Italian, and ai
the Debito Kegio, in the Piazza Mignanelli, you may pur
chase genuine havanas, specially imported by the Govern
ment of the Holy Father for the delectation of his faithfu
children. As a snuff-taker the Pontiff has a fellow-feeling,
for the smoker. King Victor Emmanuel unfortunately ha;
an unrefined taste as regards tobacco. The coarsest of weedi
are deemed good enough by his Majesty, and his realm i:
consequently poisoned with bad cigars.
I am aware that a tableau of the actual condition of Komi
can be painted in colours far darker than those with whicl
I have set my palette. From Florence, from Milan, fron
Turin, from Paris, you will receive probably very differen
accounts of what is going on in the Eternal City. There i
an influential journal, for example, called II Patriota, &m
There are noiv (1869),
THE POPE. 34:1
published at Parma. The Eoman correspondent of this in-
teresting sheet writes, under the date of the 6th of December,
:hat Kome is in a state of siege ; that cannon are posted, '^ al
U qiia e al di la,'' here and there along the Tiber ; that so
soon as the bells for the Ave Maria are heard the streets are
ileserted; that nightly wayfarers are poniarded, or stripped
md robbed, by the " brigands" with whom the city is
svv^arming, and who are under the immediate protection of
Am Papal Government ; that the Presidents of the different
Rioni or districts have carte hlanclie from head-quarters, and
irrest whom they please in order to satisfy private vengeance ;
:hat the gendarmerie stop passengers in the streets, and in-
sult them ; that the piisons of the Holy Office are full of
ooveri ififelici accused of heresy or blasphemy, zvho undergo
Ihe most frightful tortures ; that other enormities are rife,
jhe which the pen refuses to transcribe; that malversation,
k^endette, rapes, arrests, robbery, and murder are the order
}f the day; and so forth. The correspondent of the Par-
mesan paper winds up by informing his readers that the
Sanfedisti, who committed such atrocities in the Eomagna
md the Marches in '49, are enrolled in a " secret military
legion," and will in due course of time be let loose on the
shopkeepers. The Osservatore Romano has quietly repub-
lished the letter of the Koman correspondent of the Parma
Patriota, heading it with the suggestive title, " Nuove hugie
1 vecchi bugiardi'" — "New lies from old liars." It need
scarcely be said that there is not one word of truth in the .
Parmesan chronicle. Rome is just as quiet as Camberwell.
Until very late at night the streets are filled with people ;
carriages full of fashionable ladies drive about with impunity.
ZiSi ROME AND VENICE.
There are no cannon visible **al di qm'' or *' al di Ih," on
the Tiber's banks ; and the cells of the Holy Office are in all
probability as empty as the Parmesan gentleman's head.
This is but a very mild sample of the prodigious lies which
are told every day in the columns of the Italian press.
I will believe that, were a plehiscitum called for tvhile the
Pope remains at Kome, the result, although the majority
might be for union with Italy under Victor Emmanuel, would
show a very respectable proportion of voters for the main-
tenance of the actual order of things. Mind, everybody
must vote. The thirteen thousand priests and monks, the
seminaries and the pupils of the Propaganda, the three thou-
sand beadles, vergers, sacristans, bell-ringers, gutter-scrapers,
Tioly-water-bottle fillers, and lamplighters and candle-snuf-
fers of St. Peter's — the beadles, &c. of the other three-hun-
dred -and -sixty -three churches and basilicas of Eome, the
■cardinals and the cardinals' coachmen and footmen, and that
wonderful dragoon — the image of our own City marshal —
who rides before the Pope, waving a drawn sword, after the
manner of the late Mr. Gomersal in the Astleian spectacle of
the Battle of Waterloo. The Swiss halberdiers must vote,
and the Noble Guard, and the Trasteverini who yet grovel
before the empty tomb which Pius IX. has caused to be
constructed for himself, and groups of whom are always to
be found in St. Peter's, kissing away what remains of the toe
of the saint. The shopkeepers who sell mosaics and Byzan-
tines, and gilt bronzes, and verd antique, and malachite, and
copies of old pictures, the hotel-keepers, the lottery -office-
keepers, and the valets de place, should also be admitted to
the suffrage ; and the result would, I am sure, be a highly-
THE POPE. 343
respectable list of people in Eome who wanted to keep tlie
Pope in and the Italians out. As for the ladies, if female
votes were allowed, and only the old women, in any European
capital, Protestant or Catholic, you choose to mention, were
polled, the majority would be for the Pope, and he would
remain at the Vatican in scecula sceculorum.
But neither priests, nor friars, nor flunkeys, nor shop-
keepers, nor old women, nor his rabble-rout of Dutch-Irish
Zouaves and Antibes Legionaries will set the temporal power
on its legs again. There will not, I hope, be another Castel-
fidardo or another Perugia ;* but the Papacy for all that will
** slide," and, temporally, be effaced. The real, the sole com-
plaint of the Koman people is, not that they are massacred,
or starved, or locked up and tortured by the Inquisition, but
that they are subject to a Government which belongs, not to
the nineteenth, but to the fourteenth century. The Pope is
a dear good old gentleman, but he is five hundred years old
— he goes himself sometimes so far as to say that he is close
upon two thousand — and really, at his age, he should be
spared the clatter and the worry of modern politics. The
Eomans do not want him to go away from Eome. They are
willing to make him happy and comfortable there all the days
of his life ; but they desire to see him adopt a policy, and
surround himself with counsellors befitting the coming year
1867. ,.
* There has been Mentana (1869).
XXIV.
ROME AND THE ROMANS.
Of course, during the fortnight preceding the departure of
the French troops from Rome, you heard at least fourteen
different rumours — mostly from the inventive city of Paris,
or the scarcely less imaginative Florence — setting forth how
the Ultramontane party had succeeded in persuading the Pope
to run away from Rome so soon as the French evacuation-
was completed. Certainly, in the majority of instances, the
wish was father to the thought, and the Italian papers, in
particular, show great anxiety to prove that the departure of
the Holy Father from Rome would he an act of virtual abdi-
cation. There are some notable historical precedents in
support of this view. In the British Museum may be seen
a copy of the London Gazette for a certain day in the month
of November 1688, in which the Lords of the Council calmly
announce that, " his Majesty having withdrawn himself, " they
hold the throne of England to be vacant. James II. did
subsequently more formally abdicate ; but the " withdrawal"
noticed in the Gazette was undeniably the real false step
which shook the crown off his head.
Were the Pope to depart, suddenly and secretly from his
capital, to be next heard of at Malta, at Munich, or at Ma-
drid, it might need no very nice discrimination between de
jure and de facto rights, and no very minute hairsplitting
ROME AND THE ROMANS. 345
between sovereigns in esse and in posse, to arrive at the con-
clusion that there was nobody to sit down in the chair of St.
Peter — that is, in the ordinary locality provided for sedentary
accommodation. Ultramontanism denies this, and asserts
that the Pope was as much a temporal prince at Avignon —
when the Tribune Rienzi was fighting the Colonna and the
Orsini at Rome — or at Fontainebleau — under the lock and
key of Napoleon, while the Eternal City was not only gar-
risoned by French troops, but formally incorporated with the
French Empire under the name of the Department of the
Tiber — or as at any other period of his history when he sat
enthroned in high state in the Vatican, surrounded by Swiss
halberdiers and noble guards, and sending his monsignori to
govern the Legations.
The worth of an assertion — like anything else — is, QuCCOYdi-
ing to Hudibras, "just so much as it will bring;" and the
Ultramontane assertion does not bring conviction to the
mind. The Pope was not sovereign of Rome when he lived
at Avignon, because it was as much as his life was worth to
have shown himself in Rome among the turbulent barons.
He was not sovereign of Rome when Napoleon immured him
in the splendid durance of Fontainebleau, simply because he
had been forced into a postchaise, and hurried from Italy to
France under an escort of gendarmes, while the son of his
captor had been solemnly created king of the city which he
claimed as his appanage.
These are not, of course, the views of Ultramontanism.
Their views are summed up in the doctrine of Divine right.
Those views are very distinctly expressed on the portal of a
monumental tomb in the crypt of St. Peter's, where we are told
346 ROME AND VENICE.
in sounding Latin, that James the Third, Charles the Third,
and Henry the Ninth, Kings of Great Britain, France, and Ire-
land, are interred. Wo know very well that there never were
any snch kings, and that in that stately sepulchre continue to
moulder only the bones of two Pretenders, the elder and the
younger, and of Henry Stuart, sometime Cardinal of York.
Ultramontanism, to do it justice, is seldom inconsistent. To
Ultramontanism the Count de Chambord is still Henry the
Fifth, Leopold is still Grand Duke of Tuscany, Francesco
King of Naples, and Juan de Borbon King of Spain ;* and
not a fortnight since I read in an ultra-Catholic paper a flam-
ing panegyric on the lately-deceased miscreant — a miscreant
as mad as he was sanguinary — Don Pedro of Portugal.
But will the Pope go away, either definitively or only for
a short time, until he can see what turn affairs are likely to
take ? You may think it now rather late in the day to dis-
cuss such a question, but at Rome, as I have already had
occasion to point out, much less seems to be known, and to
all outward appearance much less seems to be cared about
that twin-brother in abstruseness and obscurity to the Schles-
wig-Holstein difficulty, the Roman question, than is known
and cared in France, in Italy, or even in Protestant England.
The Romans are not such gossips as the Florentines or the
"Venetians. Caffe life is here almost a nullity. The erst-
famous Caffe Greco — done to death by every tourist who has
professed to describe artist life in Rome — is the dullest and
most deserted of places ; the falling-off in its prosperity being
attributed to the new proprietor's raising the tariff for a cup
* Don Juan, I believe, has since abdicated his pretensions, and the pre-
sent pretender is an even more obscure personage (1869).
EOME AND THE EOMANS. 347
of coffee from one penny to threehalfpence. There is no
Florian's, no Doney's, no Piazza della Scala, at Eome, where
the scan. mag. of the day is retailed hot and hot, like the
parallelograms of juicy meat at the Beefsteak Club.
One does not resort to the Forum to hear what is going
on. One goes to the Forum to see the ruins and be fleeced
by the custodes thereof on a sliding-scale of extortion, vary-
ing from five hajocchi for a Corinthian column damaged, to
three paoli for a statue. Triumphal arches are gratuitous.
The Corso is the Bond -street of Rome, and at all hours
pretty well thronged ; but it is far too narrow for even two
quidnuncs to hold each other by the button and gossip for
five minutes. And strong as is the love in humanity for
gossip, that enjoyment can scarcely be cultivated in the mid-
dle of the road at the risk of being run over by the sanguine-
hued equipage of an Eminence, or an English mail-phaeton
rattling towards the Pincian hill. There are very few people
indeed to be seen at any time on the Piazza del Popolo, which
has an odd family likeness to Highgate-archway, set down at
the entrance to Cumberland-market, Kentish Town ; and as
for the Piazza di Spagna, and the Via Condotti, and the Via
Babuino, about the last article procurable in any of those
thoroughfares is Roman political intelligence.
It is the English quarter, it is the district of the vast
hotels where the Forestieri Inglesi are taken in and done for
— comfortably done for, generously done for, I grant, but at
a deuce of a price. If you want Crosse and Blackwell's
picldes. Brown and Poison's corn-flour, Mappin's razors, El-
kington's plate, Atkinson's perfumery, Savory and Moore's
drugs, Guinness's stout, Parkins and Gotto's stationery, or
848 ROME AND VENICE.
Allsopp's pale ale, come by all means to the Spagna, the Con-
dotti, or the Babuino. If a young lady wishes to hire a
riding-habit or a side-saddle for the next meet of the Eoman
Hunt she will find everything she requires in the English
quarter. Go into Piale or Spithover's reading-rooms, and
you will hear all about the workmen's demonstration at
Beaufort House, and the Bishop of London's Charge, but
nothing about Ultramontanism or the Eoman question. If
you want Koman mosaics or Kevalenta Arabica, Byzantine
jewelry or Daffy's elixir, antique cameos or Cockle's pills,
a reduced copy of Trajan's Column in gilt bronze, or photo-
graphs of the Campidoglio nearly as big as the Campidoglio
itself, and at prices to match, I cannot recommend you to a
better place than the Via Condotti.
They sell beautiful English nail-brushes in the Via Ba-
buino, likewise Harvey's sauce and Warren's blacking, and
some of the nicest darning-needles I was ever sent out to
purchase. The newest English novels, published under the
auspices of the Baron von Tauchnitz, can be obtained at the
libraries, where there is such an unrestricted supply of English
literature, that I have begun to entertain grave doubts as to
the existence of the Index Expurgatorlus, and have thought
of asking for the Jesuit in the Family or the Dairyman's
Daughter. I daresay that these and many other anti-Baby-
lonish works are to be procured in the English quarter.
They may be prohibited, but I have not yet met anyone who
has failed in bringing to Eome anything on which he had
set his mind. You either obtain a lascia passare from your
banker, in which case your luggage is not examined at all, or
you get judiciously close to the pontifical doganiere who
ROME AND THE ROMANS. 349
is about to examine your first portmanteau at the Custom-
house, and recite in his ear that sweet passage from the late
Professor Wilson's Isle of Palms which has reference to the
wtues of palm-oil, and concludes, if I mistake not, with a
paraphrase of the classical saying, that he gives twice who
gives quickly, and without making any fuss about the gift.
With all this, I should not advise you to enter the Pontifical
States with a full-length portrait of the Scarlet Lady of Ba-
bylon worked in Berlin-wool as a railway-rug, or with a pho-
tograph of Garibaldi, a bust of Mazzini, a freemason's apron,
a copy of the Unita Italiana, and a six-chamber revolver
lying loose in the tray of your trunk. You should be chary,
too, of airing your Italian by volunteering to tell the first
Eoman citizen you meet on the railway, after crossing the
frontier, that "II Papa il non possumus r ester ici percWe il est
cattivo uomo, et Rome madre de toutti les abominations,^' than
which I have heard some observations not in much worse
taste from my countrymen and countrywomen travelling
abroad.
Florence is a curious specimen enough of that which one
may term international ''half-and-half." English boarding-
houses elbow the Italian locandas ; English bakers sell you
captain's -biscuits and pound-cakes; and Dr. Broomback's
Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen is within twenty minutes'
walk of the Pitti Palace. The hotels on the Swiss Lakes,
where a clergyman of the Church of England is always re-
tained, like the late Herr von Joel, "on the establishment,"
at a small salary, which he may considerably augment by
travelling up and down the lake per steamer, and touting for
patrons to the hotel — these are hybrid enough. Boulogne is
aSO liOME AND VENICE.
a "half-and-half" place; so is Pau in the Pyrenees, so is
Nice, so is Tours ; but of all '' half-and-half" regions in the
world, commend me to that rione of Eome which lies between
the steps of La Trinita del Monte and the Corso. There may
you see, in the space of one half-hour, on a fine wintry
afternoon, at least sixteen varieties of English old maids;
and, I delight to add, not fewer than sixty species of English
young maids, arrayed in the most ravishing cavalier hats,
mainly with feathers in them, and with Balmoral boots whose
heels are of the altitude of the obelisk of Khamses, with crino-
lines surpassing in circumference the sweep of the Circus Max-
imus, and with looks as lofty as the Pyramid of Caius Ces-
tius. On Sundays you meet them returning from the Pro-
testant church, which is still in a kind of barn, extra muros,
followed by plump flunkeys carrying the orthodox bag full of
prayer-books. Britain ! my country ! we can't put the
Church Service in the pocket of our Astracan jacket. It
wouldn't hold anything bigger than a pocket-handkerchief
of French cambric and point cVAlengon. We must have John
Thomas to carry the sacred volumes, and thank Heaven that
we are not as that publican.
I daresay there are English " publics" in the vicinity of
the Piazza di Spagna, where John Thomas and other gen-
tlemen in and out of livery may, when the peine forte et dure
is over, obtain their beer. I hope to find out one of these
Anglo-Eoman taverns ere I have done. I fancy it a neat
house, by the sign of the Cross Keys, and kept by a sturdy
Briton, formerly stud-groom to the Earl of Worldsend — that
great travelling milord who had the portraits of all his
racehorses taken in mosaic, in revenge for being unable to
ROME AND THE ROMANS. 351
purchase Gibson's tinted Venus — and whipper-in to the Ro-
man Hunt. Meanwhile I expect every afternoon to stumble
on the Cross Keys, and hear John Thomas blowing-up the
landlord because his beer is Salt and Co.'s, and not Ind,
Coope's, and there are no straw pipes and birdseye tobacco.
John Thomas does not often appear in plush in Rome.
He usually affects a demure semi-livery — a subdued invi-
sible green, or pepper-and-salt, with a narrow red cord down
the seams of his pantaloons, and the merest phantom of a
cockade in his hat. 4t is not the thing for English servitors
to wear livery in Rome. A groom indeed may appear in
full horsey costume; and I know a shop in the Babuino
where they sell buckskin-breeches, and another where they
specially advertise the preparation of oxalic acid, which
cleans top-boots so nicely ; but if we came to plush and
powder and aiguillettes, the Delaplushes of Albion would find
themselves signally eclipsed by the flunkeydom of Rome it-
self. Their costumes, you may not have heard ere this,
were all designed by Rafaelle and Michel Angelo. They
are certainly very sumptuous in fashion, and they all look
— especially those of the Cardinals' footmen, to whom I shall
have hereafter occasion to allude — as though they had been
" built" at least two and a half centuries ago.
This is the prevailing air of Rome, to tell truth. Few
of the babies in arms look less than two-hundred-and-fifty
years old ; and I have seen some, swaddled after the fashion
of the Roman fasces in their ligatures, who looked two
thousand. Were you ever on familiar terms with a human
bas-relief, a Cupid with his wings cut off, who has tumbled
into the mud, but has gotten some rags to cover his little
352 EOME AND VENICE.
bare back withal? That is a Roman boy. Did you ever
know an animated cameo, chipped and foul and smirched,
but a classical cameo for all that ? That cameo is a Roman
contadina. The Goths and the Visigoths, the Lombards
and the French, have done a good deal in their way towards
breaking up Rome into little bits, but they have not suc-
ceeded in effacing the personal type of the Roman people.
As for their character, I do not imagine they have changed
much during the last twenty centuries, and that they would
not at all object to a sovereign who^^ave them plenty of
bread and plenty of games. I have little doubt, in fact, that
they are the same Roman people, or rather Roman populace,
whose ways and manners were intuitively divined by a thea-
trical manager by the river-side, in London, who did some
very capital business in Queen Elizabeth's time — a manager,
it is said, who made but a poor actor, but was a dramatist of
some note, and wrote the plays of Julius Ccesar and Corio-
lanus.
I think I have said enough to show that it is not in the
Piazza di Spagna, not in the Via Condotti, not in the Via
Babuino, that you will hear aught that is cogent concerning
Roman politics. You might obtain a tip for the next Derby
with much greater facility than you could get an inkling of
the dilemmas of the Pope and the intrigues of the Sacred
College. If r might venture on a suggestion for the im-
provement of this convenient but unpicturesque quarter of
the Eternal City, it might be that in the windows of the
few shops not wholly devoted to the sale of English wares,
or articles most readily purchased by English people, they
should write up, Qui si parla Italiano ; just as in the Rue de
EOME AND THE ROMANS. 353
la Paix, Paris, they might announce, Ici on park Frangais ;
otherwise an unhappy Italian, wandering in this Anglicised
faubourg, might go melancholy mad under the importuni-
ties of "half-and-half" tradesmen or spruce young English
shopmen specially imported from home to jump over Koman
counters.
In conclusion, let me hint that no tourist need be nervous
about coming to Kome on the ground of being unable to
" speak the languages." Nor, being at Kome, is he expected
to do as the Komans do. He will find the Komans only
too glad and proud to do as Britons do. They are also
capable of conjugating the verb to "do" in all its moods
and tenses, and in several senses. There is no place in
Europe where a travelling Englishman can make himself
more thoroughly at home than at Eome ; and only imagine
the advantage of having the Scarlet Lady herself, in propria
persona, over the way, as it were, to abuse and shake your
head at.
AA
XXV. ^
CHRISTMAS-DAY IN HOME.
Christmas ! I hope you have had a merry one in England,
with all my heart. There has been an immensity of eating
and drinking in the British islands, I can imagine, and over-
flowing audiences at the London theatres and Mr. Cremer's
toyshop. Mr. Boleno has been anxious to know how we all
were to-morrow, and has burnt Mr. Barnes in the small of
the back with a red-hot poker, and, at a later period of the
evening, has favoured the audience with " Tippitywitchet."
Some thousands of the inhabitants of most large English
towns have kept Christmas by getting excessively drunk, and
beating their wives and families ; and others have done hom-
age to " Merrie Christmas" by going, quite involuntarily,
without any dinner. The subscriptions to the poor-boxes
of the police-courts have been, I trust, abundant ; likewise
the contributions to coal, and blanket, and soup-kitchen
funds for the poor. The publishers have produced unnum-
bered Christmas books, blazing with gold and bright colours,
and the columns of the illustrated papers have broken out in
the customary eruption of yule-logs, holly, mistletoe, pigs'-
heads with lemons between their tusks, Christmas carols and
Christmas stories, in which the adventure of a hippopotamus-
hunter on the White Nile or a new theory about Shakes-
peare's sonnets has been connected, somehow, with Old
CHRISTMAS-DAY IN ROME. 355
Father Christmas. Yes, I ean picture the festive seasor^^
at home, combined with the Christmas fog and the Christ-
mas drizzle, Christmas colds and coughs, the Christmas
tax-gatherer, and the Christmas bills, and the Christmas
blunderbus put to your head on the 26th of December — I
mean Christmas-boxes — and other tidings of comfort and
joy. Christmas comes but once a year ; and those who are
in exile, or are sojourners among the tents of Kedar, would
not wish it, I fancy, to come oftener; for Christmas away
from home and friends and children — the bills and the fogs
notwithstanding — is but a melancholy time, a time when
you feel inclined to go to bed on Christmas-eve, and not
get up again till New-year's-day.
We do not keep our Christmas in Rome in the manner
to which you are traditionally accustomed in England. I
passed a very un-English Christmas-day, too, last year at
Berlin, although there was a seasonably hard frost on the
Linden, and they gave us at the tahle-d^hote a preparation
of treacle, macaroons, and farinaceous food, which passed
current as plum-pudding. The Christmas but one before
that I was in America ; and, although I went to Canada on
purpose to have a real English dinner on the 25th, I found
things rather dull than otherwise in New York, and got into
terrible trouble with the Yankees for hinting that, from a
holly, mistletoe, roast-beef, and miscellaneous-grocery point
of view, they did not keep Christmas at all. And now I am
spending Christmas among the old stones of Rome.
We had turkey a VAnglaise for dinner on Tuesday — that
is to say, a roast gallinaccio, with a mass of soft substance
in the dish, resembling a Scotch haggis slightly impregnated
866 ROME AND VENICE.
with truffles, which was supposed to represent stuffing.
There were mince-pies, too, which, to judge from their
density and tenacity under the knife, might have been blocks
of travertine from the pyramid of Caius Cestius ; but a
mince-pie is a thing to look at, and not to swallow. I never
knew more than one reasonable being above the age of nine
who actually ate a mince-pie, and he died without making a
will. Our Christmas banquet at the Hotel d'Angleterre,
Rome, was wound up with a magnificent plum-pudding, witb
a cupola like San Carlo in the Corso, and a streaming cap
of melted-butter. It was a wonderful pudding, and tasted
very much like jugged-hare kneaded into a stiff paste witb
chocolate, figs, raspberry -jam, stewed prunes, and roasi
chestnuts. I was helped twice to this dainty, and, feeling
slightly unwell next morning, took up a Tauchnitz edition
of Old Mortality, and could perfectly sympathise with Mause
Headrigg's strong aversion to plum-porridge. It is a pre-
latical dish, certainly; a pretentious, incongruous, deceitful
jumble — like Ritualism, for instance.
Likewise, and abating a few parties given by EnglisI
residents in Rome to their friends on Christmas-eve, and
numerous congregations at the afternoon and evening ser-
vices of the English church outside the Porta del Popolo,
there was very little that could be called seasonable to Eng-
lish sympathies in our Roman Christmas. It was a greai
deal too fine, to begin with. The sky was, as usual, spot-
lessly blue — I think I could count on my fingers the numbei
of clouds I have seen during four weeks' residence in Rom(
— and the sun shone out so brightly and sturdily that th(
grimy old city seemed absolutely to wink and quiver unde]
CHRISTMAS-DAY IN EOME. 357
bis beams. Tbose abominable little closes and wynds at
tbe top of tbe Corso towards the Tiber, with their perennial
festoons of linen hanging on poles from all the windows —
whatever can the Eomans do with their skirts and petti-
coats after they have been washed and ironed ? it is certain
they never wear them — and their permanent way of veget-
able rubbish, loose stones, fragments of hats, boots, and
tin kettles, and dead dogs and cats : these wretched little
twin brethren of Church-lane, St. Giles's, were lit up, as
though in honour of Christmas, by the all - searching sun.
Our water-colour painters would have felt great joy to see
the golden bars of light, lying transversely on the muck-
heaps, tipping the jagged stones of the staircases, and glint-
ing across the cracked panes of the casements. There were,
indeed, some charming effects of light and shade, and the
view, say towards the rear of the Porta Ripetta, was highly
picturesque; but I should have liked it better for an inva-
sion in the foreground of Sir John Thwaites, assisted by Mr.
Bazalgette, and followed by the halberdiers of the Metro-
politan Board of Works, who, more ruthless than Robert
Guiscard or the Constable de Bourbon, should destroy these
closes and wynds utterly, and, from the Via della Scrofa to
the Porta Ripetta, leave not one stone upon another.
The tramontana, which has been rather troublesome
lately, forbore to blow on Christmas-day, and in the sun
the weather was as warm as June in England. The fores-
tieri all rushed out without their greatcoats, and the ladies
without their warm shawls, which may account for the
numerous cases of relaxed sore-throat of which I have since
heard in polite society. I counted, however, on the Pincian,
358 ROME AND VENICE.
no fewer than thirty-four pairs of white pantaloons among
the male Eomans, which, for the 25th of December, was
pretty well. At every street-corner and under every arch-
way there were stalls heaped high and thick with fresh
flowers — with heartsease, mignonette, monthly roses, vio-
lets, camelias, ferns and grasses, and wild-flowers, without
number as to species, and without names so far as my
powers of nomenclature extend.
Next to the environs of Seville, where everything which
is not covered with oranges is covered with roses, and the
Valley of Mexico, which is one parterre of flowers all the
year round, must come Eome as the chosen haunt of
Flora. She revels in wild -flowers among the ruins, the
tombs, the chinks of the Colosseum, and even in the waste
Campagna. She runs over with tame-flowers in the gardens
of her villas which fringe the Seven Hills. Flowers in Rome
are literally cheaper than dirt ; for dirt is a dear article — it
costs lives. For tenpence you may buy such a bowpot in
Eome as an English duchess might think cheap at a guinea
in Covent-garden ; such a bowpot as might make an Eng-
lish sempstress, stitching in her solitary garret, calculate
how many hours of toil and miles of needle and thread it
would take to purchase one poor sprig of mignonette from
that abounding loveliness. You are spared in Eome the
detestable nuisance of the flower-girls who in Venice and
Florence dog your footsteps and thrust bouquets into your
button-hole whether you will or not. Every street-corner or
vacant space is, as I have said, a Marche de la Madeleine,
and you may spend your loose halfpence in flowers, or leave
them alone, as you choose.
CHRISTMAS-DAY IN LOME. 359
The only peripatetic vendor of flowers whom I have yet
met in the Eternal City is a humpbacked dwarf, who on
week-days haunts the outside of Piale's reading-room on the
Piazza di Spagna, and is a small Birnam Wood of choice
flowers. You may make poor Lancelot Gobbo's fortune for
a fortnight if you give him say forty hajocchi — 'tis but Is. Id,
— for an armful of rainbow. On Sundays, when Piale's, in
deference to the prejudices of its Protestant patrons, is closed,
the dwarf changes his station to the outside of the Caff'e di
Eoma, on the Corso, whither, it may be hinted, a consider-
able section of the Protestant patrons resort to read the last
Galignani, invisible at Piale's. On the Sabbath the Gobbo
does not vend flowers; he has a pair of bufl'alo-horns for
sale, beautiful in their polish and curvilinear spikiness, with
which he stands sentry, a horn in each hand, like a stunted
terra-cotta figure of Plenty, bearing ossified cornucopias.
With a view to Protestant patrons, he has mastered a small
stock of English. " Little lady, buy flower ? bu'fil." " Little
gentleman, buy horn ? bu'fil." Beyond this his Anglo-Saxon
does not extend. You might fancy him to be of the family
of Albert Smith's donkey -boy at Alexandria, with his " Giv'
um sixpence; ole gentleman always giv' um sixpence." I
have often purchased flowers from the dwarf, but I have not
yet ventured upon a pair of bufl'alo-horns. Such a possession
might give a subject for a postscript to the author of What
will he do with it ? What should I do with a pair of bufl'alo-
horns ? How should I pack them ? how bestow them when
I got my horns home ? I have an idea that when I take to
discounting bills at sixty per cent — which is not at all an
unpractical way of winding-up a froward and turbulent youth
360 ROME AND VENICE.
— I will buy a pair of buffalo-horns, and hang them up in
a bleak counting-house in Thavies-inn, between a Ready
Reckoner and a List of Terms in the Exchequer of Pleas.
They shall be typical horns, and symbolical of hardness and
smoothness, and of the ultimate impalement of my acceptors
on the spikes.
I confess that the sight of the blue sky, the bright sun,
and the fresh flowers rather threw me out in my reckoning,
and rendered my ideas of parallels of latitude somewhat hazy.
" How to have fresh roses on Christmas-day" is a recipe I
cut many years ago from one of the early numbers of the
pleasant Family Herald. Remembering that old Time is
still a-flying, you gather your rosebuds while you may, and
whenever you have any spare pence in your pocket, and
snipping off the end of the stalk with a sharp pair of scis-
sors, seal them carefully with red wax, — black is unlucky,
— wrap them in silver paper, and put them in the top
left-hand drawer in the best bedroom, punctually locking the
drawer, lest Betty the housemaid's curiosity should be the
means of your buds prematurely blowing and withering, as
is the way with roses and housemaids. Then on Christmas
morning, if you haven't lost the key and forgotten all about
your hidden treasures, you unlock the drawer, release your
buds from their prison of tissue paper, snip the stalks again
above the sealing-wax, pop them into lukewarm water, and
lo, in the course of ten minutes, your roses are all a-blowing,
and you may go down to breakfast with a flower in your
button-hole, as proud as a dog with two tails. This is the
pleasant theory. I remember that I once tried the recipe
practically. It was a dreadful spectacle which broke upon
CHRISTMAS-DAY IN ROME. 361
my eyes on Christmas-morning. So much stained tissue-
paper, so many dried and withered leaves, and a skeleton
stalk or two. That was all. Did you ever assist at the
unrolHng of a mummy? Did your horse ever shy at the
skeleton of a cow picked clean by obscene birds in a moun-
tain gorge by moonlight ? I felt, gazing on the dead roses,
as men have felt when they have come upon such sights as
those.
Christmas-day was observed as a close holiday in Rome.
For us heretic foreigners inn -tables were lavishly spread,
but among the Romans there did not seem to be any signs
of extraneous eating and drinking going on, and indeed I
have been informed that although the natale is a church
festa of the most solemn order, there are devout Romanists
who fast on Christmas -day. They have a feast only of
prayers and " functions." Secular indulgences they reserve
for the capo d' anno, or New-year's-day.
The only evidences of banqueting I observed during the
day among the natives was at a little " osteria di vino pa-
dronale con cucina,'' in the Yicola della Rocca Tarpeia, into
which I took the liberty of peeping during a morning stroll.
Seven wagoners in Spanish mantles, brigand - hats, and
overalls of goatskins, were sitting at a square deal table —
a mere rough board on tressels. In the midst of them was
a bottle with a wicker base, precisely like the oil-flasks one
sees at the Italian warehouses in London, but of about eight
times the size familiar to English eyes, and filled with the
vino padronale, which comes from Velletri, I believe, and
is black and heady, but not bad drinking, at about three-
pence a quart. To them entered a kitchen wench, unwashed,
363 ROME AND VENICE.
but comely, and with a fine Roman nose and eyes like sloes.
She had thrown her white petticoat over her head, where it
formed a most artistic coiffure ; but her ju/pons not being in
duplicate, and her skirt but scanty, her lower limbs rather
suffered in consequence. II faut soiiffrir pour etre helle.
She, from a large pipkin, with a semi - circular handle,
emptied light upon the hare deal hoards of the tahle a .pro-
digious mountain of maccaroni. It must have been hot, for
it smoked. I think it was dressed with cheese, for it smelt
so strongly that one of the buffaloes in the wains outside
coughed. I conjecture that it was also accommodated with
oil, or some other fatty matter, and that some hot splashes
thereof reached the floor, for I noticed one of the wagoners*
dogs, sitting by, lick his lips and wag his tail approvingly.
It was a strange sight, this Campagna of grease, with the
oil-flask of wine towering in the midst like St. Peter's,
Upon this vast mess the seven wagoners fell tooth and nail.
The simile is, perchance, not strictly correct. Teeth may be
de trop. You should never bite or chew maccaroni, but
swallow each pipe whole, grease and all, as though it were
so much flattery. But their nails they did use, seeing that
they ate the maccaroni with their fingers. What wondrous
twistings and turnings back of their heads, what play of the
muscles of their throats, what straining of their eyeballs and
vasty openings of their jaws, did I study as they swallowed
their food. I never saw a boa-constrictor swallow a rabbit,
but here were seven men gorging boa - constrictors. They
swept the board clean in an astonishingly short space of
time, and then, referring from time to time to the hottiglione
of wine, they fell a-gambling for coppers. This was their
CHRISTMAS-DAY IN EOME. 363
way of keeping Christmas ; and I hope nobody was stabbed,
and that the buffaloes were not kept waiting until sundown,
when, as everybody knows, the malaria begins to steal abroad.
In a fashion not widely different from this, I daresay, did
Koman wagoners feast two thousand years ago, long before
the Sibyl of Tivoli revealed to Imperial Caesar the vision of
the (i^hristmas-day which was to come.
XXVI.
KOMAN *' SHAVES."
December 2ff.
Senor Figaro, ex-body-servant to Count Almaviva, and go-
between-in-chief to Cupid, all shrewdest of shavers as he was,
seems to have made a slight mistake when he fixed on Num-
ber 15, Plaza San Tomas, in the city of Seville, as the fittest
abode per un harhiere di qualita. He should have come to
Kome. He should have set up his shop at the angle of the
Palazzo Braschi, near the Piazza Navona, with that famous
tailor for a next-door neighbour who has given his name to
a statue which for ages has consoled the Romans for the lack
of a free press and comic publications. Figaro and Pasquin
would have made a pair most justly formed to meet by Na-
ture. The tailor would have undertaken the satirical depart-
ment in Roman politics ; the harhiere di qualita would have
attended to the shaving. There never was probably such a
city as Rome for " shaves." Literally, the consumption of
razors, grindstones, strops, and soap susceptible of forming
a soft lather, must be enormous. How many thousand ton-
sures are there to be kept smooth and shining ! a tonsure is
the antithesis of a grass-plat, but it needs quite as much care
and attention. How many thousand clerical maxillaries are
there every day to soap and scrape ! And then Beadledom
requires its diurnal clean shave, and Flunkeydom — for the
beadles and flunkeys of Rome are as numerous as the camp-
EOMAN « SHAVES." 365
followers of a Sepoy regiment before tlie mutiny. Only the
little boys who swing the censers, and the shrill soprani —
doleful creatures, who are called emphatically " the Pope's
singers ;" I mean Mustafa and the rest — can afford to dis-
parage the barber's shear.
So far for the literal shaving which has to be done in
Kome ; but it is not that precisely which I mean. The
" shaves" most plentiful in Eome are of the metaphorical
kind. The names of these shaves is legion. As Venice is
the chief city in Europe for gossip, Florence for small scan-
dal, Milan for libels, and Genoa for downright denunciations
of public men, so is Eome the capital for " shaves" — I mean
for palpable lies most plausibly related, for baseless rumours
most artfully propped up, for impudent fabrications most
gravely retailed. The lives of these lies are but as those of
the ephemera ; but they flutter their little wings bravely for
a time, and they amuse a people who otherwise might find
existence rather dull. So every day has its fresh shave, and
the cry is, " Figaro su and Figaro giil, Figaro qua and Figaro
la,'' Bella cittctj this Eome.
In Jerusalem the odium theologlcum has the advantage
of being kept perpetually at boiling-point by three distinct
sets of Christians — the Greeks, the Latins, and the Arme-
nians — while the Mahometan Turks preserve order, and take
care that the line of sectarian difference is drawn on this side
throat-cutting. In Eome there are three different classes in
society who supply the caffes and salo7is with " shaves,"
wholesale and retail. There are the French " shaves," to
begin with. The French, although the Imperial troops have
left, form a very numerous community in Eome, and one
36G ROME AND VENICE.
which contrives to keep itself to itself as completely as it
does in Leicester-square and Soho. The French academy at
the villa Medici has its colony of rapins ; the French draw-
ing-masters and modellers for bronze-workers form another
section ; there are little French cafes and little French re-
staurants, and little French washerwomen, and little French
milliners, of whom M. Joseph ^ Surface, Milor Anglais, of the
Piazza di Spagna, sometimes orders a bonnet ; and there are
quite a surprising number of French commercial travellers.
I like the Gallic bagman much ; I admire his shrewd-
ness, his tomfool jokes, his inexhaustible good -nature. I
like " Anatole Eoux, voyageur, Maison Proux, Doux, Choux
et compagnie, Faubourg St. Denis, a Paris," whose card I
have often found stuck so proudly over his number in out-
of-the-way foreign inns, and sometimes thrust beneath my
door, lest I should be in want of a little hair-dye, or a few
artificial flowers, or a porcelain statuette of Pradier's baig-
neuse, or so. I passed an uncommonly jolly fortnight last
spring, in the south of Spain, solely in the society of French
bagmen ; but I was not prepared for the very magisterial ap-
pearance which he puts in here. It is obvious that you can-
not eat mosaic, or drink cameos, or dye your hair with por-
phyry and alabaster tazze ; and as the Komans do not appear
to make- anything beyond the articles I have named, and
their state of civilisation is not quite up to a mark which
should cause them to relish our commodities — marine en-
gines, threshing-machines, anchovy sauce, Balbriggan hose,
tracts, and pickles — they are compelled to fall back on
France for their supply of lighter luxuries, and the French
bagman is consequently continually going and coming. He
ROMAN " SHAVES." 367
seems to be generally, from his accent, a native of Lyons or
Marseilles. His thirst for j^etits verves is insatiable ; he is
powerfully scented with garlic ; he smuggles his own caporal
and 2^(it^ts Bordeaux into the Eternal City ; and his constant
complaint is that cards and dominoes are excluded from the
Eoman caffes. When he wants the waiter, he shouts ^' Eh!
la boutique /" which he considers a humorous compromise
between the French " g argon'' and the Italian " hottega.''
His stock of Italian does not generally go beyond ''SI'' and
" Diavolo." He has a profound contempt for the ancient
monuments of Eome. I heard a Zouave ask him yesterday
if he had been to the Colosseum, to which replied Anatole
Eoux, " Je me moque pas mat clu Colisee. Ma partie c'est
dans les chocolats pralines." He considers St. Peter's, as
an ecclesiastical edifice, to be infinitely inferior to St. Louis
des Fran9ais. For the rest, when he is not a Eed Eepubli-
can and Socialist, he is a very good Catholic, and his " Le
Saint Pere, voyez-vous, faut qu'il reste a Rome — " with a
thump on the table, and a "Jichtref" or a " tronc de
clieval!" to cap it, is audible in many coffee-house argu-
ments.
If this good fellow could only sell as many razor-strops
and cakes of scented soap as he sells " shaves," he would
very soon make his fortune. He is the great expositor of
French fables in Eome. He always has his news direct from
"Vamhassade, voyez-vous." Before the expeditionary corps
went away it was from the " etat major, voyez-vous," that he
derived his " shaves." They are astounding. Anatole Eoux
told me, only last night, that the Empress of the French had
already been three days in Eome, but, with the exception of
868 ROME AND VENICE.
a visit to the Baths of Caracalla by moonlight, she had not
stirred from the Quirinal ; in which venerable palace she was
closeted for many hours every day with the Pope, his Holi-
ness paying his visits by means of the secret passage which,
as everybody knows, leads from the Quirinal to the Vatican.
One might have told Anatole that the secret passage he
spoke of led from the Vatican to the Castle of St. Angelo ;
but what does such a trifling discrepancy matter ? Accord-
ing to Anatole, the French are coming back in force on the
1st of January. His brother-in-law at Toulon — " qui tra-
vaillefort dans les houilles la-has, voyez-vous" — wrote to him
last week to say that eleven French ironclads were fitting
out for the new expedition to Kome. The Emperor was
detevmined. '' d' en Jinir avec cette sacrce question Romaine ;
car VEmpereuTy voyez-v oils'" — and here Anatole gave the
customary thump on the marble table, and smothered, in a
tremendous "Jichtre'' his further exposition of Imperial
Caesar's policy with regard to Kome ; of which Anatole very
probably knows as much Imperial Caesar does himself.
It is quite feasible that many of these " shaves" should
come from the French Embassy, or from any other of the
Legations resident in Eome, for they are all more idle and
more useless than even the ordinary ruck of those idle and
useless institutions. I would not venture to suggest that
the Minister Plenipotentiary takes bagmen into his confidence,
or that the attaches frequent the estaminet ; but diplomacy
has its cooks and its scullions, its valets and doorkeepers,
its infirna plehs of gossips and hangers-on ; and from these
gentry may proceed some of the astounding stories we
hear.
ROMAN "SHAVES." 3G9
Next to the French " shaves" are the Italianissimi. They
are whispered in the Corso, and murmured at the Antico
CafFe Greco. They are simply the rechauffes of the last lies
of the Florentine press. They are the wonderful legends of
which I have already given you specimens, and relate mainly
to brigands disguised at the hotels and lying perdus in the
convents, cannon planted on the banks of the Tiber, mid-
night assassination, arrests, espionage, terrorism, and so
forth. I have had very few Italianisslmo " shaves" to record
during the last few days ; for the fertility even of the Italian-
issimo imagination has its limits, and Rome is so thoroughly
and profoundly tranquil that the birds of ill-omen can have
scarcely known what to croak about. The last Italianissimo
** shave" is a very mild and misty one. We are to have, it
appears, "next February" a tremendous outbreak. The flower
of the Roman youth, it is said, have volunteered into Gari-
baldi's army, and subsequently have taken a short term of
service in that of Victor Emmanuel. Towards the end of
next carnival la nostra prodissima gioventu will be liberated,
and will come down on the temporal power like a hundred of
bricks.
These are the " shaves" of ultra-Italianism. The third
class of " shavers" are the Ultramontanes. The lies these
devout politicians tell are half of a hopeful, and half of an
ominous nature. Now they report that the King of Italy
has informed Baron Ricasoli that he intends to march on
Rome immediately after Easter ; now that his Majesty has
been taken with pains in his stomach and in his conscience,
and has implored his father confessor to make his peace with
the Holy Father. They blow hot and cold, like the man in
BB
370 ROME AND VENICE.
the fable. One day it is the Sultan who has suddenly be-
thought him that the Sommo Pontcfice must be own brother
to the Sheikh ul Islam, and has entreated Pio Nono to take
up his residence at the Old Seraglio. The next it is heretic
England who feels qualms of the spirit, and implores Pio
Nono to come to Malta, to Brighton, to Belfast, or any other
spot in the heretical dominions he may select. Mr. Glad-
stone's sore -throat — and I am sorry to say the eminent
statesman is still an invalid — has been productive of innu-
merable shaves. If Mr. Cardwell goes to see the Dying
Gladiator at the Capitol, there are dark and distant rumours
of " English gold" and its maleficent influences. If Sir Wil-
liam Hutt is seen on horseback on the Pincio, he means mis-
chief; and there is more in the purchase of a cameo bracelet
by the Duke of Argyll than meets the eye.
Most of the Ultramontane " shaves," however, contrive to
converge. There is one central point on which all the shovel-
hats seem agreed. A *' great power" is about to '' interfere"
in favour of the Pope. Which is the great power, and what
should it interfere for, in favour of a poor old gentleman
whom nobody wants to interfere with, and who ought to
be thinking of a variety of things — the transitory nature of
human life included ?
It cannot be France. France has washed her hands of
Rome for the present— washed them as Pilate did, the Ultra-
montanes mutter.
It cannot be Italy. There is the King's speech in evi-
dence to prove that Italy does not mean to interf^ere with the
Pope one way or the other ; and the bitterest enemies of the
Be Galantuomo dare not insinuate that he says one thing
EOMAN "SHAVES." 371
and means another — the father-confessor " shave" notwith-
standing.
It cannot he Great Britain. The great body of English-
men are, I conjecture, wholly indifferent as to what becomes
of the Pope of Eome. If there be a party in England actively
desirous that he should remain at the Vatican, it would pro-
bably be found not far from Exeter Hall. Yes, I think the
"place with the Greek name," including Clapham, would be
sorry if the Pope fell through. There would be nothing left
to platformise about.
It cannot be Spain — the bloody Popish reaction in that
unhappy country notwithstanding. Spain might very well
wish to set the Papacy on its legs again, and revive Torque-
mada and the auto-da-fes into the bargain ; but Spain is
governmentally bankrupt and a beggar, and Dona Isabel de
Borbon is too much occupied with ennobling a Meneses and
an Obregon to think of " interfering" in Italy.
It rrnist be the United States of America. Already has
the news been flashed to us from Berlin — strangest place in
all Europe for such news to come from — that President John-
son has offered the Pope an asylum in America, " where he
would be more independent than elsewhere." The presence
of another American frigate at Civita Vecchia, and the visit
of successive instalments of her officers to Kome, have
strengthened this '' shave" and given consistence to the
lather. I am not prepared to deny its truth. I am not pre-
pared to deny anything which has reference to the United
States of America. Anything and all things are possible in
that marvellous country. And I must confess that with my
own eyes I saw yesterday a Yankee lieutenant at Piale's read-
878 HOME AND VENICE.
ing-rooms, purchasing a carte-de-visite, price eight bajocchi,
of the Supreme Pontiff; it is within my knowledge that the
purser inquired only the day before yesterday at Spithoever*s
the price of one of the three-sheet photographs of the Forum
Romanum.
XXVII.
COSE DI ROMA.
December 29.
Pius IX. carries his seventy-four years lustily, and in the
twenty-first year of his Pontificate — ominous apogee rarely
exceeded by those who have sate in the chair of St. Peter —
looks as though he were quite ready to begin a new lease of
life and a fresh term of office, and to go through both gaily.
The cause of the Vicar may be well-nigh desperate — the
treasury may be at a deplorably low ebb, the investments in
the Pontifical lottery for January unsatisfactory, and the
coming in of Peter's Pence but slow — the negotiations with
Italy may have fallen through, and the Commendatore Tonello
shaken the dust off his feet at the Porta del Popolo and
returned to Florence — the Papal Dragoons may be murmuring
at the favouritism shown to the Papal Zouaves, while the
Antibes Legionaries are grumbling because the Papal Gen-
darmes had new buckskin breeches and topboots served out
to them on Christmas -day- — the Palatine Guard, who are
mainly composed of the hourgeoisie of Rome, may have dis-
played a melancholy reluctance to get under arms at the
Vatican, and several members of the Guardia Nobile resigned
their commissions ; all of which are among the latest '^ shaves"
current in Rome. But still Pio Nono keeps a cheerful coun-
tenance and an unruffled mien ; and in the joyous serenity of
874 ROME AND VENICE.
his bearing goes far to vindicate the refrain of the old student's
song, " The Pope he leads a happy life."
To tell truth, the Supreme Pontiflf, considering his innu-
merable woes, and the excruciating anguish which, according
to the Ultramontane press and the' French episcopate, the
wickedness of the "Italian revolution" has caused him, looks
uncommonly jolly. He is emphatically what gushing young
ladies call a " dear old duck." A happy, beaming, shining
face is his, for all the wrinkles which time has placed there ;
his eye, although the lids droop a little, is bright and cheery ;
and his mouth, though his molars must be growing few and
far between, still preserves its peculiarly winning and benevo-
lent smile. It is not a strong face, not a clever face, and
certainly not a wise one ; but its every lineament is full of
amenity, mansuetude, and bonhomie. It is a face which does
you good to look at — contrasting so strongly, as it does, with
the sallow, cadaverous, skulking, eavesdropping, area-sneak-
ing, hang-dog physiognomies which one so frequently meets
under shovel - hats. The Koman - Catholic clergy are, no
doubt, as a body, learned, virtuous, and pious ; yet it needs
no Lavater, no Gall or Spurzheim, to discern that their looks
belie them, and that out of Ireland — where the priest is gene-
rally a hale, comely, cheerful-looking gentleman — your Ro-
mish ecclesiastic, facially at least, has the air not only of
having gone into the Church, but of having just broken into
one with a view to the communion -plate.
Thursday was the Pope's birthday ; the shops were closed,
and all the bells of the three-hundred-and-sixty-four churches
rang quadruple peals, which, by courtesy, might be termed
merry, but which must have been slightly instrumental in
COSE DI ROMA. 376
swelling the Eoman bills of mortality for that particular day.
English hospital-nurses are sometimes accused — I know not
with what truth — of pulling the pillows from under the heads
of moribunds who, like Charles II., are " an unconscionable
time in dying." The process is known as " easing them off."
But I think I would back the three-hundred-and-sixty-four
peals of church-bells in Rome to ease obstinate patients off
more effectually.
If the bells failed, I think I would try the barrel-organs,
which swarm in Rome, and are ground at the unholiest of
hours. I do not know if Mr. Bass, M.P., has ever visited
Rome, and put up in the Via Bocca di Leone ; but if he
would be good enough to winter here, I imagine that his
experience of organ-grinding agony would make him slightly
charitable towards that minor phase of the torture we endure
in England. I don't know exactly what is the matter with
the Roman organs ; but there is apparently some derange-
ment in their viscera or some fracture of the brass small-
tooth combs whereon the tunes are set, which produces the
most extraordinary jumble of sacred and secular music I have
ever listened to. The organist begins to grind *'Adeste
Fideles," and it suddenly gets mixed up with the " Guards'
Waltz;" while I have never heard "Dixie's Land" without
the " Dead March in Saul," or an air to that effect, being
interspersed with it — cacophony being worse confounded by
a series of screeches such as those once given by the macaws
in the Pantheon conservatory, when they smelt the sandwiches
eaten for lunch underneath the counter by the young-lady
attendants in the wax-flower department.
After all, this disastrous jangling of organs is not so very
876 ROME AND VENICE.
inconsistent with the actual aspect of affairs. The lay element
jars quite as discordantly with the ecclesiastical in all things
Roman. You shall not walk a furlong anywhere in this city
of incongruities without seeing the jarring and hearing the
jangling. Enter St. Peter's; watch the crowd of devotees
kissing the toe of the graven image in the marble chair;
listen to the mass ; bend your knee when the bell rings and
the Host is elevated; then emerge — it is to be hoped, sub-
dued and edified — and if you look from the loggie of the
great vestibule, just before you come to the equestrian statue
of Constantine, you will see a paved courtyard, two of whose
sides are formed by the very walls of St. Peter's. On the
opposite side is a guard-house ; and in that court the recruits
of the Zouave corps are being instructed in the bayonet exer-
cise. I saw this sight myself, after mass, five days ago. An
idle choir-boy, peeping from a window in the Basilica while
the most awful mystery of the Romish faith was being cele-
brated — and a good many idle choristers, and idle priests too,
may be noted at every solemn "function" — might have
watched the Pope's mercenaries being taught the art of
running people through the bowels. Something must be
wrong somewhere. Someone must have blundered at some
time. Either the Mass, or murder, must be a mistake.
I said I would back the bells, and failing them the barrel-
organs. But there is another way in Rome by means of
which nervous people may be driven mad, and sick people
" eased off." Commend me to the pifferari. These are the
bagpipers from the Apennines, who make a descent on Rome
during the four weeks of Advent, ostensibly for the purpose
of serenading the Virgin ; really for that of cadging for cop-
COSE DI ROMA. 377
pers. They are villanous-looMng fellows, whose costume is
picturesque in photography, but revolting in an age which
prefers untattered coats and clean shirts to particoloured
rags and mangy goatskin breeches. I suppose that when
the brigands dance with their care spose they engage a gang
ofpifferari to pipe to them. Some of these people are said
to earn a living, out of Advent, by standing as models to the
artists, and not to be mountaineers at all. Equally libellous
assertions are made with regard to the Highland bagpipers,
who shiver in kilts in the back- streets of London. But you
have seen these Koman pifferari, mobbed by the boys, mocked
by the cabmen, and moved on by the police, in London also.
You know the horrible din they elicit from their bags, and
the wild and grotesque capers they cut. Their real object,
both in Italy and in England, is the same — the extraction of
pence from the public ; but I was not aware until I came to
Rome that blasting on the bagpipes and dancing in the gutter
until bajocchi are wrapped in paper and flung out of the
window, had anything to do with Advent and the Virgin
Mary. These pifferari are, indeed, the Roman " waits."
They begin to blow at five o'clock in the morning, preferably
choosing for their performances the neighbourhood of hotels
frequented by heretics. I did my best, on the morning of
Christmas-eve, to invest one of the serenaders with the order
of the Cold Pig ; but it is difficult to get a good aim with the
contents of a water-jug at 5 a.m.
The Pope took an airing yesterday on the Pincian Hill.
The Pontiff usually turns out in very handsome state, in a
glass coach brave in gilding, and six black horses with
streaming manes and tails, with crimson-leather trappings
378 ROME AND VENICE.
covered with gilt bosses. The reins are of gold-cord, and in
the midst of a great hammer-cloth of crimson and gold, and
silken tags and squabs, and fringes and tassels — an imposing
structure, and in itself no mean rival of the Pontifical sedia
gestatoria — sits the Pope's coachman, a dumpling-faced, rosy-
cheeked, blue-gilled, bright-eyed, pottle-stomached charioteer,
obviously full of maccaroni, polenta, risotto, wine of Orvieto,
and other good things ; yet with a devout twinkle in his eyes,
and a Deo-gratlas smack on his lips. There is a touch at
once of the toastmaster, the beadle, the Friar of Orders Gray,
and the late Mr. Brackenbury, of the "Age" stage-coach,
about him. A combined halo of the old India House, the
London Tavern, the Bull-and-Mouth coaching-office, and the
crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, surrounds him. Perhaps the
elder Mr. Weller, with a rosary in his pocket-book among
the extra whiplashes and samples of corn, and a breviary
bound up with his Little Warbler, might most fittingly sit
for a portrait of the Pope's coachman.
I wonder what he thinks of the Koman question, and
whether he has ever heard of Garibaldi. His berth is not
quite so easy a one as that of the beefy creature in a cauli-
flower-wig who conducts her Britannic Majesty's eight cream-
colours ; but still the Pontifical scuderia must be one of the
most comfortable of loose-boxes. Good wages, a kind mas-
ter, a commanding position, and any amount of indulgences
and absolution ; for of course when the Pope dies his coach-
man drives him straight up to heaven, and St. Peter opens
the celestial gates with a crash to let the grand equipage
in. This high servitor is most sumptuously clad. I need
scarcely say that he wears a cocked-hat. Indeed, as I have
COSE DI EOMA. 379
previously noticed, the Eomisli Churcli seems to hold that
out of a cocked-hat, or at least a shovel one, there is no
salvation. They put almost bahes and sucklings here into
shovels, and highly preposterous do the puny students look,
straggling to their classes in hats like unto that of Don Ba-
silio in the Barhiere, and loose tags hanging from their
shoulders, as though they were leading-strings abandoned
by careless nurses. The Pope's coachman's hat is not tri-
angularly cocked, after the ''Egham, Staines, and Windsor'*
pattern, but is the real, blocked, built-up fore-and-aft hat,
such as we are familiar with on that frightful effigy of F.M.
the Duke of Wellington, K.G., at Hyde Park-corner. He
wears crimson-silk stockings, and the buckles of his shoes
are gilt. His coat, waistcoat, and continuations are of the
, superb fabric known as " imperial velvet :" a rich velluted
design, embossed on a damask ground. It is said to be
worth five guineas a yard ; but, for all its splendour, the
wearer has an odd appearance of being made up of window-
curtains and flock paper-hangings, fresh from Jackson and
Graham's.
This is the Pope's " turn-out :" — sometimes there are
eight instead of six horses. Three, four, five, or six foot-
men, cloaked, sworded, cocked-hatted, and aiguilletted — I am
not certain how many there are, but there seem to be a great
number of them — hang on behind, by crimson straps, to a
splash-board elaborately carved and gilt, but much too small
for even two flunkeys. A person in military uniform, but of
civilian aspect, and mounted on a large horse, precedes the
cortege, wildly waving a drawn sword above his head, to let
Christendom know that the Pope is coming. Dragoons,
880 ROME AND VENICE.
clanking their sword-scabbards against their stirrup-irons,
bring up the rear. The entire spectacle leaves you with a
mingled impression of Cardinal Wolsey's procession to Tod-
place, and the Sheriffs of London and Westminster going to
chop fagots and count hobnails at Westminster. Christian
archaeologists and Oriental scholars will tell you that it was
precisely in this fashion the Vicar's Master entered Jerusa-
lem eighteen hundred years ago.
The liberated Eoman people, in 1849, made a bonfire of
most of these rattletraps. They did not hang a single car-
dinal, or do any harm to the Pope's coachman, but they
burnt the Pontifical and cardinalitian paraphernalia wherever
they could find them. To save the few remaining equipages
from destruction the Kepublican Government, it is said, used
them for the conveyance of the sick to the hospitals. Then,
the people respected them. But the vitality of pomps and
vanities is most strange to mark. Human folly is the real
Phoenix, perpetually rising from its ashes. I daresay, could
the Court of Star Chamber be reestablished to-morrow, stars
would begin to glisten on the ceiling of some room in Sir
Charles Barry's house, dozens of applications would be sent
in for the office of Sworn Tormentor, and the means would
soon be found for putting Mr. Bright in the boots and Mr.
Beales in the Scavenger's Daughter. Given a Legitimist
Government in France to-morrow, and the tricolor would
turn pale, and lilies crop up through the eagles of their
own accord. " Vive Henri Quatre !" and La Belle Gabrielle
would silence " Partant pour la Syrie," and somebody would
be sure to discover the Sainte Ampoule in a hric-a-hrac shop
on the Quai Voltaire.
COSE DI EOMA. 381
The bonfires of 1849 burnt his Government out of Rome,
and his Holiness away to Gaeta ; but the times changed, and
the Pontifical "properties" made their appearance again,
looking as fresh — or rather as hopelessly antiquated — as
ever. The tumbrils and ambulances of St. Jean d'Angely
brought back something else besides cartridges, and shells,
and kegs of powder. They were full of mitres and crosiers,
censers and holy-water-pots, cocked-hats and shovel-hats,
"Imperial velvet breeches," and scarlet petticoats, and all
the tomfool vestments which a clique of demented and con-
ceited young clergymen at home imagine that the great Pro-
testant people of England will permit their churches to be
decorated with. The Phcenix rose from its ashes. There is
nothing in the Papal pride and circumstance of to-day to
remind you of the grinding to powder of the idol eighteen
years ago. The Calf is himself again, high on a porphyry
pedestal, and glistening with fresh gold-leaf. The Ultra-
montanes exult over this, and tell you that it is a proof of
the invulnerability of their Church, built upon a rock, and
against which the Infernal gates are not to prevail. Ah !
bah ! how old is rouge ? For how many thousand years have
women been painting their faces ? In the Etruscan Museum
at the Vatican they will show you the pins with which they
used to crimp their hair twenty centuries ago. Half Livy's
books may be lost and Aristotle come down to us maimed
and mancliot, but the tailor's pattern-book is left high and
dry, and the milliner's bandbox trips safely over the Niagara
of ages. I grant the Romish Church its candles, vestments,
and other properties intact. It is only its foundations in that
Rock on which it falsely claims to be built which are rotten.
382 ROME AND VENICE.
When you meet the Pope in his carriage, you are ex-
pected, if you are driving, to alight ; if you are on foot, the
proper thing is to kneel down. When the crowd of equip-
ages is very dense, as on the Pincio about four o'clock, or
when the ground is wet and greasy, as it was yesterday all
over Rome, neither of the acts of veneration mentioned above
is very easy of accomplishment ; and directly the man waving
the drawn sword above his head is visible in the distance, the
prudent show as much alacrity in getting out of the Pope's
way as the Spanish bishops do in ordering their coachmen
to drive on faster when they hear the tinkling bell announc-
ing the passage of the Host throughout the streets. "Es Dios
que pasaT the multitude cry, and the sefior obisjjo must
alight from his coach to admit the priest with his pyx. The
good-natured Pope, however, does not seem desirous of
causing inconvenience to his subjects. After a turn or two
on the Pincian. he generally alights and walks. He has his
reward in the throng of people of all classes who fall at once
on their knees and ask his blessing. Gentle and simple,
Roman princes and Zouaves, gendarmes and nurserymaids,
old beggars and countesses in crinoline, grooms and stable-
men, and little children, sink at once on their marrowbones,
and crave the benediction always gladly accorded. Pio Nono
wore his ordinary dressing-gown of fine white flannel, and a
great shovel-hat of scarlet velvet. Altogether, he looked
amazingly well and sprightly. His voice is still as clear as
a bell, and he sang mass capitally last Tuesday in St. Peter's.
Let us wish him a merry Christmas and a happy New Year,
and better counsellors than those cadaverous parties in sho-
vels, with their sallow faces and gallows looks, who troop
after him, whispering behind their bony hands.
XXVIII.
NEW YEAR IN ROME.
January 1.
Pio NoNO, in the evening of his age, seems as fond of hard
work, and as capable of performing it, as was the good old
Duke of Wellington, who, almost up to the last moment of
his career, continued to prove to an exigent generation that
he did not consider his numerous posts, with their corre-
sponding emoluments, to be sinecures, but took as good care
of the Tower as of the Trinity House, of Oxford as of Walmer,
of the Horse Guards as of the 33d Foot, of the Ancient Con-
certs as of the House of Lords ; while as constable, com-
mander-in-chief, field-marshal, elder brother, and chancellor,
he was alike efficient. The official costumes which our late
field-marshal was bound from time to time to wear would
have half- stocked the wardrobe of a waxwork -show. The
attributes of Pio Nono are equally Protean. He has to be
as many things, and to wear as many dresses, as the Duke.
He is a prince, a pontifi*, the eldest of brethren, the grandest
of constables, and a supernatural personage into the bargain ;
and it is really marvellous to mark how blithely he discharges
his multifarious functions, and how bravely he bears up un-
der the fatigue of dressing and undressing half-a-dozen times
a -day. Mr. Charles Mathews's travestissements in Patter
versus Clatter are trifling compared with the mutation of
the Pontifical toilette at Christmas-time.
384 ROME AND VENICE.
But, to adhere to our first parallel, we may be again
vividly reminded of the Great Duke when we see the Pontifex
Maximus, unbroken by all his labours, taking his daily "con-
stitutional" on the Pincian. Did not the Hero of Waterloo
take his " constitutional" on Constitution-hill ? The Duke,
it is true, rode on horseback; whereas the Pope is either
driven or walks — it is only in the gardens of the Vatican that
he can indulge in occasional horse-exercise ; but as the Duke,
towards the end, used to sway a little in his saddle, so does
the Pope — ^whose legs are, of course, the only shaky things
about him — sway a little in his gait, and require to be
propped up from time to time by servitors, who watch him
as carefully as Duke Arthur's groom watched his Grace. The
Duke was wont to wear white trousers when taking exercise.
Pio Nono wears a white dressing-gown. Everybody used to
bow to the Duke, and he invariably touched his hat, even to
the meanest salutant. Almost everybody kneels to the Pope
when he is out walking, and he invariably blesses the genu-
flectant. The Duke saluted you with two buckskin -covered
fingers ; the Pope blesses you with two ungloved digits.' Can
any parallel be closer — except, perhaps, that one which men-
tions that there is a river in Macedon and a river in Mon-
mouth ?
I have said that the Pope works very hard. Let us ex-
amine a little of the work he has had to go through this
Christmas. I leave the negotiations with the Commendatore
Tonello — of which we hear nothing new — and the settlement
of the financial difficulties of the State, including the January
lottery and the new silver coinage, which has made monetary
confusion worse confounded — I leave these entirely out of
NEW YEAR IN KOME. 38S
the question. It is the hard labour of the Pope-priest, and
not that of the Pope-king, of which I would wish to give
heretics an idea. I observe that the Poet Swinburne — who,
I should say, will go far, if his admirers give him rope
enough — has alluded in his song of " Kevolution" to the hal-
cyon time when " the galley bench" is to " creak with a Pope."
Already, I fancy, the sedia gestatoria " creaks" with an over-
worked old gentleman, whose daily life is, physically and
morally, more onerous than that of the particoloured persons
in steel bracelets, who eat polenta and skulk about, scowling
at the sentries, in the dockyard at Civita Vecchia.
Take yesterday, the 31st of December, for example. It
was, to begin with, the Feast of Pope St. Silvester, who con-
secrated the church of St. John Lateran, and baptised Con-
stantino the Great. The Pope heard mass in his honour,
in his own private apartments, at early morn. At half-past
two in the Apostolic chapel of the Vatican, the first vespers
of circumcision were sung, the Pope presiding. Six candles
were lit on the altar and in the chancel. The Pontifical
throne was hung with white draperies, flowered with gold.
The retahlo of the altar was decorated with tapestry repre-
senting the circumcision, and the arms of Clement XIII. The
altar itself bore the sumptuous garniture of mother-of-pearl,
the gift of Benedict XIV. The cardinals paid their obeisance
to the Pope. Their eminencies wore the scarlet cassock, the
scarlet cappa or cape, and the petticoat — I do not know its
vestimentary name — of rich point-lace. The choir sang the
motett, Dies Sanctificatus, of Palestrina. The first and third
psalms were sung in the Palestrinan, in the Gregorian, and
in faux bourdon. At the Magnificat, the Pope himself in-
cc
886 EOME AND VENICE.
censod the altar, chanted the orison, and blessed the congre-
gation.
At four o'clock in the afternoon his Holiness, in semi-
state, went to the church of the Gesu, to return thanks to
Heaven for all mercies received during the year just elapsed.
The spectacle was very grand indeed, and the crowd both
inside and outside the church immense. This is the prin-
cipal church of the Jesuits, and one of the most richly deco-
rated in Rome. It is near the northern foot of the Capitol,
and in one of the most stifling and poverty-stricken quarters
of the city. The interior is one mass of precious marbles,
lapis lazuli, and verde - antique, glowing frescoes, and rich
carvings. Here, also, there is an image of the Virgin,
called the Madonna della Strada, which works miracles;
and in the adjacent convent -house sit the General of the
Jesuits and his army of R.R.P.'s, hatching vain empires
over the minds of men. The artistic glories of the Gesu
were half -hidden yesterday by the tawdry scene - painting
accessories with which the priesthood insist on spoiling, at
great church festivals, the noble proportions and stately
decorations of their temples. They do not even spare St.
Peter's, which, this Christmas, has been profaned by the
most barbarous and tasteless "properties." At a rough
guess, I should say that there were at least five hundred
wax-candles in the Gesu yesterday, in chandeliers of a dozen
tapers each, suspended from the roof of the nave and cu-
pola. The altar, surmounted by its enormous globe of lapis
lazuli, long supposed to be the largest monolith of that kind
in the world, but now discovered to be made up of several
pieces, was one blinding blaze of light. The Sacred College,
NEW YEAR IN ROME. 387
the Episcopate, the Corps Diplomatique, a host of priests of
every grade in the sacerdotal hierarchy, and a vast number
of military officers, were present. The Pope did not stay
more than twenty minutes. His Holiness entered the church
through the sacristy, and knelt bare-headed at a prie cl'ieu,
before the sacrament, which was exposed on the altar. The
Cardinal Deacon, wearing his "pluvial," and kneeling on
the steps of the altar, at the epistolar side, then chanted
the Te Deum to a musical and choral accompaniment. At
the second verse of the Tantum Ergo the Pope " incensed" the
sacrament. The benediction was given by the Cardinal
Deacon, and then the magnificent gathering broke up.
At the same hour, at the church of the Ara Coeli, the
Senator and Conservators of Eome, preceded by the corps of
Sapeurs Pompiers, were likewise present at a Te Deum. It
is at first difficult to discover any connection between the
Senator of Eome — an office once held, to his destruction, by
Cola di Kienzi — and the semi-military force, with helmets and
hatchets, whose duty it is to " run with the machine" and
put out fires. On closer examination, however, it would
appear that the Senator stands in lieu of the Eoman Consul
of antiquity. He is a Eoman Prince, and his principal pri-
vilege appears to be to allow foreigners, duly provided with
certificates of respectability from their respective consuls, to
ascend the tower of the Capitol, whence a very fine view of
Eome is to be obtained ; but, otherwise, he exercises about
as much power as does the Lord Mayor of London's sword-
bearer. The names of the Senators are, indeed, inscribed on
certain marble tablets affixed side by side to the classical
Fasti Consulares in the Conservatorial Palace. On this as-
888 HOME AND VENICE.
sumption the Sapeurs Pompiers might be supposed to repre-
sent the Lictors of old Rome. I think that on gala-days it
would he as well to dress them up in tunics and sandals, and
give them fasces to carry. They would not look one whit
more absurd than the Pope's Swiss Guards, who, to doublets
and trunk-hose of the time of Francis I., add Prussian hel-
mets and gray greatcoats a la Btisse. Certainly firemen with
fasces would not be a more incongruous combination than
the sounding initials S.P.Q.R. with municipal placards on
the walls of Rome fixing the price of beef — Seconda qualita
di came di manzo : coscia plena, fracoscio, spalla e coscia
tiiota, esclusa la polpa di stinco, ogni libra soldi 9. In the
name of the Prophet, figs ! The S.P.Q.R. are only eloquent
to the efiect that second-class beef is worth fourpence-half-
penny a pound.
I mentioned that the crowd both inside and outside the
Gesu was immense. In the interior the sanctity of the
edifice and the solemnity of the occasion forbade, of course,
any demonstrations of popular feeling at the entrance of the
Pope. The Romans are not yet so far advanced as the Vene-
tians, who cheered their King and hooted their Patriarchs in
St. Mark's. Neither sanctity nor solemnity, however, deterred
a large number of foreigners, presumably Protestants, and I
am afraid mostly of the Anglo-Saxon race, from behaving in
the Gesu with extreme indecorum. This was not the first
time, perhaps, in Rome, when it was necessary to remind
strangers that a church is neither a volunteer review nor the
Oxford Music Hall, and that pushing, jostling, stamping on
the bystanders' toes, or digging elbows into their chests, the
whole accompanied by very free-and-easy remarks in the
NEW YEAR IN EOME. 389
English tongue, are not exactly the hest means of persuading
foreigners that we are Christians, or indeed that we have any
religion at all.
It may he as well to state, once for all, that these shame-
ful scenes have been repeated in every church in Kome, from
St. Peter's and the Sistine to the little church of San Tom-
maso degl' Inglesi, any time since December 24th ; and that
on St. Peter's-day and in Holy-week there will be even more
crowding, more impropriety, and more irreverence displayed.
The Papal authorities have done their best on these grand
occasions to preserve decorum and exclude the canaille by
enacting that only persons in evening-dress, and ladies in
black, with black veils, shall be admitted to the precincts of
the altar ; but it is precisely the people in evening-dress — I
say nothing, of course, about the ladies — who behave them-
selves in the worst possible manner. The frock, the proverb
tells us, does not make the monk, and a tail-coat and white
''choker" fail sometimes to make a gentleman. Swiss Guards
and gentlemen-ushers are posted all about the churches on
gala-days to see that none save in the prescribed costume are
admitted to the reserved spaces ; and a halberdier will occa-
sionally feel you about the hips, after the manner of a
searcher at a dockyard-gate who is inquisitive about tobacco,
to assure himself that you have not linked or pinned-up your
frock-coat into the similitude of a swallow-tail. These sump-
tuary laws, however, have not had the desired effect ; and
there is ten times better conduct observed in the body of the
church, in the darkened aisles, and remote chapels, where
the people who are ordinarily termed canaille are to be found
thick clustered. These good souls have only come into the
980 HOME AND VENICE.
church to pray ; and they drop down on their keees quietly,
and keep on praying till the ceremony is over.
Outside the Gesu, when the Pope reentered his carriage,
there was a real demonstration of popular sentiment, and
were I writing for the Povghkeepsie Seer or the Communipaw
Chronicle I should say that his Holiness was " ovated con-
siderahle." The multitude on the steps in the Piazza di Gesu
and in the adjacent streets was very dense, and composed,
apparently, of every class of the population. In addition to
working-men and women, and even cloudier plebeians, and a
fair sprinkling of Zouaves and Antibes Legionaries off duty,
there was a considerable number of well-dressed Italians,
both ladies and gentlemen. The cheering when the Pope
made his appearance was very loud, very general, and seemed
very sincere. It was certainly louder than when Pio Nono
went before Christmas to the SS. Apostoli, when the pre-
sence of an official claque, and of fuglemen connected with
the police, was manifest enough. Such a claque may have
-been on the spot yesterday at the Gesu.
Is there a country in Europe, excepting only our own
happy and favoured land, where the services of such hired
applauders are not occasionally required ? Even in free Italy,
-even in recently-liberated Yenetia, I have heard of strong-
lunged gentlemen employed by the Questura to shout " Viva
il Re r at the rate of five lire a-day. Who gave the cue at
the Gesu it is not easy to say ; but the populace took it up
<ion amorCf and the loud and renewed shouts of " Viva Pio
Nono r'' ^^Viva il Papa Re T must have been infinitely
grateful to the venerable Pontiff, whose trembling fingers
were blessing his loving subjects right and left. The Pope
NEW YEAR IN ROME. 391
is said to covet martyrdom ; but surely popularity is a more
comfortable thing. The cries of " Long live the Pope-king !"
audible to all, but which will, doubtless, be denied by the
veracious Italian press, are considered here, by the ultra-
clerical party, to be extremely significant, and evidential in-
deed of the triumph of their cause. The crisis, they say, is
over. The worst is past. Satan is beaten^down under the
Pontifical feet, and the "Italian Revolution" may run away
and hide itself, howling, in the Cave of Despair. Under-
stand, they point out, that it was the Pope, not only as Pon-
tifi", but as King, who was cheered so lustily yesterday. That is
to say, if we read the signs of the times through Ultramontane
spectacles, the Eoman people are thoroughly satisfied with
their present form of government; they admire the Swiss
Guards and the foreign mercenaries ; they do not want their
streets paved or their postage-stamps perforated ; they would
rather not have representative institutions and a free press.
The most philosophical conclusion, perhaps, at which one
can arrive is, that these popular demonstrations do not mean
much one way or the other. It cannot be too often repeated
that there are great numbers of persons in Rome who like
the Pope and the Papacy ; who even love the first and admire
the latter. These persons are not all clerical. The lay ele-
ment is sufficiently marked among them. There are old
people, simple people, dull people, credulous people, people
who are governed by women, people who do not care about
thinking for themselves, people who are young and enthusi-
astic ;pro, as there are other youngsters enthusiastic contra.
Let us remember the crucial test of the quack who answered
the question as to how he got so many patients by pointing
392 ROME AND VENICE.
from the window and asking his interlocutor how many of
the people he saw passing he thought to be fools. I do not
say that it is foolish to venerate the Pope, or the Grand Lama
of Thibet, or the King of Corea ; but I -do say that there are
people whose likings and dislikings are in one direction, while
those of others point a contrary way. The people who like
the Pope as King were about the Gesu on Monday, and
cheered him to the echo. Those who did not like him either
stayed away, or looked on and held their tongues. But the
question of the Temporal Power is, I take it, no more affected
by such a demonstration than is that of modern costume by
people who like going to fancy-balls dressed up as Madame
de Pompadour or Ivan the Terrible.
To attend church for a couple of hours in the morning
and for twenty minutes in the afternoon may not appear to
be such very hard work ; but it is the continual dressing and
and undressing which would tell on most elderly persons.
At the early vespers the Pope wore the falda, the alb, the
cordon, the stole, the white pluvial embroidered with gold,
and a mitre of cloth-of-gold. He came to the Gesu in his
white robe, with a purple rochet over it, and a velvet skull-
cap. In the sacristy they dressed him in the sottana, the
mozetta of red velvet, trimmed with ermine, and the scarlet
stole embroidered with gold. This kind of thing has been
going on for a week. On Christmas-eve his Holiness offici-
ated at the Sistine, seated on a splendid throne erected on
the gospel-side of the altar. In addition to the vestments I
have enumerated above, he wore the amice. He incensed
the altar, and was incensed in turn by the cardinals. This
was the day on which the sacred manger-board from the
NEW YEAR IN EOME, 393
stable at Bethleliem was exhibited to the veneration of the
faithful, in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. It is en-
closed in a crystal casket, framed in silver, and surmounted
by a little silver Bambino couchant on golden straw. At the
Basilica of St. John Lateran was exhibited the "acherotype"
image of the Saviour.
The Pope this year was not present at the midnight
mass, and omitted his customary visit by torchlight to Sta.
Maria Maggiore ; but he sang mass in St. Peter's on Christ-
mas-day. Previously the veil of the Virgin and the mantle
of St. Joseph had been exhibited at the early or " Aurora"
mass at Sta. Anastasia ; while at the church of the Agoni-
sants were shown the swaddling-clothes of the Saviour. At
Sta. Maria Maggiore and at St. Peter's some of the stones
from the stable and some of the straw on which the Divine
Infant was laid are exhibited. St. Mark's Church also pos-
sesses some straw ; and at the Santa Croce di Gerusalemme
they exhibit some of the hair of the Infant Jesus.* At Sta.
Maria in Trastevere can be shown, close to the high altar,
only the place from which once issued a miraculous fountain
of oil. It is not at all unlikely, bearing in mind the geolo-
gical conditions of the Eoman soil, that a real oil-well, not at
all miraculous, did flow hereabouts at some time or another.
These things are ; and there are people who believe in them.
At the pontifical high mass the Pope joined the sacred
college in the chapel of the Pieta in St. Peter's, wearing, in
addition to the dress I have described, the girdle with golden
acorns and a rochet of lace. Then a procession was formed
* " Fetes de Noel et de rUpipJmnie a Borne:' Par le Chanoine X. Baibier
de Montault. Kome, Joseph Spithoiver. 1865.
394 EOME AND VENICE.
of collegiate procurators in black cassocks and capes, apostolic
preachers of the Capuchin order, in cowl and sandals ; con-
fessors of the apostolic palace ; hussolanti, or ushers, in violet
cassocks and scarlet capes ; the apostolic jeweller in a court-
dress and with a sword by his side; the secret chaplains,
carrying the precious tiaras and mitres.
There are four pontifical tiaras or triple crowns ; one the
gift of Napoleon I. to Pius VII. It weighs eight pounds
avoirdupois, and is worth ten thousand pounds sterling ; the
second dating from the pontificate of Gregory XVI., and worth
only four hundred pounds ; the third presented by the Pala-
tine guard to Pio Nono, and estimated at the value of nine
hundred pounds ; the fourth, the grandest and richest of all,
being a present made to the Pope in 1854 by Queen Isabella
of Spain, and valued at 535,000 francs, or over twenty-one
thousand pounds English. It contains no fewer than eighteen
thousand diamonds; and, let me see, what is the actual
market-price of Spanish bonds ?
After the chaplains came the aides-de-chamhre, the con-
sistorial advocates, the singers of the Papal chapel in their
white cottas, the Referendaries, the clerks of the apostolic
chamber, the auditors of the Eota, the master of the Sacred
Hospital, the voters of the Signature, the apostolic sub-
deacons, the abbots of the monastic orders, the commander
of the Order of the Holy Ghost in Saxia, the bishops, arch-
bishops, primates, and patriarchs, the cardinals according to
their rank as cardinal-deacons, priests, and bishops, in scarlet,
but wearing white dalmatics and mitres of snowy damask,
and each followed by his '* caudatary" or trainbearer, with a
sling of gauze round his neck to hold up his eminence's mitre
ITEW YEAR IN EOME. 395
when his eminence takes it off, and his groom of the chambers
in court-dress, a rapier by his side, and a short black coat
over his left shoulder. To these succeeded the conservators
and the senator of Rome, in togas of cloth-of-gold turned up
with scarlet silk ; then Monsignore the Governor of Rome, in
a violet tippet trimmed with ermine ; then the prefect of the
ceremonies ; then the staff-officers of the Guardia Nobile and
the Swiss Guard ; and, finally, the Pope, in a white alb and
pluvial broidered in gold, carried on his portable throne by
twelve palefrenieri in scarlet damask, between the two gigantic
fans of ostrich mingled with peacock feathers, under a floating
baldaquin of white silk, of which the poles were borne by
eight Referendary prelates, and escorted by the Swiss Guard
in head -pieces, back- and breast -plates of burnished steel,
with their swords drawn, mace-bearers with silver maces fol-
lowing, and the Pope's physician, his body- servant, and
another detachment of Swiss Guards bringing up the rear.
The Pope was dressed and undressed during the different
ceremonies of the mass at least half-a-dozen times. They
put on his good old head a variety of things ; they led him
up to his throne and down from his throne ; and they smoked
him with frankincense and benzoin. At the end the presby-
tery offered him a purse of white moire, containing thirty
golden Juliuses, each of the value of five scudi, pro missa
bene cantata, for so well singing of his mass. Certainly his
Holiness deserved thirty pounds and more for all this fatigue.
It is the custom for the Pope, after thanking the priesthood
of St. Peter's, to present that purse to the cardinal-deacon,
who, in his turn, presents it to his "caudatary," or tail-
bearer. This functionary is expected to carry it to the chap-
396 BOME AND VENICE,
ter — ^the original donors — from whom he receives only twenty-
five pauls, or thirteen francs and a half, a composition which
can be regarded only as shabby in the extreme.
If you are sent for to sing at the Imperial Court of Russia,
you receive next day, in lieu of money-payment, some orna-
ment in diamonds. If you are fond of diamonds, you may
keep the gewgaws and exhibit them on your return as a proof
of the warm affection in which you were held by the Czar of
All the Russias; but if you prefer ready -money, you may
take your diamonds to the Treasury of the Hermitage and
receive so many roubles for your brooch or your snuff-box,
abating a discount of fifteen per cent. I think that on Box-
ing-day a system at least corresponding in liberality to the
Russian might be adopted in Rome ; but I honestly confess
that were I a Cardinal's caudatary I should regard the purse
of white moire as legitimate backshish, and ^' stick to" the
thirty golden Juliuses.
XXIX.
OLD CHRISTMAS-DAY.
Yesterday was the vigil of the Epiphany; and to-day is
old Christmas - day. You are aware that in the Oriental
Churches the sixth of January continues to be celebrated as
the Feast of the Nativity, and that even among Western
Christians the tradition which fixes Christmas-day on the
25th of December was for three or four centuries a matter
of sharp discussion. The authority of St. Augustine and
St. Chrysostom seems to have been the weightiest in favour
of the 25th ; but the learned and lucid Abbe Martigny, in
the superb Dictionary of Christian Antiquities^ recently pub-
lished by Hachette — a work fully worthy to rank with the
classical dictionaries of Mr. Anthony Rich and Dr. William
Smith — candidly admits that many Fathers of the Church
were of the opinion that our Saviour's birthday was neither
on the 25th of the old year nor on the 6th of the new. A
variety of dates have been suggested by these non-content
fathers, whose testimony has been collated by St. Clement
of Alexandria, and they range between the 19th of April and
the 20th of May. Tillemont has written a whole folio on
this long-controverted point ; but the 25th of December is
still, I apprehend, an all-sufficing Christmas-day to the
majority of Christians. When the symbol celebrated re-
898 ROME AND VENICE.
lates to Eternity, it seems to me puerile to be very parti-
cular about Time.
I venture to refer to such matters, in such a place, not
for the reason that I see the columns of English newspapers-
filled, day after day, with letters and articles about confes-
sion, absolution, and the divine legation of priests, their vest-
ments and the mysteries of their ritual, but because it is
impossible to live the life of Eome, and mark what is going
on around, without reflecting that the solemnisation of festi-
vals which we have grown used to pass by with indifference
when we meet them in our Letts' s Diaries, side by side with
the dividends that are due at the Bank, the beginning of par-
tridge-shooting, the end of the long vacation, and the birth-
day of the Princess Mary of Teck, is the daily business of
thousands of ecclesiastical persons in this city, and the object
of the piety and veneration of many more thousands of lay-
men. Temporal power, clerical misgovernment, ignorance,
fraud, and hypocrisy must all be dismissed from our con-
sideration when we reflect that this is indeed a city of the
Levites ; that the Pope, whether he be the Vicar of Heaven
or not, is still invested with all the attributes of Aaron the
High Priest; that St. Peter's and the Sistine fill as large
and as intimate a place in the transactions of common life
here as Solomon's Temple did in old Jerusalem, even to the
introduction of a few doves and a few money-changers in the
purlieus of the sacred places; and that all these people we
see going about in seemingly masquerading - dresses — old
men in scarlet petticoats and lace-tippets, monsignori in
purple stockings, college-students in shovel-hats and flow-
ing cassocks, monks with shaven crowns and sandalled feet,
OLD CHRISTMAS-DAY. 899
penitents with ghastly cowls and crosses on their breasts,
nuns with rosaries, relics, medals, and knotted cords at their
gir41es nearly as heavy as a galley-slave's chain, beadles,
vergers, choir-boys, and candle-snuffers — have all a direct
and special connection with the performance of the capital
rites of a most Ancient Faith.
If we take Kome, and what is done at Eome, in good
faith, it is impossible to deny the logical position which I
heard laid down the other day by a preaching friar, that this
world must either be devoted to the service of God or of
man, and that it is better that it should be devoted to God ;
and arguing upon this position, the Papal Government is
clearly justified in neglecting to pave its streets, perforate
its postage-stamps, ventilate its houses, and wash its popu-
larition. At least, it keeps God's house in good order. St.
Peter's is being continually beautified, swept, and garnished.
Not one of the fourscore lamps round the Apostles' tomb
is ever suffered to become extinguished, and not one mass,
vesper, vigil, or orison in honour of any one of the innumer-
able saints, virgins, or martyrs who crowd the Eoman Cal-
endar is ever omitted. *
I repeat that it is impossible to spend Christmas in
Eome without mentioning — and that, too, very frequently —
the tribe of ceremonies — or "functions," as the Eomans
call them — which are stuck, set, embroidered, and hung all
about one simple pathetic Fact, which is narrated, without
any kind of gewgaw adornment, in the New Testament.
That board from the Manger at Bethlehem, be it genuine
or be it spurious, which is shown as a sight at Santa Maria
Maggiore, is a significant illustration of what Christmas has
400 ROME AND VENICE.
become. A dark, dim, decayed morsel of sometliing — wood,
or tinder, or bone, you do not know which — lies in a crystal
casket, with a gorgeously-chased frame, and surmounted, as
I told you, by a silver doll lying upon golden straw. But
I have no desire to describe these shows in detail. Hitherto
I have been content with barely enumerating them ; but to
pass them by in utter silence would give cause to the infer-
ence that I looked upon Kome as a place chiefly remarkable
for curious jewelry, copies of old pictures, indifferent modern
statues, a show of aristocratic equipages on the Pincian al-
most equalling, and certainly closely rivalling, our own show
in Hyde Park ; a number of crumbling ruins, highly inter-
esting to the antiquary ; and an infinity of vile smells.
There are in Kome just now, however, a number of my
countrymen who appear to take a warmer and closer interest
in the intricacies of the Komish ritual than I do. I am not
alluding to the ordinary sightseers and tourists, English or
American, who regard the Supreme Pontiff, the Sacred Col-
lege, the Dominican and Capuchin friars, the masses, vespers,
and vigils, the churches, statues, and pictures, the ruins and
the statuary, the Columbaria and the Catacombs, simply and
purely as so many shows and spectacles gotten up as part of
the attractions of the winter season in Eome, and provided
exclusively for their, the sightseers', gratification. I think
these good people would get up an indignation-meeting if
the Pope were to decline giving an audience to Protestants,
or if his Holiness passed a sumptuary law enacting that the
Cardinals were henceforth to go clad in gray serge, or that
the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel were to be covered up ; and
I don't think they would grumble very sorely if the midnight
OLD CHRISTMAS-DAY. 401
Pastorella at St. Peter's or the Te Deum at the Gesu were
charged for at the hotels in the bill, at the rate of a scudo
a-head.
The amateurs of spectacular Christianity I mean are a
group of young English gentlemen, presumably from the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who are walking about
the streets of Kome in costumes ten times more preposterous
and absurd than those worn in London by the gawky young
acolytes of St. Philip Neri, who used to be "guyed" by the
boys, when the Oratory was in King William- street. Strand*
I observe that the statement made in the Saturday Revieiu
as to the grotesque exhibition of sucking Kitualists in the
streets of Oxford was, at the time, indignantly denied ; but
I can vouch for the corporeal appearance in the streets of
Rome of a clique of brainless young Britons clad in grotesque
imitation of Jesuit priests. They cut their hair very short ;
but I do not know if they have yet assumed the tonsure, and
gone to Figaro for a Roman " shave." They wear long-
skirted coats that are all but cassocks, and '' M.B." waist-
coats that are all but amices. Their hats are growing broad
about their brim, but are not as yet perfect shovels. They
are " otherwise clean shaven," and walk in pairs with a de-
mure and cat-like mien. They are the great admirers and
critics of the sacerdotal incantations in the churches. They
check off the genuflexions on their fingers ; they know to a
wick how many candles are lit, and cunningly interpret and
comment upon the numberless mummeries and millineries.
If these boys want to ''go over to Rome" for good and
all, let them go. We have all known more than one young
gentleman who has gone over, and is sorry for it, and wants
402 ROME AND VENICE.
to come back to Kidley-and-Latimer land, but dares not for
very shame. If Ritualism has such fascinating charms for
the hobbledehoys in the " M.B." waistcoats, let them do it
thoroughly, and become Papists ; but it is rather inconsis-
tent, it is slightly incongruous, to meet them at night in the
€affes and in the smoldng-rooms of the hotels tossing off
their petits verves, and pulling at their short-pipes — I hope
only on flesh-days — and gossiping about the " functions" of
the morning as though they were talking about boating, or
steeplechasing, or Van John, or some other recreation dear
to the youthful university mind.
The vigil which commences the octave of the Epiphany
was observed yesterday by the celebration of Vespers at the
Vatican, the Pope being present, and the tapestry behind the
tiltar representing the Adoration of the Magi. Vespers were
also sung by the boys of the Propaganda at their college,
near the Piazza di Spagna. It may not be generally known
that this world-famous seminary, whose very name has so
terrible a sound to Protestant ears, is dedicated to the three
Magian kings, Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar. At the
church of St. Andrea della Valle, at the same hour, there
was actually above the high altar a waxwork- show, consisting
of personnaggi in cera the size of life, richly dressed and
ornamented by the munificence of the Banker-Prince, whom
IVEr. Thackeray used to call Polonia, but who was very well
known to bearers of letters of credit as Prince Torlonia, Duke
of Brancaleone, and Rothschild of Italy. It was at a ball
given by his Highness, you remember, that Mrs. Rebecca
Crawley, nee Sharpe, met, for the last time but one in this
life, the Marquis of Steyne ; once afterwards she met him on
OLD CHKISTMAS-DAY. 403
Monte Pincio, wlien he was driving witli Madame Belladonna,
and when his valet followed Becky and warned her that the
air of Eome was not good for her. The waxwork-show re-
presents the Adoration of the Magi. Magi were also shown
as large as life, in lieu of the ordinary shepherds, in the
scenes representing the Stahle at the Ara Coeli and St. Fran-
cesco a Ripa.
This morning, heing the Epiphany, a salute of fourteen
guns was fired from the Castle of St. Angelo, and the pon-
tifical colours were hoisted. At half-past ten there was a
Papal chapel at the Vatican, and the Pope attended high
mass, with the triple crown on his head. An indulgence
was conceded to all persons present of thirty years and thirty
*^ quarantines.'' I confess that I do not know what the
last means, or whether it has reference to purgatory or the
cholera. The missal used by the cardinal singing mass was
the splendid volume illumined by Biondini for Clement XII.
At the church of St. Athanasius mass was sung by the
Bishop of the United Greeks, and consecrated bread was
distributed to the faithful. At half-past three o'clock this
afternoon Vespers will be sung at the church of the Ara
Coeli by the Franciscan friars, and subsequently the Santo
Bambino will be carried processionally from the church to
the top of the great staircase, where it is usually shown to
the assembled multitude, who are then blessed by the offi-
ciating bishop.
I bought a photograph of this Bambino, warranted from
the original, at Piale's, for eight bajocchi. It is an image
grossly chopped rather than carved by a Franciscan monk
in Syria, some time during the sixteenth century. Its swad-
404 ROME AND VENICE.
dling-clothes are one network of diamonds and other precious
stones. On its head is a magnificent crown. One of its feet
is made of pure gold, and is submitted, at stated periods, to
be kissed by the faithful. Inside one of the toes are relics
of the Virgin Mary. To sick persons who desire a visit from
the Bambino, it is brought in a close carriage by two monks.
Respecting the miracles it works with the sick, including
that of frightening them to death by its hideous appearance,
I advise you to read Mr. Charles Dickens's Pictures from
Italy. I dare not repeat what he further says about the
Bambino. He wrote his book more than twenty years ago,
and the world has grown since then wonderfully straitlaced.
Of course the reverend fathers of the Oratory will maintain
that the Bambino is only a symbol, and that the ignorant
thousands who fall down before it are not really worshipping
a wooden doll. I refer, in this regard, the reverend fathers
of the Oratory to the refrain of an old English poem, called
*'The Soul's Errand." If they say that to adore the Bam-
bino is not idolatry, they Lie.
Epiphany is kept in yet another fashion in Rome — a
fashion much more human, and not nearly so wicked, although
troublesome enough to persons of nervous temperament. It
is the great Roman holiday for children ; and the rising gene-
ration of Rome, from sundown on Saturday to sunrise on
Monday, are privileged to run about the streets blowing on
penny trumpets, beating upon drums, clashing upon gongs,
squeaking like Punch, whistling, hurdy-gurdy grinding, and
otherwise making the air hideous. I have not yet heard the
Ethiopian bones and banjo, but almost every other kind of
psaltery has been audible. Down by the Piazza Navona last
OLD CHRISTMAS-DAY. 405
night, and in the densely-populated districts round the Pan-
theon, there were numbers of illuminated booths and stalls
heaped with toys, which faintly reminded me of the New-
year's haraques on the Paris boulevards, and the Christmas
fair round the old Schloss at Berlin. I saw some children in
paper cocked-hats, and some with false noses, and a few with
torches. Abating the incessant squeaking and the drubbing
of parchment, which noises were incessant, the festivity
seemed tame and spiritless enough. The real holiday shows
are in the churches, and there the audience is immense, and
very nearly as free in their comments as at a theatre. Good
luck to the children, anyhow, however. I conceive that the
original design of the Saturnalia at the Epiphany was to con-
sole them for the annual whipping inflicted by devout Eoman
parents on their offspring on Innocents' Day, in order that
the memory of the fourteen thousand babies slaughtered by
the cruel Herod of Jewry might never be erased from their
minds.
XXX.
KOMAN NOTES.
It might be worth the while of London archaeologists to
inquire whether in the narrow little lane which, until lately,
existed in the immediate neighbourhood of our metropolitan
cathedral — I say until recently, for there is no knowing how
many lanes, or streets, or whole districts, even, have been
swept away since I was last in England — and called " Paul's
Chain," there was ever a chapel dedicated to the great
Apostle of the Gentiles, in which the fetters wherewith he
was bound were exhibited to the veneration of the pious.
The place was surely not called Paul's Chain for nothing;
but it is to be feared that the Keformation, or the even more
iconoclastic deluge of Puritanism, made short work both of
the images and the relics accumulated during long ages of
faith. Kome, however, yet teems with such memorials.
The Catacombs, it is true, have long since been emptied of
human remains; but every church is an anatomical museum;
every altar has a coffer beneath it full of jewelled skulls and
saintly bladebones, set in pearls and diamonds. In Eome
there is still exhibited the Scala Santa — the identical flight
of steps once forming the grand staircase of Pontius Pilate's
house, which was brought hither from the Holy Land by the
Empress Helena, and by ascending which on your knees to
KOMAN NOTES. 40T
the chapel called the Sancta Sanctorum, and repeating a
certain number of aves and paternosters during the process,,
you may gain, for each of the twenty-eight steps composing,
the staircase, no less than nine years of indulgence. Twenty-
eight times nine : the total is but two hundred and fifty-two,,
which, deducted from say five million years of purgatory,
sounds at first but insignificant, but is, after all, something
to the good.
But to return to St. Paul's Chain, or rather Paul's
Chains — they are tangible objects in Eome, contrasting it
very strongly with heretical England, where the shadowy
names of so many things have been preserved, but where
their substance has long since been disregarded, or con-
temned, or lost. Take Candlemas, for instance. It is pro-
bable that at home the average receipts of Price's Patent
Candle Company are not increased by a single shilling on
the second of February, and that the beeswax market is not
in the slightest degree rufiied by the occurrence of the festival
of the Purification of the Virgin. Still we keep the name
of Candlemas in our calendars, knowing not why, and caring
still less. Very different is the case in Eome. A hundred
shrines will be begirt next Saturday by the "holy shine"
of tapers innumerable, and for some days the grand architec-
ture of St. Peter's has been disfigured with tawdry uphol-
stery and gew-gaw drapery in anticipation of the solemn
" function" of another day, when the Pope will sit in state
over against the Baldacchino, and bless long-sixes by the
ton weight. It must be admitted in favour of the Komanists
that they are consistent; that they forget nothing, and
neglect nothing in the outward forms and shows bequeathed
408 ROME AND VENICE.
to them by immemorial tradition ; and precisely as the pa-
geant was under Gregory the Great, so it is under Pius IX.
St. Paul has no church within Rome proper, and the
absence of such a fane in a city with which his name,
though without any historical evidence, is so indissolubly
connected, has given rise to many curious conjectures.
Among the common people an absurd legend is current to
the effect that St. Peter and St. Paul quarrelled about a pair
of shoes ; and this grotesque story may have some dim re-
ference to our proverb about *' robbing Peter to pay Paul."
At all events, the popular belief is that the two Apostles
were not on good terms, and that the absence even from
intramural Rome of any church specially dedicated to St.
Paul is to be attributed to the affair of the shoes. There
must have been a Pauline party in Rome, however, from the
earliest times, and outside the walls the Doctor Gentium has
no reason to complain of the lukewarmness of his devotees.
He has a church about four miles out of Rome, called " San
Paolo alle tre Fontane," erected on the spot where he is said
to have been decapitated. The dungeon in which he was
confined, and the marble pillar which served as a heading-
block, are still shown. His severed head, on striking the
earth, is said to have rebounded three times, and from each
of the spots it touched a fountain miraculously sprang.
But the little Church of the Three Fountains is a mere
oratory compared with the gigantic basilica of " San Paolo
fuori le Mura," or St. Paul's without the walls, which, St.
Peter's excepted, is the most splendid church in Rome, or in
the whole world. The old basilica, built by Valentinian II.
and Theodosius on the site of a still more ancient edifice
EOMAN NOTES. 409
erected by Constantino in tho fourth century, over the cata-
comb of Lucina, a noble Koman matron and Christian con-
vert, was almost entirely destroyed by fire in 1823. A few
columns and rare mosaics escaped the flames ; but the
present basilica must be regarded as almost wholly new.
Its exterior is, in common with so many Koman churches,
exceedingly ugly and cumbrous ; a factory turned into a
workhouse, and then occupied as a barrack, would give the
closest idea of its appearance. The interior is of almost
unexampled splendour, and is so dazzling with gold and
silver and precious marbles, with frescoes and sculptures,
carved woodwork and mosaics, that, remembering that the
completion of this vast creation is due to the piety and
munificence of the reigning Pontiff, some incredulity natur-
ally arises in the mind of the foreign spectator as to the
truth of the many doleful stories he has heard of the poverty
of the Papal exchequer.
Something like a million sterling must have been spent
in the erection and embellishment of this most gorgeous
temple; and, calling to mind on how many other public
works of an ecclesiastical nature in Kome Pio Nono has
lavished his treasures, one is puzzled to discover where all
the money could have come from. Marble, it is true, is
cheap in the Koman States, artistic handicraftsmen are
plentiful, and do not look for splendid remuneration from
any but the forestierL If they do so look for it, they cer-
tainly do not get it. If excellence has departed, if Kafaelles
and Berninis are no longer to be secured, efficient mediocrity
at least abounds; and there are vast numbers of Koman
artists who can cut marble and polish it, carve wood and gild
410 ROME AND VENICE.
it, and cover canvas and stucco with brilliant colours laid
over designs which, if not original, are cleverly adapted from
the great masterpieces of the Eenaissance. The modern
school of Roman art — and indeed of Italian art in general —
is perhaps the most contemptible in Europe ; and since the
death of Canova, the only painters and sculptors who have
made Eome illustrious as an art-city have been the foreigners
Thorwaldsen, Overbeck, Gibson, Lehmann, and Story; but
the Eternal City can yet boast of a host of copyists and
adapters and translators, servile it is true but faithful, and
not devoid of that tasteful grace which is inborn in every
Italian, however corrupt and however ignorant he may be in
other respects. So all that the copyists and adapters in
stone or in stucco could do for St. Paul has been done, and
the result is almost inconceivably superb. The mosaic
manufactory at the Vatican, which may be defined as the
Woolwich-cum-Enfield of the Church militant, has also been
most prodigal in its supply of tesselatory art ; and any num-
ber of niches and vaultings have been covered with any num-
ber of million squares of coloured glass and jpietra dura —
apostles by the score, popes by the string, angels by the
legion, and martyrs by the army.
With all this, however, the consumption of hard scudi
must have been tremendous ; and it may be accepted as an
axiom that you cannot build a basilica on credit, or with
paper money which has no forced circulation. The Pope has
no private fortune. The cardinals derive their public salaries
from the monopolies on snuff, cigars, wine, salt -fish, and
similar articles of common use granted them by his Holiness
to keep up their state withal, and I have not heard of any
ROMAN NOTES. 411
actual member of the Sacred College who has contributed a
single hajocco to the restoration of St. Paul's. The taxes do
not bring in much more than will suffice to pay for the jack-
boots and buckskins of the Pontifical gendarmery, and all
that the Custom-house and the gambling lotteries can pro-
duce is wanted for the maintenance of the Swiss Guard and
the other mediaeval hangers-on of the court of the Servus
Servorum Dei.
Whence, then, the scudi which have been spent upon St.
Paul's ? It is a mystery, like so many other things in Eome.
Large sums have been bestowed from time to time towards
the work by Catholic sovereigns and princes. Mehemet Ali
gave the gorgeous columns of oriental alabaster which support
the baldacchino ; even schismatic Eussia contributed huge
blocks of malachite and vast slabs of lapis lazuli for the sides
of the altar ; and that English lady-convert, who is said to
give five thousand pounds a-year, being the half of her fortune,
in frank almoign to the Pope, may have done somethnig note-
worthy towards the decoration of the confessional of St.
Timothy — for in death, as in life, the Disciple is close to the
Apostle. But all these, and the Peter's pence so industri-
ously collected all over Catholic Christendom, fail to account
for a tithe of the enormous sums which have been squandered
here. Perhaps the Pope has a long stocking somewhere.
Perhaps the gold to buy the marble and pay the masons, and
painters, and carvers flowed as miraculously as the water from
the Three Fountains. But what a pity it is that some pro-
portion of the wealth swallowed up here — say twenty per cent
of the gross amount — was not laid out in repairing the filthy
road which leads to the glorious edifice, or in propping-up
413 ROME AND VENICE.
the tottering old Porta San Paolo, or in washing and clothing
the deplorable creatures who crawl about the sumptuous
basilica, airing their foul rags in the ruddy light from the
stained-glass windows, or clinging to the skirts of the foreign
sightseers at the gates, brandishing their stumps, and show-
ing their sores as though they were crosses of honour, and
yelping in the name of the Madonna and the Saints for three
haj ocelli.
The high altar of St. Paul's was burnt to a cinder in the
fire of 1823, and it is now no longer stated, even by the
Romanists, that the body of the Apostle, whose remains are
said to have been transferred here from the Vatican in the third
century, is to be found in the new basilica. As a compensa-
tion for the loss of the actual relics of the saint, his chains
are exhibited. Friday last was the festival of the conversion
of the Apostle ; and after High Mass the faithful were invited
to adore the holy fetters. There seemed to be about half-a-
dozen links, making up a length of about eighteen inches.
These were held in a white napkin by a priest, who carried
them round to the kneeling worshippers, extending the
napkin and its rusty contents to be kissed by each in turn,
and carefully wiping the links before he submitted them to a
fresh salutation. There were a great many women among
those who adored the Apostle's bonds, and a considerable
number of poor country-people, to whom the splendour of the
churches, and the multiplicity of the pageants may well serve
as a consolation in adversity, and in some measure compen-
sate for the squalor and destitution of their own homes. A
whole company of Pontifical Zouaves marched in about two
o'clock, and, kneeling, kissed the chains with military pre-
EOMAN NOTES. 41^
cision. The Pope also came to the basilica in the course of
the afternoon, staying, however, but a very few minutes.
For the rest, there were no Italians of the class conventionally
termed respectable to be seen in the place. The ecclesi-
astical sights of Rome seem to be patronised exclusively by
beggars and -shepherds, English and American tourists.
January 18.
Christmas and the New Year are seasons when men's
hearts are ordinarily open to the influences of charity ; and
it is remarkably cheering to observe how very charitable the
organs of the clerical party in Rome have lately become to-
wards their neighbours. Their charity does not begin, in
accordance with the wise maxim to that intent, at home.
Charity seldom does. We are usually more prone to weep
over the sorrows of Cochin China than over those of Somers
Town, and the spiritual destitution of a native of Antan-
narivo is, as a rule, more affecting than the corporeal needs
of a denizen of Duck-lane. If Roman charity began at
home, it might almost end there, from sheer weariness, so
much misery might it find to relieve. I am well-nigh tired
of telling, and you must be quite tired of hearing, that the
poorer inhabitants of this city of sumptuous basilicas and
stately palaces, and in which there are probably more wax-
candles burnt and more footmen in livery employed than in
any city of Christendom, are lodged far worse and fed far
more poorly than any Irish cotter's swine. You must be
beginning to find it rather stale information that the streets
of Rome swarm with beggars, some in extreme old age,
414 ROME AND VENICE.
others so young as to be scarcely able to toddle ; some crip-
ples, others frightfully-afflicted creatures exhibiting revolting
sores ; but all clamorous for alms.
The charity of the cassocks and shovel-hats might find
plenty of room for exercise among these deplorable wretches.
In their scrupulous courtesy to foreigners, however, the Ro-
mans prefer to leave the relief of such miserables to the
foreign visitors, whom the attractions of the jewellers' shops
and the photographs bring in the worst of weather to the
Piazza di Spagna. The natives, so at least I am inclined to
think from close observation, seldom if ever give anything to
the street-beggars whom they allow to prey on the strangers
within their gates. Blessings they may bestow upon them,
but the pence they distribute are as few as those which they
confer on the waiters at the caffes. If they have any spare
bajocchi and feel liberal, they reserve their elemosina to fling
them out of window to the screeching and organ -torturing
vagabonds who seem to sing expressly false, and to grind
purposely-injured instruments. In England foolish people
bid these nuisances to go away, but I fancy the Romans pay
them because the discord is grateful to their ears. I think
they like cacophony, as that Sultan of Turkey did who only
derived pleasure from the performances of his brass-band
when his musicians were tuning up their instruments.
"Mashallah! let the dogs play that tune again," cried the
Sultan to his Italian bandmaster. And I can aver, that not
only in Rome, but in Italy generally, the land of song, you
may hear in the course of one day, either inside a theatre, or
in the streets outside it, more execrably bad music than you
will hear in England — ^whose people are supposed by foreign-
EOMAN NOTES. 415
ers to have no ear and no taste for music at all — in tlie course
of a whole year.
The beggars, therefore, thrive on the forestieri — a simple
race born to be shorn, and who are apt to be either touched
with compassion, or worried into parting with their small
change when they are pertinaciously followed — say from
Spillmann's restaurant to the Piazza Colonna — by wailing chil-
dren with blue noses and bare feet, or decrepit old women,
taking the Madonna and all the saints to witness that they
have not tasted food for four days. The born Eoman can
command, when solicited for alms, a stare of such utter
stoniness, and a look of such superbly stolid indifference, that
you might imagine him deaf and blind to the wretchedness
yelping and whining at his feet or his elbow. I do not
believe that they thus pass on through real hardness of heart.
I think that there is a tolerably general average of hard and
soft hearts, as of hard and soft red-herrings, all the world
over ; and that no set of people anywhere, always excepting
workhouse guardians and Marshal Narvaez, are much better
or much worse than any other set of people. The Eomans
turn a deaf ear to the street-beggars, probably because from
their youth upwards they have known them to be arrant
impostors, or at least persons whose destitution is the fault
and shame of a neglectful Government. I have no doubt
that they have their own objects of charity, to whom they are
seasonably benevolent.
For instance, since the octave of the Epiphany com-
menced, all the church-doors have been beset by posses of
semi -ecclesiastical mendicants, with red crosses on their
cassocks, who hold in their hands tin-boxes with slits in the
416 ROME AND VENICE.
lids, and carefully padlocked by their superiors, the which
they rattle in a monotonous manner. They seem to do rather
a good business, especially among the women, who in all
countries (bless them !) are bountiful to everybody save cab-
men. Those they screw down frightfully. The " collectors,"
if I may call them by that polite name, at the church-doors,
seek subscriptions for a variety of purposes : sometimes |?er
nostre povei'e monache (for our poor nuns) ; sometimes for
the repair of churches and convents; sometimes on the
simple plea of the "octave of the Epiphany," which leaves
a conveniently-broad margin, and reminds one of the joint-
stock company promoted during the South- Sea mania, with
a capital of a million sterling, "for an object hereafter to be
named ;" and sometimes for the conversion of England to the
Catholic faith. I had the honour, too, lately, at St. Andrea
della Valle, of subscribing three bajocchi towards the fund
for the canonisation of the *' Benedetto e beato Labu,'^ who
is to be raised to the celestial peerage, if his friends can find
money enough, next June. I have not the slightest idea of
who this saint elect was, or what he did ; but it was worth
three bajocchi to know that even a saint cannot be made
without ready-cash. I suppose the fees of the Avvocato del
Diavolo are pretty heavy.
All this almsgiving, however, is not by any means the
kind of charity to which I desire to call your attention. I
allude to the great outburst of commiseration in Eome for
the dreadful sufferings of the people of constitutional Italy.
"La Fame in Italia'' is the sensation heading of an article
in the chief Ultramontane organ in Rome, in which a most
distressing picture is drawn of the state of things brought
EOMAN NOTES. 417
about by the '' revolution" in the unhappy region which has
been emancipated from the rule of Austrian bayonets,
Bourbon shirri, and Tuscan and Modenese Grand Dukes.
'* Hunger in Italy" — the Indian famine is trifling in com-
parison with the dearth of revolutionised Italy. There are
thirty thousand people in Venice looking to public charity
for their daily bread. In the island of Sardinia — in which,
if I mistake not, the "revolution" cannot be chargeable with
much mischief, seeing that the island has been an appanage
of the House of Savoy almost ever since it ceased to be the
prey of the Arab corsairs, and the Sardinians are as devout
Catholics as any in Italy ; but perhaps it is placed under the
" revolution" ban for the reason that Garibaldi's islet is only
a few hours' distance from La Maddalena — in the island of
Sardinia the necessaries of life are almost entirely wanting.
Whole families are perishing for want of food. The laws are
contemned, the authorities powerless. In the neighbourhood
of Cagliari the unfortunate islanders have been living for
months on crows and myrtle-boughs — a curious diet, some-
what analogous to a course of magpies and stumps. It is
not more curious, however, than that of the shovel-hats in
Rome, whose only nutriment, as all men are aware, consists
of cloves and olive-branches. As for the kingdom of Naples,
it is notorious that beggary, famine, and brigandage are
rampant there; and nothing can be more miserable and more
lawless than the condition of the island of Sicily, including
the city of Palermo. The clerical critics forget to mention
how many Neapolitan brigands have received material aid
from the Papal Government and from the Papal jjrotege, the
abject Bombicella ; nor do they dwell on the ugly fact that
EE
418 ROME AND VENICE.
the chief promoters of the disorders which lately called for
stern measures of repression in Palermo were brutish and
profligate monks — own brothers to the hulking friars who
infest the Roman streets, and compete with the brass-badged
mendicants for the crusts and the coppers. When to hunger,
brigandage, and lawlessness, you add such things as impiety,
atheism, immorality, debt, taxes, and a constantly-increasing
deficit in the revenue, the condition of the revolutionised
Peninsula may be faintly imagined. " This is the end," the
Ultramontane Jeremiah concludes, " of all the golden dreams
and the seductive illusions of the unhappy Italian people.
This is the end of the magnificent promises made to them ;
and this would be the fate of the happy and contented
Roman people if they submitted to be ' regenerated and re-
deemed' by the revolution." If to this were added a little
personal abuse of King Victor Emmanuel, we might almost
fancy that we were listening to Sir George Bowyer.
This in all conscience is bad enough ; but worse remains
behind. The poverty and embarrassments of Italy, we are
warned, together with the prevailing wickedness and irre-
ligion of the "Piedmontese party," are breeding in the
public mind a state of despondency verging on despair.
Wliile loyal and pious Rome skips like the little hills for
joy, the Italians, so the shovel-hats declare, are going
melancholy mad. Witness the number of suicides which
have lately occurred in revolutionary Italy, even in the high-
est ranks of society ! Witness the lamentable act of self-
destruction committed by the Commendatore Giambattista
Cassinis, Senator of the kingdom, at Turin ! The responsi-
bility of this unfortunate event must be laid at the door of
EOMAN NOTES. 419
the Italian revolution. It is very impertinent for me to ven-
ture to prompt the accomplished scribes of Ultramontanism,
but it might be as well to suggest that their agreeable
comments on the death of an eminent Italian statesman are
incomplete without a repetition of the old lie so dear to the
Ultramontane heart — that Calvin died cursing, that^ Voltaire
choked himself with his bed-curtains, like the python at the
" Zoo" with his blanket, and that Eousseau took poison, all
because they were so wicked.
The people of Turin, it appears, are getting up a sub-
scription for a statue to the late M. Cassinis, and Ultra-
montane wit — which very much resembles that of an
elephant in black knee-shorts and shoe-buckles — is making
very merry at the expense of the Turinese on this head,
stating that henceforth revolutionised Italy must be called,
not the " land of the dead," as M. Lamartine described it,
but the land of monuments. Cavour, La Farina, Massimo
d'Azeglio, the brothers Bandiera, Moro, Farini, Fano, have
all had, or are to have, their statues. Who next among the
*' coryphees of the revolution" ? the clericals ask. Putting
up a statue to anybody, human or divine, living or dead, is
perhaps a stupid thing, which had much better be left alone ;
but humanity can no more desist from the practice than it
can from scribbling its name on the pedestal when the statue
is put up. But the clumsy pleasantry directed against the
erection of monuments to Italy's great men comes with a
very ill grace from Eome, the city par excellence of dolls, pa-
gods, fetishes, and Pontifical guys — the city in three of
whose churches yesterday I saw a waxwork-show, with decora-
tions by theatrical scene-painters, and dresses apparently from
420 EOME AND VENICE.
Nathan's, but which Mr. Artemus Ward would have scorned
to exhibit to that hypercritical audience at Utica, who " caved
in" the head of Judas Iscariot — the city of stone cherubs
with swollen cheeks, and bloated angels with their draperies
distended by rude Boreas, displaying their biceps and sarto-
rius muscles on public bridges — the city of impossible saints
perched on the peaks of pediments, and apocryphal martyrs
standing on one leg.
But although the clerical mourners over the sufferings of
Victor Emmanuel's subjects are so exceedingly virtuous,
there are still cakes and ale in Kome. The ginger might
be a trifle hotter in the mouth; but it is still giager, and
not gall and wormwood. When we had entered on the Car-
nival we were very agreeably reminded of the fact by the
opening of the theatres. The edict of the Pontifical police
authorising the commencement oV il divertimento del teatro,^'
was one of the most amusing documents I ever read. I pe-
rused it in a placard pasted on an old wall ; they do not post
upon the hoardings here, seeing that they never build new
houses, and when an old one tumbles down they call it a
ruin, and inscribe on the prostrate chimney-pot " Munificentia
Pii IX. Pont. Max." — side by side with the latest fulmina-
tion of the Congregation of the Index, condemning two or
three French works in history and science, and that S.P.Q.E.
notification I told you about which fixes the price of leg of
beef and scrag of mutton.
The regulations of the Pope's police on the subject of
theatres are far more rigorous than the unwritten laws of
our Lord Chamberlain and his licenser. The audience are
not permitted to applaud " immoderately," or to encore any
EOMAN NOTES. 421
song, dance, speech, or scene. They are not to "yell"
(gridare). They are not to employ whistles {fischietti) .
They are not to call for any actor or actress, or speak to any
musician — a stern taboo this on any irreverent manifestation
of a ''Play up. Catgut!" nature. They are not to wear any
unseemly garments, or to throw any bouquets, or to buy or
sell any photographs in the building. I wish that among
these prohibitions there were one forbidding Italians who
think they can sing — and they all think they can — from
humming all the airs in the opera, not by any means in a
sotto-voce tone, in accompaniment to the singers on the
stage ; and it would be certainly desirable if the management
were brought to understand that an opera is, after all, a per-
formance possessing some dramatic as well as lyrical interest ;
that there are operas — such as Norma, Lucrezia Borgia, and
the Sonnamhula — as exciting in the curiosity they awaken as
any tragedy of Alfieri or any comedy of Goldoni ; and, if,
understanding this, they were restrained from interpolating
between the first and second acts of the opera a long and
wearisome ballet.
Anything longer and anything duller than a Roman ballet
it is impossible to conceive. It is literally a pantomime —
that is to say, a pantomime without any fun. They give
moral ballets at the Apollo Theatre here — I don't mean that
the corjrphees are compelled by the Cardinal Vicar to appear
in Turkish trousers of green gauze reaching to the ankle,
as in the Bourbon times at Naples — but ballets with a story,
ballets with a purpose, ballets full of good and evil spirits,
lost children, pious cottagers, benevolent countesses, and
venerable hermits in gowns of glazed calico and beards of
4S2 ^ ROME AND VENICE.
whitened tow, who rush about the stage in a demented man-
ner, prophesying their old heads off, in dumb- show. There is a
ballet called the Glotta cV Adesherga given at the Apollo just
now, which is like one of Mrs. Barbauld's stories dramatised
by a lunatic and performed by the scholars of the Deaf and
Dumb Asylum. Now, morality is an excellent thing; but
morality in short skirts, and didactic reflections on one leg,
and sententious maxims combined with the double -shuffle,
are rather provocative of merriment than of edification.
They play some odd tricks with the operas too, and the
titles and recitatives are made to undergo strange metamor-
phoses. Nooma, to avoid the impropriety of a priestess of
any faith forgetting herself, becomes a peasant -girl in La
Foresta d'Irminsul, and Giovanna di Guzman stands sponsor
to the Sicilian Vespers. But why don't they give the wicked
operas in their entirety, but with a sound Pontifical moral at
the end? Don Basilio in the Barbieo^e, after singing La
Callunnia, might doff his shovel and deliver a good set speech
against revolution; the Commendatore in Don Giovanni
might say some very stinging things about the profligacy of
certain revolutionary princes ; and the occasion of Masani-
ello's death might be improved by the recitation behind the
scenes, and to the accompaniment of red -fire, of a homily
pointing the obvious moral, that seafaring men who foment
revolution invariably go raving mad and bring about an
eruption of Mount Vesuvius. If poor Masaniello's body were
brought across the stage on a stretcher, in a red-shirt and a
pork-pie hat, to the music of Garibaldi's Hymn, the moral
effect would be tremendous : more tremendous, perhaps, than
the moralists would like to risk.
XXXI.
THE STEEETS OF KOME.
January 21.
Much sympathy, which would have been better bestowed
elsewhere, has been thrown away in bewailing the almost
entire disappearance of the streets of ancient Kome. In the
first place, persons are apt to forget that, although temples
and basilicas, solidly constructed, may endure for a couple
of thousand years, and, abating earthquakes, sieges, and
the barbarians — to say nothing of princes who strip from
old monuments the building -materials for new palaces —
may show, at the end of twenty centuries, as few symptoms
of decay as the Maison Carree at Nismes, or the Amphi-
theatre at Yerona, or the Temple of Yesta, here ordinary
dwelling-houses are more fragile in their construction, are
preserved with greater difficulty, and burnt down with
greater facility. There may have been Chancery -suits, too,
under the old Koman civil law, which proved as efficacious
in ruining house -property as any great case of Jarndyce
versus Jarndyce among us. Cheops built, and Praxiteles
sculptured, for Eternity ; but the mass of houses in the
mass of streets in this world are but little cockboats launched
on the broad river of Time, and doomed, in time, to be
swamped or run down by bigger barks. Eound about old
cathedrals; it is true, the old, old dwelling-houses of our
424 KOME AND VENICE.
ancestors are curiously tenacious of vitality ; and, in spite
of all the efforts of the Houses - of- Parliament Commission
and Baron Haussmann, some generations may yet elapse
before the antique hovels which cling to the purlieus of
AVestminster Abbey and Notre Dame de Paris disappear:
but these are but barnacles sticking to the keels of very old
ships; elsewhere, new brooms ar-e being continually made,
and the sweeping away of old houses is incessant. The
change they suffer, although thorough, is imperceptible,
just as a certain school of physiologists tell us that once in
every seven years or so, although we think that we have the
same heart, lungs, liver, skin, and hair, we get a bran-new
set of those organs and tissues. The Poultry, by Cheapside,
is abstractedly the same narrow Poultry which Sir Christopher
Wren, to his own sore discomfort, was forced to lay down,
after the great Fire of London, on the lines of a still older
street ; yet I question if, the chapel excepted, there are half-
a-dozen houses in the Poultry that are a hundred years old.
I have met a great many travellers professing an expecta-
tion to find the streets of Kome with precisely the same con-
figuration, containing the same houses, and presenting the
same characteristics, as they may have done under the Twelve
Caesars. They require their inn or their greengrocer's-shop
to be in exact accordance with the canons ofVitruvius. They
look for the atiium, the impluvimrif and the alee. They want
statues of the Lares and Penates in the peristyle, fresco ara-
besques in the cuhicula, "Cave canem^' on the door-jamb, and
" Salve'^ on a slab of mosaic to serve as a door-mat; and if
they don't find these things, they cry out that Kome is very
much fallen indeed ; and I have heard fast young gentlemen
THE STREETS OF ROME. 425
from the universities declare over their cheroots and punch —
they make punch with white rum at the Caffe di Koma, and,
just tomahawked or dashed with maraschino, after the recipe
of the Eight Honourable Benjamin Disraeli : it is very good,
and might convert Mr. Spurgeon to Komanism — I have heard
these fortunate youths, moderns of the moderns, declare Eome
to he a " sell," and, as a relic of antiquity, not half so inter-
esting as Chester.
I suppose one might just as well expect to find the old
Eoman domus in modern Eome as to meet ladies and gentle-
men arrayed in the toga, or the peplmn, or the timicopallium,
followed by their slaves, and surrounded by their freedmen
and clients, passing to and fro in the Forum, praying in the
Temple of Saturn, or making their way to the games in
the Circus Maximus. We know that such sights, out of
the Carnival, are impossible. We know that the Papal
Zouaves are no Praetorians, and that the Pontifical gendarmes
carry no fasces ; and if we thirst for anachronism, the Swiss
guards in their masquerading canary-bird dress, the dirty
shavelings, and the infinite people in shovel-hats, should be
quite old enough to satisfy the most ardent member of the
Eoyal Society of Antiquaries. Still, even those who expect
little, and are in consequence rarely disappointed, those who
have taken the portraits of many cities and dissected many
schemes of civilisation, are unable to suppress something akin
to a sigh of regret when they find the tabula rasa which has
been made of old Eome- — when they discover that the ruins
of the City of the Caesars are all but isolated from the City
of the Pontiffs— when they behold the streets of modern
Eome and find them so very like modern Clare-market and
426 ROME AND VENICE.
modern Whitechapel, only much dirtier, and not quite so
felonious.
Lord Lytton is responsible for much of the sadness thus
engendered by the destruction of fondly-cherished illusions.
The Last Days of Pompeii sent everybody, in person or in
imagination, to that wonderful place. The novel so exqui-
sitely and so truthfully portrays the city, that the houses of
Glaucus and Pansa, the theatre, and the gladiators' wine-
shop, have become as indelibly impressed on the readers'
minds as the forms of the dead Pompeians on the hot ashes
with which they were stifled. Bulwer has made Pompeii his
own; the Last Days are the best possible guide-book to
the disinterred city; and after a visit to Naples, or that which
is next best, and in some respects preferable — after careful
study of the Pompeian Court at the Crystal Palace — we come
to Kome and are surprised at not finding "pansa ^d." in
red letters over the first private house in the Corso, and feel
ourselves aggrieved when, being asked out to dinner, the re-
past is not "after the manner of the ancients," with a wild-
boar stuffed with chestnuts and honey, and a sow's bosom
served with gariim to follow — all to be taken on the tricli-
nium, with youths from the Isles of Greece to warble soft
melodies in praise of Venus Aphrodite, and slaves to crown
us with flowers while we quaff the Falernian.
I have purposely exaggerated the feeling which I assume
many visitors to Kome have experienced ; but I am convinced
that some such state of mind is very common, and that very
few cultivated persons conclude their first day's wandering in
the streets of Eome without a sensation of bitter disappoint-
ment. Was it for this that they came so far — to see imita-
THE STREETS OF ROME. 427
tion French soldiers in red breeclies, and dragoons in helmets
with horse-tails after the pattern of the Cuirassiers of the Im-
perial Guard; to meet everywhere Jouvin's gloves, chocolat
de sante, and the eau-de-Cologne of Jean Marie Farina; to
be told that Mr. Lowe sells Bengal chutnee and family Sou-
chong, and that Mr. William Brown gives the highest ex-
change for English bank-notes and sovereigns ? They may
not exactly exclaim that Eome is a '' sell," but still they are
gravely disappointed. If you wish to see a real Eoman house,
and — substituting the cloak, the mantiUa, and the burnouse
for the toga, the redimiculum, and the hardocucullus — to see
people attired after the manner of those of antiquity, you
must go to Andalusia or to Algeria ; there the patio admir-
ably figures the impkivium, and the hot, vehement, blood-
thirsty throng in the bull-ring — I have seen eight thousand
people shrieking with exultation over one lamentable horse
with his bowels hanging out — completely satisfies the ima-
ginative craving to know what a gala-day at the Colosseum
could have been like.
But in modern Eome, Papistry has taken up Paganism,
swallowed it, welded it into its own components, and made
it bone of, its bone and flesh of its flesh. Apart from the
huge ruins of the Forum, the Baths, and the Tombs, the
Pope's paw is upon everything Eoman. If you stumble on
an ancient column, it has a saint flaming at the top. If
you light on an ancient inscription, it winds-up with some
more freshly-cut reminder that the munificence of Some-
body "Pont. Opt. Max." has permitted it to escape destruc-
tion. The mitre and the shovel-hat have quite extinguished
the pileum. The cupids and genii have gone down before
428 EOME AND VENICE.
the Madonnas at the street - corners, with their environment
of dumpling clouds and more dumpling cherubs. Very often
do you see the grim, grimy columns and entablature of a
pagan temple chained up, as it were, in the tasteless struc-
ture of a Romanist church, which clings to the old marbles
and sculpture, strangling them with its flexible claws, like
Victor Hugo's devil-fish in the Toilers of the Sea. Over
this absorption Romanists exult, and many devout persons,
no doubt, thought it a wicked thing for Cardinal Mai to have
scraped away St. Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms
from the parchment, and exposed Cicero's Republic, the old-
est Latin manuscript extant, which lay beneath.
For my part, while I deplore the havoc that has been
made of so many antique temples, basilicas, palaces, foun-
tains, baths, aqueducts, columns, and statues, I do not see
the slightest cause for regret in the evanishment of the
streets and dwelling-houses of classical Rome. The exca-
vations of Pompeii show us with microscopic distinctness
what those streets were like ; and it is plain that — all their
frescoed arabesques, mosaics, encaustics, bronzes, alabaster,
and rosso antico notwithstanding — the Pompeians must have
lived miserably. It is plain that their streets were narrower
than the meanest alleys in the meanest Moorish town ; that
their houses were badly lit and badly ventilated; and that
they had every need to frequent such huge baths, such en-
ormous theatres, and- such a wide forum or gossiping-place,
in view of the wretched little hutches in which they were
cooped-up at home. Many an English squire's hounds are
more amply kennelled than would have been the guests who
accepted the hospitality of the patrician whose villa is to
THE STREETS OF ROME. 429
be visited every day at Sydenham. Things at Rome were
doubtless all on a grander scale than in the neighbourhood
of Vesuvius, yet this is a case in which we are surely en-
titled to reason from analogy. Pompeii was probably to
Rome as Tunbridge Wells was to London, and we certainly
look for comfort and even elegance on the Pantiles.* The
civilisation of old Rome was, it cannot be doubted, grand
and sumptuous; but the old Romans were, for all that, I
suspect, a nasty, dirty set of people, who had need to go to
the bath so often, seeing what pigsties they wallowed in else-
where, and who wore their togas until — like the Russian
peasants, who send their hats to the village oven to be baked,
and thus freed from insect life — they were compelled to send
them to the fuller's to be made decent again. Depend upon
it, bad as modern Rome is, badly built, badly paved, and
but half- lit with gas, ancient Rome was even more in-
tolerable.
Let us not, therefore, beat our breasts and utter the wail
of woe because Alaric, Genseric, and others, from the fourth
to the sixth century, successively performed with Rome the
admired feat which in later days was so notably repeated
by Field-Marshal Turenne, by Field-Marshal Tilly, and by
Generals Sherman and Sheridan, and other famous conquer-
ors, including Genghis Khan and Timour the Tartar, and
which is known as knocking a city into a ''cocked-hat;" or
because Belisarius gutted the inside of Rome to strengthen
the walls outside it; or because Robert Guiscard and his
Normans burnt Rome from the Antonine column to the Fla-
* According to Hox'ace the inns, even at a short distance from Rome,
were most miserable.
480 ROME AND VENICE.
minian gate, and laid waste the Esquiline hill ; or hecause
the Savellis and the Frangipanis, the Contis and the Caetanis,
barbarians within, completed the havoc of the barbarians
without ; or because there was an inundation in 1345 which
only left the summits of the Seven Hills above water, and an
earthquake in 1349, and the Constable de Bourbon in 1527,
who was worse than all the Goths and their compounds put
together, and another inundation in 1530, with a long suc-
cession of Popes before and after, who despoiled and stripped
every monument of antiquity to build or to ornament their
own churches. " Fust cum smut in the corn," said the
New Englander, recounting his experiences as a farmer, "and
then cum the Hessian fly, and the next year cum the cater-
pillars, and they capped the climax of my catastrophe."
Popery capped the climax of the catastrophe of Kome. It
has left only one of the shabbiest modern cities to be found
on the earth's surface ; but the shabbiness and dirtiness of
Rome are things that can be mended, when greater enlight-
enment and a better government shall prevail.
The best way to inspect the streets of Borne, if you wish
to study as well as see them, is to break your pocket-com-
pass and burn your maps and guide-books, as Prospero did
his conjuring-apparatus, and, forgetting that such things as
ciceroni at a scuclo and a half a-day ever existed, take Chance
for a Mentor, and lose yourself. This I contrived to do very
effectually the day before yesterday. I have just turned
up, and propose to commit an account of my wanderings to
paper. I must have halted, now and again, on the way, and
brought-up at caffes and reading-rooms to rest, and I must
have slept, and I think I dined-out yesterday; but walking
THE STKEETS OF EOME. 431
the streets has been my principal occupation during the last
six -and -thirty hours, and I have the satisfaction now of
knowing that I have worn a new pair of boots into a most
comfortable state of slipshodedness, inflated my lungs with
a variety of gases — some of them, I am willing to believe,
unfamiliar to British chemists — and acquired an amount of
Eoman experience which may prove in the future, I trust,
not wholly unserviceable.
I did not victual for the campaign, for the Koman larder
is admirably supplied, and there is more to eat and drink
procurable in the streets of Kome than in any other city in
Italy. The Komans eat very odd things, it is true, and
some that scrupulous people in England might term nasty
— such as frogs, lizards, and hedgehogs; but at least their
markets are full, and even the smallest wineshop, or spaccio
da vino, has its cucina, or kitchen, attached to it. I did not
provide myself with defensive weapons for the excursion, as
nervous tourists still do when they take a trip to Tivoli :
first because I had no pontifical license to carry arms, and
next because I thoroughly disbelieve in the alarming stories
current at the tahle-dliotes and in the smoking-rooms about
brigands, Sanfedisti, infuriated Dutch Zouaves who stab in-
offensive persons unable to provide them with Schiedam, blood-
thirsty Antibes legionaries promenading the back-streets, and
bayoneting civilians of heretical appearance as they emerge
from the hotteghe oscure where they have been beating
down old-curiosity vendors, and felonious Trasteverini, who
sharpen their knives upon stone statues of the Madonna,
sprinkle their life-preservers with holy-water, and go out
482 KOME AND VENICE.
robbing and murdering so soon as the vesper-bell has finished
ringing.
I daresay there are back -streets in Eome which are not
safe, during the small hours, for people who persist in wear-
ing eighteen-carat gold watch-guards outside their great-
coats, who won't wear gloves, and will wear diamond - rings
on all the fingers of both hands, and who toss for napoleons
under every lamp; but then I daresay the back -streets of
Belgravia — or the front ones either, for that matter — would
not be much safer to such wayfarers, say between midnight
and two in the morning. There are rogues in Kome, as in
every other great city ; but pedestrians who are neither fool-
hardy nor tipsy may penetrate into all quarters of the city
without the slightest danger, at all reasonable hours. I have
heard, on good authority, that the civil governor of Eome,
arguing from the reports of the diff'erent presidents of the
Eioni, or districts, and their police - commissaries, has de-
clared that at no time during his experience has the city
been so thoroughly tranquil and well-behaved, both as re-
gards political demonstrations and crimes of violence.
I write this, both with a view to correct the false im-
pressions which may be current in England, springing from
the barefaced falsehoods told in the Italian new^spapers —
falsehoods greedily caught up by the opposition newspapers
in Paris — and to reassure some kind friends of my own in
England, who have been writing to me letters of condolence
on my alarmingly-perilous position in a city infested with
bandits, and so soon to be given over to rapine and massacre.
We have not yet come to that charming state of things
which is chronic in Mexico, where you go to church armed
THE STREETS OF EOME. 433
to the teeth, and return from a whist-party with a revolver
in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other, walking in the
middle of the road, lest an assassin should be lurking under
an archway. We have not even come to realise the state
of affairs prevalent in London — ^which I have heard called
the metropolis of the world — many of whose most frequented
thoroughfares are impassable, to decent people, not only
after dark, not only at dusk, but often at broad daylight,
from the gangs of costermonger "roughs," of blackguard
boys and girls, of pickpockets, sharpers, and cadgers, and
of common courtesans, who are suffered by a badly-organised
police, and an incredibly lax and incompetent municipal
government, to infest them. I will say nothing about the
state of the suburban London roads at night, save to hint
that I would much rather stroll along the Via Appia than
Haverstock-hill after ten p.m. I might possibly meet a fox
among the tombs; but I should prefer that to a garotter
among the trim villa residences.
Unarmed then, unfurnished with provender, and with
very little money even in my purse — for foreigners who walk
about in Kome are very apt to come home with no gold and
silver, but with a large stock of Eoman scarves, cameos,
and photographs, all picked up, of course, as bargains — I
journeyed forth towards my unknown destination. The world
was all before me where to choose as I emerged from the
Hotel d'Angleterre. Five minutes' careless strolling either
to the north, the south, the east, or the west would bring
about, I knew well, the consummation I had in view — that
of not knowing where I was ; but I was ambitious, and
wished to lose myself thoroughly, and at as great a distance
434 ROME AND VENICE.
from my habitation as was possible. So I took a cab, and
bade the man drive me to the post-office.
The public conveyances of Eome, I may remark once for
all, are generally uncovered, little, light, one-horse caleches,
not unlike the St.-Petersburg droschkies — not the droschkiea
on which you sit astride and pull the isvostchik's ears as you
wish him to turn to the right or left, but those in which
your legs are spread out before you in the normal manner.
The Koman calescini are passably clean, not at all uncom-
fortable, and very cheap, that is to say, a drive to any part
of the city within the walls need not cost more than eight-
pence. For two-horse carriages you pay a lira and a half
for a "course,^* and fovty hajoccJii, or one - and - sevenpence,
for an hour. For excursions extra muros there is no settled
tariff; a bargain must be made ; and as foreigners are the
principal patrons for drives beyond the gates, they must
expect to be cheated. If you object to this, I should advise
you to hire a carriage, not from the public stand, but from
the hotel in which you are staying. In that case you will
not be cheated, but simply overcharged. The price of a
carriage for an entire day — and which is a really handsome
turn-out, with two fiery horses, and a most aristocratic-look-
ing driver in semi -livery — is five -and -twenty francs. You
may engage it for half a day; but in the computations of
Eoman hotel-keepers the day has no first half, the long and
the short of which is that if you require a remise for a drive
on the Pincian Hill in the afternoon, or to take you to the
theatre in the evening, you pay half- a- guinea for it; but if
you merely want a drive among the ruins after breakfast,
you pay a guinea.
THE STREETS OF ROME. 435
Save when the claims of gentility assert themselves, and
I elect to live for an hour-and-a-half at the rate of two thou-
sand five hundred a -year, I prefer the hack calesc'uio at
eightpence the coarse. It is very cool and pleasant, and
you can see everybody, and everybody can see you, as it was
vdih Brothers the Prophet and the Devil in Tottenham -
^court-road. As you are usually alone, too, in this vehicle
— for it is not genteel to offer a lady one-horse exercise—
the calesciiio has something triumphal about it; and, by
^^ making believe" a great deal, as Dick Swiveller's Mar-
chioness did when she put the orange-peel into water and
made believe it was wine, you may bring yourself to believe
that you are a Conqueror by the name of Caesar, and pro-
ceeding along the Via Sacra in your chariot; Zenobia, Queen
of Palmyra, trudging before you a captive, with muddy san-
dals and shackles on her finely -proportioned limbs, and a
host of elephants following you, laden with the spoils of your
campaigns. You propose in the evening to paint yourself
a bright scarlet, and to sacrifice several of your prisoners to
the gods. Wliat scenes in the circus you will have to-morrow
with the elephants, and the lions and tigers, and Christians,
and other wild-animals ! Ah, what does that servile person
standing on the splashboard of your triumphal chariot ven-
ture to whisper in your ear ? That you are mortal. What
impertinence ! Are there no lictors to take him up, or at
least cry, ''Whip behind" ?
That I was mortal I was reminded, and in a very curious
manner, not ten minutes after I had entered my currus
triumphalls at fifteen hajocchl the course. In the maze of
narrow streets which hem in the Post-office we got mixed up
436 HOME AND VENICE.
with a funeral. It was a delightfully fine and warm after-
noon, and anjrthing more grotesquely ghastly than this fune-
ral I never saw under a bright sun and a blue sky anywhere.
It was a walking funeral. The coffin was a great painted
ark, bedizened with rosettes of tinsel and foil-paper, and
hung with festoons of paper-flowers and shreds of coloured
calico. It looked as though Jack-in-the-Green had gone the
. way of all flesh which is grass, and was to be buried in pro-
fessional costume, with my Lord and my Lady as chief
mourners; and I am sure that the 19th of December in
Eome was very like the 1st of May in less-favoured climates.
This ark was borne on painted poles, apparently distrained
from barbers' shops, on the shoulders of half-a-dozen lads
in long red gowns, beneath which their dirty boots " stole iu
and out" in anything but the mouse-like manner of the little
feet of the bride in Sir John Suckling's ballad ; and they
swayed to and fro with their burden, and staggered along,
now and then halting to trim their bark and adjust theii
balance, in a fashion which was, to say the least, unseemly.
In a surplice, which had evidently not been washed since
last Easter, and which was disgracefully ragged, came along
a thurifer, with a great crucifix on the top of a pole. There
was an old priest in spectacles, and a young priest witL
many pimples on his face, walking leisurely along, and
crooning forth, in that dull, listless, heartless chant whichj
to heretics, is the most distasteful and irritating of all things
in the Eomish rite, the Office for the Dead. The old priesi
had something the matter with his knee-shorts, which com-
pelled him every two minutes or so to stop and hitch then]
up ; and the young priest, at the imminent risk of getting
THE STREETS OF EOME. 437
:a crick in liis neck, was staring at tlie occupants of the very
tall houses on either side the street, droning out his chant
meanwhile, and yawning occasionally, as though he found
the Office for the Dead rather a bore than otherwise, which
I daresay he did. There was a sprinkling of choristers carry-
ing candles, and choristers swinging censers ; but the most
extraordinary part of the cortege was that which brought up
its rear.
A mob — for I can give them no other name — of hulking
fellows came clumping along, their features and all but the
^dim outline of their limbs concealed under most hideous
robes and hoods of bright green -baize, with white-calico
crosses sewn on to the breast. Their cowls, drawn over their
faces, with two holes for their eyes to peer through, looked
inexpressibly horrible. I have met more than one Trappist
monk, and in Spain I have seen the Confraternity of the
Passion, who carry images about and wear disguises of
fine white flannel; but this rabble-rout of green -baize
maskers in Kome staggered me. If anything could add to
the incongruity of their aspect, it was this : that the robes
of many were too short for them, and that beneath the green-
baize vestments I noticed one pair of shepherd's-plaid pan-
taloons, and one of corduroy. They were howling, in a most
drearily-demented manner, some litany or penitential psalm
of their own, which completely failed to harmonise with the
^Office for the Dead going on ahead.
I asked the driver who these people were, and he in-
formed me that they belonged to one of the innumerable
Confraternities of the Dead, who in Rome appear to be a
ikind of amateur undertakers. According to the driver, they
438 HOME AND VENICE.
were great rogues ; aiid he even hinted that as soon as thejr
got possession of a corpse their principal endeavour was to
extract as many j^ctnls as they could out of the bereaved rela-
tions : but this, I hope, is not the case. It is certain that
they attend condemned criminals to the scaffold quite gratui-
tously ; and the intense horror of death and puerile terror even
of the sick-room, which prompt so many Italians to abandon
the sick and dying to the priest and the hired attendants^
render the intervention of these confraternities necessary.
Somebody finds a shroud; a coffin is easily hired for the
occasion ; and the priests and hooded people do all the
rest. Funerals must be very cheaply conducted in this,
country ; and, abstractedly, there is nothing purer and nobler
than the voluntary penance to which these green-baize per-
sons devote themselves in the performance of offices generally
found so revolting. Practically, perhaps, it would be better
to employ regular undertakers than these howling amateurs.
Foreigners are always told that many of the proudest Eoman,
nobles are members of these confraternities, and that the eyes
you see blearing through the slits in a hood may belong to
a Colonna, an Orsini, or a Pamfili-Doria ; but I scarcely
imagine that the green-baize guild numbers many patricians,
in its ranks. I had a taste of their quality ere long.
I have said that we were mixed up with this funeral..
The painted coffin and its carriers, the priests, the cross-
bearer, and the choristers, all became inextricably entangled,
with my calescino and its horse, with a string of peasants
bearing sacks of charcoal, with a dray piled with pumpkins-
and drawn by two of the savage buffalo-looking oxen of the
Campagna, with a knot of Dutch Zouaves rather the worse
THE STREETS OF KOME. 439
— or the better — for their visit to the adjacent spaccio di
vino, and with a contaclino on horseback, who, cloaked up
to the eyes, and with his shaggy overalls of goatskin, his
high-peaked saddle, and huge rowelled spurs, wanted only
a coachwheel-hat and a lasso wound round the cantle of
his saddle to make him the twin -brother of a Mexican
guerillero. You may add to these several priests off duty,
and with shovel -hats, quite broad enough of themselves
to block-up a street of ordinary width; a select party of young
gentlemen returning from some theological day-school, and
clad for the occasion in salmon-coloured bed-gowns, also with
shovel-hats — nothing religious can be done in Kome without
a shovel-hat, and even the Pope wears one, of a bright crim-
son, like a cardinal's turned up, during the performance of
certain rites — a sprinkling of monks, some barefooted and
some clumsily shod, who, in infinitely-varied stages of dirt
and imperfect shaving, are always hopping about Rome, like
pigeons, taking what they can pick up; and innumerable
monks without hoods and shaven crowns, but with brass-
badges on their breasts licensing them "a domandare in
Roma,'' and who were professional beggars.
These, with the children wriggling about under and be-
tween the legs of the adults, like eels, and a poor mule,
seemingly belonging to Nobody, and who had gotten his eye
knocked out, and was wandering about in a dumbly -dis-
traught manner, the blood trickling from his orbless socket,
very pitiable to view — these, with a tribe of furious dogSj
and a number of old women, clawing each other's heads on
the doorsteps, and, more furious than the dogs, the Confra-
ternity of Death howling their banshee serenade, made up a
440 . ROME AND VENICE.
picture of modern Roman life for which I was quite unpre-
pared. For all its frequentation by the forestieri, the grass
grows between the stones on the Via Condotti and the Piazza
di Spagna ; but here there was life and animation and bustle
of quite a turbulent order. It was life and animation, how-
ever, quite two centuries and a half old, and struck me, as I
sat in a hack-cab on the 22d of December 1866, as being
life and animation not precisely real and vital, but of a
spasmodic and galvanised description.
A heretic of heretics, I was nevertheless taught in my
youth to uncover my head whenever a corpse passed by. We
owe, at least, that reverence to the Unknown King. And if
Death had not been there, the Cross at least was. So I took
off my hat, an action not imitated by my driver, so soon as
the procession straggled into view, and I have to record that
in Catholic Rome I got well laughed at for my pains. There
is, perhaps, not much harm either in uncovering when in a
public picture-gallery you stand before a picture of the Cruci-
fixion, or the Mother and Child; but I have always been
stared at and grinned at if I have paid that slight mark of
respect to that which I do not Understand, but which I Re-
vere.
The Confraternity of Death are much to be commended
for their pious zeal; but I am afraid that the familiarity
with the Office for the Dead and other sacred things has en-
gendered something like contempt for that and other sacred
things. At all events, they and the coffin-carriers and the
cross-hearer indulged in a regular slanging-match with the
driver of my calescino and the conductor of the dray laden
with pumpkins. My driver gave them quite as good as they
THE STREETS OF ROME. 441
brought, and the result was the usual torrent of blasphemous
Billingsgate, in the comprehension of which six-months'
commerce with gondolieri and vetturini has rendered me a
tolerable proficient. There is a richness and fulness, a copi-
ousness of scurrility, in the Roman allusions to the principal
persons mentioned in the Scriptures, which I have not yet
heard equalled. The attendant priests did not in any way
reprehend this scandalous scene, but " bullyragged" the
driver themselves in good set terms — quite free, however,
I hasten to admit, from blasphemy. At last, the dray being
enabled to move on, my calescino got round the corner of the
next street, and then the boys in red gowns began to carry
the corpse, and the choristers began to swing their censers,
and the old priest began to hitch-up his knee-shorts, and the
young priest began to stare up at the windows, and the men
in green-baize began to set up a renewed yowl, so dismal,
that you might have fancied them the very Dogs, and not
the Confraternity, of Death. Then I got down near the
Post-office, asked if there were any letters, found there were
none, and, plunging into the next half-dozen streets, forth-
with lost myself.
There is something about funerals irresistibly encourag-
ing to pugnacity. What a row there is whenever an Irish-
man is buried ! What bloodshed followed the funeral of
General Lamarque ! Wliat a frightful riot was that which
attended the funeral of Queen Caroline ! How the yeomen
of the guard, if Horace Walpole is to be believed, fought for
the wax-candles at the funeral of George II.! In modern
English society, which is so very genteel, our funeral com-
bativeness is of a subdued and decorous kind ; but bad blood
443 . ROME AND VENICE,
and set teeth have been manifest ere now on the way to
Kensal- green. We disparage the cake and wine in under-
tones, grumble at the gloves, and mutter things sometimes
not wholly complimentary to our dear brother departed. I
have had myself before now words with a man in a mourn-
ing-coach. I once saw two gentlemen — Irishmen by name,
and sailors by profession — get out of a " brougham hearse"
in the middle of Russell- square and fight, the undertaker
waiting for the purpose, and an admiring circle of partisans
in hatbands and scarves cheering the combatants on from
their cab -windows; but the slanging -match in Rome the
day before yesterday, the blasphemy, the Billingsgate, the
tawdry coffin, the dirty surplices, the howling mummers in
green-baize, and the Cross above all, like the mast of k
wrecked ship visible above a stormy sea, made up a spectacle
which will never be effaced from my mind.
If New York has been called a city of one street, modern
Rome may with equal justice, or injustice, as your archi-
tectural taste or prejudices lead you to assume, be described
as a city of no streets at all. Of course such sweeping criti-
cisms applied to a metropolis once numbering a million of
inhabitants, and now about two hundred thousand,* must
* The population of Eome in 18G3, when the last census was taken, was
computed, exclusive of strangers and the French garrison, at 201,161. In
1800 the total number of inhabitants was only 153,000 ; but in 1813, at the
conclusion of Napoleon's rule, it had sunk to 117,000. Since that period it
has been constantly on the increase, and in 1854 it was 178,042. The cal-
culations as to the population of ancient Rome are, as a rule, the wildest
guesses. Some antiquaries put it down at two, and some go as high as
three-and-a-half millions. Topographical engineers, taking the extent of
the lines of circumvallation as standpoints, declare that there could never
have been more than a million of people in Rome. To have done with sta-
tistics, I may mention that the ecclesiastical population is composed of
fifteen hundred priests, nearly four hundred seminary pupils destined for
THE STREETS OF EOME. U3
to some extent necessarily partake of the nature of paradoxes*
In New York, Fiftli Avenue and all tlie other avenue sf Eighth-
street and all the other streets up to Ninety -first -street —
if there he such a thoroughfare — the Bowery and Chatham,
Wall and William, and the remainder of the streets in the
old Dutch quarter of the island of Manhattan, have a clear
right, municipally, statistically, and politico-economically, to
be termed streets. They are built and numbered, and paved
and populated, in due accordance with street-law. Yet, in
the opinion of many, who, like Mercier and De Balzac in
Paris, or Mr. Peter Cunningham and Mr. John Timbs in
London, hold that a street is nothing without social charac-
teristics and historical associations. New York has only one
street, and that one is Broadway. In modern Rome, the
paradox is even more sustainable. Broadway is at least a
main thoroughfare, a grand artery leading from the heart
to the head of the city, a High-street, indeed a trunk-road
from which innumerable smaller thoroughfares branch off;
but there is nothing arterial about the Corso of Rome. It
is simply a very long, narrow, and dirty lane, with many
turnings, by patiently threading which you may possibly get
from the Piazza del Popolo into a network of filthy alleys
which debouch on the Forum. It is not the highway of*
Roman commerce. The best Roman shops are not in the
the priesthood, two thousand five hundred monks and friars, two thousand
nuns, and two thousand beadles, sacristans, custodes, bell-ringers, choristers,
and other persons of the church-rat order. In this summary of the civiliau
army of the Pontiff I have not been quite so minute as the German statist
who began his table with " Popes, two ; cardinals, thirty-six ;" adding, in a
foot-note, "By the other Pope I mean the General of the Jesuits." His
" other" Holiness is usually known in Rome as " the Black Pope," in con-
tradistinction to Pio Nono, whose habitual attire is white flannel.
444 ROME AND VENICE.
Corso ; and were it not that it is the most convenient pass-
age for carriages going to the Pincian Hill, it would be no
more the main street of Rome than Holborn is the main
street of London, or the Rue St. Lazare the main street of
Paris.
I have, in a preceding page, mentioned the Yia Con-
dotti, which is the principal resort of foreigners, and the
chief emporium of the exquisite nicknacks manufactured by
the Romans for the delectation of foreigners and the im-
poverishment of their purses. The Via Babuino might also,
by a great stretch of courtesy and the imagination, be termed
a street ; so might that of the Fontanella Borghese ; so — a
very large margin being allowed to the admission — might
the Vie di Ripetta and della Scrofa. But none of these are
streets, in the rigid acceptance of the word as used by
civilised beings in the nineteenth century. The would-be
dandy of the Regency had a garment made of Saxony broad-
cloth with silk linings, which probably cost him half-a-dozen
guineas ; but when he showed it to Brummell, expecting
laudatory remarks, the Beau took the collar between his
finger and thumb, and asked the abashed neophyte of
fashion whether he called " that thing a coat." So is it
with streets. We don't call Pentonville-hill a street, nor,
the Board of Works notwithstanding, do we confer streetal
dignity on Hanway-yard, or on that infirm and incult gap
in which the Garrick Club have built their new house.
Vigo -lane is not a street, and never will be. It will take
another half-century to make New Oxford and Victoria gen-
uine streets ; and even King William- street. Strand, though
more than thirty years old, is still in an incipient and em-
THE STREETS OF EOME. 445
bryotic state, wanting the real cachet and imprimatur of street
vitality.
I have premised so much lest there might be persons
yet untravelled, but studious of topography, who, on read-
ing this, should produce a monstrous map of Eome from
the pocket of a guide-book, flourish it before me, and ask
what I meant when such a viatorial labyrinth had been laid
down by the copperplate engraver ; or lest members of the
more felicitous classes, who have spent a winter in Eome,
should, half - astonished and half - indignant, want to know
what I was driving at. "No streets in Rome?" they might
say : " why, we have been nearly run over half-a-dozen times
in the Via delF Angelo Custode. We have bought West-India
pickles and Durham mustard in the Via Babuino. We have
lost our way in the Via Capo-le-case, and have seen the horse-
races in the Via del Corso."
With all this I respectfully submit that there are no
streets in Rome ; and I would say to the felicitous beings
who have wintered there, *' Ladies and gentlemen, you lived
on the Piazza di Spagna, or the Piazza del Popolo, or the
Bocca di Leone ; and every morning and evening a carriage
came to take you to the Capitol, or the Forum, the Quirinal,
the Vatican, the Lateran, the Appian Way, or the Pincian.
Do you remember those long dreary drives through by-lanes
full of hovels and pigsties, full of dirt and beggars and foul
smells ? Surely you could not call those slums streets ! In
the afternoon, perhaps, you took a little gentle exercise, or
did a little shopping within five hundred yards of your
abode ; and in a short time you would find out the prin-
cipal places for the sale of cameos and mosaics, black
446 HOME AND VENICE.
draughts, blue pills, photographs, alabaster tazze, French
bonnets, and sham Etruscan vases. But within how small a
compass were those shops ! You deal at perhaps twenty, and
there should be at least twenty thousand in this huge city.'*
One of the chief advantages of a paradox is, that it may
be qualified, modified, and taken with as many verbal and
mental reservations as an oath by a Jesuit. There are few,
if any, streets in Eome which are paved, well lit, hand-
some, commodious, or even commonly decent. There are
few, if any, in which three friends can walk arm-in-arm, or
in which Materfamilias can sail along surrounded by her
olive-branches. In the Corso, for instance, the foot -pave-
ment is so narrow, that if a lady halt for a moment to look
into a shop she is in imminent danger of being jostled into the
kennel by a Zouave, or a Monsignore, or a barefooted friar,
or an Antibes legionary, or a " trasteverino" with a basket of
charcoal on his back. As for the Condotto, there is not one
inch of foot -pavement in it. Streets, indeed, where people
can lounge, or even walk with convenience, are nearly alto-
gether lacking ; but on the other hand, there are some scores
of Koman streets not less than three -hundred-and-fifty years
old. Not that they are picturesque in their architecture,
like the streets of Frankfort, Heidelberg, or Vienna ; their
three centuries and a half only represent an accumulation of
dirt, discomfort, rags, and foul smells.
If you will only consent to give the nineteenth century
the go-by — and I own that it is so continually forced down
our throats, both from printed column and from spouting
platform, as to have become a very close imitation of a bore,
— and will consent to become thoroughly mediaeval, you may
THE STREETS OF ROME. 447
take your fill of streets in Eome, and form 'a sufficiently ac-
curate notion of the misery and wretchedness which the non-
felicitous classes suffered during those same middle ages.
Those ages have heen unjustly decried, the sentimental de-
votees of the past inform us. There are people who wish,
or profess to wish, for their reedification. The amiable Tory
poet, Lord John Manners, has put on record a couplet which,
although not so well known as the famous ' old nobility"
one, is even more expressive of his lordship's views in regard
to social progress. In the sweet volume of lyrics which he
published in conjunction with the gentleman who afterwards
turned Papist, and died Superior of the Oratory at Brompton,
his lordship indulges in soft aspirations for the return of the
halcyon time when "the humbler classes once again" shall
^^feel the kind pressure of the social cJiain.'^
Walk about the streets of Eome, and you will see how the
*' humbler classes" felt "the kind pressure of the social
chain," with a vengeance, during the middle ages. To that
kind pressure, in France, in England, and in Germany, were
due the plague, the sweating fever, the falling sickness, and
the black death which used to swoop down on the kindly-
chained ones periodically, and, where xVlaric, Attila, and
Totila had slain only their thousands, would lay their mil-
lions low. To the few remaining links of that "kind chain"
which still rust and fester at home, we owe Bethnal-green
and Spitalfields, and chronic cholera and typhus* Rome has
felt the "kind pressure" so long as to have grown accus-
tomed to it, and there are many Ultramontanes, I daresay,
who assert that the Romans prefer their backward state of
life to the feverish progress of the non-Catholic nations.
<50 BOMB AND VI2XICK.
with knivc», &% tlicy do to this day. There are the Ban
cafsemeutg ntufTcd with fonl ragn, the same black and crazy
BtaircascB, from which peep old and weazened faces, or hcf"
young and wan, or faces bleared by passion and poverty
the greed of other men's goods; or at which sprawl tu.
squall, cascading at last to the kennel below, ragged, frow/
elf-like children, many of them m&imed by neglect, many oi
them scarred and seamed frightfully, more by the hot cinders
of the braziers with which they have been allowed to play
than by that other children's scourge, smallpox, and m*
of them, up to eight years of age, more than three pai
naked.
I liave not yet seen the *' humbler classes" in Naples ani
Sicily, but up to this writing I have seen nothing so fo
lorn and so revolting, so miserable and so degraded, as 1!
"humbler classes" of Rome. You man in the shovel-b;
who talk BO unctuously about the Virgin Mary— you wl
have set up at every street-corner a painted idol, with a lainp
before it — ^you who fill the minds of your penitents with all
kinds of lying legends about the saints and their miracles —
are you, too, so blind, so ignorant, so stupid, as not to h-
that in the lives of these deplorable creatures, fluttering iu
rags, wallowing in dirt — in these mothers, who from shorv
lethargic carelessness suffer their babes to become hunjj
backed and bow-legged — in these slouching, unkempt m< n
and lads — in these swarms of beggars, now cringing aj
now clamorous — in these homes, unfit for human bein^'
and scarcely fit for hogs, there is one constant, dull deniui
both of the Mother and the Son of God — there is one stand-
ing negative to the tremendous assertions of Romanism in
THE STREETS OF ROME. 451
the Basilica hard by ? The filthiest streets of Rome are in
the Borgo, and the Borgo is composed of the streets imme-
diately surrounding St. Peter's. " Tu es Petrus" runs the
great inscription in mosaic round the drum of the dome, in
letters every one of them as tall as a Life Guardsman — " Tu
(s Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam;**
but underneath the rock of the Church priestcraft has built
up a dunghill.
One loses patience altogether with the splendour of the
Roman church, when we contrast that splendour with the
squalor by which it is environed. At least, among us here-
tics, consigned by the Romanists to eternal torment, the
church goes hand in hand with the trim school-house, full
of clean and rosy children, with the hospital, the asylum,
and the reformatory. But here there is but one step from
Rafaelle's pictures and Bernini's statues to Beggar's Bush
and the Cadger's Arms. Bramante's and Fontana's great
fa9ades only screen the nest of hovels behind; and all the
loathsome losels of the Roman Alsatia wash their rags in
fountains adorned with saints and angels. The very steps
of St. Peter's, the very corridors of the Vatican, to within
the shadow of the halberts of the Swiss guard, are beset by
beggars. But is not mendicancy itself orthodox ? Did not
many of the saints themselves beg? And has not a life
of sloth, uncleanliness, and mendicity, otherwise known as
'' holy meditation," been expressly pointed out by many Fa-
thers of the Church as the direct road to salvation ?
There are streets in Rome whose names are more poig-
nant in their suggcstiveness than the fiercest satire of Ju-
venal. The Vicolo Gesu-Maria is close to the Via degl*
460 ROME AND VENICE.
with knives, as they do to this day. There are the same
casements stuffed with foul rags, the same black and crazy
staircases, from which peep old and weazened faces, or faces
young and wan, or faces bleared by passion and poverty or
the greed of other men's goods ; or at which sprawl and
squall, cascading at last to the kennel below, ragged, frowzy,
elf-like children, many of them maimed by neglect, many of
them scarred and seamed frightfully, more by the hot cinders
of the braziers with which they have been allowed to play
than by that other children's scourge, smallpox, and most
of them, up to eight years of age, more than three parts
naked.
I have not yet seen the *' humbler classes" in Naples and
Sicily, but up to this writing I have seen nothing so for-
lorn and so revolting, so miserable and so degraded, as the
"humbler classes" of Rome. You man in the shovel-hat,
who talk so unctuously about the Virgin Mary — you who
have set up at every street-corner a painted idol, with a lamp
before it — you who fill the minds of your penitents with all
kinds of lying legends about the saints and their miracles —
are you, too, so blind, so ignorant, so stupid, as not to see
that in the lives of these deplorable creatures, fluttering in
rags, wallowing in dirt — in these mothers, who from sheer
lethargic carelessness suffer their babes to become hump-
backed and bow-legged — in these slouching, unkempt men
and lads — in these swarms of beggars, now cringing and
now clamorous — in these homes, unfit for human beings,
and scarcely fit for hogs, there is one constant, dull denial
both of the Mother and the Son of God — there is one stand-
ing negative to the tremendous assertions of Romanism in
THE STEEETS OF EOME. 451
the Basilica hard by ? The filthiest streets of Rome are in
the Borgo, and the Borgo is composed of the streets imme-
diately surrounding St. Peter's. " Tu es Petrus,'' runs the
great inscription in mosaic round the drum of the dome, in
letters every one of them as tall as a Life Guardsman — " Tu
es Petrus, et super lianc petram cedificaho ecclesiam meam ;"
but underneath the rock of the Church priestcraft has built
Tip a dunghill.
One loses patience altogether with the splendour of the
Eoman church, when we contrast that splendour with the
squalor by which it is environed. At least, among us here-
tics, consigned by the Romanists to eternal torment, the
church goes hand in hand with the trim school-house, full
of clean and rosy children, with the hospital, the asylum,
and the reformatory. But here there is but one step from
Rafaelle's pictures and Bernini's statues to Beggar's Bush
and the Cadger's Arms. Bramante's and Fontana's great
fagades only screen the nest of hovels behind ; and all the
loathsome losels of the Roman Alsatia wash their rags in
fountains adorned with saints and angels. The very steps
of St. Peter's, the very corridors of the Vatican, to within
the shadow of the halberts of the Swiss guard, are beset by
beggars. But is not mendicancy itself orthodox ? Did not
many of the saints themselves beg ? And has not a life
of sloth, uncleanliness, and mendicity, otherwise known as
" holy meditation," been expressly pointed out by many Fa-
thers of the Church as the direct road to salvation ?
There are streets in Rome whose names are more poig-
nant in their suggestiveness than the fiercest satire of Ju-
Tenal. The Vicolo Gesu-Maria is close to the Via degF
452 ROME AND VENICE.
Incurabili. The Street of the Guardian Angel is the most
abandoned place you ever saw out of St. Giles's ; the Street
of Paradise is a poor imitation of Saffron-hill ; and the Street
of Death skirts the wall of a grand palace. All the saints
have streets named after them ; all the articles of religion,
all its mysteries, and most of the non-apostolic personages
in the New Testament, have their streets, with an occasional
Triton, or Dolphin, or Nereid to make up; and now and
then plain truth peeps out to the discomfiture of fiction, as
in the " Street of the Old Shoes" and the " Street of the
Dark Shops." But, amidst all these rankling hovels, among
all the garbage, amidst all these tatters and tatterdemalions,
the three-hundred-and-sixty-four churches and basilicas of
Kome rear their sumptuous heads; without, all sculpture
and ornate architectural ornament — within, all glowing fresco
and radiant mosaic, gilding and embroidery, gold and silver
plate. For my part I think it would be much less sacri-
legious to sell every Kafaelle and Domenichino to the dealers
in the Ghetto — to scrape every particle of gold-leaf ofi'the
statues of the Virgin, as the French did at Puebla — to melt
down all the silver candlesticks, and despoil the very shrine
on the altar of its gems, and apply the ready-money thus
obtained to building a few model lodging-houses and a few
baths and washhouses, than to allow Home to ^ethe and rot
in the corruption of neglect and abandonment, while the
monuments of a preposterous idolatry blazed all around in
gold and jewels.
XXXII.
A DAY WITH THE EOMAN HOUNDS.
'^ A SOUTHERLY wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a hunting-
morning," to which I may venture to add that "You all
knew Tom Moody, the whipper-in, well." It will be per-
ceived by these quotations from the once -popular anthology
of the cover-side, now degraded, I am sorry to say, to a very
dog's-eared condition in the ''fourpenny box" at the book-
stalls, that my intent, on the present occasion, is a sporting
one ; that I purpose rhetorically to array myself in scarlet,
and to substitute top-boots for the classical cotJmrnus, and
that the burden of my song throughout this letter will be
" Yoicks !" " My name is Nimrod, and on the Esquiline
hills my father kept his hounds, a noble pack, until — not
being a frugal swain — my sire outran the constable, sold his
dogs, and went to them himself." To have done with cir-
cumlocution, I aspire to give you an account of the great
meet of the Eoman Hunt as it occurred one day in the month
of December 1866.
If a '' southerly wind" be essential to the proclamation of
a hunting-morning, the sons of Nimrod in Kome on that day
•must have had every reason to be satisfied. The sirocco,
which is a southerner, with a dash of the easterly, like a
Carolinian who has married a lady from Massachu setts, put
in a very lively appearance throughout the forenoon. The
464 ROME AND VENICE.
Roman sirocco is no arid and suffocating blast, such as tliat
awful wind in Algeria which comes scouring in from the
Sahara like a goiim of wild Bedouins, its burnouse laden with
impalpable sand, which pierces the lungs of the consumptive
even as a sharp scimitar. When the sirocco blow? in Algeria
the people hasten to close their doors and windows, stopping
up the very chimneys and keyholes, and remain in their
back-parlours, trembling, till the flying pillar of hot dust has
passed away. But when the Roman sirocco blows we open
our casements, and invite the gentle gale to fan our cheeks
and ventilate our apartments. It is a soft, mild, caressing
wind, more resembling warm milk in a volatilised state than
anything else. In summer the sirocco is said to be both
debilitating and oppressive ; but a fortnight before Christmas,
and with the knowledge that your friends in England are
being choked with fog, drenched in Fleet-street mist, or ren-
dered despondent in the morning by the appearance of ice
in the water-jug, the balmy south-easter is inexpressibly
grateful and refreshing. At least ten thousand times a year
we are informed by didactic journalists that there were people
who wept for Nero — not such a very bad fellow, perhaps, after
all : a kind of Mr. Sothern fallen into evil ways and gone
mad, but a great actor always — and I am determined that
there shall be at least one bard to sing the praises of
that much-calumniated wind, the sirocco. For the world is
growing very stale and jejune, and paradox has ever a salt
flavour.
With the *' southerly wind" came, however, no ''cloudy
sky." The cerulean vault might have been taken down
bodily — since this is the city of miracles — and used to crown
A DAY WITH THE EOMAN HOUNDS. 455
those enormous slabs of Kussian lapis lazuli in the Baldac
chino covering the sepulchre, where, outside the walls at
Eome, they say the Apostle of the Gentiles is buried. St.
Peter and St. Paul ! It is not more shocking and irreverent
perhaps to breathe those tremendous names in a newspaper-
article than to have them huckstered about to you by custodes
and valets-de-jdme at so many hajocchi a piece. " Down dere
part of St. Paul be buried ; rest of him in de oder church ;"
or ''A gauche, Excellence, sont les ossements de St. Pierre,
ajpotre et martyr.'' Mr. Kingsley, in his time, was shocked
at the gross familiarity with which the sacred names of the
colleges at Cambridge were bandied about by unreflecting
under-graduates ; but Eomish and Cambridge ears grow, I sup-
pose, in time alike hardened. The Ten Commandments here
are so much fresco or encaustic ; and the Passion is done in
mosaic at so many scudi per foot. The Trinity has become a
trade. Miriam cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsam.
Yes ; the sky was bluer than any ultramarine that Winsor
and Newton could sell at a guinea an ounce ; and, save one
little fleecy speck of vapour, wandering like a lost lamb in
the fields of Elysium, it was without a cloud. The weather-
wise declared the fleecy speck to be a sign that ere noon had
passed the southerly wind would shift to the north and the
sirocco become a tramontana, which is a very rude and blus-
tering gale, harsh and penetrating, cracking the lips and
reddening the nose, and playing old gooseberry with the
ladies' crinolines and the ampler skirts of the Eoman clergy.
The sun shone bright and strong, to the infinite glee of the
Jorestieri, but far too brightly and strongly for the Komans,
who, in common with other Italians, have a deep-seated re-
456 BOME AND VENICE.
luctance to exposing themselves to the rays of Phoebus. Thoy
never walk on the sunny side of the street if they can help
it, and the only possible objection that can be taken to the
hotels of Rome, which are exceptionally clean, comfortable,
and well-managed, is that most of their rooms are as dark
as Sir Walter Raleigh's bedroom in the Tower of London.
" Murray" tells us of a Roman saying, that " none but
Englishmen and dogs walk in the sunshine." * It is very
odd how cosmopolitan are these proverbial sayings. Not
nine months since I was told at Madrid, that nobody save
" ?m perro o un Frances'^ — a dog or a Frenchman — walked
on the sunny side of the Puerta del Sol. There were nu-
merous Romans, however, yesterday in the Campagna, who
were fain to be as dog-like as Englishmen, and not only to
walk, but to ride, for a good many hours in the full blaze of
the lord of the unerring bow, as Lord Byron calls the Apollo,
whose bow must have erred sometimes, seeing that it is now
hopelessly broken. You cannot ride to hounds with an um-
brella, or take a stone wall in a brougham ; at least, I fancy
that Nimrod and the Sporting Magazine would not approve
of such proceedings.
The Roman Hunt is an institution of respectable an-
tiquity, and probably owes its origin to the great influx of
aristocratic English to the Papal capital which took place
* The Eoman doctors would not seem to be quite so strongly prejudiced
against solar influences as their patients are, for the faculty in Rome have
their own proverbial saying, to the effect that, in rooms where the sun does
not enter, the physician invariably must. It is after all a question of season.
There are months in the ^ear, in Italy as in Spain, when the sun from a
benefactor turns to an intolerable despot. In the hotels in Seville you pay
for rooms without sun double the price charged for apartments al sol ; and
at a bull-fight unpalco a la somhra, or box in the shade, costs twice as much
as one in the sun.
A DAY WITH THE ROMAN HOUNDS. 457
after the Ml of Napoleon, and after Sir Thomas Lawrence's
pencil and the munificence of George the Fourth to the Car-
dinal of York had made the Pope fashionable, and a winter
in Kome the very genteelest of things to do. It is curious to
mark the infinite ramifications stricken into the English
mind, all springing from the common trunk of our hatred to
the First Bonaparte. If Napoleon had used the Pope well,
his Holiness would have probably remained the reviled and
despised "Bishop of Eome;" but the French Emperor mal-
treated the Sovereign Pontiff, kidnapped and imprisoned
him; so genial society in England forthwith "took him up,"
and he became the " dear good Pope" whom Belgravian ladies
talk so ecstatically about.
The Eoman Hunt fell into abeyance for a period of seven
years. The suspension was due partly to the troubles of
1849, from which Koman society has never entirely recovered,
and never will recover, until the fount and origin of the evil
— the temporal power — is removed, and partly to the painful
impression made on the mind of the benevolent Pio Nono by
the numerous and sometimes fatal accidents which had taken
place in the hunting-field. The truth was, that the English
gentlemen who joined the Hunt imagined that they could do
in the Campagna all that they had been in the habit of doing
with the Quorn and the Pytchley, and that the Eoman patri-
cians who so blithely assumed the scarlet and buckskins — as
the costume cle' veri cacciatori Tnglesi — tried, incited by
noble emulation, to do all that the veterans of Melton Mow-
bray attempted, and more. The consequence was that, with
melancholy frequency, the noble sportsman's horse would shy
at the stump of a Corinthian column, or shy him neck and
468 ROME AND VENICE.
crop into the profundities of a sepulchral monument ; and it
was obviously more classical than convenient to crack your
skull by contact with the broken bust of a defunct Praetor,
and be carried to the hospital on a bronze door.
Since 1864 the Hunt has been reestablished, and with
the full concurrence of the Pontifical authorities — a special
proviso, however, being added to the permission given by the
kind-hearted old Pope, to the effect that the noble sportsmen
should be accompanied by a mounted corps of Pioneers, con-
sisting of one contadino on horseback, equipped with an axe
and a pick, to cut down hedges that were too tall, and knock
down stone walls that were too stiff to leap. The Hunt is
placed under the management of a committee of Eoman no-
blemen — I think Prince Odescalchi and Prince Colonna are
alternately Masters — and consists of at least one hundred
members, or azionisti, each paying a hundred-and-fifty francs
a-year, and engaging to keep up their subscriptions for at
least three years. Strangers may become annual members,
and those staying but a short time in Eome are always wel-
come at the meet. I need not say that nine- tenths of the
foreigners who thus avail themselves of the privilege are our
own countrymen. Now and then a "fast" Yankee, an illus-
tration of the Paris Jockey Club, or a Eussian prince, makes
his appearance in the field; but the Anglo-Saxon element
is by far the predominant one ; and the scene, apart from its
wondrous associations of the buried past, is a thoroughly
English one — that is to say, genial, good-natured, and jolly,
mth just a spice of the national eccentricity — which
foreigners mistake for madness — and just a leaven of the
national stuckupishness — which foreigners have no name
A DAY WITH THE EOMAN HOUNDS. 459
for, but whicli they laugli at. I do believe there are English
people who would give themselves airs in Charon's boats, as
young Bibo did, till the stern ferryman hit him over the pate
with his oar to teach him humility, and who would use smell-
ing-bottles and eyeglasses in the very dock before Ehada-
manthus' judgment-seat. I have seen '' stuckupishness" at
the top of the Alps and at the bottom of the Catacombs, and
I saw it yesterday in full bloom at the Eoman Hunt.
The meet for Thursday, which was to be the most bril-
liant of the season, was announced to take place at the Tomb
of Cecilia Metella ; but the actual rendezvous was on a
rising knoll in the Campagna — ^very likely the crest of a
partially-sunk tumulus, about a mile farther on, to the left
of the Appian Way. The Tomb of Cecilia Metella, and the
left-hand side of the Appian Way ! What a trysting-place
for foxhounds ! Well, they must meet somewhere ; and,
given the favourable nature of the locality, we need not in-
quire too minutely into its history. The Duke of Welling-
ton kept a pack of hounds in the Peninsula, and the Grpat
Captain's short, sharp "Ha! ha!" was often heard as he
galloped over the green slopes of Andalusia. Boabdil and
Muley Abbas did not interfere with Jowler and Boxer, and
Tom Moody, a colour-sergeant on ordinary days, was the
whipper-in. The oldest and the dearest friend I ever had
was a great huntsman, and emigrated to South America to
re-make the fortune which he had lost at home. He went
to Valparaiso, and did well — principally, I believe, in coal-
mines — and I met a Scotchman at Cadia^iwho told me that
he had known him well in Chili, that his old passion for
the chase had revived, and that he kept a pack of hounds.
460 ROME AND VENICE.
all to himself, at the remote hacienda where ho dwelt, often
without seeing a European face from year's end to year's
end, and went out hunting by himself, monarch of all he
surveyed, like a top-booted Kobinson Crusoe. Not a stranger
rendezvous this, among the sierras and pampas and copper-
coloured Indians, than here, among the tombs, with Numa
Pompilius looking over the wall, and Professor Niebuhr de-
nying him round the corner, while the voice of the late Sir
George Cornewall Lewis is heard in high dispute with Mu-
tius Scsevola from the adjacent sepulchres. Associations,
a la longue, are but adventitious. They may crop up every-
where. The bluff Leicestershire squire, the sturdy York-
shire farmer, have their gatherings among associations as
old and as interesting — now by a Eoman encampment, now
by a Danish colony — now by where Druids worshipped the
mistletoe, and roasted people in wickerwork cages — now by
where Canute rebuked his courtiers, or Hardicanute got
drunk, or Boadicea was scourged, or crookbacked Richard
fell in fight with Richmond.
I had made up a party, and filled a barouche and pair,
and, at half-past ten, started from our hostelry in the Via
Bocca di Leone for the tomb of Cecilia Metella. It is,
perhaps, unnecessary for me to hint to you that youi
rambling interlocutor is not a hunting -man, and that he
prefers to witness such things as battles, fox-hunts, and,
if possible, shipwrecks, on four wheels, to joining in them
on four legs — that is to say, on horseback. A chacun son
metier : and it i« not mine to follow the flying fox. The
late Mr. John Leech and the yet extant Mr. Anthony Trol-
lope have done quite enough to vindicate the individualism
A DAY WITH THE EOMAN HOUNDS. 461
of literature and art in the hunting-field. I saw a Saturday
Eeviewer at the meet on Thursday, and I am right sorry
that he did not catch a fall, for I am not one of those who
profess to love my enemies. My enemy I should like to
have, in handcuffs and without a hat, at high noon, in the
middle of the Great Desert. I would then read him my
printed opinions of him (which are highly sarcastic and, I
think, clever), and refresh him from time to time with an-
chovy sandwiches and hoiling Worcestershire sauce.
No, I do not hunt. I rememher once staying in a coun-
try-house whose hospitable owner pressed me very much to
" ride to hounds," and offered me something which he called
a "mount;" and I am afraid that, under the influence of
capillaire and seltzer-water, late at night in the smoking-
room, I promised to " show" at the meet the next morning.
I rememher that I received important letters soon after sun-
rise, and went to London by the 8.40 train. Is there any
harm in admitting that you never hunted anything bigger
than a flea or a guinea ? I hope not. Yet there are some
people who grow quite savage, and sneer at you viciously,
because you do not appreciate the delight of galloping after
a wretched vermin at the risk of breaking your neck, or be-
cause you do not understand the slang of the hunting-field.
How stupid are these sneers ! Can we all of us do every-
thing? Suppose I ask Nimrod what a mezzotinto scraper
is ; or how he would use the roulette in half-tones ; and what
is the best way of laying a soft ground, or knocking up a
plate which has been overbitten ? Suppose I ask Tom
Moody how, on a given horizontal, he would construct an
equilateral triangle, or how he would inscribe, in a given
462 ROME AND VENICE.
parallelogram, the ellipse known as the " gardener's oval" ?
Ten to one he would know nothing at all about these things.
Please, then, my noble sportsmen, don't sneer at me be-
cause, until dinner-time on Wednesday night, I did not know
what the "fox's pad" was. Why should I? I never saw a
fox unstujQfed in my life ; but, sportsmen, did you ever see
a dolphin, or a shark, or a brigand, or a wild Indian ? Life
is short, and art is long ; the study of English technology
rivals that of the Oriental languages in abstruseness. I had
heard of the fox's brush ; but this is how I came to hear
of his "pad" — the which, I apprehend, is his foot. "He
brought home the fox's pad, did the captain," quoth a young
Englishman at the tahle-dlwte, " and he gave it to the cook
to dry on the top of the oven, and, by Jove, sir, the fellow
fried it and sent it up the next morning for breakfast, with
chopped parsley. You may smell it in the kitchen now."
I asked, deferentially, what the fox's pad might be, not
knowing exactly whether it was something to eat or some-
thing to sit down upon, and being enlightened, experienced
considerable gratification. The English tongue is certainly
a most copious one, and its wealth of synonyms is inexhaus-
tible. , The foot of a fox is his " pad," and that of a dog his
" paw." The head of a wild-boar is his " hood," and the tail of
a hare his "scut," and the stomach of a horse is his "barrel."
We drove over the slippery flagstones of modern Kome
amidst a wilderness of old churches, old pictures, old beg-
gars, old women, and old clothes, and through the old Porta
San Sebastiano and the older arch of Drusus, on to the
Appian Way. It is certainly not wider than that back-lane
which leads from Walham-green to Hammersmith, but it
A DAY WITH THE ROMAN HOUNDS. 463
is the most interesting road in the world. To reach it, by
the route we took, you must pass the gigantic Baths of
Caracalla, and the still more gigantic, but more dilapidated,
Palace of the Caesars, which the Emperor of the French is
so busily excavating, but which, for all the quotations from
Livy he has stuck up as sign-posts, will scarcely become
anything more than a shapeless mass of ruins — a Titanic
brick-kiln, sent into a state of distraction by a colossal earth-
quake.
You must pass the tombs of the Scipios, and those of the
Pompeys — the Columbaria, so called from their pigeon-house
conformation, where baked Romans are potted down in such
very circumscribed spaces, that the practicability of being
burnt on a fourpenny-piece, and having your ashes collected
on a postage-stamp, and being buried in a portemonnaie, at
once occurs to you. The first time I visited the Columbaria
the custode took out of a jar — originally, so it seemed, in-
tended for Bengal chutnee — a handful of little bits of black
stuff, and told me that was a Roman senator. Yes ; and it
might have been Cleopatra, or Marc Antony, or Alexander,
or the Lady of Shalott, or the costermonger's baby burnt to
death in the back-garret in Bethnal-green last Monday was
a fortnight. We pack very closely, and give very little
trouble when we are in a jar, calcined and powdered fine,
that is certain. They might make a good pigment for house-
painters out of a senator, and consular ashes might be use-
ful in bleaching linen.
Lord save us ! what infinite pains these Roman magni-
ficoes were at, not only in these pigeon-cotes, but for miles
and miles along the Appian Way, to have elbow-room in
4C4 ROME AND VENICE.
their tombs for their stuckupishness, and to let the remotest
posterity know what grand folks they were ! Wliat myriads
of alphabets were there not graven to record their styles and
their titles, and the years of their births and their deaths.
Not one in a thousand of the inscriptions is perfect ; by not
one in ten thousand is aught conveyed beyond a hollow noise
that has no meaning. Now and then the sound is vocable,
and has stress, as in the solemn warning, " Touch me not,
mortals; revere the manes of the dead;" or as in the
exquisitely pathetic apostrophe, in which the bereaved mother
endearingly implores the "kind fever, the good fever, the
holy fever," which has taken two of her children, to spare
the two that remain. But time and the barbarians have
been as good as the fever, and neither children nor grown-
up people, nor the manes of the dead, nor slave nor senator,
have been respected ; and this Appian Way is but a chaos
of charnel-houses, with the Pope's highway running through
it, along which post-chaises and hackney-carriages drive.
Do you know the bone-grubbing purlieus ofKensal-green,
or the great Croquemort promenade on the way to Montmar-
tre or Pere la Chaise, or Stonecutter's-row in the Euston-
road, or Greenwood Cemetery in New York ? Take all the
tombs and statues, tear up the vaults, lay bare the catacombs,
break them up into fragments large and fragments small,
play at nine-pins with them, half hide them in the earth, let
grass cover and weeds choke them; grow the acanthus on
the Corinthian capital, and let the thistle riot over the cor-
nice — "down with the nose, down with it flat, take the
bridge quite away" — from legions of bodiless heads, and
shear the arms and legs from legions of headless marble
A DAY WITH THE KOMAN HOUNDS. 466
bodies. Let this be a valley of dry bones, of petrified Chel-
sea and Greenwich pensioners. Turn the whole chaos loose
in the building-yard of a Lucas or a Cubitt, after a long
strike, or a longer lock-out. Shoot the rubbish of ages there ;
sprinkle with dust and innumerable brickbats, and serve hot,
with trailing vines, and a bright sun, and a blue sky for
sauce. This is the Appian Way.
Never was there such an eloquent rebuke to the pride,
and vanity, and ambition of man. You may put the Pontifex
Maximus in your snuff-box, and carry away a vestal virgin in
your waistcoat-pocket. Those tremendous Komans here at-
tempted to set up a lasting text of the sublime and the stu-
pendous ; and lo ! Time sits on a broken tombstone, and
reads a lecture on the Infinitely Little. The poorest Paris
gamin shovelled last week into the fosse commune, the wretch-
edest pauper whom the board can worry and the nurse bully
no longer, and whom the parish undertaker has nailed-up
between four deal-boards and carried off to the paupers' bury-
ing-ground, is of as much account as the Koman Prince who
had five-hundred slaves, and a thousand clients, and a fortune
of four millions sterling.
The Yia Appia is thronged with beggars. I will not say
infested; for here they do not seem out of place. They are
in perfect consonance with the decaying scene, with the decay-
ing Church, with the general " mitycheesiness," so to speak,
and twenty-centuries - old aspect of everything around. A
Carden here might be prodigal of bajocchi ; a Marquis Towns-
hend, even, induced to bestow a paid upon a poor widow with
a callow brood of brats. There is a very hideous creature on
the Appian Way, a mendicant, who has a sliding-scale of ail-
HH
466 HOME AND VENICE.
ments at his command, and who, in proportion to your libe-
rality, will get more and more frightfully afflicted. A gratui-
tous view may be obtained of him ; but he is then simplj
a spiteful idiot, with bandy-legs and St. Anthony's fire in hit
face. For two bajocchi he will have St. Vitus' s dance ; foi
three, his right side will be paralysed ; for five, he -will hav€
an epileptic fit and foam at the mouth.
The Papalini tell us that Kome is full of charitable insti-
tutions, where every conceivable human ill is ministered tc
by *' nostri poveri monacW — by those charming monks anc
nuns whose convents the wicked and atheistical Goveriimeni
are so ruthlessly suppressing. Could not the Pontifical
almoners find a corner in one of their admirable hospitals foi
this deplorable object on the Via Appia ?
Signs of the Hunt began to appear as soon as we were
clear of the arch of the Drusus. Outside the walls there waj
a great muster of ladies' and gentlemen's steeds; for th(
slippery flags of the Koman streets are terribly trying t(
horses shod for hunting, and prudent Nimrods prefer tc
mount extra muros. Many even drive to cover in dogcarts
chars-a-banc, or barouches. There were half-a-dozen EnglisI
ladies, at least, who did not vault — vaulting is, I believe, th(
term — on to their crutch-saddles until they were well clear o:
the walls ; but the spectacle then became charmingly eques
trian, and the Appian Way was brightened by a most viva
cious cavalcade. Gracefully-cut jackets, more graceful Eng
lish faces, plumed hats, flying skirts, cambric handkerchiefs
in the pocket of the saddle, daintily - varnished boots, tin^
gauntleted hands, whips with amber, and coral, and bucks
foot handles — nay, even the famous " ladies' riding-trousers
A DAY WITH THE ROMAN HOUNDS. 467
chamois leather with black feet," were visible among the
tombs. The gentlemen made an equally gallant show. With
some, the modest pepper-and-salt shooting-jacket, with doe-
skin pantaloons and high boots, were deemed sufficiently
"down the road;" but a goodly proportion of the noble
sportsmen had evidently left England with malice prepense
as regards the Eoman Hunt. They may have aired their
" pink" at Pau, in the Pyrenees ; but the full bloom of their
Nimrodism had been reserved for the Campagna.
The ladies tell me that there is not a prettier sight to be
seen the whole world over than a gentleman in full fox-
hunting dress. J think that the prettiest specimen of hu-
manity possible to view is a lady riding in Kotten-row on a
fine May morning; but, I daresay, were I a lady, that the
cynosure of my eyes would be a slim figure in a well-fitting
swallow-tail of brightest vermilion, with a shiny chimney-pot
hat, a blue birdseye scarf with a horseshoe pin, buckskins
fitting like a glove, and top-boots shining like a mirror. The
present generation of hunting-men run slim, and have a ten-
dency to moustaches, not innocent of pommade Hongroise.
Indeed, about many of the dandies of the Koman Hunt there
hung a mysterious odour of Truefitt's and Pratt's, the Ealeigh
Club, and M. Francatelli's cabinets particuliers. Yea, even
of the Treasury and the Foreign Office, Whitehall.
The Koman Hunt is a highly- select one, principally be-
cause the Campagna is rather a long way off" for a tenant
farmer or a sporting publican, and Mr. Soapy Sponge thinks
twice before taking a second-class return-ticket to Marseilles
and Civita Vecchia. I did not see Mr. Sponge at the cover-
side by Cecilia Metella's Tomb. I did not see Mr. Jorrocks.
468 ROME AND VENICE.
Squire Western was absent ; but Sophy Western was there,
and young Tom Jones — third paid secretary of her Majesty's
Legation, Ecbatana — making desperate love to her behind
a sarcophagus. I did not see any of the burly, bloated fox-
hunters, their scarlet coats smirched by innumerable spills,
and stained purple, besides, by after-hunting orgies, with
whom we grow so familiar in Luke Clennel's pictures;
mighty hunters before the Lord, riding over five-barred gates
all day, and keeping it up to all sorts of hours at night,
always cracking t'other bottle, always drinking the " King,
God bless him !" with nine times nine, over flowing bowls of
punch, waving foxes' brushes over their heads the while in a
distracted manner. A tipsy, swearing, Test-and-Corporation-
Act-supporting, collar-bone-breaking generation they were,
scouting the bare idea of railways, and holding the Elgin
marbles in but slight estimation. They drank deep, but
they did not smoke, and were far from the frivolous vices
of the age of sham science and soda-water. And they won
Salamanca and Waterloo, clearly.
There was no meet at Cecilia Metella's Tomb, and the
fox, who must have read the announcement of the rendezvous
in the Osservatore Romano of Tuesday, was doubtless bitterly
disappointed. For, if there be any truth in the good old
British theory that the fox likes being hunted, we may expect
Keynard to be as punctual as anyone else in keeping his
hunting-appointments. Moreover, the meet was to come off
at eleven, and it was now a quarter to twelve. Appealed to,
to reconcile this discrepancy, the driver of the barouche
pointed to the extreme distance of the Campagna with his
whip, and declared that "i cani e tutta la caccia" were ''unpd*
A DAY WITH THE ROMAN HOUNDS. 469
avantV^ — a little farther on. So lie drove us for another mile
and a half along the Appian Way — always among the tomhs;
but still no meet in sight appeared.
I was sorry, for the sake of Cecilia Metella, with whom I
had already formed an acquaintance, and whom I much ad-
mire. What a noble old ruin is the mausoleum of Crassus'
wife ! Battered by the barbarians, converted into a castle,
besieged and retaken half-a-dozen times by the more bar-
barous Koman barons, stripped of its sumptuous shell of
marble by the lime-burners ; rifled by Clement XII., to fur-
nish artificial rocks for his monstrous fountain of Trevi ; and
at last so utterly given up to abandonment and neglect that
its original intent was lost, and it was known only to the
country-people as La Torre del capo di Bove, or Bull's-head
Tower, from the white marble bas-reliefs on the frieze, in
which festoons alternate with bulls' heads — the tomb of
Cecilia Metella is still one of the most perfect vestiges that
remain of ancient Kome, and with the Pantheon and the
Temple of Vesta induces the most definite idea of the beauty,
the strength, and the magnificence of the structures of this
wonderful city. Clements, and Bonifaces, and Kobert Guis-
card, and the Constable de Bourbon have done their best
to devastate it; but still "the stern round tower of other
days," with its garland of eternity, its two thousand years of
ivy, stands " firm as a fortress with its fence of stone," and
frowns haughtily upon the Campagna, like an indomitable
woman. ■../■; ■^-
There is nothing inside the tomb but bats, and, at night,
I suppose, an owl or two ; but I could fancy the fox sitting
at the bottom on his haunches, and murmuring that it was
470 ROME AND VENICE.
really very rude of the gentlemen of the Hunt to keep him
waiting so long, and that if they meant hunting, they had
better look sharp about it. Foxes have feelings as well as
other people, which should not lightly be trifled with. We
came on the meet at last, to the left - hand side, as I have
already mentioned, of the Appian Way. The sight we saw
fully atoned for the delay we had experienced in reaching it.
There were the hounds — thirteen couple and a half, I think,
they told me — the half being a young dog of piecrust-and-
creamy hue, who would wag his tail at the wrong time, and
was continually incurring personal chastisement on that ac-
count. There were the English gentlemen-riders, and the
English lady-riders, and a very fair muster of noble Eomans,
some of whom appeared in true British scarlet and top-boots,
while others favoured us with jackets and jockey-caps of
black velvet, and varnished boots reaching mid- thigh. The
show of horseflesh was capital; and as regards the noble
sportsmen who had not brought their own hunters with them,
but were content to hire them at the rate of forty francs for
the day, the exhibition reflected the highest credit on Mr.
Jarrett, who appears to be the Quartermaine of Koman livery-
stable-keepers, and whose little son, in the quietest and
prettiest of hunting-gear, and mounted on a very strong
horse, distinguished himself greatly during the day, and
took some of the stiff'est leaps attainable.
There was a tent at the trysting-place, and external
symptoms, in the shape of hampers of champagne, that
something good was going on inside. Not being a sub-
scriber to the Eoman Hunt, I could not of course push my
inquiries in this direction further. There was a great muster
A DAY WITH THE ROMAN HOUNDS. 471
of private carriages — many of the most recherche equipages
you meet on tlie Pincian, with their most recherche occu-
pants, were indeed present — while the " ruck" was made up
of yard-barouches, such as our own. The familiar sounds of
one's mother-tongue were continually audible ; and an occa-
sional "melodious twang" with "I guess," or "0, my!" or
"Yes, sir," to give it zest, led to the conclusion that the
American as well as the British element was "on hand."
After some twenty minutes' giggling and gossipping, and
mutual inspection through eyeglasses, the huntsmen, the
hounds, and the noble sportsmen decamped from the tryst-
ing-place, and the people who had come in carriages hastily
alighted in order to follow the Hunt on foot. Then did the
historian see sights !
There is a wonderfully droll Irish story of a matchmaking
mamma, who is continually striving to delude subalterns in
her Majesty's foot regiments into matrimony, by inciting
her daughters to proceed in advance in a country walk, and
" show Ensign Somebody how the turkeys walk through the
long grass." That matchmaking mamma should have
brought her daughters to the Campagna. Ensign Some-
body would have proposed at once, had he seen Miss Jemima
OTlynn walking through the thistles. I have not the honour
of Miss O'Flynn's acquaintance ; but on inquiring of an Eng-
lish lady with whom I am on speaking terms, I elicited the
fact that walking through thistles, with an occasional varia-
tion in the way of climbing a stone wall, was extremely
painful to the feet, ruinous to the stockings, fatal to kid
boots, and trying to the temper. In addition to the thistles,
many parts of the Campagna were knee-deep in wild-flowers.
472 ROME AND VENICE.
most beautiful to look upon; and the deep purple of the
distant Alban hills was exquisite. With all this, you don't
care about having your boots cut to pieces, and your gracilis
muscle lacerated by sublatent enemies of Scottish extrac-
tion.
The ladies who were best off were some very high-born
Italian dames, who had adopted the last new Paris fashion
for a walking-dress. Have you seen it yet in London ? It
is a marvellous make-up. You wear a hat, to begin with —
anybody's hat — a cocked-hat, if you like, but preferably
Tom Tug, the jolly young waterman's, glazed, flat-brimmed,
and with a blue ribbon round it. The next thing is to go
without your gown, and appear in public with your petticoat-
skirt, which should be of scarlet quilted silk, like your great-
grandmother's counterpane, and which reaches nO lower than
the tops of your boots. Your boots, by the way, are top ones,
or rather Hessians without tassels. You wear a jacket, too,
if I remember aright, of velvet ; and to be perfectly proper
and modest, you wear round your waist, not a fig-leaf, but a
curious slashed-and-tagged structure, something like a bustle
in duplicate, rigged fore and aft, as the sailors would say,
and cut into pendent Vandykes. Then, having left your
crinoline at home, you borrow a very tall bamboo-cane from
the fifth footman, and go out walking through the thistles.
I don't think Ensign Anybody could have resisted that
sight on Thursday. Unfortunately, most of the ladies so
attired were princesses, or, at the least, duchesses, and the
ensign would have had but a poor chance. 0, I forgot one
thing ! Although it is so early in the morning, you paint
your face an inch thick.
A DAY WITH THE KOMAN HOUNDS. 473
The noble sportsmen were subjected to a test of almost
a crucial nature before the real business of the day began.
The expanse on which the tent had been erected was sepa-
rated from the wide waste of the Campagna by a long stone
wall of considerable steepness — a very Irish-looking wall, and
a very ugly one, to boot. There were no gates in it, and no
gaps ; and unless you went a quarter of a mile to the right,
and struck the Appian Way, there was no dodging it. The
wall, I am proud to state, was taken, in the majority of in-
stances, " in style." The toy-hurdles they set up for the
circus-riders at Franconi's could not have been cleared more
deftly than was that Koman wall by at least three-fourths of
the Actseons and Dianas present; and, so far as the four-
footed participants were concerned, any amount of scudi must
be put down to the account of Mr. Jarrett's stable. Now and
then a horse would smell the wall, and prudently wheel away
from it. One obstinate gray declined to do more than stand
with his two fore-feet on the coping, and insinuatingly en-
deavour to wriggle his rider off his back ; and one evil-tem-
pered animal, a bright bay, fairly showed the wall a clean
pair of heels, and bolted back towards the arch of
Drusus.
The whole field, however, got over at last ; at least, that
portion who couldn't manage the leaps got through the wall.
A mob of contadini, ragged, active and vociferous, started up
from the adjacent tombs as though they had been ghouls,
and very soon made practicable breaches in the barriers by
the simple process of pulling down the loose stones ; for no
mortar had been used in their structure. Thus, we pedes-
trians, too, were enabled to " take" our stone walls and follow
474 ROME AND VENICE.
the Hunt, to our great internal joy, but to the increasing
laceration of our tendon- Achilles. Surely on that hunting-
morning the thistles must have savoured all the sweets of
vengeance for the injuries inflicted on them by I know not
how many generations of donkeys.
This kind of thing went on for a full hour and a half, the
noble sportsmen meandering about the Campagna under the
guidance of the huntsman, and the pack wagging their tails
in unison, or keeping them in a state of quiescence in appa-
rent obedience to the nod or the wink of the whipper-in. It
was very pretty to see the ladies " schooling" over the walls,
or when there came a hedge with too much brushwood about
it, to see the corps of mounted pioneers lop away the imper-
tinent twigs lest the Amazons should scratch their pretty
faces as they swept through. There was a dash of the steeple-
chase about it, and a suspicion of Mr. Sleary's circus, the
audience being unrestricted in their locality. I say that it
was very pretty; but by about a quarter to two I began to
grow impatient to hear the hounds "give tongue" — is that
the correct phraseology ? — or to hear somebody cry '* Yoicks !"
or " Hark away !" I began to get weary, too, of the " school-
ing," and irritated at the corps of mounted pioneers, who was
a grisly man, with a black beard, mounted on a black horse,
with a black axe, and all manner of sinister-looking imple-
ments of a prevailing sable hue, slung at his saddle-bow. He
looked like Heme the Hunter, who had emigrated from
Windsor Forest to be nearer graves.
At about two o'clock it occurred to me that the excite-
ment of the chase would be very much enhanced if such an
article as a fox were added to it. It was very clear, as the
A DAY WITH THE EOMAN HOUNDS. 475
condemned criminal remarked to the ordinary when the sheriff
looked at his watch, and observed that it was growing late,
that the fun couldn't begin without him.
An English friend volunteered the information that he
had met the fox, the day before yesterday, on quite another
road, and going in the direction of the Porta del Popolo,
to keep an appointment, it is to be presumed, at a private
henroost. For my part, I could not divest myself of the
impression that the fox was still squatting snugly at the
bottom of the Tomb of Cecilia Metella, lunching off a cold
chicken, and repeating that it was very ungenteel behaviour
on the part of the gentlemen of the Roman Hunt to keep
him waiting so.
There was plenty of cover, both in the underbrush of the
slopes and in the inexhaustible graves, and for another half-
hour the huntsman went poking about, followed by his dogs.
At every moment I expected to see a gentleman with a brush
scurry out, and, indeed, I should not have been surprised had
he sallied forth, with a shovel-hat and bands, and buckles in
his shoes, and, looking up from his breviary, like Don Ab-
bondio, in the Promessi Sposi, calmly inquired what all this
clatter was about on the Feast of St. Odille, the eve of
St. Nicaise, and the morrow of St. Lucia. But no fox
appeared, and in default of Reynard, I was fain to admire the
dashing horsemanship of Mr. Jarrett's little boy, and the
equally intrepid Amazonship of a lady who stuck at nothing,
and went at everything, who was capitally mounted, and did
not look more than six-and-twenty, and who, I was told, was
Miss Charlotte Cushman, the tragic actress. Lady Macbeth
foxhunting ! I was quite prepared after this to see the ghost
476 ROME AND VENICE.
of Cecilia Metella taking the lead, or Galla Placida flying
over a five-barred gate.
They found a fox soon after this, appropriately enough,
in a tomb ; and here the duties of the scribe come to an
end. I may well be excused from accumulating any more
solecisms on matters which I do not understand. I trust,
however, that the excellent newspaper, BelVs Life, had a
correspondent in the field, and that this splendid run with
the Eoman Hounds will be duly chronicled. I was very glad
to get back to the barouche, and return to Rome, to lunch,
and send my boots, which were rather too elaborately de-
corated with the Order of the Thistle, to be mended. I
have come to the conclusion that hunting is a very abstruse
science, and that, in addition to the intense study it requires,
you must be Born to it.
The Duchess of Berry, it is said, once witnessed a cricket-
match gotten up by some Englishmen at Dieppe for her
special delectation. After some hours' batting and bowling,
in a broiling sun, she asked "when the game was going
to begin." She had mistaken all the batting and bowling
for mere preparation. Thus may I have made too light of
all the meandering and the poking about, and have seen a
fox-hunt without being aware of it. I heard in the evening
that the fox, though hunted, was not killed. After a sharp
run the poor little beast took refuge (always consistent) in
another tomb, and they benevolently left him there to be
hunted another day. At the last meet an enthusiastic Eng-
lish sportsman insisted that the fox should die the death,
and, having some lucifer-matches in his pocket, he smoked
him out of his earth, and so delivered him to the dogs and
A DAY WITH THE ROMAN HOUNDS. 477
secured his " pad." I don't know wliat lady had the hrush.
In any case, I still hold the opinion that the animal I saw
chevied was not the genuine one, and that the real original
fox remains to this moment in the Tomb of Cecilia Metella,
picking a merrythought, and observing that punctuality is
the soul of business.
Some people are born to do things by contraries. I never
saw a cock-fight till I went to Africa, and the only cricket-
match I ever witnessed was in the Valley of Mexico. It was
quite consistent with the rule of contraries that I should
have to wait for a trip to Eome ere I beheld a pack of Eng-
lish foxhounds.
THE END.
LONDON : ROBSON AND SONS, PBINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
>
^
//•v/^
Kcoewcd
books
.^^S^;^-^^
"Pk -Jiad^i 6*
S3
THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY