I 
 
NEW AND REVISED EDITION OF "OLIVER TWIST," 
 IN TEN MONTHLY PARTS. 
 
 Publishing in Monthly Parts, price One Shilling each, toith Two Illustrations 
 on Steel, (uniform with " The Pickwick Papers,") 
 
 OLIVER TWIST. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 ILLUSTKATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK. 
 
 ^* - This Edition has been carefully corrected by the Author thi-oughout, and 
 it will contain the whole of the original Illustrations. 
 
A NEW ENGLISH STORY, 
 
 BY MR. DICKENS, 
 
 In Twenty Monthly Parts, price One Shilling each, uniform with 
 "Martin Chuzzlewit," &c. 
 
 IS NOW IN PREPARATION. 
 
 No. I. icill be published on the First of October. 
 
PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
PICTURES FROM ITALY.c 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 The Vignette Illustrations on Wood, ty Samuel Palmer. 
 
 The Street of the Tombs: Pompeii. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR, 
 BY BRADBURY & EVANS, WHITEFRIARS. 
 
 iwncccxLvr. 
 
LONDON : 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PniNTERr, WHITErRIARS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE reader's passport 1 
 
 GOING THROUGH FRANCE ....... 5 
 
 LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF AVIGNON . 17 
 
 AVIGNON TO GENOA . 30 
 
 GENOA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD . . . .38 
 TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA 84 
 
 THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA . . . .98 
 
 AN ITALIAN DREAM . . „ . . ' . . . 107 
 
 BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE PASS OF 
 
 THE SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND . . . . 120 
 
 TO ROME BY PISA AND SIENA 144 
 
 ROME 165 
 
 A RAPID DIORAMA 
 
 TO NAPLES 233 
 
 NAPLES 237 
 
 POMPEII — HERCULANEUM 243 
 
 P.ESTUM 247 
 
 VESUVIUS 248 
 
 RETURN TO NAPLES 255 
 
 MONTE CASSINO 261 
 
 FLORENCE 265 
 
FTi 
 
 a 
 
 (nl ¥\ t: 
 
 ^^ ^' w i^'id 
 
 
 
 ^s^aj< 
 
 ;'5rSJ 
 
 i^eatret^is passport. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 If the readers of this vokime 
 will be so kind as to take their 
 credentials for the different places 
 ^Yhich are the subject of its 
 author's reminiscences, from the 
 Author himself, perhaps they 
 may visit them, in fancy, the 
 more agreeably, and with a better 
 understanding of what they are 
 to expect. 
 
 Many books have been written 
 upon Italy, affording many means 
 of studying the history of that 
 interesting coimtn-, and the in- 
 numerable associations entwined 
 
 m 
 
 i 
 
 rii^^^ 
 
 ^.m 
 
 ,i: -'?"-; 
 
 THE VILLA D\tSlE &.J IIVOLI FROM THE CYPRESS AVENUE. 
 
2 THE header's passport. 
 
 about it. I make but little reference to that stock of 
 information ; not at all regarding it as a necessaiy con- 
 sequence of my lia\ing had recourse to the storehouse 
 for my own benefit, that I should reproduce its easily 
 accessible contents before the eyes of my readers. 
 
 Neither will there be fomid, in these pages, any grave 
 examination into the government or misgovemment of 
 any portion of the country. No visiter of that beautiful 
 land can fail to have a strong conviction on the subject ; 
 but as I chose when residing there, a Foreigner, to 
 abstain from the discussion of any such questions with 
 any order of Italians, so I would rather not enter on the 
 inquiry now. During my twelve months' occupation of 
 a house at Genoa, I never found that authorities consti- 
 tutionally jealous, were distrustful of me ; and I should 
 be Sony to give them occasion to regret their free cour- 
 tesy, either to myself or any of my countrymen. 
 
 There is, probably, not a famous Pictm'e or Statue in 
 all Italy, but could be easily bmied under a mountain of 
 prmted paper devoted to dissertations on it. I do not, 
 therefore, though an earnest admirer of Painting and 
 Sculptm"e, expatiate at any length on famous Pictures 
 and Statues. 
 
 This Book is a series of faint reflections — mere 
 shadows in the water — of places to which the ima- 
 ginations of most people are attracted in a gi'eater or 
 less degree, on which mine had dwelt for years, and 
 which have some interest for all. The greater part of 
 the descriptions were written on the spot, and sent 
 home, from time to time, in private letters. I do not 
 
THE EEADEr's passport. 
 
 mention the circumstance as an excuse for any defects 
 they may present, for it would be none; but as a 
 guarantee to the Reader that they were at least penned 
 in the fulness of the subject, and with the liveliest 
 impressions of novelty and freshness. 
 
 If they have ever a fanciful and idle air, perhaps the 
 reader will suppose them written in the shade of a Sunny 
 Day, in the midst of the objects of which they treat, and 
 will like them none the worse for having such influences 
 of the country upon them. 
 
 I hope I am not likely to be misunderstood by Pro- 
 fessors of the Roman Catholic faith, on account of any- 
 thing contained in these pages. I have done my best, 
 in one of my former productions, to do justice to them ; 
 and I trust, m this, they will do justice to me. When I 
 mention any exhibition that impressed me as absurd or 
 disagreeable, I do not seek to connect it, or recognise it 
 as necessarily connected, with, any essentials of their 
 creed. When I treat of the ceremonies of the Holy 
 Week, I merely treat of their effect, and do not chal- 
 lenge the good and learned Dr. Wiseman's intei^reta- 
 tion of their meaning. When I hint a dislike of 
 nunneries for young girls who abjure the world before 
 they have ever proved or known it; or doubt the ex 
 officio sanctity of all Priests and Friars ; I do no more 
 than many conscientious Catholics both abroad and at 
 home. ' 
 
 I have hkened these Pictures to shadows in the 
 water, and would fain hope that I have, nowhere, stirred 
 the water so roughly, as to mar the shadows. I could 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE READERS PASSPORT. 
 
 never desire to be on better terms with all my friends 
 than now, when distant mountains rise, once more, in 
 my path. For I need not hesitate to avow, that, bent 
 on correcting a brief mistake I made, not long ago, 
 in disturbing the old relations between myself and 
 my readers, and departing for a moment from my 
 old pm'suits, I am about to resume them, joyfully, 
 in Switzerland : where, during another year of absence, 
 I can at once work out the themes I have now in my 
 mind, without interruption : and, while I keep my 
 English audience within speaking distance, extend my 
 knowledge of a noble country, inexpressibly attractive 
 to me. 
 
 This book is made as accessible as possible, because 
 it would be a great pleasure to me if I could hope, 
 through its means, to compare impressions with some 
 among the multitudes who will hereafter visit the scenes 
 described, with interest and delight. 
 
 And I have only now, in passport wise, to slietch my 
 reader s portrait, which I hope may be thus suppositi- 
 tiously traced for either sex : — 
 
 Complexion 
 
 Eyes 
 
 Nose 
 
 Mouth . 
 
 Visage 
 
 General Expression 
 
 Fair. 
 
 Very cheerful. 
 
 Not supercilious. 
 
 Smiling. 
 
 Beaming. 
 
 Extremely agreeable. 
 
THE COLOSSEUM OF ROMS. 
 
 GOING THROUGH FRANCE. 
 
 N a fine Sunday morning in the Midsummer time 
 and weather of eighteen hundred and forty-foui', 
 it was, my good friend, when — don't be alarmed; 
 not when two travellers might have been observed slowly 
 making their way over that picturesque and broken ground 
 by which the first chapter of a Middle Aged novel is 
 usually attained — but when an English travelling car- 
 riage of considerable proportions, fresh fi'om the shady 
 halls of the Panteclniicon near Belgrave-square, London, 
 
6 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 was observed (by a very small French soldier; for I 
 saw him look at it) to issue from the gate of the Hotel 
 Memice in the Rue PJvoli at Paris. 
 
 I am no more bound to explain why the English 
 family travelling by this carriage, inside and out, should 
 be starting for Italy on a Sunday morning, of all good 
 days in the week, than I am to assign a reason for all the 
 little men in France being soldiers, and all the big men 
 postilions: which is the invariable rule. But, they had 
 some sort of reason for what they did, I have no doubt ; 
 and their reason for being there at all, was, as you know, 
 that they were going to live in fair Genoa for a year ; 
 and that the head of the family purposed, in that space 
 of time, to stroll about, wherever his restless humour 
 carried him. 
 
 And it would have been small comfort to me to have 
 explained to the population of Paris generally, that I 
 was that Head and Chief; and not the radiant 
 embodiment of good-humour who sat beside me in 
 the person of a French Courier — best of servants and 
 most beaming of men ! Truth to say, he looked a 
 great deal more patriarchal than I, who, in the shadow 
 of his portly presence, dwindled down to no account at all. 
 
 There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris 
 — as we rattled near the dismal Morgue and over the 
 Pont Neuf — to reproach us for our Sunday travelling. 
 The wine-shops (every second house) were driving a 
 roaring trade ; awnings were spreading, and chairs and 
 tables arranging, outside the cafes, preparatory to the 
 eating of ices, and drinking of cool liquids, later in the 
 
DEPAETUEE FEOM PAEIS. 
 
 day ; shoe-blacks were busy on the bridges ; shops were 
 open ; carts and waggons clattered to and fro ; the 
 narrow, up-hill, funnel-like streets across the Paver, 
 were so many dense perspectives of crowd and bustle, 
 parti-coloured night-caps, tobacco-pipes, blouses, large 
 boots, and shaggy heads of hair ; nothing at that hour 
 denoted a day of rest, unless it were the appearance, 
 here and there, of a family pleasure-party, crammed into 
 a bulky old lumbering cab ; or of some contemplative 
 holiday maker in the freest and easiest dishabille, 
 leaning out of a low garret window, watching the drying 
 of his newly polished shoes on the little parapet outside 
 (if a gentleman), or the airing of her stockings in the 
 sun (if a lady), with calm anticipation. 
 
 Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven 
 pavement which surrounds Paris, the first three days 
 of travelling towards Marseilles, are quiet and monotonous 
 enough. To Sens. ToAvallon. To Chalons. A sketch of 
 one day's proceedings is a sketch of all three ; and here it is. 
 
 We have four horses, and one postilion, who has a 
 yerj long whip, and drives his team, something like 
 the Cornier of Saint Petersburgh in the circle at 
 Astley s or Franconi's : only he sits his own horse instead 
 of standing on him. The immense jack-boots worn by 
 these postilions, are sometimes a centmy or two old ; 
 and are so ludicrously disproportionate to the wearer's 
 foot, that the spur, which is put where his own heel 
 comes, is generally halfway up the leg of the boots. 
 The man often comes out of the stable-yard, with his 
 whip in his hand and his shoes on, and brings out, in both 
 
8 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 hands, one boot at a time, which he plants on the ground 
 by the side of his horse, with great gravity, until every- 
 thing is ready. When it is — and oh Heaven! the 
 noise they make about it ! — he gets into the boots, shoes 
 and all, or is hoisted into them by a couple of friends ; 
 adjusts the rope-hamess, embossed by the labom's of 
 innumerable pigeons in the stables ; makes all the horses 
 kick and plunge ; cracks his whip like a madman ; 
 shouts "En route — Hi! " and away we go. He is sure 
 to have a contest with his horse before we have gone 
 very far ; and then he calls him a Thief, and a Brigand, 
 and a Pig, and what not ; and beats him about the head 
 as if he were made of wood. 
 
 There is little more than one variety in the appear- 
 ance of the countiy, for the first two days. From a 
 dreary plain, to an interminable avenue ; and from an 
 interminable avenue, to a dreary plain again. Plenty 
 of vines there are, in the open fields, but of a short 
 low kind, and not trained in festoons, but about straight 
 sticks. Beggars innumerable there are, everywhere; 
 but an extraordinarily scanty population, and fewer 
 children than I ever encountered, I don't believe 
 we saw a hundred children between Paris and Chalons. 
 Queer old towns, draw-bridged and walled : with odd 
 little towers at the angles, like grotesque faces, as if 
 the wall had put a mask on, and were staring, down 
 into the moat ; other strange little towers, in gardens 
 and fields, and down lanes, and m farm-yards : all 
 alone, and always romid, with a peaked roof, and never 
 used for any pm-pose at all ; niinous buildmgs of all 
 
TO CH.\LONS. 9 
 
 sorts : sometimes an hotel de villa, sometimes a guard- 
 house, sometimes a dwelling-house, sometimes a chateau 
 with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and watched 
 over by extinguisher-topped tm'rets, and hlink-eyed 
 little casements ; are the standard objects, repeated over 
 and over again. Sometimes, we pass a village inn, 
 with a crumbling wall belonging to it, and a perfect 
 town of out-houses : and painted over the gateway, 
 " Stabling for Sixty Horses;" as indeed there might 
 be stabHng for sixty score, were there any horses to be 
 stabled there, or anybody resting there, or anything 
 stirring about the place but a danglmg bush, indicative 
 of the wine inside : which flutters idly in the wind, 
 in lazy keeping with everything else, and certainly is 
 never in a green old age, though always so old as to 
 be dropping to pieces. And all day long, strange little 
 narrow waggons, in strings of six or eight, bringing 
 cheese from Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the 
 whole line, of one man or even boy — and he veiy often 
 asleep in the foremost cart — come jinglmg past : the 
 horses di'owsily ringing the bells upon their harness, 
 and looking as if they thought (no doubt they do) their 
 great blue woolly furniture, of immense weight and thick- 
 ness with a pair of grotesque horns growing out of the 
 collar, very much too warm for the Midsummer weather. 
 Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a-day; 
 with the dusty outsides in blue frocks, like butchers ; and 
 the insides in white nightcaps ; and its cabriolet head 
 on the roof, nodding and shaking, like an idiot's head ; 
 and its Young-France passengers staring out of \Nindow, 
 
10 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 with beards down to their waists, and blue spectacles 
 awfully shading their warlike eyes, and very big sticks 
 clenched in their National grasp. Also the Malle Poste, 
 with only a couple of passengers, tearing along at a real 
 good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no time. 
 Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and then, in 
 such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clatteriug coaches as no 
 Englishman would believe in ; and bony women daudle 
 about in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they 
 feed, or digging and hoeing, or doing field-work of a more 
 laborious kind, or representing real shepherdesses with 
 their flocks — to obtain an adequate idea of which pursuit 
 and its followers, in any countr}'', it is only necessary to 
 take any pastoral poem, or pictm'e, and imagine to your- 
 self whatever is most exquisitely and widely unlike the 
 descriptions therein contained. 
 
 You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as 
 you generally do in the last stage of the day ; and the 
 ninety-six bells upon the horses — twenty-four apiece 
 — have been ringing sleepily in your ears for half an 
 hour or so ; and it has become a veiy jog-trot, mono- 
 tonous, tiresome sort of business ; and you have been 
 thinking deeply about the dinner you will have at the 
 next stage ; when, down at the end of the long avenue 
 of trees through which you are travellmg, the first indi- 
 cation of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling 
 cottages : and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over 
 a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a 
 great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage 
 chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and 
 
TO CHALONS. 11 
 
 splutter, as if the veiy devil were in it. Crack, crack, 
 crack, crack. Crack-crack-crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. 
 Helo ! Hola ! Vite ! Voleur ! Brigand ! Hi hi hi ! En 
 r-r-r-r-r-route ! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, 
 children ; crack, crack, crack ; helo ! hola ! charite 
 pour I'amour de Dieu ! crick-crack-crick-crack; crick, crick, 
 crick ; bump, jolt, crack, bump, crick-crack ; round the 
 comer, up the narrow street, down the paved hill on the 
 other side ; in the gutter; bump, bump; jolt, jog, crick, 
 crick, crick ; crack, crack, crack ; into the shop-windows 
 on the left hand side of the street, preliminary to a 
 sweeping turn into the wooden archway on the right; 
 rumble, rumble, iiimble ; clatter, clatter, clatter ; crick, 
 crick, crick ; and here we are in the yard of the Hotel 
 de I'Ecu d'Or; used up, gone out, smoldng, spent, 
 exhausted ; but sometimes making a false start unex- 
 pectedly, with nothing coming of it — like a firework to 
 the last ! 
 
 The landlady of the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or is here ; and 
 the landlord of the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or is here ; and 
 the femme de chambre of the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or is 
 here ; and a gentleman in a glazed cap, mth a red beard 
 like a bosom friend, who is staying at the Hotel de I'Ecu 
 d'Or is here ; and Monsieur le Cure is walking up and 
 down in a corner of the yai'd by himself, with a shovel 
 hat upon his head, and a black gown on his back, and a 
 book in one hand, and an umbrella in the other ; and 
 everybody, except Monsieur le Cm^e, is open-mouthed 
 and open-eyed, for the opening of the carriage-door. 
 The landlord of the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or, dotes to that 
 
12 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 extent upon the Courier, that he can hardly wait for his 
 coming down from the box, but embraces his very legs 
 and boot-heels as he descends. "My Courier! My 
 brave Cornier ! My friend I My brother ! " The land- 
 lady loves him, the femme de chambre blesses him, the 
 gar^on worships him. The Courier asks if his letter has 
 been received? It has, it has. Are the rooms prepared? 
 They are, they are. The best rooms for my noble 
 Courier. The rooms of state for my gallant Comder ; 
 the whole house is at the service of my best of friends ! 
 He keeps his hand upon the carriage-door, and asks some 
 other question to enhance the expectation. He carries 
 a green leathern purse outside his coat, suspended by a 
 belt. The idlers look at it ; one touches it. It is full 
 of five-franc pieces. Murmm-s of admiration are heard 
 among the boys. The landlord falls upon the Courier's 
 neck, and folds him to his breast. He is so much 
 fatter than he was, he says ! He looks so rosy and 
 so well ! 
 
 The door is opened. Breathless expectation. The 
 lady of the family gets out. Ah sweet lady ! Beautiful 
 lady ! The sister of the lady of the family gets out. 
 Great Heaven, Ma'amselle is charming! Fkst little 
 boy gets out. Ah, what a beautiful little boy ! First 
 little gui gets out. Oh, but this is an enchantmg cliild ! 
 Second little girl gets out. The landlady, pelding to 
 the finest impulse of our common natm'e, catches her 
 up in her arms ! Second little boy gets out. Oh, the 
 sweet boy ! Oh, the tender little family ! The baby is 
 handed out. Angelic baby ! The baby has topped 
 
TO CHALONS. 13 
 
 everything. All the rapture is expended on the baby ! 
 Then the two nui'ses tumble out ; and the enthusiasm 
 swelling into madness, the whole family are swept up 
 stairs as on a cloud; while the idlers press about the 
 carriage, and look into it, and walk round it, and touch 
 it. For it is something to touch a carriage that has 
 held so many people. It is a legacy to leave one's 
 children. 
 
 The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery 
 for the night, which is a great ramblmg chamber, with 
 four or five beds in it : through a dark passage, up two 
 steps, down fom% past a pump, across a balcony, and 
 next door to the stable. The other sleeping apartments 
 are large and lofty; each with two small bedsteads, 
 tastefully hung, like the wuidows, with red and w^hite 
 drapery. The sitting-room is famous. Dinner is already 
 laid in it for three ; and the napldns are folded in 
 cocked-hat fashion. The floors are of red tile. There 
 are no cai'pets, and not much furniture to speak of ; but 
 there is abmidance of looking-glass, and there are large 
 vases mider glass shades, filled with artificial flowers ; 
 and there are plenty of clocks. The whole party are in 
 motion. The brave Cornier, in particular, is everywhere : 
 looking after the beds, ha^dng ^vuie pom'ed down his 
 thi'oat by his dear brother the landlord, and picking up 
 green cucumbers — always cucumbers ; Heaven Imows 
 where he gets them — with which he walks about, one in 
 each hand, like tnmcheons. 
 
 Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup ; there 
 are very large loaves — one apiece ; a fish ; four dishes 
 
14 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 afterwards ; some poultry afterwards ; a dessert afterwards ; 
 and no lack of wine. There is not much in the dishes ; but 
 they are very good, and always ready instantly. When 
 it is nearly dark, the brave Courier, having eaten the two 
 cucumbers, sliced up in the contents of a pretty large 
 decanter of oil, and another of vinegar, emerges from liis 
 retreat below, and proposes a visit to the Cathedral, 
 whose massive tower frowns down upon the courtyard 
 of the inn. Off we go ; and very solemn and grand it 
 is, m the dim light : so dim at last, that the polite, old, 
 lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit of candle 
 in his hand, to grope among the tombs with — and looks 
 among the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is 
 searching for his own. 
 
 Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior 
 servants of the inn are supping in the open air, at a 
 great table ; the dish a stew of meat and vegetables, 
 smoking hot, and served in the iron cauldron it was 
 boiled in. They have a pitcher of thin wine, and are 
 very merry ; merrier than the gentleman with the red 
 beard, who is pla3dng billiards in the light room on the 
 left of the yard, where shadows, with cues in their hands, 
 and cigars in their mouths, cross and recross the window, 
 constantly. Still the tliin Cure walks up and down 
 alone, with his book and umbrella. And there he walks, 
 and there the billiard-balls rattle, long after we are fast 
 asleep. 
 
 We are astir at six next mornmg. It is a delightful 
 day, shaming yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if any- 
 thing could shame a carriage, in a land where carriages 
 
TO CHALONS. 15 
 
 are never cleaned. Everj^body is brisk ; and as we finish 
 breakfast, the horses come jinghng into the yard from 
 the Post-house. Everj^thing taken out of the carriage 
 is put back again. The brave Cornier announces that all 
 is ready, after walldng into eveiy room, and looking all 
 round it, to be certain that nothing is left behind. Eveiy- 
 body gets in. Everybody connected with the Hotel de 
 I'Ecu d'Or is again enchanted. The brave Cornier runs 
 into the house for a parcel containing cold fowl, sliced 
 ham, bread, and biscuits, for Imich ; hands it into the 
 coach ; and rmis back agam. 
 
 What has he got in his hand now? More cucum- 
 bers ? No. A long strip of paper. It 's the bill. 
 
 The brave Courier has two belts on, this morning : 
 one supportmg the purse : another, a mighty good sort 
 of leathern bottle, filled to the throat with the best 
 light Bordeaux wine in the house. He never pays the 
 bill till this bottle is full. Then he disputes it. 
 
 He disputes it now, violently. He is still the land- 
 lord's brother, but by another father or mother. He is 
 not so nearly related to him as he was last night. The 
 landlord scratches his head. The brave Cornier points 
 to certam figures in the bill, and intimates that if they 
 remain there, the Hotel de I'Ecu d"Or is thenceforth 
 and for ever an hotel de I'Ecu de cuivre. The landlord 
 goes into a httle countmg-house. The brave Cornier 
 follows, forces the bill and a pen into his hand, and 
 tallvs more rapidly than ever. The landlord takes the 
 pen. The Courier smiles. The landlord makes an 
 
16 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 alteration. The Courier cuts a joke. The landlord is 
 affectionate, but not weakly so. He bears it like a 
 man. He shakes hands with his brave brother, but he 
 don't hug him. Still, he loves his brother; for he 
 knows that he will be returning that way, one of these 
 fine days, with another family, and he foresees that his 
 heart will yearn towards him again. The brave Courier 
 traverses all round the carriage once, looks at the drag, 
 inspects the wheels, jumps up, gives the word, and 
 away we go ! 
 
 It is market morning. The market is held in the 
 little square outside, in front of the cathedral. It is 
 crowded with men and women, in blue, in red, in green, 
 in white ; with canvassed stalls ; and fluttering mer- 
 chandise. The country people are grouped about, with 
 their clean baskets before them. Here, the lace-sellers; 
 there, the butter and egg-sellers ; there, the fruit-sellers ; 
 there, the shoe-makers. The whole place looks as if it 
 were the stage of some great theatre, and the curtain 
 had just run up, for a picturesque ballet. And there is 
 the cathedral to boot : scene-Hke : all grim, and swarthy, 
 and mouldering, and cold : just splashmg the pavement 
 in one place with faint pm^^le drops, as the morning 
 smi, entering by a little mndow on the eastern side, 
 struggles through some stained glass panes, on the 
 western. 
 
 In five minutes we have passed the iron cross, with 
 a little ragged kneeling-place of tmf before it, in the 
 outsldrts of the town ; and are again upon the road. 
 
LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF 
 
 AVIGNON. 
 
 Chalons is a fair resting-place, in right of its good 
 inn on the bank of the river, and the little steam-boats, 
 gay with green and red paint, that come and go upon it : 
 which make up a pleasant and refreshing scene, after 
 the dusty roads. But, unless you would like to dwell 
 on an enormous plain, with jagged rows of irregular 
 poplars on it, that look in the distance like so many 
 combs with broken teeth : and unless you would like to 
 pass yom' life without the possibility of going up-hill, or 
 going up anything but stairs : you would hai'dly approve 
 of Chalons as a place of residence. 
 
 You would probably like it better, however, than 
 Lyons : which you may reach, if you will, in one of 
 the before-mentioned steam-boats, in eight hours. 
 
 What a city Lyons is ! Talk about people feelmg, 
 at certain milucky times, as if they had tumbled from 
 the clouds ! Here is a whole town that has tumbled, 
 anyhow, out of the sky; having been first caught up, 
 like other stones that tumble down from that region, 
 out of fens and barren places, dismal to behold ! The 
 two great streets through which the two great rivers 
 
 c 
 
18 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 dash, and all the little streets whose name is Legion, 
 were scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The houses, 
 high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, 
 and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem 
 the city in, these houses swarm ; and the mites in- 
 side were lolling out of the wuidows, and drjdng their 
 ragged clothes on poles, and crawling in and out at the 
 doors, and coming out to pant and gasp upon the pave- 
 ment, and creeping in and out among huge piles and 
 bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods ; and living, or 
 rather not dying till their time should come, in an 
 exhausted receiver. Every manufacturing town, melted 
 into one, would hardly convey an impression of Lyons 
 as it presented itself to me : for all the imdrained, un- 
 scavengered, qualities of a foreign town, seemed grafted, 
 there, upon the native miseries of a manufacturing one ; 
 and it bears such fniit as I would go some miles out of 
 my way to avoid encomitering again. 
 
 In the cool of the evenmg : or rather in the faded 
 heat of the day : we went to see the Cathedral, where 
 divers old women, and a few dogs, were engaged in 
 contemplation. There was no difference, in pomt of 
 cleanliness, between its stone pavement and that of the 
 streets ; and there was a wax saint, in a little box like 
 a berth aboai'd ship, with a glass front to it, whom 
 Madame Tussaud would have nothing to say to, on any 
 terms, and which even Westminster Abbey might be 
 ashamed of. If you w^ould Imow all about the architecture 
 of this church, or any other, its dates, dimensions, 
 endowments, and history, is it not written m Mr. Murray's 
 
LYONS. 19 
 
 Guicle-Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks 
 to him, as I did ! 
 
 For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning 
 the curious clock in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a 
 small mistake I made, in connection with that piece of 
 mechanism. The keeper of the church was very anxious 
 it should be shown ; partly for the honom- of the esta- 
 blishment and the town ; and partly, perhaps, because of 
 Jais demdng a per-centage from the additional consider- 
 ation. However that may be, it was set in motion, 
 and thereupon a host of little doors flew open, and 
 innumerable little figm'es staggered out of them, and 
 jerked themselves back again, ^Nith that special unstea- 
 diness of pm-pose, and hitching in the gait, which usually 
 attaches to figures that are moved by clock-work. Mean^ 
 while, the Sacristan stood explaining these wonders, 
 and pomting them out, severally, with a wand. There 
 was a centre puppet of the Virgin Maiy ; and close to 
 her, a small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a 
 veiy ill-looking puppet made one of the most sudden 
 plunges I ever saw accomplished : instantly flopping 
 back again at sight of her, and banging his little door, 
 violently, after him. Taking this to be emblematic of 
 the \dctoiy over Sin and Death, and not at all un- 
 willing to show that I perfectly miderstood the subject, 
 in anticipation of the showman, I raslily said, " Aha I 
 The E\dl Spirit. To be sm'e. He is veiy soon disposed 
 of." " Pardon Monsiem'," said the Sacristan, -uith a 
 polite motion of his hand towards the little door, as if 
 introducing somebody — " The Angel Gabriel ! "' 
 
 c -2 
 
20 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Soon after day-break next morning, we were steaming 
 down the Arrowy Rhone, at the rate of twenty miles an 
 hour, in a very dirty vessel full of merchandise, and 
 with only three or four other passengers for our com- 
 panions : among w^hom, the most remarkable was a silly, 
 old, meek-faced, garlic-eating, immeasurably-polite Che- 
 valier, with a dirty scrap of red ribbon hanging at his 
 button-hole, as if he had tied it there, to remind himself 
 of something : as Tom Noddy, in the farce, ties knots in 
 his pocket-handkerchief. 
 
 For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills, 
 the first indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. 
 Now, we were rushing on beside them : sometimes close 
 beside them : sometimes with an intervening slope, 
 covered with vineyards. Villages and small towns hang- 
 ing in mid-air, with great woods of olives seen through 
 the light open towers of their churches, and clouds 
 moving slowly on, upon the steep acclivity behind them; 
 ruined castles perched on every eminence ; and scattered 
 houses in the clefts and gullies of the hills; made it 
 very beautiful. The great height of these, too, making 
 the buildings look so tiny, that they had all the charm 
 of elegant models; their excessive whiteness, as con- 
 trasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, 
 heavy green of the olive-tree ; and the puny size, and 
 little slow walk of the Lilliputian men and women on 
 the bank; made a charming picture. There were fer- 
 ries out of number, too ; bridges ; the famous Pont 
 d'Esprit, with I don't Imow how many arches ; to^\•ns 
 where memorable wines are made ; Vallence, where 
 
AVIGNON. 21 
 
 Napoleon studied ; and the noble river, biinging, at 
 every winding turn, new beauties into view. 
 
 There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken 
 bridge of Avignon, and all the city baking m the sun ; 
 yet with an under-done-pie-crust, battlemented, wall, that 
 never will be brown, though it bake for centuries. 
 
 The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, 
 and the brilliant Oleander was in full bloom everywhere. 
 The streets are old and very naiTow, but tolerably clean, 
 and shaded by awnings stretched from house to house. 
 Bright stuffs and handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient 
 frames of carved wood, old chairs, ghostly tables, saints, 
 virgins, angels, and staring daubs of portraits, being 
 exposed for sale beneath, it was veiy quaint and lively. 
 All this was much set off, too, by the glimpses one 
 caught, through rusty gates standing ajar, of quiet 
 sleepy courtyards, having stately old houses within, as 
 silent as tombs. It was all veiy like one of the 
 descriptions in the Arabian Nights. The three one- 
 eyed Calenders might have knocked at any one of 
 those doors till the street rang again, and the porter 
 who persisted in asldng questions — the man who had the 
 delicious purchases put into his basket in the morning 
 — might have opened it quite naturally. 
 
 After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see 
 the lions. Such a delicious breeze was blowing in, 
 from the north, as made the walk delightful : though the 
 pavement-stones, and stones of the walls and houses, 
 were far too hot to have a hand laid on them comfortably. 
 
 We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the 
 
22 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 cathedral : where Mass was performing to an auditory . 
 veiy like that of Lyons, namely, several old women, 
 a baby, and a very self-possessed dog, who had marked 
 out for himself a little course or platform for exercise, 
 beginning at the altar-rails and ending at the door, up 
 and down which constitutional walk, he trotted, during 
 the sersdce, as methodically and calmly, as any old 
 gentleman out of doors. It is a bare old church, and 
 the paintings in the roof are sadly defaced by time and 
 damp weather ; but the sun was shining in, splendidly, 
 through the red cmlains of the windows, and glittering 
 on the altar furniture ; and it looked as bright and 
 cheerful as need be. 
 
 Going apart, in this Chmxh, to see some painting 
 which was bemg executed in fresco by a French artist 
 and his pupil, I was led to obsei^ve more closely than I 
 might otherwise have done, a great number of votive 
 offerings with which the walls of the different chapels 
 were profusely limig. I will not say decorated, for they 
 were very roughly and comically got up : most likely by 
 poor sign-painters, who eke out their living in that way. 
 They were all little pictures : each representing some 
 siclmess or calamity from which the person placing it 
 there, had escaped, through the intei-position of his or 
 her patron saint, or of the Madonna ; and I may refer 
 to them as good specimens of the class generally. They 
 are abundant in Italy. 
 
 In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility 
 of perspective, they were not unlike the woodcuts in old 
 books ; but they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like 
 
AVIGNON. 23 
 
 the painter of the Primrose family, had not been sparing 
 of his colonics. In one, a lady was having a toe ampu- 
 tated — an operation which a saintly personage had sailed 
 into the room, upon a cloud, to superintend. In another, 
 a lady was l)^ng in bed, tucked up veiy tight and prim, 
 and staring with much composure at a tripod, with a 
 slop-basin on it : the usual form of washing-stand, and 
 the only piece of furniture, besides the bedstead, in her 
 chamber. One would never have supposed her to be 
 labouiing under any complaint, beyond the inconvenience 
 of being miraculously wide awake, if the painter had not 
 hit upon the idea of putting all her family on their knees in 
 one comer, with their legs sticking out behind them on 
 the floor, like boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, on 
 a kind of blue divan, promised to restore the patient. 
 In another case, a lady was in the very act of being run 
 over, immediately outside the city walls, by a sort of 
 piano-forte van. But the Madonna was there again. 
 Whether the supernatural appearance had startled the 
 horse (a bay griffin), or whether it was invisible to him, 
 I don't know; but he was gallopping away, ding-dong, 
 without the smallest reverence or compunction. On 
 every picture "Exvoto" was painted in yellow capi- 
 tals in the sky. 
 
 Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan 
 Temples, and are evidently among the many compromises 
 made between the false religion and the true, when the 
 true was in its infancy, I could wish that all the other 
 compromises were as harmless. Gratitude and Devotion 
 are Christian qualities ; and a grateful, humble. Christian 
 spirit may dictate the observance. 
 
Q4 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Hard by the cathedral, stands the ancient Palace of 
 the Popes, of which one portion is now a common jail, 
 and another a noisy barrack: while gloomy suites of 
 state apartments, shut up and deserted, mock their own 
 old state and glor}% like the embalmed bodies of kings. 
 But we neither went there, to see state-rooms, nor 
 soldiers' quarters, nor a common jail, though we 
 dropped some money into a prisoner's box outside, 
 whilst the prisoners, themselves, looked through the 
 iron bars, high up, and watched us eagerly. We went 
 to see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which the 
 Inquisition used to sit. 
 
 A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing 
 black eyes, — proof that the world hadn't conjm'ed down 
 the devil withm her, though it had had between sixty 
 and seventy years to do it in, — came out of the Barrack 
 Cabaret, of which she was the keeper, with some large 
 keys in her hands, and marshalled us the way that we 
 should go. How she told us, on the way, that she was 
 a Government Officer {concierge du ^jrtZazs cqwstoliqne), 
 and had been, for I don't know how many years ; and 
 liow she had shown these dungeons to princes ; and how 
 she was the best of dungeon demonstrators ; and how 
 she had resided in the palace from an infant, — had been 
 bom there, if I recollect right, — I needn't relate. But 
 such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic, she-devil 
 I never beheld. She was alight and flaming, all the 
 time. Her action was violent in the extreme. She 
 never spoke, without stopping expressly for the purpose. 
 She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung 
 herself into attitudes, hammered against walls with her 
 
AVIGNON. 25 
 
 keys, for mere emphasis : now whispered as if the 
 Inquisition were there still : now shrieked as if she were 
 on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-like way 
 with her forefinger, when approaching the remains of» 
 some new horror — looldng back and walking stealthily, 
 and making horrible grimaces — that might alone have 
 qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's counter- 
 pane, to the exclusion of all other figm-es, through a 
 whole fever. 
 
 Passing through the com't-yard, among groups of idle 
 soldiers, we turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin 
 unlocked for our admission, and locked again behind us : 
 and entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by fallen 
 stones and heaps of rubbish ; part of it choldng up the 
 mouth of a ruined subterranean passage, that once 
 communicated (or is said to have done so) with another 
 castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close to this 
 court-yard, is a dungeon — we stood within it, in another 
 minute — hi the dismal tower cles oubliettes, where Rienzi 
 was imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to the very 
 wall that stands there now, but shut out from the sky 
 which now looks down into it. A few steps brought us 
 to the Cachots, in wliich the prisoners of the Inquisition 
 were confined for forty-eight hom'S after their captm'e, 
 without food or drink, that their constancy might be 
 shaken, even before they were confronted with their 
 gloomy judges. The day has not got in there yet. 
 They are still small cells, shut in by fom' unyielding, 
 close, hard walls ; still profomidly dark ; still massively 
 doored and fastened, as of old. 
 
 Gobhn, looking back as I have described, went softly 
 
26 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 on, into a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room : 
 once the chapel of the holy office. The place where 
 the tribunal sat, was plain. The platfoim might have 
 been removed but yesterday. Conceive the parable of 
 the Good Samaritan havhig been painted on the wall of 
 one of these Inquisition chambers ! But it was, and may 
 be traced there yet. 
 
 High up in the jealous wall, ai'e niches where the 
 faltering replies of the accused were heard and noted 
 down. Many of them had been brought out of the very- 
 cell we had just looked into, so awfully ; along the same 
 stone passage. We had trodden in their veiy footsteps. 
 
 I am gazing romid me, mth the horror that the place 
 inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and 
 lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, 
 upon her lip. She invites me, with a jerk, to follow 
 her. I do so. She leads me out into a room adjoining 
 — a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, 
 open at the top, to the bright day. I ask her what it is. 
 She folds her arms, leers hideously, and stares. I ask 
 agam. She glances round, to see that all the little 
 company are there ; sits down upon a mound of stones ; 
 throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend, " La 
 Salle de la Question ! " 
 
 The Chamber of Torture ! And the roof was made 
 of that shape to stifle the victim's cries ! Oh Goblin, 
 Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in silence. Peace, 
 Goblin ! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short 
 legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, 
 and then flame out again. 
 
 Minutes ! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace 
 
AVIGNON. 27 
 
 clock, when, with her eyes flashing fire, GobHu is up, 
 in the middle of the chamber, describmg, with her sun- 
 burnt arms, a wheel of heavy blows. Thus it ran round ! 
 cries Goblin. Mash, mash, mash ! An endless routine 
 of heavy hammers. Mash, mash, mash ! upon the 
 sufferer's limbs. See the stone trough ! says Goblin. 
 For the water torture ! Gm'gle, swill, bloat, burst, 
 for the Redeemer s honour ! Suck the bloody rag, 
 deep down into yom* mibelieving body. Heretic, at evei'}' 
 breath you draw ! And when the executioner plucks 
 it out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God s own 
 Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers 
 in the Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples of Him 
 who never did a miracle but to heal : who never struck 
 a man with palsy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, mad- 
 ness, any one affliction of mankind ; and never stretched 
 His blessed hand out, but to give relief and ease ! 
 
 See I cries Goblin. There the fmiiace was. There 
 they made the irons red-hot. Those holes supported 
 the sharp stake, on which the tortured persons hung 
 poised : dangling with their whole weight from the roof. 
 " But ; " and Goblin whispers this ; " Monsiem' has 
 heard of this tower ? Yes ? Let Monsieur look down, 
 then ! " 
 
 A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the 
 face of Monsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, 
 a trap-door in the wall. Monsiem- looks in. Downward 
 to the bottom, upward to the top, of a steep, dark, lofty 
 tower : very dismal, veiy dark, very cold. The Execu- 
 tioner of the Inquisition, says Goblin, edging in her 
 head to look down also, flung those who were past all 
 
28 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 further torturing, down here. " But look ! does Mon- 
 sieur see the black stains on the wall?" A glance, 
 over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen eye, shows Mon- 
 sieur — and would without the aid of the directing-key — 
 where they are. " What are they ? " " Blood ! " 
 
 In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its 
 height here, sixty persons : men and women (" and 
 priests," says Goblin, "priests"): were murdered, and 
 hurled, the dying and the dead, into this dreadful 
 pit, where a quantity of quick-lime was tumbled down 
 upon their bodies. Those ghastly tokens of the mas- 
 sacre were soon no more ; but while one stone of the 
 strong building in which the deed was done, remains 
 upon another, there they will lie in the memories of 
 men, as plain to see as the splashing of their blood upon 
 the wall is now. 
 
 Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retribution, 
 that the cruel deed should be committed in this place I 
 That a part of the atrocities and monstrous mstitutions, 
 which had been, for scores of years, at work, to change 
 men's nature, should in its last service, tempt them with 
 the ready means of gratifying their furious and beastly 
 rage ! Should enable them to show themselves, in the 
 height of their frenzy, no worse than a great, solenm, 
 legal establishment, in the height of its power ! No 
 worse ! Much better. They used the Tower of the 
 Forgotten, in the name of Liberty — their liberty; an 
 earth-born creature, nursed in the black mud of the 
 Bastille moats and dungeons, and necessarily betraying 
 many evidences of its unwholesome bringing-up — but 
 the Inquisition used it in the name of Heaven. 
 
AVIGNON. 29 
 
 Goblin's finger is lifted; and she steals out again, 
 into the Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a 
 certain part of the flooring. Her great effect is at hand. 
 She waits for the rest. She darts at the brave Courier, 
 who is explaming something ; hits him a somiding rap 
 on the hat with the largest key ; and bids him be silent. 
 She assembles us all, round a little trap-door in the floor, 
 as romid a grave. " Voila!" she darts down at the 
 ring, and flings the door open with a crash, in her goblin 
 energy, though it is no light weight. " Voila les oubli- 
 ettes ! Voila les oubliettes ! Subterranean ! Frightful ! 
 Black ! Terrible ! Deadly ! Les oubliettes de 1 Inqui- 
 sition!" 
 
 My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down 
 into the vaults, where these forgotten creatures, with 
 recollections of the world outside : of wives, friends, 
 children, brothers : starved to death, and made the 
 stones ring with their miavailing groans. But, the 
 thrill I felt on seeing the accursed wall below, decayed 
 and broken through, and the sun shining in through its 
 gaping wounds, w^as like a sense of victory and triumph. 
 I felt exalted with the proud delight of living, in these 
 degenerate times, to see it. As if I were the hero of 
 some high achievement ! The light in the doleful 
 vaults was t}^ical of the light that has streamed in, on 
 all persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at 
 its noon ! It cannot look more lovely to a blind man 
 newly restored to sight, than to a traveller who sees it, 
 calmly and majestically, treading down the darkness of 
 that Infernal Well. 
 
AVIGNON TO GENOA. 
 
 Goblin, having shown les oubliettes, felt that her 
 great coup was struck. She let the door fall with a crash, 
 and stood upon it with her arms a-ldmbo, sniffing 
 prodigiously. 
 
 Wlien we left the place, I accompanied her into her 
 house, under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a 
 little history of the building. Her cabaret, a dark low 
 room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the thick wall — 
 m the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney ; 
 its little comiter by the door, with bottles, jars, and 
 glasses on it; its household implements and scraps of 
 dress against the walls ; and a sober-looking woman (she 
 must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin,) knitting 
 at the door — looked exactly like a picture by Ostade. 
 
 I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort 
 of dream, and yet with the delightful sense of having 
 awakened from it, of which the light, down in the vaults, 
 had given me the assm^ance. The immense thickness 
 and giddy height of the walls, the enormous strength of 
 the massive towers, the great extent of the building, 
 its gigantic proportions, frowning aspect, and barbarous 
 
AVIGNON. 31 
 
 irregularity, awaken awe and wonder. The recollection 
 of its opposite old uses : an impregnable fortress, a 
 luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of torture, the 
 court of the Inquisition : at one and the same time, a 
 house of feasting, fighting, religion, and blood : gives to 
 every stone in its huge form a fearful interest, and im- 
 parts new meaning to its incongruities. I could think of 
 little, however, then, or long aftei*wards, but the sun in 
 the dungeons. The palace commg down to be the 
 lounging-place of noisy soldiers, and being forced to 
 echo their rough talk, and common oaths, and to have 
 their garments fluttering from its dirty windows, was 
 some reduction of its state, and something to rejoice at ; 
 but the day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of its 
 chambers of cruelty — that was its desolation and defeat ! 
 If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I 
 should have felt that not that light, nor all the light in 
 all the fire that bmns, could waste it, like the sunbeams 
 in its secret council-chamber, and its prisons. 
 
 Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me trans- 
 late from the little histoiy I mentioned just now, a short 
 anecdote, quite appropriate to itself, connected with its 
 adventm'es. 
 
 " An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew 
 of Pierre de Lude, the Pope s legate, seriously insulted 
 some distinguished ladies of A\dgnon, whose relations, 
 in revenge, seized the young man, and honibly muti- 
 lated him. For several years the legate kept his revenge 
 within his own breast, but he was not the less resolved 
 upon its gratification at last. He even made, in the 
 
32 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 fulness of time, advances towards a complete reconcilia- 
 tion ; and when their apparent sincerity had prevailed, 
 he invited to a splendid banquet, in this palace, certain 
 families, whole families, whom he sought to exterminate. 
 The utmost gaiety animated the repast; but the mea- 
 sures of the legate were well taken. When the dessert 
 was on the board, a Swiss presented himself, ^ith the 
 announcement that a strange ambassador solicited an 
 extraordinary audience. The legate, excusing himself, 
 for the moment, to his guests, retired, followed by his 
 officers. Within a few moments afterwards, five hun- 
 dred persons were reduced to ashes : the whole of that 
 whig of the building having been blown into the air 
 with a terrible explosion ! " 
 
 After seeing the churches, (I \\'ill not trouble you 
 with churches just now,) we left Avignon that after- 
 noon. The heat being veiy great, the roads outside 
 the walls were stre^^n with people fast asleep in ever)' 
 little slip of shade, and with lazy groups, half asleep and 
 half awake, who were waiting until the sun should be 
 low enough to admit of their playing bowls among the 
 bunit-up trees, and on the dusty road. The han^est 
 here, was already gathered in, and mules and horses 
 were treading out the com in the fields. We came, at 
 dusk, upon a wild and hilly comitr}% once famous for 
 brigands : and travelled slowly up a steep ascent. So 
 we went on, until eleven at night, when we halted at the 
 town of Aix (within two stages of Marseilles) to sleep. 
 
 The hotel, mth all the blinds and shutters closed to 
 keep the light and heat out, was comfortable and aiiy 
 
ItARSEILLES. 33 
 
 next moming, and the town -was very clean ; but so hot, 
 and so intensely light, that when I walked out at noon 
 it was like coming suddenly from the darkened room 
 into crisp blue fii'e. The air was so veiy clear, that 
 distant hills and rocky points appeared within an hour's 
 walk : while the town immediately at hand — with a kind 
 of blue wind between me and it — seemed to be white 
 hot, and to be throwing off a fieiy air from its surface. 
 
 We left this town towards evening, and took the road 
 to Marseilles. A dusty road it was; the houses shut 
 up close; and the vines powdered white. At nearly all 
 the cottage doors, women were peeling and slicing onions 
 into earthen bowls for supper. So they had been doing 
 last night all the way from Avignon. We passed one 
 or two shady dark chateaux, surrounded by trees, and 
 embellished with cool basins of water : which were the 
 more refreshing to behold, from the great scai'city of 
 such residences on the road we had travelled. As we 
 approached Marseilles, the road began to be covered 
 with hohday people. Outside the public-houses were 
 parties smoking, drinking, playing draughts and cards, 
 and (once) dancing. But dust, dust, dust, everywhere. 
 We went on, thi'ough a long, straggling, dirty suburb, 
 thronged with people ; having on our left a dreaiy slope 
 of land, on which the countiy-houses of the Marseilles 
 merchants, always staring white, are jumbled and heaped 
 without the slightest order: backs, fronts, sides, and 
 gables towards all points of the compass ; until, at last, 
 we entered the tovm. 
 
 I was there, twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather 
 
 D 
 
34 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and foul ; and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a 
 dirty and disagi'eeable place. But the prospect, from 
 the fortified heights, of the beautiful Mediterranean, 
 with its lovely rocks and islands, is most delightful. 
 These heights are a desirable retreat, for less picturesque 
 reasons — as an escape from a compound of vile smells 
 perpetually arising fi'om a great harbour full of stagnant 
 water, and befouled by the refuse of iimumerable ships 
 with all sorts of cargoes : which, in hot weather, is 
 dreadful in the last degree. 
 
 There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the 
 streets ; with red shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny 
 shirts, and shirts of orange colour; with red caps, blue 
 caps, green caps, great beards, and no beards; in 
 Turkish turbans, glazed English hats, and Neapohtan 
 head-dresses. There were the townspeople sitting in 
 clusters on the pavement, or airing themselves on the 
 tops of their houses, or walldng up and down the closest 
 and least airy of Boulevards; and there were crowds 
 of fierce-looking people of the lower sort, blocldng up 
 the way, constantly. In the very heart of all this stir 
 and uproar, was the common madhouse; a low, con- 
 tracted, miserable building, looking straight upon the 
 street, without the smallest screen or comt-yard ; where 
 chattering madmen and mad-women were peeping out, 
 through rusty bars, at the staring faces below, while the 
 sun, darting fiercely aslant into their little cells, seemed 
 to dry up their brains, and wony them, as if they were 
 baited by a pack of dogs. 
 
 We were pretty well accommodated at the Hotel du 
 
MARSEILLES. 35 
 
 Paradis, situated in a nari'ow street of very high houses, 
 with a hau'dresser s shop opposite, exhibiting in one of 
 its windows two full-length waxen ladies, twirling round 
 and round : which so enchanted the hairdresser himself, 
 that he and his family sat in arm-chairs, and in cool 
 undresses, on the pavement outside, enjopng the grati- 
 fication of the passers-hy, with lazy dignity. The family 
 had retired to rest when we went to bed, at midnight ; 
 but the hahdresser (a corpulent man, in drab slippers) was 
 still sitting there, with his legs stretched out before him, 
 and evidently couldn't bear to have the shutters put up. 
 Next day we went down to the harbom*, where the 
 sailors of all nations were discharging and taking in 
 cargoes of all kinds : fruits, wuies, oils, silks, stuffs, 
 velvets, and every manner of merchandise. Taking one 
 of a gi'eat number of lively little boats with gay-striped 
 awnings, we rowed away, under the sterns of great 
 ships, under tow-ropes and cables, against and among 
 other boats, and very much too near the sides of vessels 
 that were faint with oranges, to the Marie Antoinette, 
 a handsome steamer bound for Genoa, lyhig near the 
 mouth of the harbom\ By-and-by, the carriage, that 
 unwieldy "trifle from the Pantechnicon," on a flat barge, 
 bumping against everything, and giving occasion for a 
 prodigious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly 
 alongside ; and by five o'clock we were steaming out in 
 the open sea. The vessel was beautifully clean; the 
 meals were sen^ ed imder an awning on deck ; the night 
 was calm and clear ; the quiet beauty of the sea and sky 
 unspeakable. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 We were off Nice, early next morning, and coasted 
 along, within a few miles of the Cornice road (of which 
 more in its place) nearly all day. We could see Genoa 
 hefore three ; and watching it as it gradually developed 
 its splendid amphitheatre, terrace rising above terrace, 
 garden above garden, palace above palace, height upon 
 height, was ample occupation for us, till we ran into the 
 stately harbour. Having been duly astonished, here, by 
 the sight of a few Cappuccini monks, who were watching 
 the fair-weighing of some wood upon the wharf, we drove 
 off to Albaro, two miles distant, where we had engaged 
 a house. 
 
 The way lay through the main streets, but not through 
 the Strada Nuova, or the Strada Balbi, which are the 
 famous streets of palaces. I never, in my life, was so 
 dismayed ! The wonderful novelty of everything, the 
 unusual smells, the unaccountable filth (though it is 
 reckoned the cleanest of Italian towns), the disorderly 
 jumbling of dirty houses, one upon the roof of another ; 
 the passages more squalid and more close than any in 
 Saint Giles's, or old Paris : in and out of which, not 
 vagabonds, but well-dressed women, with white veils 
 and great fans, were passing and repassing ; the perfect 
 absence of resemblance in any dwellmg-house, or shop, 
 or wall, or post, or pillar, to anything one had ever seen 
 before ; and the disheartening dirt, discomfort, and 
 decay; perfectly confounded me. I fell into a dismal 
 reverie. I am conscious of a feverish and bewildered 
 vision of saints and virgins' shrines at the street comers 
 — of great numbers of friars, monks, and soldiers — of 
 
GENOA. 37 
 
 vast red curtains, waving in the door-ways of the churches 
 — of always going up hill, and yet seeing every other 
 street and passage going higher up — of fruit-stalls, with 
 fresh lemons and oranges hanging in garlands made of 
 vine-leaves — of a guard-house, and a drawbridge — and 
 some gateways — and vendors of iced water, sitting with 
 little trays upon the margin of the kennel — and this is 
 all the consciousness I had, until I was set down in a 
 rank, dull, weedy court-yard, attached to a kind of pink 
 jail ; and was told I lived there. 
 
 I little thought, that day, that I should ever come to 
 have an attachment for the very stones in the streets of 
 Genoa, and to look back upon the city with affection as 
 connected with many hom's of happiness and quiet ! 
 But these are my first impressions honestly set down ; 
 and how they changed, I will set down too. At present, 
 let us breathe after this long-winded journey. 
 
GENOA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 
 
 The first impressions of such a place as Albaro, the 
 suburb of Genoa where I am now, as my Americau 
 friends would say, " located," can hardly fail, I should 
 imagine, to be mournful and disappointing. It requires 
 a little time and use to overcome the feeling of depres- 
 sion consequent, at first, on so much ruin and neglect. 
 Novelty, pleasant to most people, is particularly dehght- 
 fal, I think, to me. I am not easily dispirited when I 
 have the means of pursuing my own fancies and occu- 
 pations ; and I believe I have some natm*al aptitude for 
 accommodating myself to circumstances. But, as yet, 
 I stroll about here, in all the holes and comers of the 
 neighbourhood, in a pei^etual state of forlorn surprise ; 
 and returning to my villa ; the Villa Bagnerello ; (it 
 sounds romantic, but Signer Bagnerello is a butcher 
 hard by,) have sufficient occupation in pondering over 
 my new experiences, and comparing them, very much 
 to my own amusement, with my expectations, until I 
 wander out again. 
 
 The Villa Bagnerello : or the Pink Jail, a far 
 more expressive name for the mansion: is in one of 
 
GENOA. 39 
 
 the most splendid situations imaginable. The noble 
 bay of Genoa, with the deep blue Mediterranean, lie 
 stretched out near at hand; monstrous old desolate 
 houses and palaces are dotted all about; lofty hills, 
 with their tops often hidden in the clouds, and with 
 strong forts perched high up on their craggy sides, are 
 close upon the left ; and in front, stretching from the 
 walls of the house, down to a ruined chapel which stands 
 upon the bold and pictui-esque rocks on the sea-shore, 
 are green vineyards, where you may wander all day long 
 in partial shade, through interminable vistas of grapes, 
 trained on a rough trellis- work across the narrow paths. 
 
 This sequestered spot is approached by lanes so very 
 narrow, that when we anived at the Custom-house, we 
 found the people here, had taken the measure of the 
 narrowest among them, and were waiting to apply it to 
 the cai'riage ; which ceremony was gi'avely performed in 
 the street, while we all stood by, in breathless suspense. 
 It was found to be a very tight fit, but just a possibility, 
 and no more — as I am reminded every day, by the sight 
 of various large holes which it punched in the walls on 
 either side as it came along. We are more fortunate, I 
 am told, than an old lady who took a house in these 
 parts not long ago, and who stuck fast in her carriage 
 in a lane ; and as it was impossible to open one of the 
 doors, she was obliged to submit to the indignity of 
 being hauled through one of the little front windows, 
 like a harlequin. 
 
 When you have got through these nan'ow lanes, 
 you come to an archway, imperfectly stopped up by a 
 
40 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 iiisty old gate — my gate. The rusty old gate has a bell 
 to correspond, which you rmg as long as you like, and 
 which nobody answers, as it has no connexion whatever 
 with the house. But there is a rusty old knocker, too- 
 very loose, so that it slides round when you touch it — 
 and if you learn the trick of it, and knock long enough, 
 somebody comes. The Brave Courier comes, and gives 
 you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden, 
 all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard opens; 
 cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a 
 cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous 
 room with a vaulted roof aiid whitewashed walls: not 
 unlike a great methodist chapel. This is the sala. It 
 has five windows and five doors, and is decorated with 
 pictures wliich would gladden the heart of one of those 
 picture-cleaners in London who hang up, as a sign, a 
 picture divided, like death and the lady, at the top of 
 the old ballad: which always leaves you in a state of 
 micertainty whether the ingenious professor has cleaned 
 one half or dirtied the other. The fumitm*e of this sala 
 is a sort of red brocade. All the chairs are immovable, 
 and the sofa weighs several tons. 
 
 On the same floor, and opening out of this same 
 chamber, are dining-room, drawing-room, and divers 
 bed-rooms : each with a multiplicity of doore and 
 windows. Up stairs are divers other gaunt chambers, 
 and a kitchen ; and down stairs is another kitchen, 
 which, with all sorts of strange contrivances for burning 
 charcoal, looks like an alchemical laboratory. There are 
 also some half-dozen small sitting-rooms, where the 
 
GENOA. 41 
 
 servants, in this hot July, may escape from the heat of 
 the fire, and where the Brave Courier plays all sorts of 
 musical instruments of his own manufacture, all the 
 evening long. A mighty old, wandering, ghostly, 
 echomg, grim, bare house it is, as ever I beheld or 
 thought of. 
 
 There is a little vine-covered terrace, openmg from 
 the drawing-room; and under this ten'ace, and forming 
 one side of the little garden, is what used to be the 
 stable. It is now a cow-house, and has three cows in it, 
 so that we get new milk by the bucket-full. There is 
 no pasturage near, and they never go out, but are 
 constantly lying down and sm'feiting themselves with 
 vine -leaves — perfect Italian cows — enjoying the dolce 
 far niente all day long. They are presided over, and 
 slept with, by an old man named Antonio, and his son : 
 two burnt-sienna natives with naked legs and feet, who 
 wear, each, a shirt, a paii' of trousers, and a red sash, 
 with a relic, or some sacred chaim like a bonbon o£P a 
 twelfth cake, hanguig round the neck. The old man 
 is veiy anxious to convert me to the Catholic Faith; 
 and exhorts me frequently. We sit upon a stone by the 
 door, sometimes, in the eveniug, like Robinson Crusoe 
 and Friday reversed ; and he generally relates, towards 
 my conversion, an abridgment of the History of Saint 
 Peter — chiefly, I beheve, fi'om the imspeakable delight 
 he has in his imitation of the cock. 
 
 The view, as I have said, is charming ; but in the 
 day you must keep the lattice-bhnds close shut, or 
 the sun would drive you mad ; and when the sun goes 
 
42 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 down, you must shut up all the windows, or the mosqui- 
 toes would tempt you to commit suicide.. So at this 
 time of tho year, you don't see much of the prospect 
 within doors. As for the flies, you don't mind them. 
 Nor the fleas, whose size is prodigious, and whose name 
 is Legion, and who populate the coach-house to that 
 extent that I daily expect to see the carriage going oif 
 bodily, drawn by myriads of mdustrious fleas in harness. 
 The rats are kept away, quite comfortably, by scores of 
 lean cats, who roam about the garden for that purpose. 
 The lizards, of course, nobody cares for ; they play in 
 the sun, and don't bite. The little scorpions are merely 
 curious. The beetles are rather late, and have not 
 appeared yet. The frogs are company. There is a pre- 
 serve of them in the grounds of the next villa; and 
 after night-fall, one would think that scores upon scores 
 of women in pattens, were going up and down a wet 
 stone pavement without a moment's cessation. That is 
 exactly the noise they make. 
 
 The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful 
 sea-shore, was dedicated, once upon a time, to Saint John 
 the Baptist. I believe there is a legend that Saint 
 John's bones were received there, with various solemni- 
 ties, when they w^ere first brought to Genoa ; for Genoa 
 possesses them to this day. When there is any im- 
 common tempest at sea, they are brought out, and 
 exhibited to the raging weather, which they never fail to 
 calm. In consequence of this connexion of Saint Jolm with 
 the city, great numbers of the common people are chris- 
 tened Giovanni Baptista, which latter name is pronounced 
 
GENOA. 43 
 
 in the Genoese j^atots "Batcheetcha,"like a sneeze. To 
 hear everybody calling everybody else Batcheetcha, on a 
 Sunday, or Festa-day, when there are crowds in the 
 streets, is not a little singular and amusing to a stranger. 
 
 The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, 
 whose walls (outside walls, I mean,) are profusely painted 
 with all sorts of subjects, grim and holy. But time 
 and the sea-air have nearly obliterated them ; and they 
 look like the entrance to Vauxhall Gardens on a sunny 
 day. The court-yards of these houses, are overgrown 
 with grass and weeds ; all sorts of hideous patches cover 
 the bases of the statues, as if they were afflicted with a 
 cutaneous disorder; the outer gates are rusty; and the 
 iron bars outside the lower windows are all tumbling 
 down. Firewood is kept in halls where costly treasures 
 might be heaped up, mountains high ; water-falls are dry 
 and choked.; fountains, too dull to play, and too lazy to 
 work, have just enough recollection of their identity, in 
 their sleep, to make the neighbourhood damp ; and the 
 sirocco wind is often blowing over all these things for 
 days together, like a gigantic oven out for a holiday. 
 
 Not long ago, there was a festa day, in honour of the 
 Virgins mother, when the young men of the neighbour- 
 hood, having worn green wreaths of the vine ui some 
 procession or other, bathed in them, by scores. It looked 
 very odd and pretty. Though I am bound to confess 
 (not knowing of the festa at that time), that I thought, 
 and was quite satisfied, they wore them as horses do — 
 to keep the flies off. 
 
 Soon afterwards, there was another festa day, in 
 
44 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 honour of a St. Nazaro. One of the Albaro young men 
 brought two large bouquets soon after brealdast, and 
 coming up-stairs into the great sala, presented them 
 himself. This was a polite way of begging for a contri- 
 bution towards the expenses of some music in the Saint's 
 honour, so we gave him whatever it may have been, 
 and his messenger departed: well satisfied. At six 
 o'clock in the evenmg we went to the church — close 
 at hand — a very gaudy place, hung all over with fes- 
 toons and bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to 
 the main door, with women, all seated. They wear no 
 bonnets here, simply a long white veil — the "mezzero;" 
 and it was the most gauzy, ethereal-looking audience I 
 ever saw. The young women are not generally pretty, 
 but they walk remarkably well, and in their personal 
 carriage and the management of their veils, display 
 much innate grace and elegance. There -were some 
 men present : not very many : and a few of these 
 were kneeling about the aisles, while everybody else 
 tumbled over them. Innumerable tapers were burning 
 in the church; the bits of silver and tin about the 
 saints (especially in the Virgin's necldace) sparkled 
 brilliantly ; the priests were seated about the chief 
 altar ; the organ played away, lustily, and a full band 
 did the like ; while a conductor, in a little galleiy op- 
 posite to the band, hammered away on the desk before 
 him with a scroll ; and a tenor, without any voice, sang. 
 The band played one way, the organ played another, the 
 singer went a tliird, and the unfortunate conductor banged 
 and banged, and flourished his scroll on some principle 
 
GENOA, 45 
 
 of his own : apparently well satisfied with the whole 
 performance. I never did hear such a discordant din. 
 The heat was intense all the time. 
 
 The men, in red caps, and with loose coats hanging on 
 their shoulders (they never put them on), were plapng 
 bowls, and buying sweetmeats, immediately outside the 
 church. When half-a-dozen of them finished a game, 
 they came into the aisle, crossed themselves with the 
 holy water, knelt on one knee for an instant, and walked 
 off" again to play another game at bowls. They are 
 remarkably expert at this diversion, and will play in the 
 stony lanes and streets, and on the most uneven and 
 disastrous ground for such a purpose, with as much 
 nicety as on a billiard-table. But the most favourite 
 game is the national one of Mora, which they pursue 
 with surprising ardoui', and at which they will stake 
 everything they possess. It is a destmctive kind of 
 gamljling, requiiing no accessaries but the ten fingers, 
 which are always — I intend no pun — at hand. T^\X) 
 men play together. One calls a number — say the 
 extreme one, ten. He marks what portion of it he 
 pleases by throwing out three, or fom% or five, fingers ; 
 and his adversary has, in the same instant, at hazard, 
 and without seeing his hand, to throw out as many 
 fingers as will make the exact balance. Their eyes 
 and hands become so used to this, and act with such 
 astonishing rapidity, that an uninitiated bystander 
 would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to follow 
 the progress of the game. The initiated, however, of 
 whom there is always an eager group looking on, devour 
 
46 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 it with the most intense avidity ; and as they are always 
 ready to champion one side or the other in case of a 
 dispute, and are frequently divided in their partizanship, 
 it is often a very noisy proceeding. It is never the 
 quietest game in the world ; for the numbers are always 
 called in a loud sharp voice, and follow as close upon 
 each other as they can be counted. On a holiday 
 evening, standing at a window, or walking in a garden, 
 or passing through the streets, or sauntering in any 
 quiet place about the town, you will hear this game in 
 progress in a score of wine-shops at once ; and looking 
 over any vineyard walk, or turning almost any corner, 
 will come upon a knot of players in full cry. It is 
 observable that most men have a propensity to throw 
 out some particular number oftener than another; and 
 the vigilance with which two sharp-eyed players will 
 mutually endeavour to detect this weakness, and adapt 
 their game to it, is very curious and entertaining. The 
 effect is greatly heightened by the universal suddenness 
 and vehemence of gesture ; two men playing for half a 
 farthing with an intensity as all-absorbing as if the stake 
 were .life. 
 
 Hard by here, is a large Palazzo, formerly belonging 
 to some member of the Brignole family, but just now 
 hired by a school of Jesuits for their summer quarters. 
 I walked into its dismantled precincts the other evening 
 about smiset, and couldn't help pacing up and down 
 for a little time, drowsily taking in the aspect of the 
 place : which is repeated hereabouts in all directions. 
 
 I loitered to and fro, under a colonnade, forming two 
 
GENOA. 47 
 
 sides of a weedy, grass-grown court-yard, whereof the 
 house formed a third side, and a low terrace-walk, over- 
 looking the garden and the neighbouiing hills, the 
 fourth. I don't believe there was an uncracked stone 
 in the whole pavement. In the centre, was a melancholy 
 statue, so piebald in its decay, that it looked exactly as 
 if it had been covered with sticking-plaster, and after- 
 wards powdered. The stables, coach-houses, offices, 
 were all empty, all ruinous, all utterly deserted. 
 
 Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on 
 by their latches ; windows were broken, painted plaster 
 had peeled off, and was lying about in clods ; fowls and 
 cats had so taken possession of the out-buildings, that 
 I couldn't help thinking of the faiiy tales, and eyeing 
 them with suspicion, as transformed retainers, waiting 
 to be changed back again. One old Tom in particular : 
 a scraggy brute, with a hungiy green eye (a poor relation, 
 in reality, I am inclined to think) : came prowling round 
 and round me, as if he half believed, for the moment, 
 that I might be the hero come to maiTy the lady, and 
 set all to-rights ; but discovering his mistake, he sud- 
 denly gave a grim snarl, and walked away with such a 
 tremendous tail, that he couldn't get into the little hole 
 where he lived, but was obliged to wait outside, until his 
 indignation and his tail had gone down together. 
 
 In a sort of summer-house, or whatever it may be 
 in this colonnade, some Englishmen had been livuig, 
 like gmbs in a nut ; but the Jesuits had given them 
 notice to go, and they had gone, and tlio.t was shut up 
 too. The house : a wandering, echoing, thundering bar- 
 
48 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 rack of a place, with the lower windows barred up, as 
 usual, was wide open at the door : and I have no doubt 
 I might have gone in, and gone to bed, and gone dead, 
 and nobody a bit the wiser. Only one suite of rooms 
 on an upper floor was tenanted ; and from one of these, 
 the voice of a young-lady vocalist, practising bravura 
 lustily, came flaunting out upon the silent evening. 
 
 I went down into the garden, intended to be prim 
 and quaint, with avenues, and terraces, and orange- 
 trees, and statues, and water in stone basins ; and every- 
 thing was green, gaunt, weedy, stragglmg, under grown, 
 or over grown, mildewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of 
 slabby, clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable life. There 
 was nothuig bright in the whole scene but a firefly — one 
 solitary firefly — showing against the dark bushes like the 
 last little speck of the departed Glory of the house ; 
 and even it went flittmg up and down at sudden angles, 
 and leaving a place with a jerk, and describing an irreg- 
 ular circle, and returning to the same place with a twitch 
 that startled one : as if it were looking for the rest of 
 the Glory, and wond^ering (Heaven Imows it might!) 
 what had become of it. 
 
 In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and 
 shadows of my dismal entering reverie gradually resolved 
 themselves into familiar forms and substances; and I 
 already began to think that when the time should come, 
 a year hence, for closing the long holiday and turning 
 back to England, I might part from Genoa with any- 
 thing but a glad heart. 
 
GENOA. 49 
 
 It is a place that " grows upon you" eveiy day. There 
 seems to be always something to find out m it. There are 
 the most extraordinaiy alleys and by-ways to walk about 
 in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when 
 you are idle !) twenty times a-day, if you like ; and turn 
 up again, under the most unexpected and sm^prising diffi- 
 culties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts ; things 
 that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, 
 and offensive, break upon the view at every turn. 
 
 They who would know how beautiful the country im- 
 mediately surrounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear 
 weather) to the top of Monte Faccio, or, at least, ride 
 romid the city walls : a feat more easily performed. No 
 prospect can be more diversified and lovely than the 
 changing views of the harbour, and the valleys of the 
 two rivers, the Polcevera and the Bizagno, from the 
 heights along which the strongly-fortified walls are 
 carried, lilve the great wall of China in little. In not 
 the least picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair 
 specimen of a real Genoese tavern, where the visitor 
 may derive good entertainment from real Genoese 
 dishes, such as Tagliaiini ; Ra\ioli ; German sausages, 
 strong of garlick, sliced and eaten with fresh green figs ; 
 cocks' combs and sheep-kidneys, chopped up with 
 mutton-chops and liver ; small pieces of some unkno\Mi 
 part of a calf, twisted into small shreds, fried, and 
 served up in a gi'eat dish like white-bait ; and other 
 curiosities of that kind. They often get wine at these 
 subm'ban Trattorie, from France and Spain and Portu- 
 gal, which is brought over by small captains m little 
 
 E 
 
50 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 trading-vessels. They buy it at so much a bottle, 
 without asldng what it is, or caring to remember if any- 
 body tells them, and usually divide it into two heaps; 
 of which they label one Champagne, and the other 
 Madeira. The various op^^osite flavours, qualities, 
 comitries, ages, and vintages that are comprised under 
 these two general heads is quite extraordinary. The 
 most limited range is probably from cool Giniel up to old 
 Marsala, and down again to apple Tea. 
 
 The great majority of the streets are as naiTOw as 
 any thoroughfare can well be, where people (even Italian 
 people) are supposed to live and walk about ; being mere 
 lanes, with here, and there, a Idnd of well, or breathing- 
 place. The houses are immensely high, painted in all 
 sorts of colours, and are in every stage and state of 
 damage, dirt, and lack of repair. They are commonly let 
 off m floors, or flats, like the houses in the old town of 
 Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris. There are few 
 street doors; the entrance halls are, for the most part, 
 looked upon as public property ; and any moderately 
 enterprising scavenger might make a fine fortune by 
 now and then clearing them out. As it is impossible 
 for coaches to penetrate into these streets, there ai'e 
 sedan chairs, gilded and otherwise, for hire in divers 
 places. A great many private chairs are also kept 
 among the nobility and gentry ; and at night these are 
 trotted to and fro in all directions, preceded by bearers 
 of great lanthorns, made of linen stretched upon a frame. 
 The sedans and lanthorns are the legitimate successors 
 of the long strings of patient and much-abused mules. 
 
GENOA. 5 1 
 
 that go jingling their little bells through these confined 
 streets all day long. They follow them, as regularly as 
 the stars the sun. 
 
 When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces : the Strada 
 Nuova and the Strada Balbi ! or how the former looked 
 one summer day, when I first saw it underneath the 
 biightest and most intensely blue of summer skies : which 
 its naiTow perspective of immense mansions, reduced 
 to a tapering and most precious strip of brightness, look- 
 ing down upon the heavy shade below ! A brightness 
 not too common, even in July and August, to be well 
 esteemed : for, if the Truth must out, there were not 
 eight blue skies in as many midsummer weeks, saving, 
 sometimes, early in the morning ; when, looking out to 
 sea, the water and the firmament were one world of 
 deep and brilliant blue. At other times, there were 
 clouds and haze enough to make an Englishman giinnble 
 in his own climate. 
 
 The endless details of these rich Palaces : the walls 
 of some of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Van- 
 dyke ! The great, heavj'-, stone balconies, one above 
 another, and tier over tier : with here and there, one 
 larger than the rest, towering high up — a huge marble 
 platform; the doorless vestibules, massively-barred lower 
 windows, immense public staircases, thick marble pillars, 
 strong dungeon-like arches, and dreaiy, cbeaming, echoing 
 vaulted chambers : among which the eye wanders again, 
 and again, and again, as eveiy palace is succeeded by 
 another — the terrace gardens between house and house, 
 with green arches of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, 
 
 E -2 
 
52 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty, thirty, forty, 
 feet above the street — the painted halls, mouldering, 
 and blotting, and rotting in the damp comers, and still 
 sliming out in beautiful colours and voluptuous designs, 
 where the walls are dry — the faded figures on the out- 
 sides of the houses, holding wreaths, and crowns, and 
 flying upward, and downward, and standing in niches, 
 and here and there looking fainter and more feeble than 
 elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little Cupids, who 
 on a more recently-decorated portion of the fi'ont, are 
 stretching out what seems to be the semblance of a 
 blanket, but is, indeed, a sun-dial — the steep, steep, up- 
 hill streets of small palaces (but very large palaces for all 
 that), with marble terraces looldng down mto close by- 
 ways — the magnificent and innumerable Chm'ches ; and 
 the rapid passage from a street of stately edifices, 
 into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming with un- 
 wholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked 
 children and whole worlds of dirty people — make up, 
 altogether, such a scene of wonder : so lively, and yet so 
 dead : so noisy, and yet so quiet : so obtnisive, and yet 
 so shy and lowering : so wide awake, and yet so fast 
 asleep : that it is a sort of intoxication to a stranger to 
 walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. A bewil- 
 dering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of 
 a dream, and all the pain and all the pleasure of an 
 extravagant reality ! 
 
 The different uses to which some of these Palaces are 
 applied, all at once, is characteristic. For instance, the 
 English Banker (my excellent and hospitable friend) hiis. 
 
GENOA. 53 
 
 his office in a good-sized Palazzo in the Strada Nuova. 
 In the hall (every inch of which is elaborately painted, 
 but which is as dirty as a police-station in London), a 
 hook-nosed Saracen's Head mth an immense quantity of 
 black hair (there is a man attached to it) sells walking- 
 sticks. On the other side of the doorway, a lady with a 
 showy handkerchief for head-dress (wife to the Saracen's 
 Head, I believe) sells articles of her own knitting ; and 
 sometimes flowers. A little further m, two or three 
 blind men occasionally beg. Sometimes, they are visited 
 by a man mthout legs, on a Httle go-cart, but who has 
 such a fresh-colom-ed, lively face, and such a respectable, 
 well-conditioned bodv, that he looks as if he had sunk 
 into the ground up to his middle, or had come, but 
 partially, up a flight of cellar-steps to speak to some- 
 body. A little further in, a few men, perhaps, lie 
 asleep in the middle of the day ; or they may be chair- 
 men waiting for their absent freight. If so, they have 
 brought their chah's in with them, and there they stand 
 also. On the left of the hall is a little room : a hatter's 
 shop. On the first floor, is the English bank. On the 
 first floor also, is a whole house, and a good large 
 residence too. Heaven knows what there may be above 
 that ; but when you are there, you have only just begim 
 to go up-stairs. And yet, coming down stairs again, 
 thhikmg of this ; and passing out at a great crazy door 
 in the back of the hall, instead of turning the other 
 way, to get into the street again ; it bangs behind you, 
 making the dismallest and most lonesome echoes, and 
 you stand in a yard (the yard of the same house) which 
 
54 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 seems to have been im\'isited by human foot, for a 
 hmidred years. Not a sound disturbs its repose. Not 
 a head, thinist out of any of the grim, dark, jealous 
 windows within sight, makes the weeds in the cracked 
 pavement famt of heart, by suggesting the possibility of 
 there being hands to grub them up. Opposite to you, 
 is a giant figure carved in stone, reclining, with an urn, 
 upon a lofty piece of artificial rockwork; and out of 
 the urn, dangles the fag end of a leaden pipe, which, 
 once upon a time, poured a small torrent down the 
 rocks. But the eye-sockets of the giant are not drier 
 than this channel is now. He seems to have given his 
 uni, which is nearly upside down, a final tilt ; and after 
 crpng, like a sepulchral child, " All gone ! " to have 
 lapsed into a stony silence. 
 
 In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, 
 but of great size notwithstanding, and extremely high. 
 They are veiy dirty : quite undrained, if my nose be at 
 all reliable : and emit a peculiar fragrance, like the 
 smell of very bad cheese, kept in very hot blankets. 
 Notwithstanding the height of the houses, there would 
 seem to have been a lack of room in the City, for new 
 houses are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it has been 
 possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a crack or 
 comer, in it has gone. If there be a nook or angle in 
 the wall of a church, or a cre\dce in any other dead wall, 
 of any sort, there you are sure to find some kind of 
 habitation : looking as if it had grown there, like a 
 fmigus. Against the Government house, against the 
 old Senate house, romid about any large building, little 
 
GENOA. D-) 
 
 shops stick close, like parasite veniiin to the great 
 carcase. And for all this, look where you may : up 
 steps, do\sii steps, anpvhere, everywhere : there are 
 irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling 
 down, leaning against their neighbours, crippling them- 
 selves or their friends by some means or other, until 
 one, more irregular than the rest, choaks up the way, 
 and you can't see any further. 
 
 One of the rottenest-looking parts of the tovm, I think, 
 is down by the landing- wharf : though it may be, that 
 its being associated with a great deal of rottenness on 
 the evening of our arrival, has stamped it deeper in my 
 mind. Here, again, the houses are very high, and are 
 of an infinite variety of deformed shapes, and have (as 
 most of the houses have) something hanging out of a 
 great many windows, and wafting its frowsy fragrance on 
 the breeze. Sometimes, it is a curtain ; sometimes, it is 
 a carpet ; sometimes, it is a bed ; sometimes, a whole 
 line-full of clothes ; but there is almost always some 
 thing. Before the basements of these houses, is an arcade 
 over the pavement : veiy massive, dark, and low, like an 
 old crypt. The stone, or plaster, of which it is made, 
 has turned quite black ; and against eveiy one of these 
 black piles, all sorts of filth and garbage seem to accu- 
 mulate spontaneously. Beneath some of the arches, the 
 sellers of maccaroni and polenta establish thek stalls, 
 which are by no means inviting. The offal of a fish- 
 market, near at hand — that is to say, of a back lane, 
 w^here people sit upon the gi'ound and on various old 
 bulk-heads and sheds, and sell fish when they have any 
 
56 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 to dispose of — and of a vegetable liiarket, constructed on 
 the same principle — are contributed to the decoration of 
 this quarter ; and as all the mercantile busmess is trans- 
 acted here, and it is crowded all day, it has a veiy 
 decided flavour about it. The Porto Franco, or Free 
 Port (where goods brought in from foreign coimtries pay- 
 no duty until they are sold and taken out, as in a bonded 
 warehouse in England), is down here also ; and two por- 
 tentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the gate to 
 search you if they choose, and to keep out Monks and 
 Ladies. For, Sanctity as well as Beauty has been known 
 to yield to the temptation of smuggling, and in the 
 same way : that is to say, by conceahng the smuggled 
 property beneath the loose folds of its dress. So Sanc- 
 tity and Beauty may, by no means, enter. 
 
 The streets of Genoa would be all the better for the 
 importation of a few Priests of prepossessing appearance. 
 Eveiy fourth or fifth man in the streets is a Priest or a 
 Monk ; and there is pretty sure to be at least one itine- 
 rant ecclesiastic inside or outside every hackney carriage on 
 the neighbouring roads. I have no knowledge, elsewhere, 
 of more repulsive countenances than are to be fomid 
 among these gentiy. If Nature's handwriting be at all 
 legible, greater varieties of sloth, deceit, and intellec- 
 tual torpor, could hardly be observed among any class 
 of men in the world. 
 
 Mr. Pepys once heard a clergyman assert in his 
 sermon, in illustration of his respect for the Priestly 
 office, that if he could meet a Priest and angel together, 
 he would salute the Priest first. I am rather of the 
 
GENOA. 57 
 
 opinion of Petrarch who, when his pupil Boccaccio 
 wrote to him in great tribulation, that he had been 
 visited and admonished for his writings by a Carthusian 
 Friar who claimed to be a messenger immediately com- 
 missioned by Heaven for that purpose, replied, that for 
 his own part, he would take the liberty of testing the 
 reality of the commission by personal observ^ation of the 
 Messenger's face, eyes, forehead, behaviour, and discourse. 
 I cannot but believe myself, from similar observation, 
 that many unaccredited celestial messengers may be seen 
 skulking through the streets of Genoa, or droning away 
 their lives in other Italian towns. 
 
 Perhaps the Cappuccini, though not a learned body, 
 are, as an order, the best friends of the people. They 
 seem to mingle with them more immediately, as their 
 counsellors and comforters ; and to go among them more, 
 when they are sick; and to pry less than some other 
 orders, into the secrets of families, for the purpose of 
 establishing a baleful ascendancy over their weaker 
 members; and to be influenced by a less fierce desire 
 to make converts, and once made, to let them go to ruin, 
 soul and body. They may be seen, in their coarse dress, 
 in all parts of the town at all times, and begging in the 
 markets early in the morning. The Jesuits too, muster 
 strong in the streets, and go slinking noiselessly about, 
 in pairs, like black cats. 
 
 In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades con- 
 gregate. There is a street of jewellers, and there is a 
 row of booksellers ; but even do^vn in places where 
 nobody ever can, or ever could, penetrate in a carriage, 
 
58 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 there are mighty old palaces shut in among the gloomiest 
 and closest walls, and almost shut out from the sun. Very- 
 few of the tradesmen have any idea of settmg forth their 
 goods, or disposing them for show. If you, a stranger, want 
 to buy an}i:hing, you usually look romid the shop till you 
 see it ; then clutch it, if it be within reach ; and inquire 
 how much. Eveiything is sold at the most unlikely 
 place. If you want coffee, you go to a sweetmeat- 
 shop ; and if you want meat, you mil proba])ly find it 
 behind an old checked curtain, down half a dozen steps, 
 in some sequestered nook as hard to find as if the com- 
 modity were poison, and Genoa's law were death to any 
 he that uttered it. 
 
 Most of the apothecaries' shops are great lounging 
 places. Here, grave men with sticks, sit down in the 
 shade for hom^s together, passing a meagre Genoa paper 
 from hand to hand, and talldng, drowsily and sparingly, 
 about the News. Two or three of these are poor physicians, 
 ready to proclaim themselves on an emergency, and tear 
 off with any messenger who may arrive. You may know 
 them by the way in which they stretch their necks to 
 listen, when you enter ; and by the sigh with which they 
 fall back again into their dull comers, on finding that 
 you only want medicine. Few people lounge in the 
 barbers' shops ; though they are very numerous, as 
 hardly any man shaves himself. But the apothecary's 
 has its group of loungers, who sit back among the bottles, 
 with their hands folded over the tops of their sticks. 
 So still and quiet, that either you don't see them in the 
 darkened shop, or mistake them — as I did one ghostly 
 
GENOA. 59 
 
 man in bottle-green, one day, with a hat Uke a stopper — 
 for Horse Medicine. 
 
 On a summer evening, the Genoese are as fond of 
 putting themselves, as their ancestors were of putting 
 houses, in eveiy available inch of space witliin and about 
 the town. In all the lanes and alleys, and up eveiy 
 little ascent, and on eveiy dwarf wall, and on every- 
 flight of steps, they cluster like bees. Meanwhile (and 
 especially on Festa-days) the bells of the chmTlies ring 
 incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of sound, 
 but in a horrible, irregidar, jerking, dingle, dingle, 
 dingle : with a sudden stop at eveiy fifteenth dingle or 
 so, which is maddening. This performance is usually 
 achieved by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of 
 the clapper, or a little rope attached to it, and tries to 
 dingle louder than every other boy similarly employed. 
 The noise is supposed to be particularly obnoxious to 
 Evil Spirits ; but looking up into the steeples, and 
 seeing (and hearing) these young Christians thus en- 
 gaged, one might veiy naturally mistake them for the 
 Enemy. 
 
 Festa-days, early in the autumn, are very numer- 
 ous. All the shops were shut up, twice \\ithin a week, 
 for these holidays; and one night, all the houses in 
 the neighbom'hood of a particulai- church were illumi- 
 nated, while the chm'ch itself was lighted, outside, with 
 torches ; and a grove of blazing links was erected, in an 
 open place outside one of the city gates. This part of 
 the ceremony is prettier and more siiigular a little way 
 
60 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 in the country, where you can trace the illummated 
 cottages all the way up a steep hill side ; and where you 
 pass festoons of tapers, wasting away in the starlight 
 night, before some lonely little house upon the road. 
 
 On these days, they always dress the church of the 
 saint in whose honour the Festa is holden, very gaily. 
 Gold-embroidered festoons of different colours, hang 
 from the arches ; the altar furniture is set forth ; and, 
 sometimes, even the lofty pillars are swathed from top to 
 bottom in tight-fitting draperies. The cathedral is 
 dedicated to St. Lorenzo. On St. Lorenzo's day, w6 
 went into it, just as the sun was setting. Although 
 these decorations are usually in very indifferent taste, 
 the effect, just then, was very superb, indeed. For the 
 whole building was dressed in red ; and the sinking sun, 
 streaming in, through a great red curtain in the chief 
 doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own. When the 
 sun went down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, 
 except for a few tmnkling tapers on the principal altar, 
 and some small dangling silver lamps, it was very 
 mysterious and effective. But, sitting in any of the 
 churches towards evening, is like a mild dose of opium. 
 
 With the money collected at a Festa, they usually pay 
 for the dressing of the church, and for the hiring of the 
 band, and for the tapers. If there be any left (which 
 seldom happens, I believe) the souls in purgatoiy get the 
 benefit of it. They are also supposed to have the benefit 
 of the exertions of certain small boys, who shake money- 
 boxes before some mysterious little buildings like rural 
 turnpikes, which (usually shut up close) fly open on Red- 
 
GENOA. 61 
 
 letter days, and disclose an image and some flowers 
 inside. 
 
 Just without the city gate, on the Albaro road, is a 
 small house, with an altar in it, and a stationary money- 
 box : also for the benefit of the souls in Purgatory. 
 Still fm'ther to stimulate the charitable, there is a 
 monstrous painting on the plaster, on either side of the 
 grated door, representing a select party of souls, fi'}dng. 
 One of them has a grey moustache, and an elaborate 
 head of grey hair : as if he had been taken out of a hair- 
 dresser's window and cast mto the furnace. There 
 he is : a most grotesque and hideously comic old soul : 
 for ever blistering in the real sun, and melting in the 
 mimic fire, for the gratification and improvement (and 
 the contributions) of the poorer Genoese. 
 
 They are not a very joyous people, and are seldom 
 seen to dance on their holidays : the staple places of 
 entertainment among the women, being the churches and 
 the public walks. They are veiy good-tempered, obliging. 
 and industrious. Industiy has not made them clean, 
 for then- habitations are extremely filthy, and their 
 usual occupation on a fine Sunday morning, is to sit at 
 their doors, hunting in each others' heads. But their 
 dwellings are so close and confined that if those parts of 
 the city had been beaten down by Massena in the time 
 of the terrible Blockade, it w^ould have at least occasioned 
 one public benefit among many misfortunes. 
 
 The Peasant Women, with naked feet and legs, are so 
 constantly washing clothes, in the public tanks, and in 
 eveiy stream and ditch, that one cannot help wondering. 
 
0'2 PICTUKES FROM ITALY. 
 
 in the midst of all this dirt, who wears them when they 
 are clean. The custom is to lay the wet linen wliich is 
 being operated upon, on a smooth stone, and hammer 
 away at it, with a flat wooden mallet. This they do, as 
 furiously as if they were revenging themselves on dress 
 in general for being connected with the Fall of Manldnd. 
 
 It is not unusual to see, Ipng on the edge of the 
 tank at these times, or on another flat stone, an unfor- 
 tunate baby, tightly swathed up, arms and legs and all, 
 in an enormous quantity of wrapper, so that it is unable 
 to move a toe or finger. This custom (which we often 
 see represented in old pictures) is universal among the 
 common people. A child is left anywhere without the 
 possibility of crawling away, or is accidentally knocked 
 ofl" a shelf, or tumbled out of bed, or is hung up to a 
 hook now and then, and left dangling like a doll at an 
 English rag shop, without the least inconvenience to 
 anybody, 
 
 I was sitting, one Sunday, soon after my arrival, in 
 the little country church of San Martino, a couple of 
 miles from the city, while a baptism took place, I saw 
 the priest, and an attendant with a large taper, and a 
 man, and a woman, and some others ; but I had no 
 more idea, until the ceremony was all over, that it was a 
 baptism, or that the curious little stiff instrument, that 
 was passed from one to another, in the course of the 
 ceremony, by the handle — like a short poker — was a 
 child, than I had that it was my o\mi christening. I 
 borrowed the child afterwards, for a minute or two (it 
 was lying across the font then) and found it very red in 
 
GENOA. 63 
 
 the face but perfectly quiet, and not to be bent on any 
 terms. The number of cripples in the streets, soon 
 ceased to sui'prise me. 
 
 There are plenty of Saints' and Virgin's Shrines, of 
 course ; generally at the comers of streets. The 
 favourite memento to the Faithful, about Genoa, is a 
 painting, representing a peasant on his knees, with a 
 spade and some other agiicultm-al implements beside 
 him ; and the Madonna, Vvith the Infant Saviour in her 
 arms, appearing to him in a cloud. This is the Legend 
 of the Madonna della Guardia : a chapel on a moimtaiii 
 within a few miles, which is in high repute. It seems 
 that this peasant lived all alone by himself, tilling some 
 land atop of the mountain, where, being a devout man, 
 he daily said his prayers to the Virgin ui the open air ; 
 for his hut was a very poor one. Upon a certain day, 
 the Virgin appeared to him, as in the pictm'e, and said, 
 " Why do you pray in the open air, and without a priest?" 
 The peasant explained because there was neither priest 
 nor church at hand — a very micommon complamt indeed 
 in Italy. " I should wish, then," said the Celestial 
 Visitor, " to have a chapel built here, in which the prayers 
 of the Faithful may be offered up." " But Santissima 
 Madonna," said the peasant, " I am a poor man; and 
 chapels cannot be built without money. They must be 
 supported, too, Santissima ; for to have a chapel and not 
 support it liberally, is a wickedness — a deadly sin." This 
 sentiment gave great satisfaction to the visitor. " Go ! " 
 said she. " There is such a village in the valley on the 
 left, and such another \dllage in the valley on the right. 
 
64 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and such another village elsewhere, that will gladly con- 
 tribute to the building of a chapel. Go to them ! Relate 
 what you have seen ; and do not doubt that sufficient 
 money will be forthcoming to erect my chapel, or that 
 it will, afterwards, be handsomely maintained." All of 
 which (miraculously) turned out to be quite true. And in 
 proof of this prediction and revelation, there is the chapel 
 of the Madonna della Guardia, rich and flemishing at 
 this day. 
 
 The splendom* and variety of the Genoese churches, 
 can hardly be exaggerated. The church of the Annun- 
 ciata especially : built, like many of the others, at the 
 cost of one noble family, and now in slow progress of 
 repair : from the outer door to the utmost height of the 
 high cupola, is so elaborately painted and set in gold, 
 that it looks (as Simond describes it, in his charming 
 book on Italy) like a great enamelled snuff-box. Most 
 of the richer chm'ches contain some beautiful j)ictm'es, 
 or other embellishments of great price, almost miiversally 
 set, side by side, with sprawling effigies of maudlin monks, 
 and the veriest trash and tinsel ever seen. 
 
 It may be a consequence of the frequent direction of 
 the popular mind, and pocket, to the souls in Pm'gatoiy, 
 but there is ver}^ little tenderness for the bodies of the 
 dead here. For the very poor, there are, immediately 
 outside one angle of the walls, and behind a jutting 
 point of -the fortification, near the sea, certain common 
 pits — one for every day in the year — which all remain 
 closed up, mitil the tmii of each comes for its daily 
 reception of dead bodies. Among the troops in the 
 
GENOA. 65 
 
 towTi, there are usually some Swiss : more or less. 
 When any of these die, they are buried out of a fund 
 maintamed by such of their countrj^men as are resident 
 in Genoa. Their providing coffins for these men, is 
 matter of great astonishment to the authorities. 
 
 Certainly, the effect of this promiscuous and indecent 
 splashing down of dead people into so many wells, is bad. 
 It sun"ounds Death with revolting associations, that in- 
 sensibly become connected with those whom Death is 
 approaching. Indifference and avoidance are the natural 
 result ; and all the softening influences of the great sor- 
 row are harshly disturbed. 
 
 There is a ceremony when an old Cavaliere or the 
 like, expires, of erecting a pile of benches in the cathe- 
 dral, to represent his bier ; covering them over with a 
 pall of black velvet ; putting his hat and sword on the 
 top ; making a little square of seats about the whole ; 
 and sending out formal invitations to his friends and 
 acquaintance to come and sit there, and hear Mass : 
 which is performed at the principal Altar, decorated 
 with an infinity of candles for that purpose. 
 
 When the better kind of people die, or are at the 
 point of death, their nearest relations generally walk off: 
 retiring into the coimtry for a little change, and leaving 
 the body to be disposed of, without any superintendance 
 from them. The procession is usually formed, and the 
 coffin borne, and the fimeral conducted, by a body of 
 persons called a Confratemita, who, as a Idnd of 
 voluntary penance, undertake to perform these offices, in 
 regular rotation, for the dead ; but who, mingling some- 
 
 F 
 
66 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 thing of pride with their humihty, are dressed in a loose 
 garment covermg their whole person, and wear a hood 
 concealing the face ; with breathing holes and aper- 
 tures for the eyes. The effect of this costume is very- 
 ghastly : especially in the case of a certain Blue Confra- 
 teniita belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least of 
 them, are very ugly customers, and who look — suddenly 
 encountered in their pious ministration in the streets — 
 as if they were Ghoules or Demons, bearing off the body 
 for themselves. 
 
 Although such a custom may be liable to the abuse 
 attendant on many Italian customs, of being recognised as 
 a means of estabhshing a current account with Heaven, 
 on which to draw, too easily, for futm'e bad actions, or as 
 an expiation for past misdeeds, it must be admitted to 
 be a good one, and a practical one, and one involvuig 
 unquestionably good works. A voluntary service like 
 this, is surely better than the imposed penance (not at 
 all an infrequent one) of giving so many licks to such and 
 such a stone in the pavement of the cathedral ; or than 
 a vow to the Madonna to wear nothhig but blue for a 
 year or two. This is supposed to give great delight 
 above ; blue being (as is well known) the Madonna s 
 favourite colour. Women who have devoted themselves 
 to this act of Faith, are very commonly seen walking in 
 the streets. 
 
 There are three theatres in the city, besides an old one 
 now rarely opened. The most important — the Carlo 
 Felice : the opera-house of Genoa — is a very splendid, 
 commodious, and beautiful theatre. A company of come- 
 
GENOA. 67 
 
 dians were acting there, when we arrived : and after their 
 departure, a second-rate opera company came. The great 
 season is not mitil the carnival time — in the spring. 
 Nothing impressed me, so much, in my visits here 
 (which were pretty numerous) as the uncommonly hard 
 and cniel character of the audience, who resent the 
 slightest defect, take nothmg good-humouredly, seem to 
 be always Ipng in wait for an opportmiity to hiss, and 
 spare the actresses as little as the actors. But, as there 
 is nothing else of a public natm'e at which they are 
 allowed to express the least disapprobation, perhaps they 
 ai'e resolved to make the most of this opportunity. 
 
 There are a great number of Piedmontese Officers too, 
 who are allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in 
 the pit, for next to nothing: gi-atuitous, or cheap 
 accommodation for these gentlemen being insisted on, by 
 the Governor, in all public or semi-public entertam- 
 ments. They are lofty critics in consequence, and 
 infinitely more exacting than if they made the mihappy 
 manager's fortune. 
 
 The Teateg Diueno, or Day Theatre, is a covered 
 stage in the open air, where the performances take place 
 by daylight, in the cool of the afternoon ; commencing 
 at four or five o'clock, and lasting some three hours. 
 It is curious, sitting among the audience, to have a fine 
 view of the neighbouring hills and houses, and to see the 
 neighbom's at their windows looldng on, and to hear the 
 bells of the chm'ches and convents ringing at most 
 complete cross-pm-poses with the scene. Beyond this, 
 and the novelty of seeing a play in the fresh pleasant 
 
 F 2 
 
68 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 air, with the darkening evening closing in, there is 
 nothing very exciting or characteristic in the perform- 
 ances. The actors are indifferent; and though they 
 sometimes represent one of Goldoni's comedies, the 
 staple of the Drama is French. Anything like nation- 
 ality is dangerous to despotic governments, and Jesuit- 
 beleaguered kings. 
 
 The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti — a famous 
 company from Milan — is, without any exception, the 
 drollest exhibition I ever beheld m my life. I never 
 saw anything so exquisitely ridiculous. They look be- 
 tween four and five feet high, but are really much 
 smaller ; for when a musician in the orchestra happens 
 to put his hat on the stage, it becomes alaimingly 
 gigantic, and almost blots out an actor. They usually 
 play a comedy, and a ballet. The comic man in the 
 comedy I saw one summer night, is a waiter at an hotel. 
 There never was such a locomotive actor, since the 
 world began. Great pains are taken with him. He 
 has extra jomts in his legs : and a practical eye, with 
 which he winks at the pit, in a manner that is absolutely 
 insupportable to a stranger, but which the uiitiated 
 audience, mainly composed of the common people, 
 receive (so they do everything else) quite as a matter of 
 course, and as if he were a man. His spirits are pro- 
 digious. He continually shakes his legs, and winks his 
 eye. And there is a heavy father mth grey hair, who 
 sits down on the regular conventional stage-bank, and 
 blesses his daughter in the regular conventional way, 
 who is tremendous. No one would suppose it possible 
 
GENOA. 69 
 
 that anything short of a real man could be so tedious. 
 It is the triumph of art. 
 
 In the ballet, an Enchanter nms away with the 
 Bride, in the veiy hour of her nuptials. He brings 
 her to his cave, and tries to soothe her. They sit down 
 on a sofa (the regular sofa! in the regular place, O.P. 
 Second Entrance !) and a procession of musicians enter; 
 one creatm'e plajdng a diiim, and knocking himself off 
 his legs at every blow. These failing to delight her, 
 dancers appear. Four first ; then two ; the two ; the 
 flesh-colom-ed two. The way in which they dance ; the 
 height to which they spring; the impossible and in- 
 human extent to which they pirouette ; the revelation of 
 their preposterous legs ; the coming down with a pause, 
 on the veiy tips of their toes, when the music requires 
 it; the gentleman's retiring up, when it is the lady's 
 turn ; and the lady's retiring up when it is the gentle- 
 man's tmn ; the final passion of a pas-de-deux ; and the 
 going off with a bound ! — I shall never see a real ballet, 
 with a composed comitenance, again. 
 
 I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play 
 called " St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon." It 
 began by the disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense 
 head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at St. Helena ; to 
 whom his valet entered, with this obscm'e annomice- 
 ment : 
 
 " Sir Yew ud se on Low ! " (the ow, as in cow). 
 
 Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regi- 
 mentals !) was a perfect mammoth of a man, to Napo- 
 leon; liideously ugly; with a monstrously dispropor- 
 
70 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 tionate face, and a great clump for the lower-jaw, to 
 express his tyrannical and obdurate nature. He began 
 his system of persecution, by calling his prisoner " Gene- 
 ral Buonaparte ;" to which the latter rephed, with the 
 deepest tragedy, " Sir Yew ud se on Low, call me not 
 thus. Repeat that phrase and leave me ! I am Napo- 
 leon, Emperor of France !" Sir Yew ud se on, nothing 
 daunted, proceeded to entertain him with an ordinance 
 of the British Government, regulating the state he 
 should preserve, and the furniture of his rooms : and 
 limiting his attendants to fom^ or five persons, "Four 
 or five for me ,'" said Napoleon. " Me ! One hundred 
 thousand men were lately at my sole command; and 
 this English officer talks of foiu* or five for me ! " 
 Throughout the piece, Napoleon (who talked very like 
 the real Napoleon, and was, for ever, ha"sdng small soli- 
 loquies by himself) was veiy bitter on " these English 
 officers," and " these English soldiers : " to the great 
 satisfaction of the audience, who were perfectly de- 
 lighted to have Low bullied ; and who, whenever Low 
 said " General Buonaparte " (which he always did : 
 always receiving the same correction) quite execrated 
 him. It would be hard to say why; for Italians have 
 little cause to sympathise with Napoleon, Heaven 
 knows. 
 
 There was no plot at all, except that a French officer 
 disguised as an Englishman, came to propound a plan of 
 escape ; and being discovered, but not before Napoleon 
 had magnanimously refused to steal his freedom, was 
 immediately ordered off by Low to be hanged. In two 
 
GENOA. 71 
 
 very long speeches, ■which Low made memorable, by 
 windrng up with " Yas ! " — to show that he was English — 
 which brought down thunders of applause. Napoleon 
 was so affected by this catastrophe, that he fainted away 
 on the spot, and was carried out by two other puppets. 
 Judging from what followed, it would appear that he 
 never recovered the shock ; for the next act showed him, 
 in a clean shirt, in his bed (curtains crimson and white), 
 where a lady, prematurely dressed in mourning, brought 
 two little children, who Imeeled down by the bed-side, 
 while he made a decent end ; the last word on his lips 
 being " Vatterlo." 
 
 It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte's boots 
 were so wonderfully beyond control, and did such mar- 
 vellous things of their own accord : doubling themselves 
 up, and getting under tables, and dangling in the air, 
 and sometimes skating away with liim, out of all human 
 knowledge, when he was in full speech — mischances 
 which were not rendered the less absurd, by a settled 
 melancholy depicted in his face. To put an end to one 
 conference with Low, he had to go to a table, and read a 
 book : when it was the finest spectacle I ever beheld, to 
 see his body bending over the volume, like a boot-jack, 
 and his sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit. 
 He was prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense 
 collar to his shirt, and his little hands outside the 
 coverlet. So was Dr. Antommarchi, represented by 
 a Puppet with long lank hair, like Mawworm's, who, 
 in consequence of some derangement of his wires, 
 hovered about the couch like a vultui'e, and gave medical 
 
72 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 opinions in the air. He was almost as good as Low, 
 though the latter was great at all times — a decided 
 brute and villain, beyond all possibility of mistake. 
 Low was especially fine at the last, when, hearing the 
 doctor and the valet say, " The Emperor is dead ! " he 
 pulled out his watch, and wound up the piece (not the 
 watch) by exclaiming, with characteristic brutality, "Ha! 
 ha ! Eleven minutes to six ! The General dead ! and 
 the spy hanged ! " This brought the curtain down, 
 triumphantly. 
 
 There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them) 
 a lovelier residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or 
 Palace of the Fishponds, whither we removed as soon as 
 our three months' tenancy of the Pink Jail at Albaro 
 had ceased and determined. 
 
 It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but 
 aloof from the town : surrounded by beautiful gardens 
 of its own, adorned with statues, vases, fountains, 
 marble basins, terraces, walks of orange trees and lemon 
 trees, groves of roses and camelias. All its apartments 
 are beautiful in their proportions and decorations ; but 
 the great hall, some fifty feet in height, with three 
 large windows at the end, overlooking the whole to^vn of 
 Genoa, the harbour, and the neighboming sea, affords one 
 of the most fascinating and delightfid prospects in the 
 world. Any house more cheerful and habitable than 
 the great rooms are, mthin, it would be dijfficult to 
 conceive ; and certainly nothing more delicious than the 
 scene without, in sunshine or in moonlight, could be 
 
GENOA. 73 
 
 imagined. It is more like an enchanted palace in an 
 Eastern story than a grave and sober lodging. 
 
 How you may wander on, from room to room, and 
 never tire of the wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, 
 as bright in their fresh colouring as if they had been 
 painted yesterday ; or how one floor, or even the great 
 hall which opens on eight other rooms, is a spacious 
 promenade ; or how there are corridors and bed-chambers 
 above, which we never use and rarely visit, and scarcely 
 know the way through ; or how there is a view of a 
 perfectly different character on each of the fom* sides of 
 the building ; matters little. But that prospect from the 
 hall, is like a vision to me. I go back to it, iji fancy, as 
 I have done in calm reality a hundred times a-day ; and 
 stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents from the 
 garden risiug up about me, in a perfect dream of 
 happiness. 
 
 There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its 
 many churches, monasteries, and convents, pointing up 
 into the sunny sky ; and down below me, just where the 
 roofs begin, a solitaiy convent parapet, fashioned like a gal- 
 lery, with an iron cross at the end, where sometimes, early 
 in the morning, I have seen a little gi'oup of dark-veiled 
 nmis gliding sorrowfully to and fro, and stopping now and 
 then to peep down upon the waking world in which they 
 have no part. Old Monte Faccio, brightest of hills in 
 good weather, but sulkiest when storms are coming on, 
 is here, upon the left. The Fort within the walls (the 
 good King built it to command the town, and beat the 
 houses of the Genoese about their eai'S, in case they 
 
74 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 should be discontented) commands that height upon the 
 right. The broad sea lies beyond, in front there ; and 
 that line of coast, beginning by the light-house, and 
 tapering away, a mere speck in the rosy distance, is the 
 beautiful coast road that leads to Nice. The garden 
 near at hand, among the roofs and houses : all red with 
 roses and fresh with little fountains : is the Acqua Sola 
 — a public promenade, where the military band plays 
 gaily, and the white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese 
 nobility ride round, and roimd, and round, in state- 
 clothes and coaches at least, if not in absolute wisdom. 
 Within a stone 's-throw, as it seems, the audience of the 
 Day-Theatre sit : their faces turned this way. But as 
 the stage is hidden, it is very odd, without a knowledge 
 of the cause, to see their faces change so suddenly from 
 earnestness to laughter; and odder still, to hear the 
 rounds upon rounds of applause, rattling in the evening 
 air, to which the curtain falls. But, being Sunday 
 night, they act their best and most attractive play. And 
 now, the sim is going down, in such magnificent array 
 of red, and green, and golden light, as neither pen nor 
 pencil could depict; and to the ruiging of the vesper 
 bells, darlmess sets in at once, without a twilight. 
 Then, lights begin to shine m Genoa, and on the 
 country road ; and the revohdng lantern out at sea there, 
 flashing, for an instant, on this palace front and portico, 
 illuminates it as if there were a bright moon bursting 
 from behind a cloud ; then, merges it in deep obscurity. 
 And this, so far as I know, is the only reason why the 
 Genoese avoid it after dark, and think it haunted. 
 
GENOA. 75 
 
 My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to 
 come; but nothing worse, I will engage. The same 
 Ghost "will occasionally sail away, as I did one pleasant 
 Autumn evening, into the bright prospect, and snuff the 
 morning air at Marseilles. 
 
 The corpulent hair-dresser was still sitting in his 
 slippers outside his shop-door there, but the twirling 
 ladies in the window, with the natm'al inconstancy of 
 their sex, had ceased to twirl, and were languishing, stock . 
 still, with their beautiful faces addressed to blind corners 
 of the establishment, where it was impossible for ad- 
 mirers to penetrate. 
 
 The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run 
 of eighteen hours, and we were going to run back again 
 by the Cornice Eoad from Nice : not being satisfied to 
 have seen only the outsides of the beautiful towns that 
 rise in pictm-esque white clusters from among the olive 
 woods, and rocks, and hills, upon the margin of the Sea. 
 
 The Boat which started for Nice that night, at eight 
 o'clock, was very small, and so crowded \sith goods that 
 there was scai'cely room to move ; neither was there any- 
 thing to eat on board, except bread ; nor to drink, except 
 coffee. But being due at Nice at about eight or so in 
 the morning, this was of no consequence : so when we 
 began to wink at the bright stars, in invohmtaiy aclniow- 
 ledgment of their winking at us, we tmiied into our 
 berths, in a crowded, but cool little cabin, and slept 
 soundly till morning. 
 
 The Boat, being as dull and dogged a little boat as 
 ever was built, it was within an horn* of noon when we 
 
76 • PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 turned into Nice Harbour, where we very little expected 
 anything but brealdast. But we were laden with wool. 
 Wool must not remain in the Custom House at Mar- 
 seilles more than twelve months at a stretch, without 
 paying duty. It is the custom to make fictitious removals 
 of unsold wool to evade this law ; to take it somewhere 
 when the twelve months are nearly out; bring it straight 
 back again ; and warehouse it, as a new cargo, for nearly 
 twelve months longer. This wool of ours, had come 
 originally from some place in the East. It was re- 
 cognised as Eastern produce, the moment we entered 
 the harbour. Accordingly, the gay little Sunday boats, 
 full of holiday people, which had come off to greet us, 
 were warned away by the authorities ; we were declared 
 in quarantine ; and a great flag was solemnly nm up to 
 the mast-head on the wharf, to make it known to all 
 the town. 
 
 It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved, 
 unwashed, undressed, mifed, and could hardly enjoy the 
 absurdity of lying bUstering in a lazy harbour, with 
 the town looking on from a respectful distance, all 
 manner of whiskered men in cocked hats discussing our 
 fate at a remote guard-house, with gestures (we looked 
 very hard at them through telescopes) expressive of a 
 week's detention at least : and nothing whatever the 
 matter all the time. But even in this crisis the Brave 
 Courier acliieved a triumph. He telegraphed somebody 
 [I saw nobody) either naturally connected with the hotel, 
 or put en rapport with the establishment for that occa- 
 sion only. The telegraph was answered, and in half 
 
NICE HAEBOUE. • 77 
 
 an hour or less, there came a loud shout from the 
 guard-house. The captain was wanted. Everybody 
 helped the captam into his boat. Eveiybody got his 
 luggage, and said we were going. The captain rowed 
 away, and disappeared behind a little jutting comer of 
 the Galley-slaves' Prison : and presently came back with 
 something, veiy sulkily. The Brave Cornier met him at 
 the side, and received the something as its rightful 
 o^^'ner. It w^as a wicker-basket, folded in a linen 
 cloth ; and in it were two great bottles of wine, a 
 roast fowl, some salt fish chopped with garlic, a great 
 loaf of bread, a dozen or so of peaches, and a few other 
 trifles. When we had selected om* own breakfast, the 
 Brave Cornier invited a chosen party to partake of these 
 refreshments, and assured them that they need not be 
 deterred by motives of delicacy, as he would order a 
 second basket to be furnished at their expense. Which he 
 did — no one knew how — and by and by, the captain 
 being again summoned, again sulldly returned with 
 another something; over which my popular attendant 
 presided as before : cai'ving with a clasp-knife, his own per- 
 sonal property, something smaller than a Roman sword. 
 
 The whole party on board were made merry by these 
 unexpected supplies ; but none more so, than a loquacious 
 little Frenchman, who got drunk in five minutes, and a 
 stm-dy Cappuccino Friar, who had taken eveiybody's 
 fancy mightily, and was one of the best friars in the 
 world, I verily believe. 
 
 He had a free, open countenance ; and a rich brown, 
 flowing beard; and was a remarkably handsome man, of 
 
78 ' PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 about fifty. He had come up to us, early in the morning, 
 and inquu'ed whether we were sure to be at Nice by 
 eleven; sapng that he particularly wanted to know, 
 because if we reached it by that time he would have to 
 perform mass, and must deal with the consecrated wafer, 
 fasting ; whereas, if there were no chance of his being in 
 time, he would immediately breakfast. He made this 
 commmiication, under the idea that the Brave Courier 
 was the captain ; and indeed he looked much more like 
 it than anybody else on board. Being assured that we 
 should arrive in good time, he fasted, and talked, fast- 
 ing, to everybody, with the most charming good-humour; 
 answering jokes at the expense of friars, with other 
 jokes at the expense of lajnnen, and saying that friar as 
 he was, he would engage to take up the two strongest 
 men on board, one after the other, with liis teeth, and 
 carry them along the deck. Nobody gave him the 
 opportunity, but I dare say he could have done it; 
 for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in the 
 Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and most ungainly 
 that can well be. 
 
 All this had given great delight to the loquacious 
 Frenchman, who gradually patronised the Friar very 
 much, and seemed to commiserate him as one who 
 might have been born a Frenchman himself, but for an 
 unfortmiate destiny. Although his patronage was such 
 as a mouse might bestow upon a lion, he had a vast 
 opinion of its condescension ; and in the warmth of that 
 sentiment, occasionally rose on tiptoe, to slap the Friar 
 on the back. 
 
NICE HARBOUR. 79 
 
 When the baskets arrived : it being then too late for 
 Mass : the Friar went to work bravely; eating prodigiously 
 of the cold meat and bread, drinking deep draughts of 
 the wine, smoking cigars, taking snuff, sustaining an 
 uninterrupted conversation with all hands, and occasion- 
 ally running to the boat's side and hailing somebody on 
 shore with the intelligence that we must be got out of 
 this quarantine somehow or other, as he had to take part 
 in a gi^eat religious procession in the afternoon. After 
 this, he would come back, laugliing lustily from pm'e 
 good-humom' : while the Frenchman wrinlded his small 
 face into ten thousand creases, and said how droll it was, 
 and what a brave boy was that Friar ! At length the 
 heat of the sun without, and of the wine within, made the 
 Frenchman sleepy. So, in the noontide of his patronage 
 of his gigantic protege, he lay down among the wool, and 
 began to snore. 
 
 It was four o'clock before we were released ; and the 
 Frenchman, dirty and woolly, and snuffy, was still 
 sleeping when the Friar went ashore. As soon as we 
 were free, we all hmiied away, to wash and dress, that 
 we might make a decent appearance at the Procession ; 
 and I saw no more of the Frenchman mitil we took up 
 our station in the main street to see it pass, when he 
 squeezed himself into a front place, elaborately reno- 
 vated ; threw back his httle coat, to show a broad-barred 
 velvet waistcoat sprinkled all over with stars ; and 
 adjusted himself and his cane so as utterly to 
 bewilder and transfix the Friar, when he should 
 appear. 
 
80 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 V The procession was a very long one, and included an 
 immense number of people divided into small parties ; 
 each party chaunting nasally, on its own account, without 
 reference to any other, and producing a most dismal 
 result. There were angels, crosses, Virgins carried on 
 flat boards surrounded by Cupids, crowns, saints, mis- 
 sals, infantry, tapers, monks, nuns, relics, dignitaries of 
 the church in green hats, walldng under crimson 
 parasols : and, here and there, a species of sacred street- 
 lamp hoisted on a pole. We looked out anxiously for 
 the Cappuccini, and presently their brown robes and 
 corded gu'dles were seen coming on, in a body. 
 
 I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea 
 that when the Friar saw him in the broad-barred waist- 
 coat, he would mentally exclaim, " Is that my Patron ! 
 That distinguished man ! " and would be covered with 
 confusion. Ah ! never was the Frenchman so deceived. 
 As om* friend the Cappuccino advanced, with folded arms, 
 he looked straight into the visage of the little Frenchman, 
 with a bland, serene, composed abstraction, not to be 
 described. There was not the faintest trace of recog- 
 nition or amusement on his features ; not the smallest 
 consciousness of bread and meat, wine, snuff, or cigars. 
 " C'est lui-meme," I heard the little Frenchman say, in 
 some doubt. Oh yes, it was liimself. It was not his 
 brother or his nephew, very like him. It was he. He 
 walked in great state : being one of the Superiors of the 
 Order : and looked his part to admiration. There never 
 was anj^hing so perfect of its Idnd as the contemplative 
 way in which he allowed his placid gaze to rest on us. 
 
CORNICE ROAD. 81 
 
 his late companions, as if he had never seen us in hjs 
 life and didn't see us then. The Frenchman, quite hum- 
 bled, took off his hat at last, but the Friar still passed on, 
 with the same imperturbable serenity; and the broad- 
 barred waistcoat, fading into the crowd, was seen no more. 
 
 The procession womid up with a discharge of mus- 
 ketry that shook all the windows in the town. Next 
 afternoon we started for Genoa, by the famed Cornice Road. 
 
 The haK-French, half-Italian Vetturino, who undertook, 
 with his little rattling carriage and pair, to convey us 
 thither in three days, was a careless, good-looking fellow, 
 whose light-heartedness and singing propensities knew no 
 bounds as long as we went on smoothly. So long, he had 
 a word and a smile and a flick of his whip, for all the 
 peasant girls, and odds and ends of the Somnambula for 
 all the echoes. So long, he went jinglmg through every 
 little village, with bells on his horses and rings in his 
 ears : a very meteor of gallantry and cheerfulness. But, 
 it was liighly characteristic to see him under a slight 
 reverse of circumstances, when, in one part of the jour- 
 ney, we came to a narrow place where a waggon had 
 broken down and stopped up the road. His hands were 
 twined in his hair immediately, as if a combination of 
 all the direst accidents in life had suddenly fallen on 
 his devoted head. He swore in French, prayed in Italian, 
 and went up and down, beating his feet on the ground 
 in a very ecstasy of despair. There were various 
 carters and mule-drivers assembled round the broken 
 waggon, and at last some man, of an original turn of 
 mind, proposed that a general and joint effort should be 
 
 G 
 
82 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 made to get things to-rights again, and clear the way — 
 an idea which I verily believe would never have presented 
 itself to our friend, though we had remained there until 
 now. It was done at no great cost of labour; but at 
 every pause in the doing, his hands were wound in his 
 hair again, as if there were no ray of hope to lighten his 
 misery. The moment he was on his box once more, 
 and clatteruig briskly down hill, he returned to the 
 Somnambula and the Peasant girls, as if it were not in 
 the power of misfortune to depress him. 
 
 Much of the romance of the beautiful to^ns and vil- 
 lages on this beautiful road, disappears when they are 
 entered, for many of them are very miserable. The 
 streets are narrow, dark, and dirty ; the inhabitants lean 
 and squalid; and the withered old women, with their 
 wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the top of the 
 head, like a pad to carry loads on, are so intensely ugly, 
 both along the Eiviera, and in Genoa too, that, seen 
 straggling about in dim door- ways with their spindles, or 
 crooning together in by corners, they are like a popula- 
 tion of Witches — except that they certainly are not to be 
 suspected of brooms or any other instrument of cleanhness. 
 Neither are the pig-skins, in common use to hold wine, 
 and hung out in the sun m all directions, by any means 
 ornamental, as they always preserve the form of very 
 bloated pigs, with their heads and legs cut off, danglmg 
 upside-down by their own tails. 
 
 These towns, as they are seen in the approach, how- 
 ever : nestling, Arith their clustering roofs and towers, 
 among trees on steep hill-sides, or built upon the brmk of 
 
CORNICE ROAD. 83 
 
 noble bays : are charming. The vegetation is, everywhere, 
 luxuriant and beautiful, and the Palm tree makes a novel 
 featui'e in the novel scenery. In one town, San Remo — 
 a most extraordinaiy place, built on gloomy open arches, 
 so that one might ramble underneath the whole town — 
 there are pretty terrace gardens ; in other towns, there 
 is the clang of shipwrights' hammers, and the building 
 of small vessels on the beach. In some of the broad 
 bays, the fleets of Europe might ride at anchor. In 
 every case, each little group of houses presents, in the 
 distance, some enchanting confusion of picturesque and 
 fancifd shapes. 
 
 The road itself — now liigh above the glittering sea, 
 which breaks against the foot of the precipice : now turn- 
 ing inland to sweep the shore of a bay : now crossing the 
 stony bed of a mountain stream : now low down on the 
 beach : now winding among riven rocks of many forms 
 and colom's : now chequered by a solitary ruined tower, 
 one of a chain of towers built, in old time, to protect the 
 coast from the invasions of the Barbary Corsairs — pre- 
 sents new beauties every moment. When its own strik- 
 ing scenery is passed, and it trails on through a long 
 line of subm'b, l}ing on the flat sea-shore, to Genoa, 
 then, the changing glimpses of that noble city and its 
 Harbom', awaken a new som'ce of interest ; freshened by 
 eveiy huge, miwieldy, half-inhabited old house in its 
 outskirts ; and coming to its cUmax when the city Gate is 
 reached, and all Genoa mth its beautiftd harbour, and 
 neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on the ^iew. 
 
 G Q 
 
TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA. 
 
 I STROLLED away from Genoa on the 6th of November, 
 bound for a good many places (England among them), 
 but first for Piacenza ; for which town I started in the 
 coupe of a machine something like a travelling caravan, 
 in company with the Brave Courier, and a lady with a large 
 dog, who howled dolefully, at intervals, all night. It was 
 very wet, and very cold ; very dark, and very dismal ; 
 we travelled at the rate of barely four miles an hour, and 
 stopped nowhere for refreshment. At ten o'clock next 
 morning, we changed coaches at Alessandria, where we 
 were packed up in another coach (the body whereof 
 would have been small for a fly), in company with a very 
 old priest ; a young Jesuit, his companion — who carried 
 their breviaries and other books, and who, in the exertion 
 of getting into the coach, had made a gash of pink leg 
 between his black stocldng and his black Ivnee-shorts, 
 that reminded one of Hamlet in Ophelia's closet, only it 
 was \isible on both legs — a provincial Awocato ; and a 
 gentleman with a red nose that had an uncommon and 
 singidar sheen upon it, which I never observed in the 
 human subject before. In this way we travelled on, 
 
STR.ADELL.\. 85 
 
 until four o'clock in the afternoon ; the roads being still 
 very heavy, and the coach very slow. To mend the mat- 
 ter, the old priest was troubled with cramps in his legs, 
 so that he had to give a terrible yell every ten minutes 
 or so, and be hoisted out by the united efforts of the com- 
 pany ; the coach always stopping for him, with great 
 gravity. This disorder, and the roads, formed the main 
 subject of conversation. Finding, in the afternoon, that 
 the coupe had discharged two people, and had only one 
 passenger inside — a monstrous ugly Tuscan, with a great 
 purple moustache, of which no man could see the ends 
 when lie had his hat on — I took advantage of its better 
 accommodation, and in company with this gentleman (who 
 was very conversational and good-humom'ed) travelled on, 
 until neai'ly eleven o'clock at night, when the driver 
 reported that he couldn't think of going any farther, and 
 we accordingly made a halt at a place called Stradella. 
 
 The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding 
 a yard ; where our coach, and a waggon or two, and a 
 lot of fowls, and firewood, were all heaped up together, 
 higgledy-piggledy; so that you didn't know, and couldn't 
 have taken your oath, which was a fowl and which was 
 a cart. We followed a sleepy man with a flaring torch, 
 into a great, cold room, where there were two immensely 
 broad beds, on what looked like two immensely broad 
 deal dining-tables ; another deal table of similar dimen- 
 sions in the middle of the bare floor ; fpur windows ; and 
 two chairs. Somebody said it was my room ; and I walked 
 up and down it, for half an hour or so, staring at the 
 Tuscan, the old priest, the young priest, and the Aw- 
 
86 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 ocato (Red-Nose lived in the town, and had gone home), 
 who sat upon the beds, and stared at me in return. 
 
 The rather dreary whimsicahty of this stage of the 
 proceedings, is interrupted by an announcement from 
 the Brave (he has been cooking) that supper is ready; 
 and to the priest's chamber (the next room and the 
 counterpart of mine) we all adjourn. The first dish is 
 a cabbage, boiled with a great quantity of rice in a 
 tureen full of w-ater, and flavoured with cheese. It is 
 so hot, and we are so cold, that it appears almost jolly. 
 The second dish is some little bits of pork, fried with 
 pigs' kidneys. The third, two red fowls. The fourth, 
 two little red turkeys. The fifth, a huge stew of garlic 
 and truffles, and I don't know what else ; and this con- 
 cludes the entertainment. 
 
 Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and 
 think it of the dampest, the door opens, and the Brave 
 comes moving in, in the middle of such a quantity of 
 fuel that he looks like Bimam Wood taking a winter 
 w'alk. He kindles this heap in a twinkling, and pro- 
 duces a jorum of hot brandy and water ; for that bottle 
 of his keeps company with the seasons, and now holds 
 nothing but the pm^est eau de vie. When he has accom- 
 plished this feat, he retires for the night ; and I hear 
 him, for an hour afterwards, and indeed until I fall 
 asleep, maldng jokes in some out-house (apparently 
 under the pillow), where he is smoking cigars with a 
 party of confidential friends. He never was in the 
 house in his life before ; but he Imows everj^body every- 
 where, before he has been anywhere five minutes ; and 
 
STRADELLA. 87 
 
 is certain to have attracted to himself, in the meantime, 
 the enthusiastic devotion of the whole establishment. 
 
 This is at twelve o'clock at night. At four o'clock 
 next morning, he is up again, fresher than a new-blown 
 rose ; making blazing fires without the least authority 
 from the landlord; producing mugs of scalding coffee 
 when nobody else can get anything but cold water ; and 
 going out into the dark streets, and roaring for fresh 
 milk, on the chance of somebody with a cow getting up 
 to supply it. While the horses are " coming," I stumble 
 out into the town too. It seems to be all one little 
 Piazza, with a cold damp wuid blowing in and out of the 
 arches, alternately, in a sort of pattern. But it is pro- 
 foundly dark, and raining heavily; and I shouldn't know 
 it to-morrow, if I were taken there to try. Which 
 Heaven forbid ! 
 
 The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval, 
 the driver swears : sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes 
 Pagan oaths. Sometimes, when it is a long, compound 
 oath, he begins with Christianity and merges into 
 Paganism. Various messengers are despatched ; not so 
 much after the horses, as after each other ; for the first 
 messenger never comes back, and all the rest imitate 
 him. At length the horses appear, surrounded by all 
 the messengers ; some kicking them, and some dragging 
 them, and all shouting abuse to them. Then, the old 
 priest, the young priest, the Awocato, the Tuscan, 
 and all of us, take our places ; and sleepy voices pro- 
 ceeding from the doors of extraordinary hutches in 
 divers parts of the yard, ciy out " Addio coniere mio ! 
 
88 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Buon' viaggio, corriere !" Salutations which the courier, 
 with his face one monstrous grin, returns in like 
 manner as we go jolting and wallowing away, through 
 the mud. 
 
 At Piacenza, which was four or five hours' journey 
 from the inn at Stradella, we broke up our little 
 company before the hotel door, with divers manifesta- 
 tions of friendly feeling on all sides. The old priest 
 was taken with the cramp again, before he had got half- 
 way down the street ; and the young priest laid the 
 bundle of books on a door step, while he dutifully rubbed 
 the old gentleman's legs. The client of the Awocato 
 was waiting for him at the yard-gate, and kissed him on 
 each cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I am 
 afraid he had either a very bad case, or a scantily-fur- 
 nished purse. The Tuscan, with a cigar in his mouth, 
 went loitering off, carrying his hat in his hand that he 
 might the better trail up the ends of his dishevelled 
 moustache. And the Brave Courier, as he and I strolled 
 away to look about us, began immediately to entertain 
 me with the private histories and family affairs of the 
 whole party. 
 
 A brown, decayed, old town, Piacenza is, A deserted, 
 solitary, grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts; half 
 filled-up trenches, which afford a frowsy pasturage to tlie 
 lean kine that wander about them ; and streets of stern 
 houses, moodily frowning at the other houses over the 
 way. The sleepiest and shabbiest of soldiery go wander- 
 ing about, with the double curse of laziness and poverty, 
 uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting regimentals ; the 
 
PIACENZA. 89 
 
 dirtiest of children play with their impromptu toys (pigs 
 and mud) in the feeblest of gutters ; and the gaimtest 
 of dogs trot in and out of the dullest of archways, in 
 perpetual search of something to eat, which they never 
 seem to find. A mysterious and solemn Palace, guarded 
 by two colossal statues, twin Genii of the place, stands 
 gravely in the midst of the idle town ; and the king with 
 the marble legs, who flourished in the time of the thou- 
 sand and one Nights, might live contentedly inside of 
 it, and never have the energy, in his upper half of flesh 
 and blood, to want to come out. 
 
 What a strange, half-sorrowful and half-delicious doze 
 it is, to ramble through these places gone to sleep and 
 basking in the sun ! Each, in its turn, appears to be, of all 
 the mouldy, dreaiy, God-forgotten towns in the wide 
 world, the chief. Sitting on this hillock where a bastion 
 used to be, and where a noisy fortress was, in the time 
 of the old Roman station here, I become aware that I 
 have never Ivnown till now, what it is to be lazy. A dor- 
 mouse must sm^ely be in very much the same condition 
 before he retires under the wool in his cage ; or a tortoise 
 before he buries liimself. I feel that I am getting rusty. 
 That any attempt to think, would be accompanied with a 
 creaking noise. That there is nothing, anywhere, to be 
 done, or needing to be done. That there is no more 
 human progress, motion, effort, or advancement, of any 
 kind beyond this. That the whole scheme stopped 
 here centmies ago, and lay down to rest until the Day 
 of Judgment. 
 
 Never while the Brave Courier lives ! Behold him 
 
90 PICTURES FROJI ITALY. 
 
 jingling out of Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the 
 tallest posting-chaise ever seen, so that he looks out of the 
 front window as if he were peeping over a garden wall ; 
 while the postilion, concentrated- essence of all the 
 shabbiness of Italy, pauses for a moment in his animated 
 conversation, to touch liis hat to a blunt-nosed little 
 Virgin, hardly less shabby than himself, enshrined in a 
 plaster Punch's show outside the town. 
 
 In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on trel- 
 lis-work, supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in 
 themselves, are anything but picturesque. But, here, they 
 twine them aromid trees, and let them trail among the 
 hedges; and the vineyards are full of trees, regularly 
 planted for this pm^ose, each with its own vine twining 
 and clustering about it. Their leaves are now of the 
 brightest gold and deepest red ; and never was anythhig 
 so enchautingly graceful and full of beauty. Through 
 miles of these delightful forms and colours, the road 
 winds its way. The wild festoons ; the elegant wreaths, 
 and crowQS, and garlands of all shapes ; the fauy nets 
 flung over great trees, and making them prisoners in 
 sport ; the tumbled heaps and mounds of exquisite 
 shapes upon the ground; how rich and beautiful they 
 are ! And every now and then, a long, long line of 
 trees, will be all bound and garlanded together: as if 
 they had taken hold of one another, and were coming 
 dancmg down the field ! 
 
 Parma has cheerful, stirring streets, for an Italian 
 town ; and consequently is not so characteristic as many 
 places of less note. Always excepting the retired 
 
PARMA. 91 
 
 Piazza, where the Cathedral, Baptistery, and Campanile 
 — ancient buildings, of a sombre brown, embellished 
 with innumerable grotesque monsters and dreamy- 
 looldng creatures carved in marble and red stone — are 
 clustered in a noble and magnificent repose. Their 
 silent presence was only invaded, when I saw them, by 
 the twittering of the many birds that were flying in and 
 out of the crevices in the stones and little nooks in the 
 architecture, where they had made their nests. They 
 were busy, rising from the cold shade of Temples made 
 with hands, into the smmy air of Heaven. Not so the 
 worshippers withm, who were listening to the same 
 drowsy chaunt, or kneeling before the same Idnds of 
 images and tapers, or whispering, v^ith their heads 
 bowed down, in the very selfsame dark confessionals, as 
 I had left in Genoa and everywhere else. 
 
 The decayed and mutilated paintings with which tliis 
 church is covered, have, to my thinking, a remarkably 
 momTiful and depressing influence. It is miserable to see 
 great works of ait — something of the Souls of Painters — 
 perishing and fading away, hke human forms. This 
 cathedral is odorous with the rotting of Coreggio's fres- 
 coes in the Cupola. Heaven linows how beautiful they 
 may have been at one time. Connoisseurs fall into 
 raptures with them now ; but such a labyrinth of arms 
 and legs : such heaps of foreshortened limbs, entangled 
 and involved and jumbled together : no operative surgeon, 
 gone mad, could imagine in his wildest delkium. 
 
 There is a very interesting subterranean church here ; 
 the roof supported by marble pillars, behind each of 
 
92 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 which there seemed to be at least one beggar in ambush : 
 to say nothing of the tombs and secluded altars. From 
 every one of these lurking-places, such crowds of phan- 
 tom-looking men and women, leading other men and 
 women with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or paralytic 
 gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad infirmity, 
 came hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in 
 the cathedral above, had been suddenly animated, and 
 had retired to this lower church, they could hardly have 
 made a greater confusion, or exhibited a more confound- 
 ing display of arms and legs. 
 
 There is Petrarch's Monument, too; and there is the 
 Baptistery, with its beautiful arches and immense font; and 
 there is a gallery containing some very remarkable pic- 
 tures, whereof a few were being copied by hairy-faced 
 artists, with little velvet caps more off their heads than 
 on. There is the Famese Palace, too ; and in it one of 
 the dreariest spectacles of decay that ever was seen — a 
 grand, old, gloomy theatre, mouldering away. 
 
 It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe shape ; 
 the lower seats arranged upon the Roman plan, but 
 above them, great heavy chambers rather than boxes, 
 where the Nobles sat, remote, in their proud state. 
 Such desolation as has fallen on this theatre, enhanced 
 in the spectator's fancy by its gay intention and design, 
 none but worms can be familiar with. A hundred and 
 ten years have passed, since any play was acted here. The 
 sky shines in through the gashes in the roof ; the boxes are 
 dropping down, wasting away, and only tenanted by rats ; 
 damp and mildew smear the faded colours, and make 
 
MODENA. 93 
 
 spectral maps upon the panels ; lean rags are dangling 
 down where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium ; 
 the stage has rotted so, that a narrow wooden galleiy is 
 thrown across it, or it would sink beneath the tread, and 
 bury the visitor in the gloomy depth beneath. The 
 desolation and decay impress themselves on all the 
 senses. The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy 
 taste ; any stray outer sounds that straggle in with some 
 lost sunbeam, are muffled and heavy ; and the worm, the 
 maggot, and the rot have changed the surface of the 
 wood beneath the touch, as time will seam and roughen 
 a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act plays, they act them 
 on this ghostly stage. 
 
 It was most delicious weather, when we came into 
 Modena, where the darkness of the sombre colonnades 
 over the footways skiiling the main street on either side, 
 was made refreshing and agreeable by the bright sky, 
 so wonderfully blue. I passed, from all the glory of the 
 day, into a dim cathedral, where high mass was performing, 
 feeble tapers were burning, people were kneehng in 
 all directions before all manner of shrines, and officiating 
 priests were crooning the usual chaunt, in the usual low, 
 dull, drawling, melancholy tone. 
 
 Thinking how strange it was, to find, m eveiy stagnant 
 town, this same Heart beating with the same monotonous 
 pulsation, the centre of the same toi'pid, listless system, 
 I came out by another door, and was suddenly scared to 
 death by a blast from the shrillest trumpet that ever was 
 blown. Immediately, came tearing round the comer, an 
 equestrian company from Paris : marshallmg themselves 
 
94 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 under the walls of the church, and floutmg, Tsith their 
 horses' heels, the griffins, lions, tigers, and other 
 monsters in stone and marble, decorating its exterior. 
 First, there came a stately nobleman with a great deal 
 of hair, and no hat, bearing an enormous banner, on 
 which was inscribed, Mazeppa ! to-night ! Then, a 
 Mexican chief, with a great pear-shaped club on his 
 shoulder, like Hercules. Then, six or eight Roman 
 chariots : each with a beautiful lady in extremely short 
 petticoats, and unnaturally pink tights, erect within: 
 shedding beaming looks upon the crowd, in which there 
 was a latent expression of discomposure and anxiety, for 
 which I couldn't account, until, as the open back of each 
 chariot presented itself, I saw the immense difficulty 
 with which the pinl^ legs maintamed their pei*pendicular, 
 over the imeven pavement of the town: which gave 
 me quite a new idea of the ancient Romans and Britons. 
 The procession was brought to a close, by some dozen 
 indomitable warriors of different nations, riding two and 
 two, and haughtily surveying the tame population of 
 Modena: among whom, however, they occasionally con- 
 descended to scatter largesse in the form of a few hand- 
 bills. After caracolling among the lions and tigers, and 
 proclaiming that evening's entertainments with blast of 
 trumpet, it then filed off, by the other end of the square, 
 and left a new and greatly uicreased dulness behind. 
 
 When the procession had so entirely passed away, 
 that the shrill trumpet was mild in the distance, and the 
 tail of the last horse was hopelessly round the corner, the 
 people who had come out of the chm'ch to stare at it, 
 
MODENA. 95 
 
 went back again. But, one old lady, kneeling on the 
 pavement within, near the door, had seen it all, and had 
 been immensely interested, without getting up ; and this 
 old lady's eye, at that jmicture, I happened to catch : to 
 our mutual confusion. She cut our embarrassment very 
 short, however, by crossing herself devoutly, and going 
 down, at full length, on her face, before a figure in a 
 fancy petticoat and a gilt crown; which was so like 
 one of the procession-figures, that perhaps at this hour 
 she may think the whole appearance a celestial vision. 
 ^ Anyhow, I must certainly have forgiven her, her interest 
 in the Circus, though I had been her Father Confessor. 
 
 There was a little fieiy-eyed old man with a crooked 
 shoulder, in the cathedral, who took it veiy ill that I 
 made no effort to see the bucket (kept in an old tower) 
 which the people of Modena took away from the people 
 of Bologna in the fom'teenth century, and about which 
 there was war made and a mock-heroic poem by Tasso, 
 too. Being quite content, however, to look at the outside of 
 the tower, and feast, in imagination, on the bucket 
 within ; and preferring to loiter in the shade of the tall 
 Campanile, and about the cathedral; I have no per- 
 sonal knowledge of this bucket, even at the present 
 time. 
 
 Indeed, we were at Bologna, before the little old man 
 (or the Guide-Book) would have considered that we had 
 half done justice to the wonders of Modena. But it is 
 such a delight to me to leave new scenes behind, and 
 still go on, encountering newer scenes — and, moreover I 
 have such a perverse disposition in respect of sights that 
 
96 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 are cut, and dried, and dictated — that I fear I sin 
 against similar authorities in every place I visit. 
 
 Be this as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at 
 Bologna I found myself walking next Sunday morning, 
 among the stately marble tombs and colonnades, in 
 company with a crowd of Peasants, and escorted by a 
 little Cicerone of that town, who was excessively anxious 
 for the honour of the place, and most solicitous to divert 
 my attention from the bad monuments : whereas he was 
 never tired of extolling the good ones. Seeing this 
 little man (a good-humoured little man he was, who 
 seemed to have nothing in his face but shining teeth 
 and eyes) looking, wistfully, at a certain plot of grass, I 
 asked him who was buried there. " The poor people, 
 Signore, " he said with a shrug and a smile, and stopping 
 to look back at me — for he always went on a little before, 
 and took off his* hat to introduce every new monument. 
 " Only the poor, Signore ! It 's veiy cheerful. It 's 
 very lively. How green it is, how cool ! It 's like a 
 meadow ! There are five," — holding up all the fingers 
 of his right hand to express the number, which an 
 Italian peasant will always do, if it be within the com- 
 pass of his ten fingers, — "there are five of my little 
 children buried there, Signore; just there; a little to 
 the right. Well ! Thanks to God ! It 's very cheerful. 
 How green it is, how cool it is ! It 's quite a meadow ! " 
 
 He looked me very hard in the face, and seeing 
 I was sorry for him, took a pinch of snuff (every Cice- 
 rone takes snuff), and made a little bow; partly in 
 deprecation of his having alluded to such a subject, and 
 
BOLOGNA. 97 
 
 partly in memory of the children and of his favourite 
 saint. It was as unaffected and as perfectly natural a 
 little bow, as ever man made. Immediately aftei'wards, 
 he took his hat off altogether, and begged to introduce 
 me to the next monument ; and his eyes and his teeth 
 shone brighter than before. 
 
THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA. 
 
 There was such a very smart ojfficial in attendance at 
 the Cemetery where the little Cicerone had buried his 
 children, that when the little Cicerone suggested to me, 
 in a whisper, that there would be no offence in present- 
 ing this officer, in return for some slight extra service, 
 with a couple of pauls (about tenpence, English money), 
 I looked incredulously at his cocked hat, wash-leather 
 gloves, well-made uniform, and dazzling buttons, and re- 
 buked the little Cicerone with a grave shake of the head. 
 For, in splendour of appearance, he was at least equal to 
 the Deputy Usher of the Black Rod ; and the idea of his 
 carrying, as Jeremy Diddler would say, " such a thing as 
 tenpence " away with him, seemed monstrous. He took 
 it in excellent part, however, when I made bold to give 
 it him, and pulled off his cocked hat with a flourish that 
 would have been a bargain at double the money. 
 
 It seemed to be his duty to describe the monuments 
 to the people — at all events he was doing so ; and when 
 I compared him, like Gulliver in Brobdignag, "with the 
 Institutions of my own beloved country, I could not 
 refrain from tears of pride and exultation." He had no 
 
BOLOGNA. 99 
 
 pace at all ; no more than a tortoise. He loitered as the 
 people loitered, that they might gratify their curiosity ; 
 and positively allowed them, now and then, to read the 
 inscriptions on the tombs. He was neither shabby, nor 
 insolent, nor churlish, nor ignorant. He spoke his own 
 language with perfect propriety, and seemed to consider 
 himself, in his way, a kind of teacher of the people, and 
 to entertain a just respect both for himself and them. 
 They would no more have such a man for a Verger in 
 Westminster Abbey, than they w^ould let the people in 
 (as they do at Bologna) to see the monuments for nothing. 
 
 Again, an ancient sombre town, under the brilliant 
 sky ; with heavy arcades over the footways of the older 
 streets, and lighter and more cheerful archways in the 
 newer portions of the town. Again, brown piles of 
 sacred buildings, with more birds flying in and out of 
 chinks in the stones ; and more snarling monsters for 
 the bases of the pillars. Again, rich chm'ches, drowsy 
 masses, curling incense, tinkling bells, priests in bright 
 vestments : pictm"es, tapers, laced altar cloths, crosses, 
 images, and artificial flowers. 
 
 There is a grave and learned air about the city, and a 
 pleasant gloom upon it, that would leave it, a distinct and 
 separate impression in the mind, among a crowed of cities, 
 though it were not still further marked in the travellers 
 remembrance by the two brick leaning towers (sufficiently 
 unsightly in themselves, it must be acknowledged), in- 
 clming cross-wise as if they were bowing stiffly to each 
 other — a most extraordinary termination to the per- 
 spective of some of the narrow streets. The colleges, 
 
 H 2 
 
100 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and churches too, and palaces : and above all the 
 academy of Fine Arts, where there are a host of 
 interestmg pictures, especially by Guido, Domenichino, 
 and LuDovico Caracci : give it a place of its own in the 
 memory. Even though these were not, and there were 
 nothing else to remember it by, the great Meridian on 
 the pavement of the church of San Petronio, where the 
 sunbeams mark the time among the kneeling people, 
 would give it a fanciful and pleasant interest. 
 
 Bologna being very full of tourists, detained there by 
 an inmidation which rendered the road to Florence im- 
 passable, I was quartered up at the top of an Hotel, in 
 an out-of-the-way room which I never could find : con- 
 taining a bed, big enough for a boarding-school, which I 
 couldn't fall asleep in. The chief among the waiters 
 who visited this lonely retreat, where there was no other 
 company but the swallows in the broad eaves over the 
 window, was a man of one idea in connection with the 
 English ; and the subject of this harmless monomania, 
 was Lord Byron. I made the discovery by accidentally 
 remarking to him, at breakfast, that the mattmg with 
 which the floor was covered, was very comfortable at that 
 season, when he immediately replied that Milor Beeron 
 had been much attached to that kind of matting. Observ- 
 ing, at the same moment, that I took no milk, he exclaimed 
 with enthusiasm, that Milor Beeron had never touched 
 it. At first, I took it for granted, in my innocence, that 
 he had been one of the Beeron servants ; but no, he 
 said no, he was in the habit of speaking about my Lord, 
 to English gentlemen ; that was all. He knew all about 
 
BOLOGNA. 101 
 
 him, he said. In proof of it, he connected him with every 
 possible topic, from the Monte Pulciano wine at dinner, 
 (which was grown on an estate he had owned,) to the big 
 bed itself, which was the very model of his. When I 
 left the inn, he coupled with his final bow in the yard, 
 a parting assurance that the road by which I was going, 
 had been Milor Beeron's favourite ride ; and before the 
 horse's feet had well begun to clatter on the pavement, 
 he ran briskly up stairs again, I dare say to tell some 
 other EngUshman in some other solitary room that 
 the guest who had just departed, was Lord Beeron's 
 living image. 
 
 I had entered Bologna by night — almost midnight — 
 and all along the road thither, after our entrance into the 
 Papal territory : which is not, in any part, supremely 
 well governed, Saint Peter's keys being rather rusty now: 
 the driver had so worried about the danger of robbers 
 in travellmg after dark, and had so infected the Brave 
 Courier, and the two had been so constantly stopping and 
 getting up and down to look after a portmanteau which 
 was tied on behmd, that I should have felt almost 
 obliged to any one who would have had the goodness to 
 take it away. Hence it was stipulated, that, whenever 
 we left Bologna, we should start so as not to arrive at 
 Ferrara later than eight at night ; and a delightful 
 afternoon and evening jomney it was, albeit tln-ough a 
 flat district which gradually became more marshy from 
 the overflow of brooks and rivers in the recent heavy 
 rains. 
 
 At sunset, when I was walking on alone, while the 
 
102 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 horses rested, I arrived upon a little scene, which, by- 
 one of those singular mental operations of which we are 
 all conscious, seemed perfectly familiar to me, and which 
 I see distinctly now. There was not much in it. In 
 the blood-red light, there was a momTiful sheet of water, 
 just stirred by the evening wind ; upon its margin a few- 
 trees. In the foreground was a group of silent peasant- 
 girls leaning over the parapet of a little bridge, and 
 looking, now up at the sky, now down into the water ; in 
 the distance, a deep bell; the shadow of approaching night 
 on eveiything. If I had been mm'dered there, in some 
 former life, I could not have seemed to remember the 
 place more thoroughly, or with a more emphatic chilling 
 of the blood ; and the real remembrance of it acquired 
 in that minute, is so strengthened by the imaginary 
 recollection, that I hardly think I could forget it. 
 
 More solitary, more depopulated, more deserted, old 
 Ferrara, than any city of the solemn brotherhood ! The 
 grass so grows up in the silent streets, that anyone 
 might make hay there, literally, while the sun shines. 
 But the sun shines with diminished cheerfulness in 
 grim Ferrara ; and the people are so few who pass and 
 repass through the public places, that the flesh of its 
 inhabitants might be grass indeed, and growing in the 
 squares. 
 
 I wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian 
 town, always lives next door to the Hotel, or opposite : 
 making the visitor feel as if the beating hammers were 
 his own heart, palpitating with a deadly energy! I 
 wonder why jealous corridors surround the bedroom on 
 
FERRAEA. 103 
 
 all sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that can't 
 be shut, and will not open, and abut on pitchy darkness ! 
 I wonder why it is not enough that these distrustful 
 genii stand agape at one's dreams all night, but there 
 must also be round open portholes, high in the wall, 
 suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the 
 wainscot, of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in 
 his endeavours to reach one of these portholes and look 
 in ! I wonder why the faggots are so constructed, as to 
 know of no effect but an agony of heat when they are 
 lighted and replenished, and an agony of cold and suffo- 
 cation at all other times ! I wonder, above all, why it 
 is the great feature of domestic architecture in Italian 
 inns, that all the fire goes up the chimney, except the 
 smoke ! 
 
 The answer matters little. Coppersmiths, doors, 
 portholes, smoke, and faggots, are welcome to me. Give 
 me the smiling face of the attendant, man or woman ; 
 the courteous manner ; the amiable desire to please and 
 to be pleased; the light-hearted, pleasant, simple air — 
 so many jewels set m dirt — and I am theirs again 
 to-morrow ! 
 
 Ariosto's house, Tasso's prison, a rare old gothic 
 cathedral, and more churches of course, are the sights of 
 Ferrara. But the long silent streets, and the dis- 
 mantled palaces, where ivy waves in lieu of banners, 
 and where rank weeds are slowly creeping up the long- 
 untrodden stairs, are the best sights of all. 
 
 The aspect of this dreary town, half an hour before 
 sunrise one fine morning, when I left it, was as pic- 
 
104 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 turesque as it seemed unreal and spectral. It was no 
 matter that the people were not yet out of bed ; for if 
 they had all been up and busy, they would have made 
 but little difference in that desert of a place. It was 
 best to see it, without a single figure in the picture ; a 
 city of the dead, without one solitary survivor. Pesti- 
 lence might have ravaged streets, squares, and market- 
 places ; and sack and siege have ruined the old houses, 
 battered down their doors and windows, and made 
 breaches in their roofs. In one part, a great tower rose 
 into the air ; the only landmark in the melancholy view. 
 In another, a prodigious Castle, with a moat about it, 
 stood aloof: a sullen city in itself. In the black dun- 
 geons of this castle, Parisina and her lover were beheaded 
 in the dead of night. The red light, beginning to shine 
 when I looked back upon it, stained its walls without, as 
 they have, many a time, been stained within, in old days ; 
 but for any sign of life they gave, the castle and the 
 city might have been avoided by all human creatures, from 
 the moment when the axe went down upon the last of the 
 two lovers : and might have never \'ibrated to another sound 
 
 Beyond the blow that to the block 
 
 Pierced through with forced and sullen shock. 
 
 Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and 
 running fiercely, we crossed it by a floating bridge of 
 boats, and so came into the Austrian territory, and resumed 
 our journey : through a country of which, for some miles, 
 a great part was under water. The Brave Courier and the 
 soldiery had first quarrelled, for half an hour or more, over our 
 eternal passport. But this was a daily relaxation with the 
 
FERRA.RA. 105 
 
 Brave, who was always stricken deaf when shabby func- 
 tionaries in uniform came, as they constantly did come, 
 plunging out of wooden boxes to look at it — or in other 
 words to beg — and who, stone deaf to my entreaties that 
 the man might have a trifle given him, and we resume our 
 journey in peace, was wont to sit reviling the functionary 
 in broken Enghsh: while the unfortunate man's face was 
 a portrait of mental agony framed in the coach window, 
 from his perfect ignorance of what was being said to his 
 disparagement. 
 
 There was a Postilion, in the course of this day's 
 journey, as wild and savagely good-looldng a vagabond 
 as you would desire to see. He was a tall, stout-made, 
 dark-complexioned fellow, with a profusion of shaggy 
 black hair hanging all over his face, and great black 
 whiskers stretching down his throat. His dress was a 
 torn suit of rifle green, garnished here and there with 
 red; a steeple-crowned hat, innocent of nap, with a 
 broken and bedraggled feather stuck in the band ; and a 
 flaming red neck-kerchief hanging on his shoulders. 
 He was not in the saddle, but reposed, quite at his ease, 
 on a sort of low footboard in front of the postchaise, down 
 among the horses' tails — convenient for having his brains 
 kicked out, at any moment. To this Brigand, the Brave 
 Courier, when we were at a reasonable trot, happened to 
 suggest the practicability of going faster. He received the 
 proposal with a perfect yell of derision ; brandished his 
 whip about his head (such a whip ! it was more like a 
 home-made bow); flung up his heels, much higher 
 than the horses; and disappeared, in a pai'oxysm, 
 
106 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 somewhere in the neighbourhood of the axle-tree. I 
 fully expected to see him lying in the road, a hundred 
 yards behind, but up came the steeple-crowned hat 
 again, next minute, and he was seen reposing, as on a 
 sofa, entertaining himself with the idea, and crying, "Ha 
 ha ! what next. Oh the devil ! Faster too ! Shoo — 
 hoo — — ! " (This last ejaculation, an inexpressibly 
 defiant hoot.) Being anxious to reach our immediate 
 destination that night, I ventured, by and by, to 
 repeat the experiment on my own account. It produced 
 exactly the same effect. Round flew the whip with 
 the same scornful flemish, up came the heels, down 
 went the steeple-crowned hat, and presently he re- 
 appeared, reposing as before and saying to himself, " Ha 
 ha ! what next ! Faster too. Oh the devil ! Shoo 
 — hoo — 0—0 ! " 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 
 
 I HAD been travelling, for some days ; resting 
 very little in the night, and never in the day. The 
 rapid and unbroken succession of novelties that had 
 passed before me, came back like half-formed dreams : 
 and a crowd of objects wandered in the gi'eatest confusion 
 through my mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road. 
 At intervals, some one among them would stop, as it were, 
 in its restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to look 
 at it, quite steadily, and behold it in full distinctness. After 
 a few moments, it would dissolve, like a view in a magic- 
 lantern ; and while I saw some part of it quite plainly, 
 and some faintly, and some not at all, would show me 
 another of the many places I had lately seen, lingering 
 behind it, and coming through it. This was no sooner 
 visible than, in its turn, it melted into something else. 
 
 At one moment, I was standing again, before the 
 brown old rugged churches of Modena. As I recognised 
 the cmious pillars with grim monsters for their bases, 
 I seemed to see them, standing by themselves in the 
 quiet squai'e at Padua, where there were the staid old 
 University, and the figures, demurely-gowned, gi'ouped 
 
108 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 here and there in the open space about it. Then, I was 
 strolling in the outskirts of that pleasant city, admiring 
 the unusual neatness of the dwelling-houses, gardens, and 
 orchards, as I had seen them a few hours before. In 
 their stead, arose, immediately, the two towers of Bologna; 
 and the most obstinate of all these objects, failed to hold 
 its ground, a minute, before the monstrous moated castle 
 of Ferrara, which, like an illustration to a wild romance, 
 came back again in the red sun-rise, lording it over the 
 solitary, grass-grown, withered town. In short, I had 
 that incoherent but delightful jumble in my brain, which 
 travellers are apt to have, and are indolently willing to 
 encourage. Every shake of the coach in which I sat, 
 half dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some new 
 recollection out of its place, and to jerk some other new 
 recollection into it ; and in this state I fell asleep. 
 
 I was awakened after some time (as I thought) by the 
 stopping of the coach. It was now quite night, and we 
 were at the water side. There lay here, a black boat, 
 with a little house or cabin in it of the same mournful 
 colour. When I had taken my seat in this, the boat was 
 paddled, by two men, towards a great light, lying in the 
 distance on the sea. 
 
 Ever and again, there was a dismal sigh of wind. It 
 ruffled the water, and rocked the boat, and sent the dark 
 clouds flying before the stars. I could not but think 
 how strange it was, to be floating away at that hour : 
 leaving the land behind, and going on, towards this light 
 upon the sea. It soon began to burn brighter : and from 
 being one light became a cluster of tapers, twinlding and 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 109 
 
 shining out of the water, as the boat approached towards 
 them by a dreamy kind of track, marked out upon the 
 sea by posts and piles. 
 
 We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark 
 water, when I heard it rippling, in my dream, against 
 some obstruction near at hand. Looking out attentively, 
 I saw, through the gloom, a something black and mas- 
 sive — ^like a shore, but lying close and flat upon the 
 water, like a raft — which we were gliding past. The 
 chief of the two rowers said it was a bmial-place. 
 
 Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying 
 out there, in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze 
 upon it as it should recede in our path, when it was 
 quickly shut out from my view. Before I knew by 
 what, or how, I found that we were gliding up a street — 
 a phantom street ; the houses rising on both sides, from 
 the water, and the black boat gliding on beneath their 
 windows. Lights were shining from some of these case- 
 ments, plumbing the depth of the black stream with 
 their reflected rays ; but all was profoundly silent. 
 
 So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to 
 held our course through narrow streets and lanes, all 
 filled and flowing with water. Some of the comers 
 where our way branched off, were so acute and narrow, 
 that it seemed impossible for the long slender boat to 
 turn them ; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of 
 warning, sent it skimming on, without a pause. Some- 
 times, the rowers of another black boat like our own, 
 echoed the ciy, and slackening their speed (as I thought 
 we did ours) would come flitting past us, like a dark 
 
no PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 shadow. Other boats, of the same sombre hue, were 
 lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near to dark 
 mysterious doors that opened straight upon the water. 
 Some of these were empty ; in some, the rowers lay 
 asleep ; towards one, I saw some figures coming down a 
 gloomy archway from the interior of a palace : gaily 
 dressed, and attended by torch-bearers. It was but a 
 glimpse I had of them; for a bridge, so low and close 
 upon the boat that it seemed ready to fall down and 
 crush us : one of the many bridges that perplexed the 
 Dream : blotted them out, instantly. On we went, floating 
 towards the heart of this strange place — with water all 
 about us where never water was elsewhere — clusters of 
 houses, churches, heaps of stately buildmgs growing out 
 of it — and, everj^^vhere, the same extraordinary silence. 
 Presently, we shot across a broad and open stream ; and 
 passing, as I thought, before a spacious paved quay, 
 where the bright lamps with which it was illuminated, 
 shewed long rows of arches and pillars, of ponderous con- 
 struction and great strength, but as light to the eye as 
 garlands of hoar-frost or gossamer — and where, for the 
 first time, I saw people walking — arrived at a flight of 
 steps leading from the water to a large mansion, where, 
 having passed through corridors and galleries innumer- 
 able, I lay down to rest; listening to the black boats 
 stealing up and down below the window on the rippling 
 water, till I fell asleep. 
 
 The glory of the day that broke upon me in this 
 Dream ; its freshness, motion, buoyancy ; its spai'kles of 
 the sun in water ; its clear blue sky and nistling air ; no 
 
' AN ITALIAN DREAM. HI 
 
 waldng words can tell. But, from my window, I looked 
 down on boats and barks; on masts, sails, cordage, 
 flags ; on groups of busy sailors, working at the cargoes 
 of these vessels ; on wide quays, strewn with bales, 
 casks, merchandise of many kinds ; on great ships, Ipng 
 near at hand in stately indolence ; on islands, crowned 
 with gorgeous domes and turrets: and where golden 
 crosses glittered in the light, atop of wondrous churches 
 springing from the sea ! Going down upon the margin 
 of the gi'een sea, rolling on before the door, and fil- 
 ling all the streets, I came upon a place of such sur- 
 passing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest 
 was poor and faded, in comparison with its absorbing 
 loveliness. 
 
 It was a great Piazza, as I thought ; anchored, like 
 all the rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was 
 a Palace, more majestic and magnificent in its old age, 
 than all the buildmgs of the earth, in the high prime and 
 fulness of their youth. Cloisters and galleries: so 
 light, they might have been the work of faiiy hands : so 
 strong that centuries had battered them in vain : wound 
 round and round this palace, and enfolded it with a 
 Cathedral, gorgeous in the wild luxuriant fancies of the 
 East. At no great distance from its porch, a lofty tower, 
 standing by itself, and rearing its proud head, alone, 
 into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic sea. Near to 
 the margin of the stream, were two ill-omened pillars of 
 red granite ; one having on its top, a figure with a sword 
 and shield; the other, a winged lion. Not far from 
 these again, a second tower : richest of the rich in all its 
 
112 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 decorations: even here, where all was rich: sustained 
 aloft, a great orb, gleaming with gold and deepest blue : 
 the Twelve Signs painted on it, and a mimic sun revolv- 
 ing in its com'se around them : while above, two 
 bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding 
 bell. An oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest 
 stone, surrounded by a light and beautiful arcade, formed 
 part of this enchanted scene ; and, here and there, gay 
 masts for flags rose, tapering, from the pavement of the 
 unsubstantial ground. 
 
 I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and 
 out among its many arches : traversing its whole extent. 
 A grand and dreamy structure, of immense proportions ; 
 golden with old mosaics; redolent of perfumes; dim 
 with the smoke of incense ; costly in treasure of precious 
 stones and metals, glittering through iron bars; holy 
 with the bodies of deceased saints ; rainbow-hued with 
 windows of stained glass ; dark with carved woods and 
 coloured marbles ; obscure in its vast heights, and length- 
 ened distances ; shining with silver lamps and winking 
 lights ; mireal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable through- 
 out. I thought I entered the old palace ; pacing silent 
 galleries and council-chambers, where the old iiilers of 
 this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in pictures, 
 from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still 
 victorious on canvass, fought and conquered as of old. 
 I thought I wandered through its halls of state and 
 triumph — bare and empty now! — and musmg on its 
 pride and might, extinct : for that was past ; all past : 
 heard a voice say, " Some tokens of its ancient rule, and 
 
AN ITALIAN DEEAM, 113 
 
 some consoling reasons for its downfal, may be traced 
 here, yet ! " 
 
 I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous 
 rooms, commmiicating with a prison near the palace ; 
 separated from it by a lofty bridge crossing a narrow 
 street ; and called, I dreamed, The Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall ; 
 the lions' mouths — now toothless — where, in the distem- 
 pered horror of my sleep, I thought denunciations of 
 innocent men to the old wicked Council, had been dropped 
 through, many a time, when the night was dark. So, 
 when I saw the council-room to which such prisoners 
 were taken for examination, and the door by which they 
 passed out, when they were condemned — a door that 
 never closed upon a man with life and hope before him 
 — my heart appeared to die within me. 
 
 It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, 
 I descended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one 
 below another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. 
 They were quite dark. Each had a loop-hole in its 
 massive wall, where, in the old time, every day, a torch 
 was placed — I dreamed — to light the prisoner within, 
 for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering of 
 these brief rays, had scratched and cut inscriptions in 
 the blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labour 
 with a rusty nail's point, had outlived their agony and 
 them, through many generations. 
 
 One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more 
 than four-and-twenty hom^s ; being marked for dead 
 before he entered it. Hard by, another, and a dismal 
 
 I 
 
114 JICTUEES FHOM ITALY. 
 
 one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor came— a m^onfc 
 brown-robed, and hooded — ghastly in the day, and free 
 bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison, 
 Hope's extinguisher, and Murder's herald. I had my foot 
 'upon the spot, where, at the same dread hour, the shriven 
 prisoner was strangled ; and struck my hand upon the 
 guilty door— low browed and stealthy — through which 
 the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and rowed 
 away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net. 
 
 Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part 
 of it: licking the rough walls without, and smearing 
 them with damp and slime within : stuffing dank weeds 
 and refuse into chinks and crevices, as if the very stones 
 and bars had mouths to stop : fumishmg a smooth road 
 for the removal of the bodies of the secret victims of the 
 state — a road so ready that it went along with them, and 
 ran before them, like a cruel officer — flowed the same 
 water that filled this Dream of mine, and made it seem 
 one, even at the time. 
 
 Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I 
 thought, the Giant's — I had some imaginary recollection 
 of an old man abdicating, coming, more slowly and more 
 feebly, down it, when he heard the bell, proclaiming hi» 
 successor — I glided off, in one of the dark boats, until 
 we came to an old arsenal guarded by fom* marble lions. 
 To make my Dream more monstrous and unlikely, one 
 of these had words and sentences upon its body, inscribed 
 there, at an unknown time, and in an unknown language ; 
 so that their pm-port was a mysteiy to all men. 
 
 There was little somid of hammers in this place for 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. il5 
 
 building ships, and little work in progress ; for the great- 
 ness of the city was no more, as I have said. Indeed, it 
 seemed a very wreck fomid drifting on the sea ; a strange 
 flag hoisted in its honourable stations, and strangers 
 standuig at its helm. A splendid barge in which its* 
 ancient chief had gone forth, pompously, at certain periods, 
 to wed the ocean, lay here, I thought, no more ; but, in 
 its place, there was a tiny model, made from recollection 
 like the city's greatness ; and it told of what had been 
 (so are the strong and weak confounded in the dust) 
 almost as eloquently as the massive pillars, arches, roofs, 
 reared to overshadow stately ships that had no other 
 shadow now, upon the water or the earth. 
 
 An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled; 
 but an armoury. With a fierce standai'd taken from the 
 Turks, drooping in the dull air of its cage. Kich suits 
 of mail worn by great warriors were hoarded there ; cross- 
 bows and bolts; quivers full of an-ows; spears; swords, 
 daggers, maces, shields, and heavy-headed axes. Plates 
 of wi'ought steel and iron, to make the gallant horse a 
 monster cased in metal scales ; and one spring- weapon 
 (easy to be carried in the breast) designed to do its office 
 noiselessly, and made for shooting men with poisoned 
 darts. 
 
 One press or case I saw, fidl of accursed instru- 
 ments of torture : horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, 
 and grind, and crush men's bones, and tear and twist 
 them with the torment of a thousand deaths. Before it, 
 were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces : made to close 
 up tight and smooth upon the heads of living sufferers ; 
 
 I 2 
 
116 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil, where 
 the dkectmg devil could repose his elbow at his ease, 
 and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations 
 and confessions of the wretch within. There was that 
 grim resemblance in them to the human shape — they 
 were such moulds of sweating faces, pained and cramped 
 — that it was difl&cult to think them empty; and terrible 
 distortions lingering within them, seemed to follow me, 
 when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of 
 garden or public walk in the sea, where there were grass 
 and trees. But I forgot them when I stood upon its 
 farthest brink — I stood there, in my dream — and looked, 
 along the ripple, to the setting sun : before me, in the 
 sky and on the deep, a crimson flush ; and behind me 
 the whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple, 
 on the water. 
 
 In the luxmious wonder of so rare a dream, I took 
 but little heed of time, and had but little understanding 
 of its flight. But there were days and nights in it ; and 
 when the sun was high, and when the rays of lamps were 
 crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, I 
 thought : plashmg the slippeiy walls and houses with 
 the cleavuigs of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon 
 it, skimmed along the streets. 
 
 Sometimes, alighting at the doors of chm'ches and 
 vast palaces, I wandered on, from room to room, from 
 aisle to aisle, through labyrinths of rich altars, ancient 
 monuments; decayed apartments where the furniture, 
 half awful, half grotesque, was mouldermg away. Pic- 
 tm'es were there, replete with such enduring beauty and 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 117 
 
 expression : with such passion, tnith, and power : that 
 they seemed so many young and fresh realities among a 
 host of spectres. I thought these, often intermingled 
 with the old days of the city : with its beauties, tyrants, 
 captains, patriots, merchants, courtiers, priests : nay, 
 with its very stones, and bricks, and public places ; all of 
 which lived agam, about me, on the walls. Then, com- 
 ing down some marble staircase where the water lapped 
 and oozed against the lower steps, I passed into my boat 
 again, and went on in my dream. 
 
 Floating down narrow lanes, where cai'penters, at 
 work with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the 
 light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like 
 weed, or ebbed away before me in a tangled heap. Past 
 open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the 
 wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone 
 green and bright, making unusual shadows on the pave- 
 ment with its trembling leaves. Past quays and ter- 
 races, where women, gi'acefully veiled, were passing and 
 repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine, 
 on flag-stones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, where 
 there were idlers too : loitering and looking over. Below 
 stone balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the 
 loftiest windows of the loftiest houses. Past plots of 
 garden, theatres, shrmes, prodigious piles of architecture 
 — Gothic — Saracenic — fanciful with all the fancies of 
 all times and countries. Past buildings that were high, 
 and low, and black, and white, and straight, and crooked; 
 mean and gi^and, crazy and strong. Twining among a 
 tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out at last 
 
118 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 into a Grand Canal ! There, in the errant fancy of my 
 dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a 
 bridge, all buil1;,upon with shops and humming with the 
 tongues of men ; a form I seemed to know for Desde- 
 mona's, leaned down through a latticed blind to pluck a 
 flower. And, in the dream, I thought that Shakespeare's 
 spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere : stealing 
 through the city. 
 
 At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an 
 image of the Virgin, in a gallery outside the great 
 cathedral, near the roof, I fancied that the great piazza 
 of the Winged Lion was a blaze of cheerful light, and 
 that its whole arcade was thronged with people ; while 
 crowds were diverting themselves in splendid coffee- 
 houses opening from it — which were never shut, I 
 thought, but open all night long. When the bronze 
 giants struck the hour of midnight on the bell, I thought 
 the life and animation of the city were all centered here ; 
 and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I only 
 saw them dotted, here and there, with sleeping boatmen 
 wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at fuU length upon 
 the stones. 
 
 But, close about the quays and churches, palaces and 
 prisons : sucking at their walls, and welling up into the 
 secret places of the town : crept the water always. 
 Noiseless and watchful : coiled round and romid it, in its 
 many folds, like an old serpent : waiting for the time, I 
 thought, when people should look down into its depths 
 for any stone of the old city that had claimed to be its 
 mistress. 
 
AN ITALIAN DREAM. 119 
 
 Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old 
 market-place at Verona. I have, many and many a time, 
 thought, since, of this strange Dream upon the water: 
 half-wondering if it lie there jet, and if its name be 
 Venice. 
 
BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE 
 PASS OF THE SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND. 
 
 I HAD been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should 
 at all put me out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. 
 But, I was no sooner come into the old Market-place, 
 than the misgiving vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint, 
 and picturesque a place, formed by such an extraordinaiy 
 and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there could 
 be nothing better at the core of even this romantic town : 
 scene of one of the most romantic and beautiful of 
 stories. 
 
 It was natural enough, to go straight from the 
 Market-place, to the House of the Capulets, now degene- 
 rated into a most miserable little mn. Noisy vetturini 
 and muddy market carts were disputing possession of the 
 yard, which was ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of 
 splashed and bespattered geese ; and there was a grim- 
 visaged dog, viciously panting in a dooi'way, who would 
 certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he put 
 it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in 
 those times. The orchard fell into other hands, and 
 
VERONA. 1'21 
 
 was parted off many years ago ; but there used to be one 
 attached to the house — or at all events there may have 
 been, — and the hat (Cappello) the ancient cognizance 
 of the family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the 
 gateway of the yard. The geese, the market-carts, their 
 drivers, and the dog, were somewhat in the way of the 
 stoiy it must be confessed; and it would have been 
 pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to have 
 been able to walk thi'ough the disused rooms. But the 
 hat was unspeakably comfortable ; and the place where 
 the garden used to be, hardly less so. Besides, the 
 house is a distmstful, jealous-looking hoiLse as one would 
 desire to see, though of a veiy moderate size. So I was 
 quite satisfied with it, as the veritable mansion of old 
 Capulet, and was coiTespondingly grateful in my acknow- 
 ledgments to an extremely unsentimental middle-aged 
 lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was lomiging on the 
 threshold looking at the geese ; and who at least resembled 
 the Capulets in the one particular of being very great 
 indeed in the " Family " way. 
 
 From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as 
 natural to the visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the 
 proudest Juliet that ever has taught the torches to bum 
 bright in any time. So, I went off, with a guide, to an old, 
 old garden, once belonguig to an old, old convent, I 
 suppose ; and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a 
 bright-eyed woman who was washing clothes, went down 
 some walks where fresh plants and young flowers were 
 prettily growing among fragments of old wall, and ivy- 
 covered mounds ; and was shewn a little tank, or water 
 
122 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 trough, which the bright-eyed woman — drying her arms 
 upon her 'kerchief, called, " La tomba di Giulietta la 
 sfortmiata." With the best disposition in the world to 
 believe, I could do no more than believe that the bright- 
 eyed woman believed ; so I gave her that much credit, 
 and her customary fee in ready money. It was a 
 pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that Juliet's 
 resting-place was forgotten. However consolatory it 
 may have been to Yorick's Ghost, to hear the feet upon 
 the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a day, the 
 repetition of his name, it is better for Juliet to lie out of 
 the track of tourists, and to have no visiters but such as 
 come to graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and 
 sunshine. 
 
 Pleasant Verona ! With its beautiful old palaces, 
 and charming country in the distance, seen from terrace 
 walks, and stately, balustraded galleries. With its Roman 
 gates, still spanning the fair street, and casting, on the 
 sunlight of to-day, the shade of fifteen hundred years ago. 
 With its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich 
 architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, where 
 shouts of Montagues and Capulets once resounded, 
 
 And made Verona's ancient citizens 
 
 Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments, 
 
 To wield old partizans. 
 
 With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great 
 castle, waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and 
 so cheerful ! Pleasant Verona ! 
 
 In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Bra — a spirit of 
 
VERONA. 123 
 
 old time among the familiar realities of the passing hour 
 — is the great Roman Amphitheatre. So well preserved, 
 and carefully maintained, that every row of seats is there, 
 unbroken. Over certain of the arches, the old Ptoman 
 numerals may yet be seen ; and there are corridors, and 
 staircases, and subten'anean passages for beasts, and 
 winding ways, above-ground and below, as when the 
 fierce thousands hurried in and out, intent upon the 
 bloody shows of the arena. Nestling in some of the 
 shadows and hollow places of the walls, now, are 
 smiths with their forges, and a few small dealers of one 
 kind or other ; and there are green weeds, and leaves, 
 and grass, upon the parapet. But little else is greatly 
 changed. 
 
 When I had traversed all about it, with great interest, 
 and had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and 
 turning from the lovely panorama closed in by the dis- 
 tant Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed to 
 lie before me like the inside of a prodigious hat of 
 plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim and a 
 shallow crown : the plaits being represented by the fom^- 
 and-forty rows of seats. The comparison is a homely 
 and fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, 
 but it was irresistibly suggested at the moment, never- 
 theless. 
 
 An equestrian troop had been there, a short time 
 before — the same troop, I dare say, that appeared to the 
 old lady in the church at Modena — and had scooped out 
 a little ring at one end of the arena ; where their per- 
 formances had taken place, and where the marks of 
 
124 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 their horses' feet were still fresh. I could not but pic- 
 ture to myself, a handful of spectators gathered together 
 on one or two of the old stone seats, and a spangled 
 Cavalier being gallant, or a Policinello funny, with the 
 grim walls looldng on. Above all, I thought how 
 strangely those Roman mutes would gaze upon the 
 favourite comic scene of the travelling English, where 
 a British nobleman (Lord John), with a very loose 
 stomach : dressed in a blue tailed coat down to his heels, 
 bright yellow breeches, and a white hat: comes abroad, 
 riding double on a rearing horse, with an English lady 
 (Lady Betsey) in a straw bonnet and green veil, and a 
 red spencer; and who always carries a gigantic reticule, 
 and a put-up parasol. 
 
 I walked through and through the town all the rest of 
 the day, and could have walked there until now, I tliink. 
 In one place, there was a very pretty modem theatre, 
 where they had just performed the opera (always popular 
 in Verona) of Romeo and Juliet. In another, there was 
 a collection, under a colonnade, of Greek, Roman, and 
 Etruscan remains, presided over by an ancient man who 
 might have been an Etruscan relic himself ; for he was 
 not strong enough to open the iron gate, when he had 
 milocked it, and had neither voice enough to be audible 
 when he described the curiosities, nor sight enough to 
 see them : he was so very old. In another place, there 
 was a gallery of pictures : so abominably bad, that it was 
 quite delightful to see them mouldering away. But 
 anywhere : in the chmThes, among the palaces, in the 
 streets, on the bridge, or down beside the river: it was 
 
MANTUA. 125 
 
 always pleasant Verona, and in my remembrance always 
 will be. 
 
 I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn 
 that night — of com'se, no Englishman had ever read it 
 there, before — and set out for Mantua next day at sun- 
 rise, repeating to myself (in the coupe of an omnibus, 
 and next to the conductor, who was reading the Mys- 
 teries of Paris) 
 
 There is no world without Verona's walls, 
 But purgatory, torture, hell itself. 
 Hence-banished is banish'd from the world, 
 And world's exile is death 
 
 which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five- 
 and-twenty miles after all, and rather disturbed my con- 
 fidence in his energy and boldness. 
 
 Was the way to Mantua, as beautiful, in his time, I 
 wonder! Did it wind through pasture land as green, 
 bright with the same glancing streams, and dotted with 
 fresh clumps of graceful trees ! Those purple moun- 
 tains lay on the horizon, then, for certain ; and the 
 dresses of these peasant girls, who wear a great, 
 knobbed, silver pin like an English " life-preserver " 
 through their hsdr behind, can hardly be much changed. 
 The hopeful feeling of so bright a morning, and so 
 exquisite a sunrise, can have been no stranger, even to 
 an exiled lover's breast; and Mantua itself must have 
 broken on him in the prospect, with its towers, and 
 walls, and water, pretty much as on a common-place and 
 matrimonial omnibus. He made the same sharp twists 
 and turns, perhaps, over two rumbling drawbridges ; 
 
126 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 passed through the like long, covered, wooden bridge; 
 and leaving the marshy water behind, approached the 
 rusty gate of stagnant Mantua. 
 
 If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, 
 and his place of residence to him, the lean Apothecary 
 and Mantua came together in a perfect fitness of things. 
 It may have been more stirring then, perhaps. If so, 
 the Apothecary was a man in advance of his time, and 
 Imew what Mantua would be, in eighteen hundred and 
 forty-four. He fasted much, and that assisted him m 
 his foreknowledge. 
 
 I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in 
 my own room arranging plans with the Brave Courier, 
 when there came a modest little tap at the door, which 
 opened on an outer gallery surrounding a courtyard; and 
 an intensely shabby little man looked in, to inquire if the 
 gentleman would have a Cicerone to shew the town. His 
 face was so very wistful and anxious, in the half-opened 
 doorway, and there was so much poverty expressed in 
 his faded suit and little pinched hat, and in the thread- 
 bare worsted glove with which he held it — not expressed 
 the less, because these were evidently his genteel 
 clothes, hastily slipped on — that I would as soon have 
 trodden on him as dismissed him. I engaged him on 
 the instant, and he stepped in directly. 
 
 While I finished the discussion in which I was 
 engaged, he stood, beaming by himself in a comer, 
 making a feint of brushing my hat with his arm. If his 
 fee had been as many napoleons as it was francs, there 
 could not have shot over the twilight of his shabbiness 
 
MANTUA. 127 
 
 such a gleam of sun, as lighted up the whole man, now 
 that he was hired. 
 
 " Well ! " said I, when I was ready, " shall we go 
 out now ? " 
 
 " If the gentleman pleases. It is a beautiful day. A 
 little fresh, but charming; altogether charming. The 
 gentleman will allow me to open the door. This is the 
 Inn Yard. The courtyard of the Golden Lion ! The 
 gentleman will please to mind his footing on the stairs." 
 
 We were now in the street. 
 
 *' This is the street of the Golden Lion. This, the 
 outside of the Golden Lion. The interesting window 
 up there, on the first Piano, where the pane of glass is 
 broken, is the window of the gentleman's chamber ! " 
 
 Havmg viewed all these remarkable objects, I inquired 
 if there were much to see in Mantua. 
 
 "Well! Truly, no. Not much ! So, so," he said, 
 shrugging his shoulders apologetically. 
 
 " Many churches '? " 
 
 " No. Nearly all suppressed by the French." 
 
 " Monasteries or convents ? " 
 
 "No. The French again! Neai'ly all suppressed by 
 Napoleon." 
 
 " Much busmess ? " 
 
 " Very little business." 
 
 " Many strangers ? " 
 
 " Ah Heaven ! " 
 
 I thought he would have fainted. 
 
 " Then, when we have seen the two large Churches 
 yonder, what shall we do next? " said I. 
 
128 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 He looked up the street, and down the street, and 
 rubbed his chin timidly; and then said, glancing in my 
 face as if a light had broken on his mind, yet with a 
 humble appeal to my forbearance that was perfectly 
 irresistible : 
 
 " We can take a little turn about the town, Signore! " 
 (Si puo far 'un piccolo giro della citta). 
 
 It was impossible to be anything but delighted with 
 the proposal, so we set off together in gi'eat good-hu- 
 mom\ In the relief of his mind, he opened his heart, 
 and gave up as much of Mantua as a Cicerone could. 
 
 " One must eat," he said ; " but, bah ! it was a dull 
 place, without doubt ! " 
 
 He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa 
 Andi'ea — a noble church — and of an inclosed portion of 
 the pavement, about which tapers were burning, and a 
 few people kneeling, and mider which is said to be pre- 
 served the Sangreal of the old Romances. This church 
 disposed of, and another after it (the cathedral of San 
 Pietro), we went to the Museum, which was shut up. 
 " It was all the same," he said ; " Bah ! There was not 
 much inside ! " Then, w^e went to see the Piazza del 
 Diavolo, built by the Devil (for no particular pm'pose) in 
 a single night ; then, the Piazza Virgiliana ; then the 
 statue of Vii^gil — our Poet, my little friend said, plucking 
 up a spirit, for the moment, and putting his hat a little 
 on one side. Then, we went to a dismal sort of farm- 
 yard, by which a pictui'e-gallery was approached. The 
 moment the gate of this retreat was opened, some five 
 hundred geese came waddling round us, stretching out 
 
MANTUA. 129 
 
 their necks, and clamouring in the most hideous manner, 
 as if they were ejaculating, "Oh! here's somebody 
 come to see the Pictures ! Don't go up ! Don't go up!" 
 While we went up, they waited very quietly about the 
 door, in a crowd, cackling to one another occasionally, in 
 a subdued tone ; but the instant we appeared again, their 
 necks came out like telescopes, and setting up a great 
 noise, which meant, I have no doubt, " What, you would 
 go, would you ! What do you think of it ! How do you 
 like it ! " they attended us to the outer gate, and cast 
 us forth, derisively, into Mantua. 
 
 The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared 
 with these, Pork to the learned Pig. What a galleiy it 
 was ! I would take their opinion on a question of art, 
 in preference to the discom'ses of Sir Joshua Pieynolds. 
 
 Now that we were standing in the street, after being 
 thus ignominiously escorted thither, my Uttle friend was 
 plainly reduced to the " piccolo giro," or little circuit of 
 the town, he had fonnerly proposed. But my suggestion 
 that we should visit the Palazzo Te (of which I had 
 heard a great deal, as a strange ^^ild place) imparted 
 new life to him, and away we went. 
 
 The secret of the length of Midas' ears, would have 
 been more extensively known, if that ser\^ant of his, who 
 whispered it to the reeds, had lived in Mantua, where 
 there are reeds and nishes enough to have published it 
 to all the world. The Palazzo Te stands in a swamp, 
 among this sort of vegetation ; and is, indeed, as singular 
 a place as I ever saw. 
 
 Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreory. Nor 
 
 K 
 
130 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 for its dampness, tliough it is very damp. Nor for its 
 desolate condition, though it is as desolate and neglected 
 as house can be. But chiefly for the unaccountable 
 nightmares with which its interior has been decorated 
 (among other subjects of more delicate execution), by 
 Giulio Romano. There is a leering Giant over a certain 
 chimney-piece, and there are dozens of Giants (Titans 
 warring with Jove) on the walls of another room, so in- 
 conceivably ugly and grotesque, that it is marvellous how 
 any man can have imagined such creatures. In the cham- 
 ber in which they abound, these monsters, with swollen 
 faces and cracked cheeks, and every kind of distortion of 
 look and limb, are depicted as staggering under the weight 
 of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the ruins ; 
 upheaving masses of rock, and burying themselves be- 
 neath ; vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy 
 roofs that topple down upon their heads ; and, m a word, 
 undergoing and doing every kuid of mad and demoniacal 
 destruction. The figures are immensely large, and 
 exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness ; the 
 colourhig is harsh and disagreeable ; and the whole effect 
 more like (I should imagine) a violent rush of blood tx) 
 the head of the spectator, than any real pictm'e set 
 before him by the hand of an artist. This apoplectic 
 performance was shown by a sicldy-looking woman, whose 
 appearance was referable, I dare say, to the bad air of 
 the marshes ; but it was difficult to help feeling as if she 
 were too much haunted by the Giants, and they were 
 frightening her to death, all alone in that exhausted, 
 cistern of a Palace, among the reeds and nishes, with 
 
MANTUA. 131 
 
 the mists hovering about outside, aiid stalldiig round and 
 round it continually. 
 
 Our walk through Mantua showed us, m almost every 
 street, some suppressed church : now used for a warehouse, 
 now for nothing at all : all as crazy and dismantled as 
 they could be, short of tumbling down bodily. The 
 marshy to\Mi was so intensely dull and flat, that the dirt 
 upon it seemed not to have come there in the ordinary 
 course, but to have settled and mantled on its surface as 
 on standing water. And yet there were some business- 
 deahngs going on, and some profits realizmg ; for there 
 were arcades full of Jews, where those extraordinary 
 people were sitting outside their shops: contemplating 
 their stores of stuffs, and woollens, and bright handker- 
 chiefs, and tiinkets : and looking, in all respects, as wary 
 and business-like, as their brethren in Houndsditch, 
 London. 
 
 Having selected a Vettmino from among the neigh- 
 bouring Christians, who agreed to carry us to Milan in 
 two days and a half, and to start, next morning, as soon as 
 the gates were opened, I returned to the Golden Lion, 
 and dined luxuriously in my own room, in a naiTow 
 passage between two bedsteads : confronted by a smoky 
 tire, and backed up by a chest of drawers. At six 
 o'clock next morning, we were jingling in the dark 
 through the wet cold mist that enshrouded the to\vn ; 
 and, before noon, the driver, (a native of Mantua, and 
 sixty years of age, or thereabouts) began to ask the way 
 to Milan, 
 
 It lay through Bozzolo : formerly a little republic, and 
 
 K 2 
 
13Q PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 now one of the most deserted and poverty-stricken of 
 towns : where the landlord of the miserable inn (God 
 bless him I it was his weekly custom) was distributing in- 
 finitesimal coins among a clamorous herd of women and 
 children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind and 
 rain outside his door, where they were gathered to 
 receive his charity. It lay through mist, and mud, and 
 rain, and vines trained low upon the ground, all that day 
 and the next ; the first sleeping-place being Cremona, 
 memorable for its dark brick churches, and immensely 
 high tower, the Torrazzo — to say nothing of its violins, of 
 which it certainly produces none in these degenerate 
 days ; and the second, Lodi. Then we went on, through 
 more mud, mist, and rain, and marshy gi'omid : and 
 through such a fog, as Englishmen, strong in the faith 
 of their o^vn grievances, are apt to believe is nowhere to 
 be found but in their own country : until we entered the 
 paved streets of Milan. 
 
 The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far- 
 famed Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for 
 anything that could be seen of it at that time. But as 
 we halted to refresh, for a few days then, and retm^ned to 
 Milan again next summer, I had ample opportmiities of 
 seeing the glorious structure in all its majesty and 
 beauty. 
 
 All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it ! 
 There are many good and true saints in the calendar, 
 but San Carlo Borromeo has — if I may quote Mrs. 
 Primrose on such a subject — " my warm heart." A 
 charitable doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to the 
 
MILAN. 133 
 
 poor, and this, not in any spirit of blind bigotiy, but as the 
 bold opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church, 
 I honoui' his memoiy. I honom" it none the less, because 
 he was nearly slain by a priest, suborned, by priests, to 
 murder him at the altar : in acknowledgment of his 
 endeavom-s to reform a false and hypocritical brother- 
 hood of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of San 
 Carlo Borromeo as it shielded him ! A reforming Pope 
 would need a little shieldmg, even now. 
 
 The subterranean chapel in which the body of San 
 Carlo Borromeo is preserved, presents as strildng and as 
 ghastly a contrast, perhaps, as any place can show. The 
 tapers which are lighted down there, flash and gleam on 
 alti-relievi in gold and silver, delicately wrought by skil- 
 ful hands, and representing the principal events in the 
 life of the saint. Jewels, and precious metals, shine and 
 sparkle on every side. A windlass slowly removes the 
 front of the altar ; and, within it, in a gorgeous shruie of 
 gold and silver, is seen, through alabaster, the shrivelled 
 mummy of a man : the pontifical robes with which it is 
 adorned, radiant \rith diamonds, emeralds, rabies : every 
 costly and magnificent gem. The shrunken heap of 
 poor earth in the midst of this great glitter, is more piti- 
 ful than if it lay upon a dunghill. There is not a ray of 
 imprisoned light in all the flash and fii'e of jewels, but 
 seems to mock the dusty holes where eyes were, once. 
 Every thread of silk m the rich vestments seems only a 
 provision from the worms that spm, for the behoof of 
 worms that propagate in sepulchres. 
 
 In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of 
 
134 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Santa Maria delle Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps 
 better known than any other in the world : the Last 
 Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci — with a door cut through 
 it by the intelligent Dominican friars, to facilitate their 
 operations at dinner time. 
 
 I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of 
 painting, and have no other means of judging of a pic- 
 ture than as I see it resembling and refining upon 
 nature, and presenting graceful combinations of forms 
 and colours. I am, therefore, no authority AYhatever, in 
 reference to the " touch " of this or that master; though I 
 know very well (as anybod}^ may, who chooses to think 
 about the matter) that few very great masters can pos- 
 sil)ly have painted, in the compass of their lives, one half 
 of the pictures that bear their names, and that are recog- 
 nised by many aspirants to a reputation for taste, as 
 undoubted originals. But this, by the way. Of the Last 
 Supper, I would simply observe, that in its beautiful 
 composition and arrangement, there it is, at Milan, a 
 wonderful pictm^e ; and that, in its original colouring, or in 
 its original expression of any single face or feature, there 
 it is not. Apart from the damage it has sustained from 
 damp, decay, and neglect, it has been (as Bariy shows) 
 so retouched upon, and repainted, and that so clumsily, 
 that many of the heads are, now, positive deformities, 
 with patches of paint and plaster sticldng upon them 
 like wens, and utterly distorting the expression. Where 
 the original artist set that impress of his genius on a 
 face, which, almost in a line or touch, separated him 
 from meaner painters and made him what he was, sue- 
 
MILAN. 135 
 
 ceeding bunglers, filling up, or painting across seams 
 and cracks, have been quite imable to imitate his hand ; 
 and putting in some scowls, or frowns, or wiinkles, of their 
 own, have blotched and spoiled the work. This is so 
 well established as a historical fact, that I should not 
 repeat it, at the risk of being tedious, but for ha\dng 
 obsen-ed an English gentleman before the picture, who 
 was at great pains to fall into what I may describe as 
 mild convulsions, at certain minute details of expression 
 which are not left in it. Whereas, it would be comfort- 
 able and rational for travellers and critics to amve at 
 a general understanding that it cannot fail to have been 
 a work of extraordinary^ merit, once : when, with so few 
 of its original beauties remaining, the gi-andeur of the 
 general design is yet sufficient to sustain it, as a piece 
 replete with interest and dignity. 
 
 We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due com^se, 
 and a fine city it is, though not so mnnistakeably Italian 
 as to possess the characteristic qualities of many towns 
 far less important in themselves. The Corso, where the 
 Milanese gentry ride up and down in carriages, and 
 rather than not do which, they would half starve them- 
 selves at home, is a most noble public promenade, 
 shaded by long avenues of trees. In the splendid 
 theatre of La Scala, there was a ballet of action per- 
 formed after the opera, under the title of Prometheus : 
 in the begmning of which, some hundred or two of men 
 and women represented our mortal race before the 
 refinements of the arts and sciences, and loves and 
 graces, came on earth to soften them. I never saw anv- 
 
136 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 thing more effective. Generally speaking, the panto- 
 mimic action of the Italians is more remarkable for its 
 sudden and impetuous character than for its delicate 
 expression; but, in this case, the drooping monotony: 
 the weaiy, miserable, listless, moping life : the sordid 
 passions and desires of human creatures, destitute of 
 those elevating mfluences to which we owe so much, and 
 to whose promoters we render so little : were expressed 
 in a manner really powerful and affecting. I should 
 have thought it almost impossible to present such an 
 idea so strongly on the stage, without the aid of 
 speech. 
 
 Milan soon lay behind us, at five o'clock in the morn- 
 ing; and before the golden statue on the summit of the 
 cathedral spire was lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stu- 
 pendously confused in lofty peaks and ridges, clouds and 
 snow, were towering in our path. 
 
 Still, we continued to advance towards them until 
 nightfall ; and, all day long, the mountain tops presented 
 strangely shifting shapes, as the road displayed them in 
 different points of view. The beautiful day was just 
 declinmg, when we came upon the Lago Maggiore, with 
 its lovely islands. For however fanciful and fantastic 
 the Isola Bella may be, and is, it still is beautiful. 
 Anything springing out of that blue water, with that 
 scenery around it, must be. 
 
 It was ten o'clock at night when we got to Domo 
 d'Ossola, at the foot of the Pass of the Simplon. But as 
 the moon was shining brightly, and there was not a cloud 
 in the starlit sky, it was no time for gomg to bed, or 
 
PASS OF THE SIMPLON. 137 
 
 going anj^where but on. So, we got a little carriage, 
 after some delay, and began the ascent. 
 
 It was late in November ; and the snow lying four or 
 five feet thick in the beaten road on the summit (in other 
 parts the new drift was already deep,) the air was 
 piercing cold. But, the serenity of the night, and the 
 grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows, 
 and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into the shining 
 of the moon, and its incessant roar of falling water, 
 rendered the journey more and more sublime at eveiy 
 step. 
 
 Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us, sleep- 
 ing in the moonlight, the road began to wind among 
 dark trees, and after a time emerged upon a barer 
 region, veiy steep and toilsome, where the moon shone 
 bright and high. By degrees, the roar of water grew 
 louder ; and the stupendous track, after crossing the 
 torrent by a bridge, struck in between two massive 
 perpendicular walls of rock that quite shut out the 
 moonlight, and only left a few stars shinhig in the 
 narrow strip of sky above. Then, even this was lost, in 
 the thick darkness of a cavern in the rock, through which 
 tlie way was pierced; the tenible cataract thmidering 
 and roai'ing close below it, and its foam and spray hanging, 
 in a mist, about the entrance. Emerging from tliis cave, 
 and coming again mto the moonlight, and across a dizzy 
 bridge, it crept and twisted upward, through the Gorge 
 of Gondo, savage and grand beyond description, with 
 smooth-fronted precipices, rising up on either hand, and 
 almost meeting overhead. Thus we went, climbing on 
 
138 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 our nigged way, higher and higher, all night, -without a 
 moment's weariness : lost in the contemplation of the 
 black rocks, the tremendous heights and depths, the 
 fields of smooth snow lying in the clefts and hollows, 
 and the fierce torrents thundering headlong down the 
 deep abyss. 
 
 Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where a 
 keen wind was blowing fiercely. Having, with some 
 trouble, awakened the inmates of a wooden house in this 
 solitude: round which the wind was howling dismally, 
 catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling it away : we 
 got some breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but 
 well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it had 
 need to be) for keeping out the bitter storms. A sledge 
 being then made ready, and four horses harnessed to it, 
 we went, ploughing, through the snow. Still upward, but 
 now in the cold light of morning, and with the great white 
 <lesert on which we travelled, plain and clear. 
 
 We were well upon the summit of the mountain : and 
 had before us the rude cross of wood, denoting its 
 greatest altitude above the sea : when the light of the 
 rising sun, struck, all at once, upon the waste of snow, 
 and turned it a deep red. The lonely grandeur of the 
 scene, was then at its height. 
 
 As we went sledging on, there came out of the 
 Hospice founded by Napoleon, a group of Peasant 
 travellers, with staves and knapsacks, who had rested 
 there last night : attended by a Monk or two, their 
 hospitable entertainers, trudging slowly foi'ward with 
 them, for company's sake. It was pleasant to give them 
 
GORGE OF THE SALTINE- 139 
 
 goofl morning, and pretty, looking back a long way after 
 them, to see them looking back at us, and hesitating 
 presently, when one of om* horses stumbled and fell, 
 whether or no they should return and help us. But he 
 was soon up again, with the assistance of a rough 
 waggoner whose team had stuck fast there too ; and 
 when we had helped him out of his difficulty, in return, 
 we left him slowly ploughing towards them, and went 
 softly and s\\iftly foi'ward, on the brink of a steep preci- 
 pice, among the mountain pines. 
 
 Taking to our wheels again, soon aftei'wards, we began 
 rapidly to descend ; passing under everlasting glaciers, by 
 means of arched galleries, hung with clusters of dripping 
 icicles ; under and over foaming waterfalls ; near places 
 of refuge, and galleries of shelter against sudden danger ; 
 through caverns over whose arched roofs the avalanches 
 slide, in spring, and bmy themselves in the imknown 
 gulf beneath. Down, over lofty bridges, and through 
 lionible ravines : a little shifting speck in the vast 
 desolation of ice and snow, and monstrous granite rocks : 
 down through the deep Gorge of the Saltine, and deaf- 
 ened by the torrent plunging madly down, among the 
 riven blocks of rock, into the level country, far below, 
 (rradually down, by zig-zag roads, Ipng between an 
 upward and a do^vnward precipice, into wanner weather, 
 calmer air, and softer scenery, until there lay before us, 
 glittering like gold or silver in the thaw and sunshine, 
 the metal-covered, red, green, yellow, domes and church- 
 spires of a S\\dss town. 
 
 The business of these recollections beinf]f with Italv, 
 
140 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and my business, consequently, being to scamper back 
 thitlier as fast as possible, I will not recal (though I am 
 sorely tempted) how the Swiss villages, clustered at the 
 feet of Giant mountains, looked like playthings ; or how 
 confusedly the houses were heaped and piled together ; 
 or how there were very narrow streets to shut the howling 
 winds out in the winter time ; and broken bridges, which 
 the impetuous torrents, suddenly released in spring, 
 had swept away. Or how there were peasant women 
 here, with great round fur caps : looldng, when they 
 peeped out of casements and only their heads were seen, 
 like a population of Sword-bearers to the Lord Mayor of 
 London ; or how the town of Vevay, l}"ing on the 
 smooth lake of Geneva, was beautiful to see ; or how the 
 statue of Saint Peter in the street at Fribourg, grasps the 
 largest key that ever was beheld ; or how Fribourg is 
 illustrious for its two suspension bridges, and its grand 
 cathedral organ. 
 
 Or how, between that town and Bale, the road mean- 
 dered among thriving villages of wooden cottages, with 
 overhanging thatched roofs, and low protrudmg windows, 
 glazed with small romid panes of glass like crown-pieces ; 
 or how, in every little Swiss homestead, with its cart or 
 waggon carefully stowed away beside the house, its little 
 garden, stock of poultr}% and groups of red-cheeked 
 children, there was an air of comfort, very new and very 
 pleasant after Italy ; or how the dresses of the women 
 changed again, and there were no more sword-bearers to 
 be seen ; and fair white stomachers, and great black, fan- 
 shaped, gauzy-looking caps, prevailed instead. 
 
STRASBOURG TO PARIS. 141 
 
 Or how the country by the Jiu'a mountams, sprmkled 
 with snow, and lighted by the moon, and musical with 
 falling water, was delightful ; or how, below the windows 
 of the great hotel of the Three Kings at Bale, the 
 swollen Rhine ran fast and green ; or how, at Strasbourg, 
 it was quite as fast but not as green : and was said to be 
 foggy lower down : and, at that late time of the year, was 
 a far less certain means of progress, than the highway 
 road to Paris. 
 
 Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic 
 Cathedral, and its ancient houses with their peaked roofs 
 and gables, made a little gallery of quaint and interesting 
 \dews ; or how a crowd was gathered inside the cathedral 
 at noon, to see the famous mechanical clock in motion, 
 strildug twelve. How, when it struck twelve, a whole 
 army of puppets went through many ingenious evolu- 
 tions ; and, among them, a huge puppet-cock, perched on 
 the top, crowed twelve times, loud and clear. Or how it 
 was wonderful to see this cock at great pains to clap its 
 wings, and strain its throat ; but ob\iously having no 
 connection whatever with its ovm voice, which was deep 
 within the clock, a long way down. 
 
 Or how the road to Paris, was one sea of mud ; and 
 thence to the coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or 
 how the cliffs of Dover were a pleasant sight, and Eng- 
 land was so wonderfully neat — though dark, and lacking 
 colom' on a winter's day, it must be conceded. 
 
 Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-crossing 
 the channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow lying 
 pretty deep in France. Or how the Malle Poste 
 
142 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 scrambled through the snow, headlong, drawn in the 
 hilly parts by any number of stout horses at a canter ; or 
 how there were, outside the Post-office Yard in Paris, 
 before daybreak, extraordinary adventurers in heaps of 
 rags, groping in the snowy streets with little rakes, in 
 search of odds and ends. 
 
 Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being 
 then exceeding deep, a thaw came on, and the mail 
 waded rather than rolled for the next three hundred 
 miles or so ; breaking springs on Smiday nights, and 
 putting out its two passengers to warm and refresh them- 
 selves pending the repairs, in miserable billiard-rooms, 
 where hairy company, collected about stoves, "were play- 
 ing cards ; the cards being very like themselves — 
 extremely limp and dirty. 
 
 Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress 
 of weather ; and steamers were advertised to go, which 
 did not go ; or how the good Steam-packet Charlemagne 
 at length put out, and met such weather that now she 
 threatened to run into Toulon, and now into Nice, but, 
 the wind moderatmg, did neither, but ran on into 
 Genoa harbom' instead, where the familiar Bells rang 
 sweetly in my ear. Or how there was a travelling 
 party on board, of whom one member was very ill in the 
 cabin next to mine, and being ill w^as cross, and therefore 
 declined to give up the Dictionary, which he kept under 
 his pillow; thereby obliging his companions to come 
 down to him, constantly, to ask what w^as the Italian for 
 a lump of sugar — a glass of brandy and water — what's 
 o'clock ? and so forth : which he alw^ays insisted on 
 
RETURN TO GENOA. 143 
 
 looking out, with bis own sea-sick eyes, declining to 
 entrust the book to any man alive. 
 
 Like Grumio, I might have told you, in detail, all 
 this and something more — but to as little purpose — were 
 I not deterred by the remembrance that my business is 
 with Italy. Therefore, like Grumio's story, it "shall 
 die in oblivion." 
 
TO ROME BY PISA AND SIENA. 
 
 There is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than 
 the coast-road between Genoa and Spezzia. On one 
 side : sometimes far below, sometimes nearly on a level 
 with the road, and often sldrted by broken rocks of many 
 shapes : there is the free blue sea, with here and there a 
 picturesque feluca gliding slowly on ; on the other side, 
 are lofty hills, ravines besprinkled with white cottages, 
 patches of dark olive woods, country churches with their 
 light open towers, and country houses gaily pamted. On 
 every bank and knoll by the wayside, the wild cactus and 
 aloe flemish in exuberant profusion ; and the gardens of 
 the bright villages along the road, are seen, all blushing 
 in the summer-time with clusters of the Belladonna, 
 and ai'e fragrant in the autumn and winter with golden 
 oranges and lemons. 
 
 Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively, 
 by fishermen; and it is pleasant to see their great boats 
 hauled up on the beach, maldng little patches of shade, 
 where they lie asleep, or where the women and children 
 sit romping and looldng out to sea, while they mend 
 their nets upon the shore. There is one town. 
 
CAMOGLIA. 145 
 
 Camoglia, witli its little harboiir on the sea, hundreds 
 of feet below the road : where families of mariners live, 
 who, time out of mind, have owned coasting-vessels in 
 that place, and have traded to Spain and elsewhere. 
 Seen from the road above, it is like a tin}'- model on the 
 margin of the dimpled water, shining in the sun. 
 Descended into, by the winding mule-tracks, it is a per- 
 fect miniature of a primitive seafaring town ; the saltest,. 
 roughest, most piratical little place that ever was seen. 
 Great rusty iron rings and mooring-chains, capstans, and 
 fragments of old masts and spars, choke up the way; 
 hardy rough- weather boats, and seamen's clothing, flutter 
 in the little harbour or are drawn out on the sunny stones 
 to dry ; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few amphibious- 
 lookmg fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling over 
 the wall, as though earth or water were all one to them, 
 and if they slipped in, they would float away, dozing 
 comfortably among the fishes ; the church is bright with 
 trophies of the sea, and votive offerings, in commemora- 
 tion of escape from stoi*m and shipwi-eck. The dwellings 
 not immediately abutting on the harbom* are approached 
 by blmd low archways, and by crooked steps, as if in 
 darkness and in difficulty of access they should be like 
 holds of ships, or inconvenient cabins imder water ; and 
 everywhere, there is a smell of fish, and seaweed, and 
 old rope. 
 
 The coast-road whence Camoglia is descried so far 
 below, is famous, in the warm season, especially in some 
 parts near Genoa, for fii-e-flies. Walldng there, on a 
 dark night, I have seen it made one sparkling firmament 
 
 L 
 
146 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 by these beautiful insects ; so that the distant stars were 
 pale against the flash and glitter that spangled eveiy 
 olive wood and hill-side, and pervaded the whole air. 
 
 It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed 
 this road on our way to Rome. The middle of January 
 was only just past, and it was very gloomy and dark 
 weather ; very wet besides. In crossing the fine Pass 
 of Bracco, we encountered such a storm of mist and 
 rain, that we travelled in a cloud the whole way. There 
 might have been no Mediterranean in the world, for any- 
 tliing we saw of it there, except when a sudden gust of 
 wind, clearing the mist before it, for a moment, showed 
 the agitated sea at a great depth below, lashing the 
 distant rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously. The 
 rain was incessant ; every brook and torrent was greatly 
 swollen ; and such a deafening leaping, and roaring, and 
 thundering of water, I never heard the like of in my 
 life. 
 
 Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the 
 Magra, an unbridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was 
 too high to be safely crossed in the Ferry Boat, and were 
 fain to wait mitil the afternoon of next day, when it had, 
 in some degree, subsided. Spezzia, however, is a good 
 place to tarry at ; by reason, firstly, of its beautiful bay ; 
 secondly, of its ghostly Inn ; thirdly, of the head-dress of 
 the women, who wear, on one side of theii^ head, a small 
 doll's straw hat, stuck on to the hair ; which is certainly 
 the oddest and most roguish head-gear that ever was 
 invented. 
 
 The Magra safely crossed in the Feriy Boat — the 
 
CAKBARA. 147 
 
 passage is not by any means agreeable, when the current 
 is swollen and strong — we arrived at Carrara, within a 
 few hours. In good time next morning, we got some 
 ponies, and went out to see the marble quarries. 
 
 They are four or five great glens, running up into a 
 range of lofty hills, until they can run no longer, and 
 are stopped by being abraptly strangled by Nature. 
 The quarries, or "caves," as they call them there, are 
 so many openings, high up in the hills, on either side 
 of these passes, where they blast and excavate for 
 marble : which may turn out good or bad : may make a 
 man's fortune veiy quickly, or ruin him by the great 
 expense of working what is worth nothing. Some of 
 these caves were opened by the ancient Romans, and 
 remain as they left them to this hour. Many others 
 are being worked at this moment; others are to be 
 begun to-morrow, next week, next month; others are 
 unbought, unthought of; and marble enough for more 
 ages than have passed since the place was resorted to, 
 lies hidden everywhere : patiently awaiting its time of 
 discoveiy. 
 
 As you toil and clamber up one of these steep 
 gorges (having left your pony soddening his girths 
 in water, a mile or two lower down) you hear, every 
 now and then, echoing among the hills, in a low tone, 
 more silent than the previous silence, a melancholy 
 warning bugle, — a signal to the miners to withdraw. 
 Then, there is a thundering, and echoing from hill to 
 hill, and perhaps a splashing up of great fragments of 
 rock into the air ; and on you toil again until some 
 
 L 2 
 
148 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 otlier bugle sounds, in a new direction, and you stop 
 directly, lest you should come within the range of the 
 new explosion. 
 
 There were numbers of men, working high up in 
 these hills — on the sides — clearing away, and sending 
 down the broken masses of stone and earth, to make 
 way for the blocks of marble that had been discovered. 
 As these came rolling down from unseen hands into the 
 narrow valley, I could not help thinking of the deep 
 glen (just the same sort of glen) where the Roc left Sin- 
 bad the Sailor; and where the merchants from the 
 heights above, flung down great pieces of meat for the 
 diamonds to stick to. There were no eagles here, to 
 darken the sun in their swoop, and pounce upon them ; 
 but it was as wild and fierce as if there had been 
 hundreds. 
 
 But the road, the road down which the mai'ble comes, 
 however immense the blocks ! The genius of the coun- 
 try, and the spirit of its institutions, pave that road : 
 repair it, watch it, keep it going ! Conceive a channel 
 of water running over a rocky bed, beset with great 
 heaps of stone of all shapes and sizes, winduig down the 
 middle of this valley ; and that being the road — because 
 it was the road five hmidred years ago ! Imagine the 
 clumsy carts of five hmidred years ago, being used to 
 this hour, and drawn, as they used to be, five hmidred 
 years ago, by oxen, whose ancestors were worn to death 
 five hundred years ago, as their unhappy descendants 
 are now, in twelve months, by the suffering and agony 
 of this cruel work ! Two pau', four pair, ten pair, 
 
CARRAKA. 149 
 
 twenty pair, to one block, according to its size ; do-vvTi it 
 must come, this way. In their struggling from stone to 
 stone, with their enormous loads behind them, they die 
 frequently upon the spot ; and not they alone ; for their 
 passionate drivers, sometimes tumbling down in their 
 energy, are crushed to death beneath the wheels. 
 But it was good five hundred years ago, and it must 
 be good now; and a railroad down one of these 
 steeps (the easiest thing in the world) would be flat 
 blasphemy. 
 
 When we stood aside, to see one of these cars drawn 
 by only a pair of oxen, (for it had but one small block of 
 marble on it) coming do\Mi, I hailed, in my heart, the 
 man who sat upon the heavy yoke, to keep it on the 
 neck of the poor beasts — and who faced backward : not 
 before him — as the very Devil of true despotism. He 
 had a great rod in his hand, with an iron point ; and 
 when they could plough and force their way through the 
 loose bed of the torrent no longer, and came to a stop, 
 he poked it into their bodies, beat it on their heads, 
 screwed it round and round in their nostrils, got them 
 on a yard or two, in the madness of intense pain ; 
 repeated all these persuasions, with increased intensity 
 of purpose, when they stopped again; got them on, 
 once more; forced and goaded them to an abrupter 
 point of the descent; and when their wTithing and 
 smarting, and the weight behind them, bore them 
 plunging down the precipice in a cloud of scattered 
 water, whirled his rod above his head, and gave a great 
 whoop and hallo, as if he had achieved something, and had 
 
150 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 110 idea that they might shake him off, and blindly 
 mash his brains upon the road, in the noon-tide of his 
 triumph. 
 
 Standmg in one of the many studii of Carrara that 
 afternoon — for it is a great workshop, full of beautifully 
 finished copies in marble, of almost every figure, group, and 
 bust, we know — it seemed, at first, so strange to me that 
 those exquisite shapes, replete with grace, and thought, 
 and delicate repose, should grow out of all this toil, and 
 sweat, and torture ! But I soon found a parallel to it, 
 and an explanation of it, in every virtue that springs up 
 in miserable ground, and eveiy good thing that has its 
 birth in sorrow and distress. And, looldng out of the 
 sculptor's great window, upon the marble mountains, all 
 red and glowing in the decline of day, but stern and 
 solemn to the last, I thought, my God ! how many 
 quarries of human hearts and souls, capable of far more 
 beautiful results, are left shut up and mouldering away : 
 while pleasm^e-travellers through life, avert their faces, 
 as they pass, and shudder at the gloom and ruggedness 
 that conceal them ! 
 
 The then reigning Duke of Modena, to whom this 
 territoiy in part belonged, claimed the proud distinction 
 of being the only sovereign in Europe who had not 
 recognised Louis-Philippe as King of the French ! He 
 was not a wag, but quite in earnest. He was also much 
 opposed to railroads ; and if certain lines m contempla- 
 tion by other potentates, on either side of him, had 
 been executed, would have probably enjoyed the satis- 
 faction of having an omnibus plying to and fro, across 
 
PISA. 151 
 
 his not very vast dominions, to foi*ward travellers from 
 one terminus to another. 
 
 CaiTara, shut in by great hills, is very pictm^esque 
 and bold. Few tourists stay there ; and the people are 
 nearly all connected, in one way or other, with the 
 working of marble. There are also villages among the 
 caves, where the workmen live. It contains a beautiful 
 little Theatre, newly-built; and it is an interesting 
 custom there, to fonn the chorus of laboui'ers in the 
 marble quarries, who are self-taught and sing by ear. 
 I heard them in a comic opera, and in an act of 
 "Norma;" and they acquitted themselves very well; 
 unlike the common people of Italy generally, who (with 
 some exceptions among the Neapolitans) sing vilely out 
 of tune, and have very disagreeable singing voices. 
 
 From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the 
 first view of the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa 
 lies — with Leghorn, a purple spot in the flat distance — 
 is enchanting. Nor is it only distance that lends 
 enchantment to the view; for the fruitful country, and 
 rich woods of olive-trees through which the road sub- 
 sequently passes, render it delightful. 
 
 The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, 
 and for a long time we could see, behind the wall, the 
 leaning Tower, all awiy in the uncertain light; the 
 shadowy original of the old pictures in school-books, 
 setting forth " The Wonders of the World." Like most 
 things connected in their first associations with school- 
 books and school-times, it was too small. I felt it 
 keenly. It was nothing like so high above the wall as 
 
152 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 I had hoped. It was another of the many deceptions 
 practised by Mr. Harris, Bookseller, at the comer of 
 St. Pauls Churchyard, London. His Tower was a fic- 
 tion, but tliis was reality — and, by comparison, a short 
 reality. Still, it looked very well, and very strange, and 
 was quite as much out of the perpendicular as Harris 
 had represented it to be. The quiet air of Pisa too ; the 
 big guardhouse at the gate, with only two little soldiers 
 in it; the streets, with scarcely any show of people 
 in them ; and the Amo, flowing quaintly tlirough the 
 centre of the town ; were excellent. So, I bore no 
 malice in my heart against Mr. Harris (remembering 
 his good intentions) but forgave him before dinner, 
 and went out, full of confidence, to see the Tower next 
 morning. 
 
 I might have known better ; but, somehow, I had ex- 
 pected to see it, casting its long shadow on a public street 
 where people came and went all day. It was a sui^rise 
 to me to find it in a grave retired place, apart from the 
 general resort, and carpeted with smooth green turf. 
 But, the group of buildings, clustered on and about this 
 verdant carpet : comprising the Tower, the Baptistery, 
 the Cathedral, and the Church of the Campo Santo : is 
 perhaps the most remarkable and beautiful in the whole 
 world ; and from being clustered there, together, away 
 from the ordinarv transactions and details of the town, 
 they have a singularly venerable and impressive cha- 
 racter. It is the architectural essence of a rich old city, 
 with all its common life and common habitations pressed 
 out, and filtered away. 
 
PISA. 153 
 
 SiSMONDi compares the Tower, to the usual pictorial 
 representations in children's books, of the Tower of 
 Babel. It is a happy simile, and conveys a better idea 
 of the building than chapters of laboured description. 
 Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of the 
 structui'e; nothing can be more remarkable than its 
 general appearance. In the course of the ascent to the 
 top (which is by an easy staux-ase), the inclination is not 
 ver}" apparent ; but, at the summit, it becomes so, and 
 gives one the sensation of bemg in a ship that has 
 heeled over, through the action of an ebb-tide. The 
 effect upon the low side, so to speak — looking over from 
 the gallery, and seemg the shaft recede to its base — is 
 very startling ; and I saw a nervous traveller hold on to 
 the Tower involuntarily, after glancing down, as if he 
 had some idea of propping it up. The view within, from 
 the ground — looking up, as through a slanted tube — is 
 also very curious. It certainly inclines as much as the 
 most sanguine tourist could desire. The natural impulse 
 of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, who were about 
 to recline upon the grass below it, to rest, and contem- 
 plate the adjacent buildings, would probably be, not to 
 take up their position mider the leaning side ; it is so 
 very much aslant. 
 
 The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Bap- 
 tistery need no recapitulation from me ; though in this 
 case, as in a hundred others, I find it difficult to sepa- 
 rate my own dehght in recalling them, from your weari- 
 ness in having them recalled. There is a pictm'e of 
 Saint Agnes, by Andrea del Sarto, in the former, and 
 
154 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 there are a variety of rich columns in the latter, that 
 tempt me strongly. 
 
 It is I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be 
 tempted into elaborate descriptions, to remember the 
 Campo Santo ; where grass-grown graves are dug in 
 earth brought more than six hundred years ago, from 
 the Holy Land ; and where there are, surrounding 
 them, such cloisters, with such pla}dng Hghts and 
 shadows falling through their delicate tracery on the 
 stone pavement, as surely the dullest memory could 
 never forget. On the walls of this solemn and lovely 
 place, are ancient frescoes, very much obliterated and 
 decayed, but very curious. As usually happens in 
 almost any collection of paintings, of any sort, in Italy, 
 where there are many heads, there is, in one of them, a 
 striking accidental likeness of Napoleon. At one time, 
 I used to please my fancy with the speculation whether 
 these old painters, at their work, had a foreboding know- 
 ledge of the man who would one day arise to wreak such 
 destruction upon art : whose soldiers would make targets 
 of great pictures, and stable their horses among triumphs 
 of architecture. But the same Corsican face is so plen- 
 tiful m some parts of Italy at this day, that a more 
 commonplace solution of the coincidence is miavoidable. 
 
 If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of 
 its Tower, it may claim to be, at least, the second or third 
 in right of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy 
 visiter at every turn, escort him to every door he enters 
 at, and lie in wait for him, with strong reinforce- 
 ments, at every door by which they know he must come 
 
LEGHORN. 155 
 
 out. The grating of the portal on its hinges is the 
 signal for a general shout, and the moment he appears, 
 he is hemmed in, and fallen on, by heaps of rags and 
 personal distortions. The beggars seem to embody- 
 all the trade and enterprise of Pisa. Nothing else is 
 stirring, but warm air. Going through the streets, 
 the fi'onts of the sleepy houses look like backs. They 
 are all so still and quiet, and unlike houses with people 
 in them, that the greater part of the city has the 
 appearance of a city at daybreak, or duiing a general 
 siesta of the population. Or it is yet more like those 
 backgrounds of houses in common prints, or old engrav- 
 ings, where windows and doors are squarely indicated, 
 and one figure (a beggar of course) is seen walldng off 
 by itself into illimitable perspective. 
 
 Not so Leghorn, (made illustrious by Smollett's 
 grave) which is a thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact 
 place, where idleness is shouldered out of the way 
 by commerce. The regulations observed there, in 
 reference to trade and merchants, are very liberal 
 and free ; and the town, of course, benefits by 
 them. Leghorn has a bad name in connection with 
 stabbers, and with some justice it must be allowed ; 
 for, not many years ago, there was an assassination club 
 there, the members of which bore no ill-^\ill to anybody 
 in particular, but stabbed people (quite strangers to 
 them) in the streets at night, for the pleasure and 
 excitement of the recreation. I tliink the president of 
 this amiable society, was a shoemaker. He was taken, 
 however, and the club was broken up. It would, pro- 
 
156 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 bably, have disappeared in the natural course of events, 
 before the railroad between Leghorn and Pisa, which is 
 a good one, and has already begun to astonish Italy with 
 a precedent of punctuality, order, plain dealing, and 
 improvement — the most dangerous and heretical as- 
 tonisher of all. There must have been a slight sensa- 
 tion, as of earthquake, surely, in the Vatican, when the 
 first Italian railroad was thrown open. 
 
 Eetuming to Pisa, and liiring a good-tempered Vet- 
 turino, and his four horses, to take us on to Rome, we 
 travelled through pleasant Tuscan villages and cheerful 
 scenery all day. The roadside crosses in this part of 
 Italy are numerous and curious. There is seldom a 
 figure on the cross, though there is sometimes a face ; 
 but they are remarkable for being garnished with little 
 models in wood, of every possible object that can be 
 connected with the Saviours death. The cock that 
 crowed when Peter had denied his Master thrice, is 
 usually perched on the tip-top ; and an ornithological 
 phenomenon he generally is. Under him, is the inscrip- 
 tion. Then, hung on to the cross-beam, are the spear, 
 the reed with the sponge of vinegar and water at the 
 end, the coat without seam for which the soldiers cast 
 lots, the dice-box with which they threw for it, the 
 hammer that drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled 
 them out, the ladder which was set against the cross, 
 the crown of thorns, the instrument of flagellation, the 
 lantern with which Mary went to the tomb (I suppose), 
 and the sword with which Peter smote the servant of 
 the high priest, — a perfect toy-shop of little objects, 
 
LA SCALA, 157 
 
 repeated at eveiy four or five miles, all along the high- 
 way. 
 
 On the evening of the second day from Pisa, we 
 reached the beautiful old city of Siena. There was what 
 they called a Carnival, in progress ; but, as its secret 
 lay in a score or two of melancholy people walking up 
 and down the principal street in common toy-shop masks,. 
 and being more melancholy, if possible, than the same 
 sort of people in England, I say no more of it. We 
 went off, betimes next morning, to see the Cathedral, 
 which is wonderfully picturesque inside and out, espe- 
 cially the latter — also the market-place, or great Piazza, 
 which is a large square, with a great broken-nosed foun- 
 tam in it : some quaint gothic houses : and a high 
 square brick tower ; outside the top of which — a curious 
 feature in such views in Italy — hangs an enormous bell. 
 It is like a bit of Venice, without the water. There are 
 some curious old Palazzi in the town, which is very 
 ancient ; and without ha^dng (for me) the interest of 
 Verona, or Genoa, it is veiy dreamy and fantastic, and 
 most interesting. 
 
 We went on again, as soon as we had seen these 
 things, and going over a rather bleak country (there had 
 been nothing but vines until now : mere walking-sticks 
 at that season of the year), stopped, as usual, between 
 one and two hom's in the middle of the day, to rest the 
 horses; that being a part of eveiy Vettmino contract. 
 We then went on again, through a region gradually 
 becommg bleaker and wilder, until it became as bare 
 and desolate as any Scottish moors. Soon after darlv. 
 
158 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 we halted for the night, at the osteria of La Scala : a 
 perfectly lone house, where the family were sitting 
 round a great fire in the kitchen, raised on a stone 
 platform three or four feet high, and big enough for 
 the roasting of an ox. On the upper, and only other 
 floor of this hotel, there was a great wild rambling sala, 
 with one very little window m a by-comer, and four 
 black doors opening into four black bedrooms in various 
 directions. To say nothing of another large black door, 
 opening into another large black sala, with the staircase 
 coming abruptly through a kind of trap-door in the floor, 
 and the rafters of the roof looming above : a suspicious 
 little press skulking in one obscure comer : and all the 
 knives in the house lying about in various directions. 
 The fire-place was of the purest Italian architecture, so 
 that it was perfectly impossible to see it for the smoke. 
 The waitress was like a dramatic brigand's wife, and 
 wore the same style of dress upon her head. The dogs 
 barked like mad ; the echoes retumed the compliments 
 bestowed upon them ; there was not another house 
 within twelve miles ; and things had a dreary, and rather 
 a cut-throat, appearance. 
 
 They were not improved by rumours of robbers having 
 come out, strong and boldly, within a few nights ; and 
 of their having stopped the mail very near that place. 
 They were known to have waylaid some travellers not 
 long before, on Mount Vesuvius itself, and were the talk 
 at all the roadside inns. As they were no business of 
 ours, however (for we had very little with us to lose) 
 we made ourselves merry on the subject, and were very 
 
EADICOFANI. 159 
 
 soon as comfortable as need be. We had the usual 
 dinner in this solitaiy house ; and a very good dinner it 
 is, when you are used to it. There is something with a 
 vegetable or some rice in it, which is a sort of short-hand 
 or arbitrary character for soup, and which tastes very 
 well, when you have flavoured it with plenty of grated 
 cheese, lots of salt, and abundance of pepper. There 
 is the half fowl of which this soup has been made. 
 There is a stewed pigeon, mth the gizzards and livers 
 of himself and other birds stuck all round him. There 
 is a bit of roast beef, the size of a small French roll. 
 There are a scrap of Parmesan cheese, and five little 
 withered apples, all huddled together on a small plate, 
 and crowding one upon the other, as if each were tiying 
 to save itself from the chance of being eaten. Then 
 there is coffee ; and then there is bed. You don't mind 
 brick floors ; you don't mind yawning doors, nor banging 
 windows ; you don't mind your own horses being stabled 
 under the bed : and so close, that every time a horse coughs 
 or sneezes, he wakes you. If you are good-humoured 
 to the people about you, and speak pleasantly, and look 
 cheerful, take my word for it you may be well enter- 
 tained in the very worst Italian Inn, and always in the 
 most obhging manner, and may go from one end of the 
 comitry to the other (despite all stories to the contrary) 
 without any great trial of your patience anywhere. 
 Especially, when you get such wine in flasks, as the 
 Orvieto, and the Monte Pulciano. 
 
 It was a bad morning when we left this place ; and 
 we went, for twelve miles, over a comitiy as barren, as 
 
160 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 stony, and as wild, as Cornwall in England, until we 
 came to Radicofani, where there is a ghostly, goblin 
 inn : once a hunting-seat, belonging to the Dukes of 
 Tuscany, It is full of such rambling corridors, and gaunt 
 rooms, that all the murdering and phantom tales that 
 ever were written, might have originated in that one 
 house. There are some horrible old Palazzi in Genoa : 
 one in particular, not unlike it, outside : but there is a 
 windy, crealdng, wormy, rustling, door-opening, foot-on- 
 staircase-falling character about this Radicofani Hotel, 
 such as I never saw, anywhere else. The town, such 
 as it is, hangs on a hill-side above the house, and in 
 front of it. The inhabitants are all beggars ; and as 
 soon as they see a carriage coming, they swoop down 
 upon it, like so many birds of prey. 
 
 When we got on the momitain pass, which lies beyond 
 this place, the wind (as they had forewarned us at the 
 inn) was so terrific, that we were obliged to take my 
 other half out of the carriage, lest she should be blown 
 over, carriage and all, and to hang to it, on the windy 
 side (as well as we could for laughing) to prevent its 
 going. Heaven knows where. For mere force of wind, 
 this land-storm might have competed with an Atlantic 
 gale, and had a reasonable chance of coming off victorious. 
 The blast came sweeping down great gulHes in a range 
 of mountains on the right : so that we looked with positive 
 awe at a great morass on the left, and saw that there 
 was not a bush or twig to hold by. It seemed as if, 
 once blown from our feet, we must be swept out to sea, 
 or away into space. There was snow, and hail, and rain, 
 
LAKE OF BOLSENA. 161 
 
 and lightning, and thunder; and there were rolling 
 mists, travelling with incredible velocity. It was dark, 
 awful, and solitaiy to the last degree ; there were moun- 
 tains above mountains, veiled in angry clouds; and 
 there was such a wrathful, rapid, \dolent, tumultuous 
 hurry, everywhere, as rendered the scene mispeakably 
 exciting and grand. 
 
 It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding ; and 
 to cross even the dismal dirty Papal Frontier. After 
 passing through two little towns ; in one of which, 
 Acquapendente, there was also a " Carnival " in pro- 
 gress : consistmg of one man dressed and masked as 
 a woman, and one woman dressed and masked as 
 a man, walking ankle-deep, through the muddy streets, 
 in a veiy melancholy manner : we came, at dusk, 
 within sight of the Lake of Bolsena, on whose 
 bank there is a little town of the same name, much 
 celebrated for malaria. With the exception of this poor 
 place, there is not a cottage on the banks of the lake, 
 or near it (for nobody dare sleep there) ; not a boat 
 upon its waters ; not a stick or stake to break the dismal 
 monotony of seven-and-twenty watery miles. We were 
 late in getting in, the roads being very bad from heavy 
 rains; and, after dark, the dulness of the scene was 
 quite intolerable. 
 
 We entered on a very different, and a finer scene of 
 desolation, next night, at simset. We had passed through 
 Montefiaschone, (famous for its wine) and Viterbo (for its 
 fomitams) : and after climbmg up a long hill of eight or 
 ten miles extent, came suddenly upon the margin of a 
 
 21 
 
162 PICTUKES FROM ITALY. 
 
 solitary lake : in one part very beautiful, with a luxuriant 
 wood ; in another, very barren, and shut in by bleak 
 volcanic hills. Where this lake flows, there stood, of old, 
 a city. It was swallowed up one day ; and in its stead, 
 this water rose. There are ancient traditions (common 
 to many parts of the world) of the ruined city having 
 been seen below, w^hen the water was clear ; but however 
 that may be, from this spot of earth it vanished. The 
 ground came bubbling up above it ; and the water too ; 
 and here they stand, like ghosts on whom the other 
 world closed suddenly, and who have no means of getting 
 back again. They seem to be waiting the course of 
 ages, for the next earthquake in that place; when they 
 ^vill plunge below the groimd, at its first yawning, and 
 be seen no more. The unhappy city below, is not more 
 lost and dreary, than these fire-charred hills and the 
 stagnant water, above. The red sun looked strangely on 
 them, as with the knowledge that they were made for 
 caverns and darkness ; and the melancholy water oozed 
 and sucked the mud, and crept quietly among the marshy 
 grass and reeds, as if the overthrow of all the ancient 
 towers and house-tops, and the death of all the ancient 
 people bom and bred there, were yet heavy on its 
 conscience. 
 
 A short ride from this lake, brought us to Ronciglione ; 
 a little town like a large pig-sty, where we passed the 
 night. Next morning at seven o'clock, we stai'ted for 
 Rome. 
 
 As soon as we were out of the pig-sty, we entered on 
 the Campagna Romana; an undulating flat (as you 
 
CAMPAGNA ROMANA. 163 
 
 know) where few people can live ; and where, for miles 
 and miles, there is nothing to relieve the terrible 
 monotony and gloom. Of all kinds of countiy that coidd, 
 by possibility, lie outside the gates of Rome, this is the 
 aptest and fittest bmial-gi'oimd for the Dead City. So 
 sad, so quiet, so sullen ; so secret in its covering up of 
 great masses of ruin, and hiding them ; so like the waste 
 places into which the men possessed with devils, used to 
 go and howl, and rend themselves, in the old days of 
 Jerusalem. We had to traverse thirty miles of this 
 Campagna ; and for two-and-twenty we went on and on, 
 seeing nothing but now and then a lonely house, or a 
 villauous-looking shepherd : with matted hair all over his 
 face, and himself wrapped to the chin in a frowsy brown 
 mantle : tending his sheep. At the end of that distance, 
 we stopped to refresh the horses, and to get some lunch, 
 in a common malaria-shaken, despondent little public- 
 house, whose every inch of wall and beam, inside, was 
 (according to custom) painted and decorated in a way so 
 miserable that every room looked like the wrong side of 
 another room, and, with its wretched imitation of drapery, 
 and lop-sided little daubs of lyres, seemed to have been 
 plundered from behind the scenes of some travellmg 
 circus. 
 
 When we were fairly off again, we began, in a perfect 
 fever, to strain our eyes for Rome; and when, after 
 another mile or two, the Eternal City appeared, at 
 length, in the distance ; it looked like — I am half 
 afraid to write the word — like LONDON ! ! ! There 
 it lay, under a thick cloud, with innumerable towers, and 
 
 M 2 
 
164 PICTUKES FROM ITALY. 
 
 steeples, and roofs of houses, rising up into the sky, and 
 high above them all, one Dome. I swear, that keenly 
 as I felt the seeming absurdity of the comparison, it was 
 so like London, at that distance, that if you could have 
 shewn it me, in a glass, I should have taken it for 
 nothing else. 
 
ROME. 
 
 We entered the Eternal City, at about four o'clock 
 in the afternoon, on the thirtieth of Januaiy, by the 
 Porta del Popolo, and came immediately — it was a dark 
 muddy day, and there had been heavy rain — on the 
 skirts of the Carnival. We did not, then> know that we 
 were only looking at the fag end of the masks, who were 
 driving slowly round and round the Piazza, until they 
 could find a promising opportunity for falling into the 
 stream of carriages, and getting, in good time, into the 
 thick of the festivity; and coming among them so 
 abruptly, all travel-stained and wear}% was not coming 
 very well prepared to enjoy the scene. 
 
 We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte MoUe, two 
 or three miles before. It had looked as yellow as it 
 ought to look, and hunying on between its wom-away 
 and miiy banks, had a promising aspect of desolation 
 and ruin. The masquerade dresses on the fringe of the 
 Carnival, did great \'iolence to this promise. There were 
 no gi'eat ruins, no solemn tokens of antiquity, to be 
 seen ; — they all lie on the other side of the city. There 
 seemed to be long streets of commonplace shops and 
 
166 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 houses, such as are to be found in any European town ; 
 there were busy people, equipages, ordinary walkers to 
 and fro ; a multitude of chattering strangers. It was 
 no more my Rome : the Rome of anybody's fancy, man 
 or boy : degraded and fallen and lying asleep in the sun 
 among a heap of ruins : than the Place de la Concorde 
 in Paris is. A cloudy sky, a dull cold rain, and muddy 
 streets, I was prepared for, but not for this : and I con- 
 fess to having gone to bed, that night, in a very indif- 
 ferent humour, and with a very considerably quenched 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to 
 St. Peter's. It looked immense in the distance, but 
 distinctly and decidedly small, by comparison, on a near 
 approach. The beauty of the Piazza in which it stands, 
 with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing 
 fountains, — so fresh, so broad, and free, and beautiful — 
 nothing can exaggerate. The first burst of the interior, 
 in all its expansive majesty and glory : and, most of all, 
 the looking up into the Dome : is a sensation never to 
 be forgotten. But, there were preparations for a Festa ; 
 the pillars of stately marble were swathed in some im- 
 pertinent frippery of red and yellow ; the altar, and 
 entrance to the subterranean chapel : which is before it : 
 in the centre of the church : were like a goldsmith's 
 shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very lavish pan- 
 tomime. And though I had as high a sense of the 
 beauty of the building (I hope) as it is possible to enter- 
 tain, I felt no very strong emotion. I have been infi- 
 nitely more affected in many English cathedrals when 
 
KOME. 167 
 
 the organ has heen plapng, and in many English 
 country churches when the congregation have been sing- 
 ing. I had a much greater sense of mystery and wonder, 
 in the Cathedral of San Mai'k at Venice. 
 
 When we came out of the church again (we stood 
 nearly an hour staring up into the dome : and would not 
 have " gone over" the Cathedral then, for any money), 
 we said to the coachman, "Go to the Coliseum." In a 
 quarter of an hour or so, he stopped at the gate, and we 
 went in. 
 
 It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say : 
 so suggestive and distinct is it at this hour : that, for a 
 moment — actually in passing in — they who will, may 
 have the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, 
 with thousands of eager faces staring down into the 
 arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust, 
 going on there, as no language can describe. Its sohtude, 
 its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike upon 
 the stranger, the next moment, like a softened sorrow.; 
 and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and over- 
 come by any sight, not immediately connected with his 
 own affections and afflictions. 
 
 To see it crumbling there, an inch a year ; its walls 
 and arches overgrown with green ; its corridors open to 
 the day ; the long grass growing in its porches ; young 
 trees of yesterday, springing up on its ragged parapets, 
 and bearing fruit : chance produce of the seeds dropped 
 there by the birds who build their nests witlnn its chinks 
 and crannies ; to see its Pit of Fight filled up with 
 earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in the centre ; to 
 
168 PTCTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, 
 ruin, all about it ; the triumphal arches of Constantino, 
 Septimus Severus, and Titus ; the Roman Forum ; the 
 Palace of the Caesars; the temples of the old religion, fallen 
 down and gone ; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked 
 wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which 
 its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most 
 stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, moumfid sight, 
 conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight 
 of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the 
 lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it must move all 
 who look upon it now, a ruin. God be thanked : a ruin ! 
 
 As it tops the other ruins : standing there, a mountain 
 among graves : so do its ancient influences outlive 
 all other remnants of the old mythology and old 
 butchery of Rome, in the nature of the fierce and cruel 
 Roman people. The Italian face changes as the visiter 
 approaches the city ; its beauty becomes de\'ilish ; and 
 there is scarcely one countenance in a hundred, among 
 the common people in the streets, that would not be at 
 home and happy in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow. 
 
 Here was Rome indeed at last ; and such a Rome as 
 no one can imagine in its full and awfiil grandem* ! We 
 wandered out upon the Appian Way, and then went on, 
 through miles of ruined tombs and broken walls, with 
 here and there a desolate and uninhabited house : past 
 the Circus of Romulus, where the course of the chariots, 
 the stations of the judges, competitors, and spectators, 
 are yet as plainly to be seen as in old time : past the 
 tomb of Cecilia Metella : past all inclosure, hedge, or 
 
HOME. 169 
 
 stake, wall or fence : away upon the open Campagna, 
 where on that side of Rome, nothing is to be beheld but 
 Ruin. Except where the distant Apennmes bound the 
 \dew upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one field 
 of niin. Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque 
 and beautiful clusters of arches ; broken temples ; broken 
 tombs. A desart of decay, sombre and desolate beyond 
 all expression ; and with a history in every stone that 
 strews the ground. 
 
 On Sunday, the Pope assisted in the performance of 
 High Mass at St. Peter's. The effect of the Cathedral 
 on my mind, on that second visit, was exactly what it 
 was at first, and what it remains after many visits. It 
 is not religiously impressive or affecting. It is an 
 immense edifice, with no one point for the mind to 
 rest upon ; and it tires itself with wandering round 
 and round. The very purpose of the place, is not ex- 
 pressed in anything you see there, unless you examine 
 its details — and all examination of details is incompatible 
 with the place itself. It might be a Pantheon, or a 
 Senate House, or a gi'cat architectm'al trophy, having 
 no other object than an architectural triumph. There 
 is a black statue of St. Peter, to be sure, under a red 
 canopy ; which is larger than life, and which is constantly 
 having its great toe kissed by good Catholics. You 
 cannot help seeing that : it is so very prominent and 
 popular. But it does not heighten the effect of the 
 ■ temple, as a work of art; and it is not expressive — to 
 me at least — of its high pm*pose. 
 
170 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 A large space behind the altar, was fitted up with 
 boxes, shaped like those at the Italian Opera in 
 England, but in their decoration much more gaudy. In 
 the centre of the kind of theatre thus railed off, was 
 a canopied dais with the Pope's chair upon it. The 
 pavement was covered with a carpet of the brightest 
 green; and what with this green, and the intolerable 
 reds and crimsons, and gold borders of the hangings, the 
 whole concern looked like a stupendous Bon-bon. On 
 either side of the altar, was a large box for lady strangers. 
 These were filled with ladies in black dresses and black 
 veils. The gentlemen of the Pope s guard, in red coats, 
 leather breeches, and jack-boots, guarded all this 
 reserved space, with drawn swords, that were veiy flashy 
 in every sense ; and from the altar all down the nave, a 
 broad lane was kept clear by the Pope's Swiss guard, 
 who wear a quaint striped surcoat, and striped tight 
 legs, and carry halberds like those which are usually 
 shouldered by those theatrical supernumeraries, who 
 never can get off the stage fast enough, and who may 
 be generally observed to linger in the enemy's camp 
 after the open country, held by the opposite forces, has 
 been split up the middle by a convulsion of Nature. 
 
 I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company 
 with a great many other gentlemen, attired in black (no 
 other passport is necessary), and stood there at my ease, 
 during the performance of mass. The singers were in a 
 crib of wire-work (like a large meat-safe or bird-cage) 
 in one corner; and sang most atrociously. All about 
 the green carpet, there was a slowly moving crowd of 
 
EOME. 171 
 
 people: talking to each other: staring at the Pope through 
 eye-glasses: defrauding one another, in moments of 
 partial curiosity, out of precarious seats on the bases of 
 pillars : and grinning hideously at the ladies. Dotted 
 here and there, were httle Imots of friars (Francescani, or 
 Cappuccini, in their coarse brown dresses and peaked 
 hoods) maldng a strange contrast to the gaudy ecclesias- 
 tics of higher degree, and having their humility gi'atified 
 to the utmost, by being shouldered about, and elbowed 
 right and left, on all sides. Some of these had muddy 
 sandals and umbrellas, and stained garments : having 
 trudged in from the country. The faces of the greater 
 part were as coarse and heavy as their dress ; their 
 dogged, stupid, monotonous stare at all the glory and 
 splendour, having something in it, half miserable, and 
 half ridiculous. 
 
 Upon the green cai'pet itself, and gathered round the 
 altar, was a perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red, 
 gold, purple, violet, white, and fine linen. Stragglers 
 from these, went to and iro among the crowd, conversing 
 two and two, or giving and receiving introductions, and 
 exchanging salutations ; other functionaries in black 
 gowns, and other functionaries in com't-dresses, were 
 similarly engaged. In the midst of all these, and 
 stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out, and the extreme 
 restlessness of the Youth of England, who were pei'pe- 
 tually wandering about, some few steady persons in 
 black cassocks, who had knelt down with their faces to 
 the wall, and were poring over their missals, became, 
 unintentionally a sort of humane man- traps, and with 
 
172 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 their own devout legs tripped up other people's by 
 the dozen. 
 
 There was a great pile of candles lying down on the 
 floor near me, which a very old man in a rusty black 
 gown with an open-work tippet, like a summer orna- 
 ment for a fireplace in tissue-paper, made himself very 
 busy in dispensing to all the ecclesiastics : one apiece. 
 They loitered about with these for some time, under 
 their arms like walldng-sticks, or m their hands like 
 truncheons. At a certain period of the ceremony, 
 however, each carried his candle up to the Pope, laid it 
 across his two knees to be blessed, took it back again, 
 and filed off. This was done in a very attenuated 
 procession, as you may suppose, and occupied a long 
 time. Not because it takes long to bless a candle 
 through and through, but because there were so many 
 candles to be blessed. At last they were all blessed ; 
 and then they were all lighted ; and then the Pope was 
 taken up, chair and all, and carried round the church. 
 
 I must say, that I never saw anything, out of 
 November, so like the popular English commemoration 
 of the fifth of that month. A bundle of matches and a 
 lantern, would have made it perfect. Nor did the Pope, 
 himself, at all mar the resemblance, though he has a 
 pleasant and venerable face ; for, as this part of the 
 ceremony makes him giddy and sick, he shuts his eyes 
 when it is performed : and having his eyes shut, and a 
 great mitre on his head, and his head itself wagging to 
 and fro as they shook him in carrying, he looked as if 
 his mask were going to tumble off. The two immense 
 
KOME. 173 
 
 fans which are always borne, one on either side of him, 
 accompanied him, of com-se, on this occasion. As they 
 carried him along, he blessed the people with the mystic 
 sign ; and as he passed them, they Imeeled down. 
 When he had made the round of the chm'ch, he was 
 brought back again, and if I am not mistaken, this 
 performance was repeated, in the whole, three times. 
 There was, certainly, nothing solemn or effective in it ; 
 and certainly very much that was droll and tawdiy. But 
 this remark applies to the whole ceremony, except the 
 raising of the Host, when every man in the guard 
 dropped on one knee instantly, and dashed his naked 
 sword on the ground ; which had a fine effect. 
 
 The next time I saw the cathedral, was some two or 
 three weeks afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball ; 
 and then, the hangings being taken down, and the carpet 
 taken up, but all the framework left, the remnants of 
 these decorations looked like an exploded cracker. 
 
 The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festa 
 days, and Sunday being always a dies non in carnival 
 proceedings, we had looked forward, with some impatience 
 and curiosity, to the beginning of the new week : Monday 
 and Tuesday being the two last and best days of the 
 carnival. 
 
 On the Monday afternoon at one or two o'clock, there 
 began to be a great rattling of carnages into the court- 
 yai'd of the hotel ; a hm-rying to and fro of all the ser- 
 vants in it ; and, now and then, a swift shooting across 
 some dooi'way or balcony, of a straggling stranger in a 
 
174 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 fancy dress : not yet sufficiently well used to the same, 
 to wear it with confidence, and defy public opinion. All 
 the cai'riages were open, and had the linings carefully 
 covered with white cotton or calico, to prevent their 
 proper decorations from being spoiled by the incessant 
 pelting of sugar-plums; and people were pacldng and 
 cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its occu- 
 pants, enormous sacks, and baskets-full of these confetti, 
 together with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little 
 nosegays, that some carriages were not only brimful of 
 flowers, but literally running over : scattering, at every 
 shake and jerk of the springs, some of their abundance 
 on the ground. Not to be behind-hand in these essential 
 particulars, we caused two very respectable sacks of sugar- 
 plums (each about three feet high) and a large clothes- 
 basket full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired 
 barouche, with all speed. And from our place of observ- 
 ation, in one of the upper balconies of the hotel, we con- 
 templated these arrangements with the liveliest satisfac- 
 tion. The carriages now beginning to take up their 
 company, and move away, we got into oui's, and drove off" 
 too, armed with little wire masks for oui* faces ; the 
 sugar-plums, like Falstafl"s adulterated sack, having 
 lime in their composition. 
 
 The Corso is a street a mile long ; a street of shops, 
 and palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening 
 into a broad piazza. There are virandas and bal- 
 conies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost eveiy house 
 — not on one story alone, but often to one room or 
 another on every story — put there in general with so 
 
EOME. 175 
 
 little order or regularity, that if, year after year, and 
 season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed bal- 
 conies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could 
 scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly 
 manner. 
 
 This is the gi'eat fountain-head and focus of the Car- 
 nival. But all the streets in which the Carnival is held, 
 being vigilantly kept by dragoons, it is necessary for 
 carriages, in the first instance, to pass, in line, down 
 another thoroughfare, and so come into the Corso at the 
 end remote from the Piazza del Popolo ; which is one 
 of its terminations. Accordingly, we fell into the string 
 of coaches, and, for some time, jogged on quietly enough; 
 now crawlmg on at a very slow walk ; now trotting half 
 a dozen yards ; now bacldng fifty ; and now stopping 
 altogether : as the pressure in front obliged us. If any 
 impetuous carriage, dashed out of the rank and clattered 
 forward, with the wild idea of getting on faster, it was 
 suddenly met, or overtaken, by a trooper on horseback, 
 who, deaf as his own drawn sword to all remonstrances, 
 immediately escorted it, back to the very end of the row, 
 and made it a dim speck in the remotest perspective. 
 Occasionally, we interchanged a volley of confetti with 
 the carriage next in front, or the carriage next behind ; 
 but, as yet, this capturing of stray and errant coaches by 
 the military, was the chief amusement. 
 
 Presently, we came into a narrow street, where, 
 besides one line of carriages going, there was another 
 line of carriages returning. Here the sugar-plums and 
 the nosegays began to fly about, pretty smartly ; and I 
 
176 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 was fortunate enough to observe one gentleman attired 
 as a Greek warrior, catch a Ught- whiskered brigand on 
 the nose (he was in the very act of tossing up a bouquet 
 to a young lady in a first-floor window) with a precision 
 that was much applauded by the by-standers. As this 
 victorious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark with 
 a stout gentleman in a door- way — one-half black and one- 
 half white, as if he had been peeled up the middle — who 
 had offered him his congratulations on this achievement, 
 he received an orange from a house-top, full on his left 
 ear, and was much surprised, not to say discomfited. 
 Especially, as he was standing up at the time ; and in 
 consequence of the carriage moving on suddenly, at the 
 same moment, staggered ignominiously, and buried him- 
 self among his flowers. 
 
 Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress, 
 brought us to the Corso ; and anything so gay, so bright, 
 and lively as the whole scene there, it would be difficult 
 to imagine. From all the innumerable balconies : from 
 the remotest and highest, no less than from the lowest 
 and nearest : hangings of bright red, bright green, bright 
 blue, white and gold, were fluttermg in the brilliant sun- 
 light. From windows, and from parapets, and tops of 
 houses, streamers of the richest colom*s, and draperies of 
 the gaudiest and most sparklmg hues, were floating out 
 upon the street. The buildings seemed to have been 
 literally turned inside out, and to have all their gaiety 
 towards the highway. Shop-fronts were taken down, and 
 the windows filled with company, like boxes at a shining 
 theatre ; doors were carried off their hinges, and long 
 
EOME. 177 
 
 tapestried groves, hung -vvdlli garlands of flowers and 
 evergreens, displayed \N'itliin ; builders' scaffoldings 
 were gorgeous temples, radiant in silver, gold, and 
 crimson ; and in every nook and comer, from the pave- 
 ment to the chimney- tops, where women's eyes could 
 glisten, there they danced, and laughed, and sparlded, 
 like the light in water. Every sort of bewitching mad- 
 ness of dress was there. Little preposterous scarlet 
 jackets ; quaint old stomachers, more wicked than the 
 smartest boddices ; Polish j)elisses, strained and tight 
 as ripe gooseberries ; tiny Greek caps, all awry, and 
 clinging to the dark hair. Heaven knows how; eveiy 
 wild, quaint, bold, shy, pettish madcap fancy had its 
 illustration in a dress; and every fancy was as dead 
 forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as 
 if the three old aqueducts that still remain entii'e, 
 had brought Lethe mto Rome, upon their stmxly arches, 
 that morning. 
 
 The carriages were now three abreast; in broader 
 places four ; often stationary for a long time together ; 
 alwavs one close mass of variegated briohtness ; showinsf, 
 the whole street-full, through the storm of flowers, like 
 flowers of a larger growth themselves. In some, the 
 horses were richly caparisoned in magnificent trappings ; 
 in others they were decked from head to tail, with 
 flowing ribbons. Some were driven by coachmen with 
 enormous double faces : one face leering at the horses : 
 the other cocking its extraordinary eyes into the carriage : 
 and both rattling again, under the hail of sugar-plums. 
 Other diivers were attired as women, wearmg long 
 
178 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 ringlets and no bonnets, and looking more ridiculous in 
 any real difficulty with the horses (of which, in such a 
 concourse, there were a great many) than tongue can 
 tell, or pen describe. Instead of sittmg in the carnages, 
 upon the seats, the handsome Roman women, to see 
 and to be seen the better, sit in the heads of the 
 barouches, at this time of general license, with their feet 
 upon the cushions — and oh the flowing skirts and 
 dainty waists, the blessed shapes and laughing faces, 
 the free, good-humoured, gallant figiu^es that they make ! 
 There were great vans, too, full of handsome girls — 
 thirty, or more together, perhaps — and the broadsides 
 that were poured into, and pom'ed out of, these faiiy fire- 
 ships, splashed the air with flowers and bonbons for ten 
 minutes at a time. Carriages, delayed long in one place, 
 would begin a deliberate engagement with other car- 
 riages, or with people at the lower windows ; and the 
 spectators at some upper balcony or window, joining in 
 the fray, and attacking both parties, would empty down 
 great bags of confetti, that descended like a cloud, and 
 in an instant made them white as millers. Still, car- 
 riages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on 
 colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Men and 
 boys clinging to the wheels of coaches, and holding 
 on behind, and following in their wake, and diving in 
 among the horses' feet to pick up scattered flowers 
 to sell again ; maskers on foot (the drollest, generally) in 
 fantastic exaggerations of court-dresses, surv^eying the 
 throng through enormous eye-glasses, and always trans- 
 ported with an ecstasy of love, on the discovery of any 
 
ROME. 179 
 
 particularly old lady at a window ; long strings of Polici- 
 nelli, laying about them with blown bladders at the ends 
 of sticks; a waggon-full of madmen, screaming and 
 tearing to the life ; a coach-ful of grave mamelukes, 
 with their hoi-se-tail standard set up in the midst ; a 
 party of gipsy-women engaged in terrific conflict with a 
 shipful of sailors; a man-monkey on a pole, sm'romided 
 by strange animals with pigs' faces, and lions' tails, 
 carried under their arms, or worn gracefully over their 
 shoulders; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, 
 colours on colours, crowds upon crow^ds, without 
 end. Not many actual characters sustained, or repre- 
 sented, perhaps, considering the number dressed, but 
 the main pleasure of the scene consisting in its perfect 
 good temper; in its bright, and infinite, and flashing 
 variety; and in its entire abandonment to the mad 
 humour of the time — an abandonment so perfect, so con- 
 tagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights 
 up to his middle in flowers and sugar-plums, like the 
 wildest Roman of them all, and thinks of nothing else 
 till half-past four o'clock, when he is suddenly reminded 
 (to his great regret) that this is not the whole business 
 of his existence, by hearing the trumpets somid, and 
 seeing the dragoons begin to clear the street. 
 
 How it ever is cleared for the race that takes place at 
 five, or how the horses ever go through the race, 
 without going over the people, is more than I can say. 
 But the carriages get out into the by-streets, or up into 
 the Piazza del Popolo, and some people sit in temporary 
 galleries in the latter place, and tens of thousands line 
 
180 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 the Corso on both sides, ■when the horses are brought 
 out into the Piazza — to the foot of that same cokimn 
 which, for centuries, looked down upon the games and 
 chariot-races in the Circus Maximus. 
 
 At a given signal, they are started off. Down the 
 live lane, the whole length of the Corso, they fly like the 
 wind : riderless, as all the world knows : with shining 
 ornaments upon their backs, and twdsted in their plaited 
 manes : and with heavy little balls stuck full of spikes, 
 dangliug at their sides, to goad them on. The jingling 
 of these trappings, and the rattling of their hoofs upon 
 the hard stones ; the dash and fury of their speed along 
 the echoing street; nay, the very cannon that are fired — 
 these noises are nothing to the roaring of the multitude : 
 their shouts : the clapping of their hands. But it is 
 soon over — almost instantaneously. More cannon shake 
 the town. The horses have plunged into the carpets 
 put across the street to stop them ; the goal is 
 reached ; the prizes are won (they are given, m part, 
 by the poor Jews, as a compromise for not running foot- 
 races themselves) ; and there is an end to that day's 
 sport. 
 
 But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on 
 the last day but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to 
 such a height of glittering colour, swarming life, and 
 frolicsome uproar, that the bare recollection of it makes 
 me giddy at this moment. The same diversions, gi'eatly 
 heightened and intensified in the ardour with which they 
 are pursued, go on until the same hour. The race is 
 ^repeated ; the cannon are fired ; the shouting and clap- 
 
ROME. ' 181 
 
 ping of hands are renewed ; the cannon are fired again ; 
 the race is over; and the prizes are won. But, the 
 carriages : anlde-deep in sugar-phims within, and so be- 
 flowered and dusty without, as to be hardly recognisable 
 for the same vehicles that they were, three hours ago : 
 instead of scampering off in all directions, throng into 
 the Corso, where they are soon wedged together in a 
 scarcely-moving mass. For the diversion of the Mocco- 
 letti, the last gay madness of the Carnival, is now at 
 hand ; and sellers of little tapers, like w^hat are called 
 Christmas candles in England, are shouting lustily on 
 every side, *' Moccoli, Moccoli ! Eceo Moccoli ! " — a 
 new item in the tumult; quite abolishing that other 
 item of " Ecco Fiori ! Ecco Fior — r — r ! " which has 
 been making itself audible over all the rest, at intervals, 
 the whole day through. 
 
 As the bright han^rincfs and dresses are all fading? 
 into one dull, heavy, uniform colour in the decline of 
 the day, lights begin flashing, here and there: in the 
 windows, on the house-tops, in the balconies, in the 
 carriages, in the hands of the foot-passengers : little by 
 little : gradually, gradually : more and more : until the 
 whole long street i^ one great glare and blaze of fire. 
 Then, everybody present has but one engrossing object; 
 that is, to extinguish other people s candles, and to keep 
 his own a-light; and everybody: man, woman, or child, 
 gentleman or lady, prince or peasant, native or foreigner : 
 yells and screams, and roars incessantly, as a taunt to 
 the subdued, "Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo ! " (With- 
 out a light ! Without a light !) until nothing is heard 
 
I'Sji PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 but a gigantic chorus of those two words, mingled with 
 peals of laughter. 
 
 The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extra- 
 ordinary that can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly 
 by, with everybody standing on the seats or on the box, 
 holding up their lights at arms' length, for greater 
 safety; some in paper shades; some with a bunch of 
 undefended little tapers, Idndled altogether ; some with 
 blazing torches ; some with feeble little candles ; men on 
 foot, creeping along, among the wheels, watching their 
 opportunity, to make a spring at some particular light, 
 and dash it out; other people climbing up into carriages, 
 to get hold of them by main force ; others, chasing some 
 unlucky wanderer, round and round his own coach, to 
 blow out the light he has begged or stolen somewhere, 
 before he can ascend to his own company, and enable 
 them to light their extinguished tapers ; others, with their 
 hats off, at a carriage-door, humbly beseeching some kind- 
 hearted lady to oblige them with a light for a cigar, and 
 when she is in the fulness of doubt whether to comply or 
 no, blowing out the candle she is guarding so tenderly with 
 her little hand ; other people at the windows, fishing for 
 candles with lines and hooks, or letting down long 
 willow- wands with handkerchiefs at the end, and flapping 
 them out, dexterously, when the bearer is at the height of 
 his triumph ; others, biding their time in comers, with 
 immense extinguishers like halberds, and suddenly 
 coming down upon glorious torches ; others, gathered 
 round one coach, and sticldng to it; others, raining 
 oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or 
 
ROME. 183 
 
 regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding up one 
 man among them, who carries one feeble little wick 
 above his head, with which he defies them all ! Senza 
 Moccolo ! Senza Moccolo ! Beautiful women, standing 
 up in coaches, pointmg in derision at extinguished lights, 
 and clapping their hands, as they pass on, crying, 
 " Senza Moccolo ! Senza Moccolo ! " ; low balconies full 
 of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assail- 
 ants in the streets ; some repressing them as they climb 
 up, some bending down, some leaning over, some 
 shrinking back — delicate arms and bosoms — graceful 
 figures — glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moc- 
 colo, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o ! — when in 
 the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of 
 the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, 
 and the Carnival is over in an instant — put out like a 
 taper, with a breath ! 
 
 There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as 
 dull and senseless as a London one, and only remarkable 
 for the summary way in which the house was cleared at 
 eleven o'clock : which was done by a line of soldiers 
 forming along the wall, at the back of the stage, and 
 sweeping the whole company out before them, like a 
 broad broom. The game of the Moccoletti (the word, in 
 the singular, Moccoletto, is the diminutive of Moccolo, 
 and means a little lamp or candle-snuff) is supposed by 
 some to be a ceremony of burlesque mourning for the death 
 of the Carnival : candles being indispensable to Catholic 
 grief. But whether it be so, or be a remnant of the ancient 
 Saturnalia, or an incoi'poration of both, or have its origin 
 
184 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 in anything else, I shall always remember it, and the 
 frolic, as a brilliant and most captivating sight : no less 
 remarkable for the unbroken good-humour of all con- 
 ccemed, down to the very lowest (and among those who 
 scaled the carriages, were many of the commonest men 
 and boys) than for its innocent vivacity. For, odd as it 
 may seem to say so, of a sport so full of thoughtlessness 
 and personal display, it is as free from any taint of im- 
 modesty as any general mingling of the two sexes can 
 possibly be ; and there seems to prevail, dming its pro- 
 gress, a feeling of general, almost childish, simplicity 
 and confidence, which one thinks of with a pang, when 
 the Ave Maria has rung it away, for a whole year. 
 
 Availing ourselves of a part of the quiet interval 
 between the termination of the Carnival and the beginning 
 of the Holy Week : when everybody had nm away from the 
 one, and fev7 people had yet begun to run back again for 
 the other : we went conscientiously to work, to see Rome. 
 And, by dint of going out early eveiy morning, and 
 coming back late every evening, and labouring hard all 
 day, I believe we made acquaintance with every post 
 and pillar in the city, and the comitry round ; and, in 
 particular, explored so many churches that I abandoned 
 that part of the enterprise at last, before it was half 
 finished, lest I should never, of my own accord, go to 
 church again, as long as I lived. But, I managed, almost 
 every day, at one time or other, to get back to the 
 Coliseum, and out upon the open Campagna, beyond the 
 Tomb of Cecilia Metella. 
 
EOME. 185 
 
 We often encountered, in these expeditions, a company 
 of English Toiu-ists, with whom I had an ardent, but un- 
 gratified longing, to establish a speaking acquaintance. 
 They were one Mr. Davis, and a small circle of friends. 
 It was impossible not to Ivnow Mrs. Davis's name, from 
 her being always in great request among her party, and 
 her party being evei'j^iere. During the Holy Week,- 
 they were in every part of every scene of every ceremony. 
 For a fortnight or three weeks before it, they were in 
 eveiy tomb, and every church, and eveiy ruin, and every 
 Picture Galleiy ; and I hardly ever observed Mrs. Da\ds 
 to be silent for a moment. Deep under-ground, high up 
 in St. Peter's, out on the Campagna, and stifling in the 
 Jews' quarter, Mrs. Davis tm-ned up, all the same. I 
 don't think she ever saw anvtlmm, or ever looked at 
 anything ; and she had always lost something out of a 
 straw hand-basket, and was trpng to find it, with all 
 her might and main, among an immense quantity of 
 English halfpence, which lay, like sands upon the sea- 
 shore, at the bottom of it. There was a professional 
 Cicerone always attached to the party (which had been 
 brought over from London, fifteen or twenty strong, by 
 contract), and if he so much as looked at Mrs. Davis, 
 she invariably cut him short by saying, " There, God 
 bless the man don't worrit me ! I don't understand a 
 word you say, and shouldn't if you was to talk 'till you 
 W'as black m the face ! " Mr. Davis always had a snuff- 
 coloured great-coat on, and cai'ried a great green umbrella 
 in his hand, and had a slow curiosity constantly devoming 
 him, wliich prompted him to do extraordinaiy things,- 
 
186 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 such as taking the covers off unis in tombs, and looking 
 in at the ashes as if they were pickles — and tracing out 
 inscriptions with the ferrule of his umbrella, and saying, 
 with intense thoughtfulness, " Here 's a B you see, and 
 tliere 's a R, and this is the way we goes on in ; is it !" 
 His antiquaiian habits occasioned his being frequently 
 in the rear of the rest; and one of the agonies of Mrs. 
 Davis, and the party in general, was an ever-present fear 
 that Davis would-be lost. This caused them to scream 
 for him, in the strangest places, and at the most im- 
 proper seasons. And when he came, slowly emerging 
 out of some Sepulchre or other, like a peaceful Ghoide, 
 saying " Here I am ! " Mrs. Davis invariably replied, 
 " You 11 be bmied alive in a foreign country Davis, and 
 it's no use trying to prevent you ! " 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably, 
 been brought from London in about nine or ten days. 
 Eighteen hundred years ago, the Roman legions under 
 Claudius, protested against being led into Mr. and Mrs. 
 Davis's country, urging that it lay beyond the limits of 
 the world. 
 
 Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions 
 of Rome, there was one that amused me mightily. It 
 is always to be found there ; and its den is on the great 
 flight of steps that lead from the Piazza di Spagna, to 
 the church of Trinita del Monte. In plainer words, 
 these steps are the great place of resort for the artists' 
 " Models," and there they are constantly waiting to be 
 hired. The first time I went up there, T could not con- 
 ceive why the faces seemed familiar to me ; why they 
 
EOME. 187 
 
 appeared to have beset me, for years, in eveiy possible 
 variety of action and costume ; and how it came to pass 
 that they started up before me, in Rome, in the broad 
 day, like so many saddled and bridled nightmares. I 
 soon fomid that we had made acquaintance, and improved 
 it, for several years, on the walls of various Exhibition 
 Galleries. There is one old gentleman, with long white 
 hair and an immense beard, who, to my knowledge, has 
 gone half through the catalogue of the Royal Academy. 
 This is the venerable, or patriarchal model. He carries a 
 long staff ; and eveiy knot and twist m that staff I have 
 seen, faithfully delineated, innumerable times. There is 
 another man in a blue cloak, who always pretends to be 
 asleep in the sun (when there is any) and who, I need 
 not say, is always very wide awake, and very attentive to 
 the disposition of his legs. This is the doles far' niente 
 model. There is another man in a brown cloak, who 
 leans against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, 
 and looks out of the comers of his eyes : which are just 
 visible beneath his broad slouched hat. This is the 
 assassin model. There is another man, who constantly 
 looks over his own shoulder, and is always going away, 
 but never goes. This is the haughty, or scornful model. 
 As to Domestic Happiness, and Holy Families, they 
 should come yevj cheap, for there are lumps of^ 
 them, all up the steps ; and the cream of the thing, is, 
 that they are all the falsest vagabonds in the world, 
 especially made up for the purpose, and having no 
 comitei'parts in Rome or any other part of the habitable 
 globe. 
 
188 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of it^ 
 being said to be a mock mourning (in the ceremony with 
 which it closes), for the gaieties and merry-makings 
 before Lent; and this again reminds me of the real fmae- 
 rals and mourning processions of Rome, which, like those 
 in most other parts of Italy, are rendered chiefly remai'k- 
 able to a Foreigner, by the indifference with which the 
 mere clay is imiversally regarded, after life has left it. 
 And this is not from the survivors ha\ang had time to 
 dissociate the memory of the dead from their well- 
 remembered appearance and form on earth; for the 
 interment follows too speedily after death, for that: 
 almost always taking place within four-and-tweuty hours, 
 and, sometimes, within twelve. 
 
 At Rome, there is the same arrangement of Pits in a 
 great, bleak, open, dreary space, that I have already de- 
 scribed as existing in Genoa. When I visited it, at noon- 
 day, I saw a solitary coffin of plain deal : uncovered by 
 any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, that the hoof 
 of any wandering mule would have crushed it in : care- 
 lessly tumbled down, all on one side, on the door of 
 one of the pits — and there left, by itself, in the wind 
 and sunshine. " How does it come to be left here ? " 
 I asked the man who showed me the place. " It was 
 brought here half an hour ago. Signer," he said. I 
 remembered to have met the procession, on its return : 
 stragglmg away at a good round pace. " When will it 
 be put in the pit?" I asked him. "When the cart 
 comes, and it is opened to-night," he said. " How much 
 does it cost to be brought here in this way, instead of 
 
EOME. 189 
 
 coming in the cart ? " I asked him. " Ten scudi," he said 
 (about two pomids, two-and-sixpence, English). " The 
 other bodies, for whom nothing is paid, are taken to 
 the church of the Santa Maria della Consolazione," he 
 continued, " and brought here, altogether, in the cart at 
 night." I stood, a moment, looldng at the coffin, which 
 had two initial letters scrawled upon the top ; and turned 
 away, with an expression in my face, I suppose, of not 
 much liking its exposure in that manner : for he said, 
 shrugging his shoulders with great vivacity, and giving a 
 pleasant smile, " But he s dead, Signore, he 's dead. 
 Why not?" 
 
 Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must 
 select for separate mention. It is the church of the 
 Ara Coeli, supposed to be built on the site of the old 
 Temple of Jupiter Feretrius ; and approached, on one 
 side, by a long steep flight of steps, which seem incom- 
 plete without some gi'oup of bearded soothsayers on the 
 top. It is remarkable for the possession of a miraculous 
 Bambino, or wooden doll, representing the Infant 
 Saviour; and I first saw this miraculous Bambino, in 
 legal phrase, in manner following, that is to say : 
 
 We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and 
 were looldng down its long "sdsta of gloomy pillars (for all 
 these ancient churches built upon the ruins of old tem- 
 ples, are dark and sad,) when the Brave came runnmg in, 
 with a grin upon his face that stretched it from ear to 
 ear, and implored us to follow him, without a moment's 
 delay, as they were going to show the Bambino to a 
 
190 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 select party. We according!}'- hurried off to a sort of 
 chapel, or sacristy, hard hy the chief altar, but not in the 
 chui'ch itself, where the select party : consisting of two 
 or three Catholic gentlemen and ladies (not Italians) 
 were already assembled : and where one hollow-cheeked 
 young monk was lighting up divers candles, while an- 
 other was putting on some clerical robes over his coarse 
 brown habit. The candles were on a Idnd of altar, and 
 above it were two delectable figures, such as you would see 
 at any English fair, representing the Holy Virgin, and 
 Saint Joseph, as I suppose, bending in devotion over a 
 wooden box, or coffer ; which was shut. 
 
 The hollow-cheeked monk, number One, having 
 finished lighting the candles, went down on his knees, 
 in a comer, before this set-piece ; and the monk number 
 Two, having put on a pair of highly ornamented and 
 gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the coffer, with 
 great reverence, and set it on the altar. Then, with 
 many genuflexions, and muttering certain prayers, he 
 opened it, and let down the front, and took off sundiy 
 coverings of sathi and lace from the inside. The ladies 
 had been on their knees from the commencement ; and 
 the gentlemen now dropped down devoutly, as he ex- 
 posed to view, a little wooden doll, in face very like 
 General Tom Thumb, the American Dwarf : gorgeously 
 dressed in satin and gold lace, and actually blazing with 
 rich jewels. There was scarcely a spot upon its little 
 breast, or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling with the 
 costly offerings of the Faithfid. Presently, he lifted it out 
 of the box, and, canying it round among the kneelers, 
 
 J 
 
ROME. 191 
 
 set its face against the forehead of every one, and ten- 
 dered its chimsy foot to them to kiss — a ceremony 
 which they all performed, down to a dirty little raga- 
 muffin of a boy who had walked in from the street. 
 When this was done, he laid it in the box again : and 
 the company, rising, drew near, and commended the 
 jewels in whispers. In good time, he replaced the 
 coverings, shut up the box, put it back in its place, 
 locked up the whole concern (Holy Family and all) 
 behmd a pair of folding-doors ; took off his priestly 
 vestments ; and received the customaiy " small charge," 
 while his companion, by means of an extinguisher fast- 
 ened to the end of a long stick, put out the lights, one 
 after another. The candles being all extinguished, and the 
 money all collected, they retired, and so did the spectators. 
 I met this same Bambino, in the street, a short time 
 afterwards, gomg, in great state, to the house of some 
 sick person. It is taken to all parts of Rome for this 
 purpose, constantly ; but, I understand that it is not 
 always as successful as could be wished ; for, making its 
 appearance at the bedside of weak and neiTous people 
 in extremit}^ accompanied by a numerous escort, it not 
 unfrequently frightens them to death. It is most 
 populai' in cases of child-birth, where it has done such 
 wonders, that if a lady be longer than usual in gettmg 
 through her difficulties, a messenger is despatched, with 
 all speed, to solicit the immediate attendance of the 
 Bambino, It is a very valuable property, and much 
 confided in — especially by the religious body to whom it 
 belongs. 
 
192 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 I am Iiappy to Imow that it is not considered immacu- 
 late, by some who are good catholics, and who are behind 
 the scenes, from what was tokl me by the near relation 
 of a Priest, himself a catholic, and a gentleman of 
 learning and intelligence. This Priest made my in- 
 formant promise that he would, on no account, allow the 
 Bambino to be borne into the bed-room of a sick lady, 
 in whom they were both interested. " For," said he, 
 " if they (the monks) trouble her with it, and intrude 
 themselves into her room, it will certainly kill her." My 
 informant accordingly looked out of the window when 
 it came ; and, with many thanks, declined to open the 
 door. He endeavom"ed, in another case of which he 
 had no other knowledge than such as he gained as 
 a passer-by at the moment, to prevent its being carried 
 into a small miwholesome chamber, where a poor girl 
 was dying. But, he strove against it unsuccessfully, and 
 she expired while the crowd were pressing round her 
 bed. 
 
 Among the people who drop into St. Peter's at their 
 leisure, to kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet 
 prayer, there are certain schools and seminaries^ priestly 
 and otherwise, that come in, twenty or thirty strong. 
 These boys always kneel down in single file, one behind 
 the other, with a tall grim master in a black gown, 
 bringing up the rear : like a pack of cards arranged to 
 be tumbled down at a touch, with a disproportionately 
 large Knave of clubs at the end. When they have had 
 a minute or so at the chief altar, they scramble up, and 
 filing off to the chapel of the Madonna, or the sacra- 
 
EOME. 193 
 
 merit, flop down again in the same order ; so that if 
 anybody did stumble against the master, a general and 
 sudden overthrow of the whole line must inevitably 
 ensue. 
 
 The scene in all the chui'ches, is the strangest 
 possible. The same monotonous, heartless, drowsy 
 chaunting, always going on ; the same dark building, 
 darker from the brightness of the street without ; the 
 same lamps dimly burning ; the self-same people 
 kneeling here and there ; tm^ned towards you, from 
 one altar or other, the same priest's back, with the 
 same large cross embroidered on it; however differ- 
 ent in size, in shape, in wealth, in architecture, this 
 church is from that, it is the same thing still. There 
 are the same dirty beggars stopping in their muttered 
 prayers to beg; the same miserable cripples exhibit- 
 ing their deformity at the doors ; the same blind 
 men, rattling little pots like kitchen pepper-castors : 
 their depositories for alms; the same preposterous 
 crowns of silver stuck upon the painted heads of single 
 saints and Virgins in crowded pictm-es, so that a 
 little figure on a mountain has a head-dress bigger than 
 the temple in the foregromid, or adjacent miles of 
 landscape ; the same favourite shrine or figure, smoth- 
 ered with little silver hearts and crosses, and the 
 like : the staple trade and show of all the jewellers ; 
 the same odd mixtm'e of respect and indecorum, faith 
 and phlegm : kneeling on the stones, and spitting on 
 them, loudly ; getting up from prayers to beg a little, or 
 to pursue some other worldly matter : and then kneeling 
 
 o 
 
194 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the 
 point where it was interrupted. In one church, a 
 kneeling lady got up from her prayers, for a moment, 
 to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music ; and in 
 another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking- 
 staff, arose from his devotions to belabour his dog, who 
 was growling at another dog: and whose yelps and 
 howls resounded through the church, as his master 
 quietly relapsed into his former train of meditation — 
 keeping his eye upon the dog, at the same time, never- 
 theless. 
 
 Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contri- 
 butions of the Faithful, in some form or other. Some- 
 times, it is a money-box, set up between the worshipper, 
 and the wooden life-size figure of the Redeemer ; some- 
 times, it is a little chest for the maintenance of the 
 Virgin ; sometimes, an appeal on behalf of a popular 
 Bambino ; sometimes, a bag at the end of a long stick, 
 thrust among the people here and there, and vigilantly 
 jingled by an active Sacristan; but there it always is, 
 and, very often, in many shapes in the same church, and 
 doing pretty well in all. Nor, is it wanting in the open 
 air — the streets and roads — for, often as you are walking 
 along, thinking about anything rather than a tin canis- 
 ter, that object pounces out upon you from a little house 
 by the wayside ; and on its top is painted, " For the Souls 
 in Purgatory ; " an appeal which the bearer repeats a 
 great many times, as he rattles it before you, much 
 as Punch rattles the cracked bell which Ms sanguine 
 disposition makes an organ of. 
 
ROME. 195 
 
 And this reminds me that some Roman altars of 
 peculiar sanctity, bear the inscription, " Every mass 
 performed at this altar, frees a soul from Pui'gatory." 
 I have never been able to find out the charge for one of 
 these services, but they should needs be expensive. 
 There are several Crosses in Rome too, the kissing of 
 which, confere indulgences for varying terms. That in 
 the centre of the Coliseum, is worth a hundred days ; and 
 people may be seen kissing it, fi'om morning to night. It 
 is curious that some of these crosses seem to acquire an 
 arbitrary popularity ; this very one among them. In 
 another part of the Coliseum there is a cross upon a mar- 
 ble slab, with the inscription, " Who kisses this cross 
 shall be entitled to Two hundred and forty days' mdul- 
 gence." But I saw no one person kiss it, though, day 
 after day, I sat in the arena, and saw scores upon scores 
 of peasants pass it, on their way to kiss the other. 
 
 To single out details from the great dream of Roman 
 Churches, would be the wildest occupation in the world. 
 But St. Stefano Rotondo, a damp mildewed vault of an 
 old church in the outskirts of Rome, will always stmggle 
 uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous paint- 
 ings with which its walls are covered. These represent 
 the martyi'doms of saints and early Christians ; and such 
 a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine 
 in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig, raw, for 
 supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, 
 crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, 
 bulled alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small 
 with hatchets : women having their breasts torn with 
 
 o 2 
 
196 PICTUKES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 iron pincers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed 
 off, their jaws broken, their bodies stretched upon 
 the rack, or skinned upon the stake, or crackled up 
 and melted in the fire : these are among the mildest 
 subjects. So insisted on, and laboured at, besides, 
 that eveiy sufferer gives you the same occasion for 
 wonder as poor old Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, 
 when she marvelled at his having so much blood in him. 
 There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, 
 over what is said to have been — and very possibly may 
 have been — the dungeon of St. Peter. This chamber is 
 now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to that saint ; and 
 it lives, as a distmct and separate place, in my recollec- 
 tion, too. It is veiy small and low-roofed ; and the 
 dread and gloom of the ponderous, obdm-ate old prison 
 are on it, as if they had come up in a dark mist through 
 the floor. Hanging on the walls, among the clustered 
 votive offerings, are objects, at once strangely in keeping, 
 and strangely at variance, with, the place — rusty daggers, 
 knives, pistols, clubs, divers instruments of violence and 
 murder, brought here, fresh from use, and hung up to 
 propitiate offended Heaven : as if the blood upon them 
 would drain off in consecrated air, and have no voice to 
 cry with. It is all so silent and so close, and tomb- 
 like ; and the dungeons below, ai'e so black, and stealthy, 
 and stagnant, and naked ; that this little dark spot 
 becomes a dream within a dream : and in the vision of 
 great chm'ches which come rolling past me like a sea, it 
 is a small wave by itself, that melts mto i^o other wave* 
 and does not flow on with the rest. 
 
ROME. 197 
 
 It is an awful thing to tliink of the enormous caverns 
 that are entered from some Roman churches, and under- 
 mine the city. Many churches have crypts and subten-a- 
 nean chapels of great size, which, in the ancient time, 
 were baths, and secret chambers of temples, and what 
 not ; but I do not speak of them. Beneath the church 
 of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, there are the jaws of a 
 terrific range of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and said 
 to have another outlet underneath the Coliseum — 
 tremendous darknesses of vast extent, half-bmied in the 
 earth and unexplorable, where the dull torches, flashed 
 by the attendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant 
 vaults branching to the right and left, like streets in a 
 city of the dead ; and show the cold damp stealing down 
 the walls , drip-drop, drip-drop, to join the pools of water that 
 lie here and there, and never saw, and never will see, one 
 ray of the sun. Some accounts make these the prisons 
 of the wild beasts destined for the amphitheatre ; some, 
 the prisons of the condemned gladiators ; some, both. 
 But the legend most appalling to the fancy is, that in 
 the upper range (for there are two stories of these caves) 
 the Early Christians destined to be eaten at the 
 Coliseum Shows, heard the wild beasts, hungiy for them, 
 roaring down below ; until, upon the night and solitude 
 of their capti\ity, there bm'st the sudden noon and life 
 of the vast theatre crowded to the parapet, and of these, 
 their dreaded neighbom's, bounding in ! 
 
 Below the chm-ch of San Sebastiano, two miles 
 beyond the gate of San Sebastiano, on the Appian way, 
 is the entrance to the catacombs of Rome — quarries in 
 
198 PICTURES FROM ITALY. '^ 
 
 the old time, but afterwards the hiding-places of the 
 Christians. These ghastly passages have been explored 
 for twenty miles ; and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty 
 miles in circumference. 
 
 A gaimt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was 
 our only guide, down into this profound and dreadful 
 place. The narrow ways and openings hither and 
 thither, coupled with the dead and hesLTy air, soon 
 blotted out, m all of us, any recollection of the track by 
 which w^e had come ; and I could not help thinking, 
 " Good Heaven, if, in a sudden fit of madness he should 
 dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a fit, 
 what would become of us ! " On we wandered, among 
 martyrs' graves : passing great subterranean vaulted 
 roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with 
 heaps of stones, that thieves and mm^lerers may not 
 take refuge there, and form a population under Rome, 
 even worse than that which lives between it and the 
 sun. Graves, graves, graves; graves of men, of women, 
 of their little children, who ran crying to the persecutors, 
 " We are Christians ! We are Christians ! " that they 
 might be murdered with their parents ; Graves with the 
 palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boimd- 
 aries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the 
 martyrs' blood ; Graves of some who lived down here, for 
 years together, ministering to the rest, and preaching 
 tnith, and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, 
 that bear witness to then* fortitude at this hour; 
 more roomy graves, but far more terrible, where 
 liundreds, being surprised, were hemmed in and 
 
ROME. 199 
 
 walled up : buried before Death, and killed by slow 
 starvation. 
 
 " The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in 
 our splendid churches," said the friar, looldng round 
 upon us, as we stopped to rest in one of the low pas- 
 sages, with bones and dust surrounding us on every side. 
 " They are here ! Among the Martyrs' Graves ! " He 
 was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart ; 
 but when I thought how Christian men have dealt with 
 one another; how, perverting our most merciful religion, 
 they have hmited down and tortured, burnt and beheaded, 
 strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each other ; I 
 pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this 
 Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in 
 it, and how these great and constant hearts would have 
 been shaken — how they would have quailed and drooped 
 — if a fore-lviiowledge of the deeds that professing Chris- 
 tians would commit in the Great Name for which they 
 died, could have rent them with its own miutterable 
 anguish, on the cniel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the 
 fearful fire. 
 
 Such are the spots and patches in my dream of 
 churches, that remain apart, and keep their separate 
 identity. I have a fainter recollection, sometimes, of the 
 relics ; of the fragment of the pillar of the Temple that 
 was rent in twain ; of the portion of the table that 
 was spread for the Last Supper ; of the well at which 
 the woman of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour; of 
 two columns from the house of Pontius Pilate ; of the 
 stone to which the Sacred hands were bound, when the 
 
200 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 scourging was performed; of the gridiron of Saint 
 Lawrence, and the stone below it, marked with the 
 frying of his fat and blood ; these set a shadowy mark 
 on some cathedrals, as an old story, or a fable might, 
 and stop them for an instant, as they flit before me. 
 The rest is a vast wilderness of consecrated buildings 
 of all shapes and fancies, blending one with another ; 
 of battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from 
 the ground, and forced, like giant captives, to support 
 the roofs of Christian churches ; of pictures, bad, and 
 wonderful, and impious, and ridiculous; of kneeling 
 people, curling mcense, tinklmg bells, and sometimes 
 (but not often) of a swelling organ ; of Madonne, with 
 their breasts stuck full of swords, arranged in a half- 
 circle like a modem fan ; of actual skeletons of dead 
 saints, hideously attired in gaudy satins, silks, and 
 velvets trimmed with gold : their withered crust of skull 
 adorned with precious jewels, or mth chaplets of cinished 
 flowers ; sometimes, of people gathered round the pulpit, 
 and a monk within it stretching out the crucifix, and 
 preaching fiercely : the sun just streaming down through 
 some high window on the sail-cloth stretched above him 
 and across the church, to keep his high-pitched voice 
 from being lost among the echoes of the roof. Then my 
 tired memory comes out upon a flight of steps, where 
 knots of people are asleep, or basking in the light ; and 
 strolls away, among the rags, and smells, and palaces, 
 and hovels, of an old Italian street. 
 
 On one Saturday morning, (the eighth of March) a man 
 
ROME. 201 
 
 was beheaded here. Nine or ten months before, he had 
 waylaid a Bavarian countess, travellmg as a pilgiim to 
 Rome — alone and on foot, of course — and performing, it 
 is said, that act of piety for the fouith time. He saw 
 her change a piece of gold at Viterbo, where he lived ; 
 followed her; bore her company on her journey for some 
 forty miles or more, on the treacherous pretext of pro- 
 tecting her ; attacked her, in the fulfilment of his unre- 
 lenting pui'pose, on the Campagna, withm a xerj short 
 distance of Rome, near to what is called (but what is 
 not) the Tomb of Nero ; robbed her ; and beat her to 
 death with her own pilgrim's staff. He was newly 
 married, and gave some of her apparel to his wife : 
 saying that he had bought it at a fair. She, however, 
 who had seen the pilgrim-comitess passing through their 
 town, recognised some trifle as having belonged to 
 her. Her husband then told her what he had done. 
 She, m confession, told a priest ; and the man was 
 taken, withm fom* days after the commission of the 
 murder. 
 
 There are no fixed times for the administration of jus- 
 tice, or its execution, in this unaccountable country; and he 
 had been in prison ever since. On the Friday, as he was 
 dining "s\ith the other prisoners, they came and told him 
 he was to be beheaded next morning, and took liim 
 away. It is veiy unusual to execute in Lent ; but his 
 crime being a very bad one, it was deemed advisable to 
 make an example of him at that time, when great num- 
 bers of pilgrims were coming towards Rome, from all 
 parts, for the Holy Week. I heard of this on the Friday 
 
202 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 evening, and saw the bills up at the churches, calHng on 
 the people to pray for the criminal's soul. So, I deter- 
 mined to go, and see him executed. 
 
 The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a half 
 o'clock, Roman time : or a quarter before nine in the 
 forenoon. I had two friends with me ; and as we did 
 not Imow but that the crowd might be very great, we 
 were on the spot by half-past seven. The place of exe- 
 cution was near the church of San Giovanni decollato 
 (a doubtful compliment to St. John the Baptist) in one 
 of the impassable back streets without any footway, of 
 which a great part of Rome are composed — a street of 
 rotten houses, which do not seem to belong to anybody, 
 and do not seem to have ever been inhabited, and cer- 
 tainly were never built on any plan, or for any particular 
 purpose, and have no window-sashes, and are a little 
 like deserted breweries, and might be warehouses but 
 for ha\dng nothing in them. Opposite to one of these, 
 a white house, the scaffold was built. An untidy, un- 
 painted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course : some 
 seven feet high, perhaps: with a tall, gallows-shaped 
 frame rising above it, in which was the knife, charged 
 "svith a ponderous mass of iron, all ready to descend, and 
 glittering brightly in the moming-sun, whenever it looked 
 out, now and then, from behind a cloud. 
 
 There were not many people lingering about ; and 
 these were kept at a considerable distance from the 
 scaffold, by parties of the Pope's dragoons. • Two or 
 three hundred foot-soldiers were under arms, standing 
 at ease in clusters here and there ; and the officers were 
 
ROME. Q03 
 
 walking up and down in twos and threes, chatting 
 together, and smoking cigars. 
 
 At the end of the street, was an open space, where 
 there would be a dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, 
 and mounds of vegetable refuse, but for such things being 
 thrown anywhere and everywhere in Rome, and favouring 
 no particular sort of locality. We got into a kind of 
 wash-house, belonging to a dwelling house on this spot ; 
 and standing there, in an old cart, and on a heap of cart 
 wheels piled against the wall, looked, through a large 
 grated window, at the scaffold, and straight down the 
 street beyond it, imtil, in consequence of its turning off 
 abruptly to the left, our perspective was brought to a 
 sudden termination, and had a corpulent officer, in a 
 cocked hat, for its crowning feature. 
 
 Nine o'clock struck, and ten o'clock struck, and 
 nothing happened. All the bells of all the churches 
 rang as usual. A little parliament of dogs assembled in 
 the open space, and chased each other, in and out among 
 the soldiers. Fierce-looking Romans of the lowest class, 
 in blue cloaks, russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked, came 
 and went, and talked together. Women and children 
 fluttered, on the skirts of the scanty crowd. One large 
 muddy spot was left quite bare, like a bald place on a 
 man's head. A cigar-merchant, with an earthen pot of 
 charcoal ashes in one hand, went up and down, ciying 
 his wares. A pastry -merchant divided his attention 
 between the scaffold and his customers. Boys tried to 
 climb up walls, and tumbled down again. Priests and 
 monks elbowed a passage for themselves among the people, 
 
204 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 and stood on tiptoe for a sight of the knife : then went 
 away. Artists, in inconceivable hats of the middle-ages, 
 and beards (thank Heaven !) of no age at all, flashed 
 picturesque scowls about them from their stations in the 
 throng. One gentleman (connected with the fine arts, 
 I presume) went up and down in a pair of Hessian-boots, 
 with a red beard hanging down on his breast, and his 
 long and bright red hair, plaited into two tails, one on 
 either side of his head ; which fell over his shoulders in 
 front of him, very nearly to his waist, and were carefully 
 entwined and braided ! 
 
 Eleven o'clock struck ; and still nothing happened. 
 A rumour got about, among the crowd, that the cri- 
 minal would not confess ; in which case, the priests 
 would keep him until the Ave Maria (sunset) ; for it 
 is their merciful custom never finally to turn the cru- 
 cifix away from a man at that pass, as one refusing 
 to be shriven, and consequently a sinner abandoned 
 of the Saviour, until then. People began to drop 
 off. The officers shrugged their shoulders and looked 
 doubtful. The dragoons, who came riding up below our 
 window, every now and then, to order an unlucky hack- 
 ney-coach or cart away, as soon as it had comfortably 
 established itself and was covered with exulting people 
 (but never before) became imperious, and quick-tempered. 
 The bald place hadn't a straggling hair upon it; and 
 the corpulent officer, crowning the perspective, took a 
 world of snuff*. 
 
 Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets. "Atten- 
 tion ! " was among the foot-soldiers instantly. They were 
 
ROME. 205 
 
 marched up to the scaffold and formed romid it. The 
 dragoons galloped to their nearer stations too. The 
 guillotme became the centre of a wood of bristling bay- 
 onets and shining sabres. The people closed round 
 nearer, on the flank of the soldieiy. A long straggling 
 stream of men and boys, who had accompanied the pro- 
 cession from the prison, came pouring into the open 
 space. The bald spot was scarcely distinguishable from 
 the rest. The cigar and pastry-merchants resigned all 
 thoughts of business, for the moment, and abandoning 
 themselves wholly to pleasure, got good situations in the 
 crowd. The perspective ended, now, in a troop of dragoons. 
 And the corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at 
 a church close to him, which he could see, but we, the 
 crowd, could not. 
 
 After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching 
 to the scaffold from this church ; and above their heads, 
 coming on slowly and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon 
 the cross, canopied with black. This was carried romid 
 the foot of the scaffold, to the front, and tmned towards 
 the criminal, that he might see it to the last. It was 
 hardly in its place, when he appeared on the platform, 
 bare-footed ; his hands bound ; and with the collar and 
 neck of his shirt, cut away, almost to the shoulder. A 
 yomig man — six-and-twenty — vigorously made, and well- 
 shaped. Face pale ; small dark moustache ; and dark 
 brown hair. 
 
 He had refused to confess, it seemed, without ffi'st 
 having his wife brought to see him ; and they had sent 
 an escort for her, which had occasioned the delay. 
 
206 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 He immediately Imeeled down, below the knife. His 
 neck fitting into a hole, made for the purpose, in a 
 cross plank, was shut down, by another plank above ; 
 exactly like the pillory. Immediately below him, was a 
 leathern bag. And into it, liis head rolled instantly. 
 
 The executioner was holdmg it by the hair, and walk- 
 ing with it round the scaffold, showing it to the people, 
 before one quite knew that the knife had fallen heavily, 
 and with a rattling sound. 
 
 When it had travelled round the four sides of the 
 scaffold, it was set upon a pole in front — a little patch of 
 black and white, for the long street to stare at, and the 
 flies to settle on. The eyes were turned upward, as if 
 he had avoided the sight of the leathern bag, and looked 
 to the crucifix. Every tinge and hue of life had left it 
 in that instant. It was dull, cold, li\dd, wax. The 
 body also. 
 
 There was a great deal of blood. When we left the 
 window, and went close up to the scaffold, it was very- 
 dirty; one of the two men who were throwing water 
 over it, turning to help the other lift the body into a 
 shell, picked his way as through mire. A strange 
 appearance was the apparent annihilation of the neck. 
 The head was taken off so close, that it seemed as if the 
 knife had narrowly escaped crushing the jaw, or shaving 
 off the ear ; and the body looked as if there were nothing 
 left above the shoulder. 
 
 Nobody cared, or was at all affected. There was no 
 manifestation of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or 
 sorrow. My empty pockets were tried, several times, in 
 
ROME. 207 
 
 the crowd immediately below the scaffold, as the coq^se 
 was being put into its cofi&n. It was an ugly, filthy, care- 
 less, sickening spectacle ; meaning nothing but butcheiy 
 beyond the momentaiy interest, to the one wretched 
 actor. Yes ! Such a sight has one meaning and one 
 warning. Let me not forget it. The speculators in 
 the lotteiy, station themselves at favom^able pomts for 
 counting the gouts of blood that spirt out, here or 
 there ; and buy that number. It is pretty sure to have 
 a run upon it. 
 
 The body was carted away in due time, the knife 
 cleansed, the scaffold taken down, and all the hideous 
 apparatus removed. The executioner : an outlaw ex 
 officio (what a satire on the Punishment !) who dare not, 
 for his life, cross the Bridge of St. Angelo but to do his 
 work : retreated to his lair, and the show was over. 
 
 At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, 
 the Vatican, of course, with its treasures of art, its 
 enormous galleries, and staircases, and suites upon 
 suites of immense chambers, ranks highest and stands 
 foremost. Many most noble statues, and wonderful 
 pictures, are there ; nor is it heresy to say that there 
 is a considerable amount of rubbish there, too. When 
 any old piece of sculptm-e dug out of the ground, finds 
 a place in a galleiy because it is old, and without any 
 reference to its intrinsic merits : and fuids admirers by 
 the hundred, because it is there, and for no other 
 reason on earth : there will be no lack of objects, very 
 indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who employs 
 
208 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 SO vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles 
 of Cant for less than nothmg, and establish himself as a 
 man of taste for the mere trouble of putting them on. 
 
 I mireserveclly confess, for myself, that I cannot 
 leave my natm'al perception of what is natm'al and true, 
 at a palace-door, in Italy or elsewhere, as I should leave 
 my shoes if I were travelling in the East. I cannot 
 forget that there are certain expressions of face, natural 
 to certain passions, and as unchangeable in their nature 
 as the gait of a lion, or the flight of an eagle. I cannot 
 dismiss from my certain knowledge, such common-place 
 facts as the ordinary proportions of men's arms, and legs, 
 and heads ; and when I meet with performances that do 
 violence to these experiences and recollections, no matter 
 where they may be, I cannot honestly admire them, and 
 think it best to say so ; in spite of high critical advice 
 that we should sometimes feign an admiration, though 
 we have it not. 
 
 Therefore, I freely aclmowledge that when I see a 
 Jolly young Waterman representing a cherubim, or a 
 Barclay and Perkins's Drayman depicted as an Evangelist, 
 I see nothing to commend or admire in the performance, 
 however great its reputed Painter. Neither am I partial 
 to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and bassoons, for 
 the edification of sprawling monks apparently in liquor. 
 Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons of galleries. Saint Francis 
 and Saint Sebastian ; both of whom I submit should have 
 very micommon and rare merits, as works of art, to jus- 
 tify their compound multiplication by Italian Painters;. 
 
 It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and 
 
EOME. 209 
 
 determined raptures in which some critics indulge, is 
 incompatible with the true appreciation of the really great 
 and transcendent works. I cannot imagine, for example, 
 how the resolute champion of undeserving pictures can 
 soar to the amazing beauty of Titian's great picture of 
 the Assumption of the Virgin at Venice ; or how the 
 man who is truly affected by the sublimity of that 
 exquisite production, or who is truly sensible of the 
 beauty of Tintoretto's great picture of the Assembly of 
 the Blessed in the same place, can discern in Michael 
 Angelo's Last Judgment, intheSistine chapel, any general 
 idea, or one pervading thought, in harmony with the 
 stupendous subject. He who will contemplate Raphael's 
 masterpiece, the Transfiguration, and will go away into 
 another chamber of that same Vatican, and contemplate 
 another design of Raphael, representing (in incredible 
 caricature) the miraculous stopping of a great fire by 
 Leo the Fourth — and who will say that he admires them 
 both, as works of extraordinaiy genius — must, as I thmk, 
 be wanting in his powers of perception in one of the two 
 instances, and, probably, in the high and lofty one. 
 
 It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great 
 doubt whether, sometimes, the rules of art are not 
 too strictly observed, and whether it is quite well 
 or agreeable that we should know beforehand, where 
 this figure will be tummg round, and where that figure 
 will be lying down, and where there will be drapeiy in 
 folds, and so forth. When I observe heads inferior to 
 the subject, in pictures of merit, in Italian galleries, I do 
 not attach that reproach to the Painter, for I have a 
 suspicion that these great men, who were, of necessity, 
 
 p 
 
210 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 very much in the hands of monks and priests, painted 
 monks and priests a great deal too often. I frequently 
 see, in pictures of real power, heads quite below the story 
 and the painter : and I invariably observe that those 
 heads are of the Convent stamp, and have their counter- 
 parts among the Convent inmates of this hour ; so, I have 
 settled with myself that, in such cases, the lameness 
 was not with the painter, but with the vanity and ignorance 
 of certain of his employers, who would be apostles — on 
 canvass, at all events. 
 
 The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's statues ; 
 the wonderful gravity and repose of many of the ancient 
 works in sculpture, both in the Capitol and the Vatican ; 
 and the strength and fire of many others ; are, in their 
 different ways, beyond all reach of words. They are 
 especially impressive and delightful, after the works of 
 Bernini and his disciples, in wliich the churches of 
 Rome, from St. Peter's downward, abound ; and which 
 are, I verily believe, the most detestable class of produc- 
 tions in the wide world. I would infinitely rather (as 
 mere works of art) look upon the three deities of the 
 Past, the Present, and the Future, in the Chinese 
 Collection, than upon the best of these breezy maniacs ; 
 whose every fold of drapery is blown inside-out ; whose 
 smallest vein, or artery, is as big as an ordinary fore- 
 finger ; whose hair is like a nest of lively snakes ; and 
 whose attitudes put all other extravagance to shame. 
 Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no 
 place in the world, where such intolerable abortions, 
 begotten of the sculptor's chisel, are to be found in such 
 profusion, as in Rome. 
 
BOME. '2\l 
 
 There is a fine collection of Eg}^tian antiquities, in 
 the Vatican ; and the ceilings of the rooms in which 
 they are arranged, are painted to represent a star-light 
 sky in the Desert. It may seem an odd idea, but it is 
 very effective. The giim, half-human monsters from the 
 temples, look more grim and monstrous underneath the 
 deep dark blue ; it sheds a strange imcertain gloomy air 
 on everything — a mystery adapted to the objects ; and 
 you leave them, as you find them, shrouded in a solemn 
 night. 
 
 In the private palaces, pictures are seen to the best 
 advantage. There are seldom so many in one place that 
 the attention need become distracted, or the eye con- 
 fused. You see them very leism'ely ; and are rarely 
 interinipted by a crowd of people. There are portraits 
 innumerable, by Titian, and Rembrandt, and Vandyke ; 
 heads by Guido, and Domenichino, and Carlo Dolci ; 
 various subjects by Correggio, and Murillo, and Raphael, 
 and Salvator Rosa, and Spagnoletto — many of which it 
 would be difficult, indeed, to praise too liighly, or to 
 praise enough ; such is their tenderness and grace ; 
 their noble elevation, purity, and beauty. 
 
 The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo 
 Berberini, is a picture almost impossible to be forgotten. 
 Through the transcendent sweetness and beauty of the 
 face, there is a something shining out, that haunts me. 
 I see it now, as I see this paper, or my pen. The head 
 is loosely draped in white ; the light hair falling down 
 below the linen folds. She has turned suddenly towards 
 you ; and there is an expression in the eyes — although 
 they are very tender and gentle — as if the wildness of a 
 
 p 2 
 
212 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 momentary terror, or distraction, had been stmggled with 
 and overcome, that instant ; and nothing but a celestial 
 hope, and a beautiful sorrow, and a desolate earthly 
 helplessness remained. Some stories say that Guido 
 painted it, the night before her execution ; some other 
 stories, that he painted it fi'om memory, after having 
 seen her, on her way to the scaffold. I am willing to 
 believe that, as you see her on his canvass, so she turned 
 towards him, in the crowd, from the first sight of the axe, 
 and stamped upon his mind a look which he has stamped 
 on mine as though I had stood beside him in the 
 concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci : blighting a 
 whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by 
 grains : had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, 
 and at its black blind windows, and flitting up and down 
 its dreary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of its 
 ghostly galleries. The History is written in the 
 Painting ; written, in the dying girl's face, by Natm*e's 
 own hand. And oh ! how in that one touch she puts to 
 llight (instead of making kin) the puny world that claim 
 to be related to her, in right of poor conventional 
 forgeries ! 
 
 I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey ; 
 the statue at whose base, Caesar fell. A stern, tremen- 
 dous figure ! I imagined one of greater finish : of the 
 last refinement : full of delicate touches : losing its 
 distinctness, in the giddy eyes of one whose blood was 
 ebbing before it, and settling into some such rigid 
 majesty as this, as Death came creeping over the 
 upturned face. 
 
ROME. 213 
 
 The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are 
 charming, and would be full of interest were it only for 
 the changing views they afford, of the wild Campagna. 
 But, every inch of ground, in eveiy direction, is rich in 
 associations, and in natural beauties. There is Albano, 
 with its lovely lake and wooded shore, and with its wine, 
 that certainly has not improved since the days of Horace, 
 and in these times hardly justifies his panegyric. There 
 is squalid Tivoli, with the river Anio, diverted from its 
 course, and plunging down, headlong, some eighty feet in 
 search of it. With its picturesque Temple of the Sibyl, 
 perched high on a crag ; its minor waterfalls glancing 
 and sparkling in the sun ; and one good cavern yawning 
 darkly, where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots 
 on, low down under beetling rocks. There, too, is the 
 Villa d'Este, deserted and decaying among groves of 
 melancholy pine and cypress trees, where it seems to lie in 
 state. Then, there is Frascati, and, on the steep above 
 it, the ruins of Tusculum, where Cicero lived, and wrote, 
 and adorned his favoimte house (some fragments of it 
 may yet be seen there), and where Cato was bom. We 
 saw its ruined amphitheatre on a grey dull day, when a 
 shrill March wind was blowing, and when the scattered 
 stones of the old city lay strewn about the lonely emi- 
 nence, as desolate and dead as the ashes of a long extin- 
 guished fire. 
 
 One day, we walked out, a little party of thi'ee, to 
 Albano, fourteen miles distant ; possessed by a great 
 desire to go there, by the ancient Appian way, long 
 since ruined and overgrown. We started at half past 
 seven in the morning, and within an hour or so, were 
 
214 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 out Upon the open Campagna. For twelve miles, we went 
 climbing on, over an unbroken succession of mounds, and 
 heaps, and hills, of ruin. Tombs and temples, overthrown 
 and prostrate ; small fragments of columns, friezes, pedi- 
 ments ; great blocks of granite and marble ; mouldering 
 arches, grass-grown and decayed ; min enough to build 
 a spacious city from ; lay strewn about us. Sometimes, 
 loose walls, built up from these fragments by the shep- 
 herds, came across our path ; sometimes, a ditch between 
 two mounds of broken stones, obstructed our progress ; 
 sometimes, the fragments themselves, rolling from be- 
 neath our feet, made it a toilsome matter to advance ; 
 but it was always ruin. Now, we tracked a piece of the 
 old road, above the ground ; now traced it, underneath a 
 grassy covering, as if that were its grave ; but all the 
 way was ruin. In the distance, ruined aqueducts went 
 stalking on their giant course along the plain ; and every 
 breath of wind that swept towards us, stirred early flowers 
 and grasses, springing up, spontaneously, on miles of 
 ruin. The unseen larks above us, who alone disturbed 
 the awful silence, had their nests in ruin ; and the fierce 
 herdsmen, clad in sheepskins, who now and then scowled 
 out upon us from their sleeping nooks, were housed in ruin. 
 The aspect of the desolate Campagna in one direction, 
 where it was most level, reminded me of an American 
 prairie ; but what is the solitude of a region where men 
 have never dwelt, to that of a Desert, where a mighty 
 race have left their foot-prints in the earth from which 
 they have vanished ; where the resting-places of their 
 Dead, have fallen like their Dead ; and the broken hour- 
 glass of Time is but a heap of idle dust ! Returning, by 
 
EOME. 215 
 
 the road, at sunset ; and looking, from the distance, on 
 the course we had taken in the morning, I almost felt 
 (as I had felt when I first saw it, at that hour) as if the 
 sun would never rise again, but looked its last, that 
 night, upon a ruined world. 
 
 To come again on Rome, by moonlight, after such an 
 expedition, is a fitting close to such a day. The narrow 
 streets, devoid of footways, and choked, in every obscure 
 corner, by heaps of dunghill- rubbish, contrast so strongly, 
 in their cramped dimensions, and their filth, and dark- 
 ness, v^th the broad square before some haughty church : 
 in the centre of which, a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, 
 brought from Egypt in the days of the Emperors, looks 
 strangely on the foreign scene about it ; or perhaps an 
 ancient pillar, with its honoured statue overthrown, sup- 
 ports a christian saint : Marcus Aurelius giving place to 
 Paul, and Trajan to St. Peter. Then, there are the 
 ponderous buildings reared from the spoliation of the 
 CoHseum, shutting out the moon, like mountains : while, 
 here and there, are broken arches and rent walls, through 
 which it gushes freely, as the life comes pouring from a 
 wound. The little town of miserable houses, walled, 
 and shut in by barred gates, is the quarter where the 
 Jews are locked up nightly, when the clock stiikes eight 
 — a miserable place, densely populated, and reeldng 
 with bad odours, but where the people are industrious 
 and money-getting. In the day-time, as you make your 
 way along the narrow streets, you see them all at work : 
 upon the pavement, oftener than in their dark and 
 frouzy shops : furbishing old clothes, and driving 
 bargains. 
 
216 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into 
 the moon once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling 
 from a hundred jets, and rolling over mimic rocks, is 
 silvery to the eye and ear. In the narrow little throat 
 of street, beyond, a booth, dressed out with flaring lamps, 
 and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky Romans 
 round its smoking coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower 
 stew ; its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine. As 
 you rattle round the sharply-twisting coraer, a lumbering 
 sound is heard. The coachman stops abruptly, and un- 
 covers, as a van comes slowly by, preceded by a man 
 who bears a large cross ; by a torch-bearer ; and a 
 priest : the latter chaunting as he goes. It is the Dead 
 Cart, with the bodies of the poor, on their way to 
 burial in the Sacred Field outside the walls, where they 
 will be thrown into the pit that mil be covered with a 
 stone to-night, and sealed up for a year. 
 
 But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or 
 columns : ancient temples, theatres, houses, porticoes, or 
 forums : it is strange to see, how ever}^ fragment, when- 
 ever it is possible, has been blended into some modern 
 structure, and made to serve some modem purpose — a 
 wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a stable — some use 
 for which it never was designed, and associated with 
 which it cannot otherwise than lamely assort. It is 
 stranger still, to see how many ruins of the old mytho- 
 logy : how many fragments of obsolete legend and 
 observance : have been incorporated into the worship of 
 christian altars here ; and how, in numberless respects, 
 the false faith and the true are fused into a monstrous 
 union. 
 
EOME. '217 
 
 From one part of the city, looking out beyond the 
 walls, a squat and stunted pyramid (the burial-place 
 of Caius Cestius) makes an opaque triangle in the moon- 
 light. But, to an English traveller, it sei'ves to mark the 
 grave of Shelley too, whose ashes lie beneath a little 
 garden near it. Nearer still, almost within its shadow, 
 lie the bones of Keats, " whose name is writ in water," 
 that shines brightly in the landscape of a calm Italian 
 night. 
 
 The Holy Week in Kome is supposed to offer great 
 attractions to all visitors ; but, saving for the sights of 
 Easter Sunday, 1 would counsel those who go to Rome 
 for its own interest, to avoid it at that time. The 
 ceremonies, in general, are of the most tedious and 
 wearisome kind; the heat and crowd at eveiy one of 
 them, painfully oppressive ; the noise, hubbub, and confu- 
 sion, quite distracting. We abandoned the pursuit of 
 these shows, very early in the proceedings, and betook 
 om'selves to the Ruins again. But, we plunged into the 
 crowd for a share of the best of the sights ; and y?hat we 
 saw, I will describe to you. 
 
 At the Sistine chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very 
 little, for by the time we reached it (though we were 
 early) the besieging crowd had filled it to the door, and 
 overflowed into the adjoining hall, where they were 
 struggling, and squeezing, and mutually expostulating, 
 and making great rushes every time a lady was brought 
 out faint, as if at least fifty people could be accommo- 
 dated in her vacant standing-room. Hanging in the 
 doorw^ay of the chapel, was a heavy curtain, and this 
 
218 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 curtain, some twenty people nearest to it, in their 
 anxiety to hear the chaunting of the Miserere, were 
 continually plucking at, in opposition to each other, that 
 it might not fall down and stifle the sound of the voices. 
 The consequence was, that it occasioned the most 
 extraordinary confusion, and seemed to wind itself about 
 the unwary, like a Serpent. Now, a lady was wrapped up 
 in it, and couldn't be unwound. Now, the voice of a 
 stiflmg gentleman was heard inside it, beseeching to be let 
 out. Now, two muffled arms, no man could say of which 
 sex, struggled in it as in a sack. Now, it was carried by a 
 rush, bodily overhead into the chapel, like an awning. 
 Now, it came out the other way, and blinded one of the 
 Pope's Swiss Guard who had arrived, that moment, to 
 set things to rights. 
 
 Being seated at a little distance, among two or three of 
 the Pope's gentlemen, who were very weary and counting 
 the minutes — as perhaps His Holiness was too — we 
 had better opportunities of observing this eccentric 
 entertainment, than of hearing the Miserere. Sometimes^ 
 there was a swell of mournful voices that sounded very 
 pathetic and sad, and died away, into a low strain again ; 
 but that was all we heard. 
 
 At another time, there was the Exhibition of the 
 Relics in Saint Peter's, which took place at between six 
 and seven o'clock in the evening, and was striking from 
 the cathedral being dark and gloomy, and having a great 
 many people in it. The place into which the relics 
 were brought, one by one, by a party of three priests, 
 was a high balcony near the chief altar. This was the 
 only lighted part of the church. There are always a 
 
EOME. 219 
 
 hundred and twelve lamps burning near the altar, and 
 there were two tall tapers, besides, near the black statue 
 of St. Peter; but these were nothing in such an im- 
 mense edifice. The gloom, and the general uptmning 
 of faces to the balcony, and the prostration of true 
 believers on the pavement, as shining objects, hke 
 pictures or looking-glasses, were brought out and shown, 
 had something effective in it, despite the very prepos- 
 terous manner in which they were held up for the 
 general edification, and the great elevation at which 
 they were displayed; which one would think rather 
 calculated to diminish the comfort derivable from a full 
 conviction of their being genuine. 
 
 On the Thursday, we went to see the Pope convey the 
 Sacrament from the Sistine chapel, to deposit it in the 
 Capella Paolina, another chapel in the Vatican ; — a cere- 
 mony emblematical of the entombment of the Saviour 
 before His Resurrection. We waited in a great gallery 
 with a great crowd of people (thi'ee-fourths of them Eng- 
 lish) for an hour or so, while they were chaunting the 
 Miserere, in the Sistine chapel again. Both chapels opened 
 out of the gallery ; and the general attention was con- 
 centrated on the occasional opening and shutting of 
 the door of the one for which the Pope was ultimately 
 bound. None of these openings disclosed anything 
 more tremendous than a man on a ladder, lighting a 
 great quantity of candles ; but at each and eveiy opening, 
 there was a terrific rush made at this ladder and this 
 man, something like (I should think) a charge of the 
 heavy British cavalry at Waterloo. The man was never 
 brought down, however, nor the ladder ; for it performed 
 
2'20 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 the strangest antics in the world among the crowd — 
 where it was carried by the man, when the candles were 
 all lighted ; and finally it was stuck up against the gallery 
 wall, in a very disorderly manner, just before the opening 
 of the other chapel, and the commencement of a new 
 chaunt, announced the approach of his Holiness. At this 
 crisis, the soldiers of the guard, who had been poking the 
 crowd into all sorts of shapes, formed down the gallery : 
 and the procession came up, between the two lines they 
 made. 
 
 There were a few choristers, and then a great many 
 priests, walldng two and two, and carrying — the good- 
 looking priests at least — their lighted tapers, so as to 
 throw the light with a good effect upon their faces : for 
 the room was darkened. Those who were not handsome, 
 or who had not long beards, carried their tapers anyhow, 
 and abandoned themselves to spiritual contemplation. 
 Meanwhile, the chaunting was very monotonous and 
 dreary. The procession passed on, slowly, into the 
 chapel, and the drone of voices went on, and came on, 
 with it, until the Pope himself appeared, walldng under 
 a white satin canopy, and bearing the covered Sacra- 
 ment in both hands ; cardinals and canons clustered 
 round him, making a brilliant show. The soldiers of 
 the guard knelt down as he passed ; all the bystanders 
 bowed ; and so he passed on into the chapel : the white 
 satin canopy being removed from over him at the door, 
 and a white satin parasol hoisted over his poor old 
 head, in place of it. A few more couples brought up the 
 rear, and passed into the chapel also. Then, the chapel 
 door was shut ; and it was all over ; and everybody 
 
ROME. 221 
 
 hurried off headlong, as for life or death, to see some- 
 thing else, and say it wasn't worth the trouble. 
 
 I think the most popular and most crowded sight 
 (excepting those of Easter Sunday and Monday, which 
 are open to all classes of people) was the Pope washing 
 the feet of Thirteen men, representing the twelve apos- 
 tles, and Judas Iscariot. The place in which this pious 
 office is performed, is one of the chapels of St. Peter's, 
 which is gaily decorated for the occasion ; the tliirteen 
 sitting " all of a row," on a very high bench, and looking 
 particularly imcomfortable, with the eyes of Heaven 
 knows how many English, French, Americans, Swiss, 
 Germans, Russians, Swedes, Norwegians, and other fo- 
 reigners, nailed to their faces all the time. They are robed 
 in white ; and on their heads they wear a stiff white cap, 
 like a large EngHsh porter-pot, without a handle. Each 
 carries in his hand, a nosegay, of the size of a fine cauli- 
 flower ; and two of them, on this occasion, wore spectacles : 
 which, remembering the characters they sustained, I 
 thought a droll appendage to the costume. There was 
 a great eye to character. St. John was represented by 
 a good-looking young man, St. Peter, by a grave-look- 
 ing old gentleman, ^vith a flowing brown beard; and 
 Judas Iscariot by such an enormous hypocrite (I could 
 not make out, though, whether the expression of his face 
 was real or assumed) that if he had acted the part to the 
 death and had gone away and hanged himself, he would 
 have left nothing to be desired. 
 
 As the two large boxes, appropriated to ladies, at this 
 sight, were full to the throat, and getting near was hope- 
 less, we posted off, along with a great crowd, to be in 
 
222 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 time at the Table, where the Pope, in person, waits on 
 these Thirteen ; and after a prodigious struggle at the 
 Vatican staircase, and several personal conflicts with the 
 Swiss guard, the whole crowd swept into the room. It was 
 a long gallery hung with drapery of white and red, with 
 another great box for ladies (who are obliged to dress in 
 black at these ceremonies, and to wear black veils), a 
 royal box for the King of Naples, and his party; and 
 the table itself, which, set out like a ball supper, and 
 ornamented with golden figures of the real apostles, was 
 arranged on an elevated platform on one side of the 
 gallery. The counterfeit apostles' knives and forks were 
 laid out on that side of the table which was nearest to 
 the wall, so that they might be stared at again, without 
 let or hindrance. 
 
 The body of the room was full of male strangers ; the 
 crowd immense ; the heat very great ; and the pressure 
 sometimes frightful. It was at its height when the 
 stream came poming in, from the feet-washmg ; and then 
 there were such shrieks and outcries, that a party of 
 Piedmontese dragoons went to the rescue of the Swiss 
 guard, and helped them to calm the tumult. 
 
 The ladies were particularly ferocious, in their struggles 
 for places. One lady of my acquaintance was seized 
 round the waist, in the ladies' box, by a strong matron, 
 and hoisted out of her place ; and there was another lady 
 (in a back row in the same box) who improved her position 
 by sticking a large pin into the ladies before her. 
 
 The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to 
 see what was on the table ; and one Englishman seemed 
 to have embarked the whole energy of his nature in the 
 
HOME. 223 
 
 determination to discover whether there was any mus- 
 tard. *' By Jupiter there 's vinegar ! " I heard him say 
 to his friend, after he had stood on tiptoe an immense 
 time, and had been crushed and beaten on all sides. 
 "And there's oil! ! I saw them distinctly, in cruets! 
 Can any gentleman, in front there, see mustard on the 
 table ? Sir, will you oblige me ! Do you see a Mustard- 
 Pot ? " 
 
 The apostles and Judas appearing on the platform, 
 after much expectation, were marshalled, in line, in front 
 of the table, with Peter at the top ; and a good long 
 stare was taken at them by the company, while twelve of 
 them took a long smell at their nosegays, and Judas — 
 moving his lips very obtrusively — engaged in inward 
 prayer. Then, the Pope, clad in a scarlet robe, and 
 wearing on his head a skull-cap of white satin, appeared 
 in the midst of a crowd of Cardinals and other dignitaries, 
 and took in his hand a little golden ewer, from which 
 he poured a little water over one of Peter's hands, 
 while one attendant held a golden basin ; a second, a 
 fine cloth ; a third, Peter s nosegay, which was taken 
 from him during the operation. This his Holiness per- 
 formed, with considerable expedition, on every man in 
 the Ime (Judas, I observed, to be particularly overcome 
 by his condescension) ; and then the whole Thirteen sat 
 down to dinner. Grace said by the Pope. Peter in 
 the chair. 
 
 There was white wine, and red wine ; and the dinner 
 looked very good. The courses appeared in portions, 
 one for each apostle ; and these being presented to the 
 Pope, by Cardinals upon their knees, were by him handed 
 
224 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 to the Thirteen. The manner in which Judas grew 
 more white-hvered over his victuals, and languished, 
 with his head on one side, as if he had no appetite, 
 defies all description. Peter was a good, sound, old 
 man, and went in, as the saying is, " to win ; " eating 
 everything that was given him (he got the best : being 
 first in the row) and saying nothing to anybody. The 
 dishes appeared to be chiefly composed of fish and vege- 
 tables. The Pope helped the Thirteen to wine also ; 
 and, during the whole dinner, somebody read something 
 aloud, out of a large book — the Bible, I presume — which 
 nobody could hear, and to which nobody paid the least 
 attention. The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled 
 to each other, from time to time, as if the thing were a 
 great farce ; and if they thought so, there is little doubt 
 they were perfectly right. His Holiness did what he 
 had to do, as a sensible man gets through a troublesome 
 ceremony, and seemed very glad when it was all over. 
 
 The Pilgrims' Suppers : where lords and ladies 
 waited on the Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried 
 their feet when they had been well washed by deputy : 
 were very attractive. But, of all the many spectacles of 
 dangerous reliance on outward observances, in themselves 
 mere empty forms, none struck me half so much as the 
 Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw several times, 
 but to the greatest advantage, or disadvantage, on Good 
 Friday. 
 
 This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-tweuty 
 steps, said to have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house, 
 and to be the identical stairs on which Our Saviour trod, 
 in coming down from the judgment-seat. Pilgrims ascend 
 
ROME. 225 
 
 it, only on their knees. It is steep ; and, at the summit, 
 is a chapel, reported to be full of relics ; into which they 
 peep through some iron bars, and then come down again, 
 by one of two side staircases, which are not sacred, and 
 may be walked on. 
 
 On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate computa- 
 tion, a hundred people, slowly shuffling up these stairs, 
 on theu' knees, at one time ; while others, who were going 
 up, or had come down — and a few who had done both, 
 and were going up again for the second time — stood 
 loitering in the porch below, where an old gentleman in 
 a sort of watch-box, rattled a tin cannister, with a slit in 
 the top, incessantly, to remind them that he took the 
 money. The majority were comitry-people, male and 
 female. There were four or five Jesuit priests, how- 
 ever, and some half-dozen well-dressed women. A 
 whole school of boys, twenty at least, were about half- 
 way up — evidently enjoying it very much. They were 
 all wedged together, pretty closely ; but the rest of the 
 company gave the boys as wide a berth as possible, in 
 consequence of their betraying some recklessness in the 
 management of their boots. 
 
 I never, in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, 
 and so unpleasant, as this sight — ridiculous in the absurd 
 incidents inseparable from it; and impleasant in its 
 senseless and unmeaning degi'adation. There are two 
 steps to begin with, and then a rather broad landing. 
 The more rigid climbers went along this landing on 
 their knees, as well as up the stairs ; and the figures 
 they cut, in their shuffling progress over the level surface, 
 
 Q 
 
2 '2 6 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 no description can paint. Then, to see them watch their 
 opportunity from the porch, and cut in where there was a 
 place next the wall ! And to see one man -with an umbrella 
 (brought on purpose, for it was a fine day) hoisting him- 
 self, unlawfully, from stair to stair ! And to observe a 
 demure lady of fifty-five or so, looking back, every now 
 and then, to assm*e herself that her legs were properly 
 disposed ! 
 
 There were such odd differences in the speed of 
 different people, too. Some got on, as if they were 
 doing a match against time ; others stopped to say a 
 prayer on every step. This man touched every stair with 
 his forehead, and kissed it ; that man scratched his head 
 all the way. The boys got on brilliantly, and were up 
 and down again before the old lady had accomplished 
 her half dozen stairs. But most of the Penitents came 
 down, very sprightly and fresh, as having done a real 
 good substantial deed which it would take a good deal of 
 sin to counterbalance ; and the old gentleman in the 
 watch-box was down upon them with his cannister while 
 they were in this humour, I promise you. 
 
 As if such a progress were not m its natm^e inevitably 
 droll enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden 
 figure on a crucifix, resting on a sort of great iron 
 saucer : so ricketty and unsteady, that whenever an 
 enthusiastic person kissed the figure, with more than 
 usual devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer, with 
 more than common readmess (for it served in this res- 
 pect as a second or supplementaiy cannister), it gave a 
 great leap and rattle, and nearly shook the attendant 
 
EOME. 227 
 
 lamp out : horribly frightening the people further down, 
 and throwing the guilty party into unspeakable embar- 
 rassment. 
 
 On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding 
 Thursday, the Pope bestows his benediction on the 
 people, from the balcony m front of St. Peter s. This 
 Easter Sunday was a day so bright and blue : so cloud- 
 less, balmy, wonderfully bright: that all the previous 
 bad weather vanished from the recollection in a mo- 
 ment. I had seen the Thursday's Benediction drop- 
 ping damply on some hundreds of umbrellas, but 
 there was not a sparkle then, in all the hundred foun- 
 tains of Kome — such fountains as they are ! — and on 
 this Sunday morning, they were running diamonds. 
 The miles of miserable streets through which we drove 
 (compelled to a certain course by the Pope's dragoons : 
 the Roman police on such occasions) were so full of 
 colour, that nothing in them was capable of wearing a 
 faded aspect. The common people came out in their 
 gayest dresses; the richer people in their smartest 
 vehicles ; Cardinals rattled to the church of the Poor 
 Fishermen in their state carriages ; shabby magnificence 
 flamited its thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked 
 hats, in the sun ; and every coach in Piome was put in 
 requisition for the Great Piazza of St. Peter's. 
 
 One hundred and fifty thousand people were there, at 
 least ! Yet there was ample room. How many car- 
 riages were there, I don't know ; yet there was room for 
 them too, and to spare. The great steps of the churcli 
 were densely crowded. There were many of the Conta- 
 
 q2 
 
228 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 dini, from Albano (who deliglit in red) in that part of 
 the square ; and the mingling of bright colours in the 
 crowd, was beautiful. Below the steps, the troops were 
 ranged. In the magnificent proportions of the place, 
 they looked like a bed of flowers. Sulky Romans, lively 
 peasants from the neighbouring comitry, groups of pil- 
 grims from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners 
 of all nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like so 
 many insects ; and high above them all, plashing and 
 bubbling, and maldng rainbow colours in the light, the 
 two delicious fountains welled and tumbled bountifully. 
 
 A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of 
 the balcony; and the sides of the great window were 
 bedecked with crimson drapery. An awning was 
 stretched too, over the top, to screen the old man from 
 the hot rays of the smi. As noon approached, all eyes 
 were turned up to this window. In due time, the chair 
 was seen approaching to the front, with the gigantic 
 fans of peacock's feathers, close behind. The doll within 
 it (for the balcony is very high) then rose up, and 
 stretched out its tiny arms, while all the male specta- 
 tors in the square uncovered, and some, but not by any 
 means the greater part, kneeled down. The guns upon 
 the ramparts of the Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed, 
 next moment, that the benediction was given ; drums 
 beat; trumpets sounded; arms clashed; and the great 
 mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller heaps, and 
 scattering her^ and there in rills, was stirred like party- 
 coloured sand. 
 
 What a bright noon it was, as we rode away ! The 
 
ROME. *2'29 
 
 Tiber was no longer yellow, but blue. There was a blush 
 on the old bridges, that made them fresh and hale again. 
 The Pantheon, with its majestic front, all seamed and 
 furrowed like an old face, had summer light upon its bat- 
 tered walls. Every squalid and desolate Hut in the Eter- 
 nal City (bear witness every grim old palace, to the filth 
 and misery of the plebeian neighbour that elbows it, as 
 certainly as Time has laid its grip on its Patrician head!) 
 was fresh and new with some ray of the sun. The ver}' 
 prison in the crowded street, a whirl of carriages and 
 people, had some stray sense of the day, droppmg 
 through its chinks and crevices : and dismal prisoners 
 who could not wind their faces round the barricading of 
 the blocked-up windows, stretched out their hands, and 
 clinging to the rusty bars, turned them towards the 
 overflowing street: as if it were a cheerful fire, and could 
 be shared in, that way. 
 
 But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim 
 the full moon, what a sight it was to see the Great 
 Square full once more, and the whole church, from the 
 cross to the ground, lighted with innumerable lanterns, 
 tracing out the architectm'e, and winkmg and shining 
 all round the colonnade of the piazza ! And what a 
 sense of exultation, joy, delight, it was, when the great 
 bell struck half-past seven — on the instant — to behold 
 one bright red mass of fire, soar gallantly from the top 
 of the cupola to the extremest summit of the cross, and 
 the moment it leaped into its place, become the signal 
 of a bm-sting out of countless lights, as gi'eat, and red, 
 and blazing as itself, from eveiy part of the gigantic 
 
230 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 church; so that every cornice, capital, and smallest orna- 
 ment of stone, expressed itself in fire : and the black 
 solid groundwork of the enormous dome, seemed to grow 
 transparent as an egg-shell ! 
 
 A train of gunpowder, an electric chain — ^nothing could 
 be fired, more suddenly and swiftly, than this second 
 illumination ; and when we had got away, and gone upon 
 a distant height, and looked towards it two hours after- 
 wards, there it still stood, shining and glittering in the 
 calm night like a Jewel ! Not a Ime of its proportions 
 wanting; not an angle blunted; not an atom of its 
 
 radiance lost. 
 
 The next night — Easter Monday — there was a great 
 
 display of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. 
 
 We hired a room in an opposite house, and made our 
 
 way to our places, in good time, tln*ough a dense mob 
 
 of people choking up the square in front, and all the 
 
 avenues leading to it; and so loading the bridge by 
 
 which the castle is approached, that it seemed ready to 
 
 sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues 
 
 on this bridge (execrable works) and, among them, great 
 
 vessels full of bmning tow were placed : glaring strangely 
 
 on the faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on the 
 
 stone counterfeits above them. 
 
 The show began with a tremendous discharge of 
 
 cannon ; and then, for twenty minutes, or half an hour, 
 
 the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and 
 
 labyrinth of blazing wheels of every colom', size, and 
 
 speed : while rockets streamed into the sky, not by 
 
 ones or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time. The 
 
KOME. 231 
 
 concluding burst — the Girandola — was like the blowing 
 up into the air, of the whole massive castle, without 
 smoke or dust. 
 
 In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse 
 had dispersed ; the moon was looking calmly down upon 
 her wTinkled image in the river ; and half a dozen men 
 and boys, with bits of lighted candle in their hands : 
 moving here and there, in seai'ch of anything worth 
 havmg, that might have been dropped in the press : 
 had the whole scene to themselves. 
 
 By way of contrast, we rode out into old ruined 
 Rome, after all this firing and booming, to take our 
 leave of the Coliseum. I had seen it by moonlight 
 before, (I never could get through a day without gomg 
 back to it) but its tremendous solitude, that night, is 
 past all telling. The ghostly pillars in the Forum ; 
 the triumphal arches of Old Emperors ; those enormous 
 masses of ruin which were once their palaces ; the 
 grass-grown mounds that mark the graves of ruined 
 temples ; the stones of the Via Sacra, smooth with the 
 tread of feet in ancient Rome ; even these were dimmed, 
 in their transcendent melancholy, by the dark ghost of 
 its bloody holidays, erect and grim ; haunting the old 
 scene; despoiled by pillaging Popes and fighting Piinces, 
 but not laid ; wringing wild hands of weed, and grass, 
 and bramble ; and lamenting to the night in every gap 
 and broken arch — the shadow of its awful self, im- 
 movable ! 
 
 As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next 
 day, on our way to Florence, hearing the larks sing, we 
 
232 PICTUEES FKOM ITALY. 
 
 saw that a little wooden cross had been erected on the 
 spot where the poor Pilgrim Countess was murdered. 
 So, we piled some loose stones about it, as the beginning 
 of a mound to her memory, and wondered if we should 
 ever rest there again, and look back at Rome. 
 
A RAPID DIORAMA. 
 
 We are bound for Naples ! And we cross the threshold 
 of the Eternal City at yonder gate, the Gate of San 
 Giovanni Laterano, where the two last objects that attract 
 the notice of a depaiting \-isitor, and the two fii'st objects 
 that attract the notice of an arriving one, are a proud 
 church and a decaying niin — good emblems of Rome. 
 
 Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more 
 solemn on a bright blue day like this, than beneath a 
 darker sky ; the great extent of iniin being plainer to the 
 eye : and the sunshine thi'ough the arches of the broken 
 aqueducts, showuig other broken arches shining through 
 them in the melancholy distance. "V^Taen we have tra- 
 versed it, and look back from Albano, its dark midulating 
 smface lies below us like a stagnant lake, or like a broad 
 dull Lethe flowuig round the walls of Rome, and sepa- 
 rating it from all the world ! How often have the 
 Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering across 
 that pui'ple waste, so silent and unpeopled now ! How 
 often has the train of captives looked, with sinking hearts, 
 upon the distant city, and beheld its population pouring 
 out, to hail the retmn of their conqueror ! What riot, 
 sensuality and mm^der, have run mad in the vast Palaces 
 
234 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 now heaps of brick and shattered marble ! What glare 
 of fires, and roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence 
 and famine, have come sweeping over the wild plain 
 where nothing is now heard but the wind, and where 
 the solitary lizards gambol unmolested in the sun ! 
 
 The train of Wine-carts going into Kome, each driven by 
 a shaggy peasant reclining beneath a little gipsy-fashioned 
 canopy of sheepskin, is ended now, and we go toiling up 
 into a higher country where there are trees. The next 
 day brings us on the Pontine Marshes, wearily flat and 
 lonesome, and overgrown with brushwood, and swamped 
 with water, but with a fine road made across them, 
 shaded by a long, long, avenue. Here and there, we 
 pass a solitary guard-house ; here and there, a hovel, 
 deserted, and walled up. Some herdsmen loiter on the 
 banks of the stream beside the road, and sometimes 
 a flat-bottomed boat, towed by a man, comes rippling 
 idly along it. A horseman passes occasionally, carrying 
 a long gun cross-wise on the saddle before him, and 
 attended by fierce dogs ; but there is nothing else astir 
 save the wind and the shadows, until we come in sight 
 of Terracina. 
 
 How blue and bright the sea, rolling below the 
 windows of, the Inn so famous in robber stories ! How 
 picturesque the great crags and points of rock over- 
 hanging to-morrow's narrow road, where galley-slaves 
 are worldng in the quarries above, and the sentinels 
 who guard them lounge on the sea shore ! All night 
 there is the mm^mur of the sea beneath the stars; and, 
 in the morning, just at daybreak, the prospect suddenly 
 
FONDI. S35 
 
 becoming expanded, as if by a miracle, reveals — in the 
 far distance, across the Sea there ! — Naples with its 
 Islands, and Vesuvius spouting fire. Within a quarter 
 of an hour, the whole is gone as if it were a vision in 
 the clouds, and there is nothing but the sea and sky. 
 
 The Neapolitan Frontier crossed, after two hours' 
 travelling; and the hungriest of soldiers and custom- 
 house officers with difiiculty appeased ; we enter, by a 
 gateless portal, into the first Neapolitan town — Fondi. 
 Take note of Fondi, in the name of all that is wretched 
 and beggarly. 
 
 A filthy channel of mud and refuse, meanders down the 
 centre of the miserable street: fed by obscene rivulets 
 that trickle from the abject houses. There is not a 
 door, a window, or a shutter ; not a roof, a wall, a post, 
 or a pillar, in all Fondi, but is decayed, and crazy, and 
 rotting away. The \NTetched history of the town, mth 
 all its sieges and pillages by Barbarossa and the rest, 
 might have been acted last year. How the gaunt dogs 
 that sneak about the miserable street, come to be ahve, 
 and undevom-ed by the people, is one of the enigmas 
 of the world. 
 
 A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they are ! All 
 beggars ; but that 's nothing. Look at them as they 
 gather round. Some, are too indolent to come down 
 stairs, or are too wisely mistrustful of the stairs, perhaps, 
 to venture : so stretch out their lean hands from upper win- 
 dows, and howl ; others, come flocking about us, fighting 
 and jostling one another, and demanding, incessantly, 
 charity for the love of God, charity for the love of 
 the Blessed Virgin, charity for the love of all the Saints. 
 
236 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 A group of miserable children, almost naked, screaming 
 forth the same petition, discover that they can see them- 
 selves reflected in the varnish of the carriage, and begin 
 to dance and make grimaces, that they may have the 
 pleasm^e of seeing their antics repeated in this mirror. 
 A crippled idiot, in the act of striking one of them who 
 drowns his clamorous demand for charity, observes his 
 angry comiterpart in the panel, stops short, and thrust- 
 ing out his tongue, begins to wag his head and chatter. 
 The shrill cry raised at this, awakens half a dozen wild 
 creatures wrapped in frowsy brown cloaks, who are lying 
 on the church-steps with pots and pans for sale. These, 
 scrambling up, approach, and beg defiantly. " I am hun- 
 gry. Give me something. Listen to me Signor. I am 
 hungry ! " Then, a ghastly old woman, fearful of being 
 too late, comes hobbling down the street, stretching out 
 one hand, and scratching herself all the way with the 
 other, and screammg, long before she can be heard, 
 " Charity, charity ! I 11 go and pray for you directly, 
 beautiful lady, if you 11 give me charity ! " Lastly, the 
 members of a brotherhood for burying the dead : hideously 
 masked, and attired in shabby black robes, white at the 
 skirts, with the splashes of many muddy winters : 
 escorted by a dirty priest, and a congenial Cross-Bearer: 
 come hmTying past. Surrounded by this motley con- 
 course, we move out of Fondi : bad bright eyes glaring 
 at us, out of the darkness of every crazy tenement, like 
 glistening fragments of its filth and putrefaction. 
 
 A noble mountain-pass, with the iTiins of a fort on a 
 strong eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra 
 Diavolo ; the old town of Itri, like a device in pastry, 
 
NAPLES. 237 
 
 built up, almost perpendicularly, on a hill, and approached 
 by long steep flights of steps ; beautiful Mola di Gaeta, 
 whose wines, like those of Albano, have degenerated 
 since the days of Horace, or his taste for wine was bad : 
 which is not likely of one who enjoyed it so much, and 
 extolled it so well ; another night upon the road at St. 
 Agata ; a rest next day at Capua, which is picturesque 
 but hardly so seductive to a traveller now, as the soldiers 
 of -Praetorian Rome were wont to find the ancient city 
 of that name ; a flat road among vines festooned and 
 looped from tree to tree ; and Mount Vesuvius close at 
 hand at last ! — its cone and summit whitened with snow; 
 and its smoke hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere 
 of the day, like a dense cloud. So we go, rattling down- 
 hill, into Naples. 
 
 A funeral is coming up the street, towards us. The 
 body, on an open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, 
 covered with a gay cloth of crimson and gold. The 
 mourners, in white gowns and masks. If there be 
 death abroad, life is well represented too, for all Naples 
 would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to and fro in 
 carriages. Some of these, the common Vetturino vehicles, 
 are drawn by three horses abreast, decked with smart 
 trappings and great abundance of brazen ornament, and 
 always going very fast. Not that their loads are Hght ; 
 for the smallest of them has at least six people inside, 
 four in front, four or five more hanging on behind, and 
 two or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, 
 where they lie half-suffocated with mud and dust. Ex- 
 hibitors of Punch, buffo singers with guitai'S, reciters of 
 
238 PICTURES FROM ITALY, 
 
 poetry, reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with 
 clowns and showmen, drums, and trumpets, painted 
 cloths representing the wonders within, and admir- 
 ing crowds assembled without, assist the whirl and 
 bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, arch- 
 ways, and kennels ; the gentry, gaily di'essed, ai^e dashing 
 up and down in carriages on the Chiaja, or walking in 
 the Public Gardens ; and quiet letter-writers, perched 
 behind their little desks and inkstands under the 
 Portico of the Great Theatre of San Carlo, in the 
 public street, are waiting for clients. 
 
 Here is a Galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter 
 written to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looldng 
 man, sitting under the comer arch, and makes his bargain. 
 He has obtained permission of the Sentinel who guards 
 him : who stands near, leaning against the wall and crack- 
 ing nuts. The Galley-slave dictates in the ear of the 
 letter- writer, what he desires to say; and as he can't 
 read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there 
 whether he sets down faithfully what he is told. After 
 a time, the Galley-slave becomes discursive — mcoherent. 
 The Secretary pauses and rubs his chin. The Galley- 
 slave is voluble and energetic. The Secretary, at length, 
 catches the idea, and with the air of a man who knows 
 how to word it, sets it dov^ii ; stopping, now and then, to 
 glance back at his text admiringly. The Galley-slave is 
 silent. The Soldier stoically cracks his nuts. Is there 
 anytliing more to say ? inquires the letter- writer. No 
 more. Then listen, friend of mine. He reads it through. 
 The Galley-slave is quite enchanted. It is folded, and 
 
NAPLES. 239 
 
 addressed, and given to him, and he pays the fee. The 
 Secretaiy falls back indolently in his chair, and takes 
 a book. The Galley-slave gathers up an empty sack. 
 The Sentinel throws away a handful of nut-shells, 
 shoulders his musket, and away they go together. 
 
 Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with 
 their right hands, when you look at them ? Everything 
 is done in pantomime in Naples, and that is the conven- 
 tional sign for hunger. A man who is quarrelling with 
 another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand on the 
 back of his left, and shakes the two thumbs — expressive 
 of a donkey's ears — whereat his adversary is goaded to 
 desperation. Two people bargaining for fish, the buyer 
 empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is told 
 the price, and walks away without a word : having tho- 
 roughly conveyed to the seller that he considers it too 
 deal'. Two people in carriages, meeting, one touches 
 his lips, twice or thiice, holds up the five fingers of his 
 right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the 
 palm. The other nods briskly, and goes his way. He has 
 been invited to a friendly dmner at half-past five o'clock, 
 and will certainly come. 
 
 All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from 
 the wrist, ^^ith the fore-finger stretched out, expresses a 
 negative — the only negative beggars will ever understand. 
 But, in Naples, those five fingers are a copious language. 
 
 All this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, 
 and maccaroni- eating at Sunset, and flower-sellhig all day 
 long, and begging and stealing ever}nvhere and at all 
 hours, you see upon the bright sea-shore, where the waves 
 
240 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 of the Bay sparkle merrily. But, lovers and hunters 
 of the picturesque, let us not keep too studiously out of 
 view, the miserable depravity, degradation, and wretched- 
 ness, with which this gay Neapolitan life is inseparably 
 associated ! It is not well to find Saint Giles's so repul- 
 sive, and the Porta Capuana so attractive. A pair of 
 naked legs and a ragged red scarf, do not make all the 
 difference between what is interesting and what is coaree 
 and odious ? Painting and poetising for ever, if you will, 
 the beauties of this most beautiful and lovely spot of 
 earth, let us, as our duty, try to associate a new pic- 
 tui'esque with some faint recognition of man's destiny 
 and capabilities ; more hopeful, I believe, among the ice 
 and snow of the North Pole, than in the sun and bloom 
 of Naples. 
 
 Capri — once made odious by the deified beast Tibe- 
 rius — Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties 
 of the Bay, lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the 
 mist and sunshine twenty times a-day: now close at 
 hand, now far off, now unseen. The fairest countiy in 
 the world, is spread about us. Whether we turn towards 
 the Miseno shore of the splendid watery amphitheatre, and 
 go by the Grotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane and 
 away to Baige : or take the other way, towards Vesuvius and 
 Sorrento, it is one succession of delights. In the last- 
 named direction, where, over doors and archways, there are 
 countless little images of San Gennaro, with liis Canute's 
 hand stretched out, to check the fmy of the Burning Momi- 
 tain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beau- 
 tiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built 
 
NAPLES. 241 
 
 upon the ashes of the former towu destroyed by an einip- 
 tion of Vesuvius, within a hundred years ; and past the 
 flat-roofed houses, gi'anaries, and maccaroni manufactories ; 
 to Castel-a-Mare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited 
 by fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks. 
 Here, the railroad terminates ; but, hence we may ride on, 
 by an unbroken succession of enchanting bays, and beau- 
 tiful scenery, sloping from the highest summit of Saint 
 Angelo, the highest neighbouring mountain, do^\^l to the 
 water's edge — among vineyards, olive trees, gardens of 
 oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped-up rocks, green 
 gorges in the hills — and by the bases of snow-covered 
 heights, and through small towns with handsome, dark- 
 haired women at the doors — and past delicious summer 
 villas — to SoiTento, where the Poet Tasso drew his 
 inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. Returning, 
 we may climb the heights above Castel-a-Mare, and 
 looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp 
 water glistening in the sun ; and clusters of white houses 
 in distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of pro- 
 spect, down to dice. The coming back to the city, by the 
 beach again, at sunset: with the glomng sea on one side, 
 and the darkening mountain, with its smoke and flame, 
 upon the other : is a sublime conclusion to the glory of 
 the day. • 
 
 That church by the Porta Capuana — near the old 
 fishermarket in the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples 
 where the revolt of Massaniello began — is memorable 
 for having been the scene of one of his earliest procla- 
 mations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for 
 
242 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejewelled Saint 
 in a glass case, with two odd hands ; or the enormous 
 number of beggars who are constantly rapping their 
 chins there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral with 
 the beautiful door, and the columns of African and 
 Eg}^tian granite that once ornamented the temple of 
 Apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of San Gen- 
 naro or Januarius : which is preserved in two phials in a 
 silver tabernacle, and miraculously hquefies three times 
 a year, to the great admiration of the people. At 
 the same moment, the stone (distant some miles) where 
 the Saint suffered martyrdom, becomes faintly red. It 
 is said that the officiating priests turn faintly red also, 
 sometimes, when these miracles occur. 
 
 The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance 
 
 of these ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and 
 
 infirmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, 
 
 are members of a curious body, called the Royal Hospital, 
 
 who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these 
 
 old spectres totter away, with lighted tapers, to shew the 
 
 caverns of death — as unconcerned as if they were 
 
 immortal. They were used as burying-places for three 
 
 hundred years ; and, in one part, is a large pit full of 
 
 skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a great 
 
 mortality occasioned by a plague. In the rest, there 
 
 is nothing but dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide 
 
 corridors and labyrmths, hewn out of the rock. At the 
 
 end of some of these long passages, are unexpected 
 
 glimpses of the dayhght, shining down from above. 
 
 It looks as ghastly and as strange : among the torches. 
 
POMPEII. 243 
 
 and the dust, and the dark vaults: as if it, too, were 
 dead and buried. 
 
 The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill 
 between the city and Vesuvius. The old Campo 
 Santo with its three hundred and sixty-five pits, is only 
 used for those who die in hospitals, and prisons, and are 
 unclaimed by their friends. The graceful new cemetery, 
 at no great distance from it, though yet unfinished, has 
 already many graves among its shnibs and flowers, and 
 airy colonnades. It might be reasonably objected else- 
 where, that some of the tombs are meretricious and too 
 feinciful ; but the general brightness seems to justify it 
 here ; and Mount Vesuvius, separated from them by a 
 lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens the scene. 
 
 If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the 
 Dead, with its dark smoke hanging in the clear sky, 
 how much more awful and impressive is it, viewed from 
 the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii ! 
 
 Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of 
 Pompeii, and look up the silent streets, through the 
 ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, over the broken 
 houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, 
 away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the 
 peaceful distance ; and lose all count of time, and heed 
 of other things, in the strange and melancholy sensation 
 of seemg the Destroyed and the Destroyer making this 
 quiet picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every 
 turn, the little famihar tokens of human habitation and 
 eveiy-day pursuits ; the chafing of the bucket-rope in the 
 stone rim of the exhausted well ; the track of carriage- 
 
 r2 
 
Q44 PICnjRES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 wheels in the pavement of the street ; the marks of 
 drinking- vessels on the stone comiter of the wineshop ; 
 the Amphorse in private cellars, stored away so in any 
 hundred vears ago, and undistiu-bed to this hour — all 
 rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the 
 place, ten thousand times more solemn, than if the 
 volcano, in its fuiy, had swept the city from the earth, 
 and sunk it in the bottom of the sea. 
 
 After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded 
 the eruption, workmen were employed in shaping out, in 
 stone, new ornaments for temples and other buildings 
 that had suffered. Here lies their work, outside the 
 city gate, as if they would retmn to-morrow. 
 
 In the cellar of Diomedes house, where certain 
 skeletons were found huddled together, close to the 
 door, the impression of their bodies on the ashes, 
 hardened with the ashes, and became stamped and fixed 
 there, after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones. 
 So, in the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, 
 floating on the stream when it was hot and liquid, 
 stamped its mimic features in it as it hardened into 
 stone ; and now, it turns upon the stranger the fantastic 
 look it turned upon the audiences in that same Theatre, 
 two thousand years ago. 
 
 Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, 
 and in and out of the houses, and traversing the secret 
 chambers of the temples of a religion that has vanished 
 from the earth, and finding so many fresh traces of 
 remote antiquity : as if the coui'se of Time had been 
 stopped after this desolation, and there had been no 
 
HERCULANEUM. 245 
 
 nights and days, months, years, and centuries, since : 
 nothing is more impressive and terrible than the many 
 evidences of the searching nature of the ashes, as 
 bespeaking their irresistible power, and the impossibility 
 of escaping them. In the wine-cellai*s, they forced 
 their way into the earthen vessels : displacing the wine 
 and choking them, to the brim, with dust. In the tombs, 
 they forced the ashes of the dead from the funeral urns, 
 and rained new ruin even into them. The mouths, and 
 eyes, and skulls of all the skeletons, were stuffed with 
 this tenible hail. In Herculaneum, where the flood 
 was of a different and a heavier kind, it rolled in, like a 
 sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at 
 its height — and that is what is called " the lava " here. 
 Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the 
 brink of which we now stand, looking down, when they 
 came on some of the stone benches of the Theatre — 
 those steps (for such they seem) at the bottom of the 
 excavation — and found the buried city of Herculaneum. 
 Presently going down, with lighted torches, we are 
 perplexed by great walls of monstrous thickness, rising 
 up between the benches, shutting out the stage, 
 obtruding their shapeless forms in absurd places, 
 confusing the whole plan, and making it a disordered 
 dream. "We cannot, at first, believe, or picture to 
 oui'selves, that This came rolling in, and drowned the 
 city; and that all that is not here, has been cut away, by 
 the axe, like solid stone. But this perceived and 
 undei-stood, the hoiTor and oppression of its presence 
 are indescribable. 
 
246 PICTUKES FKOM ITALY. 
 
 Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless 
 chambers of both cities, or carefully removed to the 
 museum at Naples, are as fresh and plain, as if they had 
 been executed yesterday. Here, are subjects of still life, 
 as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses, and the like ; 
 familiar classical stories, or m}i:hological fables, always 
 forcibly and plainly told ; conceits of cupids, quarrelling, 
 sporting, working at trades ; theatrical rehearsals ; poets 
 reading their productions to their friends ; inscriptions 
 chalked upon the walls ; political squibs, advertisements, 
 rough drawings by schoolboys ; everything to people and 
 restore the ancient cities, in the fancy of their wondering 
 visitor. Furniture, too, you see, of eveiy kind — lamps, 
 tables, couches; vessels for eating, drinking, and cooking; 
 workmen's tools, surgical instruments, tickets for the 
 theatre, pieces oi money, personal ornaments, bunches of 
 keys found clenched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets 
 of guards and warriors ; little household bells, yet 
 musical with their old domestic tones. 
 
 The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell 
 the interest of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect 
 fascination. The looking, from either ruined city, into the 
 neighbouring grounds overgrown with beautiful vines and 
 luxuriant trees ; and remembering that house upon 
 house, temple on temple, building after building, and 
 street after street, are still lyuig underneath the roots of 
 all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the 
 light of day ; is something so wonderful, so full of mys- 
 tery, so captivating to the imagination, that one would 
 think it would be paramount, and yield to nothing else. 
 
P^STUM. 247 
 
 To nothing but Vesuvius ; but the mountain is the genius 
 of the scene. From every indication of the ruin it has 
 worked, we look, again, with an absorbing interest to 
 where its smoke is rising up into the sky. It is beyond 
 us, as we thread the ruined streets : above us, as we stand 
 upon the ruined walls ; we follow it through every yistSL 
 of broken columns, as we wander through the empty 
 com'tyards of the houses ; and through the garlandings 
 and interlacings of every wanton vine. Tm'ning away to 
 Psestum yonder, to see the awful structm'es built, the least 
 aged of them, hundreds of years before the birth of 
 Christ, and standing yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon 
 the wild, malaria-blighted plain — we watch Vesuvius as 
 it disappears from the prospect, and watch for it again, 
 on our return, with the same thrill of interest : as the 
 doom and destiny of all this beautiful countiy, biding its 
 terrible time. 
 
 It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring-day, 
 when we retm'n from Psestum, but very cold in the 
 shade : insomuch, that although we may lunch, pleasantly, 
 at noon, in the open air, by the gate of Pompeii, the 
 neighbouring rivulet supplies thick ice for oui" wine 
 But, the smi is shining brightly ; there is not a cloud or 
 speck of vapour in the whole blue sky, looldng down 
 upon the bay of Naples ; and the moon will be at the full 
 to-night. No matter that the snow and ice lie thick 
 upon the summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been on 
 foot all day at Pompeii, or that croakers maintain that 
 strangers should not be on the mountain by night, in 
 such an unusual season. Let us take advantage of the 
 
248 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 fine weather ; make the best of our way to Eesina, the 
 little village at the foot of the mountain ; prepare our- 
 selves, as well as we can, on so short a notice, at the 
 Guide's house ; ascend at once, and have sunset half- 
 way up, moonlight at the top, and midnight to come 
 down in ! 
 
 At four o'clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible 
 uproar in the little stable-yard of Signior Salvatore the 
 recognised head-guide with the gold band round his cap ; 
 and thirty mider-guides who are all scuffling and 
 screaming at once, are preparing half a dozen saddled 
 ponies, three litters, and some stout staves, for the jour- 
 ney. Every one of the thirty, quarrels with the other 
 twenty-nine, and frightens the six ponies ; and as much of 
 the village as can possibly squeeze itself into the little 
 stable-yard, participates in the tumult, and gets trodden 
 on by the cattle. 
 
 After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than 
 would suffice for the storming of Naples, the procession 
 starts. The head guide, who is liberally paid for all the 
 attendants, rides a little in advance of the party ; the 
 other thirty guides proceed on foot. Eight go forward 
 with the litters that are to be used by and by ; and the 
 remaining two-and-twenty beg. 
 
 We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad 
 flights of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave 
 these, and the vineyards on either side of them, and 
 emerge upon a bleak bare region where the lava lies 
 confusedly, in enormous rusty masses : as if the earth 
 had been ploughed up by burning thunderbolts. And 
 
VESUVIUS. 249 
 
 now, we halt to see the sun set. The change that falls 
 upon the dreary region, and on the whole mountain, as 
 its red light fades, and the night comes on — and the 
 unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, 
 who that has witnessed it, can ever forget ! 
 
 It is dark, when after winding, for some time, over 
 the broken ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone : 
 which is extremely steep, and seems to rise, almost per- 
 pendicularly, from the spot where we dismount. The 
 only light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and 
 white, with which the cone is covered. It is now in- 
 tensely cold, and the air is piercing. The thirty-one 
 have brought no torches, knowing that the moon will 
 rise before we reach the top. Two of the litters are 
 devoted to the two ladies ; the third, to a rather 
 heavy gentleman from Naples, whose hospitality and 
 good-nature have attached him to the expedition, and 
 determined him to assist in doing the honours of the 
 momitain. The rather heavy gentleman is carried by 
 fifteen men ; each of the ladies by half a dozen. We 
 who walk, make the best use of our staves ; and so the 
 whole party begin to labour upward over the snow, — as 
 if they were toiling to the summit of an antediluvian 
 Twelfth-cake. 
 
 We are a long time toiling up ; and the head guide 
 looks oddly about him when one of the company — 
 not an Italian, though an habitue of the mountain for 
 many years : whom we will call, for our present pur- 
 pose, Mr. Pickle of Portici — suggests that, as it is 
 freezing hard, and the usual footing of ashes is covered 
 by the snow and ice, it will sm'ely be difficult to 
 
250 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting 
 up, and down, and jerking from this side to that, as the 
 bearers continually slip and stumble, diverts our atten- 
 tion : more especially as the whole length of the rather 
 heavy gentleman is, at that moment, presented to us 
 alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downwards. 
 
 The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the 
 flagging spirits of the Bearers. Stimulating each other 
 with their usual watchword, " Courage friend I It is to 
 eat Maccaroni ! " they press on, gallantly, for the summit. 
 
 From tinging the top of the snow above us, with a 
 band of light, and poming it in a stream through the 
 valley below, while we have been ascending in the dark, 
 the moon soon lights the whole white mountain side, and 
 the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the dis- 
 tance, and every village in the country round. The 
 whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we come 
 upon the platform on the mountain-top — the region of 
 Fire — an exhausted crater formed of great masses of 
 gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tre- 
 mendous waterfall, bmiit up ; from every chink and 
 crevice of which, hot, sulphurous smoke is pouring out: 
 while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present 
 crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end, 
 great sheets of tire are streaming forth : reddening the 
 night with flame, blackening it vrith smoke, and spottmg 
 it with red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the 
 air like feathers, and fall down like lead. What words 
 can paint the gloom and grandeur of this scene ! 
 
 The broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffoca- 
 tion from the sulphm' ; the fear of falling down through 
 
PORTICI, 25] 
 
 the crevices in the ya-wning ground ; the stopping, eveiy 
 now and then, for somebody who is missing in the dark 
 (for the dense smoke now obscui'es the moon); the 
 intolerable noise of the thirty ; and the hoai'se roaring of 
 the mountain; make it a scene of such confusion, at 
 the same time, that we reel again. But, dragging the 
 ladies through it, and across another exhausted crater 
 to the foot of the present Volcano, we approach close 
 to it on the windy side, and then sit down among 
 the hot ashes at its foot, and look up in silence ; faintly 
 estimating the action that is going on within, from its 
 being full a hundred feet higher, at this minute, than it 
 was six weeks ago. 
 
 There is something in the fire and roar, that generates 
 an irresistible desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest 
 long, without starting off, two of us, on om* hands and 
 knees, accompanied by the head guide, to chmb to the 
 brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. Mean- 
 while, the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is a 
 dangerous proceeding, and call to us to come back ; 
 frightening the rest of the party out of their wits. 
 
 What with their noise, and what \rith the trembling 
 of the thin crust of gi'ound, that seems about to open 
 underneath om* feet and plimge us in the binning 
 gulf below (which is the real danger, if there be any) ; 
 and what with the flashing of the fire in our faces, 
 and the shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, 
 and the choking smoke and sulphur ; we may well feel 
 giddy and irrational, like drunken men. But, we con- 
 trive to climb up to the brim, and look do^^1l, for a 
 moment, into the Hell of boiling fire below. Then, we 
 
252 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 all three come rolling down ; blackened, and singed, and 
 scorched, and hot, and giddy : and each with his dress 
 alight in half a dozen places. 
 
 You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way 
 of descending, is, by sliding down the ashes : which, form- 
 ing a gradually increasing ledge below the feet, prevent 
 too rapid a descent. But, when we have crossed the two 
 exhausted craters on our way back, and are come to this 
 precipitous place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) 
 no vestige of ashes to be seen; the whole being a 
 smooth sheet of ice. 
 
 In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cau- 
 tiously join hands, and make a chain of men ; of whom 
 the foremost beat, as well as they can, a rough track 
 with their sticks, down which we prepare to follow. 
 The way being fearfully steep, and none of the party : 
 even of the thirty: being able to keep their feet for 
 six paces together, the ladies are taken out of their 
 litters, and placed, each between two careful persons ; 
 while others of the thirty hold by their sldrts, to prevent 
 their falling forward — a necessary precaution, tend- 
 ing to the immediate and hopeless dilapidation of their 
 apparel. The rather heavy gentleman is adjured to 
 leave his litter too, and be escorted in a similar manner; 
 but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought 
 up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not 
 likely to tumble all at once, and that he is safer so, than 
 trusting to his own legs. 
 
 In this order, we begin the descent: sometimes on 
 foot, sometimes shuffling on the ice : always proceeding 
 much more quietly and slowly, than on our upward way : 
 
VESUVIUS. 25 3 
 
 and constantly alarmed by the falling among us of some- 
 body from behind, who endangers the footing of the 
 whole party, and clings pertinaciously to anybody's 
 ankles. It is impossible for the litter to be in advance, 
 too, as the track has to be made; and its appearance 
 behind us, overhead — with some one or other of the 
 bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman 
 with his legs always in the air — is very threatening and 
 frightful. We have gone on thus, a very little way, 
 painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and regard- 
 ing it as a great success — and have all fallen several 
 times, and have all been stopped, somehow or other, 
 as we were sliding away — when Mr. Pickle, of Portici, 
 in the act of remarking on these uncommon circum- 
 stances as quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, 
 disengages himself, with quick presence of mind, from 
 those about him, plunges away head foremost, and rolls, 
 over and over, down the whole surface of the cone ! 
 
 Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help 
 him, I see him there, in the moonlight — I have had 
 such a dream often — slamming over the white ice, like 
 a cannon-ball. Almost at the same moment, there is a cry 
 from behmd ; and a man who has carried a light basket 
 of spare cloaks on his head, comes rolling past, at the 
 same frightful speed, closely followed by a boy. At this 
 climax of the chapter of accidents, the remaining eight- 
 and-twenty vociferate to that degi'ee, that a pack of 
 wolves would be music to them ! 
 
 Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is 
 Pickle of Portici when we reach the place where we 
 dismounted, and where the horses are waitmg; but, thank 
 
254 PICTUBES FROM ITALY. 
 
 God, sound in limb ! And never are we likely to be 
 more glad to see a man alive and on his feet, than to 
 see him now — making light of it too, though sorely 
 bruised and in great pain. The boy is brought into 
 the Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are at supper, 
 with his head tied up ; and the man is heard of, some 
 hours afterwards. He too is bruised and stunned, but 
 has broken no bones; the snow having, fortunately, 
 covered all the larger blocks of rock and stone, and 
 rendered them harmless. 
 
 After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing 
 fire, we again take horse, and continue our descent 
 to Salvatore's house — very slowly, by reason of our 
 bruised friend being hardly able to keep the saddle, or 
 endure the pain of motion. Though it is so late at 
 night, or early in the morning, all the people of the 
 village are waiting about the little stable-yard when 
 we arrive, and looldng up the road by which we are 
 expected. Our appearance is hailed with a great clamour 
 of tongues, and a general sensation for which in our 
 modesty we are somewhat at a loss to account, until, 
 turning mto the yard, we- find that one of a party of 
 French gentlemen t^o were on the mountain at the 
 same time is lying on some straw in the stable, "vsith a 
 broken limb : looking like Death, and suffering great 
 torture ; and that we were confidently supposed to have 
 encountered some worse accident. 
 
 So " well returned, and Heaven be praised ! " as the 
 cheerful Vetturino, who has borne us company all the 
 way from Pisa, says, with all his heart ! And away with 
 his ready horses, into sleeping Naples ! 
 
NAPLES. 255 
 
 It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo 
 singers and beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, 
 dirt, and universal degradation; airing its Harlequin 
 suit in the sun-shine, next day and every day ; singing, 
 starving, dancing, gaming, on the sea-shore ; and leaving 
 all labour to the burning mountain, which is ever at its 
 work. 
 
 Our English dilettanti would be very pathetic on the 
 subject of the national taste, if they could hear an Italian 
 opera half as badly sung in England as we may hear 
 the Foscari performed, to-night, in the splendid theatre 
 of San Carlo. But, for astonishing tiiith and spirit in 
 seizing and embodying the real life about it, the shabby 
 little San Carlino Theatre — the ricketty house one story 
 high, with a staring picture outside : down among the 
 drums and trumpets, and the tumblers, and the lady 
 conjuror — is without a rival anywhere. 
 
 There is one extraordinary feature in the real life of 
 Naples, at which we may take a glance before we go — 
 the Lotteries. 
 
 They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particularly 
 obvious, in their effects and influences, here. They are 
 drawn every Saturday. They bring an immense revenue 
 to the Government; and diffuse a taste for gambling 
 among the poorest of the poor, which is very comfort- 
 able to the coffers of the state, and veiy ruinous to 
 themselves. The lowest stake is one grain ; less than a 
 farthing. One hundred numbers — from one to a hun- 
 dred, inclusive — are put into a box. Five are drawn. 
 Those are the prizes. I buy three numbers. If one 
 of them come up, I win a small prize. If two, some 
 
256 PICTURES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 hundreds of times my stake. If three, three thousand 
 five hundred times my stake. I stake (or play as they 
 call it) what I can upon my numbers, and buy what 
 numbers I please. The amount I play, I pay at the 
 lottery office, where I purchase the ticket; and it is 
 stated on the ticket itself. 
 
 Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Uni- 
 versal Lottery Diviner, w^here every possible accident 
 and circumstance is provided for, and has a number 
 against it. For instance, let us stake two carlini — about 
 sevenpence. On our way to the lottery office, we run 
 against a black man. When we get there, we say 
 gravely, " The Diviner." It is handed over the counter, 
 as a serious matter of business. We look at black man. 
 Such a number. *' Give us that." We look at running 
 against a person in the street. " Give us that." We 
 look at the name of the street itself. " Give us that." 
 Now, we have our three numbers. 
 
 If the roof of the theatre of San Carlo were to fall 
 in, so many people would play upon the numbers 
 attached to such an accident in the Diviner, that the 
 Government would soon close those numbers, and 
 decline to run the risk of losmg any more upon them. 
 This often happens. Not long ago, when there was a 
 fire in the King s Palace, there was such a desperate 
 run on fire, and long, and palace, that further stakes 
 on the numbers attached to those words in the Golden 
 Book were forbidden. Every accident or event, is sup- 
 posed, by the ignorant populace, to be a revelation to 
 the beholder, or party concerned, in connection with the 
 lottery. Certain people who have a talent for di^eaming 
 
NAPLES. 257 
 
 fortunately, are much sought after ; and there are some 
 priests who are constantly favoured with visions of the 
 lucky numbers. 
 
 I heard of a horse running away with a man, and 
 dashing him down, dead, at the comer of a street. 
 Pursuing the horse with mcredible speed, was another 
 man, who ran so fast, that he came up, immediately 
 after the accident. He threw himself upon his knees 
 beside the unfortmiate rider, and clasped his hand with 
 an expression of the wildest grief. " If you have life," 
 he said, " speak one word to me ! If you have one gasp 
 of breath left, mention yom' age for Heaven's sake, that 
 I may play that number in the lottery." 
 
 It is four oVlock in the afternoon, and we may go to 
 see our lottery drawn. The ceremony takes place, every 
 Saturday, in the Tribunale, or Court of Justice — tliis 
 smgular, earthy- smelling room, or galler}^ as mouldy 
 as an old cellar, and as damp as a dungeon. At the 
 upper end, is a platform, with a large horse-shoe table 
 upon it ; and a President and Council sitting round — all 
 Judges of the Law. The man on the little stool behind 
 the President, is the Capo Lazzarone, a kind of tribune 
 of the people, appointed on their behalf to see that all is 
 fairly conducted : attended by a few personal friends. A 
 ragged, swarthy, fellow he is : with long matted haii' hang- 
 ing down all over his face : and covered, from head to foot, 
 mth most unquestionably genuine dirt. All the body of 
 the room, is filled with the commonest of the Neapolitan 
 people : and between them and the platform, guarding the 
 steps leading to the latter, is a small body of soldiers. 
 
 s 
 
258 PICTUEES FKOM ITALY. 
 
 There is some delay in the arrival of the necessary 
 number of judges ; during which, the box, in which the 
 numbers are being placed, is a source of the deepest 
 interest. When the box is full, the boy who is to draw 
 the numbers out of it, becomes the prominent featiure of 
 the proceeduigs. He is already dressed for his part, in 
 a tight brown Holland-coat, with only one (the left) sleeve 
 to it, which leaves his right arm bared to the shoulder, 
 ready for plunging down into the mysterious chest. 
 
 During the hush and whisper that pervade the room, 
 all eyes are turned on this young minister of fortune. 
 People begm to inquire his age, with a view to the next 
 lottery ; and the nimiber of his brothers and sisters ; and 
 the age of his father and mother ; and whether he has 
 any moles or pimples upon him ; and where, and how 
 many ; when the arrival of the last judge but one (a little 
 old man, universally dreaded as possessing the Evil Eye) 
 makes a slight diversion, and would occasion a greater 
 one, but that he is immediately deposed, as a soin-ce of 
 interest, by the officiating priest, who advances gravely to 
 his place, followed by a very dirty little boy, carrj^ing his 
 sacred vestments, and a pot of Holy Water. 
 
 Here is the last judge come at last, and now he takes 
 his place at the horse-shoe table ! 
 
 There is a murmur of irrepressible agitation. In the 
 midst of it, the priest puts his head into the sacred vest- 
 ments, and pulls the same over his shoulders. Then 
 he says a silent prayer ; and, dipping a bmsh into the 
 pot of Holy Water, sprinldes it over the box and over 
 the boy, and gives them a double-barrelled blessing. 
 
NAPLES. 259 
 
 which the box and the boy are both hoisted on the 
 table to receive. The boy remaining on the table, the 
 box is now carried round the front of the platform, 
 by an attendant, who holds it up and shakes it lustily 
 all the time ; seeming to say, like the conjuror, " There 
 is no deception, ladies and gentlemen ; keep your eyes 
 upon me, if you please ! " 
 
 At last, the box is set before the boy ; and the boy, 
 first holding up his naked arm and open hand, dives 
 down into the hole (it is made like a ballot-box) and 
 pulls out a number, which is rolled up, romid something 
 hard, like a bonbon. This he hands to the Judge next 
 him, who unrolls a little bit, and hands it to the Presi- 
 dent, next to whom he sits, The President mirolls it, 
 very slowly. The Capo Lazzarone leans over his 
 slioulder. The President holds it up, unrolled, to the 
 Capo Lazzarone. The Capo Lazzarone, looking at it 
 eagerly, cries out, in a shrill loud voice, " Sessanta- 
 due ! " (sixty-two), expressing the two upon liis fingers, 
 as he calls it out. Alas ! the Capo Lazzarone himself 
 has not staked on sLxty-two. His face is very long, and 
 his eyes roll wildly. 
 
 As it happens to be a favourite number, however, it 
 is pretty well received, which is not always the case. 
 They ai'e all drawn mth the same ceremony, omitting 
 the blessing. One blessmg is enough for the whole 
 multiplication-table. The only new incident in the 
 proceedings, is the gradually deepening intensity of the 
 change iu the Capo Lazzarone, who has, evidently, spe- 
 culated to the very utmost extent of his means ; and who, 
 
 s2 
 
260 PICTUEES FEOM ITALY. 
 
 when he sees the last number, and finds that it is not 
 one of his, clasps his hands, and raises his eyes to the 
 ceiling before proclaimmg it, as though remonstrating, 
 in a secret agony, with his patron saint, for ha\dng 
 committed so gross a breach of confidence. I hope the 
 Capo Lazzarone may not desert him for some other 
 member of the Calendar, but he seems to threaten it. 
 
 Where the winners may be, nobody knows. They 
 certainly are not present ; the general disappointment 
 filling one with pity for the poor people. They look : 
 when we stand aside, observing them, in their passage 
 through the court yard down below : as miserable as the 
 prisoners in the jail (it forms a part of the building), 
 who are peeping down upon them, from between their 
 bars ; or, as the fragments of human heads which are 
 still danglmg in chains outside, in memory of the good 
 old times, when their owners were strung up there, for 
 the popular edification. 
 
 Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the road 
 to Capua, and then on a three days' journey along bye- 
 roads, tliat we may see, on the way, the monaster}^ of 
 Monte Cassino, which is perched on the steep and 
 lofty hill above the little town of San Germane, and is 
 lost on a misty morning in the clouds. 
 
 So much the better, for the deep somiding of its bell, 
 which, as we go winding up, on mules, towards the 
 convent, is heard mysteriously in the still air, while 
 nothing is seen but the grey mist, moving solemnly 
 and slowly, like a funeral procession. Behold, at length, 
 the shadowy pile of building close before us : its 
 
MONTE CASSINO. 261 
 
 grey walls and towers dimly seen, though so near and 
 so vast : and the raw vapour roUmg through its cloisters 
 heavily. 
 
 There are two black shadows walkmg to and fro in 
 the quadrangle, near the statues of the Patron Saint 
 and his sister ; and hopping on behind them, in and out 
 of the old arches, is a raven, croaldng in answer to the 
 bell, and uttering, at intervals, the pm'est Tuscan. How 
 like a Jesuit he looks ! There never was a sly and 
 steal tliy fellow so at home as is this raven, standing now 
 at the refectory door, with his head on one side, and pre- 
 tending to glance another way, while he is scrutinizing 
 the visiters keenly, and listening with fixed attention. 
 What a dull-headed monk the porter becomes in com- 
 parison ! 
 
 "He speaks like us!" says the porter: "quite as 
 plainly." Quite as plainly. Porter. Nothing could be 
 more expressive than his reception of the peasants who 
 are entering the gate with baskets and burdens. There 
 is a roll in his eye, and a chuckle in his throat, which 
 should qualify him to be chosen Superior of an Order 
 of Ravens. He Imows all about it. "It's all right," 
 he says. " We Imow what we know. Come along, good 
 people. Glad to see you ! " 
 
 How was this extraordinaiy structure ever built in 
 such a situation, where the labom' of conveying the 
 stone, and iron, and marble, so great a height must have 
 been prodigious^ "Caw!" says the raven, welcoming 
 the peasants. How, being despoiled by plunder, fire, 
 and earthquake, has it risen from its ruins, and been 
 again made what we now see it, with its church so 
 
262 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 sumptuous and magnificent? "Caw!" says the raven, 
 welcoming the peasants. These people have a miserable 
 appearance, and (as usual) are densely ignorant, and all 
 beg, while the monks are chaxmting in the chapel. 
 " Caw ! " says the raven, " Cuckoo ! " 
 
 So we leave him, chuckling and rolling his eye at the 
 convent gate, and wind slowly down again, through the 
 cloud. At last emerging from it, we come in sight of 
 the village far below, and the flat green country inter- 
 sected by rivulets; which is pleasant and fresh to see 
 after the obscurity and haze of the convent — no disre- 
 spect to the raven, or the holy friars. 
 
 Away we go again, by muddy roads, and through the 
 most shattered and tattered of villages, where there is 
 not a whole window among all the houses, or a whole 
 garment among all the peasants, or the least appearance 
 of anything to eat, in any of the wretched hucksters' 
 shops. The women wear a bright red boddice laced 
 before and behind, a white skirt, and the Neapolitan 
 head-dress of square folds of linen, primitively meant to 
 carry loads on. The men and children wear anything 
 they can get. The soldiers are as dirty and rapacious 
 as the dogs. The inns are such hobgoblin places, that 
 they are infinitely more attractive and amusing than the 
 best hotels in Paris. Here is one near Valmontone, 
 (that is Valmontone, the round, walled tovvTi on the 
 mount opposite), which is approached by a quagmire 
 almost knee-deep. There is a wild colonnade below, 
 and a dark yard full of empty stables and lofts, and a 
 great long kitchen with a great long bench and a great 
 long form, where a party of travellers, with two priests 
 
ROADSIDE INNS. 263 
 
 among them, are crowding round the fire while their 
 supper is cooking. Above stairs, is a rough brick galleiy 
 to sit in, with very little windows with very small 
 patches of knotty glass in them, and all the doors that 
 open from it (a dozen or two) off their hinges, and a 
 bare board on tressels for a table, at which thiity people 
 might dine easily, and a fire-place large enough in itself 
 for a breakfast parlour, where, as the faggots blaze and 
 crackle, they illuminate the ugliest and grimmest of faces, 
 drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed chimney-sides by 
 previous travellers. There is a flaring countiy lamp on the 
 table ; and, hovering about it, scratching her thick black 
 hair continually, a yellow dwarf of a woman, who stands 
 on tiptoe to arrange the hatchet knives, and takes a 
 flymg leap to look into the water-jug. The beds in 
 the adjoining rooms, are of the liveliest kind. There is 
 Eot a solitary scrap of looking-glass in the house, and the 
 washing apparatus is identical with the cooldng utensils. 
 But the yellow dwarf sets on the table, a good flask of 
 excellent wine, holding a quart at least ; and produces, 
 among half-a-dozen other dishes, two-thirds of a roasted 
 kid, smoking hot. She is as good-humoured, too, as 
 dirty, which is sajing a great deal. So here's long 
 life to her, in the flask of wine, and prosperity to the 
 establishment ! 
 
 Rome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims 
 who are now repairing to their owa homes again — each 
 with his scallop shell and staff, and soliciting alms for 
 the love of God — we come, by a fair country, to the 
 Falls of Terni, where the whole Velino river dashes, 
 headlong, from a rocky height, amidst shining spray 
 
264 PICTUEES FKOM ITALY. 
 
 and rainbows. Perugia, strongly fortified by art and 
 nature, on a lofty eminence, rising abruptly from the 
 plain where pm-ple mountains mingle with the distant 
 sky, is glowing, on its market day, with radiant colours. 
 They set off its sombre but rich Gothic builcUngs 
 admirably. The pavement of its market-place is strewn 
 with country goods. All along the steep hill leading 
 from the town, under the town wall, there is a noisy 
 fair of calves, lambs, pigs, horses, mules, and oxen. 
 Fowls, geese, and turkeys, flutter vigorously among 
 their very hoofs ; and buyers, sellers, and spectators, 
 clustering everywhere, block up the road as we come 
 shouting down upon them. 
 
 Suddenly, there is a rmging somid among our horses. 
 The driver stops them. Sinking in his saddle, and 
 casting up his eyes to Heaven, he delivers this apo- 
 strophe, " Oh Jove Omnipotent ! here is a horse has 
 lost his shoe ! " 
 
 Notwithstanding the tremendous nature of this acci- 
 dent, and the utterly forlorn look and gesture (impossible 
 in any one but an Italian Vetturino) with which it is 
 announced, it is not long in being repaired by a mortal 
 Farrier, by whose assistance we reach Castiglione the 
 same night, and Arezzo next day. Mass is, of course, 
 performing in its fine cathedral, where the sun shines 
 in among the clustered pillars, through rich stained glass 
 windows : half revealing, half concealing, the kneeling 
 figures on the pavement, and strildng out paths of 
 spotted light in the long aisles. 
 
 But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, 
 on a fair clear morning, we look, from the summit 
 
FLOEENCE. J265 
 
 of a hill, on Florence ! See where it lies before us 
 in a sun-lighted valley, bright with the winding Amo, 
 and shut in by swelling hills ; its domes, and towers, and 
 palaces, rising from the rich comitiy in a glittering heap, 
 and shining in the sun like gold ! 
 
 Magnificently stem and sombre are the streets of 
 beautiful Florence ; and the strong old piles of building 
 make such heaps of shadow, on the gi'ound and in the 
 river, that there is another and a different city of rich 
 fonns and fancies, always lying at our feet. Prodigious 
 palaces, constructed for defence, with small distiiistful 
 windows heavily barred, and walls of gi-eat thiclaiess 
 formed of huge masses of rough stone, frown, in their 
 old sulky state, on eveiy street. In the midst of the 
 city — in tlie Piazza of the Grand Duke, adorned with 
 beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune — rises 
 the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging 
 battlements, and the Great Tower that watches over the 
 whole town. In its court-yard — worthy of the Castle of 
 Otranto in its ponderous gloom — is a massive staircase 
 that the heaviest waggon and the stoutest team of horses 
 might be driven up. Within it, is a Great Saloon, 
 faded and tarnished in its statelv decorations, and 
 mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in pictures on 
 its walls, the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of the 
 old Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in an 
 adjacent court-yard of the building — a foul and dismal 
 place, where some men are shut up close, in small cells 
 like ovens ; and where others look through bars and 
 beg; where some are playing draughts, and some are 
 talking to their friends, who smoke, the while, to 
 
966 PICTUEES FROM ITALY. 
 
 purify the air ; and some are bupng wine and fruit of 
 women- vendors ; and all are squalid, dirty, and vile to 
 look at. " They are merry enough Signore," says the 
 Jailer. " They are all blood-stained here," he adds, 
 indicating, with his hand, three fourths of the whole 
 building. Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty 
 years of age, quarrelling over a bargain with a young 
 girl of seventeen, stabs her dead, in the market-place 
 full of bright flowers ; and is brought in prisoner, to 
 swell the number. 
 
 Among the four old bridges that span the river, the 
 Ponte Vecchio — that bridge which is covered with the 
 shops of Jewellers and Goldsmiths — is a most enchant- 
 ing feature in the scene. The space of one house, in the 
 centre, being left open, the ^dew beyond, is shown as in 
 a frame ; and that precious glimpse of sky, and water, and 
 rich buildings, shining so quietly among the huddled 
 roofs and gables on the bridge, is exquisite. Above it, 
 the Gallery of the Grand Duke crosses the river. It 
 was built to connect the two Great Palaces by a secret 
 passage ; and it takes its jealous course among the 
 streets and houses, with true despotism : going where it 
 lists, and spuming every obstacle away, before it. 
 
 The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage 
 through the streets, in his black robe and hood, as a 
 member of the Compagnia della Misericordia, which 
 brotherhood includes all ranks of men. If an accident 
 take place, their office is, to raise the sufferer, and bear 
 him tenderly to the Hospital. If a fire break out, it is 
 one of their functions to repair to the spot, and render 
 their assistance and protection. It is, also, among their 
 
FLORENCE. 267 
 
 commonest offices, to attend and console the sick ; and 
 they neither receive money, nor eat, nor drink, in any 
 house they visit for this purpose. Those who are on 
 duty for the time, are called together, on a moment's 
 notice, by the tolling of the great bell of the Tower ; and 
 it is said that the Grand Duke has been seen, at this 
 sound, to rise from his seat at table, and quietly with- 
 draw to attend the summons. 
 
 In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind 
 of market is held, and stores of old iron and other small 
 merchandise are set out on stalls, or scattered on the pave- 
 ment, are grouped together, the Cathedral with its great 
 Dome, the beautiful Italian Gothic Tower the Campanile, 
 and the Baptistry with its wrought bronze doors. And 
 here, a small untrodden square in the pavement, is "the 
 Stone of Dante," where (so runs the story) he was used to 
 bring his stool, and sit in contemplation. I wonder was 
 he ever, in his bitter exile, withheld from cursing the 
 very stones in the streets of Florence the ungrateful, by 
 any kind remembrance of this old musing-place, and its 
 association with gentle thoughts of little Beatrice ! 
 
 The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels 
 of Florence ; the church of Santa Croce where Michael 
 Angelo lies buried, and where eveiy stone in the 
 cloisters is eloquent on great men's deaths ; innumerable 
 churches, often masses of unfinished hea\7 brickwork 
 externally, but solemn and serene within ; arrest our 
 lingering steps, in strolling through the city. 
 
 In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the 
 Museum of Natural History, famous through the world 
 for its preparations in wax; beginning with models of 
 
"268 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 
 
 leaves, seeds, plants, inferior animals; and gradually 
 ascendiQg, through separate organs of the human frame, 
 up to the whole structure of that wonderful creation, 
 exquisitely presented, as in recent death. Few ad- 
 monitions of our frail mortality can be more solemn, and 
 more sad, or strike so home upon the heart, as the 
 counterfeits of Youth and Beauty that are lying there, 
 upon their beds, in their last sleep. 
 
 Beyond the walls, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, 
 the convent at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, Boccaccio's 
 house, old villas and retreats ; innumerable spots of 
 interest, all glowing in a landscape of surpassing beauty 
 steeped in the richest light ; are spread before us. 
 Retmiiiug from so much brightness, how solemn and 
 how grand the streets again, with their great, dark, 
 mournful palaces, and many legends : not of siege, and 
 war, and might, and Iron Hand alone, but of the trium- 
 phant growth of peaceful Arts and Sciences. 
 
 What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from 
 amidst these rugged Palaces of Florence ! Here, open 
 to all comers, in their beautiful and calm retreats, 
 the ancient Sculptors are immortal, side by side with 
 Michael Angelo, Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, 
 Poets, Historians, Philosophers — those illustrious men of 
 history, beside whom its crowned heads and harnessed 
 warriors, show so poor and small, and are so soon 
 forgotten. Here, the imperishable part of noble minds 
 sm'vives, placid and equal, when strongholds of assault 
 and defence are overthrown ; when tlie tyranny of the 
 many, or the few, or both, is but a tale ; when Pride 
 and Power are so much cloistered dust. The fire within 
 
FLORENCE. 269 
 
 the stem streets, and among the massive Palaces and 
 Towers, Idndled by rays from Heaven, is still burning 
 brightly, when the flickering of war is extinguished and 
 the household fires of generations have decayed ; as 
 thousands upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife 
 and passion of the hour, have faded out of the old 
 Squares and public haunts, while the nameless Floren- 
 tine Lady, preserved from obli\ion by a Painter's hand, 
 yet lives on, in endm'ing gi'ace and youth. 
 
 Let us look back on Florence while we may, and 
 when its shining Dome is seen no more, go travelling 
 through cheerful Tuscany, with a bright remembi^ice of 
 it ; for Italy will be the fairer for the recollection. The 
 summer time being come : and Genoa, and Milan, and 
 the Lake of Como lying far behind us : and we resting at 
 Faido, a Swiss village, near the awful rocks and moim- 
 tains, the everlasting snows and roaring cataracts, of the 
 Great Saint Gothard : hearing the Italian tongue for the 
 last time on this journey : let us part from Italy, with all 
 its miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our admiration 
 of the beauties, natm^al and artificial, of which it is full 
 to overflowing, and in our tenderness towards a people, 
 naturally well disposed, and patient, and sweet tempered. 
 Years of neglect, oppression, and misrule, have been at 
 work, to change their nature and reduce their spirit ; 
 miserable jealousies, fomented by petty Princes to whom 
 union was destruction, and dixision strength, have been 
 a canker at the root of their nationality, and have bar- 
 barized their language ; but the good that was in them 
 ever, is in them yet, and a noble people maybe, one day, 
 raised up from these ashes. Let us entertain that hope ! 
 
X"'-rNr 
 
 
 .•^' — ■ V*.. 
 
 'V-v 
 
 
 ■/ 
 
 And let us not remember 
 Italy the less regardfully, 
 because, in every fragment of 
 her fallen Temples, and 
 every stone of her deserted 
 palaces and prisons, she helps 
 to inculcate the lesson that 
 the wheel of Time is rolling 
 for an end, and that the world 
 is, in all great essentials, 
 better, gentler, more forbear- 
 ing, and more hopeful, as it 
 
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