ITALY ROME AND NAPLES- FROM THE FRENCH OF H. T A I N E BY J. DURAND Fourth Edition, with Corrections and an Index NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1874 3> u^ V* 7jT, Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1868, By LEYPOLDT & HOLT, In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States for the Soutbern District of New York. • • • • • • • • • •- • •• .• • •«•• • • •• • • •»•••••• •••••• • IN"TEODUCTIOK. To M , at Park. January 15, 1864. Do you know anything more disagreeable than an entr'acte ? You sit uneasily in your chair and stretch your limbs and yawn discreetly. Your eyes ache ; wan- dering about the house, they fix themselves for the hun- dredth time on the jaded features of the musicians: on the first violinist showing himself off, on the clarionette player taking breath, and on the patient basso resembling a hack horse resting after a relay. You turn round to the boxes, and over snowy shoulders perceive a big black spot, an enormous lorgnette, which like a huge proboscis seems to conceal the face behind it. A thick deleterious atmo- sphere hangs over the crowded parterre and orchestra ; through the cloud of illuminated dust you detect a multi- tude of uneasy faces grimacing and smiling hypocritically; — bad humour reveals itself beneath politeness and de-, corum. You buy a newspaper and find it stupid. You even read the libretto which is still more stupid, and finally, grumble quietly to yourself that your evening iv INTRODUCTION. is lost, the entr'acte being so much more tedious than the play is amusing. There are an infinity of entr'actes in travelling. These are the dull liours of the day — getting up, going to bed, waiting at stations, between visits, and when you are weary and indifferent At such times you look at things on the dark side. There is but one remedy, and that is a pencil and taking notes. You must regard this as a journal * with some of its pages missing, and moreover, entirely personal. I do not pretend that what pleases me will please you, and still less that it will please others. Heaven preserve us from legislators in matters of beauty, pleasure, and emotion ! What each one feels is peculiar and appropriate to him- self like his nature; my experiences will depend upon what I am. Apropos to this, I must begin with somewhat of self- examination ; it is prudent to inspect an instrument before making use of it. According to my own experience this instrument, call it what you will, whether soul or in- tellect, derives greater pleasure from natural objects than from works of art ; nothing seems to it to equal mountains, seas, forests, and streams. It has always shown the same disposition in other things, in poetry as in music, in archi- tecture as in painting ; that which has most deeply im- pressed it is the natural spontaneous outflow of human forces, whatever these may be and under whatever form • The reader will bear in mind the political changes that hare occurred in Italy, since this work was written, and, notably, the removal of the Fr?:ioli troops from Rome. By so doing, certain allusions and opinions (for instance, on pages 65 and 308) will not seem out of place.— Tp. INTRODUCTION. V they present themselves. Provided the artist is stirred by a profound passionate sentiment, and desires only to express this fully, as it animates him, without hesitation, feebleness, or reservation, the end is served ;• if sincere and sufficiently mastei of his processes to translate his impres- sion? accurately and completely, his work, whether ancient or modern, gothic or classic, is beautiful. In this respect it is a brief abstract of public sentiment, of the dominant passion of the hour and country in which it is born ; itself a natural work, the result of the mighty forces that guide or stimulate the conflict of human activities. This instrument thus fashioned has been roaming through history, especially among literary works, and also a long time among works of art, — those only whicn through their strong relief hand down to posterity the being, forms, and personality of man through the engrav- ings and museums of France, Belgium, Holland, England, and Germany. Taking a comparative view of its impres- sions, first and above all come the heroic or ungovernable forces, that is to say, the colossal types of Michael Angelo and Rubens ; then the beauty of the voluptuous- ness and joyous feeling of the Venetian decorative art ; and then in the same, if not to a greater degree, the tragic and piercing sentiment of truth, the intensity of a suffering visionary imagination, the bold transcripts of human squalor and misery, and the poesy of a misty northerly light in the works of Rembrandt. This is the instrument I now bear with me into Italy ; this is the colour of its lens ; that colouring is to be taken into account in the descriptions given. I distrust it VI INTRODUCTION. somewhat myself and have endeavoured to provide other lennet as occasion calls for them, which is possible, inas- much as education, history, and criticism furnish the means for so doing. Through reflection, study and habit we succeed by degrees in producing sentiments in our minds of which we were at first unconscious; we find that another man in another age of necessity felt differently from ourselves ; we enter into his views, and then into his tastes, and as we place ourselves at his point of view com- prehend him, and, in comprehending him, find ourselves a little less superficial COOTEOTS. BOOK I. THE ROUTE AND THE ARRIVAL. CHAPTER I. FAei MARSEILLES AND PROVENCE — THE SEA — CIVITA VECCHIA . 1 CHAPTER II. ROME — THE COLOSSEUM — ST. PETER'S — A NIGHT PROMENADE — THE FORUM — PROM ROME TO NAPLES — TYPICAL CHARACTERS 8 book n. NAPLES. CHAPTER I. CLIMATE AND COUNTRY — THE STREETS OF NAPLES — CHURCHES — THE CONVENT OF SAN MARTINO 22 CHAPTER II. POZZUOLI AND BALE — CASTELLAMARE — SORRENTO — HOMERIC LIFE 34 CHAPTER III. HERCCLANEUM AND POMPEII— THE CITY OF ANTIQUITY, AND ITS LIFE 45 viii CONTENTS. CIIAPTER IV. MM THB MU8E0 BORBONICO — THE PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, MANNERS, CU8TOM8, AND RELIGION OP ANTIQUITY— MODERN PICTURES, AND TUB SIXTEENTH CENTURY 53 CHAPTER V. •CiEAX 8TATB— POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION. . • ,65 CHAPTER VL INTELLECTUAL AND OTHER TRAITS — SAN CARLO AND SAN CAR- LINO 80 CHAPTER VIL CAPUA— LANDSCAPE — MONTE CASINO . • • - # . 89 BOOK m. SOME. CHAPTER L THE GENERAL ASPECT OF ROME — MASS AT THE SISIINE CHAPEL — THE STREETS OP ROME ••••••. 98 CHAPTER IL ANTIQUE STATUES— THE CAPITOL— GREEK NUDITY AND GYMNAS- TIC LIFE— MORAL DIFFERENCES INDICATED AND PRODUCED BY CHANGE OP COSTUME — BUSTS — PICTURES — THE FORUM . , 107 CHAPTER III. THE VATICAN— THE IDEAL OF MAN AMONG THE ANCIENTS— THB MELEAGER, THE APOLLO BELVEDERE, THE LAOCOON, AND THE MKRCURY— THE BANKS OF THE TIBER , , . # .119 CHAPTER IT. THE TANTHEON, AND THB BATHS OF CARACALLA I I .132 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTEE V. PAGH PAINTING — RAPHAEL, FIRST EXPERIENCES— DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EASEL AND MURAL PAINTING — TRANSFORMATION OF THE HU- MAN MIND IN THE INTERVAL BETWEEN THE SIXTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES — THE NUDE OR DRAPED FIGURE THE CENTRE OF ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. . • .140 CHAPTEE VI. RAPHAEL •••••••••••5(1 CHAPTEE VIX THE FARNESE PALACE — THE MUSEUMS OF THE VATICAN AND THE CAPITOL — THE ACADEMY OF ST. LUKE 159 CHAPTEE VIII. THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE RENAISSANCE — PHYSICAL ACTION AND PICTURESQUE POMP — IMAGES AND NOT IDEAS FILL THE MINDS OF THIS EPOCH . 170 CHAPTEE IX. MICHAEL ANGELO — HIS LIFE, CHARACTER, AND WORKS— THE SIS- TINE CHAPEL — THE LAST JUDGMENT 186 BOOK IT. VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES. CHAPTEE L THE ITALIAN GRAND SEIGNEUR OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY — THE MANNERS OF THE PALACE AND THE ANTE-CHAMBER— THE VILLA ALBANI — THE VILLA BORGHESE . . . .196 CHAPTEE II. THE VILLA LUDOVISI — STATUES — THE AURORA OF GUERCINO— LANDSCAPES — NEPOTISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY — THE DECADENCE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENT DRY — THE PALACE AT THE PRESENT DA? , , . 204 x CONTEXTS. CHAPTER III. PAUK TUB FARNRSK PALACE — THE 8CIARRA, DORIA, BORGHF.8E, BAR- M, AND R08PIOLIO3I PALACES AND GALLERIES— TIIE PAINTINGS OP THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 218 CHAPTER TV. CHURCHES — CHARACTER OP THE CHURCHES OP ROME — TnE PIETY OP THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE DECORATION OP TnE SIX- TEENTH CENTURY — STRASBOURG CATHEDRAL — TRANSFORMATION OP CATHOLICISM AFTER THE RENAISSANCE — THE GESU — THE JESUITICAL SPIRIT — TASTE OP THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY . 234 CHAPTER V SANTA MARIA DEL POrOLO — THE CAPUCHIN CONVENT — SANTA MARIA DEGLI ANGELI— THE CARTHUSIAN CONVENT — RELICS — 8ANTA MARIA DELLA VICTORIA — 8T. THERESA BY BERNINI — DEVOTION AND LOVE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURI — THE QU1BINAL GARDENS. . .... t # . 248 CHAPTER VL IltOMENADES — SANTA MARIA MAGGIORE— SAN" GIOVANNI — SCENERY — THE STREETS OP ROME— SANTA MARIA IN TRASTEVERE — SAN CLEMENIE— SAN FRANCISCO A RIPA # , . . .200 BOOK V. SOCIETY. CHAPTER L THE MIDDLE CLASSES— MANNERS A1JD CUSTOMS— LOVE . . 271 CHAPTER II. TnE NOBILITY— THE SALOONS— INDOLENCE— THE CAMPAGNA— THE V OP POPE JULIUS III.— THE TORTA TRIMA— FRASCATI— TUSCULCM— THE VILLA ALbOBRANDINI— GROTTO FERRATA 283 CONTENTS, xi CHAPTER III. PA.«a THE PEOPLE— THE ADMINISTRATION — OPINIONS . , # .298 CHAPTER IV. THE GOVERNMENT, ITS SUPPORT AND ITS INSTINCTS . # ,308 CHAPTER V. RELIGION — THE ihbled''.a }ii|iiifl .emerald ; the scarcely visible in()iiMtain..fwyns,«^lf :lo^t 'lii obscurity, and the grand line€ , *oF : tlie' , eoast, ,, wi?re always imposing, while on the horizon a glowing band of orange revealed the magnifi- cence of sunset. On board at ten o'clock, — This quiet port, this broad glittering black basin, is striking. Its dark masts and rigging furrow it with lines still darker. Three lanterns glimmer in the distance like stars, their long train of light trembling on the water like a necklace of pearls unrolling itself. The vessel glides from its moorings slowly like a sal saurian, or some snorting antediluvian monster, while the water swells and heaves in its wake, as if dis- turbed by the monstrous fins and webbed feet of some utic frog. The screw beneath bores the sea inde* fatigably with its flanges, and the ship trembles in every limb. This powerful monotonous plunging continues all night, suggesting an enslaved plesiosaurus substituted for the labor of man. TIIE SEA. 3 At sea. — The weather this morning is calm, mild, and misty. The little crested waves stud the slaty fog with brightness ; dripping clouds hang around the four corners of the horizon. What beauty a gleam of sunshine would impart to this dull velvety surface ! I have seen this sky and sea in their summer splendour. Words can feebly express the beauty of the boundless azure expanding on all sides into infinite space ! What a contrast when compared with the dangerous and lugubrious Atlantic ! This sea might be compared to a happy beautiful girl, robed in lustrous silk fresh from the loom. Blue, radiant blue ; blue above and blue below, and extending to the very verge of the horizon, with fringes of silver here and there dotting its moving gloss. One became Pagan again on feeling the piercing glance, the virile energy, the serenity of the magnificent sun, the great god of air. How he triumphed above us ! How he launched his handfuls of arrows on this immense waste I How the waves flashed and quivered beneath this fiery hail ! One thought of the Nereids, of the sounding conchs of Tritons, of blonde dishevelled tresses, and white bodies streaming with foam. The heart seemed to be again stirred with the ancient religion of beauty and joyousness on thus encountering the landscape and climate that nourished it. *» Ever the same humid gloomy sky. The sea rolls slowly, half red and half blue, reflecting that dark purple hue so often seen in deep slate quarries. Occasionally the sun glimmers through the clouds, and illuminates a portion of the distance. Towards evening snowy peaks come in sight, then a long range of mountains, and, as we near these, the rugged embossed slopes of the brown coast of Corsica. This coast is grand on account of its simplicity, but such nudity is sterile. Involuntarily one recites Homers verges on the ' Ocean infecund and indomitable.' Thia 92 4 THE ROUTE AND TIIE ARRIVAL. grand wild clement is valueless ; man cannot tame it, inbdue it, or accommodate it to his usages. Civita Vecchia. — The vessel comes to anchor. Through the grey dawn a round mole suddenly appears, and then a crenelated line of buildings, and flat red roofs clearly defined above the tranquil surface. Seaward a sailing vessel approaches, careening over on its side like a soaring bird. This is all — two or three black lines on a light background, with the freshness of the sea and the morning — and you have a marine pencil-sketch by some great master. On entering the town the impression changes ; it is a squalid city, made up of infected lanes and public build- ings, displaying the vulgarity and plainness of the uses to which they are applied. Some of these lanes are about five feet wide, and the houses lean against each other, supported by transverse beams. No sunshine ever finds its way into them ; the mud is like glue. An en- trance sometimes consists of an old mediaeval construc- tion, with a portal and a sort of embrasure. You advance hesitatingly into this den ; on either side are dark holes, where filthy children, girls with tangled hair, are drawing on stockings, and hurriedly trying to fasten on their rags. No sponge has ever touched the window-panes, nor a broom the stairs ; they are fairly impregnated with human filth; it oozes out; and a sour putrescent odour greets the nostrils. Many of the windows seem to be crumbling, and disjointed steps cling around leprous walls. In the cross streets, strewed with mire, orange-peel and garbage, a few shops lower than the pavement expose yawning apertures with various phantoms moving about in them ; a butcher displaying bloody meat and quarters of veal on his stall ; a fruiterer looking like a ferocious bravo ; a big, dirty, brazen-faced monk, with his hands on his paunch, laughing vociferously ; a tinker nobly draped, and as grave CIVITA VECCHIA. 5 and proud as a prince, besides various expressive figures standing about, many of them handsome, almost all ener- getic and gesticulating like actors, often with a sort of comic gaiety and extreme readiness in assuming gro- tesque attitudes. The French on board our vessel, some twenty young soldiers, are much more amiable-looking and less demonstrative, they being of a less vigorous and finer race. Here lived poor Stendhal for so long a period, ever with his eyes turned towards Paris. ( It is my misfor- tune,' he wrote, ( to find nothing here to excite thought. What diversion can I find among five thousand Civita Vecchia traders ! There is nothing poetic here but the twelve hundred convicts, whom I cannot possibly take into my society.* The women have but one idea, which is to get their husbands, if possible, to present them with a French bonnet.' A friend of Stendhal, an archaeolo- gist, who under this title passed for a Liberal, for twenty years has been unable to obtain permission to stay three hours at Rome. Here and there, in the streets and squares, southern life is visible. Tinkers and travelling shoemakers are at work in the open air. Barefooted little scamps, with begrimed mouths, are playing cards in crazy carts. At the angle of a foul alley, under a lamp, sits a Madonna, in the midst of wax-candles, flowers, crowns, and painted hearts, smiling under a glass case, and honoured with the sign of the cross by all who pass her. Two fishermen arrive with three baskets, and improvise a market, when immediately twenty curious figures assemble around them as if at a spectacle, all smoking and gesticulating, while % threadbare class carry off fish in their handkerchiefs. A number of ragged vagabonds, and tall wags draped in * The Roman State prison for criminals, the bagnio, is situated at Civita Vecchia 6 THE ROUTE AND TIIE ARRIVAL. brown ana black mantles, hang about the street-corners, inhaling the steam of frying-pans, and contemplating the sea. Certainly for the last'ten years they must have slept on the ground in their clothes— imagine their tint, while tluir toes project outside their worn-out shoes. Their pantaloons have evidently passed through five or six colours, from light to dark, from grey to black, from black to brown, and from brown to yellow ; and so full of holes and so often patched are they, one would scarcely know where to find a more composite object. They, however, are indifferent. They saunter about philosophi- v cally, like sages and epicureans, living as they best can, feeding their senses on beautiful objects, and diverting themselves with idle conversation, leaving all work to blockheads. At the landing-place an hour and a half was consumed in registering twenty-five trunks ; out of six men employed, two worked, while the rest looked on and talked. It was necessary to make a show of anger, in order to expedite matters. There was no order what- ever. A trunk passed quickly through their hands pro- portionately to the rude tone of voice in which the owner pronounced bestid. The more bountiful and beautiful Nature is the less is man compelled to be active and neat. A Hollander, or a peasant of the Black Forest, would feel miserable in a house not clean and agreeable to him ; here labour and tidiness are superfluous, Nature taking it upon herself to provide both comfort and beauty. From Civita Vecchia to Rome, — We pass along the borders of the sea, stretching away, smooth and of a deep blue, into illimitable space, and with a feeble monotonous murmur; to the right, for leagues ahead, an unbroken line of foam forms a broad white fringe on the sand. The same great veil of mist still overhangs the Campagna. To the left, hills rise and fall and succeed each other, covered with delicate tints of faded green, as if CIVITA VECCHIA. 7 softened with a brush. There are no trees on them that could be called such, but shrubs like the broom, juniper, mastic, gorze, and other evergreens. All this is a desert: scarcely during the entire journey do we see more than an occasional farmhouse at long intervals by the side of a hollow. Streams descend in tortuous beds, and discharge themselves in pools, which, repelled by the sea, render the country unhealthy and hostile to man. A few horses and some black long-horned cattle graze on the slopes : one might imagine himself on the landes of Gascony. From time to time a wood of tall, grey, denuded trees appears by the side of the cars as melancholy-looking as so many invalids. Here at last is the Campagna of Rome, consisting of bare hills, without trees or shrubs, and a waste of decayed and sun-burnt vegetation ; no aqueducts yet — nothing to break up the lugubrious monotony. Now we come to gardens, and hedges of blackthorn tied together with large white reeds, vegetable plots, domes on the horizon, an old brick rampart and blackened bastions, then a long aqueduct like an immense wall, and Santa Maria Mag- giore with its two domes and campanile. At the station is a crowd of cab-drivers, guides, and conductors, hooting and appropriating to themselves your baggage and person by main force ; also a moving throng of anomalous faces — English, American, German, French, and Russian — crowding and pushing each other, and obtaining informa- tion in all sorts of accents and dialects. On the way to the hotel, things look as they do in a provincial town — neglected, irregular, odd, and dirty, with narrow, muddy streets lined with rickety tenements and attics, greasy cooking going on in the open air, clothes drying on roj^es, lofty monumental edifices with trellised windows and huge gratings and crossbars bolted together and multi- plied, giving one an idea of prisons and fortresses. CHAPTER II. ROME — THE COLOSSEUM — ST. PETER'S — A NIGIIT PROMENADE THE FORUM FROM ROME TO NAPLES TYPICAL CHARACTERS. Having one day in Home, I determined to see the Colosseum and St Peter's. It is certainly unwise to note our first impressions, but since we have them, why not do so ? A traveller should regard himself as a ther- mometer, and, right or wrong, I shall do to-morrow as I do to-day. First, as to the Colosseum. All that I saw from my cab windows was repulsive — infected streets, wet and dry linen suspended on ropes, old oozing tenements blackened and disfigured with slimy secretions, heaps of offal, shops and tattered costumes; and all this in a drizzling rain. The ruins, the churches, the palaces, visible on the way, the entire accumulations of antiquity, seemed to me like an embroidered coat made two cen- turies ago, but nevertheless two hundred years old ; that is to say, tarnished, faded, full of holes, and infested with human vermin. The Colosseum appears, and there is a sudden revul- sion, a veritable shock ; it is grand — nothing grander could be imagined. The interior is quite deserted; profound silence reigns : nothing but masses of stone, pendant vines, and from time to time the cry of a bird. One is content to remain silent and motionless. The eye wanders repeatedly over the three vaulted stories, and ROME : THE COLOSSEUM. 9 the enormous wall projecting above them. This then, you say to yourself, was a circus ; on these graded seats sat a hundred and seven thousand spectators, yelling, applauding, and threatening simultaneously ; five thou- sand animals were slain, and ten thousand combatants contended in this arena. You gather from this some idea of Roman life. All this provokes hatred of the Romans. No people have more abused man ; of all the European races none have been so destructive : only in oriental countries do we find similar despots and devastators. Here was a mon- strous city, as extensive as London now is, deriving its pleasure from spectacles of murder and suffering; for one hundred days, three consecutive months and more, the people resorted here daily to delight in pain and death. The distinctive trait of Roman life, first a triumph and next the arena, is here revealed. They had conquered a hundred nations, and found it natural to turn their victims to account. Such a regimen necessarily developed an extraordi- nary state of things, physical and mental. There was no labour: the people were supported by public distri- butions; they lived in indolence, promenaded a city oi marble, were shampooed in baths, gazed on mimes and actors, and for amusement flocked to the contemplation of wounds and death. This was their excitement, and they devoted days to it. St. Augustine experienced the terrible attraction, and has described it ; everything con- trasted with it seemed insipid ; people could not tear themselves away from it. After a certain time humanity, through these compound habits of artists and executioners, lost its equilibrium ; extraordinary monsters were deve- loped, and not merely sanguinary brutes and cool assas- sins, as in the middle ages, but refined amateurs, dilettanti, like Caligula, Commodus, and Nero; morbid inventors, 10 THE EOUTE AND THE ARRIVAL. ferocious poets, who, instead of writing out or painting their phantasies, practised them. Many artists in modern times resemble these, but fortunately they confine them- selves to the blackening of paper. Then, as now, extreme civilisation produced extreme tension and insatiable de- sires. The first four centuries after Christ may be re- garded as experience on a grand scale, in which the mind systematically sought excessive sensation. Everything below that was wearisome. When the gladiator from the centre of the arena looked around at the hundred thousand faces, and saw the upturned thumbs demanding his death, what a sensation ! It was annihilation, without pity or reprieve. The antique world here reaches its culminating point, the uncontested, un- punished, irremediable rule of force. As these spectacles abounded throughout the Roman empire, it is intelligible how the universe with such machinery became a blank. Hence, and by contrast, the existence of Christianity. One turns and looks again. The beauty of the edifice consists in its simplicity. Its continuous line of arches forms the most natural and the firmest of props. The edifice is self-supporting, immovable ; how much superior to a Gothic cathedral, with its flying buttresses like the claws of a crab ! The Roman was satisfied with bis idea, and did not require to adorn it ; an amphitheatre for a hundred thousand men and enduring indefinitely was enough. Here, as in his inscriptions and despatches, he suppresses all pomposity.* The fact proclaims itself loudly, and is understood by him alone. In this con- sists his grandeur ; it is actions and not words — a sort of haughty calm self-confidence, a serene pride in, and con- sciousness of, being able to do and to bear more than other men. * See the reply of the Senate to the King of Illyria, after the victory of Pydna (Livy). ROME* THE COLOSSEUM. 11 The Romans, however, have always lacked a sentiment of justice and humanity, and not alone in antiquity, but also in the Renaissance, and in the middle ages. They have always comprehended country after the manner of the ancients, namely, as a compact league, useful in oppressing others, and in turning them to profit. Moreover, in the middle ages, their country was nothing but an arena, in which the strong, through craft and vio- lence, sought to enslave the rest. A certain cardinal, on passing from Italy into France, remarked that if Chris- tianity was to be known by evidences of kindness, cour- tesy, and confidence, the Italians were not one half as Christian as the French. This same objection always arises in my own mind on reading Stendhal, their great admirer, and whom I so greatly admire. You laud their energy, their good sense, their genius ; you agree with Alfieri that the plant man is born more vigorous in Italy than elsewhere ; you go no further ; it seems as if this was a complete eulogy, and that nothing more desirable for a race could be imagined. This is isolating man as artists and naturalists do in order to contemplate a fine, power- ful, redoubtable animal, and a bold, expressive attitude. The complete man, however, is man in society, and who developes himself therein ; hence the superior race is that disposed to social intercourse and to progress. In this view gentleness, social instincts, the chivalrous sentiment of honour, phlegmatic good sense, and rigid, puritanical self-consciousness are precious gifts, and perhaps the most precious of all. These are the qualities which, beyond the A^s, have formed societies and an order of development; it is the lack of these qualities which, on this side of the Alps, has prevented the consolidation of societies, and hindered development. A certain instinct of willing subordination is an advantage in a nation, and, at the same time, a defect in an individual ; and perhaps IS TIIK ROUTE AND THE ARRIVAL. it is this power of the individual which has here closed tin avenue to nationality. In the centre of the arena is a cross. A man in a blue OOftt, a demi-bourgeois, approaches it in the midst of the silence, removes his hat, folds his green umbrella, and devotedly imprints several fervent kisses on it. Each is attended with a hundred days' indulgence. The sky was now getting clear. Through the arcades you might see green slopes, lofty ruins decked with shrub- bery, shafts of columns, trees, heaps of rubbish, a field of tall white reeds, the Arch of Constantine placed obliquely — all forming a singular combination of cultiva- tion and neglect. One encounters this everywhere in traversing Rome — remains of monuments, pieces of gar- dens, messes of potatoes frying at the bases of antique columns, near the bridge of Horatius Codes the odour of old codfish, and on the flanks of a palace, three cob- blers plying their awls, or perhaps a bed of artichokes. One loiters along, leisurely and indifferently. I have no cicerone — a way to see nothing and be deafened. I ask my way of a respectable-looking man, who is very obliging, and enters into conversation with me. He has been to Paris, and admires the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de PEtoile, and has visited Mabille, of which his souvenirs are very profound. Photographs of the illustrious dancers and lorettes of Paris abound in the shop- windows. I find that these ladies everywhere in foreign lands constitute our principal reputation. 'Ah, how pleasant France is, and how delightful to promenade the Boulevart Montmartre!' The sky had now become perfectly clear, the atmo- sphere warm, and the ground dry. From the cafe ir. which I breakfasted (I have forgotten where), I could ob- uerve about forty droll characters seated on the side-walk, or leaning against the angles of the houses, doing nothing, ROME : THE COLOSSEUM. 18 gome smoking, and others strolling up and down, and exchanging comments on the weather, and on passers-by. Three or four, with their bare knees shining through their rags, as dirty as old brooms, lay flat on the stones against a wall, sleeping. Half a dozen, the most active, were playing morra, opening and shutting the hand, and voci- ferously calling the number of fingers closed or extended. Most of them sat silent and motionless. Seated in a row on the edge of the kerbstone, with their hands supporting their chins, and their blankets drawn about their thighs, they seemed content to be comfortably warm and ask no more. Some, the voluptuaries, were chewing lupines, and, save the masticating motion of their jaws, remained an hour and more without moving a muscle. Throughout the entire length of the street the windows are open, and women and young girls show themselves on the balconies, and take the air. You cannot imagine a more curious contrast than these usually handsome crea- tures, with vigorous expressive heads, dark lustrous hair carefully gathered above the temples, brilliant eyes, ruddy, glowing, healthy complexions, clean clothes, gilded comb, chains and trinkets, and all framed in by the wall of a hovel. Its plaster is cracked, and broken, and spat- tered with mud, which also runs black along the entire street. If you approach it, you find a low entrance, its unfastened bars dripping with cobwebs, and a stairway winding around like the gallery of a coal-pit ; and in the interior all kinds of domestic disorder — piles of clothes, earthenware pots, and children scattered about with nothing on them but shirts. These women are by no means dis- reputable, but all they care for is to dress and pass away the afternoon on their balconies like peacocks on their perches. At the end of a long street, .the church of St. Peter discloses itself. Nothing can be more truly and substan- tially beautiful than this grand piazza. Our Louvre and 14 TITE ROUTE AND THE ARRIVAL. Place de la Concorde, compared with it, are simply operatic decorations. The piazza rises upward from the bottom, and is thus embraced in a single glance. Two superb colonnades enclose its space within their cres- cent curves, and in the centre is an obelisk, on either side of which two fountains, discharging their feathery- spray, people its vastness. Some black specks — men seated, visitors ascending, and a file of monks — dot the whiteness of the steps, while on the summit of all, elevated upon a mass of columns, pediments, and statues, rears the gigantic dome. Whatever could be done to conceal this dome has been done. Looking at it a second time, it is clear that the facade overwhelms it. The facade is that of a pompous hutel-de-villc, the construction of a period of decadence. Its forms are so complicated, its columns so multiplied, so many statues have been lavished upon it, and so many stones heaped up, that beauty has disappeared beneath the accumulation. You enter the interior, and the im- pression is the same. Two words rise to the lips — grand and theatrical. There is power in all this, but it is overdone. There is too much gilding and sculpture, too many precious marbles, bronzes, ornaments, panels, and medallions. In my opinion, every work of architec- ture, as well as every other work, should be like a cry ; * in other words, a sincere expression, the extremity and complement of a sensation, and nothing more. For example, take this or that Titian or Veronese painted pur- posely to occupy the eye with voluptuousness or magni- ficence during some gay festival or official ceremony ; or again, the interior of a fine Gothic cathedral like that ot Strasburg, with its enormous dark nave traversed with gloomy purple, its silent files of columns, its sepulchral crypt lost in shadow, and its luminous rose windows, * See the author's Philosophy of Art,' p. 69. ROME: ST. PETERS. 15 which, amidst all these Christian terrors, seem to afford glimpses into paradise. On the contrary, there is no simple, pure emotion in this church. It is a composition like our Louvre. Its projectors said, ( Let us erect the most magnificent and imposing structure possible.' Bramante selected the vast vaults of Constantine's palace, and Michael Angelo the dome of the Pantheon, and out of two pagan concep- tions, one amplified by the other, they extracted a Chris- tian temple. These arches, that cupola, and those mighty piers, all this splendid attire is grand and magnificent. Neverthe- less there are but two orders of architecture — the Greek and the Gothic ; the rest are simply transformations, dis- figurements, or amplifications of these. The builders of St. Peter's were simply pagans in fear of damnation, and nothing more. All that is sublime in religion, such as tender effusions in the presence of a compassionate Saviour, the fear of conscience before a just judge, the strong lyric enthusiasm of the Hebrew before an avenging God, the expansiveness of a free Greek genius before natural and joyous beauty — all these sentiments were wanting in them. They fasted on Friday, and combed the hair of a saint to obtain his good offices. As a recompense to Michael Angelo, the Pope granted him I know not how many indulgences on condition that he made the tour of the seven basilicas of Rome on horseback. Their passions were strong, and their energy unfaltering, and they became great because they sprung out of a great epoch, but a true religious sentiment they did not possess. They revived ancient paganism; but a second growth is never of the same value as the first. Petty superstition and narrow devo- tional habits soon arose to deform and render lifeless a primitive powerful inspiration. We have only to study 16 THE ROUTE AND THE ARRIVAL. the interim decoration of this church in order to flee to what vices they inclined. Bernini lias infested it with mannered statins, who caper and give themselves airs. All these sculptured giants kicking about with half- modern faces and drapery pretending to he antique, pro- duce the most pitiable effect. You say to yourself on seeing that procession of celestial porters, ' A fine arm, well poised ! My brave monk, you stretch out your leg vigorously ! My good woman, your robe floats very pro- perly ; be quite easy ! My little cherubs, you fly as briskly as if on a swing ! My worthy friends, especially yourselves, bronze cardinals, and you, symbolical virtues, you are as clever in your posturings as so many fiijurants ! ' I am to visit Rome again. Perhaps to-day I am unjust. But for any sincere sentiment here I am sure it is wanting. The rows of sentimental figures by Bernini on the bridge of St. Angelo put me out of humour. They assume to express a tender, coquettish air, and wriggle about in Greek or Roman drapery as if in an eighteenth century petticoat. None of these works are consistent ; three or four different sentiments in them struggle for mastery. Let the subject be a fasting, self-flagellating ascetic, and he is assigned a shape, vestments, and sym- bolry indicative of attachment to this life. To me nothing is more disagreeable than thorns, haircloth, and ecstatic eyes bestowed on a lusty young man or a healthy young woman really incapable of thinking of anything else but love. It is impossible here to feel any of the tenderness, any of the terrors, associated with a Gothic cathedral and a Christian life ; the churches are too richly gilded and too bright, and the arches and pillars are too fine. It is im- possible to find here that freshness of simple sensation, that joyousness and serenity, that smile of eternal youth- fulness which radiates from an antique temple and from A NIGHT PEOMENADE. 17 Greek life. Crosses, images of martyrs, gold skeletons, and other similar objects, form too many emblems of mystification and mystic renunciation. It is, in fine, an immense spectacle hall, the most magnificent in the world, through which a grand institution proclaims its power to all eyes. It is not a temple of a religion, but the temple of a cult. A Night Promenade. — The streets are almost deserted, and the scene is imposing — tragic, like the drawings of Piranesi. Few lights are visible, only so many as are necessary to reveal grand forms and to intensify the dark- ness. All noxious odours, dirt, and corruption have dis- appeared. The moon shines in a cloudless sky, and the bracing air, silence, and the sensation of the unknown, excite and startle one. How grand ! is the constantly recurring idea. There is nothing mean, commonplace, or vapid; there is no street or edifice that has not character, some strong marked character. No uniform compressive law has here inter- posed to level and discipline structures ; each has arisen according to its own fancy without concern for the rest, and the confusion is admirable, like the studio of a great artist. Antonine's column rears its shaft in the clear night air, and around it are solid palaces resting firmly on their foundations, and without clumsiness. That in the back ground, with its twenty illuminated arcades, and its two broad brilliant circular openings, resembles an arabesque of light, or some strange fancy creation blazing in the obscurity. The fountain of the Piazza Navona flows magnificently in the stillness, its jetting waters sending forth myriads of the moon's bright beams. Under this vacillating light, amidst this incessant commotion, its colossal statues seem alive : their theatrical appearance is effaced ; one sees only c 18 THE ROUTE AND THE ARRIVAL. giants writhing and leaping in the midst of sparks and glittering bubbles. Window cornices, vast projecting balconies, and the sculptured edges of the roofs cut the walls with powerful shadows. Doleful streets, right and left, open like yawn* jnir caverns ; here and there rises a black wall of some apparently abandoned convent or tall edifice surmounted by a tower, seeming to be a remnant of the middle ages ; lights glimmer feebly in the distance, and life seems to be swallowed up in the increasing obscurity. Nothing is so formidable as these enormous monasteries and huge square palaces in which no light is gleaming, and which rise up isolated in their inattackable massive- ness like fortresses in a besieged town. Flat roofs, ter- races, pediments, and other rigid and complicated iorms, cut the clear sky with their sharp angles, whilst below, at their feet, the indistinct gates, posts, and buttresses crouch together in the shadows. One advances and all appearances of life vanish. One might imagine himself in a dead deserted city, the skele- ton remains of a great nation suddenly annihilated. You pass under the arcades of the Colonna palace, along its mute garden walls, and no longer see or hear anything human; only at long intervals, in the depths of some tortuous street, within the vague blackness of a porch seeming to be a subterranean outlet, is a dying street- lamp flickering amidst a circle of yellow light. These closed houses and high walls, extending their inhospi- table lines in the gloom, appear like ranges of reels on the Bea coast, and, on emerging from their shadow, the broad spaces that present themselves, whitened with moonlight^ seem like strands of desolate sand. At length you reach the basilica of Constantine and its huge arcades with their head-dress of pendent vines. The eve follows their majestic sweep, and then suddenly, be- THE FORUM. 19 tween the openings above, rests on the pale blue, the peculiar azure of night, like a panel of crystal incrusted with sparks. Advancing a few steps, the divine cupola of the sky, the serene transparent ether with its myriads of flashing brilliants, discloses itself above the lonely Forum. You pass by the side of prostrate columns, their monstrous shafts seemingly magnified. Leaning against one of these breast high, you contemplate the Colosseum. The side wall, still remaining entire, rises black and colossal at a single bound ; it seems to incline over and about to fall. The moonlight, so bright on the ruined portion, allows you to distinguish the reddish hue of the stones. In this limpid atmosphere the roundness of the amphitheatre grows on you ; it forms a sort of complete and formidable being. In this wonderful stillness it might be said to exist alone, and that man, and plants, and all this fleeting world, is but a seeming show. I have often experienced the same sensation among mountains. They also seem to be the veritable inhabitants of the earth ; in their company the human hive is forgotten, and under the sky, which is their tent, one imagines himself listening to the speechless communion of the old monsters, the world's immutable possessors and eternal rulers. Returning along the base of the Capitol, the distant basilicas and triumphal arches, and especially the noble and elegant columns of ruined temples, some solitary and others collected in fraternal groups, also seem to be alive. These, likewise, are placid existences, and simple and beautiful like the Greek ephebos. Their Ionian heads bear an ornamental bandlet, and the moon sheds its rays on their polished shafts. From Rome to Naples. — A long aqueduct appears on the right; afar on the horizon is a ruin, and here and there isolated crumbling arches ; the illimitable dingy green plain extends on all sides, undulating with a faded 20 THE ROUTE AND THE ARRIVAL. carpet of dead vegetation, washed by the rains, and scat- | by the winds. Purplish grey clouds hang heavily overhead, and the locomotive discharges its rolling waves of steam to commingle with them. The monotonous aqueduct appears and disappears mile after mile like a dyke of rocks in a sea of moving grass. Towards the east dark mountains bristle, half-covered with snow, while towards the west is a cultivated surface covered with the small tops and innumerable delicate stems of denuded fruit trees; a yellow brook washes its way, undermining the ground as it passes. All this is melancholy, and still more so the stations, consisting of miserable wooden cabins in which a few faggots are kindled for the comfort of the passengers. Beggars and little boys throng the entrances, imploring a baiocco a demi-baiocco, a poor little demi-bair ceo for the love of God, the Madonna, and St. Joseph, and all other saints in the calendar, with the persistence and shrillness, the tender impatient whining which dogs after a week of starvation display on first getting sight of a bone. It is difficult to decide what it is they wear on their feet; sandals they certainly are not, and still less shoes ; they look like wrappings of cloths or old scraps picked out of the puddles, and which splash along with them in the mud. A bent, broad-brimmed, shape- less hat, and breeches, and cloak are indescribable ; nothing resembles these but kitchen towels and infected rags piled up in junk-shops to make paper with. I have studied a good many countenances, and my memory dwells on those I have seen since I came intc Italy. All these range themselves under three or four distinct types. First there is the pretty and delicate cameo head, perfectly regular and spirituelle, with a lively alert air, betokening a capacity to comprehend readily, and to inspire love as well as to express it. There is, also, tie TYPICAL CHARACTERS. ' 21 square head, planted on a solid trunk, with large sensual lips, and an expression of coarse gaiety, either grotesque or satiric. There is the lean, dark, sunburnt animal, whose face has no longer any flesh on it, wholly con- sisting of strong features, of an incredible expression, with flaming eyes and crisp hair, similar to a volcano about to explode. There is, finally, the handsome and stout man, vigorously built and muscular without clum- siness, of a rich glowing complexion, who regards you calmly and fixedly, powerful and complete, who seems to await action and self-expansion, but who, in waiting, is not prodigal of himself, and remains passive. This road and landscape, all the way to Naples, are certainly beautiful, but under a clear sky and in sum- mer. There are many fine, varied, half- wooded moun- tains, not high, and yet grand ; sometimes a grey tower appears, covering a hilltop, and as round as a bee-hive. But forms are all confused by rain and fog, and winter spoils everything; there is nothing green; red dry leaves hang to the trees like old rags, and muddy tor- rents furrow the ground. It is a corpse instead of a beautiful, blooming girl. BOOK II. NAPLES. CHAPTER I. CLIMATE AND COUNTRY THE STREETS OF NAPLES CHURCHES THE CONVENT OF SAN MARTINO. Naples: February 20. — Another climate, another sky, almost another world. On approaching the bay this morning, as the view expanded and the horizon disclosed itself, a sudden brightness and splendour was all that was visible. In the distance, under a vapoury veil over- hanging the sea, the mountains arose one above another, and spread out as luminous and as soft as clouds. The sea advanced in white rolling billows, and the sun, pouring down its flaming rays, converted it into a track- way of molten metal. I passed half an hour in the Villa Reale, a promenade shirting the shore, planted with oaks and evergreens. A few young trees, transpierced with light, open their tender little leaves, and are already blooming with yellow blos- soms. Statues of beautiful nude youths — Europa on the Bull - incline their white marble forms amidst the lii^lit green verdure. Sunshine and shadow vary the surface of the grass, and climbing vines interlace themselves around the columns. Here and there glows the bright blue of fresh flowers, their delicate velvety cups trembling in the CLIMATE AND COUNTRY. 23 balmy breeze that comes to them through the trunks of the oaks. Both sea and atmosphere are beneficent. What a contrast, when one recalls the ocean and its coasts, our cliffs of Gascony and Normandy beaten by winds and lashed by storms, with stunted trees sheltering themselves in the hollows, and bushes and the shorn grass clinging so miserably to the hillsides ! Here vegetation is nourished by the neighbouring waves; you feel the freshness and mildness of the atmo- sphere which caresses and expands it. You forget yourself as you listen to the murmur of the whispering leaves and contemplate their moving shadows on the sand. Meanwhile, a few paces off, the sea sends forth its deep roar, as its foaming crests break on the beach, and subside in snowy circles. The mist vanishes before the sun; through the foliage appears Vesuvius and its neighbours, the entire mountain range in clear relief, and of a pale violet hue, which, as the sun declines, becomes tenderer and tenderer, until, finally, the lightest tint of mauve, or the corolla of a flower, is less exquisite. The eky is now serene, and the calm sea becomes a sea of azure. It is impossible to describe this scene. Lord Byron rightly says that the beauties of art and nature are not to be placed on the same level. A picture is always less, and a landscape always more, than our imagination paints it. How beautiful ! — what more can be said ? How grand, how lovely ! the heart and the senses thrill with pleasure: nothing could be more voluptuous, nothing nobler. How can one toil and produce in the presence of all this beauty ? It is of no avail to possess fine residences, and to labo- riously fashion our vast machines called Constitution or Church, and to seek pleasure in vanity and ostentation. Let us open our eyes and live, for we have the flower of life in a glance ! I sat down on a bench. Evening was coming on, and 24 NAPLES. in watching the fading tints it seemed as if I were in the Elyaiao fields of the ancient poets. Elegant forms of - defined themselves clearly on the transparent azure. Leafless sycamores and naked oaks seemed to be smiling, the exquisite serenity of the sky, crossed with their web of light branches, apparently communicating itself to them. They did not appear to be dead or torpid as with U3, but seemed to be dozing, and, at the touch of the balmy breeze, ready to open their buds and confide their blossoms to the coming spring. Here and there shone a glimmer- ing star, and the moon began to diffuse its white light. Statues still whiter seemed in this mysterious gloom to be alive ; groups of young maidens, in light flowing robes, advanced noiselessly, like beautiful spirits of gladness. I seemed to be gazing on ancient Greek life, to compre- hend the delicacy of their sensations, to find a never- ending study in the harmony of these slender forms and faded tints; colour and luminousness no longer seemed requisite. I was listening to the verses of Aristo- phanes, and beheld his youthful athlete with crowned brow, chaste and beautiful, walking pleasantly with a sage companion of his own years amongst poplars and the flowering smilax. Naples i s a Greekcolony^and the more one sees the more on e recognises that thejtas te" and the min d_QLa_E gPPle assume the characteristics o f its landscape and of its climate. Towards eight o'clock the breeze had died away. The firmament seemed to be of lapis-lazuli ; the moon, like an immaculate queen shining alone in the azure, shed her silvery beams on the broad waters and converted them into a glittering milky way. No words can express the grace and sweetness of the mountains enveloped in their last tint, the vague violet of the nocturnal robe. The mole and a forest of masts with their deep dark reflections rendered them still more charming, while the Chiaja on ! THE STREETS OF NAPLES. 25 the right sweeping around the gulf, together with its rows of illuminated houses, gave them a garland of flame. Lamps glimmer on all sides. The people are laughing, chatting, and eating in the open air. The sky itself is a fete. Through the Streets. — What streets one passes through ! Steep, narrow, dirty, and bordered at every story with overhanging balconies; a mass of petty shops, open stalls, men and women buying, selling, gossiping, gesticu- lating, and elbowing each other ; most of them dwarfed and ugly, the_women es pecially being small and flatg- nose d, their fa ces sallow and eyes b rilliantr~an& slovenly attired in fancy shawls, red, violet, and orange neck hand- kerchiefs—the most staring colours possible— and mock jewelry. In the vicinity of the Piazza del Mercato winds a labyrinth of paved tortuous lanes buried in dust and strewn with orange-peel, melon-rinds, fragments of vege- tables, and other nameless refuse ; the crowd herd to- gether here, black and crawling, in the palpable shadow, beneath a strip of blue sky. All is J instli ng, eating, drmlqpg, and had nfinjira • it. reminds one of rats in a rat-trap. It is the same bad air and disorder, and the same abandonment that one encounters in the bye-streets of London. Fortunately, the climate is favourable to pig-styes and rags. Occasionally rising out of these dens is the huge angle or lofty gateway of some ancient edifice, through the openings of which you see wide staircases and balustrades ascending and intersecting each other, along with terraces and colonnades, exhibiting the remains of the grandeur of private life under the Spanish dominion. Here dwelt tlie great nobles and their gentlemen retainers, with their armed domestics and their carriages, soliciting pensions, giving fetes, and attending ceremonies, they alone con- 2« NAPLES. Bpicuoai and of importance ; whilst in the surrounding' linea the canaille of traders and artisans gazed on their sumptuous parade as pitiful and disdained as formerly were the troops of serfs tolerated around the feudal donjon. Crowds of monks trot about the muddy streets, in san- dal b or shoes, and without stockings. Many of these look waggish and quizzical, something of a cross between Socrates and Punch. They have evidently sprung from the populace. They flounder along in their threadbare garbs with the jaunty air of a common coachman. One of them resting his elbows on a balcony to look at us, is a strap- ping cunning old fellow, such as Habelais paints, display- ing his flesh and importance somewhat like a curious distrustful hog. In better streets, again, you encounter a better class of ecclesiastics ; the trim young abbes clad in black, and as orderly as if just out of a bandbox, and with an intelligent and diplomatic or reserved expres- sion. High and low, the palace and the hovel, are both supplied with them ! We enter five or six churches on our way. The statues ot the Virgin here are painted like barbers' models, besides being dressed in the habiliments of ladies ; one wears an expansive rose-coloured frock, blue ribbons, a tasteful coiffure, and six swords in her breast. The infant Jesus and the saints are also attired in modern fashion ; some of the latter wear actual cowls, and others ex- hibit their corpse-like skins and bloody stigmata. It is impossible to appeal to the eye and the senses more grossly.* An old woman is on her knees moaning before * ' A friend describes a Madonna he saw in Sicily: they had plated her breast with a great cx-voto of silver, representing the part of the body cured through her intercession. The patient had had hemorrhoids. At Messina, on the 15th August, they carry through the streets, in honour of the Virgin, % machine composed of revolving hoops, in which little children, figuring as •Jigols, are attached, and in which they turn about during seven hours, the CHURCHES. 27 the Virgin. Thus bedizened and bleeding, the Madonna is as real to her as any widowed princess ; they address her with similar respect, and weep in order to obtain her sympathy. Santa Maria della Pietra, Santa Chiara, and San Gennaro. — The first of these churches is a brilliant bon-bon box. You are here shown a veiled statue of Modesty in marble ; but the veil is so thin and adhesive, bo well disposed about the neck and forms of the body, that she appears more than naked. In the depths of a crypt is a dead Christ wrapped in a shroud. The cus- todian produces a candle, and by its dim light and in this cold damp atmosphere your eyes and senses, the whole nervous system, is as much shocked as if brought in con- tact with a corpse. Such are the sensational achieve- ments of superstition and sculpture ; artistic vanity is gratified, they amuse the epicurean, and make the devout shudder. I will not dwell on the richness of the paint- ings, on the lavish display of ornament, on the pretentious decoration, all of which is more conspicuous in Santa Chiara, in the enormous silver vines that encumber the altar, in the numberless bronze and gilded balustrades and little golden balls and tufts and garlanded tapers, and overloaded altars, similar to those that little girls arrange and deck for the Fete-Dieu. Numerous churches whose names I have forgotten are all bedizened with this finery. This pagan Catholicism is offensive ; sensuality can always be detected under the mantle of asceticism. Skulls, hour-glasses, and mystic invocations present in- congruities alongside of gilding, precious marbles, and Grecian capitals. There is no Christianity about it, greater number being taken out dead or dying. Their mothers console themselves by saying that the Virgin has taken their little angel into Paradise.' (' Mysteries of the Convents of Naples,' p. 39, by Enrichetta Caracciolo, ex-Benedictine.) 88 NAPLES. except its superstition and fear. Here particularly is an absence of grandeur and a reign of affectation. A church is simply a magazine of pretty things. In striving to ascertain the sentiment of the people for whom all this was built, I find only a desire to enjoy fresh air in a jeweller's shop, or at best a notion that in giving large sums of money to a saint he will preserve one from fever ; it is a casino for the use of fancy-fed brains. In respect to its architects and painters they were declaimers, who, through imitations to deceive the eye, and vast arches with curious span, aimed to reanimate a worn-out atten- tion. All this indicates a degenerate epoch, the ex- tinction of genuine feeling, the turgidity of a toiling, exhausted art, the pernicious effects of a perverted civili- sation and foreign dominion. Still, amidst this decadence, there are occasional portions instinct with the old vigorous genius. For example, at San Gennaro some powerful figures painted by Vasari over the entrances, and ceilings by Santa-Fede and Forti, containing many proud and spirited groups and figures, along with some tombs and a large nave with rows of medallions of archbishops, and the lofty spring of which and gilded background en coquille display the majesty and importance of genuine decoration. The Convent of San Martino. — To this we ascend by narrow, dirty, and densely-populated streets. I cannot accustom myself to these tattered, chattering, gesticula- ting characters. The women are not handsome ; on the contrary, their complexion is sallow, even among the young. Besides this, their flat noses spoil their faces. Altogether you have a lively and occasionally a piquant countenance, sufficiently resembling the pleasing but ir- regular features of the women of the eighteenth century, but very far removed from the beauty of the Greeks which has been assigned to them. SAN MAKTINO. 29 We mount up higher and higher, always ascending; one set of steps after another, and no end to them, and always the same rags suspended on surrounding cords ; then narrow streets with loaded donkeys feeling their way along slippery declivities, muddy streams trickling between the stones, ragged little scamps of beggars, and full views into interior household arrangements. This mountain is a sort of elephant whereon crawling, fidgety human insects have taken up their abode. You pass a house deprived of its lower story, to which the inmates ascend by a ladder ; then another with an open door, through which you see a man strumming a guitar, surrounded by a lot of women assorting vegetables. Suddenly you emerge from this rag-fair, these rat-holes, this gipsy en- campment, and reach the magnificent convent, with all the beauties of nature before you and all its treasures of art. One of its courts especially, an ample enclosure sur- rounded by four white marble porticoes, and with a vast cistern in the centre, seemed to me admirable. Shrub- bery, high and thick, the blue lavender, overhangs its pavement, displaying its light and healthy verdure ; while above shines glittering white marble, and over this the rich blue sky, each of these colours framing the other and enhancing their respective value. How well they comprehend architecture here, and especially the portico ! In the north this feature is an excrescence, an importa- tion of pedantry ; nobody knows what to do with it, unac- customed as people are to evening promenades in the open air, and requiring no protection from the sun nor open- ings to admit the cool breeze of the sea. And especially are they insensible to the effect of simple lines and broad contrasts of few and simple colours. One must live beneath an intensely blue sky in order to enjoy the polish and whiteness of marble. Art was made for this country. In the happy frame of mind produced by this luminous ao NAPLES. sky and pure atmosphere, one loves ornament, and is content to 6ee coloured marbles under his feet forming designs, and at the end of a gallery some large sculptured medallion, and on the summit of a portico half-nude statues of beautiful young saints or some female form of the same sentiment in fine drapery. Christianity thus becomes pleasing and picturesque; the eye is charmed and the soul is moved with a spirit of joy and noble- ness. At the end of one of the galleries are balconies facing the sea. From these you have a view of Naples immensely extended, and stretching as far as Vesuvius by a line of white houses ; and around the gulf the bend- ing coast embracing the blue sea, and beyond, the golden glimmering surface sparkling and flashing in sunlight, the sun itself resembling a lamp suspended in the vast con- cave firmament above. Beneath is a long slope covered with dull green olive trees, forming the convent gardens. Avenues of shady trellises run wherever the soil is level enough to sustain them. Platforms with grand isolated trees, massive foundations burying themselves in the rocks, a colonnade in ruins, the broad bay beyond, innumerable little sails, Monte San Angelo, and smoking Vesuvius, all contribute to make of this convent a world by itself, secluded but complete, and so fall of beauty. One is here transported leagues away from our common-place bourgeois life. Its inmates go bareheaded in brown and black garbs, and wear coarse shoes ; but beauty surrounds them, and no prince's palace I have yet seen makes such a noble impression. Petty comforts are wanting here, but this only renders the rest more exalted. I visited lately one of the costliest and most elegant of modern mansions, situated like this, facing the sea. Its proprietor is a man of taste, has accumulated millions, and is prodigal of his wealth. Everything is polished, but A MODERN MANSION. 31 nothing grand ; not a colonnade is to be seen, nor a splen- did apartment. Of what use would they be ? It is an agreeable residence, but not a corner, outside or inside, would a painter care to copy. Every object by itself is a model of finish and convenience ; there are six bell-knobs by each bedside, the curtains are exquisite, and the easy- chairs could not possibly be more comfortable. You find, as in English houses, every sort of utensil for petty ne- cessities. The architect and the upholsterer have deliber- ated over the best means for avoiding heat, cold, and too much light, and how to wash and to expectorate with the utmost facility, and that is all. The sole works of art visible are a few pictures by Watteau and Boucher. And these are incongruous, because they recall another epoch. Is there anything of the eighteenth century still subsist- ing with us ? Do we retain the antechamber and the splendid parade of aristocratic life ? A crowd of lacqueys would annoy us ; if we maintain courtiers it is in our bureaus; what we require in our houses is easy-chairs, choice segars, a good dinner, and at most, on ceremonial occasions, a little extra display to do ourselves credit. We no longer know how to live on a grand scale, to live out of ourselves ; we canton ourselves in a small circle of personal comfort, and interest ourselves only in ephemeral works. Living at that time was reduced to simple wants, and thus free, the mind could contemplate distant hori- zons and embrace all that expands and endures beyond man's existence. A sallow-faced monk with brilliant eyes, and a reserved concentrated expression, conducted us into the church. Theie is not a corridor nor a vista that does not bear an artistic imprint. At the entrance, in a bare court, is a Madonna by Bernini, wriggling in her mincing drapery, and contemplating her infant, as pretty and delicate as a boudoir Cupid ; but she is a superb figure, nevertheless, 81 NArLES. and testifies to her race — the race of noble forms created by the great masters. When this convent was decorated in the seventeenth century, pure ideas of the beautiful no longer prevailed, but the beautiful was still an aspiration. The contrast is apparent on resorting to the interiors of "Windsor, Buckingham Palace, or the Tuileries. This church is of extraordinary richness. What i? here accumulated of precious marble, sculpture, and paintings, is incredible. The balustrades and columns are bijous. A legion of contemporary sculptors and painters, Guido, Lanfranco, Caravaggio, the Chevalier d'Arpino, Solimene, Luca Giordano, have all expended upon it the extravagances, the graces, and the dainty conceptions of their pencils. The chapels alongside the great nave, and the sacristy, display paintings by hun- dreds. There is not a corner of the ceiling that is not covered with fresco. These figures all rush backwards and forwards as if they were in the open air ; draperies are floating and commingling, and rosy flesh glows under- neath silken tunics, their fine limbs seeming to delight in a display of their forms and movements. Many of the half-naked saints are charming youths, and an angel by Luca Giordano, attired in blue, with naked limbs and shoulders, resembles an amorous young girl. The atti- tudes are all exaggerated ; it is dire confusion, but it harmonises with the lustre of marble, the flutter of drapery, the sparkle of golden ornaments, and the splen- dour of columns and capitals. This decoration cannot be exclusively attributed to the cold flat taste of the priests. The breath of the preceding century still animates it ; we have the style of Euripides if we no longer possess that of Sophocles. Some of the subjects are magnificent, and among them a ' Descent from the Cross' by Ribera. The sun's rays shone through the half-drawn red silk curtains upon the head of Christ ; the darks of the back- RIB ERA. 33 ground seemed still more lugubrious, contrasted suddenly with this bright light falling on the luminous flesh, while the mournful Spanish colouring, the powerful, mysterious tones of the impassioned countenances in shadow, gave to the scene the aspect of a vision, such as once filled the monastic chivalric brain of a Calderon or a Lope de Vega. CHAPTER II. POZZUOLI AND BAI/E- CASTELLAMARE— SORRENTO— HOMERIC LIFE. At the end of the grotto of Pausilippo the country begins, a kind of orchard full of high vines, each one wedded to a tree. Underneath these shine the elegant green lupine and a species of the yellow crocus. All this lies before you sleeping in the misty atmosphere, like jewels embedded in gauze. The road turns, and the sea appears, and you follow it as far as Pozzuoli. The morning is gray, and watery clouds float slowly above the dull horizon. The mist has not evaporated ; now and then it diminishes and lets a pale ray of sunshine glimmer through, like an impercepti- ble smile. Meanwhile the sea casts its long white swell on a strand as tranquil as itself, and then recedes with a low monotonous murmur. A uniform tint of pale blue, as if effaced, fills the immense expanse of the sea and the sky. Both sea and sky seem to be merged into each other; often do the small black boats appear like birds poised in the air. All is repose ; the ear scarcely detects the gentle murmur of the waves. The delicate hues of dripping slate in its dewy crevices alone furnish an idea of their faded tint. You repeat to yourself Virgil's lines ; you imagine those silent regions into which the Sibyl descends, the realm of floating shades, not cold and lugubrious like the Cimmerean land of Homer, but where existence, vague and vapoury, TOZZUOLI AND BALE. 35 reposes until the powerful rays of the sun concentrate it, and send it forth to flow radiant in life's torrent ; or again, on those slumbering strands where future souls, a humming vapoury throng, fly indistinctly like bees around the calyx of a flower. Nisida, Ischia in the dis- tance, and Cape Mysena, bear no resemblance to visible objects, but to noble phantoms on the point of emerging into life. Farther on, the whole country, the white trunks of the sycamores, the verdure softened by mist and winter, the slender reeds, the passive surface of Lake Avernus, the faint mountain forms — all this mute languid landscape seems to be at rest, asleep, not subdued and stiffened by death, but softly enveloped in genial monotonous tranquillity. Such is the ancient conception of the extinction of life, of the beyond. Their tombs are not mournful ; the dead repose ; they do not suffer, and are not annihilated ; they bring them meat, wine, and milk ; they still exist, only they are transferred from the light of day to the gloom of twilight. Christian and Germanic ideas, the spiritual voices of Pascal and Shakspeare, do not address us here. I have not much to say of Baioe. It is a miserable village with a few boats moored around an old fortress. The rains have made a cesspool of it. Pozzuoli is still worse. Here hogs covered with mire roam about the streets ; some with a curb encompassing the belly, grunt and are struggling for freedom. Ragged little urchins around them seem to be their brothers. A dozen or more of semi-beg- gars, a filthy parasite canaille, huddle around the carriage; you drive them off again and again, but to no purpose ; they insist on serving as your guides. Three years ago, it seems, they were much worse ; instead of twelve on our track, we would have had fifty. At Naples the boya wandered through the streets as they now do here. The people a.ve still quite savage; when they heard of the 1> 2 36 NAPLES. arrival of Victor Emmanuel they were much astonished, and supposed that Victor Emmanuel had dethroned Gari- baldi. Many of them have but one shoe, others trot about in the mud barefooted and barelegged. Their rags cannot be described — similar ones can only be found in London. Through the open doors you observe women freeing their children of vermin, and miserable straw-pal- lets with lolling »>rms on them. On the public thorough- fares at the entrance of the town you find clusters of vagabonds, little and big, awaiting their prey, perchance some foreigner, on whom they immediately pounce. Three among them showing themselves more eager than the others, my companion began to banter them. They are fond of humour, and reply to it with a mixture of im- pudence and humility. They even retort upon each other. One especially, pointing to his comrade, charged him with having a deformed mistress, and described the deformity with some detail. What woman is so unfortu- nate as to possess such a lover ! I suppose her olfactory nerves are no longer sensitive. In the grotto of Pausilippo, and throughout Naples in general, one is always inclined to stop his nose ; in summer, they say, it is much worse. \ And this is universal in the south, at Avignon, at Toulon, as well as in Italy. It is asserted that southerly senses are more delicate than northern ; — but this is true only for the eye and the ear. We visit a temple of Serapis. where three fine columns remain standing ; in the vicinity are antique baths and sulphurous springs, the entire coast being strewed with Roman remains. Arcades of villas, underground ruins, and maritime substructures, form an almost continuous chain. Most of the wealthy citizens of Rome possessed country houses here ; but to-day I am not in an archaeo- logical humour. I am wrong — the amphitheatre is well worth the trouble. CASTELLAMARE AND SORRENTO. 37 The arches beneath it recently exhumed are as fresh as if constructed yesterday. An enormous subterranean story served as a lodging-place for gladiators and animals. This amphitheatre would seat 30,000 spectators. There was not an ancient Roman town from Antioch to Cadiz, and from Metz to Carthage, that did not possess one of these structures. For four hundred years what a consumption of living flesh ! The more you contemplate the circus, the more evident is it that antique life culminated there. The city formed an association for the hunting of man, and to make the most of him ; it used and then abused its cap- tives and slaves, in times of moderation subsisting on their labour, and in ages of debauchery obtaining enter- tainment from their death throes. In these vast cellars, in this subterranean city, columns lie on the ground, prostrated by earthquakes, similar to huge trunks of trees. Green foliage hangs pendent along the walls, the water percolating through these like a fountain which, drop by drop, falls from the locks of a naiad. I A Promenade to Castellamare and Sorrento. — The sky is almost clear. Only above Naples hangs a bank of clouds, and around Vesuvius huge white masses of smoke, moving and stationary. I never yet saw, even in summer at Marseilles, the blue of the sea so deep, bordering even on hardness. Above this powerful lustrous azure, absorbing three- quarters of the visible space, the white sky seems to be a firmament of crystal. As we recede we obtain a better \iew of the undulating coast, embraced in one grand mountain form, all its parts uniting like the members of one body. Ischia and the naked promontories on the ex- treme end repose in their lilac envelope, like a slumbering Pompeian nymph under her veil. Veritably, to paint such nature as this, this violet continent extending around 38 NAPLES. this broad luminous water, one must employ the term? of the ancient poets, and represent the great fertile goddess embraced and beset by the eternal ocean, and above them the serene effulgence of the dazzling Jupiter. Hoc sublime candens quern omnes wvocant Jvvem. We encounter on the road some fine faces with long elegant features, quite Grecian; some intelligent noble looking girls, and here and there hideous mendicants cleaning their hairy breasts. But the race is much superior to that of Naples, where it is deformed and dimi- nutive, the young girls there appearing like stunted pallid grisettes. Labourers are busy in the field. By fre- quently seeing naked legs and feet, you get to be interested in forms ; you are pleased to see a muscle of the calf strain in pushing a cart, and swell and compass the entire limb ; the eye follows its curve up and down, and you admire the firm grasp of the toes on the ground, the fit- ness and insertion of each bone, the roundness of the large toe, the aptitude and force and activity of the limb. To daily spectacles of this kind in former times we are in- debted for sculpture. As soon as the shoe appeared it could no longer be said, as in the time of Homer, i the fine-heeled women ;' nowadays the foot has no form ; it interests nobody but a shoemaker, and no longer pro- vides models which, gradually correcting each other, allow the development of its ideal type. In former times the Roman, rich or poor, also the Greek, always exposed his leg, and in the baths and in the gymnasia, his entire body. The custom of exercising naked was distinctly a Greek trait ; in Herodotus we see how offensive it was to the Asiatics and other barbarians. The railroad skirts the sea a few paces off and almost on a level with it. A harbour appears blackened with lines of rigging, and then a mole, consisting of a small half- ruined fort, reflecting a clear sharp shadow in the lumin- CASTELLAMARE AND SORRENTO. 39 ous expanse. Surrounding this rise square houses, grey as if charred, and heaped together like tortoises under round roofs, serving them as a sort of thick shell. This is Torre del Greco, protecting itself against earthquakes and the showers of ashes launched forth by Vesuvius. Beyond breaks the sea, heaving and tossing like a tide- way. All this is peculiar and charming. On this fertile soil, full of cinders, cultivation extends to the shore and forms gardens ; a simple reed hedge protects them from the sea and the wind; the Indian fig with its clumsy thorny leaves clings to the slopes ; verdure begins to appear on the branches of the trees, the apricots showing their smiling pink blossoms ; half-naked men work the friable soil without apparent effort ; a few square gardens contain columns and small statues of white marble. Everywhere you behold traces of antique beauty and joyousness. And why wonder at this when you feel that you have the divine vernal sun for a companion, and on the right, whenever you turn to the sea, its flaming golden waves. With what facility you here forget all ugly objects ! I believe I passed at Castellamare some unsightly modern Structures, a railroad station, hotels, a guard-house, and a number of rickety vehicles hurrying along in quest of fares. This is all effaced from my mind; nothing re- mains but impressions of obscure porches with glimpses of bright courts filled with glossy oranges and spring verdure, of esplanades with children playing on them and nets drying, and happy idlers snuffing the breeze and contemplating the capricious heaving of the tossing sea. On leaving Castellamare the road forms a corniche* winding along the bank. Huge white rocks, split off from * This term designates a road built along the rocky shore of a seaside being a figurative application of the architectural term cornice. — Tb. 44 NAPLES. tlie cliffs above, lie below in the midst of the eternally besicdn^ waves. On the left the mountains lift their shattered pinnacles, fretted walls, and projecting crags, all that scaffolding of indentations which strike you as the ruins of a line of rocked and tottering fortresses. Each projection, each mass throws its shadow on the surround- ing white surfaces, the entire range being peopled with tints and forms. Sometimes the mountain is rent in twain, and the sides of the chasm are lined with cultivation, descending in suc- cessive stages. Sorrento is thus built on three deep ravines. All these hollows contain gardens, crowded with masses of trees overhanging each other. Nut-trees, already lively with sap, project their white branches like gnarled fingers ; everything else is green ; winter lays no hand on this eternal spring. The thick lustrous leaf of the orange- tree rises from amidst, the foliage of the olive, and its golden apples glisten in the sun by thousands, interspersed with gleams of the pale lemon ; often in these shady lanes do its glittering leaves flash out above the crest of the walls. This is the land of the orange. It grows even in miserable court-yards, alongside of dilapidated steps, spreading its luxuriant tops everywhere in the bright sunlight. The delicate aromatic odour of all these open- ing buds and blossoms is a luxury of kings, which here a beggar enjoys for nothing. I passed an hour in the garden of the hotel, a terrace overlooking the sea about half-way up the bank. A scene like this fills the imagination with a dream of per- fect bliss. The house stands in a luxurious garden, filled with orange and lemon-trees, as heavily laden with fruit as those of a Normandy orchard; the ground at the foot ©f the trees is covered with it. Clusters of foliage and shrubbery of a pale green, bordering on blue, occupy intermediate spaces. The rosy blossoms of the peach, CASTELLAMARE AND SOEKENTO. 41 80 tender and delicate, bloom on its naked branches. The walks are of bright blue porcelain, and the terrace dis- plays its round verdant masses overhanging the sea, of which the lovely azure fills all space. ] have not yet spoken of my impressions after leaving Castellamare. The charm was only too great. The pure Bky,the pale azure almost transparent, the radiant blue sea as chaste and tender as a virgin bride, this infinite expanse bo exquisitely adorned as if for a festival of rare delight, is a sensation that has no equal. Capri and Ischia on the line of the sky lie white in their soft vapoury tissue, and the divine azure gently fades away surrounded by this border of brightness. Where find words to express all this? The gulf seemed like a marble vase purposely rounded to receive the sea. The satin sheen of a flower, the soft luminous petals of the velvet orris with shimmering sunshine on their pearly borders, such are the images that filHhe mind, and which accumulate in vain and are ever inadequate. The water at the base of these rocks is now a trans- parent emerald, reflecting the tints of topaz and amethyst ; again a liquid diamond, changing its hue according to the shifting influences of rock and depth ; or again a flashing diadem, glittering with the splendour of this divine efful- gence. As the sun declines, the blue towards the north deepens in tone, and resembles the colour of dark wine. The coast becomes black, rising in relief like a barrier of jet, whilst the evening glow spreads and diffuses itself over the sea. As I passed along the road I thought of Ulysses and his companions ; of their two-sailed barks, similar to those here dancing on the waves like sea-gulls ; on the indented shores by which they coasted ; on the unknown creeks in which they anchored at night; on the vague astonishment excited by new forests ; on the repose of 49 NAPLES. tlioir wearied limbs on these dry sandy promontories; on those fine heroic forms whose nudity graced those desert rapes. Syrens with dishevelled locks and marble torsos might well arise in these azure depths before those polished rocks, and but little effort of the imagination is neces- sary to catch the song of the enchantress Circe. In this climate she might address Ulysses, ' Come, place thy sword in its sheath, and we two will then betake ourselves to my couch, that there united by love we may trust in one another. 1 The words of the old poet on the purple sea, on the ocean embracing the earth, on the white-armed women, come into the mind naturally as on their native soil. Indeed, all is beauty, and in this clement atmosphere a simple life may revive as in the time of Homer. All that three thousand years of civilisation have added to our well-being seems useless. What does man need here ? A strip of linen and a piece of cloth if, like Ulysses' companions, his body is healthy and he comes of good stock ; once clothed, the rest is superfluous, or comes of itself. They slaughter a stag, roast his flesh on coals, drink wine from skins, light fires, and repose at evening on the sand. How complicated and perverted man has become ! How gladly one dwells on the luxurious life of a goddess as Homer imagines it ! ( There was a great cave in which the fair-haired nymph dwelt. A large fire was burning on the hearth, and at a distance the smell of well-cleft cedar and of frankincense that was burning shed odour through the island ; but she within was singing with a beautiful voice, and going over the web, wove with a golden shuttle. But a flourishing wood sprung up around her grot, alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress. There also birds with spreading wings slept, owls and hawks, and wide-tongued crows of the ocean, to which maritime employment is a care. Then a vine in its HOMERIC LIFE. 43 prime was spread about the hollow grot, and it flourished with clusters. But four fountains flowed in succession with white water, turned near one another, each in diffe- rent ways ; but around them flourished soft meadows of violet, and of parsley. There iudeed even an immortal coming would admire it, when he beheld, and would bo delighted in his mind.' * She herself spreads the table, and serves her guest like Nausicaa ; if necessary she accompanies the servants to wash his vestments in the neighbouring torrent. Acts of this kind were performed naturally like walking ; they no more thought of avoiding one than of avoiding the other. Thus was the force and agility of the limbs maintained ; it was an instinct and a pleasure to exercise and employ them. Man is still a noble animal, almost related to the fine-blooded horses that he feeds on his pastures ; thus the use of his arms and his body is not to him servile. Ulysses, with axe and auger, cuts and fashions the olive trunk that serves as the framework of his nuptial couch ; the young chiefs that strive to espouse his wife slaughter and dress the sheep and hogs they consume. And sentiments are as natural as habits. Man does not constrain himself ; he is not partially developed on the side of savage heroism as in Germany, or that of morbid superstition as in India ; he is not ashamed of fear sometimes, of confessing it, and of even being moved to tears. Goddesses love heroes, and offer themselves without blushing, as a flower inclines to the neighbouring flower that renders it fertile. Desire seems as beautiful as modesty, vengeance as forgiveness. Man blooms out fully, harmoniously, easily, like platanes and the orange nourished by fresh sea breezes and the balmy atmosphere * The Odyssey, translated by Buckley. 44 NAPLES. of ravines, and which spread their round tops without hand to prune them or rigour of climate to repel the sap from their buds and blossoms. Out of all these narratives, out of the forests and waters just traversed, vaguely emerges the figures of antique heroes ; that of Ulysses rising out of the flood, ' grander in form and more broad- shouldered ' than other men, ' his locks falling upon his neck similar to the flowers of the hyacinth,' or alongside of him the young maidens who lay aside their garments and play on the river bank, and among them Nausicaa, • the unconqucred maiden, taller than her companions by more than a head.' Even this does not suffice. It seemed to me that to describe this sky. this intensely bright luminous at- mosphere enveloping and animating all things, the smiling radiant sea its spouse, this earth which advances to meet them, it would be necessary to revert to the Y^dio hymns, and there, like our first parents, find true exist- ences, simple loving universal beings, shadowy, eternal dvinities, now no longer recognised by us, occupied as we are with the details of our little life, but who, in sum, subsist alone, bearing us, protecting us, and living together as formerly, unconscious of the imperceptible movements and ephemeral toiling and scratching of our civilisation on their bosom. CHAPTER III. HERCtXANEUM AND POMPEII— THE CITY OP ANTIQUHY, AKD ITS LIFE. Several days at Herculaneum and Pompeii. — Thousands and thousands of objects pass before one's eyes, all of which, on returning home, whirl through the brain. How abstract from this chaos any dominant impression any connected view of the whole ? The first and most enduring is the image of the reddish* grey city, half ruined and deserted, a pile of stones on a hill of rocks, with rows of thick wall, and bluish flagging glittering in the dazzling white atmosphere; and sur- rounding this the sea, the mountains, and an infinite perspective. On the summit stand the temples, that of Justice, of Venus, of Augustus, of Mercury, the house of Eumachia, and other temples, still incomplete, and, farther on, also on an elevation, the temple of Neptune. They also raised their gods on high in the pure atmosphere, of itself a divinity. The forum and the curia alongside afford a noble spot for councils, and to offer sacrifices. In the distance you discern the grand lines of the vapoury mountains, the tranquil tops of the Italian pine; then to the east, within the blonde sunlit haze, fine tree-forms and diversities of culture. You turn, and but little effort of the imagina- tion enables you to reconstruct these temples. These •16 NAPLES. columns, these Corinthian capitals, tin's simple arrange- ment, those openings of blue between those marble shafts, what an impression such a spectacle contemplated from infancy left on the mind ! The city in those days was a veritable patrimony, and not, a'i now, a government col- lection of lodging-houses. Of what significance to me are the Kouen or Limoges of today? I can lodge there amidst piles of other lodgings: life comes from Paris. Paris itself, what is it but another heap of lodgings, the life of which issues from a bureau filled with clerks and red tape? Here, on the contrary, men regarded their city as jewel and casket; they bore with them everywhere the image of their acropolis and its bright illuminated temples ; the villages of Gaul and Germany, the whole barbaric north, seemed to them simply mire and wilderness. In their eyes, a man who belonged to no city was not a man, but a kind of brute, almost a beast — a beast of prey, out of which nothing could be made but a beast of burden. The city is an unique institution, the fruit of a sovereign idea that for twelve centuries controlled all man's actions; it is the great invention by which man first emerged from a primi- tive state of savagery. It was both feudal castle and church : how man loved it, how devoted he was to it, and how absorbed by it no tongue can tell. To the universe at large he was either a stranger or an enemy : he had n«> rights in it ; neither his body nor his property were safe in it; if he found protection there it was a matter of grace ; he never thought of it but as a place of danger or of plunder : the enclosure of his city was his sole refuge and fortress. Moreover, here dwelt his divinities, his Jupiter and Juno, gods inhabiting the city, attached to the soil, and who, in primitive conceptions, constituted the soil itself, with all its streams, its fruits and the firmament above. Here was his hearthstone, his penates, HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII. 47 his ancestors, reposing in their tombs, incorporated with the soil and gathered to it by the earth, the great nurse, and whose subterranean manes in their silent bed watched over him unceasingly ; it was a combination of all salutary, sacred, and beautiful things, and for him to defend, to love, and to venerate. ' Country is more than father or mother,' said Socrates to Crito; 'and whatever violence or whatever injustice she inflicts upon us we must sub- mit without striving to escape from it.' So did Greece and Rome comprehend life. When their philosophers, Aristotle or Plato, treat of the State, it is as a city, a compact exclusive city of from five to ten thousand fami- lies, in which marriage, occupations, and the like, are sub- ordinated to the interests of the public. If to all these peculiarities we add the accurate and picturesque imagi- nation of southern races, their aptitude at representing corporeal forms and local objects, the glowing exterior and bold relief of their city, we comprehend that such a con- ception of it produced in antique breasts a unique sensa- tion, and furnished sources of emotion and devotion to which we are strangers. All these streets are narrow ; the greater portion are mere lanes, over which one strides with ease. Generally there is room only for a cart, and ruts are still visible : from time to time wide stones afford a crossing like a bridge. These details indicate other customs than our own; there was evidently no great traffic as in our cities, nothing like our heavily-loaded vehicles, and fagt-trotting fanciful carriages. Their carts transported grain, oil, and provisions : much of the transportation was done on the arm and by slaves : the rich travelled about in litters. They possessed fewer and different con- veniences. One prominent trait of antique civilisation is the absence of industrial pursuits. All supplies, utensils, and tissues, everything that machines and free labour now 48 NAPLES. produce in such enormous quantities for everybody and at every price, were wanting to thcin. It was the slave who turned the mill-wheel : man devoted himself to the beauti- ful, and not to the useful; producing but little, he could consume but little. Life was necessarily simple, and philosophers and legislators were well aware of this; if t| they enjoined temperance it was not through pedantic motives, but because luxury was visibly incompatible with the social state of things. A few thousands of proud, brave, temperate men, with only half a shirt and a mantle apiece, who delighted in the view of a hill with a group of beautiful temples and statues, ^ho entertained themselves with public business, and passed their days in the gymna- sium, at the forum, in the baths and the theatre, who washed and anointed themselves with oil, and were con- tent with things as they stood ; — such was the city of antiquity. When their necessities and refinements get to be immoderate, the slave who only has his arms no longer suffices. For the establishment of vast complicated organisations like our modern communities, for example, the equality and security of a limited monarchy, in which order and the acquisition of wealth is the common end of all, there was no basis ; when Rome desired to create it the cities were crushed out, the exhausted slaves had dis- appeared, the spring to set it in motion was broken, and all perished. This becomes clearer on entering the houses — those of / Cornelius Eufus, Marcus Lucretius, the Casa Nuova, and / the house of Sallust. They are small, and the apart? / ments are yet smaller. They are designed expressly for / enjoying cool air and to sleep in ; man passed his days / elsewhere — in the forum, in the baths, and at the theatre. / Private life, so important to us, w r as then much curtailed ; / the essential thing was public life. There is no trace of chimneys, and certainly there were bur few articles of THE CITY OF ANTIQUITY, AND ITS LIFE. 49 furniture. The walls are painted in red and black, a contrast which produces a pleasing effect in a semi- ob purity; arabesques of a charming airiness abound every- where — Neptune and Apollo building the walls of Troy, a Triumph of Hercules, exquisite little cup ids, dancing females apparently flying through the air, young girls inclining against columns, and Ariadne discovered by Bacchus. What vigour, what ingenuousness in all these youthful forms ! Sometimes the panel contains only a graceful sinuous border, and in its centre a griffin. The subjects are merely indicated, corresponding to our painted wall-papers ; but what a difference ! Pompeii i3 an antique St. Germain or Fontainebleau, by which one easily sees the gulf separating the old and the new worlds. Almost everywhere in the centre of the house is a garden like a large saloon, and in the middle of this a marble basin, a fountain flowing into it, and the whole en- closed within a portico of columns. What could be more charming, and simple, and better disposed for the warm hours of the day ? With green leaves visible between two white columns, red tiles against the blue of the sky, the murmuring water sparkling among flowers like a jet of liquid pearls, and those shadows of porticoes intersected by the powerful light ; is there a more congenial place for the. body to grow freely, for healthy meditation, and to enjoy, without ostentation or affectation, all that is most beau- tiful in nature and in life ? Some of these fountains bear lions' h^ads, and sprightly statuettes of children, with lizards, dogs, and fauns grouped around their margins In the most capacious of all these houses, that of Diomed orange and lemon trees, similar, probably, to those ot ancient days, are putting forth their fresh green buds ; a fishpool gleams brightly, and a small colonnade encloses a summer dining-room, the whole embraced within the C 50 NAPLES. square of a grand portico. The more the imagination dwells on the social economy of antiquity, the more beau- tiful it seems, and the more conformable to the climate and the nature of man. The women had their gyncscvum in the rear behind the court and portico, a secluded retreat with no external communication, and entirely separated from public life. They were not very active in their small apartments ; they indulged in indolent repose, like Italian ladies of the present day, or employed them- selves on woollen fabrics, awaiting a father's or husband's return from the business and converse of men. Wander- ing eyes passed carelessly over obscure walls, dimly discerning, not pictures, as in our day, plastering them, not archaeological curiosities, and works of a different art and country ; but figures repeating and beautifying ordinary attitudes, such as retiring to and arising from bed, the siesia, and various avocations; goddesses surrounding Paris, a Fortune, slender and elegant, like the females of Primaticcio, or a Deidamia frightened and falling back- ward on a chair. Habits, customs, occupations, dress, and monuments, all issue from one and a unique source ; the human plant grew but on one stalk, which stalk had never been grafted. At the present time the civilisation of the same land, here, at Naples, is full of incongruities, because it is older, and is made up of the contributions of diverse races. Spanish, Catholic, feudal, and northern traits generally commingle here, to confuse and deform a primitive, pagan, Italian sketch. Naturalness, accord- ingly, and ease have vanished ; all is grimace. Out of nil one sees at Naples, how much of it is really indigenous? A love of comfort, dress-coats, lofty edifices, and indus- trial craft, have all come from the North. Were man true to his instincts he would live here as the ancients did, that is to say, half-naked or clad in mantles of linen. Ancient civilisation grew out of the climate, and a race THE CITY OF ANTIQUITY, AND ITS LIFE. 51 appropriate to the climate, and this is why it was harmo- nious and beautiful. The theatre crowns the summit of a hill; its seats are of Parian marble; in front is Vesuvius, and the sea radiant with morning splendour. Its roof was an awning, which, again, was sometimes wanting. Compare this with our nocturnal edifices, lighted by gas and filled with a mephitic atmosphere, where people pile themselves up in gaudy boxes ranged in rows like suspended cages ; you then appreciate the difference between a gymnastic natural life with atheletic forms, and our complicated artificial life with its dress-coats. The impression is the same in the majestic amphitheatre exposed to the sun, except that here is the blot of antique society, the Roman imprint of blood. The same impression you find in the baths; the red cornice of the frig idarium is full of charm- ing airy little cupids, bounding away on horses or con- ducting chariots. Nothing is more agreeable and better understood than the drying-room, with its vault covered with small figures in relief in rich medallions, and a file of Hercules ranged round the wall, their vigorous shoulders supporting the entablature. All these forms live and are healthy ; none are exaggerated or overloaded. What a contrast on comparing with this our modern bathhouse, with its artificial, insipid nudities, its sentimental and voluptuous designs. The bathhouse nowadays is a wash- room ; in former times it was a pleasant retreat and a gymnastic institution.* Several hours of the day were devoted to it : the muscles got to be supple and the skin brilliant ; man here savoured of the voluptuous animality which permeated his alternately braced and! mollified flesh ; he lived not only through the head, as now, but through the body. * *H yvfxvaaTiK^. "We have no term by which to desif/nate an art em bracing all that related to the perfection of the naked ani iial. b 2 03 NAPLES. We descend and leave the city by the Street of Tombs. These tombs are almost entire; nothing can be nobler than their forms, nothing more solemn without being lugubrious. Death was not then surrounded with the torments of ascetic superstition, with ideas of hell ; in the mind of the ancients it was one of the offices of man, simply a termination of life, a serious and not a terrible thing, which one regarded calmly and not with the shud- dering doubts of Hamlet. The ashes and images of their ancestors were preserved in their dwellings ; they saluted them on entering, and the living maintained intercourse With them ; at the entrance of a city tombs were ranged on both sides of the street, and seemed to be the primi- tive, the original city of its founders. Hippias, in one of Plato's dialogues, says that ' that which is most beau- tiful for a man is to be rich, healthy, and honoured by Greeks, to .attain old age, to pay funeral honours to his parents when they die, and himself to receive from his children a fitting; and magnificent burial.' The truest history would be that of the five or six ideas that rule in the mind of man — how an ordinary man, two thousand years ago, regarded death, fame, well-being, country, love, and happiness. Two ideas controlled an- cient civilisation ; the first, that of man, and the second, that of the city : to fashion a fine animal, agile, tem- perate, brave, hardy, and complete, and this through physical exercise and selection of good stock; and then to construct a small exclusive community, containing in its bosom all that man loved and respected, a kind of permanent camp with the exigences of continual danger; — these were the two ideas that gave birth to all the rest CHAPTER IV. tB E MUSEO BORBONICO— THE PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, MANNERS, CUS- lOMS, AND RELIGION OF ANTIQUITY — MODERN PICTURES, AND THK SIXTEENTH CENTURY. The Museo Borbonico. — Most of the paintings of Pom- peii and Herculaneum have been removed to the Museo at Naples. These consist principally of mural decorations, and generally without perspective, there being one or two figures on a dark background, with now and then animals, slight landscape views, and sections of architecture. The colouring is feeble, it being scarcely more than indicated, or rather subdued, effaced, and not by time (for I have seen quite fresh pictures), but designedly. To attract the eye was not an aim in these somewhat sombre apart- ments ; they delighted in an attitude or form of the body, the mind being entertained with healthy and poetic images of physical activity. I have derived more pleasure from these paintings than from the most celebrated of the Eenaissance epoch. There is more nature, more life in them. The subjects have no particular interest, consisting ordinarily of a male or female figure nearly nude, raising an arm or a leg ; Mars and Venus, Diana finding Endy- mion, Briseis conducted by Agamemnon, and the like, dancers, fauns, centaurs, a warrior bearing away a female, who, so carried, is so much at her ease ! Nothing more is requisite, because you feel at once their beauty and 54 NAPLES. repose. You cannot comprehend, before seeing it, how many charming attitudes a half-draped figure, floating in the air, can present to you ; how many ways a veil can be raised, a flowing tunic arranged, a limb projected, and a breast exposed. The painters of these pictures enjoyed a Unique advantage, one which no others have possessed, even those of the Renaissance, of living amidst congenial social customs, of constantly seeing figures naked and draped in the amphitheatre and in the baths, and besides this, of cultivating the corporeal endowments of strength and flectness of foot. They alluded to fine breasts, well-set necks, and muscular arms as we of the present day do to expressive countenances and well-cut pantaloons. Two bronze statuettes among these paintings are masterpieces. One, called a Narcissus, is a young shep- herd, nude, and bearing a goatskin slung over his shoul- der ; it might be called an Alcibiades, so ironic and aristocratic is the smile and the turn of the head ; the feet are covered \vith the cneinid, and the fine chest, neither too full nor too spare, falls to the hips in a beauti- ful waving line. Such were Plato's youths, educated in the gymnasium ; such, Charmides, a scion of the best families, whose footsteps his companions followed because of his beauty and his resemblance to a god. The other is a satyr, also nude, and more virile, dancing with his head thrown back, and with an incomparable expression of gaiety. It may be said that nobody by the side of these people ever so felt and comprehended the human form. This feeling and knowledge were nourished by an ensemble of surrounding social habits and ideas Special conditions had to exist in order to evolve an ideal of humanity out of a nude human being happy in simple existence, and yet lacking none of man's grander intellec- tual characteristics. For this reason the centre of Greek art is not painting, but sculpture. PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES OF ANTIQUITY. 55 There is still another reason, which is that a pose was then practicable. To assume an attitude is, to-day, an effort and an act of vanity, but not so formerly. A Greek, in his leisure moments leaning against a column of the palestrum and contemplating youths exercising, or listening to a philosopher posed well because, first, he had acquired full mastery of every part of his body, and next, through aristocratic pride. Imposing demeanour, and that grave, noble aspect described by philosophers, belong to a noble society composed of men owning slaves, making war, and discussing laws ; there is no need to strive after it ; its natural and permanent source is man's consciousness of his importance, courage, independence, and dignity. Look at. the easy deportment of the young intelligent English nobles of the present day, and of the well-bred men of the highest French families ; society, however, now renders the young Englishman too stiff, and the young Frenchman too careless ; in antiquity it rendered the youth calm and sedate. We form some idea of this easy bearing from Plato, who opposes to the bustle, the ruses, the shoutings, the slave characteristics of the man of business, the natural repose of the free man, who confines himself to the deliberate discussion of general questions, who takes up and drops a subject at pleasure, ' who knows how to adjust his garments becom- ingly, and who, with unerring tact, following the harmony of philosophic discourse, celebrates the true life of gods and of immortals.' In promenading these silent halls alone for a few hours, the illusion grows on you. So many mementoes of the past render it, to a certain extent, present and palpable. And especially this assembly of white statues, which, in this cold grey atmosphere, like that of a subterranean gallery, resembles the manes who, in mysterious realms underground, maintain a sombre invisible existence ; or, 50 NAPLES. again, the inhabitants of those vacant circles whom he, the great pagan, places around living and tangible beings. Here are heroes and queens, * those that have acquired a name, or who have aspired to some noble end,' the elite of extinct generations ; here have they descended with 'grave deportment, taking their places before the throne of powers whom no man has fathomed. Even in Hades they maintain a proud, dignified attitude, ranging themselves alongside of their equals, the familiar asso- ciates of Persephone,' whilst the ignorant multitude, the souls of the vulgar, ' assigned to the depths where are the fields of Asphodel, among tall poplars, and on sterile pasture-ground, hum sadly like bats or spectres, and are no longer men.' Only do ideal forms escape the engulf- ment of time, and pepetuate for us perfect works and perfect thoughts. One forgets himself in the presence of such noble heads, before these stern Junos, these Venuses, these Minervas, these broad breasts of heroic gods, this grave human head of Jupiter. One of these heads, a Juno, is almost masculine, similar to that of a proud contemplative young man. I always returned to a colossal Flora, standing in the middle of the hall, draped so as to reveal her forms, but of such an austere dignified simplicity. She is a veritable goddess ; and how superior to the Madonnas, the skeletons, and ascetic sufferers like St. Bartholomew or St. Jerome ! A head and an attitude of this stamp are moral, but not in a Christian sense ; they do not inspire sentiments of mystic, painful resignation, but a desire to support life courageously, firmly, and calmly, with the proud consciousness of possessing a superior nature. I cannot enumerate or describe all these heads ; what I feel is, that of all the arts sculpture is the most Greek, and for this reason, that it displays a pure type, an abstract physical personage, form in itself, PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES OF ANTIQUITY. 57 as a fine race and a gymnastic life have moulded it ; and because it shows it independent of a group, and not subjected to expression and moral disturbances, with nothing to divert attention from it, and before the passions have disfigured it or subordinated its activity. This is, ■with the Greeks, the ideal type of man, such as their social and moral conceptions sought to develop him. His nudity is not indecent, but with them a distinctive trait, the prerogative of their race, the condition of their culture, the accompaniment of their great national and religious ceremonial. At the Olympic games the athletes wear no clothing ; Sophocles, fifteen years old, strips himself to sing the preon after the victory of Salamina. We of to-day sculpture nudities only through pedantry or hypocrisy ; they sculptured them in order to express a primitive, honest conception of the nature of man. This glorious conception followed them even into debauchery ; the paintings in their haunts of vice, as in the lupanars of Pompeii, exhibit forms full and robust, without voluptuous insipidity or seductive softness ; with them love is not a debasement of the senses or an ecstasy of the soid, but a function. Between the brute and the god, which Christianity opposes one to the other, they place man, who reconciles both. Hence their reason for painting him, and especially for carving his form in sculpture. Undoubtedly they implored images, according to the superstitious instincts of southern races, as their descendants nowadays implore the saints ; they prayed to Diana and the healing Apollo ; they burned incense before them, and poured out libations, as people now present ex-votos and wax candles to the Madonna and St. Januarius. They too had their sacred statuary in the recesses of their dwellings and in small oratorios specially adapted to them ; they repeated in their statues conse- crated attitudes and attributes, a Venus Anadyomene, a 68 NAPLES. Bacchus sleeping, as the paintings of the sixteenth cen- turv represent St. Catherine on her wheel, and St. Paul holding a sword, only the effect was different as the spectacle was different. In the passing glance they bestowed on these, instead of being affected by a bony figure or a bleeding heart, they were sensitive to a fine round shoulder, the arched back of an athlete, and a warrior's powerful chest ; and on these images, accumula- ting from infancy, their mind dwelt, forging for itself the type of man. All this thus spoke to them : ' Behold thyself as thou shouldst be, as thou shouldst drape thyself ! Strive to obtain flexible muscles and firm robust flesh ! Bathe thyself, frequent the palestrum, be strong on all occasions in behalf of thy city and friends ! ' "Works of art of the present time do not address us in this fashion ; we do not go naked, and we are not citizens ; our spokesman is Faust and Werther, or rather some late Parisian romance or the Songs of Heine. It now remains for me to cite a few works without which the foregoing would be somewhat obscure. The following are five or six of the most celebrated. The Farnesian Hercules is a vigorous porter, having just lifted a piece of timber, and thinking that a glass of wine would not come amiss. It is much too literal and vulgar ; he is not a god but an ox-killer. The Farnesian Bull. Amphion and Zethes, obeying their mother Antiope, bind Dirce to the horns of a bull. This work seems to belong to the second or third era of sculpture. There are four figures of life-size, besides the bull, some dogs, and a child. This is a picture or a drama ; the sculptor has sought to tell a story, to excite pathetic interest. All the arts lower themselves in departing from their appropriate sphere. There is a superb head of a horse in bronze. Like all admirable Greek horses, this one shows he is not yet a PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES OP ANTIQUITY. 59 vie dm to training; his spirit is intact; he has the short neck, intelligent eye, and exuberant will of undisciplined horses still observable on our landes or in the north of Scotland. This horse is a personage ; ours are machines. The charming Naples Psyche. This refined youthful torso, with its delicate distingue head, is likewise not of the great epoch of sculpture ; and still less the Yenus Calli- pygis, apparently a boudoir ornament, reminding one of the pretty license of our eighteenth century. There are innumerable statues and busts of actual personages in marble and in bronze ; a seated Agrippina, sad and energetic; nine statues of the Balba family; an admirable standing orator, preoccupied with the gravity of what he is about to utter, a veritable statesman, and worthy of the antique tribune ; Tiberius, Titus, Antonine, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius, all emperors and consuls, with statesmen's heads and a business-like aspect like our modern cardinals. On approaching nearer to our own times we find art inclining to mere portraiture ; objects are not ennobled but imitated; the faces of Sextus Era- piricus and Seneca look excited, anxious, and ugly, strik- ingly real, like plaster casts. Our Musee Campana at Paris shows that on reaching the centuries of degeneracy sculpture ended in the reproduction of morbid personal defects, such as deformities and nervous contortions, and other insignificant traits — like the bourgeois characters of Henri Monnier photographed to the life. Modern Pictures. — There are, I believe, seven or eight hundred pictures in this collection. I, who am not a painter, can only give the impressions of a man to whom painting affords much pleasure, and who sees in it, more- over, a complement of history. Raphael has several portraits, that of a cardinal, one of the chevalier Tibaldo, and another of Leo X. The Leo X. is a big sanctimonious personage, tolerably vulgar, and the 60 NAPLES. more strikingly so contrasted with the acolytes by his side, two crafty thoughtful ecclesiastics. Raphael's su- periority is observable in his perfectly healthy and just perceptions ; his portraits give us the essence of a man, without any affectation. Wbera. — A drunken Silenus, with a huge paunch, the chest of Vitellius, and dark features as low and cunning in expression as those of an inquisitive Sancho, and with horribly crooked legs : a strong light and surrounding shadows render all this brighter and more salient, and as a trumpet-blast to this brutal insignificance, this savage energy, a jackass is braying with all his might. Guercino. — His charming Magdalen, nude to the waist, is in the most graceful attitude, has the most beautiful hair, the most beautiful breasts, and the sweetest, tenderest, scarcely perceptible smile of dreamy melancholy ; she is the gentlest and most captivating of lovers, and is contemplating a crown of thorns! How remote from the simplicity and vigour of the pre- ceding age ! The reign of pastorals, sigisbes, and devout sentimentality has commenced ; this Magdalen is related to the Herminias and Sophronias and the gentle heroines of Tasso, and, with them, is born out of the Jesuitical reformation. Leonardo da Vinci. — A Virgin and Child of extraordi- nary finesse. Her eyes are downcast, and a strange mys- terious smile slightly draws the lip ; the face is disturbed with the emotion of a delicate, sensitive spirit of great intellectual refinement; behind the head appears a blooming lily. This artist is wholly modern, infinitely in advance of his age ; through him the Renaissance and our own epoch touch without an interval. He is already a savant, an experimentalist, an investigator, a sceptic, to which may be added the possession of the grace of a woman, and the chagrined heart of a man of genius. MODERN PICTURES, AND THE 16th CENTTjRY. 61 Several works by Parmegiano are of rare distinction, among which are some heads, long and elegant, and among them that of a modest candid young girl, bearing an expression of astonishment. A large portrait represents a grandee of the day, evidently a man of letters, a con- noisseur and a soldier; he wears a red cap, and his cuiras3 lies in one corner ; his noble face is delicate and dreamy, the hair and beard being abundant and of remarkable beauty ; a more aristocratic head could not be imagined. You observe in this head the peculiarly mild expression of a student ; he is a captain, a thinker, and a man of the world. Parmegiano lived in the first half of the sixteenth century, about the commencement of the decline of Italy. What genius and culture among the men of that day, subject to the oppressing influences of degeneracy ! Read the f Courtier ' of Castiglione, if you would obtain an idea of the polished, creative society imbued with philosophy, and liberal in spirit, then perishing. Its two destroyers are here, both painted by Titian ; Philip II., pale, stiff, irresolute, and with blinking eyes, a formal pedant such as the Venetian despatches describe him ; and the other Pope Paul III., with a large white beard, and the air of a brooding wolf. There is another pope by Sebastian del Piombo, with handsome regular features, but black like the waters of a turbid stream, and looking obliquely out of half-closed eyes. Various pictures complete this train of ideas ; for example, that by Micco Spadaro, entitled ( The Submission of Naples to Don John of Austria.' War was tragic enough in those days : we know how the Spaniards treated their recon- quered cities in Flanders. On the market place and all along the street dense masses of soldiers stand with pikes in hand, and muskets planted in their rests, awaiting the word of command; flags float from rank to rank; the vanquished city is overwhelmed by force and terror 62 NAPLES. Humbly on their knees the magistrates present itt , and on the pedestal of the statute of the viceroy; demolished by the revolutionary populace, and stretched along its white base, are severed heads staining it with their dripping blood ; high mournful houses behind it cast lugubrious shadows, and in the background rises a great barrier of mountains. Eight years after this the plague comes, and 50,000 persons at Naples die of it ; the Car- thusian monastery alone is preserved, through the inter- cession of its founder, and a second picture by the same artist represents this singular scene. You see in the air St. Martin and the Virgin arresting the vengeful arm of Christ, whilst an angel standing on the ground drives off the pestilence in the shape of a hideous old hag. All around are kneeling monks of the order, a set of vulgar heads, depending upon their patron who has taken their business in hand. One day two shepherd boys were expressing their wishes. One exclaimed, on breaking a piece of dry bread, ' If I was king, I would eat nothing but fat ; ' the other, who was out of breath chasing hogs, exclaimed, ' If I was king, I would watch my beasts on horseback.' Now, if I were king, I would transport all these portraits and historical subjects to my closet, and avail myself of them in acquiring a knowledge of history. Painters of the second and third rank abound here ; namely, Schidone, Luca Giordano, Preti, and Josepin, all of them really great men. Any of the charming well- developed vigorous female figures in the works of Lan- franco, a pupil of Guido, leaves far in the background our contemporary art, so elaborate, so incomplete, so largely composed of abortive experiments or painful imitation. Their figures are instinct with life ; they have suitable, well-proportioned limbs; there is ease, force, and com- pleteness in the structure of the body and in its groupings. MODERN PICTURES, AND THE 16th CENTURY. C3 Their heads are filled with colours and forms which flow out naturally and copiously, and readily diffuse them- selves on their canvases. Luca Giordano, so traduced and so rapid in execution, is a genuine painter ; the animation of his figures, and his gracefully moulded forms, with his fcreshortenings and silk draperies, and the action and vivacity of his style, all announce the genius of his art, that is to say, his ability to please the eye. He belongs to a different thinking stratum from ours; he was not nourished on philosophy and literature, and did not, like Delacroix, aspire to portray soul-tragedies, or, like De- camps, to express the outward world of nature, or, like so many others, to make pictures out of archaeology and history. The Danae, by Titian. This artist, certainly, had no aesthetic system ; all he cared for was to paint a splendid woman, a superb patrician's mistress. This head is quite vulgar — nothing beyond the voluptuous ; it is pro- bably that of some fisherman's daughter, willing to live idly, feed well, and wear pearl necklaces. But what flesh tones relieving on that white linen, and on that golden hair in such wild disorder about the throat ! What a per- fect hand projecting from that diamond bracelet, and what beautiful fingers and a yielding form ! There is another on a neighbouring canvas by an unknown artist su- perior in character, with the hand resting over the head, a flowering plant by her side, and in the distance a land- scape of blue mountains. She is grave, and her serious expression, like that of animals, is slightly tinged with melancholy. This is what ennobles this style of art Voluptuousness here is not indelicate, because it is perfectly natural; man does not lower himself to it, for he is on a level with it, while the grandeur of the scenery, coupled with the magnificence of the archi- tecture and a serene sky, throw around it the charms ot NAPLES. poetry. Man thus completes himself; it is one of the five or six great developments of existence. This one does not suffer by comparison; it is as it ought to be, finished, perfect; to reduce it, to purify it, would be to take away its essential beauty, to injure a rare flower the like of which no other civilisation ever produced ; one might as well insist on the tulip possessing a less ardent hue, or the rose a less exquisite fragrance. In front of this, and by an inferior hand, is a Venus and Adonis, the former being fat and ruddy, with cheeks and mouth somewhat overcharged with colour, and naked, except a strip of thin drapery, panting with desire and incapable of imagining anything nobler. And why not ? Who would wish her otherwise in this warm shadow, so deliciously imprisoning the amber tones of her fine form trembling in this warm light, palpitating like water in the glow of sunset, resting on that rich red mantle with that golden overturned vase by her side sending forth its brilliant reflections? Every great school of art is an existence in its own right, the same as every natural group of mor- tals. If systems suffer we do not. CHAPTEE Y. SOCIAL STATE— POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION. Conversations. — In the cafes, in the railway carriages, and in the drawing-rooms politics forms the substance of all discourse. Minds seem to be in a state of ebullition ; there is apparently the same ardour and vivacity, and the same convictions as with us in 1790. The newspapers, which are very numerous, widely diffused, and cheap, exhibit the same tone. For example : — I passed my first evening with a sculptor and a physician. According to these gentlemen, the brigands to the south (which prevents me from visiting Passtum) are simply brigands. They kill, burn, and rob. Brigandage is a profession, and a very good profession ; they even practise it on people of their own party. If they are denounced, they set fire to the dwelling of the informer, and so ter- rorise over the villages. In addition to this, it requires, in such mountains and thickets, a hundred soldiers to catch one man. i Is it not a Vendee ? ' I ask. s No ; the comparison is unworthy.' ' Nevertheless the country is Catholic, and the people are imaginative and fanatical ? * f No : it is nothing but a land of brigands.' Thereupon my friends become excited ; they see only one idea, and are inflated, like our early revolutionists, by newspaper phrases : resentment is ready, and their hopes are infinite. According to them, again, the existing evil comes from France, which, in maintaining the Pope at Pome, up- holds a hotbed of intrigue. Peine is an abscess affect- s' 66 NAPLES. ing the. entire body. For sixty years France has mad'j immense progress in science and in general prosperity, but none in religion or morality ; she is as low as she ever was in her subserviency to the clergy. Here comes in a flood of eighteenth century phrases. •The struggle in Italy, they say, is between education and ignorance. The intelligent class is wholly liberal — the middle class, be it understood. The nobles are ob- v stinate : look at the great aristocratic faubourg on the road to Herculaneum, all the houses of which are shut up. The populace of Naples, to which the Bourbons granted every license, are not content, and if the Austrians should return there would be violence ; but the true people, the artisans, the men who at bottom are honest and who labour, are slowly rallying. If there were four of these in the retrograde party the day after the Revolution, there are only two to-day. Liberty is producing its effect. The army, especially, is a school of union, instruction, and honour. The soldiers are learning to read and to write ; they hear people talk about Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, and love of country. Families are no longer made miserable, as formerly, by having their children torn from them. There are men of every class in the ranks ; sons of peasants march side by side with the sons of lawyers and of doctors. Military substitution is difficult : a man knowing how to read, write, and calculate, must furnish another knowing how to read, write, and calculate : the son of a certain noble, unable to find a substitute of this kind, had to go himself. A great war like that of 1792 is wanted to concentrate all these diversities through the confraternity of arms. Your nation is a great one,' they add; ' you have emancipated yourselves from slavery; you do not surfer the hundred thousand infamies and miseries of the Bourbon regime. You can comprehend how Ave also need our Revolution.' SOCIAL STATE. 67 Another conversation with a man about thirty in a railway carriage, a cotton-broker. He is scouring the environs, and buying up crops to resell to the English, the country round Vesuvius being now planted with cotton. According to him, • they have in his line for three years past made astonishing progress. Under the Bour- bons it was impossible to do anything, even to sell or to buy. There was no commerce whatever ; they were averse to contracts with strangers, and discouraged the entry and export of merchandise. Now that we are free everything is different. The peasant, sure of earning money, sows and works, even in summer. At midday he rests, the heat being terrible ; but at evening and in the morning, during the supportable hours, he goes into the field. Under the Bourbons people did not and could not do but three things — drink, eat, and occasionally amuse themselves; there was complete prohibition in every other respect ; no study, no newspapers, and no discus- sion of religion or politics ; denunciations were perpetual, and imprisonments frightful ; one felt himself liable at any moment to the touch of the hand of an inquisitor. Let us have twenty years to ourselves, and you will see what a change there will be ! ' He had travelled in the South, and stated that 'the brigands form a sort of chonannerie* but of a low order. The peasant is not very hostile to them, because he is ignorant and superstitious. Besides, it is impossible to penetrate the boschi where they conceal themselves, and Rome is constantlv sending them recruits.' Everywhere brigands, nobody speaks of anything else. According to the Liberal newspapers, ' they are fit only for * In the war of La Vender, daring the Revolution in France, the peasantry ^vhoso sentiments werG in favour of the Bourbons were called chouans, and Itrganised attempts at insurrection chouanneries. — Ta. r 2 68 NAPLES. the galleys,' while, according to the clerical journals, 'they are insurgent martyrs.' Desiring to form an opinion for myself, I read the diary of General Borges, a Spaniard and a Bourbonite, who recently traversed the kingdom of Naples from end to end, but who was taken and shot a few leagues from the Roman frontier. After reading this the following facts may be depended on, Borg&s was a sort of Vendean, and he had with him some honest persons, for instance, his officers. He encounters a certain number of Bourbonites, shepherds, peasantry, and former soldiers, but a very small number. The bands supporting him, and holding the country before his landing, are composed of robbers and assassins, who repeatedly, on taking a town or hamlet, kill, pillage, and maltreat, and carry on war like savages. The national guard and the well-to-do people are everywhere against them. My hostess at Sorrento said to me, ' Here and in the neighbourhood you will find three Piedmontese for one Bourbonite ; but over there, to the South, there are three Bourbonites for one Piedmontese.' All this is easily- understood. Here is another conversation at Castellamare, this time with a retired subordinate officer ; he is a fanatic, and speaks with the air of one trying to make converts. He says * that priests are the authors of all the trouble ; that in France they are pious and honest, but that here they are robbers and assassins, and that the head-quarters of their conspiracies is at Rome. He cites the famous General Mannas under Murat, who, in order to starve out brigands, forbade, under penalty of death, a morsel of bread being taken outside the towns, and on a priest leaving to take the host to a dying man, had him shot, col santissimo nclla mano? He showed me the way to a celebrated chapel, and, on my entering, shrugged Lid SOCIAL STATE. 69 shoulders in a significant manner. Is it not curious, after a lapse of sixty years, to encounter Jacobins ! The more I read the newspapers, the more I talk with people, the more do I find the resemblance striking. We also, at first, had only a liberal middle-class ; the national property had to be sold, and a foreign invasion take place in order to rally our peasanty to the Revolution. 1/ We also battled with an intestine insurrection, and witnessed a civil war in the most ignorant and most religious section of the country. We also improvised schools, a national guard, an army, and legal tribunals. W^e also beheld nobles emigrate with the king, and, later, seclude themselves sullenly on their estates. Here it is the small edition of a great work ; but the new volume is not yet stitched — its sheets hold together badly. Before it can acquire consistency like ours it must undergo a ten years' grinding process under heavy burdens, or, in other words, dread the interference of strangers. An evening with Magistrates, Professors, and Literary men. — The greatest obstacle here in the way of the Government is the large number of privileged persons maintained under the Bourbons, and who are now out of place. For example, there was a large manufactory of iron fabrics, which cost the Government two millions a year, and which yielded nothing; the workmen had gradually been replaced by sons of officers or by employes receiving five francs a day as locksmiths, overseers, &c, and who only came at the end of the month to receive their pay, a small number making their appearance in the bureaux between the hours of eleven and three. The Revolution occurred, and their wages were stopped. They made a great noise, however, and were paid. The manufactory is found to be too costly, and it is put up at auction. Nobody appears to bid. Finally, a bold specu- lator agrees to take it for ten years, and pay a rent of 70 NAPLES 48,000 ducats. Assembling the employes and pretended workmen, the new master says to them, ' I will pay you as formerly, but on condition that you do the work of a full day/ This is greeted with shouts and reclamations, ' Very well, then, work as you please, and I will pay you by the hour.' This is followed by a riot. The bersaglieri are welcomed with stones, to which they retort with shot. Since that time order is restored, and the manufactory begins to operate, the famished sinecurists meanwhile being furious. One of these said to me, ' Look at this miserable Piedmontese Government ! I held a position of 1,200 francs a year, which left me free the whole day, so that I could attend to business in another place at a bankers. Now that I am married and have two children, these rascals suppress it ! ' So was it in 1791 with the household officers of the king, queen, dauphin, and princes, the menins (foster-brothers), captains, masters of the hounds, &c. King Ferdinand, like Louis XV., meddled with State supplies. His effective army consisted of ninety-five, thousand men ; a hundred thousand were put in the budget, and he appropriated the surplus to himself. Besides this he reserved for himself, his favourites, and his secretaries, the right of making appointments : there were consequently two sorts of office-holders, the fat one, who came monthly to the bureau to get his pay, and the lean one, who performed the service, and got a quarter of the remuneration. These people are all greatly irritated, which is not strange. The priests likewise are in no better humour, and they have no reason to be. They have lost credit, and no longer take the wall. Three years ago there were so many monks and ecclesiastics at Naples, that a lady in the house in which I lodged, in a frequented street, stood at a window and counted a hundred per hour passing it. SOCiAL STATE. 71 Almost every family numbered one son an ecclesiastic. To-day they are not so numerous. After the Revolution they concealed themselves ; but now they are again up pearing, in companies of two or three, going out and taking their usual promenades. They think that the Government wants to starve them, and that in seques- trating convent property it declared itself their enemy; and they consequently are working against it, especially through the women. There are fourteen thousand men in the national guard of Naples, which for a city numbering five hundred thousand inhabitants, is not a great number. They pre- tend that they might have double this number, which again is not a great deal. They state that the lower class is enormously large, and that it cannot yet be trusted with arms ; it counts for nothing, and has yet to be instructed ; besides, there is nothing to fear from it, as it is not capable of erecting barricades ; three years ago, in the absence of all other authority, the national guard was amply sufficient to maintain order. The same state of things exists in the municipalities ; the captains prefer to enrol only a few men ; they do not accept half-way vagabonds, or those compromised with the former Government. Besides, the peasants are all armed, and walk about with guns on their shoulders — an old custom, the effect of the vendetta and of inveterate habits of brigandage. When Victor Em- manuel cametl ey all crowded around him thus accoutred, which affords substantial proof of their not feeling them- selves conquered or oppressed. A foreign ambassador present on that occasion remarked, ' Italy is made.' I have to return to the national guard of fourteen thousand men. These figures simply indicate a govern- ing bourgeoisie, and justify, up to a certain point, the declaration of its adversaries ; such, for instance, as that of a fanatical, provincial Neapolitan marquis at Paris who, 72 NAPLES. in my presence, fifteen days ago, charged the national guard with being a coterie, calling them traitors and in- struments of the Piedmontese, and declaring that both the nobles and the people, save a few deserters, were now bending beneath a yoke and indignantly murmuring. The reply to this is to make me read the clerical gazettes Bold at Naples and in the streets, which repeat the same charges, only in stronger terms, thereby proving that nobody is gagged. Again, the garrison of Naples is six thousand men. Is this sufficient to keep down a city of five hundred thousand disposed to rebel ? As to the means of gaining over the peasantry, they state that ( the Government does not possess, as the Convention did, an enormous amount of national property to sell to them; that, since the first Napoleon, the feudal regime has been abolished throughout the kingdom, and that already a great number of peasants have become proprietors. Meanwhile the confiscated property of the convents is to be disposed of, and the sale of this will rally to the sup- port of the Revolution numerous purchasers ; besides which, they can depend on new clearings and productions, and on the general increase of public wealth. The country is of marvellous fertility : the soil sometimes yields seven crops in a season, grapes, grains, vegetables, oranges, nuts, &c. For two years past the cultivation of cotton has in- creased on all sides, and the profits have been enormous ; instead of eight or ten ducats the quintal, it has amounted to thirty-two and forty. Peasants now at the cafes pull dollars out of their pockets; they pay borrowed sums and mortgages ; they begin to purchase land, which is a passion with them, and in some places one crop has proved sufficient to pay for the soil acquired. It has been remarked that for a long time brigandage is less frequent, and that there is more of labour in districts where small farms abound; and in this view of things Murat legis* *3 lated. Accordingly they are now beginning in various places to alienate and partition land, Add to this the mortmain tenures before mentioned, the influx of foreign capital, and that manufactures are being established, and newspapers diffused; also, as experience shows, that a Neapolitan learns to read and write in three months, no race being more subtle, more prompt in seizing on and comprehending ideas of all kinds. The peasant enriched and enlightened will become a Liberal. * One of the company present gives a recent conversa- tion wkh a soldier. This jnan had served under the Bourbons. When Garibalcli landed with his little band, a report spread that he was accompanined with sixty thousand men, whereupon, with the consent of their captain, each member of the company laid down his arms and accoutrements and proceeded tranquilly homewards. On Victor Emmanuel being proclaimed, our friend en- countered this man, and made him ashamed of himself, and, indicating him as a suitable recruit, had him re- enlisted. A year expired, and he met him again. This time the man is overjoyed and full of gratitude ; he has a martial air, and he exclaims, ' Ah, your Excellence, how happy lam! I have been to Milan, Turin, and a good many other cities ! And I know how to read ! " e And to write ? ' responds our friend. f Not very well yet ; but I can write my name.* * Here,' says the gentleman, 6 is a piastre ; and when you shall have learned to write you shall have another.' This man was transformed by military service; it disciplines a man, and creates habits of cleanliness, and instils into him sentiments of honour and love of country. Our friend, addressing another, remarked, ' You are going now to fight for the king.' ' No/ he replied, not for king, but for country: there is a parliament now. 1 They read newspapers, costing them a cent., and employ M NAPLES. the high-sounding terms which are often so vapid and so abused, but at this moment so true and noble and of such powerful effect. Two Italians in a railroad carnage with me, on coming in sight of Naples after five years' absence, remarked one to the other, ' They are improving ; they are almost a moral people.' They require time; time will consolidate all things, even the finances : at present these are the great sore. Last year the deficit was a million a day. They will improve gradually as the nation produces and consumes more. During the year just closed Naples disposed of cot- ton amounting to a hundred millions, and this year the crop will be still more valuable. Custom duties in the south used to produce very little, as smugglers had their own way ; but now other officers have been installed, and an inspector, a brother of one of our friends, states that the increase this year will amount to seven hundred thousand ducats. There is another sign of pacification. The Government has removed the Madonna boxes from the corners of the streets ; these were often found in the morning marked with dagger-blows, given either by the Mazzinians or the Bourbonites, and they have accordingly been deposited in neighbouring churches. In certain quarters the women assemble and wring their hands, and indulge in lamenta- tions, but in others this step is regarded favourably, for they were often desecrated by profanities and pollutions against the wall beneath them. An interesting experiment is being tried here, and one worthy of close attention, that of a revolution less violent than our own, and less affected by foreign intervention ; the same at bottom, since it involves the transformation of a feudal into a modern community, but differing in this respect, that the transformation goes on in a closed retort and without explosion ; it is true, however, POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION. 75 that an Austrian bayonet would shatter the retort in pieces. The same activity and exuberance is apparent in science and religion as in politics. The university contains ten thousand students and sixty professors. A student's lodging costs sixty francs per month, and he lives on macaroni, fruits, and vegetables ; people in the country eat but little, and necessaries are consequently cheap. German erudition and methods prevail. Hegel is read with facility. M. Vera, his most zealous and best accre- dited interpreter, has a chair here. M. Spaventa is trying to discover an Italian philosophy, and shows Gioberti to be a sort of Italian Hegel. You thus see amour-propre and national prepossessions penetrating even into the realm of pure reason. Yesterday a newspaper warmly commended a modern Italian picture exhibited in the Musee, and complained of the Italians for not sufficiently admiring their own artists, and of committing the weakness of too greatly admiring foreign art. All this is naive, but sincere. Young people and the public generally take great interest in these researches. Naples is the land of Vico, and has always possessed philosophical aptitude. Lately a great crowd thronged to an exposition of the * Pheno- menology' of Hegel : they translate his technical terms and abstractions without any difficulty — and such ab- stractions ! The system spreads from the centre to all its diverse branches. The law course is especially strong, and arranged wholly according to the German manner. The students are as yet confined to the formulas and classifications of Hegel, but the professors are begin- ing to overstep these limits, and to pursue their own methods, each in his own fashion and according to his intel- lectual capacity. Ideas are still vague and floating, everything being in a state of formation. 70 BTAPMa Mean while one may question whether their food is well select cd, and if fresh minds can assimilate such aliment; it is tough, ill-cooked meat : they feast on it with youthful appetites as the scholastics of the twelfth century devoured Aristotle, in spite of the disproportion and the danger of indigestion and even of strangling. A culti- vated foreigner who has resided here for the past ten years replies to me that the most difficult reasoning and all German dissertations are comprehended naturally, but that French books are much less so. If they read Vol- taire's romances, they find but little amusement in them ; they do not feel his grace, and regard his irony simply as a means of evading censure. M. Renan, whom they admire infinitely, seems to them timid : * Why,' they ask, 'does he take so many precautions ? he is a delicate restorer of Christianity.' His finished art, his tact, his sentiment, so poetic and comprehensive, escapes them entirely ; they have translated his book, and ten thousand copies have been sold at Naples ; they would consider it a privilege to see and to handle his autograph ; but their admira- tion is for the combatant and not the critic. Hence the success of ' Le Maudit',* which title figures in the win- dows of every bookstore in Naples. They are delighted with heavy artillery of this description. They demand a vigorous attack, a bold exhibition of facts : they are avenging themselves of their former slavery. There are no good periodicals : the fashion of penny papers prevails, and the editorial standard is in keeping. The telegraphic news of the morning is the first thing, and if enforced with a gross tirade all the better. They sub- ject our French journals to this standard of criticism; they do not appreciate the quiet eloquence, concise style, and delicate irony of Prevost-Paradol, much preferring * A well-known romance, purporting to narrate the experience of a Jesuit priest, and in which the practices of the Romish Church are exposed. — Ta. POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION. 77 the premiers Paris of the democratic organs. Let us hear in mind our own journals of 1789 — their declamation, high-sounding terms, and empty rhetoric. Whilst breakfasting yesterday at a cafe I observed in one of the penny papers a curious feuilleton, consisting of the fourth lecture of Professor Ferrari on the ( Philosophy of History,' in which ideas derived from the early investi- gations of Giannone in relation to religious history are expounded. According to Giannone, the early Christians were not believers in paradise ; their fundamental dogma was the resurrection of the body : up to the resurrection the dead remained in a sort of state of passivity and ex- pectancy. Theology, gradually developing, placed dead believers apart ; soon St. Augustine awards them a pre- liminary semi-beatitude, and under Pope St. Gregory they ascend at once into heaven. Ideas like these, so freely explored and so widely popularised, must evidently pro- duce a great effect. The Jesuit College is now under the ban of Victor Emmanuel. In the street you see scholars belonging to various establishments, no longer led by a priest but by a sergeant. On this transformation, and on the increase of sources of public education, their strongest hopes are built. Fifty-eight public district-schools have been established in Naples, and one in each principal town. There are a great many readers amongst the middle class. All the interesting and learned productions of Germany, England, and France may be found at Detken's book- store; all the best w r or''S on physiology, law, language, and especially philosophy, find purchasers : his store is a sort of literary and scientific club-room. To converse freely and on all-important subjects is for them the highest gratification. ' Three years ago,' they say, * even with closed doors we dared not speak. Had we been seen collected together, a spy w r ould have tracked us at once.' 78 NAPLES. They are now in all the ardour of production and of re- naissance. A strong force is excavating Pompeii, and the new discoveries are published in magnificent form, illus- trated with polychromatic drawings. It is a pleasure to look at their fine Italian heads and expressive eyes, and underneath a certain circumspect air, to detect the ardent glow within ; they openly or tacitly express a pro- found joy, like that of a man on first moving his limbs after having been a long time confined in prison. In respect to ideas they do not lack suitable preparation ; already under the Bourbons two or three booksellers made fortunes by smuggling and paying custom-house officials and inspectors, concealing their books under their beds, and disposing of them at quintuple rates. In this way excellent libraries were formed even in the provinces, for instance, that of the father of the poet Leopardi. This or that retired bourgeois or petty noble studied, not assuredly for fame or profit (because it was dangerous to be a savant), but to learn. They acquired accordingly much and quickly. I saw a young man twenty-one years old thus labouring by himself and for himself, who knew Sanscrit, Persian, and a dozen other tongues ; who was conversant with Hegel, Spencer, Schopenhauer, Mill, and Carlyle, and with current French and German produc- tions relating to law, philosophy, linguistic study, and exegesis. His erudition and comprehension are those of a man of forty. He is now going to complete his education by passing a year each at Paris and Berlin. These are noble germs ; I trust there are many of them, and that they are increasing. But such achievements, and a delight in the conflict of ideas, are not all ; it is necessary to produce, to carve out one's own way ; for without invention there is no true culture. Several of my friends are somewhat concerned on this point; they regard this ebullition as superficial, viewing this new outburst of intellectual POLITICS, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION. 79 activity as a kind of operatic display, a brilliant fairy spectacle to which speculative brains are abandoning themselves. 'A few erudites,' they say, ' import and accumulate mountains of foreign material : a curious crowd gathers around their plans, studying fac-similes and imitations of foreign models? Who is to conceive and execute the national monument \ ' CHAPTER VI. INTELLECTUAL AND OTIIEIt TRAITS— SAN CARLO AND SAN CARLINO. Streets, Promenades, and Theatres. — Most of the women are ordinary, but there are a large number of handsome, genteel, well-dressed young men. A friend who has travelled over Italy states that one encounters people in quite small towns who have dined on a bit of bread and cheese, but who wear new gloves, and seem apparently to N / have just left Dusau toy's establishment. It is a universal rule that the more a man thinks of the women the better he dresses. Many among them have heads like those of Correggio, with a tranquilly voluptuous air, and a smile constantly blissful and serene. It is very pleasing, and it enables you to comprehend their amatory characteristics. When they address a woman this smile becomes more cap- tivating and tenderer ; there is no French piquancy or petulance in it ; they seem to be enraptured, to relish with the keenest zest every word that drops from her mouth, one by one, like so many drops of honey. The light popular songs, the national music, and the operas of Cimerosa express the same sentiment. Amongst the lower classes every young girl of fifteen has a lover ; every young man of seventeen has one like- wise, the passion with both being strong and enduring. Both intend marriage, and wait as long as is requisite, INTELLECTUAL AND OTHER TRAITS. 81 which is until the young swain can purchase the principal article of furniture, an immense square bed. Observe this, however, that he does not in the interval lead the life of a Trappist. No people are more given to pleasure, none are more precocious ; at thirteen years of age a child is a man. A young girl stands at her window, while a young man passes and repasses, and stands in the porte-cochere, both making sij a Graduate of the University of Oxford. 108 ROME. lack artists as commentators ; thus far closet erudites arc their sole interpreters. Those who are familiar with an- tique vases, see nothing in them but their design and fine proportions, their classic merit ; there remains to be dis- covered their colouring, emotion, life, all of which is super- abundant. Observe the petulance, the drollery, the in- credibly fertile imagination of Aristophanes, his prolific, surprising, and ridiculous invention, his fantastic buffoon- ery, his incomparable freshness, and the startlingly sublime poesy intermingled with his grotesque imagery. Put to- gether the wit and fancy of all the studios of Paris for twenty years, and there would be no approach to it. The human brain of those days was organised and furnished in a peculiar manner ; sensations entered it with another shock, images with another relief, and ideas with other sequences. In certain traits the ancients resemble the present Nea- politans, in others the social French of the seventeenth century, in others the young literary aspirants of the re- publics of the sixteenth century, and in others, finally, the armed English now extending their empire in New Zealand ; but a lifetime is necessary, and the genius of a Goethe, to enable one to reconstruct souls of that stamp. I see a part, but not the whole. Besides special collections, there are here two grand museums of antique sculpture, those of the Capitol and of the Vatican. They are very well arranged, especially the latter: the most precious statues are placed in distinct cabinets painted in dark red, so that the eyes are not diverted from theni, the statue being seen in full light. The ornamentation is modest and cf antique sobriety: traditions are better preserved here than elsewhere, the popes and their architects having retained somewhat of grandeur in their taste even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As. to the two edifices, I refer you to engravings ; old ANTIQUE STATUES. 109 ones are best ; first, because they issue from a truer senti- ment, and next, because they have a dreary, or at least a grave aspect. Let a drawing be clean and fresh, especially as it approaches the elegant illustrations of the present day, and it represents Rome in an opposite sense. It must be borne in mind that a monumental structure, even when modern, is defaced and neglected ; winter has cracked its stones, and the rains have covered it with dingy spots ; the pavement of its courts is disjointed, and many of the slabs are broken and sunk in the ground ; its antique statues display half amputated feet and bodies covered with scars; the poor old marble divinities have been scratched with the knives of idle boys or show the effects of a long sojourn on a damp soil. A biased imagination, moreover, ampli- fies : two or three visits are necessary in order to arrive at just conceptions. Who, for instance, has not silently wondered on thinking of the Capitol ? This mighty word agitates you beforehand, and you are disappointed on find- ing a moderately grand square flanked by three palaces not at all grand. Nevertheless it is imposing ; a grand stone staircase leading up to it, gives it a monumental entrance. Two basalt lions guard the base of the ascent, and two colossal statues its summit. Balustrades with their solid lines cross and recross in the air, while on the left a second staircase of extraordinary width and length stretches upward to the red facade of the church of Ara- Coeli. On these steps hundreds of beggars as ragged as those of Callot, clad in tattered hats and rusty brown blankets, are warming themselves majestically in the sunshine. You embrace all this in a glance, the convent and the palace, the colossi and the canaille : the hill loaded ■with architecture suddenly rises at the end of a street, its stone masses spotted with crawling human insects. This is peculiar to Rome. The Capitol. — In the centre of the square stands 110 ROME. bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. The atti- tude is perfectly easy and natural ; he is making a sign with his right hand, a simple action, that leaves him calm while it gives life to the entire person. He is going to address his soldiery, and certainly because he has something important to say to them. He does not parade himself; be is not a riding-master like most of our modern eques- trian figures, nor a prince in state displaying his rank : the antique is always simple. He has no stirrups ; this is a pernicious modern contrivance, interfering with the freedom of the limbs, and due to the same manufacturing spirit that has produced flannel-jackets and jointed clogs. His horse is of a strong stout species, still related to the horses of the Parthenon. Nowadays, after eighteen centuries of culture, the two races, man and horse, have become refined and distingue. On the right, in the Palazzo dei Conservatory is a superb Cajsar in marble,, wearing a cuirass, and in a no less manly, natural attitude. The ancients set no value on that half-feminine delicacy, that nervous sensibility which we call distinction, and on which we pride ourselves. For the distingue man of the present day a salon is necessary ; he is a dilettante, and entertaining with ladies ; although capable of enthusiasm he is inclined to scepticism ; his politeness is exquisite ; he dislikes foul hands and disagreeable odours, and shrinks from being confounded with the vulgar. Alcibiades had no apprehension of being confounded with the -vulgar. A huge dismembered colossus has left his marble feet, fingers, and head here ; the fragments lie strewn about the court between the columns. But the most interest- ing objects are the barbarian kings in black marble, so vigorous and so melancholy-looking in their grand drapery! These are Roman captives, the vanquished of the north, as they followed the triumphal car to end their career with the axe on the Capitol. You cannot move without GREEK NUDITY AND GYMNASTIC LIFE. HI encountering some new sign of antique life. Facing you in the court of the museum is the large statue of a river deity stretched out over a fountain, a powerful pagan torso, with the thick hair and ample beard of a virile god slumbering half-naked and enjoying a simple natural existence. Above* this the restorer of the museum, Clement XII., has placed his own charming little bust, the student's and politician's subtle, worn, and meditative features. The first and the second Rome appear side by side. How describe a gallery ? One necessarily falls into enumeration. Let me merely designate a few statues as points of indication, in order to give a form anl a support to the ideas they suggest. The hall of the dying Gladiator. — Here is a real and not an ideal statue ; the figure nevertheless is beautiful, because men of this class devoted their lives to exercis- ing naked. Around him are ranged an admirable Antinous, a grand draped Juno, the Faun of Praxiteles, and an Amazon raising her bow. The ancients naturally represented man naked, whereas we as naturally represent him draped. Personal experience provided them with ideas of a torso, of a full chest displayed like that of Antinous, of the expanded costal muscles of a leaning side, of the easy continuity of the hips and thighs of a youthful form like that of the bending Faun. In short, they had two hundred ideas for every form and movement of the nude, whereas we are limited to the cut of a dress-coat and to facial expression. Art requires daily experience and observation ; from this proceeds public taste ; that is to say, the marked preference for this or that type. The type defined and understood, there are always some superior men to express it. This is why when familiar objects change art changes. The mind, like certain insects, assumes the colour of the plant on US ROME. •which it feeds. Nothing is more true than that art is the epitome of life. A Faun in red marble. — This one plainly belongs to an ulterior epoch; but the second age only continues the first. Rome, Hellenised, is another Greece. Even under the Emperors, under Marcus Aurelius, for example, gymnastic education was not sensibly modified. The two civilisations make one, both being the two stories of the same house. He holds a cluster of grapes in each hand, displaying them with an air of charming good-humour, free from all vulgar sentiment. Physical joy in antiquity is not debased, nor, as with us, consigned to mechanics, common people, and drunkards. In Aristophanes, Bacchus is at once merry-andrew, coward, knave, glutton, and fool, and yet he is a divinity ; and what frenzy of joyous imagination ! Two other Fauns with well-defined muscles and bodies turned half around, also a Hercules, a magnificent wrestler in bronze-gilt. The interest of the attitude is wholly confined to the backward action of the body, which gives another position to the belly and pectoral muscles. In order to comprehend this we have only the swimming schools of the Seine, and Arpin, the terrible Savoyard. But how many have seen Arpin ? And who is not dis- agreeably affected in our frog-ponds with its undressed bodies paddling about ? A large sarcophagus represents the story of Achilles : properly speaking, there is no dramatic interest in it, but only five or six nude young males, two females in the centre draped, and two old men in the corners. Each form being beautiful and animated, is sufficiently interesting in itself; the action is secondary, as the group is not there to represent this ; it simply binds the group together. Passing a fine female figure draped, we come to a nude young man, and then to an admirable old man seated— MORAL DIFFERENCES AND CHANGE OF COSTUME. 11a all the artist intended to express. To see a body leaning over, an arm upraised, and a trunk firmly planted on the two hips, is pleasure enough. It is certain that *all this is immensely removed from our customs. If we of the present day are prepared for any art it is not for statuary, nor even for the higher walks of painting, but, at most, for the painting of land- scape and of common life, and to a greater extent for romance, poetry, and music. Since I do not traffic with my thoughts, and can speak of things as I find them, I am firm in the opinion that the great change in history is the advent of pantaloons : all the barbarians ol the North wear them in their statues ; it marks the passage from Greek and Roman civilisation to the modern. — This is not a jest or a paradox , nothing is more difficult than to change a daily and universal habit. For a man to be draped and undraped he must be demo- lished and reconstructed. The distinctive trait of the Renaissance is the abandonment of the two-handed sword and full armour : the slashed doublet has succumbed, and the cap and tight hose show the passage from feudal life to court life. A French Revolution was necessary to banish breeches and small sword ; the plebeian or fagged business man in boots, pantaloons, and frock-coac, now replaces the courtier with his red-heeled shoes, the em- broidered fine talker of the ante-chamber. — In the same way the nude is an invention of the Greeks. It was discovered by the Lacedaemonians along with their tactics and regi- men ; the other Greeks adopted it towards the fourteenth Olympiad. To the exercises for which it is best adapted they owe their military supremacy. If, as Herodotus* says, the brave Medes were conquered at Platasa, it was because they were embarrassed by their long robes. Each Greek standing alone thus found that he was more agile, more adroit in the use of his limbs, more robust, and better I 114 ROME. prepared for the ancient system of combat of man to man and body to body. In this respect nudity formed one among many customs and institutions, and was an out- ward sign by which the nation distinguished itself. I now enter the gallery of busts. It would be bettes to speak of it in sober phrases and with points of excla- mation ; but character is so salient it is impossible to do otherwise than note it in decisive terms. These Greeks and Romans, after all, were men : why not treat them as contemporaries ? Scipio Africanus : a broad bold head and not handsome ; the temples are flat like those of carnivorous animals, but the square chin and firm energetic lips show the animal- tamer. Pompey the Great : here, as in history, ranks in the second class. Cato of Utica : a peevish schoolboy with big ears, rigid, drawn features and distorted checks, a grumbler and narrow-minded. Corbulo: a wry-necked, wheedling dotard, troubled with the cholic. Aristotle : a full complete head, like that of Cuvier, slightly deformed on the right cheek. Theophrastus : a face with a worn, suffering expres- sion. The complaint on happiness, on which Leopardi has commented, is by him. Marcus Aurelius : his bust is one of those you encounter the oftenest; you recognise at once his full prominent eyes. It is a noble, melancholy head, that of a man mastered by his intellect, a meditative idealist. Demosthenes : he has all the spirit and energy of the man of action ; the brow is somewhat retreating, and the eye is as keen as a rapier ; he is the perfect combatant, always armed. Terence : an absent-minded dreamer, with low brow, BUSTS. ] 15 small skull, and a melancholy, impoverished look ; a client of the Scipios, a poor dependant, a former slave, a delicate purist, and a sentimental poet, whose comedies were less esteemed than rope-dancing. Commodus : a peculiar, shrewd, and dangerously wilful countenance, with full prominent eyes ; a young beau, a dandy capable of strange freaks. Tiberius : not a noble head ; but for character and capacity well qualified to carry the affairs of an empire in his head and to govern a hundred million men. Caracalla : a square, vulgar, violent head, restless like that of a wild beast about to spring. Nero : a fine full skull, but with an expression of low humour. He looks like an actor or a leading singer at the opera, vain and vicious, and diseased both in imagina- tion and in intellect. The principal feature is a long pointed chin. Messalina: she is not handsome, and has carefully decked herself with a double row of dainty curls. There is a sickly smile on her face that pains you. Hers was the age of grand lorettes : this one exhibited all the folly, passion, sensibility, and ferocity that the species possesses. She it was who, moved one day by the elo- quence of an accused person, withdrew to conceal her tears, but recommending her husband beforehand not to let him escape. Vespasian: a powerful man, firmly relying on well- poised faculties, ready for any emergency, circumspect, and worthy to be a Renaissance pope. Again in another room observe a bust of Trajan, in*, penally grand and redoubtable, in which Spanish pride and pomposity are most conspicuous. The history of Augustus should be read on this spot : these busts tell us more of the time than the indifferent chroniclers re- maining to us Each is an epitome of character, and, 12 116 HOME. thanks to the sculptor's talent, which has effaced accidents and suppressed minor details, this character is apparent at the first glance. After the Antonines art visibly declines. Many of these statues and busts are inadvertently comic, disagreeably go, and even repulsive, as if the sculptor had copied an old woman's grimaces, the quivering features of a crafty man, and other low and unpleasant traits of a nervous, shattered machinery. Such sculpture resembles photo- sculpture; it approaches caricature in the statue of a woman with a nude torso and a surly head crowned with bul^inc: knobs AVhi'st thus indulging in re very and in meditation over these beings of stone, the murmuring water jutting from lions' mouths makes music around me, and at every turn of the gallery I obtain glimpses of landscape, now a broad surface of dark wall overhung with glowing oranges, now a vast staircase decked with clambering vines, now a confused group of roofs, towers, and terraces, and, on the horizon, the enormous Colosseum I am not disposed to see more to-day, and yet how can one possibly refrain from entering the neighbouring gallery, knowing that it contains the ' Rape of Europa,' by Paul Veronese? There is a duplicate at Venice; but this picture, as it stands before one, is ravishing. En- gravings give no idea of it: one must see that blooming maid in her dark seagreen robe as she leans over to fasten her mistress's bracelet, the noble form and calm action of the young girl raising her arm towards the crown borne by cupids, the joy and delicate voluptuousness radiat- ing from her smiling eyes, and from those beautiful rich forms and from the brilliancy and harmony of all this blended colour. Europa is seated on a magnificent silken and golden cloth, striped with black ; her robe, of a pale violet hue, discloses her snowy foot beneath it; the careless THE FORUM 117 folds of the chemise frame the soft round throat ; her dreamy eyes vaguely rpgard the cherubs sporting in the air, and the arms, neck, and ears sparkle with white pearls. The Forum is a few paces off : I descend to it and rest myself. The sky was of perfect purity ; the clear lines of the walls and of the ruined arcades, one above the other, relieved against the azure as if drawn with the finest pencil : the eye delighted in following them to and fro, and repeatedly returned to them. Form, in this limpid atmosphere, has its own beauty, independent of expression and colour, as, for instance, a circle, an oval, or a clean curve relieving on a clear background. Little by little the azure becomes almost green, an imperceptible green like that of precious stones, or that of the source of a foun- tain, but still more delicate. There was nothing in this long avenue that was not interesting or beautiful ; trium- phal arches half buried and obliquely opposed to each other, remnants of fallen columns, enormous shafts and capitals, lining both sides of the way ; to the left the colossal arches of Constantine's basilica, varied with green pendent bushes ; on the opposite side the ruins of Caesar's palace, a vast mound of red bricks crowned with trees ; Saint Como with a portal of debased columns, and Santa Francesca with its elegant campanile ; above the horizon a row of dark, delicate cypresses, and farther on, similar to a mole in ruins, the crumbling arcades of the temple of Venus ; and finally, as if to bar all progress, the gigan- tic Colosseum gilded with smiling sunshine. Over all these grand objects modern life has installed itself like a mushroom on a dead oak. Fences of rough- hewn stakes, like those of a village fete, surround the pit out of which arise the disinterred columns of Jupiter Stator. Grass covers its excavated sides. Tattered vagabonds are pitching stone quoits. Old women and 118 ROME. dirty children are basking in the sun amidst heapa of ordure. Monks in white and brown frocks pass along, and after these files of scholars in black hats, led by an ecclesiastic in red. An iron bedstead factory, in front oi the basilica, salutes the ear with its clatter. You read at the entrance of the Colosseum a prayer to the Virgin that procures a hundred days' indulgence, and in this prayer she is treated as an independent goddess. You still recognise, notwithstanding all this, some of the pro- minent traits of the ancient race and of former genius. Several of those old women resemble Renaissance sibyls. That peasant in leather leggings with his earth-stained mantle has an admirable face — a sloping nose, Greek chin, and speaking black eyes that flash and glow with natural genius. Under Constantine's arch I listen for half an hour to a voice apparently chanting litanies ; on approach- ing, I find a young man on the ground reading in a reci- tative tone to an audience of five or six droll characters stretched out at full length beside him, the combat between Roland and Marsilia in Orlando Furioso. — I return and take my supper in the nearest auberge, at Lepri's; a dirty vagabond, a hairdresser with an old pomatumed wig plastering his cheeks and provided with a mandolin and a small portable piano with pedals, instals himself in a neighbouring room, and with arms and feet going, sings in a bass voice, and plays the airs of Verdi and a finale from La Sonnambula. The delicacy elegance, and variety of his performance are admirable This poor fellow has a soul, an artist's soul, and one for gets all about eating in listening to him. CHAPTER III. THE YATICAN--THE IDEAL OF MAN AMONG TH« ANCIENTS— THE MELEAGER, THE APOLLO BELVEDERE, THE LAOCOON, AND THE MER- CURY — THE BANKS OP THE TIBER. The Vatican, — This is probably the greatest treasury of antique sculpture in the world. Here is a page of Greek which one ought to keep in mind in passing through it. ( I will question them, said Socrates, whether among the youths of the time there were any that were distin- guished for wisdom or for beauty, or for both. On this, Critias, looking towards the door, where he saw some youths coming in, wrangling with one another, and a crowd of others following them, said: "As for beauty, Socrates, you may judge for yourself; for those who have just entered are the admirers of him who is reckoned the handsomest young man now going; no doubt they are now his precursors, and he himself will be here soon." "And who, and whose son is he ? " said I. " You know him," said he. u But he was a child when you went away. It is Charmides, the son of our uncle Glaucon, and my cousin." " By Zeus ! I knew him," said I; "even then he was not ill-favoured as a boy ; but he must be now quite a young man." " You will soon know," said he, " how big he is, and how well-favoured." And as he spoke, Charmides entered. * He did seem to me wonderfully tall and beautiful, and all his companions appeared to be in love with him ; such an impression and commotion did he make when he no romi:. came into the room : and other admirers came in his suite. And that we men looked at him with pleasure was natural enough. But I remarked that the boys, even the smallest, never took their eyes off him ; but all looked at him like persons admiring a statue.' ' So Chaerephon, addressing me in particular, said : " AVell, Socrates, what do you think of the youth ? Is he not good-looking ? " " He is," said I, " perfectly admir- able." " And yet," said he, " if you were to see him undressed for his exercises, you would say that his face was the worst part about him, he is so handsome every way." And they all said the same as Chaerephon. * " Charmides," I said, " it is natural that you should surpass the others, for no one here, I think, can point out in Athens two other families whose alliance could produce any one handsomer or better than those from which you sprung. Indeed your paternal house, that of Critias, the son of Dropide, is celebrated by Anacreon, Solon, and many other poets as excelling in beauty, in virtue, and m all other things on which happiness depends. And like- wise that of your mother ; for no one appears more beau- tiful nor more great than your uncle Pyrilampe, every time that he is sent as ambassador to the great king, or to any other monarch on the continent. The latter house is in no way surpassed by the former. Born of such parents, it is reasonable that you should be first of all." ' * With this scene in your mind, you may wander through these grand halls and see these statues act and think, the Discobolus, for instance, and the young Athlete, a copy, it is said, after Lysippus. The latter has just finished a race, and holds in his hand a number by which you know that he came in fifth ; he is rubbing himself with the ■trigiL His head is small, his intellect being ample for • The Platonic Dialogues, by Win. Wliewell, D J>. THE IDEAL OP MAN AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 121 the corporeal exercise which is just terminated ; such glory and such occupation suffice for him. In fact in the best days of Greece gymnastic triumphs were deemed so im- portant, that many of the young devoted years to a pre- paration for them, under masters, and a special regimpn similar to that of oui race-horses under their trainers. He appears to be fatigued, and is scraping off the dust and perspiration adhering to his skin ; if I may be allowed the expression, he is currying himself. This term is re- pugnant to French ears, but it was not so to the Greeks, who did not as we do— separate human life from animal life. Homer, enumerating the warriors before Troy, places men and horses indifferently on the same level : • These,' says he, ( are the chiefs and the kings of Greece. Tell me, O Muse, which of these was best, both of warriors and of horses ? - But, on the other hand, consider what flesh such a life produced, what firmness of tissue, what a tone oil, dust, sunshine, perspiration, and the strigil must have given to the muscles ! In the Rivals of Plato, the youth devoted to gymnastics jeers his adversary devoted to literature : 6 It is only excercise which strengthens the body ! See Socrates, that poor fellow ; he neither sleeps nor eats ; he is lean, long-necked, and ill on account of study 1 And here they all laughed.' The body of this figure is perfectly beautiful, almost real, for he is neither god nor hero. For this reason the little toe of the foot is imperfect, the arm above the elbow meagre, and the fall of the loins strongly marked ; but the legs, and especially the right one, as viewed behind possess the spring and elasticity of those of a greyhound. Before such a statue one fully realises the difference between antique civilisation and our own. An entire city selected the best young men of the best families for Wrestling and running ; these performances were witnessed IM ROME. by everybody, both by men and women ; they compared together backs, legs, and breasts, every muscle brought into play in the thousand diversities of muscular effort. A common looker-on was a connoisseur, as nowadays any* body that can ride criticises horses at the ' Derby,' or in the ring. On his return to the city the victor received a public welcome ; sometimes he was chosen general ; hia name was placed on the public records, and his statue ranked with those of protecting heroes ; the victor in the races gave his name to the Olympiad. When the * Ten Thousand, arrived in sight of the Black Sea, and found themselves safe, their first impulse was to celebrate games ; having escaped from the barbarians their former Greek life was now to recommence. ' This hill is an excellent place,' said Dracontios, * where he who wills may run where he pleases.' ' But how can you run on such rough and bushy ground ? ' 'So much the worse for him who falls ! ' In the race of the grand stadium, more than sixty Cretans presented themselves ; the others contended in wrestling, boxing, and the pancratium. It was a fine sight, for many athletes were there, and, as their com- panions regarded them, they made great efforts.' A century later, in the time of Aristotle, Menander, and Demosthenes, when intellectual culture was complete, and when philosophy and comedy perfected themselves and began to decline, Alexander, disembarking on the Troad, stripped himself, along with his companions, to honour the tomb of Achilles with races. Imagine Napo- leon acting in a similar manner on his first campaign in Italy. The corresponding action with him I suppose would be buttoning up his uniform and gravely assisting at a Te Deum in Milan Cathedral. One sees the perfection of this system of corporeal education in the young athlete who is pitching the discus, in the curve of the body bending over, in the disposition THE IDEAL OF MAN AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 123 of the limbs extended or contracted so as to concen- trate the greatest possible force at one point. Plato has a significant paragraph on this subject. He divides education into two equally important branches, gymnas- tics and music. By gymnastics he means whatever re- lates to the formation and exercise of the naked figure ; by music whatever relates to the voice, that is to say, not only melody but the words and ideas of hymns and poems that impart a knowledge of the religion, justice, and history of heroes. What an insight this gives us into the life of the youth of antiquity ! What a contrast when placed alongside of our smattering systems ! A grand reclining statue called e The Mle,' a copy of which is in the Tuileries. Nothing could be more graceful, more fluid than these infantile diminutive crea- tures playing around this large body; nothing could better express the fulness, the repose, the indefinable, the almost divine life of a river. A divine body — these terms, coupled together in a modern language, seem to be incompatible, and yet they express the mother idea of antique civilisation. — Behind this figure stand some admirable nude athletes, quite young and holding phials of oil ; one of them, apparently about thirteen years of age is the Lysis or Menexcnes of Plato. From time to time inscriptions are disinterred, throw- ing considerable light on these usages and sentiments so remote from ours. The following, published this year, is an inscription in honour of a young athlete of Thera; it was found on the pedestal of his effigy, and its four verses possess all the beauty, simplicity, and force of a statue. Victory to the pugilist is at the price of blood , but this youth, the breath still warm from the rude com- bat of the boxer, firmly withstood the severe labour of the pancratium, and the same sun saw Dorocleides twice crowned. 124 ROME. Evil, however, must be considered as well as the good. Love as induced by gymnastic life is a perversion of human nature; in this connection the narrations of Plato are extravagant. Again, these antique customs which respect the animal in man, likewise react and develop the animal in man, and in this relation Aristophanes is scandalous. We fancy ourselves corrupt because we have licentious romances, but what would we say if one of our theatres should give us his Lysistrate ? Sculpture, fortunately, shows us nothing of this singular society but its beauty. A standing canephora at the entrance of the Braccio-Nuovo is similar to those of the Parthenon, although of an inferior workmanship. When, like this figure, a daughter of one of the first families wore only one garment, and over this a short mantle, and was accustomed to carrying vases on her head, and, conse- quently obliged to stand erect ; when her toilet consisted only of binding up her hair or letting it fall in ringlets, and her face was not wrinkled with innumerable petty graces and petty anxieties, then could a woman assume the tranquil attitude of this statue. To-day a relic of this is visible amongst the peasants of the environs who carry baskets on their heads, but they are disfigured by labour and rags. — The bosom appears under the tunic, which adheres closely to the figure, and is evidently a simple linen mantle; you see the form of the leg which breaks the stuff into folds at the knee, and the feet are naked in their sandals. No words can describe the natural seriousness of the countenance. Certainly, if one could behold the real person with her white arms and her black hair in pure sunlight, his knees would bend as if before a goddess with reverence and delight. Look at a statue entirely veiled, for instance, that of ' Modesty ;' it is evident that the antique costume effected no change in the form of the body, that the THE IDEAL OF MAN AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 125 adhesive o) loose folds of drapery received their forma and changes from it ; that one easily detects through the folds the equilibrium of the entire frame, the rotundity of the shoulders or of the thigh, and the hollow of the hack. The idea of man was not then, as with us, that of a pure or impure spirit, plus an overcoat or a crinoline, but a being with a back, a breast, muscular joints, a spinal column, visible vertebra, and a neck with tendons and a firm leg from the heel to the loins. It has been stated that Homer was versed in anatomy because he so accu- rately describes wounds, the clavicle and the iliac bone ; what he knew of man was simply what he knew of his belly and thorax, the same as all other men of that time. My own slight medical studies have considerably en- lightened me in these matters ; it is impossible to under- stand the conceptions of these artists^ if one has not himself felt the articulations of the neck and limbs ; if one has not acquired beforehand some idea of the two master portions of the body, the movable bust on its basin, and likewise the mechanism of the muscular sys- tem extending from the sole of the foot up the thigh to the hollow of the lumbar region, which enables a man to stand and keep himself erect. None of this is possible without the antique costume. Ob- serve ( Diana regarding Endymion ; ' her robe falls to her feet; she has besides this the usual over-garment, but the foot is naked. Put a shoe on it like that worn by the young ladies promenading the gallery here with their guide-books in their hands, and there is no longer a natural body but an artificial machine. It is not a human being but a jointed cuirass, very good for climatic rigour and pleasingly adorned to grace a parlour. Woman, through culture and the modern system of dressing, has become a sort of laccd-up scarabce, stiff in her grey corslet, mounted on hard polished claws and loaded with various brilliant 126 HOME. appendages, all her envelopes, ribbons, cap-, and crinolines agitated and fluttering like antennas and the double set of wings. Very often this figure assumes the expression of an insect; the entire body hums with the restless acti- vity of the bee, its beauty mainly consisting of nerve us vivacity, and especially when coquettishly arranging its lustrous attire and the complicated apparatus of jewellery that gleams and flashes around it. Here, on the contrary, the nude foot shows that the long tunic is simply a veil of no great importance ; the belt is only a cord fastened beneath the breasts and is tied in a careless manner, the two breasts expanding the material, the tunic clasped over the shoulder is not broader than the width of two fingers, so that you feel the shoulder ex- tending into the arm, which is full and strong, and not at all resembling those filamentous appendages that hang nowadays by the sides of a corset. As soon as the corset is worn there is no longer a natural form ; this dress, on the contrary, can be slipped on or off in a second ; it is simply a linen mantle taken up for a covering. All this shows itself in the Braccio-Nuovo and in count- less statues besides, such as the Augustus and the Tiberius. Alongside of each prominent figure is an emperor's bust. One cannot mention all ; I have only to remark a Julia, daughter of Titus. The form here is fine, but the head bears the ridiculous modern knobs. Such a head-dress destroys the effect of sculpture, and the entire sentiment of the antique. From this room you follow a long corridor crowded with Greek and Roman remains, and then enter the Musee Pio Clementino, where the works of art are separated and grouped each around some important piece in apartments of average size. I will not dwell on merely curious ob- jects, such as the tomb of the Scipios, so prized by anti- quarians and so simple in form, the stone out of which it THE MELEAGER. 127 is fashioned resembling baked ashes. The men herein interred belong to that generation of great Komans who in conquering Samnium and organising colonies established the power of Rome over Italy, and consequently o\< r the whole world. They were its true founders ; the van- quishers of Carthage and Macedonia, and the rest that followed them, only continued their work. This block of peperine is one of the corner stones of the edifice in which we now live, and its inscription seems to address us in the grave tones of the dead, couched there for one-and- twenty centuries. Cornelius Lucius Scipio the Bearded, Born of his father Gnsevus, a man wise and brave, Whose beauty was equal to his virtue. He was censor, consul, sedile in your city, Took Taurasia, Cisauna in Samnium, Subjected all Lucania, and bore off hostages. Here are the masterpieces; and first the c Torso,' so lauded by Michael Angelo. Indeed, in its life, in its gran- deur of style, in the vigorous setting of the thighs, in its spirited action, and in the mingling of human passion with ideal nobleness, it is in conformity with his manner. — A little farther on is the ( Meleager,' of which there is a copy in the Tuileries. This is simply a body, but one of the finest I ever saw. The head, almost square, modelled in solid sections like that of Napoleon, has only a mediocre brow, and the expression seems to be that of an obstinate man ; at all events nothing about it indicates the great capacity and flexibility of intellect which we never fail to bestow on our statues, and which at once suggests to the spectator the idea of offering pantaloons and over- coat to a poor great man so lightly dressed. The beauty of this figure consists in a powerful neck and a torso ad- mirably continued by the thigh ; he is a hunter and a warrior, and nothing more ; the muscles of the ankle denote 128 ROME. this as well as the head. These people invented the horse-breeding system for man, and hence their rank in history. The Spartans of ancient Greece, who set the example to other cities, loaned each other their wives in order to obtain an elite stock. Plato, accordingly, who is their admirer, advises magistrates to arrange annual marriages, so that the finest men may be united to the finest women. Xenophon for his part blames Athens, which has no system like this, and praises the education of Spartan women, so entirely planned with a view to maternity at a suitable age, and to the securing of beautiful offspring. ' Their young girls,' he says, ' exercise in running and in wrestling, and this is wisely ordered, for how can females brought up, as is usually the custom, to make fabrics of wool and to remain tranquil give birth to anything great ?' He remarks that in their marriages all is regulated with this intention ; an old man may not possess a young wife for himself: he must select ( among the young men whose form and spirit he most, admires, one whom he will take into his house and who will give him children.' We see that this people, who in their national institutions pushed the gymnastic and military spirit the farthest, were inte- rested above all things in fashioning a fine race. A small rotunda alongside contains the masterpieces of Canova, so much praised, I know not why, by Stendhal. There is a Perseus, an elegant effeminate figure, and two wrestlers, who are merely rancorous pugilists, or naked cartmen engaged in commonplace fisticuffing. Nothing here intervenes between insipidity and coarseness, between the parlour dandy and the stout porter. This impotence shows at a glance the difference between the antique and the modern. Continuing on, you come to the Belvedere ' Mercury/ a young man standing like the Meleager, but still more THE APOLLO BELVIDERE. 129 beautiful. The torso is more vigorous and the head more refined. A smiling expression flickers lightly over the countenance, the grace and modesty* of a well-born youth capable of expressing himself properly because he is of an intelligent and select race, but who hesitates to speak because his soul is still fresh. The Greek epltebos, before whom Aristophanes pleads the cause of the just and the unjust, ran, wrestled, and swam long enough to secure that superb chest and those supple muscles ; and he had still enough of primitive simplicity, and was sufficiently exempt from the curiosity disputes and subtleties, then beginning to be introduced, to possess those tranquil features. This tranquillity is so great> that at the first glance it might be taken for a moody and somewhat melancholy air. Setting aside the Venus of Milo and the statues of the Parthenon, I know of nothing comparable to it. The Apollo Belvedere belongs to a more recent and a less simple age. Whatever its merit may be, it has the de- fect of being a little too elegant ; it might well please Winckelmann and the critics of the eighteenth century. His plaited locks fall behind the ear in the most charming manner, and are gathered above the brow in a kind of diadem, as if arranged by a woman ; the attitude reminds one of a young lord repelling somebody that troubled him. This Apollo certainly displays savoir-vivre, also conscious- ness of his rank — I am sure he has a crowd of domestics. Neither is the Laocoon of very ancient date ; it is my belief that if these tw r o statues have obtained more admi- ration than others, it is because they approach nearer to the taste of modern times. This work is a compromise between two styles and two epochs, similar to one of Euri- pides' tragedies. The gravity and elevation of the early style still subsists in the symmetrical form of the two sons and in the noble head of the father, who, his strength and * In fans pudor. K 130 ROME. courage both gone, contracts his brow, but utters no cry of pain; while the later art, sentimental, and aiming at expression, shows itself in the terrible and affecting nature of the subject, in the frightful reality of the writh- ing forms of the serpents, in the touching weakness of the poor boy that dies instantly, in the finish of the muscles of the back and the foot, in the painful swelling of the veins, and in the minute anatomy of suffering generally. Aristophanes would say of this group, as he said of the Hippolytus or Iphigenia of Euripides, that it makes us weep and does not fortify us ; instead of changing women into men, it transforms men into women. If the footsteps of visitors did not disturb the tranquil- lity of these halls, one might pass the entire day in them unconscious of the flight of time. Each divinity, each hero here, has his own oratory, surrounded by inferior statues ; the four oratories constitute the corners of an octagonal court, around which runs a portico. Basins of basalt and of granite, and sarcophagi covered with figures, stand at intervals on the marble pavement ; alone, one fountain flows and murmurs in this sanctuary of ideal form and motionless stones. A large balcony opens out on the city and campagna , from this you obtain a fine view of the immense expanse below, with its gardens, villas, domes, the beautiful broad tops of the Italian pine rising one above another in the limpid atmosphere, rows of dark cypress relieving on bright architectural surfaces, and, on the horizon a lon TAINTING — RAPHAEL, FIRST EXPERIENCES— DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EASEL AND MURAL PAINTING — TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN MIND IN THE INTERVAL BETWEEN THE SIXTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES — THE NUDE OR DRAPED FIGURE THE CENTRE OF ART IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Rome, March 15. — We will now speak of your Raphael; as you like honest impressions, I will give you mine in their order and diversity. How many times have we not discussed Raphael over his original drawings and over engravings I Here are his greatest productions. When your im- pressions begin to shape themselves into ideas, you make a list of the places where his pictures may be found. You pass from fresco to canvass and from gallery to church ; you return to these again and again, and read his life and the lives of his contemporaries and masters. It is a labour such as you give to a Petrarch or a Sophocles ; all grand objects a little remote correspond to sentiments we no longer possess. The first aspect is singular; — you have just entered the court of the Vatican ; you have seen a pile of buildings, and, overhead, a series of window-sashes giving to the edifice the appearance of a vast conservatory. With this impression in your head, you mount innumerable steps, and at the landing-place a polite, obsequious e Swiss ' pockets your two pauls with a smile of thanks. You now stand in a spacious hall encumbered with paintings. Which will you look at first? Here is the ' Battle of Constantine,' RAPHAEL ; ,FIRST EXPERIENCES. 141 designed by Raphael and executed by Julio Romano— in brickdust, I suppose ; probably, too, it has been wet by the rain, and the colour has disappeared in places. You pass on through a long glazed portico, where the arabesques of Raphael ought to be ; but you no longer find them, the faint traces of them stil] existing, showing that they were there once, but likewise showing that the walls have been pretty well scratched by somebody. You throw your head back, and, on the ceiling, observe the fifty-two biblical subjects called the Loggia of Raphael ; five or six of these remain entire, while the rest appear to have been brushed away with a long-handled broom. Besides, was it worth while, in making masterpieces, to make them so small and place them so high, and reduce them to the service of the panels of a ceiling? Evidently, in the architect's mind these were simply accessories, a decorative motive for a promenade : when the Pope came here, after dinner, for fresh air, he could see at regular intervals a group or a torso, if by chance he raised his head. You return and make your first circuit of the four celebrated stanze of Raphael. These were the apartments of Julius II. : here the Pope trans- acted business, and in one of them signed his briefs. The painter here is secondary ; the apartment was not made for his work, but it for the apartment. The light is dim, and half of the frescoes remain in shadow. The ceiling is overcharged, the subjects stifle each other. The colouring is faded out, and cracks cover half of the forms and heads. The faces are mottled with the pallid spots of dampness, also the drapery and architecture ; the skies are no longer brilliant, but are covered with the leprous stains of mould, while the goddesses under the arch are peeling off. And yet strangers with guide-book in hand comment loudly and freely, and copyists are shifting their ladders about the floor. Imagine, in the midst of all this, the U9 ROME. unfortunate visitor twisting his neck off in manoeuvring an opera-glass ! Nineteen out of twenty of those who visit this place must certainly be disenchanted, and exclaim, with open mouth, 'Is this all?' It is with these frescoes as wit li the mutilated texts of Sophocles and Homer; give a thirteenth-century manuscript to an ordinary reader, and do you suppose that he can decipher it ? If he is honest, he will not comprehend your admiration of it, and will gladly exchange it for one of Dickens's romances, or a lied by Heine. I, too, comprehend that I do not compre- hend, and that two or three visits must be made to enable me to make the necessary abstractions and restorations. Meanwhile, I am going to say what strikes me disagreeably, and that is that all these figures pose. I have just been into the upper story to see the celebrated ' Transfiguration, ' which is pronounced the great masterpiece of art. Is there in the world a more mystical subject than this for a picture? Heaven itself opening, beatified beings appearing, forms of flesh and blood freed from gross terrestrial conditions and ascending into glory and splendour ; the delirium and sublimity of ecstacy, a veritable miracle, a vision like that of Dante when he rose into Paradise with his. eyes fixed on the beaming orbs of Beatrice ! The appari- tion of angels in Rembrandt's picture came into my mind, that rose of mysterious figures flashing out suddenly in the black night, terrifying the flocks and proclaiming to the shepherds that a Saviour was born. The Hollander in his misty atmosphere felt these evangelical terrors and these raptures ; he saw. and he thrilled to the centre of his being with the poignant sentiment of life and of truth ; things, in fine, occurred as he shows them to us ; beforehis_ jjicJau^- Ay^^e^^ occurr ence^ . — Is Raphael a believer in his miracle ? He DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EASEL AND MURAL PAINTING. 143 believes, first of all, that he must select and compose his attitudes. That handsome young woman on her knees thinks how she shall hold her arms; the three salient muscles of the left arm form an agreeable line; the fall of the loins and the tension of the entire frame from the back to the heel form precisely the pose that would be arranged in a studio. The figure with a book thinks how he shall show a well-drawn foot ; another lifting an arm, and that next him, holding the possessed child, gesticulate like actors. And what of those apostles who allow them- selves to fall into such a symmetrical group ? Moses and Elias in glory, on either side of Christ, are swimmers ' striking out.' Christ himself, with his feet so nicely drawn, the large toes separated from the others, is simply a fine figure ; his insteps and elbows are of more conse- quence to him than his divinity. This is not impotence but system, or rather instinct, for at that time there was no such thing as system. I have before my eyes a celebrated engraving of- the ' Massacre of the Innocents.' I am confident that his innocents are in no danger. The tall fellow on the left, displaying his pectoral muscles, and that in the centre who exposes the hollow of his spine, are not going to kill the little creatures they grasp. My good fellows, you are healthy and good- looking, and know how to display your muscles, but you are not up to your profession ! What poor execu- tioners you are for a king like Herod! As for the mothers, they do not love their offspring ; they are tran- quilly making their escape ; if they make any noise they do it moderately, lest they should disturb the har- mony of their attitudes ; both mothers and executioners form an assembly of calm figurants, framed in by a bridge extending between two buildings. The same thing struck me at Hampton Court in the famous cartoons ; the Apostles convicting Ananias advance to the edge of 144 ROME. the pi a i form, as a chorus of opera-singers advance up to the footfighta in the fifth act. On descending, you place yourself again before the frescoes of the stanze, for instance, before the ' Conflagra- tion of Borgo.' What a poor conflagration, and how little in it of the terrible ! Fourteen figures kneeling on a stair- case constitute a crowd ; there is no danger of these people crushing each other, for their motions show that they are in no haste. In fact, the fire is not burning ; how could it burn without wood to consume, stifled as it is by stone architecture ? There is no conflagration here — only two rows of columns, broad steps, a palace in the background, and groups spread here and there similar to the peasants, who at this moment are lying or seated on the steps of St. Peter's. The principal figure is a well-fed young man suspended by his two arms, and who finds time to practise gymnastics. A father, on tiptoe, receives an infant, which its mother hands to him from the top of a wall, — they are about as uneasy as if they were handling a basket of vegetables. A man carries off his father on his shoulders ; his naked son is by his side, and the wife follows, — antique sculpture, -ZEneas bearing Anchises, with Ascanias and Creusa. Two females carry vases and are shrieking, — the caryatides of a Greek temple would display the same action. I can only regard this work as a painted bas-relief, and a complement to the architecture. Engrossed by this idea, dwelling on it, or rathet allowing it to develop itself, it bears fruit. Why, indeed, should not frescoes be a complement of architecture ? Is it not a mistake to consider them wholly by themselves ? We must place ourselves at the same point of view as the painter in order to enter into his ideas ; and certainly sucr was the point of view of Raphael. The ' Conflagratior of Borgo ' is comprehended within the space of an orna- mental arc which had to be filled up. The s Parnasus DIFFERENCE BETWEEN" *EASEL AND MURAL PAINTING. 145 and ? the Deliverance of St. Peter ' surmount, one a door and the other a window, and their position imposes upon them their shape. These paintings are not appended to but form a portion of the edifice, and cover it as a skin covers the body. Why, then, belonging to the edifice should they not be architectural? There is an innate logic in all these great works ; it is for me to forget my modern education in order to arrive at its meaning. At the present day we view pictures in exhibitions, and each picture exists for itself ; in the artist's mind it is a complete thing and stands apart, and, as far as he is con- cerned, it may be hung anywhere. The painter has abstracted from nature or from history a landscape or a scene, the interest of which to him is his chief object ; in this respect he acts like a novelist or a dramatist ; he maintains a dialogue with us by ourselves. He is bound to be veracious and dramatic ; if he shows us a battle let it be the ' Barricades ' of Delacroix ; if a Christ consoling the poor in heart, let it be the divine Christ of the weak and suffering by Rembrandt, with its mellow halo and mournful reflections vanishing in misty obscurity. But in decorative art the motive is quite different, and the picture changes with the motive. Here is the arc of a window with a simple, grave curve ; the line is a noble one, and a border of ornamentation accompanies its beautiful sweep. The two sides, however, and the space above remain empty, and are to be filled, and they can be filled only with figures as ample and as grave as the architecture ; personages abandoned to the fury of human passion would be incongruous; the license of natural groupings cannot be imitated here. It is necessary to compose and arrange the figures according to the height of the panel, some either stooping or infantile introduced at the top of the arc, and others erect or adult, along its sides. The composition is not isolated ; it is the complement of L 146 ROME. the window, and proceeds, like the entire palace, from a unique idea. A vast royal edifice is naturally grand and calm, and it imposes its grandeur and calmness on its decoration, that is to say, on its paintings. But especially must it be kept in mind that the spec- tator of that day was not the spectator of our day. For the pas' three hundred years our brains have been em- ployed on reasonings and on moral distinctions ; we have become critics and observers of internal phenomena. Shut up in our apartments, incased in our black coats, and well protected by a police, we have neglected corporeal life and bodily exercise ; we conform to the drawing-room standard, and seek pleasure in conversation and in the cultivation of our intellects ; we study niceties of social intercourse and peculiarities of character ; we read and comment on his- torians and novelists by hundreds ; we have loaded our- selves down with literature. The human mind is barren of imagery and overflowing with ideas ; what it compre- hends, and what affects it at present in painting, is the human tragedy or the real life of which it obtains glimpses in the world of society or among rural scenes, as in the ' Larmoyeur' of Ary Scheffer, the ' Mare au Soleil ' of Decamps, and ' L'Eveque de Liege,' by Delacroix. In these we find as in a poem the confessions of an impas- sioned soul, a sort of judgment on human life ; what we seek through the medium of colour and form is sentiments. In those days they sought for nothing of the kind. The current of actual life, which interests us in inward emotion and in its outward expression, interested them in the nude figure and in the movements of the animal form. "VVe have only to read Cellini, the correspondence of Aretino, and the historians of that era, in order to see how corporeal and perilous life was ; how man took justice in his own hands, how he was assaulted on his promenades and on his journeys, how he was forced to keep his hand con- TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN MIND. 147 Btantly on his sword or arquebuss, and never to leave his house without a giacco or poignard. The great assassinated each other with impunity, and even in their palaces shared with the vulgar the coarsest of manners. Pope Julius, one day irritated at Michael Angelo, thrashed one of his prelates because he attempted to interfere. Who of the present day comprehends the action of a muscle except a surgeon or an artist? Then everybody did; not only lords but louts, the man of rank as well as the most in- significant rustic. The practice of interchanging blow r s with sword and fist, of jumping, of playing at tennis, and of tilting, and the necessity of being strong and agile, abundantly supplied the imagination with every variety of form and attitude. A little nude cupid viewed from the soles of his feet and darting off with his caduceus, or a vigorous youth throwing himself back upon his haunches, awoke ideas as familiar then as nowadays any intriguer or financier or woman of the world portrayed by Balzac. On seeing them the spectator imitated their action sympa- thetically, for it is sympathy, or involuntary semi-imitation, which renders the work of art possible ; without this it is not understood, not born. The public must imagine the object without an effort ; it must figure to itself in- stantaneously its antecedents, accompaniments, and con- sequences. Always when an art predominates the con- temporary mind contains its essential elements ; whether, as in the arts of poetry and music, these consist of ideas or of sentiments ; or, as in sculpture and painting, they consist of colours or of forms. Everywhere art and intelligence encounter each other, and this is why the first expresses the second and the second produces the first. Hence it we find in the Italy of that period a revival of pagan art it is because there was a revival of pagan manners and morals. Caesar Borgia, on capturing a certain town in the kingdom of Naples, reserved to himself forty of its most L 2 143 ROME. beautiful women. Burchard, the pope's cameriere, de- scribes certain fetes somewhat like those given in the time of Cato in the theatres of Rome. With the senti- ment of the nude, with the exercise of the muscles and the expansion of physical activity, the love of and worship of the human form appeared a second time. All Italian art turns upon this idea, namely, the resus- citation of the naked figure ; the rest is simply preparation, development, variety, alteration, or decline. Some, like the Venetians, display its grandeur and freedom of movement, its magnificence and voluptuousness ; others, like Coreg- gio, its exquisite sweetness and grace, others, like the Bolognese, its dramatic interest ; others, like Caravaggio, its coarse striking reality, all in short, caring for nothing beyond the truthfulness, grace, action, voluptuousness and magnificence of a fine form, naked or draped, raising an arm or a leg. If groups exist it is to complete this idea, to oppose one form to another, to balance one sensation by a similar one. When landscape comes it simply serves as a background and accessory, and is as subordinate as moral expression on the countenance or historical accuracy in the subject. The question is, do you feel interested in expanded muscles moving a shoulder and throwing back the body bow-like on the opposite thigh ? It is within this limited circle that the imagination of the great artists of that day wrought, and in the centre of it you find Raphael. This becomes still more apparent on reading their lives by Vasari. The artists of that period are mechanics and manufacturers employing apprentices. A pupil does not pass through college and fill his mind with literature and general ideas, but goes at once into a studio and works. Some character, naked or draped, is the form into which all his sentiments are cast. Raphael's education was like that of other artists. Vasari cites his youthful performances, which are nothing but Madonnas, always Madonnas TUB NUDE FIGURE AGAIN THE CENTRE OP ART. 149 His master Perugino, was a saint manufacturer ; he might have displayed this title on a signboard. Even his own saints are plain altar saints, poorly emancipated from the consecrated pose: they display but little animation, and when in groups of three or four each appears as if alone. They are objects of devotion quite as much as works of art ; people kneel before them and implore their favour ; they are not yet exclusively painted to please the eye. Raphael is to pass years in this school, studying the position of an arm, the folds of stuffs of gold, and a tranquil meditative countenance, before he goes to Florence to contemplate forms of greater amplitude and greater freedom of action. Such a culture as this is to concentrate all his faculties on one point ; all the vague aspirations, all the sublime and touching reveries which occupy the leisure hours of a man of genius, are to run in the direction of contour and action; he is to think through forms as we think through phrases. CHAPTER VI RAPHAEL. Raphael led a singularly noble, happy life, and this rare order of happiness is perceptible in all his works. The ordinary trials of artists, their wasted hopes and the pangs of wounded pride, were unknown to him. He was not a victim to poverty, humiliation, or neglect. At the age of twenty-five he found himself without an effort first among the artists of his time ; his uncle Bramante spared him all intrigue and all solicitation. On seeing his first fresco the Pope caused others to be effaced, and ordered that the entire decoration of his apartments should be en- trusted to his hand. But one rival was opposed to him, Michael Angelo, whom so far from envying Raphael honoured with as much of admiration as respect. His letters indicate the modesty and serenity of his nature. He was exceedingly amiable and exceedingly beloved; the great protected and welcomed him, and his pupila formed around him a concourse of admirers and comrades. He had not to contend with man nor with his own heart. Love does not seem to have ruffled his spirit, this passion in him never being accompanied with either sorrow or torment. Unlike most painters he was not compelled to bring forth his conceptions in painful travail, but produced them as a fine tree produces its fruit; the vitality of the tree was great and its culture perfect ; inspiration flowed natu- ally and the hand executed without difficulty. Finally, RAniAEE'S EARLY WORKS. 151 the imagery in which he most delighted seemed ex- pressly designed to maintain his spirit in repose. He had passed his early youth among the Madonnas of Perugino, pious, gentle maidens of virgin innocence and infantile grace, but healthy and untouched by the mystic fever oi t) ie middle ages. He then contemplated the noble forms and free spirit of antiquity, the placid joyousness of thai extinct world the fragments of which were but just ex humed. At length from these two types he obtained an ideal of his own, and his mind wandered through a world animated with vigorous impulses, one that expanded like the antique city with joyousness and youthful energy, but over which the purity, candour, and benefi- cence of a new inspiration spread an unknown charm ; it seemed to be a garden, the plants of which, quickened by pagan impulse, produced half- Christian flowers that bloomed with a more diffident and a sweeter smile. I can now examine his works, and first the ( Madonna de Foligno,' in the Vatican. You are at once impressed with the meek and modest air of the Virgin, the timidity with which she touches the blue girdle of her infant, and the charming effect of the gilded border of her red robe. In all his early works, and in almost all of his Madonnas, he has preserved some souvenir of what he felt at Perugia and at Assissi, where he was surrounded by simple traditions of spiritual love and felicity. The young girls he paints are youthful communicants possessing still undeveloped souls"; religion, m covering them with her wings, has retarded Jtheir__grp.wth ; they are women in form but children in thought. To find similar expression now- adays we must seek for it in the innocent features of nuns immured in convents from infancy, and never brougl it in contact with the world. It is evident that he studied lovingly and carefully, with all the delicate sentiment of a fresh young heart, the refined curves of the nose, the fine 152 ROME. modelling of small mouths and ears, and the reflections of light on soft auburn tresses. Ah infant's blooming smile charmed him, and a thigh like that which so gently presses against that belly. Only a mother can appre- ciate the tender complacency with which the eye dwells on beauties like these ! The painter is another Petrarch, musing over his reveries and unweariedly expressing them. Sonnet after sonnet, he makes fifty on the same face, and passes weeks in purifying verses in which he deposits his secret joy. He has no need of action or of noisy excite- ment ; he does not aim at effect, and is insensible to the shock of surrounding circumstances. He is not a comba- tant like Michael Angelo, nor a voluptuary like his con- temporaries, but a charming dreamer appearing just at the time when the world knew how to fashion the human form. Nowhere is this delicacy of feeling more apparent than in the ' De scent from the Cross' in the Borghese palace. Raphael was twenty-three yearTbTage when he executed this work, and approaching but not yet entered on the period in which he painted his frescoes. He has already got beyond the cold mannerism of Perugino, and begun to animate his figures, although with a sort of timidity and some traces of stiffness. On both sides of the corpse are groups balancing each other, three men on the left, and four females on the right, in attitudes already varied and quite beautiful. The freshness of creative power glows in this work like the dawn. Not that the picture is affecting, as Vasari insists; one must go to Delacroix for the despairing mother over a corpse, the veritable funereal bier, the deep grief of nature, the confused folds of a red mantle in tragic contrast with the lugubrious tints of a purple background. The conspicuous featu re here is a ri ch, blooming adolesconn p. ; nothing can be finer than the noble young man who bends backward in order to support the corpse, a sort of Greek ephebos with the reel HIS LOVE OF THE NUDE FIGURE. 153 cnemide heightened in effect by a bordering of gold ; nothing more fascinating than the young woman with braided tresses who, half-stooping, extends her arms to the afflicted mother in order to sustain her. These figures are virginal and gaily attired as if for a fete, and their eyes beam with the most winning gentleness. Delicate flowers here and there open their calyxes, and the horizon is crossed with a few slender trees. A soul as noble and graceful as that of Mozart is here budding and about to bloom. From this you pass to his pagan works, and on seeing his sketches you enter on the field at once. I have examined them at Paris, Oxford, and London. The feeling of the painter is here caught on the wing ; you get at the original inspiration, intact, as it existed in his mind before he had put it into shape for the public. His inspiration is wholly pagan; he appreciates the animal form as the ancients did; not alone pure anatomy of which he has acquired a knowledge, a lifeless form that he has fixed in his mind, a covering of drapery which he is obliged to comprehend in order to represent particular actions, but he loves nudity itself, the vigorous joints of a thigh, the superb vitality of a muscular back, all that a man possesses characteristic of the athelete and the racer. I know of nothing in the world so beautiful as his drawing of the e Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,' a photograph of which lies before me ; I prefer it to the fresco in the Borghese palace, which I have just examined. The figures are nude, and you might imagine yourself in attendance on a Greek fete, so natural is their nudity, and so remote from every idea of indecency or even voluptuousness; the simple joyousness and charm- ing gaiety of youth, the healthiness and beauty of bodies developed in the palajstrum, are as prominent here as in the best days of antiquity. A little cupid drags a large cuirass, too heavy for his infantile limbs ; two others 154 ROME. bear a lance ; others place one of their comrades on a buckler, who is pouting as they bear him along, dancing and capering in glee and gladness. The hero advances as noble as the Apollo Belvidere, but more virile, -while no words can express the animated radiant smile of his two young associates, who are pointing to the gentle lloxana, seated and awaiting his coming. Mingled grace and goodness, and an air of happiness radiate from all these heads ; the bodies move and demean themselves as if revelling in simple existence. That beautiful young girl is the bride of early days ; neither she nor her com- panions need drapery, and it is a mistake to give it to them in the fresco ; they may remain as they are without immodesty ; like the gods and heroes of ancient sculptors they are pure ; the free expansion of a corporeal being is as natural with them as the blooming of flowers. The goddesses of this adolescent world, the immortal Hebe, and the serene gods seated on luminous heights to which neither the brutality of the seasons nor the miseries of human life can attain, may here be recognised a second time. They are also present in the ' Judgment of Paris,' as engraved by Marc-Antoine. You might pass hours in contemplating the torso of that river-god reposing amidst the reeds, those grave goddesses standing around the shepherd, those superb nymphs resting so nobly at the base of the rock, the magnificent shoulder of the leaning naiad, and the heroic cavaliers, who, aloft in the air, res- train their fiery steeds. It seems as if eighteen centuries were suddenly effaced from history, that the middle ages were simply a nightmare, and that after many years of gloomy, barren legends, mankind had suddenly awakened and discovered that but a day removed it from Sophocles and Phidias. I visited Santa Maria della Pace, with its round, ugly, bulging facade; you enter, however, through a pretty THE FOUR SIBYLS. 15a little cloister by Bramante, in which are two elegant arcades, serving as promenades. This church is over- decorated, like all the churches of Rome; on the left is the tomb of a cardinal of the sixteenth century — a meagre form reclining with his head resting on his hand, in all the tragic sublimity of death ; sepulchres and gilding, the two extremes the best calculated to excite the imagina- tion, are here the dominant attributes of worship. The contrast is striking on seeing the four Sibyls of Raphael und3r an arc in the last chapel on the left. They stand, sit, or recline, according as the curve of the arch re- quires, while cherubs, presenting them with parchment to write on, complete the group. Solemn, tranquil, elevated like antique goddesses above human action, they are truly superhuman creations ; a calm gesture suffices — it is a complete revelation ; theirs is not a diffused or transi- tory being, but one ever existing immutably in an eternal present. One need not seek for illusion here, for relief; such are the apparitions of a vision, and only discernible with closed eyes in moments of deep, silent emotion. This man has put all the nobleness of his heart, all his solitary conceptions of sublime and tranquil happiness, into these forms and attitudes, into that fraternal inter* weaving of beautiful arms, which, peacefully extended, seek each other, and form that garland. If we could at any time banish from our minds the sad and repulsive souvenirs of life, and could obtain a passing glance of a group of adolescent women and children like these, we should be happy and conceive of nothing beyond. One especially, standing and inclining backward, and slowly turning her head, has a proud savage eye, showing the peculiar half-divine, half-animal grandeur of primitive beings. Behind her is a wrinkled, hooded old woman, but so transfigured that she appears beautiful like the aged of the Elysian Fields of Virgil. On the other side 156 ROME. Bits a gentle young woman in the flower of life, "the full contour of her face expressing the perfection of goodness and tranquillity. I go back at last to the Vatican, and all my impressions change. I have now placed myself at the proper stand- point. That which appeared to me cold and artificial is just what pleases me. A germ exists of which the rest is simply development, and this is a sound beautiful body, solidly and simply painted in an attitude manifest* ing the power and perfection of its structure. This alone we must seek for ; the other elements of art are subordi- nate. A picture is like a rhythmical musical phrase, wherein each note is pure, and which dramatic passion never so far modifies as to introduce discords or screeching. So regarded, this or that action, which seems a studied one, is like a full and accurate chord ; I have to take it by itself, abstracting both subject and resemblance, and my eye enjoys it as the ear enjoys a rich harmonious strain of music. This crowd of figures now speak, and they only speak too loudly. There are too many of them; one can no longer describe. I will merely mention those that make the strongest impression on me. And first is the Loggia of the Vatican, and in the Loggia the great Herculean form of the Almighty, who, in a single bound that fully displays his limbs, tra- verses the realm of darkness. Next the graceful form of Eve plucking the apple, her charming head, and the vigorous muscles of her youthful form as it turns on the hips, — all these figures, so powerful in their structure and bo easy in action. Next the white caryatides of the Hall of Heliodorus, simple light-grey figures, veritable goddesses, sublime in their simplicity and grandeur and related to the antique, but with an air of gentleness and sweetness which Junos and Minervas do not possess; exempt from thought like their Greek sisters, and, in THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 157 their unruffled serenity, occupied in turning a head or lifting an arm. It is with these ideal and allegorical figures that Raphael triumphs ; — on the ceiling Philo- sophy, so grave and so. vigorous; Jurisprudence, an austere virgin with downcast eyes, raising a sword ; and especially Poesy ; and again the three goddesses seated before Parnassus, and who, half turning, form, with three children, a group worthy of ancient Olympus, all being incomparable figures, and above the standard of humanity. Like the ancients he suppresses the accidental, the fleeting expressions of human physiognomy ; all those details that characterise a being tossed and tumbled about in life's battle. His personages are emancipated from the laws of nature ; they have experienced no trials, and are incapable of becoming excited ; their calm attitudes are the attitudes of statues. You would not dare to address them; you are restrained by respect, a respect, nevertheless, mingled with sympathy, for beneath their grave exterior you detect a basis of goodness and feminine sensibility. Raphael breathed his own spirit into them ; and even sometimes, as in the muses of Parnassus, many of the young women, and among others she with the naked shoulder, have a penetrating suavity, and a sweetness almost modern. He loved these. All this is more forcibly displayed in the e School of Athens.' Those groups on the steps, above and around the two philosophers, never did and never could exist; and it is for this very reason that they are so fine. The scene lies in a superior world, one which mortal eyes never beheld, a creation wholly of the artist's imagina- tion. These figures belong to the same family as the divinities on the ceiling. You must remain before them full half a day. Once realise that they are walking, and the scene strikes you as transcending all things here below. The youth in a long white robe with angelic features ascends the steps like a meditative apparition, 158 ROME. The other, with curled locks, bending over the geometrical diagram, and his three companions alongside are all divine. It is like a dream in the clouds. As with all the figures of an ecstatic vision or in reveries, these may remain in the same attitudes indefinitely. Time does not pass away with them. The old man erect in a red mantle, and the adjoining figure regarding him, and the youth writing might thus continue for ever. All is well with them. Their being is complete ; they appear at one of those moments which Faust indicates when he exclaims, * Stand, ye are perfect!' Their repose is eternal happi- ness ; a certain condition of things has been accomplished and it must not be disturbed. Human life, whether of the body or of the spirit, is of infinite and immense diversity ; but there are only certain portions of it, certain moments, which like a rose among a hundred thousand others deserve to subsist, and these are those attitudes. Plenitude of force and harmony of the human structure are h ere displayed without inco n- gruity or pttort. I'his suffices ; we ask for nothing more. Two adult men suspended beneath a calm adolescent in erect posture constitute a beautiful form, and it is pleasant to forget oneself before it The expression of the heads is not antagonistic; if too pensive, too real, too brilliantly painted, they would suggest passion or emotion ; in the serenity they now possess, in that sombre tint, they are in harmony with the quiet architectural significance of the postures. Of all the artists I am familiar with none so much resemble Raphael as Spenser. On first reading him many find Spenser dull and formal : nothing with him seems real; afterwards one ascends with him into the light, and personages which could not possibly exis 4 appear divine. CHAPTER YII. THE FARNESE PALACE — THE MUSEUMS OF THE VATICAN AND THE CAPITOL — THE ACADEMY OF ST. LUKE. I take a cab and traverse a number of crooked, melan- choly streets. I pass over the Ponte San-Sisto and see on either side of the river a confused mass of hovels and a long range of dripping arcades ; beyond is a cluster of hovels, all still preserving a middle-age aspect. In a few moments I stand in a Renaissance palace before the Psyches of Raphael. They form the decoration of a large dining-hall wain- scoted with marble, the ceiling of which is curved and framed in by a garland of flowers and fruits. Above each window the garland expands in order to make room for the vigorous forms of Jupiter, Venus, Psyche, Mer- cury, and the assembly of gods that cover the entire arch. On raising their eyes above the table loaded with gold plate and monstrous fishes the convivialists could contemplate beautiful naked forms relieving on the background of Olympian blue, amongst voluptuous gar- lands where feminine gourds and masculine radishes re- minded them of the broad humour of Aristophanes. The courtesan Imperia could come here ; the guests — parasites like Tamisius, and licentious artists like Julio Romano and Aretino, also prelates and nobles nourished amid the dangers and undisguised sensuality of their age — could sympathetically gaze on this gay, grand, vigorous art, on 160 ROME. these rudely-executed figures, whose bricklike tints are rather indications of their subjects than finished produc- tions. Frequently a daub of white and a spot of black make an eye ; the three nude Graces of the banquet are as muscular as so many wrestlers ; several of the godfl — Hercules, Pan, Pluto, and a river-god — are simply robust blacksmiths dashed on with broad masses of colour as il for tapestry; the cupids that transport Psyche have solid bloated flesh like overfed children. There is an exuber- ance of pagan vigorousness throughout this painting almost amounting to clumsiness. In Rome the type is rather one of strength than of elegance; the women, taking but little exercise, become fleshy and heavy ; tracai of this amplitude appear in many of Raphael's female figures — in his pulpy Graces, in the massive Eve, and in the largeness of the torso of his Venus. The paganism to which he inclined was not of the Attic standard, and his pupils who executed the paintings in this hall either half- neglected or else exaggerated his indications, like the engraver who, in reproducing a picture, is indifferent to its delicacies. In order to satisfy oneself of this it is only necessary to compare together the fresco and the original design of ( Venus receiving the Vase.' The figure as originally drawn is a virgin of primitive times, inexpres- sibly sweet and innocent ; her childlike head, as yet imvexed with thought, placed on a Herculean trunk carries the mind back involuntarily to the origin of the human family ; to those days when maidens were entitled ' milkers of the cow ; ' when simple athletic races, with short swords and dogs driving lions to bay, descended from their mountain fastnesses to colonise the universe.* Even through the translation of his pupils the painted figure here, as the fresco throughout, is still unique ; ifc is a new type, not copied from the Greek, but proceeding * According to Sanscrit tradition. THE FARNESE PALACE. 161 wholly from the painter's brain and his observation of the nude model ; of remarkable energy and plenitude, the muscle being brought out not through a forced imitation of nature, but because it is living, and the artist sym- pathetically enjoyed its tension. ' Psyche borne through the air by Cupids,' and e Yenus entreating Jupiter,' are of charming freshness and youthfulness. And what can be said of the two floral messengers with their butterfly wings, and of the lovely dancing Grace in the banquet who arrives, scarcely touching her foot to the ground ? All this sparkles with gaiety ; life's richest flowers are gathered by handfuls. In the space along- side of the grand goddesses are flying children ; a Cupid yoking a lion and a sea-horse ; another diving into the soft waves, in which he is going to sport himself ; then white doves, little birds, hippogriffs, a sphinx with a dragon's body, and other gay creations of an ideal imaginative- ness. Among these phantasies winds the tufted garland, intermingling the splendours of spring and summer, pomegranate and oak-leaves, blooming daisies, the pale golden lime, the satiny calyxes of the white narcissus, along with the opulent rotundity of the gourd family. How remote from his former Christian timidities ! Be- tween the * Descent from the Cross ' and the Farnesian decoration, the breath of the spirit of the Renaissance passed over him and developed all his genius on the side of vigour and joyousness. His poor ' Galatea ' in the adjoining apartment has greatly suffered through time. She looks faded out ; part of the design has disappeared ; the sea and the sky arc dull, and stained in patches. It is, nevertheless, the work of Raphael, as is evident in the gentleness of Gala- tea, in the action of the Cupid displaying his limbs so harmoniously, and in the originality of the conception of the sea gods and goddesses. The nude nymph, clasped by M l()J ROME. the waist, yields with an expression of charming coquetry ; the bearded triton with his Roman nose, who clutches and enfolds her in his nervous arms, displays the alert- ness and spirit of an animal god inhaling with the salt air of the sea huge drafts of force and contentment. Behind is a female with floating blonde hair seated on the back of the god that bears her off, her arched back bending with masterly elegance. The painter does not abandon himself to his subject; he remains sober and temperate, avoiding all extremes of action and expression, ever purifying his types and composing his attitudes. This natural love of proportion and those affectionate instincts, which, as with Mozart, led him to portray innate goodness, that delicacy of spirit and of organs which everywhere made him seek the noble and the gentle, all that is happy, generous, and worthy of tenderness, the sin- gular good fortune of encountering art on its dividing line between perfection and decline, that unique advantage of a twofold education, which, after showing him Christian purity and innocence, made him sensible of the vigour and joyousness of paganism ; all these gifts and circumstances were necessary in order to carry him onward to the sum- mit. Vasari justly says : ' If one desires to see clearly how generous, how prodigal, heaven sometimes is in accumulating on one person the infinite wealth of its treasures, all those graces and rare endowments which are commonly scattered among several during a long period of time, let him contemplate Raphael Sanzio d'Urbino.' The Museums, April 15. — There are some days when you can take up an idea, and follow it as on a straight road, and others like those I have just passed when you wander off right and left among the by-roads. Finding myself near the Vatican, I again ascended to its upper stories and revisited that precious museum. How many things a picture contains ! The province of painting, as TUE MUSEUM QF THE VATICAN". 168 with the other arts of design, is to gather an artist's ideas into one simultaneous concentrated effect. The other arts, music and poetry, disperse the impression. I again contemplate the charming ( Christ' of Correg- gio, seated half-naked on a cloud, smiling and surrounded by angels, the most amiable, rosy, and graceful youth that ever existed ; a ' Doge ' by Titian, in yellow robes, so real, with such a distinct and striking personality, and yet so exquisitely painted, that the smallest fold of his laboured drapery is a luxury for the eye to rest on ; an ( Entomb- ment ' by Caravaggio, full of figures and activity, studied from life, — vigorous porters with varicose veins, and young females bending over and weeping and drying their tears with all the sincerity of impressible youthfulness. To-day that which has impressed me most is a ' St. Catharine' by Murillo, of a strange, disturbing attractiveness. Her beauty is of a dangerous order ; her oblique glance, and black downcast eyes gleam with secret ardour. "What a contrast between this tint of a southern flower and that flame ! How impassioned a lover, and what a devotee ! In Raphael's works, the repose which sober colour gives and a sculptural attitude deprive the eyes of a portion of their vivacity. Spanish colour, on the contrary, is quivering ; the unconscious sensuality of an ardent nature, the sudden palpitation of fugitive vehement emotions, the nervous excitement of voluptuousness and ecstacy, the force, the rage, of internal fires lurk in that flesh illumi- nated by its own intensity, in those ruddy tints drowned in those deep mysterious darks. The ' Prodigal Son,' on the same side, is so affectingly suppliant ! The Spaniard is of another race than the Italian ; he is less well-balanced, less restrained by the harmonising influences of beauty ; he is carried away by internal commotion, and expresses his feeling and ideaa crudely even at the sacrifice of form m 2 164 ROME. On contemplating Raphael's e Madonna di Foligno ' a second time, I am confirmed in my opinion that this art is of another age : a modern must undergo some preparation in order to comprehend it. Which among the ordinary, unacquired sentiments, will interest him in the muscles of those two little nude angels, in that fold of the stomach defining the basin of the body, in the torsion by which the soft hip of the infant Jesus is raised up, and the flesh of the thigh pressed against the belly ? All this appealed to a man of that time, and does not appeal to one of the present day. Our eyes fix themselves without effort on the charming humour of the two children, on the gentleness and modesty of the Virgin, on the timidity of her action, as she touches the blue girdle of the Infant; and if anything besides these, and the eye is sensitive, on the pleasing effect of the gilded border of her red robe. Undoubtedly the celebrated ' Communion of St. Jerome,' by Domenichino, hanging opposite, is flimsy in comparison ; his hand is not so sure ; he is a little of a trickster ; he finds his compensation in architecture, in imitations of showy embroideries, and in a rich display borrowed from the Venetians. Reason satisfies us that Raphael's style is the better. She tells us, similarly, that Racine and Port-Royal, Lysias and Plato, write better than we write. Put our sentiments do not enter into their mould, and wc cannot disembarrass ourselves of our sentiments. The Capitol Museum. — I passed through the museum hastily on my first visit, and I was too weary. I believe that I have alluded to but one picture there, the ' Rape of Europa,' by Paul Veronese. The principal one is an enormous picture of ( Saint Petronia,' by Guercino. The body is being taken out of the ground while the soul is received into Paradise. This is a composite work : the artist, according to the practice THE MUSEUM OF THE CAPITOL. 105 of schools not primitive, having assembled together three or four kinds of effect. He addresses the eye with powerful contrasts of light and dark, and with the rich draperies of the saint and her betrothed. He imitates 30 literally as to produce illusion : the little boy holding the taper is of striking fidelity — you have met him somewhere in the streets ; the two powerful men raising the body- have all the vulgarity and masculine energy of their pro- fession. He is dramatic : the humble attitude of the saint in heaven is charming, and the head crowned with roses furnishes a contrast to the tragic heaviness of the corpse enveloped in its pale winding-sheet ; the aspect of Christ is tender and affectionate, and not, as elsewhere, a simple form. The entire subject — death, cold and lugu- brious, contrasted with a happy triumphant resurrection — serves to arrest the attention of the multitude and excite its emotion. Painting thus regarded leaves its natural limits and approaches literature. His * Sibyl Persica,' under her peculiar poetic head- dress, is already quite modern. She has one of those pensive, complicated, indefinable expressions which pleases us so greatly, a spirit of infinite delicacy, trembling with nervous sensibility, and whose mysterious fascina- tion will never end The • Presentation of Christ at the Temple,' by Fra Bartolomeo. The contrast here is striking. Art and, I may say, civilisation were completely transformed between these two masters. Nothing could be nobler, simpler, more full of repose, and healthier than this art. You are the more impressed by it after having seen the combinations and novelties of Guercino. There are two epochs in Italy, that of Ariosto and the Kenaissance and that of Tasso and the Catholic ^Restoration. A c Magdalen,' by Tintoretto, on a heap of straw, dark, haggard, with hair dishevelled, and profoundly penitent. 166 ROME. She is weeping and praying. Through the entrance of the cavern gleams the mournful crescent moon; that glimpse of the desert, with the terrors of night above the poor sobbing creature, is heart-rending. The more one sees of Tintoretto, the more docs one find in him on a grand scale the same temperament as £)elacroix, the same sen- timent of the tragic in the real, the same impetuous sympathy excited by contact with outward objects, and the same talent for expressing the crudity, nakedness, and energy of truth and of passion. Wandering around the Capitol lately, I entered the Academy of St. Luke. Few galleries in Home are equal to this. Here are two large pictures by Guido. One represents • Fortune ' a naked goddess, flying above the earth, and holding a diadem in her hand. The other is the ' Rape of Ariadne ; ' the deep blue sea extends into infinity, and a tall white female stands on a rock, while another aj>- proaches her leading a handsome youth, draped, and near by is a reclining female playing with an infant. Nothing could be more easy and elegant. The painters of this age possessed all types, and this one delighted in the softer and more agreeable reminiscences of Greek beauty. His painting, however, lacks substance ; it is too white, and reminds you of the platitude and conventionality of the tragedies of the eighteenth century. A somewhat dilapidated fresco by Raphael places this deficiency in full light. It is only a naked infant, but as strong, animated, and simple as a Pompeian antique ; the eyes are beaming; this solid young figure shows the first awakening of curiosity in the soul. A small picture, scarcely more than a sketch, by Rubens, is a masterpiece. Two nude women are crowning a com- panion, whilst small white Cupids overhead form a garland They are not too fat, and their action is so natural, so THE ACADEMY OF ST. LUKE. 167 elegant ! This term seems strange as applied to Rubens. But nobody like him has so appreciated the flexibility of the human form, and so directly recorded his impression 5. Life in other artists, on comparing them with him, seems to be stagnant. He alone has comprehended the fluid softness of flesh, the instantaneous. This, in fact, is the nature of life; it is the jet of an exhaustless fountain that never remains stationary; in animated flesh the blood rushes to and fro with the velocity of a torrent ; this pul- sation of a substance in incessant motion is visible in his freshness of tint and in the fluidity of his forms. But I risk saying too much on Rubens ; no works afford such a rich and inexhaustible treasury for the observer of man. On this domain the Venetians alone approach him. They reduce his exuberance, but they ennoble it. There are Palma Vecchios and Titians here whose voluptuous richness and superb flesh reveal a whole world beyond that of Roman art. Palma Vecchio stands at its en- trance ; his splendid vigorous colour, like a glaring ruddy sunset, his powerful modelling and the magnifi- cent torsions of his substantial figures announce a primitive taste, that of force ; in every school you first discover the simple and grave type ; only later do they refine and render it seductive. Titian stands in the centre, equally strong on the side of sensuality and on that of energy. In a beautiful Italian landscape, fading away in blue distance, and near a foun- tain whose waters are disbursed by a little Cupid, his Callisto has fallen, violently stripped by her nymphs. No mere prettiness or epicureanism exists in this bold com- position. The nymphs do their office brutally, like com- mon women with vigorous arms. One, especially, erect and with a superb, almost masculine, torso, is a virago capable of giving a man a drubbing. Another, with the cruel malice of an experienced hand, bends the back of 168 ROME. the poor culprit, in order the sooner to detect the sign9 of her misfortune. But in his other picture, ' Vanity, naked on a white bed with a sceptre and crown, a wav- ing and elegant figure so seductively soft, is the most alluring mistress that a patrician could deck with his purple, and make use of at evening to feed his practised eyes with exquisite sensuality. — Paul Veronese comes last. He is a decorator, free of the virile gigantic lusti- ness which often carries Titian away ; the most skilful of all in the art of distilling and combining those pleasures which pure colour in its contrasts, gradations, and har- monics, affords the eye. His picture represents a woman occupied in arranging her hair before a mirror held by a little Cupid. A violet curtain enlivens with its faded tints the beautiful flesh framed in by white linen. A small plaited border rests its delicate frill on the amber softness of the breast. The auburn nair is gathered in curls over the brow on the edge of the temples. You see the forms of the thigh and breasts beneath the che- mise. With that vague vinous blush on those mingled faded darks of dead leaves, the entire flesh, permeated with inward light, palpitates, and its round pulpy forms seem to be trembling as if with a caress. The picture the most contemplared is ' Lucretia and Sextus,' by Cagnacci, an artist of I know not what epoch, but certainly a late one. You may imagine its dramatic subject and its treatment with a view to dramatic effect. Naked, on white linen and red drapery, lying on her back with her head lower than her bosom, she is strug- gling with and repelling the breast of the villain. This charming delicate female form crushed down by physical ibrce excites pity. The slightest details are affecting, in her waving hair there are white pearls unloosening themselves. He, however, in his blue doublet striped with gold, seems to be a ruffian of the day, some assassin THE ACADEMY OF ST. LUKE. Itt9 Osio, and grand seignor, like him of whom the trial of Virginia de Leyva shows us the manly bearing, line manners and assassinations. A slave awaits under a large portico, holding his master's sword. Similar expe- ditions were made to the convent of Monza, near Milan, at the beginning of the seventeenth century. CHAPTER VIII. THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE RENAISSANCE — PHYSICAL ACTION AND PICTURESQUE POMP — IMAGES AND NOT IDEAS FJLL THE MINDS OF THIS EPOCH. The Sistine Chapel and the Sixteenth Century, — Do you remember our visit last year to the l5cole des Beaux- Arts with Louis B , a cultivated, intelligent, and learned man, if there is one, to see the copy of Michael Angelo's ' Last Judgment " 9 Yawning, and diverting himself at our expense, he declared that he preferred the ' Last Judgment ' of the English artist Martin. ' At all events,' he exclaimed, ' you have got the scene itself, heaven, earth, lightning, and the immense throng of the dead nocking from their graves by legions under the supernatural light of the last day and night. Here there is neither heaven, earth, hell, nor abyss ; nothing but two or three hundred figures posing.' You replied that Michael Angelo did not paint heaven, earth, hell, or abyss, that he did not regard infinity and supernatural light as personages, that he was a sculptor with the human form as his sole means of expression, that his fresco must be regarded as a sort of bas-relief in which the gran- deur and spirit of his attitudes replace the rest ; and that if we of the present day a in this final tragedy, give promi- nence to space, lightning, and an indistinct throng of diminutive figures, it was then given to a few colossi expressing the same tragic sentiment through draped and difficult attitudes. Whence comes this change? And why should that MANNERS AND CUSTOMS^ OF THE RENAISSANCE. 171 ige be so much interested in muscles? It is because muscles were closely observed. I have reread the writers of the time, the details of the education and violent manners and customs of the sixteenth century ; if one wishes to understand an art, it is important to study the spirit of the people to which it appeals. 1 1 require,' says Castiglione, in giving the portrait of the accomplished gentleman, 'that our courtier be a complete horseman ; and, as it is a special merit of Italians to govern the horse with the bridle, to manoeuvre him sys- tematically — especially horses difficult of control — to run with the lance, and to joust, let him in these matters be an Italian among the best. In tourneys and passages at arms, and in races between barriers, let him be one of the good among the best of the French. In cudgelling, bull- fighting, casting darts and lances, let him excel among the Spaniards. It is proper, moreover, that he should be skilled in running and in jumping. Another noble exercise is tennis. And I do not esteem it a slight merit to be able to leap a horse.' All these were not simple precepts given in conversation and in books, but were in conformity w T ith conduct and customs. Julian de Medici, assassi- nated by the Pazzi, is praised by his biographer, not only for his poetic talent and his tact as a connoisseur, but for his skill in horsemanship, in wrestling, and in throw- ing the javelin. Coesar Borgia, the noted politician, is as accomplished in pugilism as in intrigue. ' He is twenty- seven years of age,' says a contemporary, ' handsome and tall, and the pope, his father, holds him in great fear. He has slain six savage bulls in contending against them with a pike on horseback, and cleft the head of one of these bulls at the first blow.' Italy at this time fur- nishes Europe with its most skilful masters of arms ; in the engravings of that day we see the pupil naked with a poniard in one hand and a sword in the other, preparing 179 ROME. himself, and rendering his muscles supple from head to foot, like the antique athlete or wrestler. And it is necessary, for public order is badly main- tained. 'On the 20th September,' says a chronicler, • there was great tumult in the city of Rome, and the merchants closed their shops. Those who were in their fields, or in their vineyards, returned home in all haste, and seized their arms, because it was announced for a certainty that Pope Innocent VIII. was dead.' The feeble ties holding society together were easily broken, and people returned to a savage state, each one profiting by the occasion to rid himself of his enemies. It must not be inferred by this that they abstained from attacking each other in times of tranquillity. The private feuds of the Colonna and the Orsini kept Rome in as great a state of confusion as in the darkest centuries of the mediaeval epoch. ' Even in the city many murders were committed, and robberies by day and by night, and scarcely a day passed that some one was not slain. The third day of September, a certain Salvator attacked his enemy, the Signor Beneaccaduto, notwithstanding he was bound over to keep the peace with him under a penalty of 500 ducats, and he gave him two mortal blows, from which he died. On the fourth day the Pope sent his vice- cameriere, with the conservatori and all the people, to destroy Salvator's house. They destroyed it, and on that fourth day of September, Jerome, the brother of the said Salvator, was hung.' I might cite fifty similar examples. At this time man is too powerful, too much accustomed to do himself justice, too sudden and quick in Iii3 treatment of facts. ( One day,' says Guicciardini, ' Trivulce slew in the market-place, with his own hand, some butchers, who, with the insolence customary with this class, opposed the collection of taxes from which they had not been exempted.' As far down as 1537, lists were MANNERS AND CUSTOMS .OF THE RENAISSANCE. 173 kept open at Ferrara, where deadly duels were permitted even to strangers, and to which boys resorted to fight with knives* The Princess of Faenza set four assassins on her husband, and, seeing that he resisted them, jumped from her bed and stabbed him herself. Upon this, her father entreats Lorenzo de Medicis to solicit the Pope for a remission of the ecclesiastical censure of the act, alle^in^ that he thinks of f providing her with another husband.' The Prince of Imola is assassinated, and his body thrown from a window ; and on threatening his widow, shut up in the fortress, with the death of her children if she refused to surrender, she ascends to the battlements, and with a very expressive gesture, replies that f the mould remains in which to cast others.' Consider, again, the spectacles daily witnessed in Rome. ' The second Sunday, a man in the Borgo, masked, uttered offensive words against the Duke Valentinois. The duke, on being informed of them, caused him to be seized, and had his hand cut off, also the anterior portion of the tongue, which was attached to the little finger of the severed member.' ' The follower of this same duke suspended two old men and eight old women by their arms, after having kindled a fire under their feet, in order to make them confess where they had concealed their money, and they not knowing, or not wishing to tell where it way, died under the said torture.' Another day, the duke caused some convicts (gladiandi) to be brought into the court of the palace, where, dressed in his finest clothes, and before a select and numerous com- pany, he transpierced them with arrows. * He also slew Perotto, the Pope's favourite, under the very robe of the Pope, so that the blood spurted up in the Pope's face.' They were perfect throat-cutters, this family. He had already caused his brother-in-law to be assailed with a sword, and the Pope had had the wounded man taken care of* but the Duke exclaimed ' What cannot be done 174 ROME. at dinner may be clone at supper.' ' And one day, August 17, he entered his room, as the young man was already up, and obliging his wife and sister :o leave it, summoned three assassins, and the said young man was strangled. . . . After this he slew his brother, the Duke of Gandie, and caused him to be thrown into the Tiber.' And on demanding of the fisherman, who wit- nessed the affair, why he had not informed the gover- nor of the city of it, the man replied that ' during his lifetime he had seen on various nights more than one hundred bodies thrown in at the same place without any- body having given themselves any concern about it.' All this comes out in bold relief on reading the memoirs of Cellini. We of the present day, in the hands of the state, and entrusting ourselves to judges and gen- darmes, scarcely comprehend the natural right of force through which, before societies were regularly estab- lished, man defended and avenged himself, and obtained satisfaction for all his wrongs. In France, Spain, and England, the savage brutes of the feudal period were restrained by the feudal conception of honour, which, if not a check, kept them at least within certain limits ; the duel was substituted for private revenge, and men usually killed each other according to recognised rules, in the presence of witnesses, and at an appointed spot. But here all murderous instincts found vent in the streets. The various scenes of violence recounted by Cellini cannot be enumerated; and not alone those in which he was con- cerned, but others surrounding him. A bishop, to whom he refused to deliver a certain silver vase, ordered his retainers to sack his house; Cellini seizes his arquebuss and barricades his doors. Another jeweller named Piloto 13 the chief of a certain company, * During his sojourn in Rome, Rosso had spoken disparagingly of the works of Raphael, and the pupils of this illustrious master deter- Cl( 80 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, OF THE RENAISSANCE. 175 mined to kill him.' Vasari, sleeping with an apprentice named Manno, 'scratched the skin off of one of his legs, thinking he was scratching himself, for he never trimmed his nails,' and e Manno determined to kill him.' Cellini's brother, on hearing that his pupil Bertino Aldobrandi had just been slain, ( uttered so great a cry of rage that one could have heard him ten miles off; he then said to Giovanni, " Thou canst at least inform me who slew him ? " Giovanni replied, " Yes ; that it was the man who wore a large two-handed sword, and with a blue plume in his cap." My poor brother advanced, and having recognised the murderer by this sign, sprung with his usual alacrity and bravery into the midst of the guard, and there, before they could arrest him, he kicked the man in the belly and in various other parts, and levelled him to the ground with his sword haft.' He is himself almost immediately knocked down by a blow with an arquebuss, and then we see the vendetta fury fully display itself. Cellini can no longer eat or sleep ; the tempest within rages so violently that he thinks he will die if he finds no relief. ' I resolved one evening to rid myself from this torment, without consider- ing how little there was to approve of in the effort. . . . I approached the murderer cautiously with a large poignard, similar to a hunting-knife. I was hoping to cleave his head with a back-handed stroke, but he turned quickly, that my weapon only fell on the point of the left shoulder and broke the bone. He arose, dropped his sword, and, suffering with pain, took to his heels. I pur- sued him, and overtaking him in a few paces raised my poignard over his head, which he held low, so that my weapon on entering at the nape of the neck buried itself d;)fl} iy, and in spite of all my efforts I could not withdraw it.' A little while after this, and, ever on a public thoroughfare, Cellini kills Benedetto, and next Pompeio, who had offended him. Cardinal Medicis and Cardinal 176 ROME. Cornaro think it a fine thing. c As for the Pope,' saya Cellini, after one of these murders, ' he regarded mo with a threatening aspect which made me tremble, but, as soon as he had examined my work, his countenance began to brighten.' And at another time, when Cellini was accused before him, ( Know,' said the Pope, ( that men high in their profession like Bcnvenuto are not amenable to the laws, and he, the least of all, because I know how right he is.' Such was public morality. All this lying in ambush, meanwhile, was prompted by the most insignifi- cant motives. His friend Luigi had taken a mistress, a courtesan, to whom he, Cellini, was indifferent, but whom he had entreated him not to take. In a furious mood he placed himself in ambush, fell upon them both with his sword, wounded them, does not consider them sufficiently punished, and speaks of their death afterwards, which was not long delayed, with satisfaction. As far as private morality is concerned, Cellini has mystic visions while in prison ; his guardian angel appears to him ; he con- verses with an invisible spirit ; he has devotional transports, the effect of solitude and confinement on natures like his. When at liberty, he is a good Christian after the fashion of the day. Having made a successful cast of his ' Per- seus,' he set out, he says, c singing psalms and hymns to the glory of God, which I continued to do during the whole journey.' We find similar sentiments in the Duke of Ferrara ; f Having been attacked with a grave malady which, during forty-eight hours, prevented a discharge of urine, he betook himself to God and ordered the payment of all neglected obligations.' One of his predecessors, Hercules d'Este, possesses a similar conscience. At the end of an orgie, he proceeds to chant the service with his troop of French musicians, a man who cut off the hands and plucked out the eyes of two hundred and eighty prisoners before selling them, and who on Holy Thursday MANNERS AND CUSTOMS^ OP THE RENAISSANCE. 177 performed the ceremony of washing the feet of the poor. Such likewise is the piety of Alexander VI., who on hearing of the assassination of his son, the Duke of G an die, beats his breast, and, sobbing, confesses his crimes to the assembled cardinals. The imagination in those days is affected through one or the other of the senses, sometimes with voluptuousness, sometimes with rage and sometimes with fear. From time to time thoughts of the horrors of hell make people shudder, and they fancy they may balance accounts with wax tapers, crossing themselves, and paternosters ; but, fundamentally, they are pagans, genuine barbarians, and the only voice they listen to is that of the turbulent flesh, quivering nerves, restless members and overcharged brains buzzing with a confusion of forms and colours. One need not look for much delicacy, I fancy, in their way of doing things. Cardinal Hippolyte d'Este, who put out his brother's eyes receives an envoy of the Pope, the bearer of an offensive brief, with a thrashing. We know how Pope Julius II., in a quarrel with Michael Angelo, caned a bishop for attempting to interfere. Cellini is honoured with an audience by Pope Paul III. ' He was,' says Cellini, e in the best possible humour, and so much the better for the reason that all this occurred on the day he was accustomed to indulge in a hearty debauch,af ter which he vomited.' It is impossible to follow the narration by Burchard,his master of ceremonies,of the fetes given at the Vatican in the presence of Alexander VI., Caesar Borgia, and the Duchess Lucretia ; nor even of a certain little im- promptu amusement which these personages witnessed from a window, ' with great laughter and satisfaction.' A vivandiere would blush at it. People as yet are not very polished. Crudity frightens nobody. Poets, like Berni, and story-tellers, like the bishop Bandello, enter upon the most hazardous subjects and treat them with the most N 178 ROME. precise details. What we call good taste is a product of the salon, and is only born into the world under Louis XIV. What we call ecclesiastical decency is a counter- stroke of the Reformation, and only established in the times of St. Charles Borromeo. Physical instincts still expose their nudity in the strongest light ; neither social re- finements nor a sense of propriety have yet arisen to temper or disguise the undiminished vigour of the raging senses. g Sometimes, it happened,' says Cellini, ' on penetrating unawares into the private apartments of the Duchess, I surprised her, engaged in an occupation by no means royal. . . . She then flew into such a rage that I was terrified.' One day, at the Duke's table, he gets into a quarrel with the sculptor Bandinclli, who grossly insults him. By a miracle he restrains himself, but in a moment after he says to him, ' I tell you plainly, that if you do not send the marble to me at my house, you may seek your place in another world, for, cost what it will, I will rip up your belly in this.' Coarse terms fly about, as in Rabelais, also tavern obscenities, while the disgusting humour of drunkards displays itself even in the palace. * What a hog I am, I exclaimed, what a fool ! what a jackass ! Does all your skill make no more noise in the world than this ? At the same time I jumped on a stick.' Cellini appends four lines of poetry to this adventure, and * the Duke and Duchess both laughed.' Nowadays, the valets of any respectable mansion would put such odd characters outside the door. But when a man uses his fists like a butcher, or his sword like a bravo, it is natural for him to possess the humour of both butcher and bravo.* * Cellini relates the manner in which he behaved in a quarrel with one of his mistresses. ' I seized her by the hair and dragged her about the room, kicking and pounding her until I became weary and was obliged to stop.' PHYSICAL ACTION AND PICTURESQUE POMP. 179 Diversions of a particular species are likewise natural to them. What a man of the people prefers, that is to say, a man accustomed to corporeal exercise, and whose senses are rude, is an order of entertainment addressed to the eye, and especially one in which he is himself an actor. He is fond of parades, and gladly participates in them; he leaves niceties of observation, conversation, and criticism to the eifeminate and the refined, who frequent drawing- rooms. He likes to look at acrobats, clowns, and rope- dancers, men who grimace and exhibit themselves in pan- tomimes and processions, also reviews of troops, long caval- cades defiling, and variegated brilliant uniforms. Now that the people of Paris frequent the theatres, it is by such means that the popular theatres attract them. In this frame of mind a man is caught through his eyes. What he desires to see is not a noble intellect but a handsomely dressed muscular figure erect in a saddle, and when instead of one there are hundreds, when embroidery, gold lace, feathers, silk, and brocade glitter in broad sun- light amidst rattling drums and trumpets, when the triumph and tumult of the fete penetrate to his senses through every channel, and his whole being is aroused with involuntary sympathy, then, if a wish still remains, it is to mount a horse himself, and, in similar costume, form one of the gay throng parading before the attendant multitude. Such, at this time, is the reigning taste in Italy ; princely caval- cades, magnificent public festivals, entries into cities, and masquerades. Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, pays a visit to Lorenzo de' Medici, and takes with him, besides a body- guard of five hundred foot, a hundred men-at-arms, fifty eervants dressed in silk and silver, two thousand gentle- men and domestics of his suite, five hundred braces of dogs and an infinite number of falcons, and his jour- ney cost him two hundred thousand gold ducats. On the other han^ the city honours him with three public aS 180 BOMB. spectacles . one an s Annunciation of the Virgin,' another, the Ascension of Christ,' and the last, the ' Descent of the Holy Ghost.' — Cardinal San-Sisto expends twenty thousand ducats on a single fete in honour of the Duchess of Ferrara, and afterwards makes the tour of Italy with such a numerous and magnificent cortege, that only the pomp of his brother the Pope could equal it. — The Duchess Lucretia Borgia enters Rome with two hundred ladies, all on horseback, each magnificently dressed, and accompanied with a cavalier. — At Florence, a grand mythological fete is gotten up, called f The Triumph of Camilla,' with innumerable chariots, banners, escutcheons, and triumphal arches. Lorenzo de' Medici, in order to augment the interest of the spectacle, requests the Pope to send him an elephant *, the Pope simply sends two leopards and a panther; he would himself like to be present, but the dignity of his position restrains him; a number of cardinals more fortunate arrive and enjoy the fete. A painter, Piero di Cosimo, with his friends, arrange another of a highly lugubrious order, called • The Triumph of Death.' This is a car drawn by black oxen, on which are painted skulls, bones, and crosses, in white, and on the car itself a figure of Death with his scythe, the car containing sepulchres, from which arise skeleton figures who chant funereal hymns when it halts. Among fifty fetes similar to this, read in Vasari the de- scription of that which signalises the commencement of the century ; one may judge by its brilliancy, as well as by its details, of the picturesque tastes which then filled all breasts. The object of this was to celebrate the advent of Pope Leo X. Lorenzo de' Medici, desiring that the Bronconi confraternity, of which he was the chief, should surpass in magnificence that of the Diamond, ordered Jacopo Nardi, e a noble, intelligent man,' to compose foi him six cars. Pontormo painted them, and Baccio Ban- PHYSICAL ACTION ANT) PICTURESQUE POMP. 181 d*v*Jli decorated them with sculpture. All the wealth and all the art of the city were displayed upon them ; every invention and every resource of luxury and of recent discovery, every image and souvenir of the history of an- cient poetry contributed to their embellishment. Chargers, caparisoned with the skins of lions and tigers, with hous- ings and stirrups of gold and bridles fringed with silver, advanced in long procession ; behind them followed heifers and mules superbly decked, and monstrous fantastic buffaloes disguised as elephants, and horses travestied as winged griffins. Shepherds in sable and ermine skins and crowned with garlands, priests in antique togas bearing candelabra and vases of gold, senators, lictors, and knights in gay armour, displaying their fasces and trophies, and jurisconsults, in long robes on horseback, all surrounded the cars, on which eminent Roman personages appeared amid the insignia of their offices and the monuments of their exploits. Through their proud nudity, valiant attitudes, and grand flowing drapery, these painted and sculptured forms heightened the pagan effect of this pagan proces- sion, and taught energy and joyousness to living com- panions, who to the clang of" trumpets and the accla- mations of the crowd displayed themselves on the horses and cars around them. The generous sun, shining over- head, again illuminated a world similar to that of former days in the same place, that is to say, the same deep sentiment of natural poetic joyousness, the same bloom- ing physical health and energy, the same eternal youth- ful inspiration, and the same triumphant reverential devo- tion to beauty. And when the spectators, after witness- ing this long and rich array of splendid accoutrements, these rustling, flowing draperies, the bright glitter of silver scarfs, the yellow reflections of golden garlands and ara- besques, saw the last car approaching with its pyramid of living figures, and above these, by the side of a ver- 182 ROME. dant laurel, a naked infant, personifying the Renaissance of the golden age, well might they believe that they had for a moment reanimated the noble lost antiquity, and, after a winter of fifteen centuries were again beholding the human plant flowering in all its grandeur. These are the spectacles then daily witnessed in an Italian city • such the luxurious taste of princes, cities, and corporations. The humblest artizan devoted his eyes, his hands, and his heart to them. Admiration of fine forms, imposing ceremony, and picturesque decoration constituted a popular sentiment. The carpenter at evening talked to his wife about them, and they were discussed around the tables of taverns, each one claiming that the decorations on which he had laboured were the most beautiful ; each one with his own preferences, judgment, and favourite artist as nowadays, the pupils of a painter's studio. The result was that the painter and the sculptor addressed not merely a few critics but the entire com- munity. What now remains to us of ancient poetic pomp ? The c Descent of La Courtille,' * with its foul yelling drunkards, and the procession of fat oxen in which half-a-dozen poor fellows shiver in flesh-coloured ' tights,' amid the jokes and jeers of the populace. Picturesque cus- toms are now reduced to two street parades, and athletic life to wrestling at fairs, where some Herculean clown gets ten cents an hour to turn himself inside out for the amusement of soldiers and peasants. These customs constitute the vivifying influences which everywhere gave birth to and developed high art. They have disappeared, and hence our inability to produce the same results. The best a painter can now do is to shut himself up in his studio, and, surrounding himself with antique vases, nourishing himself on archajology, living amidst the purest models of Greek and Renaissance life and sequestrating himself from * A *ete in Paris of a low popular character. IMAGES FILLING THE MIXDS OF THIS EPOCH. 183 all modern ideas, by dint of study and artifice, create foi himself a similar atmosphere. We are familiar with pro- digies of this stamp, such as an Overbeck, who, through prayer, fasting, and a monastic life at Rome, imagines he has revived the mystical forms of Fra Angelico ; a Gothe who, converted into a pagan, and having copied antique torsos and provided himself with every resource which erudition, philosophy, observation, and genius could accu- mulate, succeeds through the pliancy and universality of the most cultivated imagination that ever existed in mounting on a German pedestal an almost Grecian Iphigenia. With a skilfully-constructed hot-house, and well-contrived heaters, a man may raise and ripen oranges even in Normandy ; but the hot-house costs an immense sum, and out of ten oranges produced nine will prove acid abortions, — and, if you offer the tenth to a Normandy peasant, he will at heart much prefer his cider and brandy. We must admit that a singular combination of things existed in those days ; we have no experience of the same commingling of coarseness and culture, of a swords- man's habits with the tastes of the antiquary, of the customs of bandits with the conversations of a man of letters. Man then is in a transitional state ; he is issuing from the mediaeval to take his place in the modern epoch, or, rather, the two ages are at their confluence, each pene trating the other in the most wonderful manner and with most surprising contrasts. As government centralisation and monarchical loyalty could not be established in Italy, the middle ages, through private feuds and appeals to force, lasted there longer than elsewhere. In Italy, the race being precocious, the crust of the Germanic in- vasion rouid only partially cover it ; the modern spirit developed itself earlier there than elsewhere through the acquisition of wealth, a fertile creative power, and the free- 184 ROME. dom of the intellect. They are farther advanced, and at the same time more backward than other peoples; more backward in the sentiment of justice, more advanced in the sentiment of beauty, and their taste conforms to their condition. Always will a society place before itself in its spectacles the objects in which it is most interested. Always has society some representative figure which it reproduces and contemplates in its art. At the present day this figure is the ambitious plebeian who covets the pleasures of Paris, who desires to descend from his plain room in the attic to a luxurious apartment on the first floor ; in short, the parvenu, the labourer, the intriguer, the business man on 'Change, or in his cabinet, such as the romances of Balzac portray. In the seventeenth century it was the courtier, versed in good breeding and a recusant in all domestic matters, the fine talker, the most elegant, the most polished and adroit of men, such as Racine portrays, and as the romances of Mdlle. de Scudery at- tempt to show him. In the sixteenth century in Italy he is the sound healthy man, well-proportioned and richly clothed, energetic and capable, such as its painters represent him in their beautiful attitudes. The Duke d'Urbino, and Caesar Borgia, and Alphonso d'Este, and Leo X., undoubtedly listened to poets and men of thought, but only at an evening entertainment, while diverting themselves after supper in some villa, surrounded by colonnades and under richly decorated ceilings. Sub- stantially, however, they delight in that which ministers to the eye and the body, such as masquerades, cavalcades, grand architectural forms, the imposing air of statues and of painted figures, and the superb decoration every- where around them. Any other diversion would bo insipid to them. They are not critics, philosophers, and frequenters of the drawing-room ; they require something palpable and tangible. If you doubt this, look at their IMAGES FILLING THE MINDS OP THIS EPOCH. 18J amusements, those of Paul II., who ordered races before him of horses, asses, cattle, children, old men and Jews ' crammed ' beforehand, to render them as stupid as possible, and ' who laughed to split his sides ; ' those of Alexander VI., which cannot be described, and of Leo X., who, booted and spurred, passed the season in hunting stags and wild boars, who kept a monk capable of ( swallowing a pigeon at one mouthful, and forty eggs in succession,' who was served at table with dishes in the shape of monkeys and crows, in order to enjoy the sur- prise of his guests, who surrounded himself with buffoons, who had i La Calandra ' and ' La Mandragora ' performed in his presence, and who delighted in obscene stories and who supported parasites. The natural finesse of such minds employed itself on the subtleties, not of senti- ments or of ideas, but of colours and forms, and, to satisfy them, a world of artists is seen to form itself around them, chief amongst which is Michael Angelo. CHAPTER IX. MICHAEL ANGELO HIS LIFE, CHARACTER, AND WORKS — THE SISTINE CHAPEL — THE LAST JUDGMENT. There are four men in the world of art and of literature exalted above all others, and to such a degree as to seem to belong to another race, namely, Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michael Angelo. No profound know- ledge, no full possession of all the resources of art, no fertility of imagination, no originality of intellect, sufficed to secure them this position, for these they all had ; these, moreover, are of secondary importance ; that which ele- vated them to this rank is their soul, the soul of a fallen deity, struggling irresistibly after a world disproportionate to our own, always suffering and combating, always toiling and tempestuous, and, as incapable of being sated as of sinking, devoting itself in solitude to erecting before men colossi as ungovernable, as vigorous, and as sadly sublime as its own insatiable and impotent desire. Michael Angelo is thus a modern spirit, and it is for this reason, perhaps, that we are able to comprehend him without effort. Was he more unfortunate than other men? Regarding things externally, it seems that he was not. If he was tormented by an avaricious family, if on two or three occasions the caprice or the death of a patron prevented the execution of an important work, designed or commenced, if his country fell into servitude, if minds around him degenerated or became weak, all these are not unusual disappointments, or serious and painful MICHAEL "ANGELO. 18? obstacles. How many among his contemporary artists experienced greater ? Suffering, however, must be mea- sured by inward emotion, and not by outward circumstance, and, if ever a spirit existed capable of transports of enthu- siasm and tremors of indignation, it was his. He was sensitive to excess, and therefore 6 timid,' lonely, and ill at ease in the petty concerns of society, and to such an extent, for example, that he could never bring himself to entertain at a dinner. Men of deep, enduring emotion, maintain reserve in order not to render themselves a spec- tacle, falling back upon introspection for lack of outward sympathy. From his youth up, society was distasteful to him ; he had so applied himself to study in solitude, as to be considered proud and insane. Later, at the acme of his fame, he plunged still deeper into it ; he took solitary walks, was served by one domestic, and passed entire weeks on scaffoldings wholly absorbed in self-communion. And this because he could hold converse with no other mind. Not only were his sentiments too powerful, but again they were too exalted. From his earliest years he cherished a passionate love for all noble things, and first for his art, to which he gave himself up entirely, notwith- standing his father's brutality, investigating all its acces- sories with compass and scalpel in hand, and with such extraordinary persistence that he became ill ; and next, his self-respect, which he maintained at the risk of his life, facing imperious popes even to forcing them to regard him as an equal, braving them 'more than a King of France would have done.' He held ordinary pleasures in contempt ; f although rich, he lived as a poor man ; ' frugally, often dining on a crust of bread: and laboriously, treating himself severely, sleeping but little, and often in his clothes, without luxury of any kind, without household display, without care for money, giving away statues and pictures to his friends, 20,000 francs to his ser- 188 ROME. vant, 30,000 ar.d 40,000 francs at once to his nephew, be- sides countless other sums to the rest of his family. And more than this; he lived like a monk, without wife or mis- tress, chaste in a voluptuous court, knowing but one love and that austere and platonic, and for one woman as proud and as noble as himself. At evening, after the labour of the day, he wrote sonnets in her praise and knelt in spirit before her, as Dante at the feet of Beatrice, praying to her to sustain his weaknesses and keep him in the ' right path.' He bowed his soul before her as before an angel of virtue, showing the same fervid exaltation in her service as that of the mystics and knights of old. He felt in her beauty a revelation of divine essence ; he beheld her ( still enveloped in her fleshly covering ascending radiant to the bosom of God.' ' He who has an affection for her,' he said, exalts himself to heaven by faith, and death becomes sweet.' Through her he attained to supreme love; in the prime source of all things he first formed his affection for her, and led by her eyes he would return thence with her.* She died before him, and for a long time he remained ' downstricken, as if deranged ; ' several years later, his heart still cherished a great grief, the regret at not having on her deathbed kissed her brow or cheek instead of her hand. The rest of his life corresponds with such sentiments. He took great delight in the ( arguments oi learned men,' and also in the perusal of the poets, espe- cially Petrarch and Dante, whom he almost knew by heart. * Would to heaven,' he one day wrote, ' I were such as he, even at the price of such a fate ! For his bitter exile and his virtue I would exchange the most for- tunate lot in this world ! The books he preferred were those noted for an imprint of grandeur, the Old and New Testaments, and especially the terribly earnest discourses * These expressions are all taken from Michael Angelo's sonnets. THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 18& of Savonarola, his master and friend, whom he saw attached to the pillory, strangled and burnt* and whose ' living word would always remain in his soul.' A man who feels and lives thus knows not how to accommodate himself to this life ; he is too different. The admiration of othera produces no self-satisfaction. * He disparaged his own works, never finding that his hand expressed the concep- tion formed within. One day, aged and decrepit, some one encountered him near the Colosseum on foot and in the snow ; on being asked, e Where are you going ? ' ' To school,' he replied, e to try and learn something.' Despair seized him more than once ; having hurt his leg. he shut himself up in his house and longed for death. Finally, he goes so far as to separate himself from himself, from that art which was his monarch and his idol ; ( pic- ture or statue, let nothing now divert my soul from that divine love on the cross, whose arms are always open to receive us ! ' The last sigh of a great soul in a dege- nerate age, and among an enslaved people! Self-renun- ciation is his last refuge. For sixty years his works do no more than make visible the heroic combat which main- tained itself in his breast to the end. Superhuman personages as miserable as ourselves, forms of gods rigid with earthly passion, an Olympus ot jarring human tragedies, such is the sentiment of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. What injustice to compare with his works the e Sibyls ' and the ( Isaiah ' of Raphael ! They are vigorous and beautiful, I admit, and I do not dispute that they testify to an equally profound art; but tha first glance suffices to show that they have not the same soul : they do not issue like these from an imp© tuous, irresistible will ; they have never experienced like these the same thrill and tension of a nervous being, concentrated and launching itself forth at the risk ot ruin. There are souls whose impressions flash out Hka 190 ROME. lightning, and whose actions are thunderbolts. Such are the personages of Michael Angelo. His colossal Jere- miah, musing, with his enormous head resting on h : s enormous hand — on what does. he muse with his downcast ejes? His floating beard descending in curls to hi3 breast, his labourer's hands furrowed with swollen veins, his wrinkled brow, his impenetrable mask, the low mutter about to burst forth, all suggest one of those barbarian kings, a dark hunter of the urus, coming to dash his impotent rage against the gates of the Roman empire. Ezekiel turns around suddenly, with an impetuous inter- rogation on his lips, and so suddenly, that the air raises from his shoulder a portion of his mantle. The aged Persica, under the long folds of her falling hood, is in- defatigably reading from a book which her knotted hands hold up to her penetrating eyes. Jonas throws back his head, appalled at the frightful apparition before him, his fingers involuntarily counting the forty days that still remain to Nineveh. Lybia, in great agitation, des- cends, bearing the enormous book she has seized. Ery- thrsea is a Pallas of a haughtier and more warlike expres- sion than her antique Athenian sister. Around these, on the curve of the arch, appear nude adolescents straining their backs and displaying their limbs, sometimes proudly extended and reposing, and again struggling or darting forward, while some are shouting, and with their rigid thighs and grasping feet seem to be furiously attacking the wall. Beneath is an old stooping pilgrim seating himself, a woman kissing an infant wrapped in its swad- dling clothes, a despairing man looking obliquely and bitterly defying destiny, a young girl with a beautiful smiling face tranquilly sleeping ; and twenty others, the grandest of human forms, that speak in all the details of their attitudes, and in the least of the folds of their garments. THE SISTrNE CHAPEL. ' 191 These are simply the contours of the arch. The arch itself, two hundred feet long, displays tho historical record of the book of Genesis, the deliverance of Israel, the creation of the world, of man, and of woman, the fall and exile of the first couple, the deluge, the brazen serpent, the murder of Holophernes, the punishment of Hainan — an entire population of figures of tragic interest. You lie down on the old carpet covering the floor and look up. In vain are they a hundred feet high, smoked, scaling off and crowded to suffocation, and so remote from the de- mands of our art, our age, and our intellect — you compre- hend them at once. This man is so great, that differences of time and of nation do not subsist in his presence. The difficulty is not in yielding to his sway, but in accounting for it. When, after your ears are filled with the thunder of his voice, and retiring to a distance, and in repose, so that only its reverberations reach you, and when reflection has succeeded to emotion, and you strive to discover the secret by which he renders its tones so vibrating, you at length arrive at this, — he possessed the soul of Dante, and he passed his life in the study of the human figure : these are the two sources of his power. The human form, as he represents it, is all ex- pression, its skeleton, muscles, drapery, attitudes and proportions ; so that the spectator is affected simultane- ously by all parts of the subject. And this form expresses energy, pride, audacity, and despair, the rage of un- governable passion or of heroic will, and in such a way as to move the spectator with the most powerful impres- sions. Moral energy emanates from every physical detail, and we feel its startling reaction corporeally and instan- taneously. Look at Adam asleep near Eve, whom Jehovah has just taken from his side. Never was creature buried in such profound, deathlike slumber. His enormous body ia 192 HOME. completely relaxed, and its enormity only renders this the more striking. On awaking, those pendant arms, those inert thighs, will crush some lion in their embrace. In the *■ Brazen Serpent' the man with a snake coiled round his waist, and tearing it off, with arm bent back and \m body distorted as he extends his thigh, suggests the strife between primitive mortals and the monsters whose slimy forms ploughed the antediluvian soil. Masses of bodies, intermingled one with the other and overthrown with their heels in the air, with arms bent like bows and with convulsive spines, quiver in the toils of the serpents; hideous jaws crush skulls and fasten themselves on howl- ing lips ; with hair on end and their mouths open miserable beings tremble on the ground, wildly and furiously kicking in the midst of the heaps of humanity around them. A man, who thus handles the skeleton and muscles, puts rage, will, and terror into the fold of a thigh, the projection of a shoulder-blade, and the flexions of the vertebra ; in his hands the whole human animal is impassioned, active, and combatant. What contemptible mannikins in com- parison are the tame frescoes, the lifeless processions, allowed to remain beneath his ! They subsist like the ancient marks on the quay of a river, by which one sees what torrents have arisen there and overflowed its banks. Alone, since the Greeks, he knew the full value of all the members. With him, as with them, the body lives by itself, and is not subordinated to the head. By dint of genius and solitary study, he rediscovered that sentiment of the nude with which their gymnastic life imbued them. Before his seated Eve, who turns half around with her foot bent under her thigh, you imagine involuntarily the spring of the leg which is tc raise that noble form erect. Before his Eve and Adam expelled from Paradise nobody thinks of looking to the face to find grief; it is the entire torso, the active limbs, the human frame with the setting THE SISTi-NR CHAPEL. 1P3 of its internal parts, the solidity of its Herculean supports, the friction and play of its moving joints, the ensemble, in short, which strikes you. The head enters into it only as a portion of the whole ; you stand motionless, absorbed in contemplating thighs that sustain such trunks and in- domitable arms that are to subject the hostile earth. But what to my taste surpass all, are the twenty youthful figures seated on the cornices at the four corners of each fresco, a veritable painted sculpture that gives one an idea of a superior and unknown world. These are all adolescent heroes of the time of Achilles and Ajax, as noble in race, but more ardent and of fiercer energy. Here are the grand nudities, the superb movements of the limbs, and the raging activity of Homer's conflicts, but with a more vigorous spirit and a more courageous, bold, and manly will. Nobody would suppose that the various atti- tudes of the human figure could affect the mind with such diverse emotions. The hips support, the breast respires, the entire covering of flesh strains and quivers ; the trunk is thrown back over the thighs, and the shoulder, ridged with muscles, is going to raise the impetuous arm. One of them falls backward and draws his grand drapery over his thigh, whilst another, with his arm over his brow, seems to be parrying a blow. Others sit pensive, and meditating, with all their limbs relaxed. Several are running and springing across the cornice, or throwing themselves back and shout- ing. Three among them, above the 'Ezekiel' the 'Persica' and the * Jeremiah/ are incomparable ; and one especially, the noblest of all, as calm and intelligent as a god, gazes with his elbow resting on some fruit, and his hand resting on his knee. You feel that they are going to move and to act, ai:d that you would like to maintain them before you con- stantly in the same attitude. Nature has produced nothing like them; thus ought she to have fashioned us; here would she find all types : giants and heroes, alongside of o 194 ROME. modest virgins and youths and sporting children; that charming Eve, so young and so proud ; that beautiful Delphica, similar to a primitive nymph, who turns her eyes tilled with innocent astonishment — all sons and daughters, of a colossal militant race, but to whom their century has preserved the smile, the serenity, the pure joyousness, the grace of the Oceanides of iEschylus, and of the Nausicaa of Homer. The soul of an artist contains within itself an entire world, and that of Michael Angelo is here un- folded. He had given it expression, and he ought not to have re- produced it. His * Last Judgment,' near by this, does not produce the same impression. The painter was then in his sixty-seventh year, and his inspiration was no longei as fresh. After having lung brooded over his ideas he has a better hold of them, but they cease to excite him ; he has exhausted the original sensation, the only true one, and he exaggerates and copies himself. Here he intention- ally enlarges the body, and inflates the muscles; he is pro- digal of foreshortenings and violent postures, converting his personages into well-fed athletes and wrestlers engaged in displaying their strength. The angels who bear away the cross clutch each other, throw themselves backward, clench their fists, strain their thighs, and gather up their feet as in a gymnasium. The saints toss about with the insignia of their martyrdom, as if each sought to attract attention to his strength and agility. Souls in purgatory, saved by cowl and rosary, are extravagant models that might serve for a school of anatomy. The artist had just entered on that period of life when sentiment vanishes before science, when the mind especially delights in over- coming difficulties. As it is, however, this work is unique ; it is like a declamatory speech in the mouth of an old warrior, with a rattling drum accompaniment. Some of the figures and groups are worthy of his grandest efforts. THE LAST JUDGMENT. 195 The powerful Eve, who maternally presses one of her horror-stricken daughters to her side ; the aged and for- midable Adam, an antediluvian Colossus, the root of the great tree of humanity ; the bestial carnivorous demons ; the figure among the damned that covers his face with his arm to avoid seeing the abyss into which he is plunging ; that in the coils of a serpent rigid with horror, as if a stone statue ; and especially that terrible Christ, like the Jupiter in Homer overthrowing the Trojans and their chariots on the plain ; also, by his side, almost concealed under his arm, that timorous, shrinking young virgin, so noble and so delicate, — all form a group of conceptions equal to those of the ceiling. These animate the whole design. We cease to feel the abuse of art, the aim at effect, the domination of mannerism; we only see the disciple of Dante, the friend of Savonarola, the recluse feeding himself on the menaces of the Old Testament, the patriot, the stoic, the lover of justice who bears in his heart the grief of his people and who attends the funeral of Italian liberty, one who, amidst degraded characters and degenerate minds, alone survives and daily becomes sadder, passing nine years at this immense work, his soul filled with thoughts of the supreme Judge and listening before- baad to the thunders of the last day / BOOK IV. VILLAS, PALACES, AND CEUBCEHS. CHAPTER I. THE ITALIAN GRAND SEIGNEUR OK THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY — TUB MANNERS OF THE PALACE AND THE ANTE-CHAMBER THE VILLA ALBANI — THE VILLA BORGHESE. Nothing has interested me more in these Roman villas than their former masters. As naturalists are aware, one obtains a pretty good idea of an animal from his shell. The place where I began to comprehend him is the Villa Albani, erected in the eighteenth century for Cardinal Alexander Albani, and according to his own plans. What you at once detect here is the grand seigneur courtier, after the fashion of our nobles of the seventeenth century. There are differences, but the two tastes are kindred. What they prize above all things is art and artistic order ; nothing is left to nature ; all is artificial. Water flows only in jets and in spray, and has no other bed but basins and urns. Grass-plots are enclosed within enormous box-hedges, higher than a man's head, and thick as walls, and are shaped in geometrical triangles, the points of which terminate in a centre. In front stretches a dense palisade lined with small cypresses. You ascend from one garden to another by broad stone steps, similar to those at Versailles. Flower-beds are er closed in little ITALIAN SIGNOR OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 197 frames of box, and form designs resembling well-bordered carpets, regularly variegated with shades of colour. This villa is a fragment, the fossil skeleton of an organism that lived two hundred years, its chief pleasure being conv er- sation, fine display, and the manners of the salon and ante-chamber. Man was not then interested in inanimate objects ; he did not recognise in them a spirit and beauty of their own ; he regarded them simply as an appendix to his own existence ; they served as a background to the picture, and a vague one, of less than accessory im- portance. His attention was wholly absorbed by the picture itself, that is to say, by its human drama and in- trigue. In order to divert some portion of attention to trees, water, and landscape, it was necessary to humanise them, to deprive them of their natural forms and ten- dencies, of their savage aspect, of a disorderly desert air, and to endow them as much as possible with the air of a salon, or a colonnade gallery, or a grand palatial court The landscapes of Poussin and Claude Lorraine all bear this imprint. They are architectural constructions — the scenery is painted for courtiers who wished to reinstate the court on their own domain. It is curious, in this relation, to compare the island of Calypso in Homer with that of Fenelon. In Homer we have a veritable island, wild and rocky, where sea-birds build their nests and screech ; in Fenelon a sort of Marly, ( arranged to please the eye.' Thus do the English gardens as now imported by us indicate the advent of another race, the reign of another taste and literature, the ascendency of another mind, more comprehensive, more solitary, more easily fatigued, and more devoted to the world within. A second remark is this, that our grand seigneur is an antiquary. Besides two galleries, and a circular portico filled with antique statues, there are pieces of sculpture of everv description scattered about the gardens : caryatides, 198 torsos, colossal busts, gods, columns topped with busts, urns, lions, huge vases, pedestals, and other innumer- able remains, often broken or mutilated. In order to turn everything to account, a wall is frequently encrusted with quantities of shapeless fragments. Some of these sculptures, such as a caryatides, a mask of Antinous, and certain statues of emperors are fine ; but the greater part forms a singular collection. Many of them belonged, evidently, to small municipalities and private dwellings; they are workshop stock, already familiar to the ancients, and the same as would subsist with us, if after a long period of inhumation our stairway statues and hotel de ville busts should be discovered ; they may be regarded as museum documents rather than as works of art. No house is thus decorated except through pedantry ; bric-a- brac forms the taste of an old man, and is the last that sub- sisted in Italy. Literature being dead, there still existed dissertations on vases and coins ; among gallant sonnets and academical phrases, when all intellectual effort was in- terdicted or paralysed in the grand void of the last century, the taste of former days and the curiosity of archaeologists were still preserved, as in the times of Politian and Lorenzo de' Medici. This sort of employment diverts minds from serious questions ; an absolute prince or a cardinal may well favour it, and thus occupy his leisure hours ; he may assume the air of a connoisseur, or of a Macaenas and merit dedicatory epistles, mythological frontispieces, and Latin and Italian superlatives. A third point, no less visible, is this : our seigneur anti- quary is Italian, a man of the south. This architecture is adapted to the climate. Many of our structures imitated during our classic centuries, and absurd under our skies, are reasonable here, and accordingly beautiful. First is the grand portico with open arcades ; windows are unneces- sary, and it is even better to be without them; it is a ITALIAN SIGNOR OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 199 promenade, and especially one in which to enjoy fresh breezes. It is proper, too, to have everything of marble , in the north we would feel cold through the imagination alone ; we would involuntarily recur to curtains, rings, heaters, carpets, the entire apparatus indispensable to physical comfort. A duke, on the contrary, or a prelate in his purple robe, in state, and surrounded by his gentlemen, is just where he should be to discuss political affairs or to listen to the reading of sonnets. From time to time, on his majestic promenade, he may bestow a glance on statues and emperors' busts, and descant on them as a latinist and politician, earnestly interested in their lives and images, through a sort of relationship belonging to the right of succession. He is again well placed here to receive artists, patronise debutants, and to order and examine architectural plans. If he enters an avenue, it is so wide and smooth, that his robe is not likely to be caught, besides furnishing plenty of space for his train of attendants. The garden and buildings are admirable for an out-of-door levee. The prospects and landscape vistas obtained at the ends of the galleries, thus framed in by columns, are of the same taste. The superb ilex rises above a terrace, with its monstrous pilasters and evergreen dome of monu- mental foliage. Avenues of sycamores diverge in rows shaped like porticoes. Lofty solemn cypresses clasp their knotty branches against their grey trunks and rise in the air gravely and monotonously like pyramids. The aloe stretches itself against a white wall, its strange trunk scaled and tortuous like a serpent writhing in convulsions. Beyond, outside the garden, on a neighbouring hill-side, a confused mass of structures and pines elevate them- selves, rising and falling according to the surface of the ground. On the horizon runs the sharp broken line of the mountains, one of which, blue like a heavy rain 200 VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES. cloud, rises triangularly and shuts off a portion of the sky From this the eye reverts back to the series of arcades forming the circular portico, to the balustrades and statues diversifying the crest of the roof, to columns scattered here and there, and to the squares and circles of the hedges and fish-pools. Surrounded by this mountain frame the landscape is precisely like that of Perelle, and it corresponds with an intellectual state of things, of which a modern man, and especially a northern man, has no idea. People nowadays are more delicate, less capable of relishing painting, and more capable of relish- ing music ; men in those days had coarser nerves, and senses more alive to external objects ; they did not feel the spirit of outward objects, but readily appreciated their forms. A well-selected and well-arranged land- scape pleased them the same as a lofty and spacious apart- ment, solidly constructed, and handsomely decorated ; this sufficed for them ; they never held a conversation with a tree. On the first story, and from the large marble balcony, the mountain in front seems like an edifice, a veritable piece of architecture. Below, you see ladies and visitors promenading the compartments of the alleys ; give them brocade silk skirts, velvet coats, lace frills, and a nobler and easier deportment, and you would behold a court as it defiled before and lived indolently under the eye, and at the expense of a grand seignor. He needed it in order to impress others with his importance, also to protect him- self from enemies; only in these days has man learned to live by himself, or alone with his family. The grand saloon, likewise, -wainscotted and decorated with marble, adorned with columns, bas-reliefs, great vases, and gilded and painted in fresco, is the most beautifully arranged place for a reception. One can recompose without much effort of the imagination the ertire scene THE VILLA ALBANI. 201 with all its personages. Here and there, awaiting the master, are amateurs and abbes discussing and examining the merits of pictures. Their eyes look upward at the ' Parnassus ' of Mengs ; they compare it with that of Ilaphael and thus furnish evidences of culture and good 1 as te ; they avoid dangerous converse and may depart without being compromised. Alongside, in small saloons, are others contemplating a superb bas-relief of Antinous — that breast so vigorous, those manly lips, that air of the valiant wrestler ; and, farther on, an admirable pale Cardinal by Domenichino, and the two little bacchanals, so animated, by Giulio Romano. People still comprehend these; traditions are still maintained; new intellectual views — a rhetorical, philosophical culture — have not yet effaced, as in France, the manners, customs, and ideas of the sixteenth century ; assassinations are still common, and the streets in the evening are by no means safe. Whilst, in France, the boudoir painters reign, Mengs is here imitating the Renaissance, and Winckelmann is reviving the antique. They appreciate their works and those of the great masters ; patient attendance in ante- chambers, the emptiness of prudent conversation, the dangers of unreserved gaiety and a mutual distrust have augmented sensibility while hindering its expan- sion. There is still a place in man for strong impressions. How remote these habits and sentiments from our own ! How refined culture, widely diffused wealth, and an effective police have laboured amongst us to leave of man no master intellect- but that of the Bohemian, the nervous ambitious being of Musset and of Heine ! I prolonged my walk two miles beyond this. There are quantities of grand villas decked with ridiculous ruins expressly manufactured for them, and many duly modernised; opposite styles contend with each other; it is not worth one's trouble to enter these villas. 202 VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES. Other structures, more commonplace, afford glimpses ol groves of palms, and of the cactus and white rushes scat- tered about among flowing fountains — nothing can be more graceful and original. The poorest inns contain in their courts large spreading trees, or thick trellises overhead forming roofs of verdure. You drink bad wine, yellow and sweet, but your eyes dwell on landscapes of delicate tints, bordered with the long blue mountains, budding ver- dure, white almond trees, elegant outlines of brown and grey foliage, and a sky flecked with soft vapoury clouds. Villa Borghese. — I have not much to say to you of the other villas : they suggest similar ideas ; the same way of living produced the same tastes. Some of them are grander, more rural, and on a larger scale, and among them is the Villa Borghese. You reach it through the Piazzo del Popolo. This square, with its churches, obelisks, and fountains, and the monumental steps of the Pincio, is both peculiar and beautiful. I am always mentally comparing these monuments with those of Paris, to which I am accustomed. You find here less space and stonework, less material grandeur than in the Place de la Concorde and in the Arc de Triomphe : but more invention, and more to interest you. The Villa Borghese is a vast park four miles in cir- cumference, with buildings of all kinds scattered over it. At the entrance is an Egyptian portico, in the poorest possible taste — some modern importation. The interior is more harmonious, and quite classical. Here is a little temple, there a peristyle, further on a ruined colonnade, a portico, balustrades, large round vases, and a sort of amphi- theatre. The undulating surface rises and falls in beauti- ful meadows, red with the delicate trembling anemone. Italian pines, purposely separated, display their elegant forms and stately heads in profile against the white sky ; T11E VILLA, BORGIIESE. 203 fountains murmur at every turn of the avenues, and in small valleys grand old oaks, still naked, send up their valiant, heroic, antique forms. I was born and nurtured in the north ; you can imagine how the sight of these trees dissipated all the beauties of Rome ; how its churches and structures vanished before these gnarled old trunks, the mighty combatants of my cherished forests, now reviving under the moist winds, and already putting forth their buds. They refresh one delightfully in this w r orld of monuments and stone. All that is human is limited, and on this account wearies ; lines of buildings are always rigid ; a statue or picture is never aught but a spectre of the past ; the sole objects that afford unalloyed pleasure are nature's objects, forming and transforming, which live, and the substance of which is, so to say, fluid. You remain here entire afternoons contemplating the ilex, the vague, bluish tint of its verdure, its rich rotundity, as ample as that of the trees of England ; there is an aristocracy here as there; only can grand hereditary estates save beautiful useless trees from the axe. By the side of these rise the pines, erect like columns, bearing aloft their noble canopies in the tranquil azure ; the eye never wearies in following those round masses, com- mingling and receding in the distance, in watching the gentle tremor of their leaves and the graceful inclina- tion of so many noble heads, dispersed here and there through the transparent atmosphere. At intervals, a poplar, ruddy with blossoms, sends up its vacillating pyramid. The sun is slowly declining; gleams of ruddy light illumine the grey trunks, and the green slopes are sprinkled with blooming daisies. The sun sinks lower and lower, and the palace windows flash, and the heads of statues are lit up with mysterious flames, while from the distance one catches the faint music of Bellini's airs borne along at intervals by the swelling breeze. CHAPTER II. THE VILLA LUDOVI8I— STATUES — THE AUKORA OP G UERCINO — L iND SCAPES — NEPOTISM IN TI1E SEVENTEENTH CENTURY — THE DECADENC] OP THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY — THE PALACE AT THE PRESENT DAY All these villas have their collections of antiques. That of the villa Ludovisi is one of the finest; a pavilion has been expressly erected to contain it. Since the days of Lorenzo de' Medici the possession of antiquities here has been a compulsory luxury, a complement of every great aristocratic life. Accordingly, on regarding things closely, you perceive throughout the history of modern Rome a souvenir, a continuation as it were of antique Rome ; the Pope is a sort of spiritual Caesar, and, in many points, the people who live beyond the Alps are always barbarians. We have been able only to renew the chain of tradition ; with them this chain has never been broken. I have notes on all this gallery; but I will not over- whelm you with notes There is a head of ( Juno, Queen,' possessing a grandeur and seriousness altogether sublime. I do not believe that there is anything superior to it in Rome. I noticed a seated ' M ars? with his hands crossed on his knees, and a nude ' Mercury.' But I cannot repeat what L have already written you on this sculpture ; what you feel for the twentieth time is the serenity of a beautiful, complete existence, well-balanced, in which the brain is not an oppressor of the rest of the body. In vain you admire Michael Angelo, and heartily give him your sympathy as to a mighty heroic tragedy ; you say to yourself re- THE VILLA XUD0V1ST. 205 peatedly tliat this wonderful calmness is more beautiful, because it is healthier. The torso of this Mercury scarcely shows any modelling — you simply see the line of the pelvis ; instead of muscles in activity the sculptor has represented only the human form, and that suffices for the spectator. A modern group, by Bernini, called ( Pluto bearing off Proserpine,' affords a striking contrast. The head of Pluto is vulgarly gay ; his crown and beard give him a ridiculous air, while the muscles are strongly marked and the figure poses. It is not a true divinity, but a decorative god, like those at Versailles — a mythological figurant striving to catch the attention of connoisseurs and the kino:. Proserpine's body is very effeminate, very pretty, and very contorted ; but there is too much expression in the face ; its eyes, its tears, and its little mouth are too attractive. The weather was perfectly beautiful, the sky of a cloud- less blue, and the more charming that for the last eight days we had no rain and no mud ; but an effort was ne- cessary in order to see anything, so depressed was I by the death of our poor friend Woepke. The villa, however, is charming ; its fields, intact and refreshed by the rains, sparkled; the blooming laurel hedge, the oak forests and the avenues of old cypress trees cheered and revived one's spirit with their grace and grandeur. This kind of landscape is unique ; you find the vegetation of all climates mingled and grouped together; on one side are knots of palms, and the grand feathery cane shooting up like a wax-taper from its nest of glittering leaves ; beyond, a poplar and enormous grey naked chestnut trees, just beginning to blossom. And a still more peculiar sight is the old walls of Rome, a veritable natural ruin, that serves as an enclosure. Hot-houses are supported against red arcades ; lemon trees in pale rows hug the disjointed bricks, and in the vicinity fresh green grass is growing / t06 VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES. abundantly; from time to time you detect from gome elevation the outermost circle of the horizon and the blue mountains varied by snow. All this exists within Rome. Nobody comes here, and I do not even know if anyone lives here. Rome is a museum and a sepulchre where past forms of life subsist in silence. You reach the large central pavilion and enter a hall wainscotted with mosaics, where grand busts look gravely down on you from their lofty niches. The name of the founder of this villa, Cardinal Ludovisi, is inscribed over each door. Through the windows you perceive gardens and verdure. The 'Aurora ' of Guercino fills the ceiling and its curves. This is the vast naked dining-hall of a grand seigneur ; we have halls nowadays as brilliant and as convenient, but have we any as beautiful ? Aurora, on a chariot, quits old Tithonus half enveloped in drapery, which a Cupid raises, whilst another, nude and plump, seizes with infantile playfulness some flowers in a basket. She is a young vigorous woman, her vigour almost inclining to coarseness. Before her are three female figures on a cloud, all large and ample, and much more original and natural than those of the Aurora of Guido. Still farther in advance are three laughing young girls frolicking and extinguish- ing the stars. A ray .of morning light half traverses their faces, and the contrast between the illuminated and shadowed portions is charming. Amid ruddy clouds and the morning mists that are disappearing, you perceive the deep blue of the sea. On one of the hollows of the arch is a seated female 6gure, sleeping, clad in grey, and supporting her head with her hand ; near her is a naked infant couched on some white drapery, also asleep. This sleep is of admirable truthfulness ; the profound stupor characteristic of children in this state is strongly marked in the slight pout of the lips and in a light frown on the brow. Guercino did n*t NEPOTISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 207 like Guido, copy antiques ; he studied living models, like Caravaggio, always observing the details of actual life, the changes of impression from grave to gay, and all that is capricious in the passion and expression of the face. His figures are often heavy and short, but they live; the mingling of light with transparent shadows on the bodies of the two sleepers is the very poetry of sleep. The Palace. —These villas and gardens, and these pa- laces that fill the Corso, are the remains of Rome's grand old aristocratic life. Neither Paris nor London possesses anything like them ; private parks in these cities have become public promenades ; a great family has retained only a mansion, or more frequently an ordinary house, with a small plot of ground around it, on which its master may take his walks, subject to the gaze of his neighbours. Whilst in northern lands equality was being established, the aristocracy were here strengthening themselves and renewing their existence through nepotism. For three centuries the popes employed the best part of the public revenues in the founding of families ; they were good relatives, and provided well for the children of thch brothers and sisters. Sixtus V. gave to one of his grand nephews a cardinal's hat and a hundred thousand crowns out of the ecclesiastical benefices. Clement VIII. in thirteen years, distributes among his nephews, the Aldo- brandini, and in ready cash only a million of crowns. Paul V. bestows on Cardinal Borghese one hundred and fifty thousand crowns of the Church income ; on Marc- Antoine Borghese a principality, several palaces in Rome, the most beautiful in its vicinity ; and to others, diamonds, plate, carriages, and complete sets of furniture, amounting to a million of crowns in specie. With such profuse sup- plies the Borghese family purchased eighty estates, all on the Roman Campagna, besides others elsewhere. The truth is j the Pope is simply an aged fui:ctiono.ry, whose office is 208 VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES. but a life tenure, his family being obliged to make the most of it in the shortest space of time. These prodigalities increase under every successive reign. Under Gregory XV., Cardinal Ludovisi receives two hundred thousand crowns of benefices ; his uncle, the Pope's father, is treated as handsomely. The pope founds luoghi di monte for eight hundred thousand crowns, which he gives to them. I The possessions of the Peretti, the Aldobrandini, the Borghese, and the Ludovisi,' says a contemporary, ' with their principalities, their enormous revenues, so many magnificent edifices, such superb furniture, decorations, and rare pleasure-grounds, surpass not only the state of nobles and princes not sovereign, but approach that of kings themselves.' Under Urban VIII. the Barberini receive to the amount of one hundred and five million crowns, and things go so far, that the Pope entertains scruples and appoints a commission to take the matter in hand. In short, in order to provide the means for these liberal endowments, it becomes necessary to borrow money, and the finances get to be in a dreadful plight ; at the end of the sixteenth century, the interest of the debt amounted to three quarters of the revenue, and six years later it ab- sorbed it entirely, excepting seventy thousand crowns ; a few years after this, certain branches of the revenue no longer sufficed to discharge the burdens imposed on them. The commission nevertheless declared that the Pope, as prince, might bestow his savings and all surplus income on whom he pleased. Nobody then considered a sovereign as a magistrate entrusted with the administration of the public funds ; such an idea did not prevail in Europe until after the time of Locke, the state being regarded as pro- perty which anyone might either use or abuse. The com- mission declared that the Pope could conscientiously found a majorat for his family at eighty thousand crowns. When a little later Alexander VII. wished to heal thia NEPOTISM IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 20> sore, good strong arguments were advanced to him to prove that he was wrong. He had forbidden his nephews to come to Rome, and the rector of the Jesuits' College, Oliva, decided that he ought to summon them there f under penalty of committing mortal sifl.' It is interest- ing to see in contemporary narratives* how money flows and overflows, descending from pope to pope in new reser- voirs and in magnificent golden streams, their glittering waves sparkling with the precious effigies of sequins, crowns, and ducats. The reader sees, as in the vicinity of a vivifying water-course, the most beautiful aristocratic flowers spring up ; all that sumptuousness represented in pictures and in engravings, gentlemen in satin and velvet, gay lackeys, footmen, guards, and corpulent majordomos, officers of the kitchen, the table, and the stable ; a population of men-at-arms and noble domestics purposely selected for show and expense, forming a retinue for the master on his visits, adorning his antichamber at his receptions, mounting behind his carriage, lodging in his attics, eating in his kitchen, assisting at his bedside, and living in lordly style, with nothing to do but to make their embroidered coats last as long as possible and defend at all hazards the honour of their master's house. How support such a throng of people ? And note this, that they had to be supported ; they were necessary in order to ensure their patron proper respect. Rome was not a place of security ; ' On the death of Urban VII 1./ says one of his contemporaries, f society, during the con- clave, seemed to have disintegrated. There were so many armed people in the city, I do not remember ever to have seen so many. There is no wealthy house that does not provide itself with a garrison of soldiers. If all were massed together they would form a grand army. Violent * See Ranke's History of the Popes. 210 VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES. acts, and all kind of license are committed with impu* nity; men are slain in all quarters: the report the oftenest circulated is that this or that well-known person has just been killed.' As soon as the pope is elected, his predecessor's nephews have a busy time ; every effort is made to force them to disgorge their plunder, their enemies commencing trials at once, and often compelling them to fly. Amidst so much danger, a party of dependants and clients whose swords are always ready and faithful, becomes an imperative necessity. Rome had not then taken the step which separates the middle ages from modern times. Security and justice did not exist. She is not an organised state, and still less a soil of pa- triotic sentiment ; every one is obliged to protect him- self either by force or by stratagem ; every one enjoys privileges, that is to say, the power and the right in certain circumstances to set himself above the law. Even a hundred years later, De Brosses writes, ' whoever cares to disturb society may do so with impunity pro- vided he is known to a noble, and is within reach of a place of refuge. Places of refuge abound everywhere, the churches, the enclosure of an ambassador's quarter, the house of a cardinal, to such an extent, that the poor devils of sbirri (these are archers) belonging to the police, are compelled to carry maps of the particular streets and places in Rome through which they may pass in pursuit of a malefactor.' A noble lives in his palace, like the feudal baron in his castle. His windows are cross-barred and strongly bolted, so as to resist lever and axe ; the stones of his facade are long, half the length of a man's body, so that neither bullet nor pick can affect their mass ; the walls of his gardens are thirty feet high, and the copings and corner stones are such that few would risk an attack on them. The park, again, is large enough to hold a small THE DECADENCE OP THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 211 army ; two or three hundred men in slashed doublets easily find room in the antichambers and galleries, and all can be lodged without difficulty under the roof. As to recruits, these are never wanting. As in the middle ages, the feeble, in order to exist, are forced to commend themselves to the strong. ' My lord,' says a poor man, 1 like my father and my grandfather, I am the servant of your family.' Also, as in the middle ages, the strong, to sustain themselves, require to enlist a corps of the weak. f There is a coat, and so many crowns a month,' says the powerful man, ( march by the side of my carriage on entries and at ceremonies.' There are thus at Rome hundreds of petty leagues, and the more men a man has under his control and in his service, the stronger he is. Such a system brings ruin, and the first thing is to borrow. In this respect the nobles imitate the state, or, in order to obtain ready money they mortgage their revenues, and fail to keep their engagements. For seven years the creditors of the Farnese do not receive a crown ; and as among these creditors there are hospitals and chari- table establishments, the pope is compelled to dispatch soldiers to occupy the Farnese territory at Castro. In these days, moreover, disputes grow out of breaches of etiquette, and provoke veritable wars, and you may imagine the expense of these. The Barberini, having received no visit from Odoardo Farnese, deprive him of the right of exporting his corn, whereupon the latter invades the States of the Church with a body of three thousand horse, declaring that he does not come to attack the pope but only his nephews. The nephews in their turn raise an army ; the soldiers on both sides are merce- naries, French and German, and the country is pillaged by the two cavalcades until, finally, peace is effected, and both parties find themselves with empty pockets. In order to refill them the natural course is to oppress the p2 212 VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES. people. Donna Olympia, sister-in-law of Innocent X., sells public offices. The brother of Alexander VI., chief judge at Borgo, makes a market of justice. Taxes become frightful. A contemporary writes 'that the people, without revenue, clothes, beds, and kitchen utensils to satisfy the requirements of the commissaries, have only one resource left with which to pay taxes, and that is to sell themselves as slaves.' They cease to work and the country becomes impoverished. In the following century De Brosses writes, ' The government is as bad as one could possibly conceive of. Imagine what a people must be of whom one third are priests, and another third idlers ; where there is neither agriculture, commerce, nor manufactures, in the midst of a fertile country, and on a navigable river, and in which at every change fresh robbers come to take the place of those who no longer need to plunder.' In such a country labour is a delusion. Why should I take the trouble to work, knowing that the exchequer or some noble, or some protected knave, will rob me of the fruits of my labour ? It is much better to attend the levee of a valet-de-chambre of some dignitary ; he will obtain for me a slice of the cake. . * If a common girl enjoys protection through the bastard of a cardinal's apothecary, she has secured to her five or six dowries charged on five or six churches, and no longer desires to learn how to sew or to spin ; another scoundrel espouses her through the attraction of this ready money,' and they live by sponging ; later as panders, solicitors, and beggars they fish for their dinner wherever they can find it. High life then begins, such as the picaresco novels portray it, and not merely in Rome but throughout Italy. Labour is regarded as an indignity, and people aim at display ; they hire servants and forget to pay them their wages ; they dine on a turnip and wear lace ; they obtain credit of ths THE DECADENCE OF THE , SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 213 merchants and repel their demands with lies and entreaties. Goldoni's comedies are full of these well-born personages, clever and cultivated and living at the expense of others. They get themselves invited into the country; they are always gay, dashing, and conversational, poetic in honour of their host and advisory in all his building enterprises ; above all they borrow his money and do full justice to his table, being called i cavaliers of the tooth ; ' buffoons, flatterers, and gluttons, they would readily accept a kick for a crown. The memoirs of the day furnish hundreds of examples of this degeneracy. Carlo Gozzi, on returning home from his travels with a friend, stops a moment to contemplate the superb facade of the palace of his family. They ascend a broad marble staircase and are astonished at what they behold, the house seeming to have been given up to pillage. * The floor of the great hall was entirely destroyed. There were deep cavities everywhere, over which one stumbled with a severe shock ; the broken windows let the wind in from all quarters, and the soiled tapestry himg on the walls in shreds. Not a trace was left of a magnificent gallery of old paintings ; I could find but two portraits of my ancestors, one by Titian and the other by Tintoretto.' The women pawn, hire, or sell, what they can and how they can. "When necessity prompts them they no longer stop to reason. One day the sister-in-law of Gozzi sells to a sausage-maker by weight a bundle of ola papers consisting of contracts, trust-deeds, and titles to property. All these circumstances provide the expedients, intrigues, and humorous features of the Roman comique. It is only necessary to read that scapegrace Casanova, in order to know to what gilded misery can descend. He undoubtedly, like all rogues, kept the company of his equals ; but French rascality has with him a different air and quite other actors than Italian. lie accosts a count, an officer of the Venetian Republic, an amiable man, 214 VILLAS, TALACES, AND CHURCHES. whose wife and daughter are refined both in manners and in address; on the following day he visits them, and finds the window blinds almost closed ; he opens them slightly and perceives two poor women dressed in rags and in linen by no means attractive ; they hire fine clothes for Sunday in order to attend mass, without which they would obtain no share of the ecclesiastical alms that enable them to keep body and soul together. Some few years after this he returns to Milan. Husbands and brothers, all gentle- men and well bred and many quite proud, play the part of panders in their own families ; a count with whom he lodges, and who is without fuel to make a fire, blu shingly offers to negociate the honour of his wife. Another, Count Rinaldi, on learning that his daughter brings a hundred crowns instead of fifty weeps for joy. Charming women who, for lack of money, could not visit Milan, are unable to resist a supper and a dress. The son of a noble Venetian keeps a gambling-hell, cheats at play and con- fesses it. A young lady of the nobility confesses that ' her father taught her to cut the cards at faro so as never to lose.' Men and women go down on their knees before a sequin. Quotations are impossible ; the actual words of the swindling charlatan adventurer can alone make visible the extraordinary contrast between morals and manners ; on the one hand fine clothes, polished phrases, elegant style, and the taste and deportment of the best society; and on the other the effrontery, the acts, the gestures, and the filth of the vilest. It is to this low level that the seigneurial life of the sixteenth century descended. When the people no longer work, and the great rob, we see chevaliers d? Industrie and female adven- turers in swarms; honour is an article of merchandise like other things, and it is bartered for coin when naught else remains. And yet it is to this society of the idle and the privileged THE DECADENCE OF THE -SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 215 that we owe the great works of art which now attract visitors to Rome. In the absence of all other interests men occupied themselves with forming galleries and with architecture ; the pleasure of building and the tastes ot the antiquary and connoisseur were all that remained to a nobleman weary of ceremonies in a country where the chase and violent bodily exercises were no longer in fashion, where politics was interdicted, where neither public spirit nor humanitarian sympathy existed, and where a noble literature had become extinct, having been sup- planted by the grossest ignorance and insignificant verses. What could he do after he had provided for the interests of his house, returned his visits, and made love ? He builds and he buys. Until the eighteenth century, and in full decadence, this noble tradition subsists. He prefers beauty to convenience. ' The houses,' says President De Brosses, ' are covered with antique bas-reliefs from top to bottom, but there is not a bedroom in them.' The Italian is not ostentatious, like the Frenchman, in his receptions and in gormandising ; in his eyes a fine fluted column is worth more than fifty repasts. ' His mode of self- display, after having acquired a fortune by a life of fru- gality, is to expend it in the construction of some grand public edifice .... in order to transmit to posterity in a durable manner his name, his magnificence, and his taste.' The traces of this peculiar life are visible at every step in the hundred and fifty palaces that crowd Rome. You see immense courts, high walls like prison walls, and monumental facades. Nobody is in the court — it is a desert; sometimes at its entrance are a dozen loungers seated on the stones, appearing to be pulling up the grass ; you would imagine the palace abandoned. This is fre- quently the case, its ruined master lodging in the fourth story and trying to let a portion of the rest, all these build- ings being too grand, too disproportionate to the standard x / 216 VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES. of modern living, and unfit for anything but museums and ministerial purposes. s You ring and a ' Swiss,' some solemn-visaged lackey, slowly answers the bell ; these people all look like the doleful birds of the Jardin dcs Plantes, begilded, striped, befeathered, and sad, but roosting on a suitable perch. Very often nobody comes, although you are there at the proper day and hour, because the custode is executing some commission for the princess : and thereupon the visitor curses a country in which all support themselves on strangers, and in which nobody is prompt. You mount countless nights of steps, of extra- ordinary width and height, and find yourself in a range of apartments of still greater width and height ; you advance — there is no end to them ; you walk for five minutes before reaching the dining hall, in which four regiments of infantry with their sappers and musicians might all be lodged ; the Austrian embassy at Venice is as much lost in one of these palaces as a nest of rats in an old mill. — Suppose, for instance, that you have a visit to pay; in vain does the family occupy the palace— it seems to be empty. You notice a few servants in the antichamber ; beyond this solitude begins — five or six enormous halls, filled with faded furniture, most of it in the fashion of the Empire. You cast your eyes out of a window as you pass, and see lofty heavy walls, moss-covered pavements, and the corn- ices of a mutilated and leprous roof. At length human figures reappear — one or two officers ; they announce you, and you stand before a plain-looking man in a frock- coat seated in a modern fauteil in a smaller chamber, and duly arranged with a view to comfort and warmth. If there is a melancholy abode in the world, one more dis- cordant with modern usages, it is that which this man occupies. By way of contrast remark, on leaving it, a renovated hotel such as you encounter among the lesser nobility,— the house of an artist, of which there are a THE PALACE AT THE PRESENT DAY. 217 number near the Piazza di Spagna, with its carpets and flower-stands, its fresh new and elegant furniture, the many charming evidences of prosperity, its moderate and convenient dimensions, everything it contains that is attractive, brilliant, comfortable, and delightful. On the contrary, the palace requires sixty liveried lackeys and eighty dependent gentlemen on wages ; these constitute the natural furniture for each apartment: the courts require the twenty carriages and the hundred horses of its ancient masters; add to this various services of plate, tapestries, and millions of cash in hand to regild or renew its furniture as in the days of the popes of two centuiies ago. Its pictures, all those grand figures in action, those splendid nudities hung on the walls, are nothing now but monuments of an extinct existence, too voluptuous and too corporeal for the life of the present. A lizard quartered in the carcase of an antediluvian croco- dile, his ancestor, is a symbol of the aristocratic life of Home ; the crocodile was a fine one, but he is now dead. x CHAPTER III. THE FARNESE PALACE — THE SCIARRA, DORIA, BORGIIESE, BARBERINI, AND ROSPIGLIOSI PALACES AND GALLERIES — THE PAINTERS OF TUB SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. Of all these fossils the grandest, noblest, most im- posing and rigidly magnificent is, in my opinion, the Farnese palace. It is situated in a vile quarter. In order to reach it you pass near the gloomy and dilapidated Cenci palace. Five minutes before I had traversed the Ghetto of the Jews, a veritable nest of pariahs in a labyrinth of crooked streets and foul gutters, its houses with their dislocated bulging fronts reminding one of dropsical hernia, their dark courts discharging exhalations, and their winding stone steps clinging to walls reeking with the filth of centuries. Ugly, dwarfed, and pallid figures swarmed here like mushrooms growing on a heap of rubbish. You arrive, your mind filled with images of this de- scription. Alone, in the middle of a dark square, rises the enormous palace, lofty and massive, like a fortress capable of giving and receiving the heaviest ordinance. It belongs to the grand era; its architects, San. Gallo, Michael Angelo and Vignolles, and especially the first named, have stamped upon it the veritable Renaissance character, that of virile energy. It is indeed akin to the torsoes of Michael Angelo ; you feel in it the inspiration of the great pagan epoch, the age of tragic passions and THE FARNJaBE PALACE. 219 of unimpaired energies that foreign dominion and the catholic restoration were about to weaken and degrade. The exterior is a colossal square form, with strong barred windows, and almost wholly without ornament ; it has to resist attack, endure for centuries, and lodge a prince and a small army of retainers ; this is the first idea of its master and of its architect ; that of the pleasing comes afterward . But the term pleasing is badly chosen ; amidst bold and dangerous customs, amusement, and graceful amiability as we comprehend it, are never thought of; what they prize is grave masculine beauty, and they express it by lines and by constructions as well as by frescoes and statues. Above this grand, almost bare facade, the cornice that forms the edge of the roof is both rich and severe, and its continuous framework, so noble and appropriate, maintains the entire mass together, so that the whole is a single form. The enormous bossages of the angles, the variety of the long lines of windows, the thickness of the walls, constantly mingle together the ideas of force and beauty. You enter through a sombre vestibule, as solid as a postern, peopled with arabesques and supported by twelve short Doric columns of red granite. The admirable interior court here presents itself, and the finest portion of the edifice. The exterior is for defence, the interior for promenade, repose, and to enjoy the cool air. Each story has its own inner pro- menade and portico of columns, every column being inserted in a strong arch and forming a resisting echinus, which adds considerably to its energetic appearance ; the balus trades however, and the diversity of the stories, one being Doric and another Ionic, and especially the garland of fruits and flowers separating them, and the lilies sculp- tured in arabesque, overspread this severity with beauty like a bright light in the midst of a powerful shadow. The Sciarra and Doria Palaces— As, the former king of 220 VILLAS, PALACES, AND CHURCHES, Naples occupies the Farnese palace it is difficult to get access to it in order to examine the paintings ; the others are open on fixed days. Proprietors have the taste and good sense to convert their private galleries into public museums. Hand-cards are placed upon the tables and serve as catologues for the convenience of visitors, while the concierges and keepers gravely pocket their two pauls' gratuity ; they are, in fact, functionaries that serve the public and must be paid by the public. — This shows the transition from aristocratic to democratic life ; mas- ter-pieces and palaces have ceased with us to be the property of individuals, in order to become the usufruct of all. - The Seiarra Palace. — Two precious pictures here are under glass, the first and the most beautiful being the ( Violin-player ' by Raphael. This represents a young man in a black cap and green mantle with a fur collar, and thick brown hair descending over it. There is good reason for pronouncing Raphael the prince of painters. It is impossible to be more sober and more simple, to comprehend grandeur more naturally and with less of effort. His faded frescoes and defaced ceilings do not fully re- present him ; one must see works like this in which the colouring is not impaired and the relief remains intact. The young man slowly turns his head, fixing his eye on the spectator. The nobleness and calmness of the head are incomparable, also its gentleness and intelligence; you cannot imagine a more beautiful, a more delicate spirit, one more worthy of being loved. His seriousness is such that one miffht imagine he detected a shade of me- lancholy; but the truth is he is in repose and he has anoble nature. The more one contemplates Raphael the more does one recognise that he had a tender confiding soul, similar to that of Mozart, that of a man of genius who displayed his genius without suffering, and ever dwelt with ideal forms; THE SCIARRA AND* DORIA PALACES. 221 he remained good, like a superior creature traversing the baseness and miseries of life without being affected by them. The other picture is a portrait of Titian's mistress, noble also and calm like a Greek statue ; one hand rests on a casket and the other touches the magnificent hair which falls from her neck. The white chemise lies in careless folds, and a large red mantle encircles the shoulders. What folly to compare together these two painters and these two pictures ! Is it not better to enjoy in them both aspects of life. Two e Magdalens ' by Guido. Here you make compa- risons in spite of yourself; you turn away immediately from these chalky, feeble productions, executed mechani- cally and barren of all ideas. One of the masterpieces of this gallery, and perhaps the greatest, I find to be the * Modesty and Vanity * of Leonardo da Vinci. It is simply two female figures on a dark background. Here, and as if by contrast, what there is of ideas is incredible. This man is the most pro- found, the most thoughtful of painters; his was a subtle intellect full of curious questionings, caprices, refinements, intricacies, sublime conceptions, and perhaps of sad expe- riences beyond all his contemporaries. He was universal — painter, sculptor, architect, machinist, engineer; antici- pating modern science and defining and pursuing its method anterior to Bacon ; inventive in all things, even to appearing eccentric to the men of his age ; diving into and pressing onward through coming centuries and ideas, without confining himself to any