THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
COLLECTION 
 
 OF 
 
 BEITISH AUTHOKS 
 
 TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 
 
 VOL. 2126. 
 SKETCHES IN ITALY BY J. ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
 
 IN ONE VOLUME. 
 
TAUCHNITZ EDITION. 
 
 By the same Author, 
 NEW ITALIAN SKETCHES I vol. 
 
SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
 
 SELECTED FROM "SKETCHES IN ITALY AND GREECE" 
 AND "SKETCHES AND STUDIES IN ITALY." 
 
 COPYRIGHT EDITION. 
 
 LEIPZIG 
 
 BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 
 1883. 
 
 TJie Right of Translation is reserved. 
 
7) (3-427 
 S16 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 In preparing this Selection of Italian Sketches for 
 the Tauchnitz Collection of English Authors, I have 
 used the text of two volumes already published in 
 England and America. These are my "Sketches in 
 Italy and Greece" (London, Smith and Elder 1879), 
 and "Sketches and Studies in Italy" (London, Smith 
 and Elder 1879). I have been careful to include the 
 more picturesque pieces of these two series, omitting 
 essays upon historical and literary topics, in order that 
 the present volume might assume the character of an 
 Italian Sketch book, and adapt itself to the use of 
 travellers rather than of students. 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
 DAVOS PLATZ, Feb. 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 THE CORNICE 9 
 
 SIENA 32 
 
 PERUGIA 60 
 
 ORVIETO 90 
 
 RIMINI no 
 
 RAVENNA . 130 
 
 PARMA 145 
 
 CANOSSA 162 
 
 CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX 181 
 
 MONTE GENEROSO 196 
 
 COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO 209 
 
 PALERMO aaj 
 
 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI 260 
 
 AMALFI, P^ESTUM, CAPRI 2 8t 
 
SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 THE CORNICE. 
 
 IT was a dull afternoon in February when we left 
 Nice and drove across the mountains to Mentone. 
 Over hill and sea hung a thick mist. Turbia's Roman 
 tower stood up in cheerless solitude, wreathed round 
 with driving vapor, and the rocky nest of Esa seemed 
 suspended in a chaos between sea and sky. Some- 
 times the fog broke and showed us Villafranca, lying 
 green and flat in the deep blue below; sometimes a 
 distant view of higher peaks swam into sight from the 
 shifting cloud. But the whole scene was desolate. 
 Was it for this that we had left our English home, 
 and travelled from London day and night? At length 
 we reached the edge of the cloud, and jingled down 
 by Roccabruna and the olive-groves, till one by one 
 Mentone's villas came in sight, and at last we found 
 ourselves at the inn door. That night, and all next 
 day and the next night, we heard the hoarse sea beat 
 and thunder on the beach. The rain and wind kept 
 driving from the south, but we consoled ourselves with 
 thinking that the orange -trees and every kind of 
 
IO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 flower were drinking in the moisture and waiting to 
 rejoice in sunlight which would come. 
 
 It was a Sunday morning when we woke and found 
 that the rain had gone, the sun was shining brightly 
 on the sea, and a dear north wind was blowing cloud 
 and mist away. Out upon the hills we went, not car- 
 ing much what path we took; for everything was beauti- 
 ful, and hill and vale were full of garden walks. 
 Through lemon-groves pale, golden, tender trees 
 and olives, stretching their gray boughs against the 
 lonely cottage tiles, we climbed, until we reached the 
 pines and heath above. Then I knew the meaning of 
 Theocritus for the first time. We found a well, broad, 
 deep, and clear, with green herbs growing at the bot- 
 tom, a runlet flowing from it down the rocky steps, 
 maidenhair, black adiantum, and blue violets hanging 
 from the brink and mirrored in the water. This was 
 just the well in Hylas. Theocritus has been badly 
 treated. They call him a court poet, dead to Nature, 
 artificial in his pictures. Yet I recognized this foun- 
 tain by his verse, just as if he had showed me the very 
 spot. Violets grow everywhere, of every shade, from 
 black to lilac. Their stalks are long, and the flowers 
 "nod" upon them, so that I see how the Greeks could 
 make them into chaplets how Lycidas wore his crown 
 of white violets* lying by the fireside elbow-deep in 
 withered asphodel, watching the chestnuts in the 
 embers, and softly drinking deep healths to Ageanax 
 far off upon the waves. It is impossible to go wrong 
 
 * This begs the question whether ksvxotov does not properly 
 mean snowflake, or some such flower. Violets in Greece, however, 
 were often used for crowns: ioorscpavos is the epithet of Homer 
 for Aphrodite, and of Aristophanes for Athens. 
 
THE CORNICE. II 
 
 in these valleys. They are cultivated to the height of 
 about five hundred feet above the sea, in terraces 
 laboriously built up with walls, earthed and manured, 
 and irrigated by means of tanks and aqueducts. Above 
 this level, where the virgin soil has not been yet re- 
 claimed, or where the winds of winter bring down 
 freezing currents from the mountains through a gap or 
 gully of the lower hills, a tangled growth of heaths and 
 arbutus and pines and rosemaries and myrtles continue 
 the vegetation, till it finally ends in bare gray rocks 
 and peaks some thousand feet in height. Far above 
 all signs of cultivation on these arid peaks, you still 
 may see villages and ruined castles, built centuries 
 ago for a protection from the Moorish pirates. To 
 these mountain fastnesses the people of the coast re- 
 treated when they descried the sails of their foes on 
 the horizon. In Mentone, not very long ago, old men 
 might be seen who in their youth were said to have 
 been taken captive by the Moors; and many Arabic 
 words have found their way into the patois of the 
 people. 
 
 There is something strangely fascinating in the 
 sight of these ruins on the burning rocks, with their 
 black sentinel cypresses, immensely tall and far away. 
 Long years and rain and sunlight have made these 
 castellated eyries one with their native stone. It is 
 hard to trace in their foundations where Nature's 
 workmanship ends and where man's begins. What 
 strange sights the mountain villagers must see! The 
 vast blue plain of the unfurrowed deep, the fairy range 
 of Corsica hung midway between the sea and sky at 
 dawn or sunset, the stars so close above their heads, 
 the deep dew-sprinkled valleys, the green pines! On 
 
12 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 penetrating into one of these hill-fortresses, you find 
 that it is a whole village, with a church and castle and 
 piazza, some few feet square, huddled together on a 
 narrow platform. We met one day three magnates of 
 Gorbio taking a morning stroll backwards and for- 
 wards, up and down their tiny square. Vehemently 
 gesticulating, loudly chattering, they talked as though 
 they had not seen each other for ten years, and were 
 but just unloading their budgets of accumulated news. 
 Yet these three men probably had lived, eaten, drunk, 
 and talked together from the cradle to that hour: so 
 true it is that use and custom quicken all our powers, 
 especially of gossiping and scandal -mongering. St. 
 Agnese is the highest and most notable of all these 
 villages. The cold and heat upon its absolutely barren 
 rock must be alike intolerable. In appearance it is 
 not unlike the Etruscan towns of Central Italy; but 
 there is something, of course, far more imposing in the 
 immense antiquity and the historical associations of a 
 Narni, a Fiesole, a Chiusi, or an Orvieto. Sea-life and 
 rusticity strike a different note from that of those 
 Apennine-girdled seats of dead civilization, in which 
 nations, arts, and religions have gone by and left but 
 few traces some wrecks of giant walls, some ex- 
 cavated tombs, some shrines, where monks still sing 
 and pray above the relics of the founders of once 
 world-shaking, now almost forgotten, orders. Here at 
 Mentone there is none of this; the idyllic is the true 
 note, and Theocritus is still alive. 
 
 We do not often scale these altitudes, but keep 
 along the terraced glades by the side of olive-shaded 
 streams. The violets, instead of peeping shyly from 
 hedgerows, fall in ripples and cascades over mossy 
 
THE CORNICE. 13 
 
 walls among maidenhair and spleenworts. They are 
 very sweet, and the sound of trickling water seems to 
 mingle with their fragrance in a most delicious har- 
 mony. Sound, smell, and hue make up one chord, the 
 sense of which is pure and perfect peace. The country- 
 people are kind, letting us pass everywhere, so that 
 we make our way along their aqueducts and through 
 their gardens, under laden lemon-boughs, the pale fruit 
 dangling at our ears, and swinging showers of scented 
 dew upon us as we pass. Far better, however, than 
 lemon or orange trees, are the olives. Some of these 
 are immensely old, numbering, it is said, five centuries, 
 so that Petrarch may almost have rested beneath their 
 shade on his way to Avignon. These veterans are 
 cavernous with age: gnarled, split, and twisted trunks, 
 throwing out arms that break into a hundred branches; 
 every branch distinct, and feathered with innumerable 
 sparks and spikelets of white, wavy, greenish light. 
 These are the leaves, and the stems are gray with 
 lichens. The sky and sea two blues, one full of sun- 
 light and the other purple set these fountains of 
 perennial brightness like gems in lapis lazuli. At a 
 distance the same olives look hoary and soft a veil 
 of woven light or luminous haze. When the wind 
 blows their branches all one way, they ripple like a 
 sea of silver. But underneath their covert, in the 
 shade, gray periwinkles wind among the snowy drift 
 of allium. The narcissus sends its arrowy fragrance 
 through the air, while, far and wide, red anemones 
 burn like fire, with interchange of blue and lilac buds, 
 white arums, orchises, and pink gladiolus. Wandering 
 there, and seeing the pale flowers, stars white and 
 pink and odorous, we dream of Olivet, or the grave 
 
14 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Garden of the Agony, and the trees seem always 
 whispering of sacred things. How people can blas- 
 pheme against the olives, and call them imitations of 
 the willow, or complain that they are shabby shrubs, I 
 do not know.* 
 
 This shore would stand for Shelley's Island of 
 Epipsychidion, or the golden age which Empedocles 
 describes, when the mild nations worshipped Aphrodite 
 with incense and the images of beasts and yellow 
 honey, and no blood was spilled upon her altars when 
 "the trees flourished with perennial leaves and fruit, 
 and ample crops adorned their boughs through all the 
 year." This even now is literally true of the lemon- 
 groves, which do not cease to flower and ripen. Every- 
 thing fits in to complete the reproduction of Greek 
 pastoral life. The goats eat cytisus and myrtle on the 
 shore; a whole flock gathered round me as I sat 
 beneath a tuft of golden green euphorbia the other 
 day, and nibbled bread from my hands. The frog 
 still croaks by tank and fountain, "whom the Muses 
 have ordained to sing for aye," in spite of Bion's death. 
 The narcissus, anemone, and hyacinth still tell their 
 tales of love and death. Hesper still gazes on the 
 shepherd from the mountain-head. The slender cypresses 
 still vibrate, the pines murmur. Pan sleeps in noontide 
 heat, and goatherds and wayfaring men lie down to 
 slumber by the roadside, under olive-boughs in which 
 cicadas sing. The little villages high up are just as 
 
 * Olive-trees must be studied at Mentone or San Remo, in 
 Corfu, at Tivoli, on the coast between Syracuse and Catania, or on 
 the lowlands of Apulia. The stunted but productive trees of the 
 Rhone valley, for example, are no real measure of the beauty they 
 can exhibit 
 
THE CORNICE. 15 
 
 white, the mountains just as gray and shadowy, when 
 evening falls. Nothing is changed except ourselves. 
 I expect to find a statue of Priapus or pastoral Pan, 
 hung with wreaths of flowers the meal-cake, honey, 
 and spilt wine upon his altar, and young boys and 
 maidens dancing round. Surely, in some far-off glade, 
 by the side of lemon-grove or garden, near the village, 
 there must be still a pagan remnant of glad Nature- 
 worship. Surely I shall chance upon some Thyrsis 
 piping in the pine-tree shade, or Daphne flying from 
 the arms of Phoebus. So I dream until I come upon 
 the Calvary set on a solitary hillock, with its prayer- 
 steps lending a wide prospect across the olives and the 
 orange-trees, and the broad valleys, to immeasurable 
 skies and purple seas. There is the iron cross, the 
 wounded heart, the spear, the reed, the nails, the 
 crown of thorns, the cup of sacrificial blood, the title, 
 with its superscription royal and divine. The other 
 day we crossed a brook and entered a lemon-field, rich 
 with blossoms and carpeted with red anemones. Every- 
 thing basked in sunlight and glittered with exceeding 
 brilliancy of hue. A tiny white chapel stood in a corner 
 of the enclosure. Two iron-grated windows let me see 
 inside: it was a bare place, containing nothing but a 
 wooden praying-desk, black and worm-eaten, an altar 
 with its candles and no flowers, and above the altar a 
 square picture brown with age. On the floor were 
 scattered several pence, and in a vase above the holy- 
 water vessel stood some withered hyacinths. As my 
 sight became accustomed to the gloom, I could see 
 from the darkness of the picture a pale Christ nailed 
 to the cross with agonizing upward eyes and ashy 
 aureole above the bleeding thorns. Thus I stepped 
 
1 6 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 suddenly away from the outward pomp and bravery of 
 nature to the inward aspirations, agonies, and martyr- 
 doms of man from Greek legends of the past to the 
 real Christian present and I remembered that an 
 illimitable prospect has been opened to the world, that 
 in spite of ourselves we must turn our eyes heaven- 
 ward, inward, to the infinite unseen beyond us and 
 within our souls. Nothing can take us back to Phoebus 
 or to Pan. Nothing can again identify us with the 
 simple, natural earth. "Une immense esplrance a tra- 
 verst la terre" and these chapels, with their deep 
 significances, lurk in the fair landscape like the cares 
 of real life among our dreams of art, or like a fear of 
 death and the hereafter in the midst of opera music. 
 It is a strange contrast. The worship of men in those 
 old times was symbolized by dances in the evening, 
 banquets, libations, and mirth-making. "Euphrosyne" 
 was alike the goddess of the righteous mind and of 
 the merry heart. Old withered women telling their 
 rosaries at dusk; belated shepherds crossing themselves 
 beneath the stars when they pass the chapel; maidens 
 weighed down with Margaret's anguish of unhappy 
 love; youths vowing their life to contemplation in se- 
 cluded cloisters these are the human forms which 
 gather round such chapels; and the motto of the wor- 
 shippers consists in this, "Do often violence to thy de- 
 sire." In the Tyrol we have seen whole villages pray- 
 ing together at daybreak before their day's work, 
 singing their Miserere and their Gloria and their Dies 
 Ira to the sound of crashing organs and jangling 
 bells; appealing in the midst of Nature's splendor to 
 the Spirit which is above Nature, which dwells in dark- 
 ness rather than light, and loves the yearnings and 
 
THE CORNICE. If 
 
 contentions of our soul more than its summer gladness 
 and peace. Even the olives here tell more to us of 
 Olivet and the Garden than of the oil-press and the 
 wrestling-ground. The lilies carry us to the Sermon 
 on the Mount, and teach humility, instead of summon- 
 ing up some legend of a god's love for a mortal. The 
 hillside tanks and running streams, and water-brooks 
 swollen by sudden rain, speak of Palestine. We call 
 the white flowers stars of Bethlehem. The large 
 sceptre-reed; the fig-tree, lingering in barrenness when 
 other trees are full of fruit; the locust-beans of the 
 Caruba: for one suggestion of Greek idyls there is 
 yet another, of far deeper, dearer power. 
 
 But who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at 
 the Cape St Martin? Down to the verge of the sea 
 stretch the tall, twisted stems of Levant pines, and on 
 the caverned limestone breaks the deep blue water. 
 Dazzling as marble are these rocks, pointed and honey- 
 combed with constant dashing of the restless sea, tufted 
 with corallines and gray and purple sea-weeds in the 
 little pools, but hard and dry and rough above tide 
 level. Nor does the sea always lap them quietly; for 
 the last few days it has come tumbling in, roaring and 
 raging on the beach with huge waves crystalline in 
 their transparency, and maned with fleecy spray. Such 
 were the rocks and such the swell of breakers when 
 Ulysses grasped the shore after his long swim. Sam- 
 phire, very salt and fragrant, grows in the rocky honey- 
 comb; then lentisk and beach-loving myrtle, both ex- 
 ceeding green and bushy; then rosemary and euphorbia 
 above the reach of spray. Fishermen, with their long 
 reeds, sit lazily perched upon black rocks above blue 
 waves, sunning themselves as much as seeking sport. 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 2 
 
1 8 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 One distant tip of snow, seen far away behind the hills, 
 reminds us of an alien, unremembered winter. While 
 dreaming there this fancy came into my head: Poly- 
 phemus was born yonder in the Gorbio Valley. There 
 he fed his sheep and goats, and on the hills found 
 scanty pasture for his kine. He and his mother lived 
 in the white house by the cypress near the stream 
 where tulips grow. Young Galatea, nursed in the 
 caverns of these rocks, white as the foam, and shy as 
 the sea fishes, came one morning up the valley to pick 
 mountain hyacinths, and little Polyphemus led the way. 
 He knew where violets and sweet narcissus grew, as 
 well as Galatea where pink coralline and spreading 
 sea-flowers with their waving arms. But Galatea, hav- 
 ing filled her lap with bluebells, quite forgot the leap- 
 ing kids, and piping Cyclops, and cool summer caves, 
 and yellow honey, and black ivy, and sweet vine, and 
 water cold as Alpine snow. Down the swift streamlet 
 she danced laughingly, and made herself once more 
 bitter with the sea. But Polyphemus remained hungry, 
 sad, gazing on the barren sea, and piping to the 
 mockery of its waves. 
 
 Filled with these Greek fancies, it is strange to 
 come upon a little sandstone dell furrowed by trick- 
 ling streams and overgrown with English primroses; 
 or to enter the village of Roccabruna, with its mediaeval 
 castle and the motto on its walls, Temper a labuntur 
 tacitisque senescimus annis. A true motto for the town, 
 where the butcher comes but once a week, and where 
 men and boys, and dogs and palms and lemon-trees, 
 grow up and flourish and decay in the same hollow of 
 the sunny mountain-side. Into the hard conglomerate 
 of the hill the town is built; house walls and precipices 
 
THE CORNICE. IQ 
 
 mortised into one another, dovetailed by the art of 
 years gone by, and riveted by age. The same plants 
 grow from both alike spurge, cistus, rue, and hen- 
 bane, constant to the desolation of abandoned dwell- 
 ings. From the castle you look down on roofs, brown 
 tiles and chimney-pots, set one above the other like a 
 big card-castle. Each house has its foot on a neigh- 
 bor's neck, and its shoulder set against the native 
 stone. The streets meander in and out, and up and 
 down, overarched and balconied, but very clean. They 
 swarm with children, healthy, happy little monkeys, 
 who grow fat on salt fish and yellow polenta, with oil 
 and sun ad libitum. 
 
 At night from Roccabruna you may see the flaring 
 gas-lamps of the gaming-house at Monaco, that Armida's 
 garden of the nineteenth century. It is the sunniest 
 and most sheltered spot of all the coast. Long ago 
 Lucan said of Monaco, "Non Corus in ilium jus habet 
 aut Zephyrus;" winter never comes to nip its tangled 
 cactuses and aloes and geraniums. The air swoons 
 with the scent of lemon-groves; tall palm-trees wave 
 their graceful branches by the shore; music of the 
 softest and the loudest swells from the palace; cool 
 corridors and sunny seats stand ready for the noontide 
 heat or evening calm; without, are olive-gardens, green 
 and fresh and full of flowers! But the witch herself 
 holds her high court and never-ending festival of sin 
 in the painted banquet-halls and among the green 
 tables. 
 
 Let us leave this scene and turn with the country- 
 folk of Roccabruna to St. Michael's Church at Mentone. 
 High above the sea it stands, and from its open doors 
 you look across the mountains with their olive-trees, 
 
 2* 
 
2O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Inside the church is a seething mass of country-folk 
 and towns-people, mostly women, and these almost all 
 old, but picturesque beyond description; kerchiefs of 
 every color, wrinkles of every shape and depth, skins 
 of every tone of brown and yellow, voices of every 
 gruffness, shrillness, strength, and weakness. Wherever 
 an empty corner can be found, it is soon filled by 
 tottering babies and mischievous children. The country- 
 women come with their large dangling earrings of thin 
 gold, wearing pink tulips or lemon-buds in their black 
 hair. A low buzz of gossiping and mutual recognition 
 keeps the air alive. The whole service seems a holi- 
 day a general enjoyment of gala dresses and friendly 
 greetings, very different from the silence, immobility, 
 and noli me tangere aspect of an English congregation. 
 Over all drones, rattles, snores, and shrieks the organ; 
 wailing, querulous, asthmatic, incomplete, its everlasting 
 nasal chant always beginning, never ending, through 
 a range of two or three notes ground into one mono- 
 tony. The voices of the congregation rise and sink 
 above it. These Southern people, like the Arabs, the 
 Apulians, and the Spaniards, seem to find their music 
 in a hurdy-gurdy swell of sound. The other day we 
 met a little girl, walking and spinning, and singing all 
 the while, whose song was just another version of this 
 chant. It has a discontented plaintive wail, as if it 
 came from some vast age, and were a cousin of prime- 
 val winds. 
 
 At first sight, by the side of Mentone, San Remo 
 is sadly prosaic. The valleys seem to sprawl, and the 
 universal olives are monotonously gray upon their thick 
 clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth 
 is wonderful. One might fancy one's self in a weedy 
 
THE CORNICE. 21 
 
 farm flower-bed invaded by stray oats and beans and 
 cabbages and garlic from the kitchen-garden. The 
 country does not suggest a single Greek idea. It has 
 no form or outline no barren peaks, no spare and 
 difficult vegetation. The beauty is rich but tame 
 valleys green with oats and corn, blossoming cherry- 
 trees and sweet bean-fields, figs coming into leaf, and 
 arrowy bay-trees by the side of sparkling streams: here 
 and there a broken aqueduct or rainbow bridge hung 
 with maidenhair and brier and clematis and sarsa- 
 parilla. 
 
 In the cathedral church of San Siro on Good-Friday 
 they hang the columns and the windows with black; 
 they cover the pictures and deface the altar; above 
 the high- altar they raise a crucifix, and below they 
 place a catafalque with the effigy of the dead Christ. 
 To this sad symbol they address their prayers and in- 
 cense, chant their "litanies and lurries," and clash the 
 rattles which commemorate their rage against the traitor 
 Judas. So far have we already passed away from the 
 Greek feeling of Mentone. As I listened to the hideous 
 din, I could not but remember the Theocritean burial 
 of Adonis. Two funeral beds prepared: two feasts 
 recurring in the spring-time of the year. What a dif- 
 ference beneath this superficial similarity xalog vt'xv? 
 oia xa&evdaw attritus aegra made. But the fast of 
 Good-Friday is followed by the festival of Easter. 
 That, after all, is the chief difference. 
 
 After leaving the cathedral we saw a pretty picture 
 in a dull old street of San Remo three children lean- 
 ing from a window, blowing bubbles. The bubbles 
 floated down the street, of every color, round and 
 trembling, like the dreams of life which children dream. 
 
22 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 The town is certainly most picturesque. It resembles 
 a huge glacier of houses poured over a wedge of rock, 
 running down the sides and along the ridge, and spread- 
 ing itself into a fan between two torrents on the shore 
 below. House over house, with balcony and staircase, 
 convent turret and church tower, palm-trees and olives, 
 roof gardens and clinging creepers this white cataract 
 of buildings streams downward from the lazar-house 
 and sanctuary and sandstone quarries on the hill. It 
 is a mass of streets placed close above each other, and 
 linked together with arms and arches of solid masonry, 
 as a protection from the earthquakes which are fre- 
 quent at San Remo. The walls are tall, and form a 
 labyrinth of gloomy passages and treacherous blind 
 alleys, where the Moors of old might meet with a fero- 
 cious welcome. Indeed, San Remo is a fortress as well 
 as a dwelling-place. Over its gateways may still be 
 traced the pipes for molten lead, and on its walls the 
 eyeloops for arrows, with brackets for the feet of 
 archers. Masses of building have been shaken down 
 by earthquakes. The ruins of what once were houses 
 gape with blackened chimneys and dark forlorn cellars; 
 mazes of fungus and unhealthy weeds among the still 
 secure habitations. Hardly a ray of light penetrates 
 the streets; one learns the meaning of the Italian word 
 uggia from their cold and gloom. During the day they 
 are deserted by every one but babies and witchlike 
 old women some gossiping, some sitting vacant at 
 the house-door, some spinning or weaving, or minding 
 little children ugly and ancient as are their own 
 homes, yet clean as are the streets. The younger 
 population goes afield; the men on mules laden for 
 the hills, the women burdened like mules with heavy 
 
THE CORNICE. 23 
 
 and disgusting loads. It is an exceptionally good- 
 looking race: tall, well-grown, and strong. But to the 
 streets again. The shops in the upper town are few, 
 chiefly wine-booths and stalls for the sale of salt fish, 
 eggs, and bread, or cobblers' and tinkers' ware. Not- 
 withstanding the darkness of their dwellings, the people 
 have a love of flowers; azaleas lean from their windows, 
 and vines, carefully protected by a sheath of brick- 
 work, climb the six stories, to blossom out into a per- 
 gola upon the roof. Look at that mass of greenery 
 and colors, dimly seen from beneath, with a yellow cat 
 sunning herself upon the parapet! To reach such a 
 garden and such sunlight who would not mount six 
 stories and thread a labyrinth of passages? I should 
 prefer a room upon the east side of the town, looking 
 southward to the Molo and the sea, with a sound of 
 water beneath, and a palm soaring up to fan my 
 window with his feathery leaves. 
 
 The shrines are little spots of brightness in the 
 gloomy streets. Madonna with a sword; Christ hold- 
 ing his pierced and bleeding heart; PEterno Padre 
 pointing to the dead Son stretched upon his knee; 
 some souls in torment; St. Roch reminding us of old 
 plagues by the spot upon his thigh these are the 
 symbols of the shrines. Before them stand rows of 
 pots filled with gilly-flowers, placed there by pious, 
 simple, praying hands by maidens come to tell their 
 sorrows to our Lady rich in sorrow, by old women 
 bent and shrivelled, in hopes of paradise or gratitude 
 for happy days, when Madonna kept Cecchino faithful 
 to his home, or saved the baby from the fever. 
 
 Lower down, between the sea and the hill, is the 
 municipal, aristocratic, ecclesiastical quarter of San 
 
24 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Remo. There stands the Palace Borea a truly princely 
 pile, built in the last Renaissance style of splendor, with 
 sea-nymphs and dolphins, and satyric heads, half lips, 
 half leafage, round about its doors and windows Once 
 it formed the dwelling of a feudal family, but now it is a 
 roomy ant-hill of a hundred houses, shops, and offices, 
 the Boreas of to-day retaining but a portion of one flat, 
 and making profit of the rest. There, too, are the barracks 
 and the syndic's hall; the Jesuits' school, crowded with 
 boys and girls; the shops for clothes, confectionery, 
 and trinkets; the piazza, with its fountain and tasseled 
 planes, and flowery chestnut-trees, a mass of greenery. 
 Under these trees the idlers lounge, boys play at leap- 
 frog, men at bowls. Women in San Remo work all 
 day, but men and boys play for the most part at bowls 
 or toss-penny or leap-frog or morra. San Siro, the 
 cathedral, stands at one end of the square. Do not 
 go inside; it has a sickly smell of immemorial incense 
 and garlic, undefinable and horrible. Far better looks 
 San Siro from the parapet above the torrent. There 
 you see its irregular half-Gothic outline across a tangle 
 of lemon-trees and olives. The stream rushes by 
 through high walls covered with creepers, spanned 
 by ferny bridges, feathered by one or two old tufty 
 palms. And over all rises the ancient turret of San 
 Siro, like a Spanish giralda, a minaret of pin- 
 nacles and pyramids and dome bubbles, with windows 
 showing heavy bells, old clocks, and sundials painted 
 on the walls, and a cupola of green and yellow tiles 
 like serpent-scales, to crown the whole. The sea 
 lies beyond, and the house-roofs break it with gray 
 horizontal lines. Then there are convents, legions of 
 them, large white edifices, Jesuitical apparently for 
 
THE CORNICE. 25 
 
 the most part, clanging importunate bells, leaning rose- 
 blossoms and cypress-boughs over their jealous walls. 
 
 Lastly, there is the port the mole running out 
 into the sea, the quay planted with plane-trees ? and 
 the fishing-boats by which San Remo is connected 
 with the naval glory of the past with the Riviera that 
 gave birth to Columbus with the Liguria that the 
 Dorias ruled with the great name of Genoa. The 
 port is empty enough now; but from the pier you look 
 back on San Remo and its circling hills, a jewelled 
 town set in illimitable olive grayness. The quay seems 
 also to be the cattle-market. There the small buff 
 cows of North Italy repose after their long voyage or 
 march, kneeling on the sandy ground or rubbing their 
 sides against the wooden cross awry with age and 
 shorn of all its symbols. Lambs frisk among the boats; 
 impudent kids nibble the drooping ears of patient 
 mules. Hinds in white jackets and knee-breeches 
 made of skin lead shaggy rams and fiercely bearded 
 goats, ready to butt at every barking dog, and always 
 seeking opportunities of flight. Farmers and parish 
 priests in black petticoats feel the cattle and dispute 
 about the price, or whet their bargains with a draught 
 of wine. Meanwhile the nets are brought on shore 
 glittering with the fry of sardines, which are cooked 
 like white-bait, with cuttlefish amorphous objects 
 stretching shiny feelers on the hot, dry sand and 
 prickly purple eggs of the sea-urchin. Women go 
 about their labor through the throng, some carrying 
 stones upon their heads, or unloading boats and bear- 
 ing planks of wood in single file, two marching side 
 by side beneath one load of lime, others scarcely visible 
 under a stack of oats, another with her baby in its 
 cradle fast asleep. 
 
26 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 San Remo has an elder brother among the hills, 
 which is called San Romolo, after one of the old 
 bishops of Genoa. Who San Remo was is buried in 
 remote antiquity; but his town has prospered, while 
 of San Romolo nothing remains but a ruined hill- 
 convent among pine-trees. The old convent is worth 
 visiting. Its road carries you into the heart ot 
 the sierra which surrounds San Remo, a hill-country 
 something like the Jura, undulating and green to the 
 very top with maritime pines and pinasters. Riding 
 up, you hear all manner of Alpine sounds; brawling 
 streams, tinkling cow-bells, and herdsmen calling to 
 each other on the slopes. Beneath you lies San Remo, 
 scarcely visible; and over it the great sea rises ever so 
 far into the sky, until the white sails hang in air, and 
 cloud and sea-line melt into each other indistinguish- 
 ably. Spanish chestnuts surround the monastery, with 
 bright blue gentians, hepaticas, forget-me-nots, and 
 primroses about their roots. The house itself is perched 
 on a knoll with ample prospect to the sea and to the 
 mountains, very near to heaven, within a theatre of 
 noble contemplations and soul-stirring thoughts. If 
 Mentone spoke to me of the poetry of Greek pastoral 
 life, this convent speaks of mediaeval monasticism of 
 solitude with God, above, beneath, and all around, of 
 silence and repose from agitating cares, of continuity 
 in prayer, and changelessness of daily life. Some 
 precepts of the Imitatio came into my mind: "Be never 
 wholly idle^ read or write, pray or meditate, or work 
 with diligence for the common needs." "Praiseworthy 
 is it for the religious man to go abroad but seldom, 
 and to seem to shun, and keep his eyes from men." 
 "Sweet is the cell when it is often sought, but if we 
 gad about, it wearies us by its seclusion." Then I 
 
THE CORNICE. 2"J 
 
 thought of the monks so living in this solitude; their 
 cell windows looking across the valley to the sea, 
 through summer and winter, under sun and stars. 
 Then would they read or write, what long melodious 
 hours! or would they pray, what stations on the pine- 
 clad hills! or would they toil, what terraces to build 
 and plant with corn, what flowers to tend, what cows 
 to milk and pasture, what wood to cut, what fir-cones 
 to gather for the winter fire! or should they yearn for 
 silence, silence from their comrades of the solitude, 
 what whispering-galleries of God, where never human 
 voice breaks loudly, but winds and streams and lonely 
 birds disturb the awful stillness! In such a hermitage 
 as this, only more wild, lived St. Francis of Assisi, 
 among the Apennines.* It was there that he learned 
 the tongues of beasts and birds, and preached them 
 sermons. Stretched for hours motionless on the bare 
 rocks, colored like them and rough like them in his 
 brown peasant's serge, he prayed and meditated, saw 
 the vision of Christ crucified, and planned his order to 
 regenerate a vicious age. So still he lay, so long, so 
 like a stone, so gentle were his eyes, so kind and low 
 his voice, that the mice nibbled bread-crumbs from 
 his wallet, lizards ran over him, and larks sang to him 
 in the air. There, too, in those long, solitary vigils, 
 the Spirit of God came upon him, and the spirit of 
 Nature was even as God's Spirit, and he sang: "Lau- 
 dato sia Dio mio Signore, con tutte le creature, spe- 
 cialmente messer lo frate sole; per suor luna, e per le 
 stelle; per frate vento e per 1'aire, e nuvolo, e sereno 
 e ogni tempo." Half the value of this hymn would be 
 lost were we to forget how it was written, in what 
 solitudes and mountains far from men, or to ticket it 
 * Dante, Par. XI. 1 06. 
 
28 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 with some abstract word like Pantheism. Pantheism 
 it is not; but an acknowledgment of that brotherhood, 
 beneath the love of God, by which the sun and moon 
 and stars, and wind and air and cloud, and clearness 
 and all weather, and all creatures, are bound together 
 with the soul of man. 
 
 Few, of course, were like St. Francis. Probably no 
 monk of San Romolo was inspired with his enthusiasm 
 for humanity, or had his revelation of the Divine Spirit 
 inherent in the world. Still fewer can have felt the 
 aesthetic charm of nature but most vaguely. It was as 
 much as they could boast, if they kept steadily to the 
 rule of their order, and attended to the concerns each 
 of his own soul. A terrible selfishness, if rightly con- 
 sidered; but one which accorded with the delusion 
 that this world is a cave of care, the other world a 
 place of torture or undying bliss, death the prime ob- 
 ject of our meditation, and life-long abandonment of 
 our fellow-men the highest mode of existence. Why, 
 then, should monks, so persuaded of the riddle of the 
 earth, have placed themselves in scenes so beautiful? 
 Why rose the Camaldolis and Chartreuses over Europe? 
 white convents on the brows of lofty hills, among the 
 rustling boughs of Vallombrosas, in the grassy meadows 
 of Engelbergs always the eyries of Nature's lovers, 
 men smitten with the loveliness of earth? There is 
 surely some meaning in these poetic stations. 
 
 Here is a sentence of the Imitatio which throws 
 some light upon the hymn of St. Francis and the sites 
 of Benedictine monasteries, by explaining the value of 
 natural beauty for monks who spent their life in study- 
 ing death: "If thy heart were right, then would every 
 creature be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of 
 holy doctrine. There is no creature so small and vile 
 
THE CORNICE. 2Q 
 
 that does not show forth the goodness of God." With 
 this sentence bound about their foreheads walked Fra 
 Angelo and St Francis. To men like them the mountain 
 valleys and the skies, and all that they contained, were 
 full of deep significance. Though they reasoned "de 
 conditione humantz miserice" and "de contemptu mundi," 
 yet the whole world was a pageant of God's glory, a 
 testimony to his goodness. Their chastened senses, 
 pure hearts, and simple wills were as wings by which 
 they soared above the things of earth and sent the 
 music of their souls aloft with every other creature in 
 the symphony of praise. To them, as to Blake, the 
 sun was no mere blazing disk or ball, but "an in- 
 numerable company of the heavenly host singing, 'Holy, 
 holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.' " To them the 
 winds were brothers, and the streams were sisters 
 brethren in common dependence upon God their Father, 
 brethren in common consecration to his service, brethren 
 by blood, brethren by vows of holiness. Unquestioning 
 faith rendered this world no puzzle; they overlooked 
 the things of sense because the spiritual things were 
 ever present and as clear as day. Yet did they not 
 forget that spiritual things are symbolized by things of 
 sense; and so the smallest herb of grass was vital to 
 their tranquil contemplations. We, who have lost sight 
 of the invisible world, who set our affections more on 
 things of earth, fancy that because these monks despised 
 the world, and did not write about its landscapes, 
 therefore they were dead to its beauty. This is mere 
 vanity: the mountains, stars, seas, fields, and living 
 things were only swallowed up in the one thought of 
 God, and made subordinate to the awfulness of human 
 destinies. We, to whom hills are hills, and seas are 
 seas, and stars are ponderable quantities, speak, write, 
 
3O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 and reason of them as of objects interesting in them- 
 selves. The monks were less ostensibly concerned 
 about such things, because they only found in them 
 the vestibules and symbols of a hidden mystery. 
 
 The contrast between the Greek and mediaeval 
 modes of regarding Nature is not a little remarkable. 
 Both Greeks and monks, judged by nineteenth-century 
 standards, were unobservant of natural beauties. They 
 make but brief and general remarks upon landscapes 
 and the like. The fioviuar ie xw/urow avqQi&fiov JB- 
 iMapa is very rare. But the Greeks stopped at the 
 threshold of Nature; the forces they found there, the 
 gods, were inherent in Nature and distinct. They did 
 not, like the monks, place one spiritual power, omni- 
 potent and omnipresent, above all, and see in Nature 
 lessons of divine government. We ourselves, having 
 somewhat overstrained the latter point of view, are 
 now apt to return vaguely to Greek fancies. Perhaps, 
 too, we talk so much about scenery because it is scenery 
 to us, and the life has gone out of it. 
 
 I cannot leave the Cornice without one word about 
 a place which lies between Mentone and San Remo. 
 Bordighera has a beauty which is quite distinct from 
 both. Palms are its chief characteristic. They lean 
 against the garden walls, and feather the wells outside 
 the town, where women come with brazen pitchers ta 
 draw water. In some of the marshy tangles of the 
 plain they spring from a thick undergrowth of spiky 
 leaves, and rear their tall aerial arms against the deep 
 blue background of the sea or darker purple of the 
 distant hills. White pigeons fly about among their 
 branches, and the air is loud with cooings and with 
 rustlings, and the hoarser croaking of innumerable 
 frogs. Then, in the olive-groves that stretch along the 
 
THE CORNICE. 3! 
 
 level shore, are labyrinths of rare and curious plants, 
 painted tulips and white periwinkles, flinging their light 
 of blossoms and dark, glossy leaves down the swift 
 channels of the brawling streams. On each side of 
 the rivulets they grow, like sister cataracts of flowers 
 instead of spray. At night fresh stars come out along 
 the coast, beneath the stars of heaven; for you can see 
 the lamps of Ventimiglia and Mentone and Monaco, 
 and, far away, the light-houses upon the promontories 
 of Antibes and the Estrelles. At dawn, a vision of 
 Corsica grows from the sea. The island lies eighty 
 miles away, but one can trace the dark strip of irre- 
 gular peaks glowing amid the gold and purple of the 
 rising sun. If the air is clear and bright, the snows 
 and overvaulting clouds which crown its mountains 
 shine all day, and glitter like an apparition in the 
 bright blue sky. "Phantom fair," half raised above 
 the sea, it stands, as unreal and transparent as the 
 moon when seen in April sunlight, yet not to be con- 
 founded with the shape of any cloud. If Mentone 
 speaks of Greek legends, and San Romolo restores the 
 monastic past, we feel ourselves at Bordighera trans- 
 ported to the East; and lying under its tall palms can 
 fancy ourselves at Tyre or Daphne, or in the gardens 
 of a Moslem prince. 
 
 NOTE. Dec., 1873. My old impressions are renewed and 
 confirmed by a third visit after seven years, to this coast. For 
 purely idyllic loveliness the Cornice is surpassed by nothing in the 
 South. A very few spots in Sicily, the road between Castellamare 
 and Amain, and the island of Corfu, are its only rivals in this style 
 of scenery. From Cannes to Sestri is one continuous line of ex- 
 quisitely modulated landscape beauty, which can only be fully 
 appreciated by travellers in carriage or on foot. 
 
32 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 SIENA. 
 
 AFTER leaving the valley of the Arno at Empoli, 
 the railway enters a country which rises into earthy 
 hills of no great height, and spreads out at intervals 
 into broad tracts of cultivated lowland. Geologically 
 speaking, this portion of Tuscany consists of loam and 
 sandy deposits, forming the basin between two moun- 
 tain-ranges the Apennines and the chalk hills of the 
 western coast of Central Italy. Seen from the eminence 
 of some old Tuscan turret, this champaign country 
 has a stern and arid aspect. The earth is gray and 
 dusty, the forms of hill and valley are austere and 
 monotonous; even the vegetation seems to sympathize 
 with the uninteresting soil from which it springs. 
 A few spare olives cast their shadows on the lower 
 slopes; here and there a copse of oakwood and acacia 
 marks the course of some small rivulet; rye-fields, 
 gray beneath the wind, clothe the hill-sides with 
 scanty verdure. Every knoll is crowned with a village 
 brown roofs and white house-fronts clustered to- 
 gether on the edge of cliffs, and rising into the cam- 
 panile or antique tower, which tells so many stories of 
 bygone wars and decayed civilizations. 
 
 Beneath these villages stand groups of stone pines 
 clearly visible upon the naked country, cypresses like 
 spires beside the square white walls of convent or of 
 villa, patches of dark foliage, showing where the ilex 
 
SIENA. 33 
 
 and the laurel and the myrtle hide thick tangles of 
 rose-trees and jessamines in ancient gardens. Nothing 
 can exceed the barren aspect of this country in mid- 
 winter: it resembles an exaggerated Sussex, without 
 verdure to relieve the rolling lines of down and hill 
 and valley; beautiful yet by reason of its frequent 
 villages and lucid air and infinitely subtle curves of 
 mountain-ridges. But when spring comes, a light and 
 beauty break upon this gloomy soil; the whole is 
 covered with a delicate green veil of rising crops and 
 fresh foliage, and the immense distances which may 
 be seen from every height are blue with cloud-shadows 
 or rosy in the light of sunset. 
 
 Of all the towns of Lower Tuscany, none is more 
 celebrated than Siena. It stands in the very centre 
 of the district which I have attempted to describe, 
 crowning one of its most considerable heights, and 
 commanding one of its most extensive plains. As a 
 city, it is a typical representative of those numerous 
 Italian towns whose origin is buried in remote anti- 
 quity, which have formed the seat of three civiliza- 
 tions, and which still maintain a vigorous vitality 
 upon their ancient soil. Its site is Etruscan, its name 
 is Roman, but the town itself owes all its interest and 
 beauty to the artists and the statesmen and the war- 
 riors of the Middle Ages. A single glance at Siena 
 from one of the slopes on the northern side will show 
 how truly mediaeval is its character. A city wall 
 follows the outline of the hill , from which the towers 
 of the cathedral and the palace, with other cupolas 
 and red-brick campanili, spring; while cypresses and 
 olive-gardens stretch downward to the plain. There 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 3 
 
34 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 is not a single Palladian fa9ade or Renaissance portico 
 to interrupt the unity of the effect. Over all, in the 
 distance, rises Monte Amiata, melting imperceptibly 
 into sky and plain. 
 
 The three most striking objects of interest in Siena 
 maintain the character of mediaeval individuality by 
 which the town is marked. They are the public 
 palace, the cathedral, and the house of St. Catherine. 
 The civil life, the arts, and the religious tendencies of 
 Italy during the ascendency of mediaeval ideas are 
 strongly set before us here. High above every other 
 building in the town soars the straight brick tower of 
 the Palazzo Pubblico, the house of the republic, the 
 hearth of civil life within the State. It guards an 
 irregular Gothic building in which the old government 
 of Siena used to be assembled, but which has now 
 for a long time been converted into prisons, courts of 
 law, and show-rooms. Let us enter one chamber of 
 the Palazzo the Sala della Pace, where Ambrogio 
 Lorenzetti, the greatest, perhaps, of Sienese painters, 
 represented the evils of lawlessness and tyranny, and 
 the benefits of peace and justice, in three noble 
 allegories. They were executed early in the four- 
 teenth century, in the age of allegories and symbolism, 
 when poets and painters strove to personify in human 
 shape all thoughts and sentiments. The first great 
 fresco represents Peace the peace of the Republic of 
 Siena. Ambrogio has painted the twenty-four coun- 
 cillors who formed the government standing beneath 
 the thrones of Concord, Justice, and Wisdom. From 
 these controlling powers they stretch in a long double 
 line to a seated figure, gigantic in size, and robed 
 with the ensigns of baronial sovereignty. This figure 
 
SIENA. 35 
 
 is the State and Majesty of Siena.* Around him sit 
 Peace, Fortitude, and Prudence, Temperance, Magna- 
 nimity, and Justice, inalienable assessors of a power- 
 ful and righteous lord. Faith, Hope, and Charity, the 
 Christian virtues, float like angels in the air above. 
 Armed horsemen guard his throne, and captives show 
 that he has laid his enemy beneath his feet. Thus 
 the mediaeval artist expressed, by painting, his theory 
 of government. The rulers of the State are sub- 
 ordinate to the State itself; they stand between the 
 State and the great animating principles of wisdom, 
 justice, and concord, incarnating the one, and receiving 
 inspiration from the others. The pagan qualities of 
 prudence, magnanimity, and courage give stability and 
 greatness to good government, while the spirit of 
 Christianity must harmonize and rule the whole. 
 Arms, too, are needful to maintain by force what 
 right and law demand, and victory in a just quarrel 
 proclaims the power and vigor of the commonwealth. 
 On another wall Ambrogio has depicted the prosperous 
 city of Siena, girt by battlements and moat, with tower 
 and barbican and drawbridge, to insure its peace. 
 
 * It is probable that the firm Ghibelline sympathies of the 
 Sienese people for the empire were allegorized in this figure; so 
 that the fresco represented by form and color what Dante had ex- 
 pressed in his treatise "De Monarchia. " Among the virtues who 
 attend him, Peace distinguishes herself by rare and very remarkable 
 beauty. She is dressed in white and crowned with olive; the folds 
 of her drapery, clinging to the delicately modelled limbs beneath, 
 irresistibly suggest a classic statue. So again does the monumental 
 pose of her dignified, reclining, and yet languid figure. It seems 
 not unreasonable to believe that Lorenzetti copied Peace from the 
 antique Venus which belonged to the Sienese, and which in a fit of 
 superstitious malice they subsequently destroyed and buried in Flo- 
 rentine soil. 
 
 3* 
 
36 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Through the gates stream country people, bringing the 
 produce of their farms into the town. The streets are 
 crowded with men and women intent on business or 
 pleasure; craftsmen at their trade, merchants with 
 laden mules, a hawking-party, hunters scouring the 
 plain, girls dancing, and children playing in the open 
 square. A schoolmaster watching his class, together 
 with the sculptured figures of Geometry, Astronomy, 
 and Philosophy, remind us that education and science 
 flourish under the dominion of well-balanced laws. 
 The third fresco exhibits the reverse of this fair 
 spectacle. Here Tyranny presides over a scene of 
 anarchy and wrong. He is a hideous monster, com- 
 pounded of all the bestial attributes which indicate 
 force, treason, lechery, and fear. Avarice and Fraud 
 and Cruelty and War and Fury sit around him. At 
 his feet lies Justice, and above are the effigies of 
 Nero, Caracalla, and like monsters of ill-regulated 
 power. Not far from the castle of Tyranny we see 
 the same town as in the other fresco; but its streets 
 are filled with scenes of quarrel, theft, and bloodshed. 
 Nor are these allegories merely fanciful. In the Middle 
 Ages the same city might more than once during one 
 lifetime present in the vivid colors of reality the two 
 contrasted pictures.* 
 
 Quitting the Palazzo, and threading narrow streets 
 
 * Siena, of all Italian cities, was most subject to revolutions. 
 Comines describes it as a city which "se gouveme plus follement 
 que ville d'ltalie." Varchi calls it "un guazzabuglio ed una con- 
 fusione di repubbliche piuttosto che bene ordinata e instituta re- 
 pubblica." See my Age of the Despots, Renaissance in Italy, parti., 
 pp. 141, 554, for some account of the Sienese constitution, and of 
 the feuds and reconciliations of the burghers. 
 
SIENA. 37 
 
 paved with brick and overshadowed with huge empty 
 palaces, we reach the highest of the three hills on 
 which Siena stands, and see before us the Duomo. 
 This church is the most purely Gothic of all Italian 
 cathedrals designed by national architects. Together 
 with that of Orvieto, it stands to show what the unas- 
 sisted genius of the Italians could produce, when under 
 the empire of mediaeval Christianity and before the 
 advent of the neopagan spirit. It is built wholly of 
 marble, and overlaid, inside and out, with florid orna- 
 ments of exquisite beauty. There are no flying but- 
 tresses, no pinnacles, no deep and fretted doorways, 
 such as form the charm of French and English archi- 
 tecture; but, instead of this, the lines of parti-colored 
 marbles, the scrolls and wreaths of foliage, the mosaics 
 and the frescos which meet the eye in every direction, 
 satisfy our sense of variety, producing most agreeable 
 combinations of blending hues and harmoniously con- 
 nected forms. The chief fault which offends against 
 our Northern taste is the predominance of horizontal 
 lines, both in the construction of the facade, and also 
 in the internal decoration. This single fact sufficiently 
 proves that the Italians had never seized the true idea 
 of Gothic or aspiring architecture. But, allowing for 
 this original defect, we feel that the Cathedral of Siena 
 combines solemnity and splendor to a degree almost 
 unrivalled. Its dome is another point in which the in- 
 stinct of Italian architects has led them to adhere to 
 the genius of their ancestral art rather than to follow 
 the principles of Gothic design. The dome is Etruscan 
 and Roman, native to the soil, and only by a kind of 
 violence adapted to the character of pointed architec- 
 ture. Yet the builders of Siena have shown what a 
 
38 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 glorious element of beauty might have been added to 
 our Northern cathedrals had the idea of infinity which 
 our ancestors expressed by long continuous lines, by 
 complexities of interwoven aisles, and by multitudinous 
 aspiring pinnacles, been carried out into vast spaces of 
 aerial cupolas, completing and embracing and covering 
 the whole like heaven. The Duomo, as it now stands, 
 forms only part of a vast design. On entering we are 
 amazed to hear that this church, which looks so large, 
 from the beauty of its proportions, the intricacy of its 
 ornaments, and the interlacing of its columns, is but 
 the transept of the intended building lengthened a 
 little, and surmounted by a cupola and campanile.* 
 Yet such is the fact. Soon after its commencement a 
 plague swept over Italy, nearly depopulated Siena, and 
 reduced the town to penury for want of men. The 
 cathedral, which, had it been accomplished, would 
 have surpassed all Gothic churches south of the Alps, 
 remained a ruin. A fragment of the nave still stands, 
 enabling us to judge of its extent The eastern wall 
 joins what was to have been the transept, measuring 
 the mighty space which would have been enclosed by 
 marble vaults and columns delicately wrought. The 
 sculpture on the eastern door shows with what magni- 
 ficence the Sienese designed to ornament this portion 
 of their temple; while the southern faade rears itself 
 aloft above the town, like those high arches which 
 testify to the past splendor of Glastonbury Abbey; but 
 
 * The present church was begun about 1229. In 1321 the 
 burghers fancied it was too small for the fame and splendor of their 
 city. So they decreed a new ecclesia pulcra, magna, et magnified, 
 for which the older but as yet unfinished building was to be the 
 transept. 
 
SIENA. 39 
 
 the sun streams through the broken windows, and the 
 walls are encumbered with hovels and stables and the 
 refuse of surrounding streets. 
 
 One most remarkable feature of the internal deco- 
 ration is a line of heads of the Popes carried all round 
 the church above the lower arches. Larger than life, 
 white solemn faces, they lean, each from his separate 
 niche, crowned with the triple tiara, and labelled with 
 the name he bore. Their accumulated majesty brings 
 the whole past history of the Church into the presence 
 of its living members. A bishop walking up the nave 
 of Siena must feel as a Roman felt among the waxen 
 images of ancestors renowned in council or in war. Of 
 course these portraits are imaginary for the most part; 
 but the artists have contrived to vary their features 
 and expression with great skill. 
 
 Not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the 
 cathedral. It is inlaid with a kind of tarsia work in 
 stone, setting forth a variety of pictures in simple but 
 eminently effective mosaic. Some of these composi- 
 tions are as old as the cathedral; others are the work 
 of Beccafumi and his scholars. They represent, in the 
 liberal spirit of mediaeval Christianity, the history of 
 the Church before the Incarnation. Hermes Trisme- 
 gistus and the Sibyls meet us at the doorway. In the 
 body of the Church we find the mighty deeds of the 
 old Jewish heroes of Moses and Samson and Joshua 
 and Judith. Independently of the artistic beauty of 
 the designs, of the skill with which men and horses 
 are drawn in the most difficult attitudes, of the dignity 
 of some single figures, and of the vigor and simplicity 
 of the larger compositions, a special interest attaches 
 to this pavement in connection with the twelfth canto 
 
4O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 of the Purgatorio. Dante cannot have trodden these 
 stones and meditated upon their sculptured histories. 
 Yet when we read how he journeyed through the plain 
 of Purgatory with eyes intent upon its storied floor, 
 how "morti i morti, e i vivi parean vivi," how he saw 
 "Nimrod at the foot of his great work, confounded, 
 gazing at the people who were proud with him," we 
 are irresistibly led to think of the Divine Comedy. 
 The strong and simple outlines of the pavement cor- 
 respond to the few words of the poet. Bending over 
 these pictures and trying to learn their lesson, with the 
 thought of Dante in our mind, the tones of an organ, 
 singularly sweet and mellow, fall upon our ears, and 
 we remember how he heard Te Deum sung within the 
 gateway of repentance. 
 
 Continuing our walk, we descend the hill on which 
 the Duomo stands, and reach a valley lying between 
 the ancient city of Siena and a western eminence 
 crowned by the Church of San Domenico. In this de- 
 pression there has existed from old time a kind of 
 suburb or separate district of the poorer people known 
 by the name of the Contrada d'Oca. To the Sienese 
 it has especial interest, for here is the birthplace of 
 St. Catherine, the very house in which she lived, her 
 father's workshop, and the chapel which has been 
 erected in commemoration of her saintly life. Over 
 the doorway is written in letters of gold " Sposas Christi 
 Katherinae domus." Inside they show the room she 
 occupied, and the stone on which she placed her head 
 to sleep: they keep her veil and staff and lantern and 
 enamelled vinaigrette, the bag in which her alms were 
 placed, the sackcloth that she wore beneath her dress, 
 the crucifix from which she took the wounds of Christ. 
 
SIENA. 4 1 
 
 It is impossible to conceive, even after the lapse of 
 several centuries, that any of these relics are fictitious. 
 Every particular of her life was remembered and re- 
 corded with scrupulous attention by devoted followers. 
 Her fame was universal throughout Italy before her 
 death; and the house from which she went forth to 
 preach and heal the sick and comfort plague-stricken 
 wretches whom kith and kin had left alone to die was 
 known and well beloved by all her citizens. From the 
 moment of her death it became, and has continued to 
 be, the object of superstitious veneration to thousands. 
 From the little loggia which runs along one portion of 
 its exterior may be seen the campanile and the dome 
 of the cathedral; on the other side rises the huge 
 brick church of San Domenico, in which she spent the 
 long ecstatic hours that won for her the title of Christ's 
 spouse. In a chapel attached to the church she watched 
 and prayed, fasting and wrestling with the fiends of a 
 disordered fancy. There Christ appeared to her and 
 gave her his own heart, there he administered to her 
 the sacrament with his own hands, there she assumed 
 the robe of poverty, and gave her Lord the silver cross 
 and took from him the crown of thorns'. 
 
 To some of us these legends may appear the 
 flimsiest web of fiction; to others they may seem quite 
 explicable by the laws of semi-morbid psychology; but 
 to Catherine herself, her biographers, and her con- 
 temporaries, they were not so. The enthusiastic saint 
 and reverent people believed firmly in these things; 
 and after the lapse of five centuries her- votaries still 
 kiss the floor and steps on which she trod; still say, 
 "This was the wall on which she leaned when Christ 
 appeared; this was the corner where she clothed him, 
 
42 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 naked and shivering like a beggar-boy; here he sus- 
 tained her with angel's food." 
 
 St. Catherine was one of twenty-five children born 
 in wedlock to Jacopo and Lapa Benincasa, citizens of 
 Siena. Her father exercised the trade of dyer and 
 fuller. In the year of her birth, 1347, Siena reached 
 the climax of its power and splendor. It was then 
 that the plague of Boccaccio began to rage, which 
 swept off 80,000 citizens, and interrupted the building 
 of the great Duomo. In the midst of so large a family, 
 and during these troubled times, Catherine grew al- 
 most unnoticed; but it was not long before she mani- 
 fested her peculiar disposition. At six years old she 
 already saw visions and longed for a monastic life; 
 about the same time she used to collect her childish 
 companions together and preach to them. As she grew, 
 her wishes became stronger; she refused the proposals 
 which her parents made that she should marry, and 
 so vexed them by her obstinacy that they imposed on 
 her the most servile duties in their household. These 
 she patiently fulfilled, pursuing at the same time her 
 own vocation with unwearied ardor. She scarcely slept 
 at all, and ate no food but vegetables and a little 
 bread, scourged herself, wore sackcloth, and became 
 emaciated, weak, and half delirious. At length the 
 firmness of her character and the force of her halluci- 
 nations won the day. Her parents consented to her 
 assuming the Dominican robe, and at the age of thir- 
 teen she entered the monastic life. From this moment 
 till her death we see in her the ecstatic, the philan- 
 thropist, and the politician combined to a remarkable 
 degree. For three whole years she never left her cell 
 except to go to church, maintaining an almost un- 
 
SIENA. 43 
 
 broken silence. Yet when she returned to the world, 
 convinced at last of having won by prayer and pain 
 the favor of her Lord, it was to preach to infuriated 
 mobs, to toil among men dying of the plague, to ex- 
 ecute diplomatic negotiations, to harangue the republic 
 of Florence, to correspond with queens, and to inter- 
 pose between kings and popes. In the midst of this 
 varied and distracting career she continued to see visions 
 and to fast and scourge herself. The domestic virtues 
 and the personal wants and wishes of a woman were 
 annihilated in her; she lived for the Church, for the 
 poor, and for Christ, whom she imagined to be con- 
 stantly supporting her. At length she died, worn out 
 by inward conflicts, by the tension of religious ecstasy, 
 by want of food and sleep, and by the excitement of 
 political life. To follow her in her public career is not 
 my purpose. It is well known how, by the power of 
 her eloquence and the ardor of her piety, she succeeded 
 as a mediator between Florence and her native city, 
 and between Florence and the Pope; that she travelled 
 to Avignon, and there induced Gregory XI. to put an 
 end to the Babylonian captivity of the Church by re- 
 turning to Rome; that she narrowly escaped political 
 martyrdom during one of her embassies from Gregory 
 to the Florentine republic; that she preached a crusade 
 against the Turks; that her last days were clouded 
 with sorrow for the schism which then rent the papacy; 
 and that she aided by her dying words to keep Pope 
 Urban on the papal throne. When we consider her 
 private and spiritual life more narrowly, it may well 
 move our amazement to think that the intricate politics 
 of Central Italy, the counsels of licentious princes and 
 ambitious popes, were in any measure guided and con- 
 
44 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 trolled by such a woman. Alone, and aided by nothing 
 but a reputation for sanctity, she dared to tell the 
 greatest men in Europe of their faults; she wrote in 
 words of well-assured command, and they, demoralized, 
 worldly, sceptical, or indifferent as they might be, were 
 yet so bound by superstition that they could not treat 
 with scorn the voice of an enthusiastic girl. 
 
 Absolute disinterestedness, the belief in her own 
 spiritual mission, natural genius, and that vast power 
 which then belonged to all energetic members of the 
 monastic orders, enabled her to play this part. She 
 had no advantages to begin with. The daughter of a 
 tradesman overwhelmed with an almost fabulously 
 numerous progeny, Catherine grew up uneducated. 
 When her genius had attained maturity, she could not 
 even read or write. Her biographer asserts that she 
 learned, to do so by a miracle. Anyhow, writing be- 
 came a most potent instrument in her hands; and we 
 possess several volumes of her epistles, as well as a 
 treatise of mystical theology. To conquer self-love as 
 the root of all evil, and to live wholly for others, was 
 the cardinal axiom of her morality. She pressed this 
 principle to its most rigorous conclusions in practice; 
 never resting day or night from some kind of service, 
 and winning by her unselfish love the enthusiastic ad- 
 miration of the people. In the same spirit of exalted 
 self-annihilation, she longed for martyrdom, and courted 
 death. There was not the smallest personal tie or 
 after-thought of interest to restrain her in the course 
 of action which she had marked out. Her personal 
 influence seems to have been immense. When she be- 
 gan her career of public peacemaker and preacher in 
 Siena, Raymond, her biographer, says that whole fami- 
 
SIENA. 45 
 
 lies devoted to vendetta were reconciled, and that civil 
 strifes were quelled by her letters and addresses. He 
 had seen more than a thousand people flock to hear 
 her speak; the confessionals crowded with penitents, 
 smitten by the force of her appeals; and multitudes, 
 unable to catch the words which fell from her lips, 
 sustained and animated by the light of holiness which 
 beamed from her inspired countenance.* She was not 
 beautiful, but her face so shone with love, and her 
 eloquence was so pathetic in its tenderness, that none 
 could hear or look on her without emotion. Her writ- 
 ings contain abundant proofs of this peculiar suavity. 
 They are too sweet and unctuous in style to suit our 
 modern taste. When dwelling on the mystic love of 
 Christ, she cries, "O blood! O fire! O ineffable love!" 
 When interceding before the Pope, she prays for 
 "Pace, pace, pace, babbo mio dolce; pace, e non piu 
 guerra." Yet clear and simple thoughts, profound 
 convictions, and stern moral teaching underlie her 
 ecstatic exclamations. One prayer which she wrote, 
 and which the people of Siena still use, expresses the 
 prevailing spirit of her creed: "O Spirito Santo, oDeita 
 eterna Cristo Amore! vieni nel mio cuore; per la tua 
 potenza trailo a te, mio Dio, e concedemi carita con 
 timore. Liberami, o Amore ineffiabile, da ogni mal 
 pensiero; riscaldami ed infiammami del tuo dolcissimo 
 amore, sicche ogni pena mi sembri leggiera. Santo 
 mio Padre e dolce mio S ignore, ora aiutami in ogni 
 mio ministero. Cristo Amore! Cristo Amore!" The 
 
 * The part played in Italy by preachers of repentance and peace 
 is among the most characteristic features of Italian history. On 
 this subject see the Appendix to my Age of the Despots, Renaissance 
 in Italy, part I. 
 
46 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 reiteration of the word "love" is most significant. It 
 was the key-note of her whole theology, the mainspring 
 of her life. In no merely figurative sense did she re- 
 gard herself as the spouse of Christ, but dwelt upon 
 the bliss, beyond all mortal happiness, which she en- 
 joyed in supersensual communion with her Lord. It 
 is easy to understand how such ideas might be, and 
 have been, corrupted, when impressed on natures no 
 less susceptible, but weaker and less gifted than St. 
 Catherine's. 
 
 One incident related by Catherine in a letter to 
 Raymond, her confessor and biographer, exhibits the 
 peculiar character of her influence in the most striking 
 light. Nicola Tuldo, a citizen of Perugia, had been 
 condemned to death for treason in the flower of his 
 age. So terribly did the man rebel against his sen- 
 tence, that he cursed God, and refused the consola- 
 tions of religion. Priests visited him in vain; his 
 heart was shut and sealed by the despair of leaving 
 life in all the vigor of its prime. Then Catherine came 
 and spoke to him: "whence," she says, "he received 
 such comfort that he confessed, and made me promise, 
 by the love of God, to stand at the block beside him 
 on the day of his execution." By a few words, by 
 the tenderness of her manner, and by the charm which 
 women have, she had already touched the heart no 
 priest could soften, and no threat of death or judg- 
 ment terrify into contrition. Nor was this strange. In 
 our own days we have seen men open the secrets of 
 their hearts to women, after repelling the advances of 
 less touching sympathy. Youths, cold and cynical 
 enough among their brethren, have stood subdued like 
 little children before her who spoke to them of love 
 
SIENA. 47 
 
 and faith and penitence and hope. The world has 
 not lost its ladies of the race of St. Catherine , beauti- 
 ful and pure and holy, who have suffered and sought 
 peace with tears, and who have been appointed 
 ministers of mercy for the worst and hardest of their 
 fellow-men. Such saints possess an efficacy even in 
 the imposition of their hands; many a devotee, like 
 Tuldo, would more willingly greet death if his St. 
 Catherine were by to smile and lay her hands upon 
 his head, and cry, "Go forth, my servant, and fear 
 not!" The chivalrous admiration for women mixes 
 with religious awe to form the reverence which these 
 saints inspire. Human and heavenly love, chaste and 
 ecstatic, constitute the secret of their power. Catherine 
 then subdued the spirit of Tuldo and led him to the 
 altar, where he received the communion for the first 
 time in his life. His only remaining fear was that he 
 might not have strength to face death bravely. There- 
 fore he prayed Catherine, " Stay with me, do not leave 
 me; so it shall be well with me, and I shall die con- 
 tented;" "and," says the saint, "he laid his head in 
 the prison on my breast, and I said, 'Comfort thee, 
 my brother, the block shall soon become thy marriage 
 altar, the blood of Christ shall bathe thy sins away, 
 and I will stand beside thee.' " When the hour came, 
 she went and waited for him by the scaffold, meditat- 
 ing on Madonna and Catherine the saint of Alexandria. 
 She laid her own neck on the block, and tried to 
 picture to herself the pains and ecstasies of martyr- 
 dom. In her deep thought, time and place became 
 annihilated; she forgot the eager crowd, and only 
 prayed for Tuldo's soul and for herself. At length he 
 came, walking "like a gentle lamb," and Catherine 
 
48 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 received him with the salutation of "sweet brother." 
 She placed his head upon the block, and laid her 
 hands upon him, and told him of the Lamb of God. 
 The last words he uttered were the names of Jesus 
 and of Catherine. Then the axe fell, and Catherine 
 beheld his soul borne by angels into the regions of 
 eternal love. When she recovered from her trance, 
 she held his head within her hands; her dress was 
 saturated with his blood, which she could scarcely 
 bear to wash away, so deeply did she triumph in the 
 death of him whom she had saved. The words of 
 St. Catherine herself deserve to be read. The sim- 
 plicity, freedom from self-consciousness, and fervent 
 faith in the reality of all she did and said and saw, 
 which they exhibit, convince us of her entire sin- 
 cerity. 
 
 The supernatural element in the life of St. Catherine 
 may be explained partly by the mythologizing adora- 
 tion of the people ready to find a miracle in every 
 act of her they worshipped; partly by her own tem- 
 perament and modes of life, which inclined her to 
 ecstasy and fostered the faculty of seeing visions; 
 partly by a pious misconception of the words of Christ 
 and Bible phraseology. 
 
 To the first kind belong the wonders which are 
 related of her early years, the story of the candle 
 which burned her veil without injuring her person, 
 and the miracles performed by her body after death. 
 Many childish incidents were treasured up which, had 
 her life proved different, would have been forgotten 
 or have found their proper place among the catalogue 
 of common things. Thus, on one occasion, after hear- 
 ing of the hermits of the Theba'id , she took it into 
 
SIENA. 49 
 
 her head to retire into the wilderness, and chose for 
 her dwelling one of the caverns in the sandstone rock 
 which abound in Siena near the quarter where her 
 father lived. We merely see in this event a sign of 
 her monastic disposition and a more than usual aptitude 
 for realizing the ideas presented to her mind. But 
 the old biographers relate how one celestial vision 
 urged the childish hermit to forsake the world and 
 another bade her return to the duties of her home. 
 
 To the second kind we may refer the frequent 
 communings with Christ and with the fathers of the 
 Church, together with the other visions to which she 
 frequently laid claim; nor must we omit the stigmata 
 which she believed she had received from Christ. 
 Catherine was constitutionally inclined to hallucina- 
 tions. At the age of six, before it was probable that 
 a child should have laid claim to spiritual gifts which 
 she did not possess, she burst into loud weeping be- 
 cause her little brother rudely distracted her attention 
 from the brilliant forms of saints and angels which 
 she traced among the clouds. Almost all children of 
 a vivid imagination are apt to transfer the objects of 
 their fancy to the world without them. Goethe walked 
 for hours in his enchanted gardens as a boy, and 
 Alfieri tells us how he saw a company of angels in 
 the choristers at Asti. Nor did St. Catherine omit 
 any means of cultivating this faculty, and of prevent- 
 ing her splendid visions from fading away, as they 
 almost always do, beneath the discipline of intellectual 
 education and among the distractions of daily life. 
 Believing simply in their heavenly origin, and receiv- 
 ing no secular training whatsoever, she walked sur- 
 rounded by a spiritual world, environed, as her legend 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 4 
 
50 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 says, by angels. Her habits were calculated to foster 
 this disposition. It is related that she took but little 
 sleep, scarcely more than two hours at night, and that, 
 too, on the bare ground; she ate nothing but vegetables 
 and the sacred wafer of the host, entirely abjuring 
 the use of wine and meat. This diet, combined with 
 frequent fasts and severe ascetic discipline, depressed 
 her physical forces, and her nervous system was 
 thrown into a state of the highest exaltation. Thoughts 
 became things, and ideas were projected from her 
 vivid fancy upon the empty air around her. It was, 
 therefore, no wonder that, after spending long hours 
 in vigils and meditating always on the thought of 
 Christ, she should have seemed to take the sacrament 
 from his hands, to pace the chapel in communion 
 with him, to meet him in the form of priest and beg- 
 gar, to hear him speaking to her as a friend. Once, 
 when the anguish of sin had plagued her with dis- 
 turbing dreams, Christ came and gave her his own 
 heart in exchange for hers. When lost in admiration 
 before the cross at Pisa, she saw his five wounds 
 stream with blood five crimson rays smote her, 
 passed into her soul, and left their marks upon her 
 hands and feet and side. The light of Christ's glory 
 shone round about her; she partook of his martyrdom 
 and, awaking from her trance, she cried to Raymond 
 "Behold! I bear in my body the marks of the Lord 
 Jesus!" 
 
 This miracle had happened to St. Francis. It was 
 regarded as the sign of fellowship with Christ of 
 worthiness to drink his cup and to be baptized with 
 his baptism. We find the same idea, at least, in the 
 old Latin hymns: 
 
SIENA. 5 1 
 
 Fac me plagis vulnerari 
 Cruce hie inebriari 
 Fac ut portem Christi mortem, 
 Passionis fac consortem, 
 Et plagas recolere. 
 
 These are words from the Stdbat Mater. Nor did 
 St. Francis and St. Catherine do more than carry into 
 the vividness of actual hallucination what had been 
 the poetic rapture of many less ecstatic but not less 
 ardent souls. They desired to be literally "crucified 
 with Christ;" they were not satisfied with metaphor 
 or sentiment, and it seemed to them that their Lord 
 had really vouchsafed to them the yearning of their 
 heart. We need not here raise the question whether 
 the stigmata had ever been actually self-inflicted by 
 delirious saint or hermit; it was not pretended that 
 the wounds of St. Catherine were visible during her 
 lifetime. After her death the faithful thought that 
 they had seen them on her corpse, and they actually 
 appeared in the relics of her hands and feet. The 
 pious fraud, if fraud there 'must have been, should be 
 ascribed, not to the saint herself, but to devotees and 
 relic-mongers.* The order of St. Dominic would not 
 be behind that of St. Francis. If the latter boasted 
 of their stigmata, the former would be ready to per- 
 forate the hand or foot of their dead saint. Thus the 
 ecstasies of genius or devotion are brought to earth 
 and rendered vulgar by mistaken piety and the rivalry 
 
 * It is not impossible that the stigmata may have been naturally 
 produced in the person of St. Francis or St. Catherine. There are 
 cases on record in which grave nervous disturbances have resulted 
 in such modifications of the flesh as may have left the traces of 
 wounds in scars and blisters. 
 
 4* 
 
52 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 of sects. The people put the most material construc- 
 tion on all tropes and metaphors. Above the door of 
 St. Catherine's chapel at Siena, for example, it is 
 written: 
 
 Hsec tenet ara caput Catharinse; corda requiris? 
 Haec imo Christus pectore clausa tenet. 
 
 The frequent conversations which she held with St. 
 Dominic and other patrons of the Church, and her 
 supernatural marriage, must be referred to the same 
 category. Strong faith and constant familiarity with 
 one order of ideas, joined with a creative power of 
 fancy and fostered by physical debility, produced these 
 miraculous colloquies. Early in her career, her injured 
 constitution, resenting the violence with which it had 
 been forced to serve the ardors of her piety, troubled 
 her with foul phantoms, haunting images of sin, and 
 seductive whisperings, which clearly revealed a morbid 
 condition of the nervous system. She was on the verge 
 of insanity. The reality of her inspiration and her 
 genius are proved by the force with which her human 
 sympathies and moral dignity and intellectual vigor 
 triumphed over these diseased hallucinations of the 
 cloister and converted them into the instruments for 
 effecting patriotic and philanthropic designs. There 
 was nothing savoring of mean pretension or imposture 
 in her claim to supernatural enlightenment. Whatever 
 we may think of the wisdom of her public policy with 
 regard to the Crusades and to the papal sovereignty, 
 it is impossible to deny that a holy and high object 
 possessed her from the earliest to the latest of her life; 
 that she lived for ideas greater than self-aggrandize- 
 ment or the saving of her soul for the greatest, per- 
 haps, which her age presented to an earnest Catholic. 
 
SIENA. 53 
 
 The abuses to which the indulgence of tempera- 
 ments like that of St. Catherine must in many cases 
 have given rise are obvious. Hysterical women and 
 half-witted men, without possessing her abilities and 
 understanding her objects, beheld unmeaning visions 
 and dreamed childish dreams. Others won the repu- 
 tation of sanctity by obstinate neglect of all the duties 
 of life and of all the decencies of personal cleanliness. 
 Every little town in Italy could show its saints like the 
 Santa Fina of whom San Gemignano boasts a girl 
 who lay for seven years on a back-board till her 
 mortified flesh clung to the wood; or the San Bartolo, 
 who, for hideous leprosy, received the title of the Job 
 of Tuscany. Children were encouraged in blasphemous 
 pretensions to the special power of Heaven, and the 
 nerves of weak women were shaken by revelations in 
 which they only half believed. We have ample evi- 
 dence to prove how the trade of miracles is still carried 
 on, and how in the France of our days, when intellectual 
 vigor has been separated from old forms of faith, 
 such vision-mongering undermines morality, encourages 
 ignorance, and saps the force of individuals. But 
 St. Catherine must not be confounded with those sickly 
 shams and make-believes. Her enthusiasms were real; 
 they were proper to her age; they inspired her with 
 unrivalled self-devotion and unwearied energy; they 
 connected her with the political and social movements 
 of her country. 
 
 Many of the supernatural events in St. Catherine's 
 life were founded on a too literal acceptation of Biblical 
 metaphors. The Canticles, perhaps, inspired her with 
 the belief in a mystical marriage. An enigmatical 
 sentence of St. Paul's suggested the stigmata. When 
 
54 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 the saint bestowed her garment upon Christ in the 
 form of a beggar and gave him the silver cross of her 
 rosary, she was but realizing his own words: "Inas- 
 much as ye shall do it unto the least of these little 
 ones, ye shall do it unto me." Charity, according to 
 her conception, consisted in giving to Christ. He had 
 first taught this duty; he would make it the test of all 
 duty at the last day. Catherine was charitable for 
 the love of Christ. She thought less of the beggar 
 than of her Lord. How could she do otherwise than 
 see the aureole about his forehead and hear the voice 
 of him who had declared, "Behold, I am with you, 
 even to the end of the world." Those were times of 
 childlike simplicity, when the eye of love was still un- 
 clouded, when men could see beyond the phantoms of 
 this world, and, stripping off the accidents of matter, 
 gaze upon the spiritual and eternal truths that lie beneath. 
 Heaven lay around them in that infancy of faith; nor 
 did they greatly differ from the saints and founders of 
 the Church from Paul, who saw the vision of the 
 Lord; or Magdalen, who cried, "He is risen!" An age 
 accustomed to veil thought in symbols easily reversed 
 the process and discerned essential qualities beneath 
 the common or indifferent objects of the outer world. 
 It was, therefore, Christ whom St. Christopher carried 
 in the shape of a child; Christ whom Fra Angelico's 
 Dominicans received in pilgrim's garb at their convent 
 gate; Christ with whom, under a leper's loathsome 
 form, the flower of Spanish chivalry was said to have 
 shared his couch. 
 
 In all her miracles it will be noticed that St. 
 Catherine showed no originality. Her namesake of 
 Alexandria had already been proclaimed the spouse 
 
SIENA. 55 
 
 of Christ. St. Francis had already received the stig- 
 mata; her other visions were such as had been granted 
 to all fervent mystics; they were the growth of current 
 religious ideas and unbounded faith. It is not as an 
 innovator in religious ecstasy, or as the creator of a 
 new kind of spiritual poetry, that we admire St. 
 Catherine. Her inner life was simply the foundation 
 of her character; her visions were a source of strength 
 to her in times of trial, or the expression of a more 
 than usually exalted mood; but the means by which 
 she moved the hearts of men belonged to that which 
 she possessed in common with all leaders of mankind 
 enthusiasm, eloquence, the charm of a gracious 
 nature, and the will to do what she designed. She 
 founded no religious order, like St. Francis or St. 
 Dominic, her predecessors, or Loyola, her successor. 
 Her work was a woman's work to make peace, to 
 succor the afflicted, to strengthen the Church, to purify 
 the hearts of those around her, not to rule or organize. 
 When she died she left behind her a memory of love 
 more than of power, the fragrance of an unselfish and 
 gentle life, the echo of sweet and earnest words. Her 
 place is in the heart of the humble; children belong 
 to her sisterhood, and the poor crowd her shrine on 
 festivals. 
 
 Catherine died at Rome, on the 2gth of April, 
 1380, in her thirty-third year, surrounded by the most 
 faithful of her friends and followers; but it was not 
 until 1461 that she received the last honor of canoniza- 
 tion from the hands of Pius II. (^Eneas Sylvius), her 
 countryman. ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini was, perhaps, 
 the most remarkable man that Siena has produced. 
 
56 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Like St. Catherine, he was one of a large family; 
 twenty of his brothers and sisters perished in a plague. 
 The licentiousness of his early life, the astuteness of 
 his intellect, and the worldliness of his aims contrast 
 with the singularly disinterested character of the saint 
 on whom he conferred the highest honors of the 
 Church. But he accomplished by diplomacy and skill 
 what Catherine had begun. If she was instrumental 
 in restoring the Popes to Rome, he ended the schism 
 which had clouded her last days. She had preached 
 a crusade; he lived to assemble the armies of Christen- 
 dom against the Turks, and died at Ancona, while it 
 was still uncertain whether the authority and enthusiasm 
 of a pope could steady the wavering counsels and 
 vacillating wills of kings and princes. The Middle 
 Ages were still vital in St. Catherine; Pius II. belonged 
 by taste and genius to the new period of Renaissance 
 The hundreds of the poorer Sienese who kneel before 
 St. Catherine's shrine prove that her memory is still 
 alive in the hearts of her fellow-citizens; while the 
 gorgeous library of the cathedral, painted by the hand 
 of Pinturicchio, the sumptuous palace and the Loggia 
 del Papa, designed by Bernardo Rossellino and Antonio 
 Federighi, record the pride and splendor of the greatest 
 of the Piccolomini. But, honorable as it was for Pius 
 to fill so high a place in the annals of his city; to 
 have left it as a poor adventurer; to return to it; first 
 as bishop, then as pope; to have a chamber in its 
 mother church adorned with the pictured history of 
 his achievements for a monument and a triumph of 
 Renaissance architecture dedicated to his family (gen- 
 tilibus suis), yet we cannot but feel that the better part 
 
SIENA. 57 
 
 remains with St. Catherine, whose prayer is still whis- 
 pered by children on their mother's knee, and whose 
 relics are kissed daily by the simple and devout. 
 
 Some of the chief Italian painters have represented 
 the incidents of St. Catherine's life and of her mystical 
 experience. All the pathos and beauty which we ad- 
 mire in Sodoma's St. Sebastian at Florence are sur- 
 passed by his fresco of St. Catherine receiving the 
 stigmata. This is one of several subjects painted by 
 him on the walls of her chapel in San Domenico. The 
 tender unction, the sweetness, the languor, and the 
 grace which he commanded with such admirable 
 mastery are all combined in the figure of the saint 
 falling exhausted into the arms of her attendant nuns 
 Soft undulating lines rule the composition; yet dignity 
 of attitude and feature prevails over mere loveliness. 
 Another of Siena's greatest masters Beccafumi has 
 treated the same subject with less pictorial skill and 
 dramatic effect, but with an earnestness and simplicity 
 that are very touching. Colorists always liked to intro- 
 duce the sweeping lines of her white robes into their 
 compositions. Fra Bartolomeo, who showed consum- 
 mate art by tempering the masses of white drapery 
 with mellow tones of brown or amber, painted one 
 splendid picture of the marriage of St. Catherine, and 
 another in which he represents her prostrate in adora- 
 tion before the mystery of the Trinity. His gentle and 
 devout soul sympathized with the spirit of the saint. 
 The fervor of her devotion belonged to him more truly 
 than the leonine power which he unsuccessfully at- 
 tempted to express in his large figure of St. Mark. 
 Other artists have painted the two Catherines together 
 the princess of Alexandria, crowned and robed in 
 
58 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 purple, bearing her palm of martyrdom, beside the 
 nun of Siena, holding in her hand the lantern with 
 which she went about by night among the sick. Am- 
 brogio Borgognone makes them stand one on each 
 side of Madonna's throne, while the infant Christ 
 upon her lap extends his hands to both in token of 
 their marriage. 
 
 The traditional type of countenance which may be 
 traced in all these pictures is not without a real founda- 
 tion. Not only does there exist at Siena, in the Church 
 of San Domenico, a contemporary portrait of St. 
 Catherine, but her head also, which was embalmed 
 immediately after death, is still preserved. The skin 
 of the face is fair and white, like parchment, and the 
 features have more the air of sleep than death. We 
 find in them the breadth and squareness of general 
 outline, and the long, even eyebrows which give pecu- 
 liar calm to the expression of her pictures. This relic 
 is shown publicly once a year on the 6th of May. 
 That is the Festa of the Saint, when a procession of 
 priests and acolytes, and pious people holding tapers, 
 and little girls dressed out in white, carry a splendid 
 silver image of their patroness about the city. Banners 
 and crosses and censers go in front; then follows the 
 shrine beneath a canopy; roses and leaves of box are 
 scattered on the path. The whole Contrada d'Oca is 
 decked out with such finery as the people can muster 
 red cloths hung from the windows, branches and 
 garlands strewn about the door-steps, with brackets for 
 torches on the walls, and altars erected in the middle 
 of the street. Troops of country-folk and towns-people 
 and priests go in and out to visit the cell of St. 
 Catherine. The upper and the lower chapel, built 
 
SIENA. 59 
 
 upon its site, and the hall of the confraternity, blaze 
 with lighted tapers. The faithful, full of wonder, kneel 
 or stand about the "santi luoghi," marvelling at the 
 relics and repeating to one another the miracles of the 
 saint. The same bustle pervades the Church of San 
 Domenico. Masses are being said at one or other 
 chapel all the morning, while women in their flapping 
 Tuscan hats crowd round the silver image of St. 
 Catherine and say their prayers with a continual under- 
 current of responses to the nasal voice of priest or 
 choir. Others gain entrance to the chapel of the saint 
 and kneel before her altar. There, in the blaze of 
 sunlight and of tapers, far away behind the gloss and 
 gilding of a tawdry shrine, is seen the pale, white face 
 which spoke and suffered so much years ago. The 
 contrast of its rigid stillness and half-concealed cor- 
 ruption with the noise and life and light outside is 
 very touching. Even so, the remnant of a dead idea 
 still stirs the souls of thousands, and many ages may 
 roll by before time and oblivion assert their inevitable 
 sway. 
 
6O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 PERUGIA. 
 
 PERUGIA is the empress of hill-set Italian cities. 
 Southward from her high-built battlements and church- 
 towers the eye can sweep a circuit of the Apennines 
 unrivalled in its width. From cloudlike Radicofani, 
 above Siena in the west, to snow-capped Monte Catria, 
 beneath whose summit Dante spent those saddest 
 months of solitude in 1313, the mountains curve con- 
 tinuously in lines of austere dignity and tempered 
 sweetness. Assisi, Spoleto, Todi, Trevi, crown lesser 
 heights within the range of vision. Here and there 
 the glimpse of distant rivers lights a silver spark upon 
 the plain. Those hills conceal Lake Thrasymene; and 
 there lies Orvieto, and Ancona there: while at our feet 
 the Umbrian champaign, breaking away into the valley 
 of the Tiber, spreads in all the largeness of majesti- 
 cally converging mountain-slopes. This is a landscape 
 which can never lose its charm. Whether it be purple 
 golden summer, or winter with sad tints of russet woods 
 and faintly rosy snows, or spring attired in tenderest 
 green of new-flegded trees and budding flowers, the air 
 is always pure and light and finely tempered here. 
 City gates, sombre as their own antiquity, frame vistas 
 of the laughing fields. Terraces, flanked on either 
 side by jutting masonry, cut clear vignettes of olive- 
 hoary slopes, with cypress-shadowed farms in hollows 
 of the hills. Each coign or point of vantage carries a 
 
PERUGIA. 6 1 
 
 bastion or tower of Etruscan, Roman, mediaeval, archi- 
 tecture, tracing the limits of the town upon its moun- 
 tain plateau. Everywhere art and nature lie side by 
 side in amity beneath a sky so pure and delicate that 
 from its limpid depth the spirit seems to drink new 
 life. What air-tints of lilac, orange, and pale amethyst 
 are shed upon those vast ethereal hills and undulating 
 plains ! What wandering cloud-shadows sail across this 
 sea of olives and of vines, with here and there a fleece 
 of vapor or a column of blue smoke from charcoal- 
 burners on the mountain flank! To southward, far 
 away beyond those hills, is felt the presence of eternal 
 Rome, not seen, but clearly indicated by the hurrying 
 of a hundred streams that swell the Tiber. 
 
 In the neighborhood of the town itself there is 
 plenty to attract the student of antiquities or art or 
 history. He may trace the walls of the Etruscan city, 
 and explore the vaults where the dust of the Volumnii 
 lies coffered in sarcophagi and urns. Mild faces of 
 grave deities lean from the living tufa above those 
 narrow alcoves, where the chisel-marks are still fresh, 
 and where the vigilant lamps still hang suspended 
 from the roof by leaden chains. Or, in the museum, 
 he may read on bass-reliefs and vases how gloomy and 
 morose were the superstitions of those obscure forerun- 
 ners of majestic Rome. The piazza offers one of the 
 most perfect Gothic faades, in its Palazzo Pubblico, 
 to be found in Italy. The flight of marble steps is 
 guarded from above by the bronze griffin of Perugia 
 and the Baglioni, with the bronze lion of the Guelf 
 faction, to which the town was ever faithful. Upon 
 their marble brackets they ramp in all the lean fero- 
 city of feudal heraldry, and from their claws hang 
 
62 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 down the chains wrested in old warfare from some 
 barricaded gateway of Siena. Below is the fountain, 
 on the many-sided curves of which Giovanni Pisano 
 sculptured, in quaint statuettes and bass-reliefs, all the 
 learning of the Middle Ages, from the Bible history 
 down to fables of JEsop and allegories of the several 
 months. Facing the same piazza is the Sala del Cambio, 
 a mediaeval Bourse, with its tribunal for the settlement 
 of mercantile disputes, and its exquisite carved wood- 
 work and frescos, the masterpiece of Perugino's school. 
 Hard by is the university, once crowded with native 
 and foreign students, where the eloquence of Greek 
 Demetrius in the first dawn of the Renaissance with- 
 drew the gallants of Perugia those slim youths with 
 shocks of nut-brown hair beneath their tiny red caps, 
 whose comely legs, encased in tight-fitting hose of two 
 different colors, look so strange to modern eyes upon 
 the canvas of Signorelli from their dice and wine- 
 cups, and amours and daggers, to grave studies in the 
 lore of Greece and Rome. 
 
 This piazza., the scene of all the bloodiest tragedies 
 in Perugian annals, is closed at the north end by the 
 cathedral, with the open pulpit in its wall from which 
 St. Bernardino of Siena preached peace in vain. The 
 citizens wept to hear his words: a bonfire of vanities 
 was lighted on the flags beside Pisano's fountain: foe 
 kissed foe : and the same cowl of St. Francis was set in 
 token of repentance on heads that long had schemed 
 destruction, each for each. But a few days passed, 
 and the penitents returned to cut each other's throat. 
 Often and often have those steps of the Duomo run 
 with blood of Baglioni, Oddi, Arcipreti, and La Staffa. 
 Once the whole church had to be washed with wine 
 
PERUGIA. 63 
 
 and blessed anew before the rites of Christianity could 
 be resumed in its desecrated aisles. It was here that 
 within the space of two days, in 1500, the catafal- 
 que was raised for the murdered Astorre, and for his 
 traitorous cousin Grifonetto Baglioni. Here, too, if 
 more ancient tradition does not err, were stretched the 
 corpses of twenty-seven members of the same great 
 house at the end of one of their grim combats. 
 
 No Italian city illustrates more forcibly than Perugia 
 the violent contrasts of the earlier Renaissance. This 
 is, perhaps, its most essential characteristic that which 
 constitutes its chief aesthetic interest. To many travellers 
 the name of Perugia suggests at once the painter who, 
 more than any other, gave expression to devout emo- 
 tions in consummate works of pietistic art. They re- 
 member how Raphael, when a boy, with Pinturicchio, 
 Lo Spagna, and Adone Doni, in the workshop of Pietro 
 Perugino, learned the secret of that style to which he 
 gave sublimity and freedom in his Madonnas di San 
 Sisto, di Foligno, and del Cardellino. But the students 
 of mediaeval history in detail know Perugia far better 
 as the lion's lair of one of the most ferocious broods 
 of heroic ruffians Italy can boast. To them the name 
 of Perugia suggest at once the great house of the 
 Baglioni, who drenched Umbria with blood, and gave 
 the broad fields of Assisi to the wolf, and who through 
 six successive generations bred captains for the armies 
 of Venice, Florence, Naples, and the Church.* That 
 
 * Most of the references in this essay are made to the Perugian 
 chronicles of Graziani, Matarazzo, Bontempi, and Frolliere, in the 
 Arckivio Storico ltaliano, vol. xvi. parts I and 2. Ariodante 
 Fabretti's Biografie del Capitani Venturieri del? Umbria supply 
 some details. 
 
64 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 the trade of Perugino in religious pictures should have 
 been carried on in the city which shared the factions 
 of the Baglioni that Raphael should have been paint- 
 ing Pietas while Astorre and Simonetto were being 
 murdered by the beautiful young Grifonetto is a para- 
 dox of the purest water in the history of civilization. 
 
 The art of Perugino implied a large number of 
 devout and wealthy patrons, a public not only capable 
 of comprehending him, but also eager to restrict his 
 great powers within the limits of purely devotional 
 delineation. The feuds and passions of the Baglioni, 
 on the other hand, implied a society in which egregious 
 crimes only needed success to be accounted glorious, 
 where force, cruelty, and cynical craft reigned supreme, 
 and where the animal instincts attained gigantic pro- 
 portions in the persons of splendid young athletic 
 despots. Even the names of these Baglioni Astorre, 
 Lavinia, Zenobia, Atalanta, Troilo, Ercole, Annibale, 
 Ascanio, Penelope, Orazio, and so forth clash with 
 the sweet mild forms of Perugino, whose very execu- 
 tioners are candidates for Paradise, and kill their 
 martyrs with compunction. 
 
 In Italy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
 such contradictions subsisted in the same place and 
 under the conditions of a common culture, because 
 there was no limit to the development of personality. 
 Character was far more absolute then than now. The 
 force of the modern world, working in the men of 
 those times like powerful wine, as yet displayed itself 
 only as a spirit of freedom and expansion and revolt. 
 The strait laces of mediaeval Christianity were loosened. 
 The coercive action of public opinion had not yet 
 made itself dominant. That was an age of adolescence, 
 
PERUGIA. 65 
 
 in which men were and dared to be themselves for 
 good or evil. Hypocrisy, except for some solid, well- 
 defined, selfish purpose, was unknown: the deference 
 to established canons of decorum which constitutes 
 more than half of our so-called morality, would have 
 been scarcely intelligible to an Italian. The outlines 
 of individuality were therefore strongly accentuated. 
 Life itself was dramatic in its incidents and motives, 
 its catastrophes and contrasts. These conditions, 
 eminently favorable to the growth of arts and the 
 pursuit of science, were no less conducive to the hyper- 
 trophy of passions, and to the full development of 
 ferocious and inhuman personalities. Every man did 
 what seemed good in his own eyes. Far less restrained 
 than we are by the verdict of his neighbors, but bound 
 by faith to more blind and fiercer superstitions, he dis- 
 played the contradictions of his character in picturesque 
 chiaroscuro. What he could was the limit set on what 
 he would. Therefore, considering the infinite varieties 
 of human temperaments, it was not merely possible, 
 but natural, for Pietro Perugino and Gianpaolo Baglioni 
 to be inhabitants at the same time of the self-same 
 city, and for the pious Atalanta to mourn the bloodshed 
 and the treason of her Achillean son, the young and 
 terrible Grifone. Here, in a word, in Perugia, beneath 
 the fierce blaze of the Renaissance, were brought into 
 splendid contrast both the martial violence and the 
 religious sentiment of medisevalism, raised for a 
 moment to the elevation of fine art. 
 
 Some of Perugino's qualities can be studied better 
 in Perugia than elsewhere. Of his purely religious 
 pictures altar-pieces of Madonna and Saints, martyr- 
 doms of St. Sebastian, Crucifixions, Ascensions, An- 
 
 Skrfches in Italy. 5 
 
66 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 nunciations, and Depositions from the Cross fine 
 specimens are exhibited in nearly all the galleries of 
 Europe. A large number of his works and of those 
 of his scholars may be seen assembled in the Pina- 
 coteca of Perugia. Yet the student of his pietistic 
 style finds little here of novelty to notice. It is in the 
 Sala del Cambio that we gain a really new conception 
 of his faculty. Upon the decoration of that little hall 
 he concentrated all his powers of invention. The 
 frescos of the Transfiguration and the Nativity, which 
 face the great door, are the triumphs of his devotional 
 manner. On other panels of the chamber he has 
 portrayed the philosophers of Greece and Rome, the 
 kings and generals of antiquity, the prophets and the 
 sibyls who announced Chirst's advent. The roof is 
 covered with arabesques of delicate design and dainty 
 execution labyrinths of fanciful improvisation, in 
 which flowers and foliage and human forms are woven 
 into an harmonious framework for the medallions of 
 the seven planets. The woodwork with which the hall 
 is lined below the frescos shows to what a point of 
 perfection the art of intarsiatura had been carried 
 in his school. All these decorative masterpieces are 
 the product of one ingenuous style. Uninfluenced by 
 the Roman frescos imitated by Raphael in his Loggie 
 of the Vatican, they breathe the spirit of the earlier 
 Renaissance, which created for itself free forms of 
 grace and loveliness without a pattern, divining by its 
 innate sense of beauty what the classic artists had 
 achieved. Take for an example the medallion of the 
 planet Jupiter. The king of gods and men, hoary- 
 headed and mild-eyed, is seated in his chariot drawn 
 by eagles: before him kneels Ganymede, a fair-haired 
 
PERUGIA, 67 
 
 exquisite, slim page, with floating mantle and ribbons 
 fluttering round his tight hose and jerkin. Such were 
 the cup-bearers of Galeazzo Sforza and Gianpaolo 
 Baglioni. Then compare this fresco with the Jupiter 
 in mosaic upon the cupola of the Chigi chapel in 
 S. Maria del Popolo at Rome. A new age of ex- 
 perience had passed over Raphael between his execu- 
 tion of Perugino's design in the one and his conception 
 of the other. He had seen the marbles of the Vatican, 
 and had heard of Plato in the interval: the simple 
 graces of the earlier Renaissance were no longer 
 enough for him; but he must realize the thought of 
 classic myths in his new manner. In the same way 
 we may compare this Transfiguration with Raphael's 
 last picture, these sibyls with those of S. Maria della 
 Pace, these sages with the School of Athens, these 
 warriors with the Battle of Maxentius. What is cha- 
 racteristic of the full-grown Raphael is his universal 
 comprehension, his royal faculty for representing past 
 and present, near and distant, things the most diverse, 
 by forms ideal and yet distinctive. Each phase of the 
 world's history and of human activity receives from 
 him appropriate and elevated expression. What is 
 characteristic of the frescos in the Sala del Cambio, 
 and indeed of the whole manner of Perugino, is that 
 all subjects, sacred or secular, allegorical or real, are 
 conceived in the same spirit of restrained and well- 
 bred piety. There is no attempt at historical propriety 
 or dramatic realism. Grave, ascetic, melancholy faces 
 of saints are put on bodies of kings, generals, sages, 
 sibyls, and deities alike. The same ribbons and 
 studied draperies clothe and connect all. The same 
 conventional attitudes of meditative gracefulness are 
 
 5* 
 
68 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 repeated in each group. Yet the whole effect, if 
 somewhat feeble and insipid, is harmonious and 
 thoughtful. We see that each part has proceeded 
 from the same mind, in the same mood, and that the 
 master's mind was no common one, the mood itself 
 was noble. Good taste is everywhere apparent: the 
 work throughout is a masterpiece of refined fancy. 
 
 To Perugino the representative imagination was of 
 less importance than a certain delicate and adequately 
 ideal mode of feeling and conceiving. The consequent 
 charm of his style is that everything is thought out 
 and rendered visible in one decorous key. The worst 
 that can be said of it is that its suavity inclines to 
 mawkishness, and that its quietism borders upon sleepi- 
 ness. We find it difficult not to accuse him of affecta- 
 tion. At the same time we are forced to allow that 
 what he did, and what he refrained from doing, was 
 determined by a purpose. A fresco of the Adoration 
 of the Shepherds, and a picture of St. Sebastian in 
 the Pinacoteca, where the archer on the right hand is 
 drawn in a natural attitude with force and truth, show 
 well enough what Perugino could do when he chose. 
 
 The best way of explaining his conventionality, in 
 which the supreme power of a master is always verg- 
 ing on the facile trick of a mannerist, is to suppose 
 that the people of Perugia and the Umbrian highlands 
 imposed on him this narrow mode of treatment. We 
 may presume that he was always receiving orders for 
 pictures to be executed in his well-known manner. 
 Celestial insipidity in art was the fashion in that 
 Umbria which the Baglioni and the popes laid waste 
 from time to time with fire and sword.* 
 
 * It will not be forgotten by students of Italian history that 
 
PERUGIA. 6g 
 
 Therefore the painter, who had made his reputa- 
 tion by placing devout young faces upon twisted necks, 
 with a background of limpid twilight and calm land- 
 scape, was forced by the fervor of his patrons, and his 
 own desire for money, to perpetuate pious prettinesses 
 long after he had ceased to feel them. It is just this 
 widespread popularity of a master unrivalled in one 
 line of devotional sentimentalism which makes the 
 contrast between Perugino and the Baglioni family so 
 striking. 
 
 The Baglioni first came into notice during the wars 
 they carried on with the Oddi of Perugia in the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries.* This was one of 
 those duels to the death, like that of the Visconti with 
 the Torrensi of Milan, on which the fate of so many 
 Italian cities in the Middle Ages hung. The nobles 
 fought; the townsfolk assisted like a Greek chorus, 
 
 Umbria was the cradle of the Battuti, or Flagellants, who over- 
 spread Italy in the fourteenth century , and to whose devotion were 
 due the Laudi, or popular hymns of the religious confraternities, 
 which in course of time produced the Sucre Rappresentazioni of 
 fifteenth century Florentine literature. Umbria, and especially 
 Perugia and Assisi, seem to have been inventive in piety between 
 1 200 and 1400. 
 
 * The Baglioni persecuted their rivals with persistent fury to 
 the very last. Matarazzo tells how Morgante Baglioni gave a death- 
 wound to his nephew, the young Carlo de li Oddi, in 1501 : "Dielli 
 una ferita nella formosa faccia : el quale era in aspetto vago e bello 
 giovane d'anni 23 o 24, al quale nscivano le bionde tresse sotto la 
 bella armadura. " The same night his kinsman Pompeo was mur- 
 dered in prison with this last lament upon his lips: "O infelice 
 casa degli Oddi, quale aveste tanta fama di conduttieri, capitanie, 
 cavaliere, speron d'oro, protonotarie, e abbate; et in uno solo tempo 
 aveste nomine quarantadue; e oggie, per me quale son ultimo, se 
 asconde el nome de la magnifica e famosa casa degli Oddi, che mai 
 al mondo non sera piu nominata" (p. 175). 
 
7O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 sharing the passions of the actors, but contributing 
 little to the catastrophe. The piazza was the theatre 
 on which the tragedy was played. In this contest the 
 Baglioni proved the stronger, and began to sway the 
 State of Perugia after the irregular fashion of Italian 
 despots. They had no legal right over the city, no 
 hereditary magistracy, no title of princely authority.* 
 The Church was reckoned the supreme administrator 
 of the Perugian commonwealth. But in reality no man 
 could set foot on the Umbrian plain without permis- 
 sion from the Baglioni. They elected the officers of 
 state. The lives and goods of the citizens were at 
 their discretion. When a papal legate showed his face, 
 they made the town too hot to hold him. One of In- 
 nocent VIII.'s nephews had been murdered by them.** 
 Another cardinal had shut himself up in a box, and 
 sneaked on mule-back like a bale of merchandise 
 through the gates to escape their fury. It was in vain 
 that from time to time the people rose against them, 
 massacring Pandolfo Baglioni on the public square in 
 1393, and joining with Ridolfo and Braccio of the 
 dominant house to assassinate another Pandolfo with 
 his son Niccolo in 1460. The more they were cut 
 down, the more they flourished. The wealth they 
 derived from their lordships in the duchy of Spoleto 
 and the Umbrian hill-cities, and the treasures they ac- 
 
 * The Baglioni were lords of Spello, Bettona, Montalera, and 
 other Umbrian burghs, but never of Perugia. Perugia had a civic 
 constitution similar to that of Florence and other Guelf towns under 
 the protection of the Holy See. The power of the eminent house 
 was based only on wealth and prestige. 
 
 ** See Matarazzo, p. 38. It is here that he relates the covert 
 threat addressed by Guido Baglioni to Alexander VJ. , who was 
 seeking to inveigle him into his clutches. 
 
PERUGIA. 7 1 
 
 cumulated in the service of the Italian republics, made 
 them omnipotent in their native town. There they 
 built tall houses on the site which Paul HI. chose 
 afterwards for his castello, and which is now an open 
 place above the Porta San Carlo. From the balconies 
 and turrets of these palaces, swarming with their bravi, 
 they surveyed the splendid land that felt their force 
 a land which, even in midsummer, from sunrise to 
 sunset keeps the light of day upon its up-turned face. 
 And from this eyrie they issued forth to prey upon 
 the plain, or to take their lust of love or blood within 
 the city streets. The Baglioni spent but short time in 
 the amusements of peace. From father to son they 
 were warriors, and we have records of few Italian 
 houses, except, perhaps, the Malatesti of Rimini, who 
 equalled them in hardihood and fierceness. Especially 
 were they noted for the remorseless vendette which they 
 carried on among themselves, cousin tracking cousin 
 to death with the ferocity and craft of sleuth-hounds. 
 Had they restrained these fratricidal passions, they 
 might, perhaps, by following some common policy, 
 like that of the Medici in Florence or the Bentivogli 
 in Bologna, have successfully resisted the papal authority 
 and secured dynastic sovereignty. 
 
 It is not until 1495 that the history of the Baglioni 
 becomes dramatic, possibly because till then they lacked 
 the pen of Matarazzo. * But from this year forward 
 
 * His chronicle is a masterpiece of naive, unstudied narrative. 
 Few documents are so important for the student of the sixteenth 
 century in Italy. Whether it be really the work of Matarazzo or 
 Maturanzio, the distinguished humanist, is more than doubtful. The 
 writer seems to me as yet unspoiled by classic studies and the 
 pedantries of imitation. 
 
72 . SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 to their final extinction, every detail of their doings 
 has a picturesque and awful interest. Domestic furies, 
 like the revel descried by Cassandra above the palace 
 of Mycenae, seem to take possession of the fated house; 
 and the doom which has fallen on them is worked out 
 with pitiless exactitude to the last generation. In 1495 
 the heads of the Casa Baglioni were two brothers, 
 Guide and Ridolfo, who had a numerous progeny of 
 heroic sons. From Guido sprang Astorre, Adriano 
 called for his great strength Morgante* Gismondo, 
 Marcantonio, and Gentile. Ridolfo owned Troilo, 
 Gianpaolo, and Simonetto. The first glimpse we get 
 of these young athletes in Matarazzo's chronicle is on 
 the occasion of a sudden assault upon Perugia made 
 by the Oddi and the exiles of their faction in Sep- 
 tember, 1495. The foes of the Baglioni entered the 
 gates and began breaking the iron chains, serragti, 
 which barred the streets against advancing cavalry. 
 None of the noble house were on the alert except 
 young Simonetto, a lad of eighteen, fierce and cruel, 
 who had not yet begun to shave his chin.** In spite 
 of all dissuasion, he rushed forth alone, bareheaded, 
 in his shirt, with a sword in his right hand and a 
 buckler on his arm, and fought against a squadron. 
 There at the barrier of the piazza he kept his foes at 
 bay, smiting men-at-arms to the ground with the sweep 
 
 * This name, it may be incidentally mentioned, proves the 
 wide-spread popularity of Pulci's poem, the Morgante Maggiore. 
 
 ** "Era costui al presente di anne 18019; ancora non se radeva 
 barba; e mostrava tanta forza e tanto ardire, e era tanto adatto nel 
 fatto d'arine, che era gran maraveglia; e iostrava cum tanta gintilezza 
 e gagliardia, che homo del mondo non Paria mai creso; et aria dato 
 con la punta de la lancia in nel fondo d'uno bicchiere da la mattina 
 a la sera," etc. (p. 50). 
 
PERUGIA. 7 3 
 
 of his tremendous sword, and receiving on his gentle 
 body twenty-two cruel wounds. While thus at fearful 
 odds, the noble Astorre mounted his charger and 
 joined him. Upon his helmet flashed the falcon of 
 the Baglioni with the dragon's tail that swept behind. 
 Bidding Simonetto tend his wounds, he in his turn 
 held the square. 
 
 Listen to Matarazzo's description of the scene; it 
 is as good as any piece of the Morte d' Arthur: "Ac- 
 cording to the report of one who told me what he had 
 seen with his own eyes, never did anvil take so many 
 blows as he upon his person and his steed; and they 
 all kept striking at his lordship in such crowds that 
 the one prevented the other. And so many lances, 
 partisans, and cross-bow quarries, and other weapons 
 made upon his body a most mighty din, that above 
 every other noise and shout was heard the thud of 
 those great strokes. But he, like one who had the 
 mastery of war, set his charger where the press was 
 thickest, jostling now one and now another; so that he 
 ever kept at least ten men of his foes stretched on the 
 ground beneath his horse's hoofs; which horse was a 
 most fierce beast, and gave his enemies what trouble 
 he best could. And now that gentle lord was all for- 
 done with sweat and toil, he and his charger; and so 
 weary were they that scarcely could they any longer 
 breathe." 
 
 Soon after the Baglioni mustered in force. One 
 by one their heroes rushed from the palaces. The 
 enemy were driven back with slaughter; and a war 
 ensued which made the fair land between Assisi and 
 Perugia a wilderness for many months. It must not 
 be forgotten that at the time of these great feats of 
 
74 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Simonetto and Astorre young Raphael was painting in 
 the studio of Perugino. What the whole city witnessed 
 with astonishment and admiration, he, the keenly 
 sensitive artist-boy, treasured in his memory. There- 
 fore in the St. George of the Louvre, and in the 
 mounted horseman trampling upon Heliodorus in the 
 Stanze of the Vatican, victorious Astorre lives forever, 
 immortalized in all his splendor by the painter's art. 
 The grinning griffin on the helmet, the resistless frown 
 upon the forehead of the beardless knight, the terrible 
 right arm, and the ferocious steed all are there as 
 Raphael saw and wrote them on his brain. One 
 characteristic of the Baglioni, as might be plentifully 
 illustrated from their annalist, was their eminent 
 beauty, which inspired beholders with an enthusiasm 
 and a love they were far from deserving by their 
 virtues. It is this, in combination with their personal 
 heroism, which gives a peculiarly dramatic interest to 
 their doings, and makes the chronicle of Matarazzo 
 more fascinating than a novel. He seems unable to 
 write about them without using the language of an 
 adoring lover. 
 
 In the affair of 1495 the Baglioni were at amity 
 among themselves. When they next appear upon the 
 scene, they are engaged in deadly feud. Cousin had 
 set his hand to the throat of cousin, and the two 
 heroes of the piazza, are destined to be slain by foulest 
 treachery of their own kin. It must be premised that 
 besides the sons of Guido and Ridolfo already named, 
 the great house counted among its most distinguished 
 members a young Grifone, or Grifonetto, the son of 
 Grifone and Atalanta Baglioni. Both his father and 
 grandfather had died violent deaths in the prime of 
 
PERUGIA. 75 
 
 their youth: Galeotto, the father of Atalanta, by poison, 
 and Grifone by the knife at Ponte Ricciolo in 1477. 
 Atalanta was left a young widow with one only son, 
 this Grifonetto, whom Matarazzo calls "un altro Gani- 
 mede," and who combined the wealth of two chief 
 branches of the Baglioni. In 1500, when the events 
 about to be related took place, he was quite a youth. 
 Brave, rich, handsome, and married to a young wife, 
 Zenobia Sforza, he was the admiration of Perugia. He 
 and his wife loved each other dearly, and how, indeed, 
 could it be otherwise, since "1'uno e 1'altro sembravano 
 doi angioli di Paradiso?" At the same time he had 
 fallen into the hands of bad and desperate counsellors. 
 A bastard of the house, Filippo da Braccio, his half- 
 uncle, was always at his side, instructing him not only 
 in the accomplishments of chivalry, but also in wild 
 ways that brought his name into disrepute. Another 
 of his familiars was Carlo Barciglia Baglioni, an un- 
 quiet spirit, who longed for more power than his 
 poverty and comparative obscurity allowed. With them 
 associated Jeronimo della Penna, a veritable ruffian, 
 contaminated from his earliest youth with every form 
 of lust and violence, and capable of any crime.* These 
 three companions, instigated partly by the lord of 
 Camerino and partly by their own cupidity, conceived 
 a scheme for massacring the families of Guido and 
 Ridolfo at one blow. As a consequence of this whole- 
 sale murder, Perugia would be at their discretion. 
 
 * Matarazzo's description of the ruffians who surrounded Grifo- 
 netto (pp. 104, 105, 113) would suit Webster's Flamineo or Bosola. 
 In one place he likens Filippo to Achitophel and Grifonetto to 
 Absalom. Villano Villani, quoted by Fabretti (vol. III. p. 125), 
 relates the street adventures of this clique. It is a curious picture 
 of the pranks of an Italian princeling in the fifteenth century. 
 
76 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Seeing of what use Grifonetto by his wealth and name 
 might be to them, they did all they could to persuade 
 him to join their conjuration. It would appear that 
 the bait first offered him was the sovereignty of the 
 city, but that he was at last gained over by being 
 made to believe that his wife, Zenobia, had carried on 
 an intrigue with Gianpaolo Baglioni. The dissolute 
 morals of the family gave plausibility to an infernal 
 trick which worked upon the jealousy of Grifonetto. 
 Thirsting for revenge, he consented to the scheme. 
 The conspirators were further fortified by the accession 
 of Jeronimo della Staffa, and three members of the 
 house of Corgna. It is noticeable that out of the 
 whole number only two Bernardo da Corgna and 
 Filippo da Braccio were above the age of thirty. Of 
 the rest, few had reached twenty-five. At so early an 
 age were the men of those times adepts in violence 
 and treason. The execution of the plot was fixed for 
 the wedding festivities of Astorre Baglioni with Lavinia, 
 the daughter of Giovanni Colonna and Giustina Orsini. 
 At that time the whole Baglioni family were to be as- 
 sembled in Perugia, with the single exception of Mar- 
 cantonio, who was taking baths at Naples for his health. 
 It was known that the members of the noble house, 
 nearly all of them condottieri by trade, and eminent 
 for their great strength and skill in arms, took few 
 precautions for their safety. They occupied several 
 houses close together between the Porta San Carlo 
 and the Porta Eburnea, set no regular guard over their 
 sleeping-chambers, and trusted to their personal bra- 
 very and to the fidelity of their attendants.* It was 
 
 * Jacobo Antiquari, the secretary of Lodovico Sforza, in a 
 curious letter, which gives an account of the massacre, says that he 
 
PERUGIA. 77 
 
 thought that they might be assassinated in their beds. 
 The wedding festivities began upon the 28th of July, 
 and great is the particularity with which Matarazzo 
 describes the doings of each successive day pro- 
 cessions, jousts, triumphal arches, banquets, balls, and 
 pageants. The night of the 1 4th of August was finally 
 set apart for the consummation of el gran tradimento: 
 it is thus that Matarazzo always alludes to the crime 
 of Grifonetto, with a solemnity of reiteration that is 
 most impressive. A heavy stone let fall into the court- 
 yard of Guido Baglioni's palace was to be the signal: 
 each conspirator was then to run to the sleeping- 
 chamber of his appointed prey. Two of the principals 
 and fifteen bravi were told off to each victim: rams 
 and crow-bars were prepared to force the doors if 
 needful. All happened as had been anticipated. The 
 crash of the falling stone was heard. The conspirators 
 rushed to the scene of operations. Astorre, who was 
 sleeping in the house of his traitorous cousin Grifo- 
 netto, was slain in the arms of his young bride, cry- 
 ing, as he vainly struggled, "Misero Astorre che more 
 come poltrone!" Simonetto, who lay that night with 
 a lad called Paolo he greatly loved, flew to arms, ex- 
 claiming to his brother, "Non dubitare Gismondo, mio 
 fratello ! " He, too, was soon despatched, together with 
 his bedfellow. Filippo da Braccio, after killing him, 
 tore from a great wound in his side the still quivering 
 heart, into which he drove his teeth with savage fury. 
 Old Guido died groaning "Ora e gionto il ponto 
 mio;" and Gismondo's throat was cut while he lay 
 
 had often reproved the Baglioni for "sleeping in their beds without 
 any guard or watch, so that they might easily be overcome by 
 enemies." 
 
78 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 holding back his face that he might be spared the 
 sight of his own massacre. The corpses of Astorre 
 and Simonetto were stripped and thrown out naked 
 into the streets. Men gathered round and marvelled 
 to see such heroic forms, with faces so proud and 
 fierce even in death. In especial the foreign students 
 likened them to ancient Romans.* But on their fingers 
 were rings, and these the ruffians of the place would 
 fain have hacked off with their knives. From this in- 
 dignity the noble limbs were spared; then the dead 
 Baglioni were hurriedly consigned to an unhonored 
 tomb. Meanwhile the rest of the intended victims 
 managed to escape. Gianpaolo, assailed by Grifonetto 
 and Gianfrancesco della Corgna, took refuge with his 
 squire and bedfellow, Maraglia, upon a staircase lead- 
 ing from his room. While the squire held the passage 
 with his pike against the foe, Gianpaolo effected his 
 flight over neighboring house-roofs. He crept into the 
 attic of some foreign students, who, trembling with 
 terror, gave him food and shelter, clad him in a 
 scholar's gown, and helped him to fly in this disguise 
 from the gates at dawn. He then joined his brother 
 Troilo at Marsciano, whence he returned without delay 
 to punish the traitors. At the same time Grifonetto's 
 mother, Atalanta, taking with her his wife, Zenobia, 
 and the two young sons of Gianpolo, Malatesta and 
 Orazio, afterwards so celebrated in Italian history for 
 their great feats of arms and their crimes, fled to her 
 
 * "Quelli che li vidino, e maxime li forastiere studiante as- 
 simigliavano el magnifico Messer Astorre cosi morto ad un antico 
 Romano, perche prima era unanissimo; tanto sua figura era degnia 
 e magnia," etc. This is a touch exquisitely illustrative of the 
 Renaissance enthusiasm for classic culture. 
 
PERUGIA. 79 
 
 country-house at Landona. Grifonetto in vain sought 
 to see her there. She drove him from her presence 
 with curses for the treason and the fratricide that he 
 had planned. It is very characteristic of these wild 
 natures, framed of fierce instincts and discordant pas- 
 sions, that his mother's curse weighed like lead upon 
 the unfortunate young man. Next day, when Gian- 
 paolo returned to try the luck of arms, Grifonetto, 
 deserted by the companions of his crime and paralyzed 
 by the sense of his guilt, went out alone to meet him 
 on the public place. The semi- failure of their scheme 
 had terrified the conspirators: the horrors of that night 
 of blood unnerved them. All had fled except the 
 next victim of the feud. Putting his sword to the 
 youth's throat, Gianpaolo looked into his eyes and 
 said, "Art thou here, Grifonetto? Go with God's 
 peace: I will not slay thee, nor plunge my hand in my 
 own blood, as thou hast done in thine." Then he 
 turned and left the lad to be hacked in pieces by his 
 guard. The untranslatable words which Matarazzo 
 uses to describe his death are touching from the 
 strong impression they convey of Grifonetto's good- 
 liness: "Qui ebbe sua signoria sopra sua nobile persona 
 tante ferite che suoi membra leggiadre stese in terra."* 
 None but Greeks felt the charm of personal beauty 
 thus. But while Grifonetto was breathing out his life 
 upon the pavement of the piazza, his mother, Atalanta, 
 and his wife, Zenobia, came to greet him through the 
 awe-struck city. As they approached, all men fell 
 aside and slunk away before their grief. None would 
 seem to have had a share in Grifonetto's murder. 
 
 * Here his lordship received upon his noble person so many 
 wounds that he stretched his graceful limbs upon the earth. 
 
8O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Then Atalanta knelt by her dying son, and ceased 
 from wailing, and prayed and exhorted him to pardon 
 those who had caused his death. It appears that 
 Grifonetto was too weak to speak, but that he made 
 a signal of assent, and received his mother's blessing 
 at the last: "E allora porse el nobil giovenetto la 
 dextra mano a la sua giovenile matre strengendo de 
 sua matre la bianca mano; e poi incontinente spiro 
 1'anima dal formoso corpo, e passo cum infinite bene- 
 dizioni de sua matre in cambio de la maledictione che 
 prima li aveva date."* Here, again, the style of Ma- 
 tarazzo, tender and full of tears, conveys the keenest 
 sense of the pathos of beauty and of youth in death 
 and sorrow. He has forgotten el gran tradimento. He 
 only remembers how comely Grifonetto was, how 
 noble, how frank and spirited, how strong in war, how 
 sprightly in his pleasures and his loves. And he sees 
 the still young mother, delicate and nobly born, lean- 
 ing over the athletic body of her bleeding son. This 
 scene, which is, perhaps, a genuine instance of what 
 we may call the Neohellenism of the Renaissance, finds 
 its parallel in the Phcenissa of Euripides. Jocasta and 
 Antigone have gone forth to the battle-field and found 
 the brothers Polynices and Eteocles drenched in 
 blood: 
 
 From his chest 
 
 Heaving a heavy breath, King Eteocles heard 
 His mother, and stretched forth a cold, damp hand 
 On hers, and nothing said, but with his eyes 
 Spake to her by his tears, showing kind thoughts 
 In symbols. 
 
 * And then the noble stripling stretched his right hand to his 
 youthful mother, pressing the white hand of his mother; and after- 
 wards forthwith he breathed his soul forth from his beauteous body, 
 
PERUGIA. 8 1 
 
 It was Atalanta, we may remember, who commis- 
 sioned Raphael to paint the so-called Borghese En- 
 tombment. Did she, perhaps, feel, as she withdrew 
 from the piazza, soaking with young Grifonetto's blood,* 
 that she, too, had some portion in the sorrow of that 
 mother who had wept for Christ? The memory of 
 the dreadful morning must have remained with her 
 through life, and long communion with our Lady of 
 Sorrows may have sanctified the grief that had so bit- 
 ter and so shameful a root of sin. 
 
 After the death of Grifonetto and the flight of the 
 conspirators, Gianpaolo took possession of Perugia. 
 All who were suspected of complicity in the treason 
 were massacred upon the piazza and in the cathedral. 
 At the expense of more than a hundred murders, the 
 chief of the Baglioni found himself master of the city 
 on the i yth of July. First he caused the cathedral to 
 be washed with wine and reconsecrated. Then he 
 decorated the Palazzo with the heads of the traitors 
 and with their portraits in fresco, painted hanging 
 head downwards, as was the fashion in Italy.** Next 
 he established himself in what remained of the palaces 
 of his kindred, hanging the saloons with black, and 
 arraying his retainers in the deepest mourning. Sad, 
 indeed, was now the aspect of Perugia. Helpless and 
 comparatively uninterested, the citizens had been spec- 
 tators of these bloody broils. They were now bound 
 
 and died with numberless blessings of his mother instead of the 
 curses she had given him before. 
 
 * See Matarazzo, p. 134, for this detail. 
 
 ** See Varchi (ed. Lemonnier, 1857), vol. II. p. 265, vol. III. 
 pp. 224, 652, and Corio (Venice, 1554), p. 326, for instances of 
 dipinti par traditori. 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 
 
82 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 to share the desolation of their masters. Matarazzo's 
 description of the mournful palace and the silent town, 
 and of the return of Marcantonio from Naples, presents 
 a picture striking for its vividness.* In the true style 
 of the Baglioni, Marcantonio sought to vent his sorrow 
 not so much in tears as by new violence. He pre- 
 pared and lighted torches, meaning to burn the whole 
 quarter of St Angelo; and from this design he was 
 with difficulty dissuaded by his brother. To such mad 
 freaks of rage and passion were the inhabitants of a 
 mediaeval town in Italy exposed ! They make us under- 
 stand the ordinanze di giustizia, by which to be a noble 
 was a crime in Florence. 
 
 From this time forward the whole history of the 
 Baglioni family is one of crime and bloodshed. A 
 curse had fallen on the house, and to the last of its 
 members the penalty was paid. Gianpaolo himself 
 acquired the highest reputation throughout Italy for 
 his courage and sagacity both as a general and a 
 governor.** It was he who held Julius IL at his dis- 
 cretion in 1506, and was sneered at by Machiavelli 
 for not consummating his enormities by killing the 
 warlike Pope.*** He again, after joining the diet of La 
 
 * Page 142 : "Pareva ogni cosa oscura e lacrimosa: tutte loro 
 servitore piangevano ; et le camere de lo resto de li magnifici 
 Baglioni, e sale, e ognie cosa erano tutte intorno cum pagnie negre. 
 E per la citta non era piu alcuno che sonasse ne cantasse ; e poco 
 si rideva," etc. 
 
 ** See Frolliere, p. 437, for a very curious account of his character. 
 *** Fabretti (vol. III. pp. 193 292, and notes) discusses this 
 circumstance in detail. Machiavelli's critique runs thus (Discorsi, 
 lib. I. cap. 27) : "Ni si poteva credere che si fosse astenuto o per 
 bonta, o per coscienza che lo ritenesse ; perch& in un petto d'un 
 uomo facinoroso, che si teneva la sorella, ch'aveva morti i cugini e 
 i nipoti per regnare, non poteva scendere alcuno pietoso rispetto: 
 
PERUGIA. 83 
 
 Magione against Cesare Borgia, escaped by his acumen 
 the massacre of Sinigaglia, which overthrew the other 
 conspirators. But his name was no less famous for 
 unbridled lust and deeds of violence. He boasted that 
 his son Constantino was a true Baglioni, since he was 
 his sister's child. He once told Machiavelli that he 
 had it in his mind to murder four citizens of Perugia, 
 his enemies. He looked calmly on while his kinsmen 
 Eusebio and Taddeo Baglioni, who had been accused 
 of treason, were hewn to pieces by his guard. His 
 wife, Ippolita de' Conti, was poniarded on her Roman 
 farm; on hearing the news, he ordered a festival in 
 which he was engaged to proceed with redoubled 
 merriment.* At last the time came for him to die by 
 fraud and violence. Leo X., anxious to remove so 
 powerful a rival from Perugia, lured him in 1520 to 
 Rome under the false protection of a papal safe-con- 
 duct. After a short imprisonment he had him be- 
 headed in the Castle of St. Angelo. It was thought 
 that Gentile, his first cousin, sometime Bishop of 
 Orvieto, but afterwards the father of two sons in wed- 
 lock with Giulia Vitelli such was the discipline of 
 the Church at this epoch had contributed to the 
 capture of Gianpaolo, and had exulted in his execu- 
 tion.** If so, he paid dear for his treachery; for Orazio 
 Baglioni, the second son of Gianpaolo and captain of 
 the Church under Clement VH, had him murdered in 
 
 ma si conchiuse che gli uomini non sanno essere onorevolmente 
 tristi, o perfettamente buoni," etc. 
 
 * See Fabretti, vol. III. p. 230. He is an authority for the 
 details of Gianpaolo's life. The circumstance alluded to above jus 
 tines the terrible opening scene in Shelley's tragedy, The Ccnci. 
 ** Fabretti, voL III. p. 230, vol. IV. p. 10. 
 
 6* 
 
84 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 1527, together with his two nephews Fileno and An- 
 nibale.* This Orazio was one of the most blood- 
 thirsty of the whole brood. Not satisfied with the 
 assassination of Gentile, he stabbed Galeotto, the son 
 of Grifonetto, with his own hand in the same year.** 
 Afterwards he died in the kingdom of Naples while 
 leading the Black Bands in the disastrous war which 
 followed the sack of Rome. He left no son. Mala- 
 testa, his elder brother, became one of the most cele- 
 brated generals of the age, holding the batons of the 
 Venetian and Florentine republics, and managing to 
 maintain his ascendency in Perugia in spite of the 
 persistent opposition of successive popes. But his 
 name is best known in history for one of the greatest 
 public crimes. Intrusted with the defence of Flo- 
 rence during the siege of 1530, he sold the city to 
 his enemy, Pope Clement, receiving for the price of 
 this infamy certain privileges and immunities which 
 fortified his hold upon Perugia for a season. All Italy 
 was ringing with the great deeds of the Florentines, 
 who for the sake of their liberty transformed them- 
 selves from merchants into soldiers, and withstood the 
 united powers of pope and emperor alone. Meanwhile 
 Malatesta, whose trade was war, and who was being 
 largely paid for his services by the beleaguered city, 
 contrived by means of diplomatic procrastination, secret 
 communication with the enemy, ^and all the arts that 
 could intimidate an army of recruits, to push affairs 
 to a point at which Florence was forced to capitulate 
 without inflicting the last desperate glorious blow she 
 longed to deal her enemies. The universal voice of 
 
 * See Varchi, Storic Florentine, vol. I. p. 224. 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
PERUGIA. 85 
 
 Italy condemned him. When Matteo Dandolo, the 
 Doge of Venice, heard what he had done, he cried 
 before the Pregadi in conclave, "He has sold that 
 people and that city, and the blood of those poor citi- 
 zens ounce by ounce, and has donned the cap of the 
 biggest traitor in the world."* Consumed with shame, 
 corroded by an infamous disease, and mistrustful of 
 Clement, to whom he had sold' his honor, Malatesta 
 retired to Perugia, and died in 1531. He left one 
 son, Ridolfo, who was unable to maintain himself in 
 the lordship of his native city. After killing the papal 
 legate, Cinzio Filonardi, in 1534, he was dislodged 
 four years afterwards, when Paul III. took final posses- 
 sion of the place as an appanage of the Church, razed 
 the houses of the Baglioni to the ground, and built 
 upon their site the Rocca Paolina. This fortress bore 
 an inscription: "Ad coercendam Perusinorum auda- 
 ciam." The city was given over to the rapacity of 
 the abominable Pier Luigi Farnese, and so bad was 
 this tyranny of priests and bastards, that, strange to 
 say, the Perugians regretted the troublous times of the 
 Baglioni. Malatesta in dying had exclaimed, "Help 
 me, if you can; since after me you will be set to draw 
 the cart like oxen." Frolliere, relating the speech, 
 adds, "And this has been fulfilled to the last letter, 
 for all have borne not only the yoke but the burden 
 and the goad." Ridolfo Baglioni and his cousin 
 Braccio, the eldest son of Grifonetto, were both cap- 
 tains of Florence. The one died in battle in 1554, 
 the other in 1559. Thus ended the illustrious family. 
 They are now represented by descendants from females, 
 
 * Fabretti, voL iv. p. 206. 
 
86 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 and by coniadini who preserve their name and boast a 
 pedigree of which they have no records. 
 
 The history of the Baglioni needs no commentary. 
 They were not worse than other Italian nobles who by 
 their passions and their parties destroyed the peace of 
 the city they infested. It is with an odd mixture of 
 admiration and discontent that the chroniclers of Perugia 
 allude to their ascendency. Matarazzo, who certainly 
 cannot be accused of hostility to the great house, de- 
 scribes the miseries of his country under their bad 
 government in piteous terms:* "As I wish not to swerve 
 from the pure truth, I say that from the day the Oddi 
 were expelled, our city went from bad to worse. All 
 the young men followed the trade of arms. Their lives 
 were disorderly; and every day divers excesses were 
 indulged, and the city had lost all reason and justice. 
 Every man administered right unto himself, propria 
 autoritate et manu regia. Meanwhile the Pope sent 
 many legates/" if so be the city could be brought to 
 order; but all who came returned in dread of being hewn 
 in pieces; for they threatened to throw some from the 
 windows of the palace, so that no cardinal or other 
 legate durst approach Perugia, unless he were a friend 
 of the Baglioni. And the city was brought to such 
 misery that the most wrongous men were most prized; 
 and those who had slain two or three men walked as 
 they listed through the palace, and went with sword 
 or poniard to speak to the podesib and other magistrates. 
 Moreover, every man of worth was downtrodden by 
 bravi whom the nobles favored; nor could a citizen 
 call his property his own. The nobles robbed first 
 
 * Pages 1 02, 103. 
 
PERUGIA. 7 
 
 one and then another of goods and land. All offices 
 were sold or else suppressed; and taxes and extortions 
 were so grievous that every one cried out. And if a 
 man were in prison for his head, he had no reason to 
 fear death, provided he had some interest with a noble." 
 Yet the same Matarazzo in another place finds it in 
 his heart to say:* "Though the city suffered great pains 
 for these nobles, yet the illustrious house of Baglioni 
 brought her honor throughout Italy, by reason of the 
 great dignity and splendor of that house, and of their 
 pomp and name. Wherefore through them our city 
 was often set above the rest, and notably above the 
 commonwealths of Florence and Siena." Pride feels 
 no pain. The gratified vanity of the Perugian burgher, 
 proud to see his town preferred before its neighbors, 
 blinds the annalist to all the violence and villany of 
 the magnificent Casa Baglioni. So strong was the 
 esprit de ville which through successive centuries and 
 amid all vicissitudes of politics divided the Italians 
 against themselves, and proved an insuperable obstacle 
 to unity. 
 
 After reading the chronicle of Matarazzo at Perugia 
 through one winter day, I left the inn and walked at 
 sunset to the blood-bedabbled cathedral square; for 
 still those steps and pavements to my strained imagina- 
 tion seemed reeking with the outpoured blood of 
 Baglioni; and on the ragged stonework of San Lorenzo 
 red patches slanted from the dying day. Then by one 
 of those strange freaks of the brain to which we are 
 all subject, for a moment I lost sight of untidy Gothic 
 facades and gaunt, unfinished church walls; and as 1 
 
 * Page 139. 
 
88 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 walked, I was in the Close of Salisbury on a perfumed 
 summer afternoon. The drowsy scent of lime-flowers 
 and mignonette, the cawing of elm-cradled rooks, the 
 hum of bees above, the velvet touch of smooth-shorn 
 grass, and the breathless shadow of motionless green 
 boughs made up one potent and absorbing mood of 
 the charmed senses. Far overhead soared the calm 
 gray spire into the infinite air, and the perfection of 
 accomplished beauty slept beneath in those long lines 
 of nave and choir and transepts. It was but a mo- 
 mentary dream, a thought that burned itself upon a 
 fancy overtaxed by passionate images. Once more 
 the puppet-scene of the brain was shifted; once more 
 I saw the bleak, bare flags of the Perugian piazza, the 
 forlorn front of the Duomo, the bronze griffin, and 
 Pisano's fountain, with here and there a flake of that 
 tumultuous fire which the Italian sunset sheds. Who 
 shall adequately compare the two pictures? Which 
 shall we prefer, the Close of Salisbury, with its sleepy 
 bells and cushioned ease of immemorial deans, or this 
 poor threadbare passion of Perugia, where every stone 
 is stained with blood, and where genius in painters 
 and scholars and prophets and ecstatic lovers has 
 throbbed itself away to nothingness? It would be 
 foolish to seek an answer to this question, idle to 
 institute a comparison, for instance, between those tall 
 young men with their broad winter cloaks who remind 
 me of Grifonetto, and the vergers pottering in search 
 of shillings along the gravel-paths of Salisbury. It is 
 more rational, perhaps, to reflect of what strange stuff 
 our souls are made in this age of the world, when 
 aesthetic pleasures, full, genuine, and satisfying, can be 
 communicated alike by Perugia with its fascination of 
 
PERUGIA. 89 
 
 a dead, irrevocable, dramatic past, and Salisbury, which 
 finds the artistic climax of its English comfort in the 
 "Angel of the house." From Matarazzo, smitten with 
 a Greek love for the beautiful Grifonetto, to Mr. Pat- 
 more, is a wide step. 
 
QO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 ORVIETO. 
 
 ON the road from Siena to Rome, half-way between 
 Ficulle and Viterbo, is the town of Orvieto. Travellers 
 often pass it in the night-time. Few stop there, for the 
 place is old and dirty, and its inns are said to be in- 
 different. But none who see it even from a distance 
 can fail to be struck with its imposing aspect, as it 
 rises from the level plain upon that mass of rock 
 among the Apennines. 
 
 Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic 
 blocks which are found like fossils imbedded in the 
 more recent geological formations of Central Italy, and 
 which stretch in an irregular but unbroken line to the 
 Campagna of Rome. Many of them, like that on which 
 Civita Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts 
 and chasms and ravines and fosses, strangely furrowed 
 and twisted by the force of fiery convulsions. But their 
 advanced guard, Orvieto, stands up definite and solid, 
 an almost perfect cube, with walls precipitous to north 
 and south and east, but slightly sloping to the west- 
 ward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one of those barren 
 streams which swell in winter with the snows and rains 
 of the Apennines, but which in summer-time shrink up 
 and leave bare beds of sand and pestilential cane- 
 brakes to stretch irregularly round their dwindled 
 waters. 
 
 The weary flatness and utter desolation of this 
 
ORVIETO. QI 
 
 valley present a sinister contrast to the broad line of 
 the Apennines, swelling tier on tier, from their oak- 
 girdled basements set with villages and towers, up to 
 the snow and cloud that crown their topmost crags. 
 The time to see this landscape is at sunrise; and the 
 traveller should take his stand upon the rising ground 
 over which the Roman road is carried from the town 
 the point, in fact, which Turner has selected for his 
 vague and misty sketch of Orvieto in our Gallery. 
 Thence he will command the whole space of the plain, 
 the Apennines, and the river creeping in a straight 
 line at the base; while the sun, rising to his right, will 
 slant along the mountain flanks, and gild the leaden 
 stream, and flood the castled crags of Orvieto with a 
 haze of light. From the centre of this glory stand out 
 in bold relief old bastions built upon the solid tufa, 
 vast gaping gateways black in shadow, towers of 
 churches shooting up above a medley of deep-corniced 
 tall Italian houses, and, amid them all, the marble 
 front of the cathedral, calm and solemn in its un- 
 familiar Gothic state. Down to the valley from these 
 heights there is a sudden fall; and we wonder how 
 the few spare olive-trees that grow there can support 
 existence on the steep slope of the cliff. 
 
 Our mind, in looking at this landscape, is carried 
 by the force of old association to Jerusalem. We could 
 fancy ourselves to be standing on Mount Olivet, with 
 the valley of Jehoshaphat between us and the Sacred 
 City. As we approach the town, the difficulty of scal- 
 ing its crags seems insurmountable. The road, though 
 carried skilfully along each easy slope or ledge of 
 quarried rock, still winds so much that nearly an hour 
 is spent in the ascent. Those who can walk should 
 
92 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 take a footpath, and enter Orvieto by the mediaeval 
 road, up which many a pope, flying from rebellious 
 subjects or foreign enemies, has hurried on his mule.* 
 
 To unaccustomed eyes there is something forbid- 
 ding and terrible about the dark and cindery appear- 
 ance of volcanic tufa. Where it is broken, the hard 
 and gritty edges leave little space for vegetation; while 
 at intervals the surface spreads so smooth and straight 
 that one might take it for solid masonry erected by 
 the architect of Pandemonium. Rubbish and shattered 
 bits of earthenware and ashes, thrown from the city 
 walls, cling to every ledge and encumber the broken 
 pavement of the footway. Then as we rise the castle 
 battlements above appear more menacing, toppling 
 upon the rough edge of the crag, and guarding each 
 turn of the road with jealous loopholes or beetle-browed 
 machicolations, until at last the gateway and portcullis 
 are in view. 
 
 On first entering Orvieto, one's heart fails to find 
 so terrible a desolation, so squalid a solitude, and so 
 vast a difference between the present and the past, 
 between the beauty of surrounding nature and the 
 misery of this home of men. A long space of unoc- 
 cupied ground intervenes between the walls and the 
 hovels which skirt the modern town. This, in the 
 times of its splendor, may have served for olive-yards, 
 vineyards, and pasturage, in case of siege. There are 
 still some faint traces of dead gardens left upon its arid 
 
 * Clement VII., for example, escaped from Rome disguised as 
 a gardener after the sack in 1527, and, to quote the words of Varchi 
 (St. Flor. v. 17), "Entr6 agli otto di dicembre a due ore di notte 
 in Orvieto, terra di sito fortissimo, per lo essere ella sopra uno 
 scoglio pieno di tufi posta, d'ogni intorno scosceso adinipato, " etc. 
 
ORVIETO. 93 
 
 wilderness, among the ruins of a castellated palace 
 decorated with the cross-keys and tiara of an unre- 
 membered pope. But now it lies a mere tract of 
 scorched grass, insufferably hot and dry and sandy, 
 intersected by dirty paths, and covered with the loath- 
 liest offal of a foul Italian town. Should you cross 
 this ground at mid-day, under the blinding sun, when 
 no living thing, except perhaps some poisonous reptile, 
 is about, you would declare that Orvieto had been 
 stricken for its sins by Heaven. Your mind would 
 dwell mechanically on ah 1 that you have read of papal 
 crimes, of fratricidal wars, of pagan abominations in 
 the high places of the Church, of tempestuous passions 
 and refined iniquity of everything, in fact, which 
 renders Italy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 
 dark and ominous amid the splendors of her art and 
 civilization. This is the natural result; this shrunken 
 and squalid old age of poverty and self-abandonment 
 is the end of that strong, prodigal, and vicious youth. 
 Who shall restore vigor to these dead bones? we cry. 
 If Italy is to live again, she must quit her ruined palace 
 towers to build fresh dwellings elsewhere. Filth, lust, 
 rapacity, treason, godlessness, and violence have made 
 their habitation here; ghosts haunt these ruins; these 
 streets still smell of blood and echo to the cries of in- 
 jured innocence; life cannot be pure or calm or healthy 
 where this curse has settled. 
 
 Occupied with such reflections, we reach the streets 
 of Orvieto. They are not very different from those of 
 most Italian villages, except that there is little gayety 
 about them. Like Assisi or Siena, Orvieto is too large 
 for its population, and merriment flows better from 
 close crowding than from spacious accommodation. 
 
Q4 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Very dark and big and dirty and deserted is the 
 judgment we pronounce upon the houses; very filthy 
 and malodorous each passage; very long this central 
 street; very few and sad and sullen the inhabitants; 
 and where, we wonder, is the promised inn? In search 
 of this one walks nearly through the city, until one 
 enters the Piazza, where there is more liveliness. Here 
 cafs may be found; soldiers, strong and sturdy, from 
 the north, lounge at the corners; the shops present 
 more show; and a huge hotel, not bad for such a place, 
 and appropriately dedicated to the Belle Arti, standing 
 in a court-yard of its own, receives the traveller weary 
 with his climb. As soon as he has taken rooms, his 
 first desire is to go forth and visit the cathedral. 
 
 The great Duomo was erected at the end of the 
 thirteenth century to commemorate the Miracle of 
 Bolsena. The value of this miracle consisted in its 
 establishing unmistakably the truth of transubstantia- 
 tion. The story runs that a young Bohemian priest 
 who doubted the dogma was performing the office of 
 the mass in a church at Bolsena, when, at the moment 
 of consecration, blood issued from five gashes in the 
 wafer, which resembled the five wounds of Christ. 
 The fact was evident to all the worshippers, who saw 
 blood falling on the linen of the altar; and the young 
 priest no longer doubted, but confessed the miracle, 
 and journeyed straightway with the evidence thereof 
 to Pope Urban IV. The Pope, who was then at Orvieto, 
 came out with all his retinue to meet the convert and 
 do honor to the magic-working relics. The circum- 
 stances of this miracle are well known to students of 
 art through Raphael's celebrated fresco in the Stanze 
 of the Vatican. And it will be remembered by the 
 
ORVIETO. 95 
 
 readers of ecclesiastical history that Urban had in 1264 
 promulgated by a bull the strict observance of the 
 Corpus Christi festival in connection with his strong 
 desire to re-establish the doctrine of Christ's presence 
 in the elements. Nor was it without reason that, while 
 seeking miraculous support for this dogma, he should 
 have treated the affair of Bolsena so seriously as to 
 celebrate it by the erection of one of the most splendid 
 cathedrals in Italy; for the peace of the Church had 
 recently been troubled by the reforming ardor of the 
 Fraticelli and by the promulgation of Abbot Joachim's 
 Eternal Gospel. This new evangelist had preached 
 the doctrine of progression in religious faith, proclaim- 
 ing a kingdom of the Spirit which should transcend 
 the kingdom of the Son, even as the Christian dis- 
 pensation had superseded the Jewish supremacy of the 
 Father. Nor did he fail at the same time to attack 
 the political and moral abuses of the papacy, "attributing 
 its degradation to the want of vitality which pervaded 
 the old Christian system, and calling on the clergy to 
 lead more simple and regenerate lives, consistently 
 with the spiritual doctrine which he had received by 
 inspiration. The theories of Joachim were immature 
 and crude; but they were among the first signs of that 
 liberal effort after self-emancipation which eventually 
 stirred all Europe at the time of the Renaissance. It 
 was, therefore, the obvious policy of the popes to crush 
 so dangerous on opposition while they could; and by 
 establishing the dogma of transubstantiation, they were 
 enabled to satisfy the craving mysticism of the people, 
 while they placed upon a firmer basis the cardinal 
 support of their own religious power. 
 
 In pursuance of his plan, Urban sent for Lorenzo 
 
96 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Maitani, the great Sienese architect, who gave designs 
 for a Gothic church in the same style as the Cathedral 
 of Siena, though projected on a smaller scale. These 
 two churches, in spite of numerous shortcomings mani- 
 fest to an eye trained in French or English archi- 
 tecture, are still the most perfect specimens of Pointed 
 Gothic produced by the Italian genius. The Gottico 
 Tedesco had never been received with favor in Italy. 
 Remains of Roman architecture, then far more numerous 
 and perfect than they are at present, controlled the 
 minds of artists, and induced them to adopt the rounded 
 rather than the pointed arch. Indeed, there would 
 seem to be something peculiarly Northern in the spirit 
 of Gothic architecture; its intricacies suit the gloom of 
 Northern skies, its massive exterior is adapted to the 
 severity of Northern weather, its vast windows catch 
 the fleeting sunlight of the North, and the pinnacles 
 and spires which constitute its beauty are better ex- 
 pressed in rugged stone than in the marbles of the 
 South. Northern cathedrals do not depend for their 
 effect upon the advantages of sunlight or picturesque 
 situations. Many of them are built upon broad plains, 
 over which for more than half the year hangs fog. 
 But the cathedrals of Italy owe their charm to color 
 and brilliancy; their gilded sculpture and mosaics, the 
 variegated marbles and shallow portals of their facades, 
 the light aerial elegance of their campanili, are all 
 adapted to the luminous atmosphere of a smiling land, 
 where changing effects of natural beauty distract the 
 attention from solidity of design and permanence of 
 grandeur in the edifice.* 
 
 * In considering why Gothic architecture took so little root in 
 mediaeval Italy, we must remember that the Italians had maintained 
 
ORVIETO. 97 
 
 The Cathedral of Orvieto will illustrate these re- 
 marks. Its design is very simple. It consists of a 
 parallelogram, from which three chapels of equal size 
 project, one at the east end, and one at the north and 
 south. The windows are small and narrow, the columns 
 round, and the roof displays none of that intricate 
 groining we find in English churches. The beauty of 
 the interior depends on surface decoration, on marble 
 statues, woodwork, and fresco-paintings. Outside, there 
 is the same simplicity of design, the same elaborated 
 local ornament. The sides of the cathedral are austere, 
 their narrow windows cutting horizontal lines of black 
 and white marble. But the facade is a triumph of de- 
 corative art. It is strictly what has often been de- 
 scribed as a "frontispiece;" for it bears no sincere re- 
 lation to the construction of the building. The three 
 gables rise high above the aisles. The pinnacles and 
 parapets and turrets are stuck on to look agreeable. It 
 is a screen such as might be completed or left un- 
 finished at will by the architect. Finished as it is, the 
 facade of Orvieto presents a wilderness of beauties. 
 Its pure white marble has been mellowed by time to a 
 
 an unbroken connection with pagan Rome, and that many of their 
 finest churches were basilicas appropriated to Christian rites. Add 
 to this that the commerce of their cities, which first acquired wealth 
 in the twelfth century, especially Pisa and Venice, kept them in 
 communication with the Levant, where they admired the master- 
 pieces of Byzantine architecture, and whence they imported Greek 
 artists in mosaic and stone-work. Against these external circum- 
 stances, taken in connection with the hereditary leanings of an 
 essentially Latin race, and with the natural conditions of landscape 
 and climate alluded to above, the influence of a few imported German 
 architects could not have had sufficient power to effect a thorough 
 metamorphosis of the national taste. For further treatment of this 
 subject see my Fine Arts, Renaissance in Italy, part in. chap. II. 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 7 
 
0,8 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 rich golden hue, in which are set mosaics shining like 
 gems or pictures of enamel. A statue stands on every 
 pinnacle; each pillar has a different design; round 
 some of them are woven wreaths of vine and ivy; 
 acanthus-leaves curl over the capitals, making nests for 
 singing-birds or Cupids; the doorways are a labyrinth 
 of intricate designs, in which the utmost elegance of 
 form is made more beautiful by incrustations of precious 
 agates and Alexandrine glass-work. On every square 
 inch of this wonderful facade have been lavished in- 
 vention, skill, and precious material. But its chief 
 interest centres in the sculptures executed by Giovanni 
 and Andrea, sons and pupils of Nicola Pisano. The 
 names of these three men mark an era in the history of 
 art They first rescued Italian sculpture from the 
 grotesqueness of the Lombard and the wooden mono- 
 tony of the Byzantine styles. Sculpture takes the lead 
 of all the arts. And Nicola Pisano, before Cimabue, 
 before Duccio, even before Dante, opened the gates of 
 beauty, which for a thousand years had been shut up 
 and overgrown with weeds. As Dante invoked the in- 
 fluence of Virgil when he began to write his mediaeval 
 poem, and made a heathen bard his hierophant in 
 Christian mysteries, just so did Nicola Pisano draw in- 
 spiration from a Graeco-Roman sarcophagus. He studied 
 the bass-relief of Phaedra and Hippolytus, which may 
 still be seen upon the tomb of Countess Beatrice in the 
 Campo Santo, and so learned by heart the beauty of 
 its lines and the dignity expressed in its figures that 
 in all his subsequent works we trace the elevated 
 tranquillity of Greek sculpture. This imitation never 
 degenerated into servile copying; nor, on the other 
 hand, did Nicola attain the perfect grace of an Athenian 
 
ORVIETO. 99 
 
 artist. He remained a truly mediaeval carver, animated 
 with a Christian instead of a pagan spirit, but caring 
 for the loveliness of form which art in the dark ages 
 failed to realize.* 
 
 Whether it was Nicola or his scholars who designed 
 the bass-reliefs at Orvieto is of little consequence. 
 Vasari ascribes them to the father; but we know that 
 he completed his pulpit at Pisa in 1230, and his death 
 is supposed to have taken place fifteen years before 
 the foundation of the cathedral. At any rate, they are 
 imbued with his genius, and bear the strongest affinity 
 to his sculptures at Pisa, Siena, and Bologna. To 
 estimate the influence they exercised over the arts of 
 sculpture and painting in Italy would be a difficult task. 
 Duccio and Giotto studied here; Ghiberti closely 
 followed them. Signorelli and Raphael made draw- 
 ings from their compositions. And the .spirit which 
 pervades these sculptures may be traced in all suc- 
 ceeding works of art. It is not classic; it is modern, 
 though embodied in a form of beauty modelled on the 
 Greek. 
 
 The bass-reliefs are carved on four marble tablets 
 placed beside the porches of the church, and corre- 
 sponding in size and shape with the chief doorways. 
 They represent the course of Biblical history, beginning 
 with the creation of the world, and ending with the 
 last judgment. If it were possible here to compare 
 them in detail with the similar designs of Ghiberti, 
 Michael Angelo, and Raphael, it might be shown that 
 the Pisani established modes of treating sacred subjects 
 
 I am not inclined to reject the old legend mentioned above 
 about Pisano's study of the antique. For a full discussion of the 
 question see my Fine Arts, Renaissance in Italy, part ill. chap. III. 
 
 7* 
 
lOO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 from which those mighty masters never deviated, 
 though each stamped upon them his peculiar genius, 
 making them more perfect as time added to the power 
 of art. It would also be not without interest to show 
 that, in their primitive conceptions of the earliest events 
 in history, the works of the Pisan artists closely re- 
 semble some sculptures executed on the walls of Northern 
 cathedrals, as well as early mosaics in the south of 
 Italy. We might have noticed how all the grotesque 
 elements which appear in Nicola Pisano, and which 
 may be traced in Ghiberti, are entirely lost in Michael 
 Angelo, how the supernatural is humanized, how the 
 symbolical receives an actual expression, and how in- 
 tellectual types are substituted for mere local and in- 
 dividual representations. For instance, the Pisani re- 
 present the Creator as a young man standing on the 
 earth, with a benign and dignified expression, and 
 attended by two ministering angels. He is the Christ 
 of the Creed, "by whom all things were made." In 
 Ghiberti we find an older man, sometimes appearing 
 in a whirlwind of clouds and attendant spirits, some- 
 times walking on the earth, but still far different in 
 conception from the Creative Father of Michael Angelo. 
 The latter is rather the Platonic Demiurgus than the 
 Mosaic God. By every line and feature of his face 
 and flowing hair, by each movement of his limbs, 
 whether he ride on clouds between the waters and the 
 firmament, or stand alone creating by a glance and by 
 a motion of his hand Eve, the full-formed and conscious 
 woman, he is proclaimed the Maker who from all 
 eternity has held the thought of the material universe 
 within his mind. Raphael does not depart from this 
 conception. The profound abstraction of Michael Angelo 
 
ORV1ETO. IOI 
 
 ruled his intellect, and received from his genius a form 
 of perhaps greater grace. A similar growth from the 
 germinal designs of the Pisani may be traced in many 
 groups. 
 
 But we must not linger at the gate. Let us enter 
 the cathedral and see some of the wonders it contains. 
 Statues of gigantic size adorn the nave. Of these, the 
 most beautiful are the work of Ippolito Scalza, an 
 artist whom Orvieto claims with pride as one of her 
 own sons. The long line of saints and apostles whom 
 they represent conduct us to the high-altar, surrounded 
 by its shadowy frescos, and gleaming with the work of 
 carvers in marble and bronze and precious metals. But 
 our steps are drawn towards the chapel of the south 
 transept, where now a golden light from the autumnal 
 sunset falls across a crowd of worshippers. From far 
 and near the poor people are gathered. Most of them 
 are women. They kneel upon the pavement and the 
 benches, sunburnt faces from the vineyards and the 
 canebrakes of the valley. The old look prematurely 
 aged and withered their wrinkled cheeks bound up 
 in scarlet and orange-colored kerchiefs, their skinny 
 fingers fumbling on the rosary, and their mute lips 
 moving in prayer. The younger women have great 
 listless eyes and large limbs used to labor. Some of 
 them carry babies trussed up in tight swaddling-clothes. 
 One kneels beside a dark-browed shepherd, on whose 
 shoulder falls his shaggy hair; and little children play 
 about, half hushed, half heedless of the place, among 
 old men whose life has dwindled down into a ceaseless 
 round of prayers. We wonder why this chapel, alone 
 in the empty cathedral, is so crowded with worshippers. 
 They surely are not turned towards that splendid Pieta 
 
IO2 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 of Scalza a work in which the marble seems to live 
 a cold, dead, shivering life. They do not heed 
 Angelico's and Signorelli's frescos on the roof and 
 walls. The interchange of light and gloom upon the 
 stalls and carved work of the canopies can scarcely 
 rivet so intense a gaze. All eyes seem fixed upon a 
 curtain of red silk above the altar. Votive pictures, 
 and glass cases full of silver hearts, wax babies, hands 
 and limbs of every kind, are hung round it. A bell 
 rings. A jingling organ plays a little melody in triple 
 time; and from the sacristy comes forth the priest 
 With much reverence, and with a show of preparation, 
 he and the acolytes around him mount the altar steps 
 and pull a string which draws the curtain. Behind the 
 silken veil we behold Madonna and her child a faint, 
 old, ugly picture, blackened with the smoke and incense 
 of five hundred years, a wonder-working image, cased 
 in gold, and guarded from the common air by glass 
 and draperies. Jewelled crowns are stuck upon the 
 heads of the mother and the infant. In the efficacy of 
 Madonna di San Brizio to ward off agues, to deliver 
 from the pangs of childbirth or the fury of the storm, 
 to keep the lover's troth and make the husband faith- 
 ful to his home, these pious women of the marshes and 
 the mountains put a simple trust. 
 
 While the priest sings and the people pray to the 
 dance-music of the organ let us take a quiet seat un- 
 seen and picture to our minds how the chapel looked 
 when Angelico and Signorelli stood before its plastered 
 walls and thought the thoughts with which they covered 
 them. Four centuries have gone by since those walls 
 were white and even to their brushes; and now you 
 scarce can see the golden aureoles of saints, the vast 
 
ORVIETO. IO3 
 
 wings of the angels, and the flowing robes of prophets 
 through the gloom. Angelico came first, in monk's 
 dress, kneeling before he climbed the scaffold to paint 
 the angry Judge, the Virgin crowned, the white-robed 
 army of the Martyrs, and the glorious company of the 
 Apostles. These he placed upon the roof, expectant 
 of the Judgment. Then he passed away, and Luca 
 Signorelli, the rich man who "lived splendidly and 
 loved to dress himself in noble clothes," the liberal 
 and courteous gentleman, took his place upon the 
 scaffold. For all the worldliness of his attire and all 
 the worldliness of his living, his brain teemed with 
 stern and terrible thoughts. He searched the secrets 
 of sin and of the grave, of destruction and of resur- 
 rection, of heaven and hell. All these he has painted 
 on the walls beneath the saints of Fra Angelico. First 
 come the troubles of the last days, the preaching of 
 Antichrist, and the confusion of the wicked. In the 
 next compartment we see the Resurrection from the 
 tomb; and side by side with that is painted Hell. Pa- 
 radise occupies another portion of the chapel. On 
 each side of the window, beneath the Christ of Fra 
 Angelico, are delineated scenes from the Judgment. A 
 wilderness of arabesques, enclosing medallion portraits 
 of poets and chiaroscuro episodes selected from Dante 
 and Ovid, occupies the lower portions of the chapel 
 walls beneath the great subjects enumerated above; 
 and here Signorelli has given free vein to his fancy 
 and his mastery over anatomical design, accumulating 
 naked human figures in the most fantastic and auda- 
 cious variety of pose. 
 
 Look at the "Fulminati" so the group of wicked 
 men are called whose death precedes the Judgment 
 
IO4 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Huge naked angels, sailing upon vanlike wings, breathe 
 columns of red flame upon a crowd of wicked men 
 and women. In vain these sinners avoid the descend- 
 ing fire. It pursues and fells them to the earth. As 
 they fly their eyes are turned towards the dreadful 
 faces in the air. Some hurry through a portico, huddled 
 together, falling men, and women clasping to their arms 
 dead babies scorched with flame. One old man stares 
 straightforward, doggedly awaiting death. One woman 
 scowls defiance as she dies. A youth has twisted both 
 hands in his hair, and presses them against his ears 
 to drown the screams and groans and roaring thunder. 
 They trample upon prostrate forms already stiff. Every 
 shape and attitude of sudden terror and despairing 
 guilt are here. Next comes the Resurrection. Two 
 angels of the Judgment gigantic figures, with the 
 plumeless wings that Signorelli loves are seen upon 
 the clouds. They blow trumpets with all their might, 
 so that each naked muscle seems strained to make the 
 blast, which bellows through the air and shakes the 
 sepulchres beneath the earth. Thence rise the dead. 
 All are naked, and a few are seen like skeletons. With 
 painful effort they struggle from the soil that clasps 
 them round, as if obeying an irresistible command. 
 Some have their heads alone above the ground. Others 
 wrench their limbs from the clinging earth; and as 
 each man rises it closes under him. One would think 
 that they were being born again from solid clay, and 
 growing into form with labor. The fully risen spirits 
 stand and walk about, all occupied with the expecta- 
 tion of the Judgment; but those that are yet in the act 
 of rising have no thought but for the strange and toil- 
 some process of this second birth. Signorelli here, as 
 
ORVIETO. IO5 
 
 elsewhere, proves himself one of the greatest painters 
 by the simple means with which he produces the most 
 marvellous eflects. His composition sways our souls 
 with all the passion of the terrible scenes that he de- 
 picts. Yet what does it contain? Two stern angels on 
 the clouds, a blank gray plain, and a multitude of 
 naked men and women. In the next compartment 
 Hell is painted. This is a complicated picture, con- 
 sisting of a mass of human beings entangled with tor- 
 turing fiends. Above hover demons bearing damned 
 spirits, and three angels see that justice takes its course. 
 Signorelli here degenerates into no mediaeval ugliness 
 and mere barbarity of form. His fiends are not the 
 bestial creatures of Pisano's bass-reliefs, but models of 
 those monsters which Duppa has engraved from Michael 
 Angelo's "Last Judgment" lean, naked men, in whose 
 hollow eyes glow the fires of hate and despair, whose 
 nails have grown to claws, and from whose ears have 
 started horns. They sail upon bats' wings; and only 
 by their livid hue, which changes from yellow to the 
 ghastliest green, and by the cruelty of their remorse- 
 less eyes, can you know them from the souls they tor- 
 ture. In Hell ugliness and power of mischief come 
 with length of years. Continual growth in crime dis- 
 torts the form which once was human; and the inter- 
 change of everlasting hatred degrades the tormentor 
 and his victim to the same demoniac ferocity. To this 
 design the science of foreshortening, and the profound 
 knowledge of the human form in every posture, give 
 its chief interest. Paradise is not less wonderful. 
 Signorelli has contrived to throw variety and grace 
 into the somewhat monotonous groups which this sub- 
 ject requires. Above are choirs of angels, not like Fra 
 
IO6 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Angelico's, but tall male creatures clothed in voluminous 
 drapery, with grave features and still, solemn eyes. 
 Some are dancing, some are singing to the lute, and 
 one, the most gracious of them all, bends down to aid 
 a suppliant soul. The men beneath, who listen in a 
 state of bliss, are all undraped. Signorelli, in this 
 difficult composition, remains temperate, serene, and 
 simple; a Miltonic harmony pervades the movement of 
 his angelic choirs. Their beauty is the product of 
 their strength and virtue. No floral ornaments or 
 cherubs, or soft clouds, are found in his Paradise; yet 
 it is fair and full of grace. Here Luca seems to have 
 anticipated Raphael. 
 
 It may be parenthetically observed that Signorelli 
 has introduced himself and Niccolo Angeli, treasurer 
 of the cathedral building fund, in the corner of the 
 fresco representing Antichrist, with the date 1503. 
 They stand as spectators and solemn witnesses of the 
 tragedy set forth in all its acts by the great master. 
 
 After viewing these frescos we muse and ask our- 
 selves why Signorelli's fame is so inadequate to his 
 deserts? Partly, no doubt, because he painted in ob- 
 scure Italian towns, and left few easel-pictures.* Be- 
 
 * The Uffizzi and Pitti Galleries at Florence contain one or two 
 fine specimens of Luca Signorelli's Holy Families, which show his 
 influence over the early manner of Michael Angelo. Into the back- 
 ground of one circular picture he has introduced a group of naked 
 figures, which was imitated by Buonarroti in the Holy Family of 
 the Tribune. The Accademia has also a picture of saints and 
 angels illustrative of his large style and crowded composition. The 
 Brera at Milan can boast of a very characteristic Flagellation, where 
 the nude has been carefully studied, and the brutality of an insolent 
 officer is forcibly represented. * But perhaps the most interesting of 
 his works out of Orvieto are those in his native place , Cortona. In 
 the Church of the Gesii, in that town, there is an altar-piece re- 
 
ORVIETO. IO7 
 
 sides, the artists of the sixteenth century eclipsed all 
 their predecessors, and the name of Signorelli has been 
 swallowed up in that of Michael Angelo. Vasari said 
 
 presenting Madonna in glory with saints, which also contains on a 
 smaller scale than the principal figures a little design of the Temp- 
 tation in Eden. You recognize the master's individuality in the 
 muscular and energetic Adam. The Duomo has a Communion of 
 the Apostles which shows Signorelli's independence of tradition. It 
 is the Cenacolo treated with freedom. Christ stands in the midst 
 of the twelve, who are gathered around him, some kneeling and 
 some upright, upon a marble pavement. The whole scene is con- 
 ceived in a truly grand style noble attitudes, broad draperies, 
 sombre and rich coloring, masculine massing of the figures in effec- 
 tive groups. The Christ is especially noble. Swaying a little to 
 the right, he gives the bread to a kneeling apostle. The composi- 
 tion is marked by a dignity and self-restraint which Raphael might 
 have envied. San Niccolo, again, has a fine picture by this master. 
 It is a Deposition with saints and angels those large-limbed and 
 wide-winged messengers of God whom none but Signorelli realized. 
 The composition of this picture is hazardous, and at first sight it is 
 even displeasing. The figures seem roughly scattered in a vacant 
 space. The dead Christ has but little dignity, and the passion of 
 St. Jerome in the foreground is stiff in spite of its exaggeration. 
 But long study only serves to render this strange picture more and 
 more attractive. Especially noticeable is the youthful angel clad in 
 dark green who sustains Christ. He is a young man in the bloom 
 of strength and beauty, whose long golden hair falls on each side of 
 a sublimely lovely face. Nothing in painting surpasses the model- 
 ling of the vigorous but delicate left arm stretched forward to sup- 
 port the heavy corpse. This figure is conceived and executed in a 
 style worthy of the Orvietan frescos, hignorelli, for whose imagina- 
 tion angels had a special charm, has shown here that his too fre- 
 quent contempt for grace was not the result of insensibility to beauty. 
 Strength is the parent of sweetness in this wonderful winged youth. 
 But not a single sacrifice is made in the whole picture to mere 
 elegance. Cortona is a place which, independently of Signorelli, 
 well deserves a visit. Like all Etruscan towns, it is perched on the 
 top of a high hill, whence it commands a wonderful stretch of land- 
 scape Monte Amiata and Montepulciano to the south, Chiusi with 
 its lake, the lake of Thrasymene, and the whole broad Tuscan 
 
IO8 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 that "esso Michel Angelo imit6 1'andar di Luca, come 
 pu6 vedere ognuno." Nor is it hard to see that what 
 the one began at Orvieto the other completed in the 
 
 plain. The city itself is built on a projecting buttress of the moun- 
 tain, to which it clings so closely that, in climbing to the terrace of 
 St. Margarita, you lose sight of all but a few towers and house- 
 roofs. One can almost fancy that Signorelli gained his broad and 
 austere style from the habitual contemplation of a view so severe in 
 outline and so vacant in its width. This landscape has none of the 
 variety which distinguishes the prospect from Perugia, none of the 
 suavity of Siena. It is truly sympathetic in its bare simplicity to 
 the style of the great painter of Cortona. Try to see it on a winter 
 morning, when the mists are lying white and low and thin upon the 
 plain, when distant hills rise islanded into the air, and the outlines 
 of lakes are just discernible through fleecy haze. Next to Cortona 
 in importance is the Convent of Monte Oliveto in the neighbour- 
 hood of Siena, where Signorelli painted eight frescos from the story 
 of St. Benedict, distinguished by his customary vigor of conception, 
 masculine force of design , and martial splendor in athletic disdain- 
 ful young men. One scene in this series, representing the interior 
 of a country inn, is specially interesting for a realism not usual in 
 the work of Signorelli. The frescos painted for Petruccio at Siena, 
 one of which is now in the National Gallery, the fresco in the 
 Sistine Chapel, which has suffered sadly from retouching, and the 
 magnificent classical picture called the "School of Pan," executed 
 for Lorenzo de' Medici, and now at Berlin, must not be forgotten, 
 nor yet the church-pictures scattered over Loreto, Arcevia, Citti 
 di Castello, Borgo San Sepolcro, Volterra, and other cities of the 
 Tuscan-Umbrian district. Arezzo, it may be added in conclusion, 
 has two altar-pieces of Signorelli's in its Pinacoteca, neither of which 
 add much to our conception of this painter's style. Noticeable as 
 they may be among the works of that period , they prove that his 
 genius -was hampered by he narrow and traditional treatment im- 
 posed on him in pictures of this kind. Students may be referred to 
 Robert Vischer's Luca Signorelli, Leipsic, 1879, for a complete list 
 of the master's works and an exhaustive biography. I have tried 
 to estimate his place in the history of Italian art in my volume on 
 the Fine Arts, Renaissance in Italy, part ill. I may also mention 
 two able articles by Professor Colvin, published a few years since 
 in the Cornhill Magazine, 
 
ORVIETO. 109 
 
 Vatican. These great men had truly kindred spirits. 
 Both struggled to express their intellectual conceptions 
 in the simplest and most abstract forms. The works 
 of both are distinguished by contempt for adventitious 
 ornaments and for the grace of positive color. Both 
 chose to work in fresco, and selected subjects of the 
 gravest and most elevated character. The study of 
 anatomy and the scientific drawing of the naked body 
 which Luca practised were carried to perfection by 
 Michel Angelo. Sublimity of thought and self-restraint 
 pervade their compositions. He who would understand 
 Buonarroti must first appreciate Signorelli. The latter, 
 it is true, was confined to a narrower circle in his 
 study of the beautiful and the sublime. He had not 
 ascended to that pure idealism, superior to all the ac- 
 cidents of place and time, which is the chief distinc- 
 tion of Michael Angelo's work. At the same time his 
 manner had not suffered from too fervid an enthusiasm 
 for the imperfectly comprehended antique. He painted 
 the life he saw around him, and clothed his men and 
 women in the dress of Italy. 
 
 Such reflections, and many more, pass through our 
 mind as we sit and ponder in the chapel, which the 
 daylight has deserted. The country people are still on 
 their knees, still careless of the frescoed forms around 
 them, still praying to Madonna of the Miracles. The 
 service is well-nigh done. The benediction has been 
 given, the organist strikes up his air of Verdi, and 
 the congregation shuffles off, leaving the dimly-lighted 
 chapel for the vast, sonorous, dusky nave. How strange 
 it is to hear that faint strain of a feeble opera sound- 
 ing where, a short while since, the trumpet-blast of 
 Signorelli's angels seemed to thrill our ears! 
 
IIO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 RIMINI. 
 
 SIGISMONDO PANDOLFO MALATESTA AND LEO BATTISTA 
 ALBERTI. 
 
 RIMINI is a city of about eighteen thousand souls, 
 famous for its Stabilmento de' Bagni and its antiquities, 
 seated upon the coast of the Adriatic, a little to the 
 southeast of the world-historical Rubicon. It is our 
 duty to mention the baths first among its claims to 
 distinction, since the prosperity and cheerfulness of 
 the little town depend on them in a great measure. 
 But visitors from the North will fly from these, to 
 marvel at the bridge which Augustus built and Tiberius 
 completed, and which still spans the Marecchia with 
 five gigantic arches of white Istrian limestone, as solidly 
 as if it had not borne the tramplings of at least three 
 conquests. The triumphal arch, too, erected in honor 
 of Augustus, is a notable monument of Roman archi- 
 tecture. Broad, ponderous, substantial, tufted here 
 and there with flowering weeds, and surmounted with 
 mediaeval machicolations, proving it to have sometimes 
 stood for city gate or fortress, it contrasts most favor- 
 ably with the slight and somewhat gimcrack arch of 
 Trajan in the sister city of Ancona. Yet these remains 
 of the imperial pontifices, mighty and interesting as 
 they are, sink into comparative insignificance beside 
 the one great wonder of Rimini, the cathedral re- 
 modelled for Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta by Leo 
 
RIMINI. Ill 
 
 Battista Albert! in 1450. This strange church, one of 
 the earliest extant buildings in which the Neopaganism 
 of the Renaissance showed itself in full force, brings 
 together before our memory two men who might be 
 chosen as typical, in their contrasted characters, of the 
 transitional age which gave them birth. 
 
 No one with any tincture of literary knowledge is 
 ignorant of the fame, at least, of the great Malatesta 
 family the house of the Wrongheads, as they were 
 rightly called by some prevision of their future part in 
 Lombard history. The readers of the twenty-seventh 
 and twenty-eighth cantos of the Inferno have all heard of 
 
 E il mastin vecchio e il nuovo da Verucchio 
 Che fecer di Montagna il mal governo, 
 
 while the story of Francesca da Polenta, who was 
 wedded to the hunchback Giovanni Malatesta and 
 murdered by him with her lover, Paolo, is known not 
 merely to students of Dante , but to readers of Byron 
 and Leigh Hunt, to admirers of Flaxman, Ary Scheffer, 
 Dore to all, in fact, who have of art and letters any 
 love. 
 
 The history of these Malatesti, from their first 
 establishment under Otho in. as lieutenants for the 
 empire in the Marches of Ancona, down to their final 
 subjugation by the papacy in the age of the Renais- 
 sance, is made up of all the vicissitudes which could 
 befall a mediaeval Italian despotism. Acquiring an un- 
 lawful right over the towns of Rimini, Cesena, Sogliano, 
 Ghiacciuolo, they ruled their petty principalities like 
 tyrants by the help of the Guelf and Ghibelline factions, 
 inclining to the one or the other as it suited their 
 humour or their interest, wrangling among themselves, 
 
1 1 2 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 transmitting the succession of their dynasty through 
 bastards and by deeds of force, quarrelling with their 
 neighbors the Counts of Urbino, alternately defying 
 and submitting to the papal legates in Romagna, serv- 
 ing as condottieri in the wars of the Visconti and the 
 state of Venice, and by their restlessness and genius 
 for military intrigues contributing in no slight measure 
 to the general disturbance of Italy. The Malatesti 
 were a race of strongly marked character: more, per- 
 haps, than any other house of Italian tyrants, they 
 combined for generations those qualities of the fox and 
 the lion which Machiavelli thought indispensable to a 
 successful despot. Son after son, brother with brother, 
 they continued to be fierce and valiant soldiers, cruel 
 in peace, hardy in war, but treasonable and suspicious 
 in all transactions that could not be settled by the 
 sword. Want of union, with them as with the Baglioni 
 and many other of the minor noble families in Italy, 
 prevented their founding a substantial dynasty. Their 
 power, based on force, was maintained by craft and 
 crime, and transmitted through tortuous channels by 
 intrigue. While false in their dealings with the world 
 at large, they were diabolical in the perfidy with which 
 they treated one another. No feudal custom, no standard 
 of hereditary right, ruled the succession in their family. 
 Therefore the ablest Malatesta for the moment clutched 
 what he could of the domains that owned his house 
 for masters. Partitions among sons or brothers, mutually 
 hostile and suspicious, weakened the whole stock. Yet 
 they were great enough to hold their own for centuries 
 among the many tyrants who infested Lombardy. That 
 the other princely families of Romagna, Emilia, and 
 the March were in the same state of internal discord 
 
RIMINI. 113 
 
 and dismemberment was probably one reason why the 
 Malatesti stood their ground so firmly as they did. 
 
 So far as Rimini is concerned, the house of Mala- 
 testa culminated in Sigismondo Pandolfo, son of Gian 
 Galeazzo Visconti's general, the perfidious Pandolfo. 
 It was he who built the Rocca, or castle of the despots, 
 which stands a little way outside the town, command- 
 ing a fair view of Apennine tossed hill-tops and broad 
 Lombard plain, and who remodelled the Cathedral of 
 St. Francis on a plan suggested by the greatest genius 
 of the age. Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was one 
 of the strangest products of the earlier Renaissance. 
 To enumerate the crimes which he committed within 
 the sphere of his own family, mysterious and inhuman 
 outrages which render the tale of the Cenci credible, 
 would violate the decencies of literature. A thoroughly 
 bestial nature gains thus much with posterity, that its 
 worst qualities must be passed by in silence. It is 
 enough to mention that he murdered three wives in 
 succession,* Bussoni di Carmagnuola, Guinipera d'Este, 
 and Polissena Sforza, on various pretexts of infidelity, 
 and carved horns upon his own tomb with this fan- 
 tastic legend underneath: 
 
 Porto le corna ch' ognuno le vede, 
 E tal le porta che non se lo crede. 
 
 " He died in wedlock with the beautiful and learned 
 Isotta degli Atti, who had for some time been his mis- 
 
 * His first wife was a daughter of the great general of the Vene- 
 tians against Francesco Sforza. Whether Sigismondo murdered 
 her, as Sansovino seems to imply in his Famiglie Illustri, or whether 
 he only repudiated her after her father's execution on the Piazza di 
 San Marco, admits of doubt. About the questions of Sigismondo's 
 marriage with Isotta there is also some uncertainty. At any rate, 
 she had been some time his mistress before she became his wife. 
 
 Sketches in Italy. S 
 
114 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 tress. But, like most of the Malatesti, he left no 
 legitimate offspring. Throughout his life he was dis- 
 tinguished for bravery and cunning, for endurance of 
 fatigue and rapidity of action, for an almost fretful 
 rashness in the execution of his schemes, and for a 
 character terrible in its violence. He was acknow- 
 ledged as a great general; yet nothing succeeded with 
 him. The long warfare which he carried on against 
 the Duke of Montefeltro ended in his discomfiture. 
 Having begun by defying the Holy See, he was im- 
 peached at Rome for heresy, parricide, incest, adultery, 
 rape, and sacrilege, burned in effigy by Pope Pius H, 
 and finally restored to the bosom of the Church, after 
 suffering the despoliation of almost all his territories, 
 in 1463. The occasion on which this fierce and 
 turbulent despiser of laws human and divine was 
 forced to kneel as a penitent before the papal legate 
 in the gorgeous temple dedicated to his own pride, in 
 order that the ban of excommunication might be re- 
 moved from Rimini, was one of those petty triumphs, 
 interesting chiefly for their picturesqueness, by which 
 the popes confirmed their questionable rights over the 
 cities of Romagna. Sigismondo, shorn of his sover- 
 eignty, took the command of the Venetian troops 
 against the Turks in the Morea, and returned in 1465, 
 crowned with laurels, to die at Rimini in the scene of 
 his old splendor. 
 
 A very characteristic incident belongs to this last 
 act of his life. Dissolute, treacherous, and inhuman 
 as he was, the tyrant of Rimini had always encouraged 
 literature, and delighted in the society of artists. He 
 who could brook no contradiction from a prince or 
 soldier, allowed the pedantic scholars of the sixteenth 
 
RIMINI. 115 
 
 century to dictate to him in matters of taste, and sat 
 with exemplary humility at the feet of Latinists like 
 Porcellio, Basinio, and Trebanio. Valturio, the engineer, 
 and Alberti, the architect, were his familiar friends; 
 and the best hours of his life were spent in conversa- 
 tion with these men. Now that he found himself upon 
 the sacred soil of Greece, he was determined not to 
 return to Italy empty-handed. Should he bring manu- 
 scripts or marbles, precious vases or inscriptions in 
 half-legible Greek character? These relics were 
 greedily sought for by the potentates of Italian cities; 
 and no doubt Sigismondo enriched his library with 
 some such treasures. But he obtained a nobler prize 
 nothing less than the body of a saint of scholarship, 
 the authentic bones of the great Platonist, Gemisthus 
 Pletho. * These he exhumed from their Greek grave 
 and caused them to be deposited in a stone sarcophagus 
 outside the cathedral of his building in Rimini. The 
 Venetians, when they stole the body of St. Mark from 
 Alexandria, were scarcely more pleased than was 
 Sigismondo with the acquisition of this father of the 
 Neopagan faith. Upon the tomb we still may read 
 this legend: "Jemisthii Bizantii philosopher sua temp 
 principis reliquum Sig. Pan. Mai. Pan. F. belli Pelop 
 adversus Turcor regem Imp ob ingentem eruditorum 
 quo flagrat amorem hue afferendum introque mit- 
 tendum curavit MCCCCLXVL" Of the Latinity of 
 the inscription much cannot be said; but it means that 
 "Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, having served as 
 general against the Turks in the Morea, induced by 
 
 * For the place occupied in the evolution of Italian scholarship 
 by this Greek sage, see my Revival of Learning, Renaissance in 
 Italy, part II. 
 
 8 
 
1 1 6 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 the great love with which he burns for all learned 
 men, brought and placed here the remains of Gemis- 
 thus of Byzantium, the prince of the philosophers of 
 his day." 
 
 Sigismondo's portrait, engraved on medals, and 
 sculptured upon every frieze and point of vantage in 
 the Cathedral of Rimini , well denotes the man. His 
 face is seen in profile. The head, which is low and 
 flat above the forehead, rising swiftly backward from 
 the crown, carries a thick bushy shock of hair curling 
 at the ends, such as the Italians call a zazzera. The 
 eye is deeply sunk, with long, venomous, flat eyelids, 
 like those which Leonardo gives to his most wicked 
 faces. The nose is long and crooked, curved like a 
 vulture's over a petulant mouth, with lips deliberately 
 pressed together, as though it were necessary to con- 
 trol some nervous twitching. The cheek is broad, 
 and its bone is strongly marked. Looking at these 
 features in repose, we cannot but picture to our fancy 
 what expression they might assume under a sudden 
 fit of fury, when the sinews of the face were con- 
 tracted with quivering spasms, and the lips writhed 
 in sympathy with knit forehead and wrinkled eye- 
 lids. 
 
 Allusion has been made to the Cathedral of St. 
 Francis at Rimini, as the great ornament of the town, 
 and the chief monument of Sigismondo's fame. It is 
 here that all the Malatesti lie. Here too is the chapel 
 consecrated to Isotta, "Divae Isottse Sacrum;" and the 
 tombs of the Malatesta ladies, "Malatestorum domus 
 heroidum sepulchrum;" and Sigismondo's own grave 
 with the cuckold's horns and scornful epitaph. No- 
 thing but the fact that the church is duly dedicated to 
 
RIMINI. 1 1 7 
 
 St. Francis, and that its outer shell of classic marble 
 encases an old Gothic edifice, remains to remind us 
 that it is a Christian place of worship.* It has no 
 sanctity, no spirit of piety. The pride of the tyrant 
 whose legend "Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta 
 Pan. F. Fecit Anno Gratiae MCCCCL" occupies every 
 arch and string-course of the architecture, and whose 
 coat-of-arms and portrait in medallion, with his cipher 
 and his emblems of an elephant and a rose, are 
 wrought in every piece of sculptured work throughout 
 the building, seems so to fill this house of prayer that 
 there is no room left for God. Yet the Cathedral of 
 Rimini remains a monument of first-rate importance 
 for all students who seek to penetrate the revived 
 paganism of the fifteenth century. It serves also to 
 bring a far more interesting Italian of that period than 
 the tyrant of Rimini himself before our notice. 
 
 In the execution of his design, Sigismondo re- 
 ceived the assistance of one of the most remarkable 
 men of this or any other age. Leo Battista Alberti, a 
 scion of the noble Florentine house of that name, 
 born during the exile of his parents, and educated in 
 the Venetian territory, was endowed by nature with 
 aptitudes, faculties, and sensibilities so varied as to 
 deserve the name of universal genius. Italy in the 
 Renaissance period was rich in natures of this sort, to 
 whom nothing that is strange or beautiful seemed un- 
 familiar, and who, gifted with a kind of divination, 
 
 * The account of this church given by tineas Sylvius Picco- 
 lomini (Pii Secundi Comment. II. 92.) deserves quotation : "^Edi- 
 ficavit tamen nobile templum Arimini in honorem divi Francisci, 
 verum ita gentilibus operibus implevit, ut non tarn Christianorum 
 quam infidelium da;mones adorantium templum esse videatur." 
 
1 1 8 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 penetrated the secrets of the world by sympathy. To 
 Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michel 
 Angelo Buonarroti may be added Leo Battista Alberti. 
 That he achieved less than his great compeers, and 
 that he now exists as the shadow of a mighty name, 
 was the effect of circumstances. He came half a cen- 
 tury too early into the world, and worked as a pioneer 
 rather than a settler of the realm which Leonardo 
 ruled as his demesne. Very early in his boyhood 
 Alberti showed the versatility of his talents. The use 
 of arms, the management of horses, music, painting, 
 modelling for sculpture, mathematics, classical and 
 modern literature, physical science as then compre- 
 hended, and all the bodily exercises proper to the 
 estate of a young nobleman, were at his command. 
 His biographer asserts that he was never idle, never 
 subject to ennui or fatigue. He used to say that books 
 at times gave him the same pleasure as brilliant jewels 
 or perfumed flowers: hunger and sleep could not keep 
 him from them then. At other times the letters on 
 the page appeared to him like twining and contorted 
 scorpions, so that he preferred to gaze on anything 
 but written scrolls. He would then turn to music or 
 painting, or to the physical sports in which he ex- 
 celled. The language in which this alternation of pas- 
 sion and disgust for study is expressed bears on it the 
 stamp of Alberti's peculiar temperament, his fervid 
 and imaginative genius, instinct with subtle sympathies 
 and strange repugnances. Flying from his study, he 
 would then betake himself to the open air. No one 
 surpassed him in running, in wrestling, in the force 
 with which he cast his javelin or discharged his ar- 
 rows. So sure was his aim and so skilful his cast, 
 
RIMINI. 119 
 
 that he could fling a farthing from the pavement of 
 the square, and make it ring against a church roof far 
 above. When he chose to jump, he put his feet to- 
 gether and bounded over the shoulders of men stand- 
 ing erect upon the ground. On horseback he main- 
 tained perfect equilibrium, and seemed incapable of 
 fatigue. The most restive and vicious animals trembled 
 under him and became like lambs. There was a 
 kind of magnetism in the man. We read, besides 
 these feats of strength and skill, that he took pleasure 
 in climbing mountains, for no other purpose apparently 
 than for the joy of being close to nature. 
 
 In this, as in many other of his instincts, Albert! 
 was before his age. To care for the beauties of land- 
 scape unadorned by art, and to sympathize with sublime 
 or rugged scenery, was not in the spirit of the Re- 
 naissance. Humanity occupied the attention of poets 
 and painters; and the age was yet far distant when 
 the pantheistic feeling for the world should produce 
 the art of Wordsworth and of Turner. Yet a few great 
 natures even then began to comprehend the charm and 
 mystery which the Greeks had imaged in their Pan, 
 the sense of an all-pervasive spirit in wild places, the 
 feeling of a hidden want, the invisible tie which makes 
 man a part of rocks and woods and streams around 
 him. Petrarch had already ascended the summit of 
 Mont Ventoux, to meditate, with an exaltation of the 
 soul he scarcely understood, upon the scene spread at 
 his feet and above his head. ^Eneas Sylvius Piccolo- 
 mini delighted in wild places for no mere pleasure of 
 the chase, but for the joy he took in communing with 
 nature. How St. Francis found God in the sun and 
 the air, the water and the stars, we know by his cele- 
 
I2O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 brated hymn: and of Dante's acute observation every 
 canto of the Divine 'Comedy is witness. 
 
 Leo Alberti was touched in spirit "by even a deeper 
 and a stranger pathos than any of these men: "In the 
 early spring, when he beheld the meadows and hills 
 covered with flowers, and saw the trees and plants of 
 all kinds bearing promise of fruit, his heart became 
 exceeding sorrowful; and when in autumn he looked 
 on fields heavy with harvest and orchards apple-laden, 
 he felt such grief that many even saw him weep for 
 the sadness of his soul." It would seem that he scarcely 
 understood the source of this sweet trouble; for at 
 such times he compared the sloth and inutility of men 
 with the industry and fertility of nature, as though this 
 were the secret of his melancholy. A poet of our cen- 
 tury has noted the same stirring of the spirit, and has 
 striven to account for it: 
 
 Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
 Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
 In looking on the happy autumn fields, 
 And thinking of the days that are no more. 
 
 Both Alberti and Tennyson have connected the mal 
 du pays of the human soul for that ancient country of 
 its birth, the mild Saturnian earth from which we 
 sprang, with a sense of loss. It is the waste of human 
 energy that affects Alberti; the waste of human life 
 touches the modern poet. Yet both perhaps have 
 scarcely interpreted their own spirit; for is not the 
 true source of tears deeper and more secret? Man is 
 a child of nature in the simplest sense; and the stir- 
 rings of the secular breasts that gave him suck, and on 
 which he even now must hang, have potent influences 
 
RIMINI. 121 
 
 over his emotions. Of Alberti's extraordinary sensitive- 
 ness to all such impressions many curious tales are 
 told. The sight of refulgent jewels, of flowers, and of 
 fair landscapes had the same effect upon his nerves as 
 the sound of the Dorian mood upon the youths whom 
 Pythagoras cured of passion by music. He found in 
 them an anodyne for pain, a restoration from sickness. 
 Like Walt Whitman, who adheres to nature by closer 
 and more vital sympathy than any other poet of the 
 modern world, Alberti felt the charm of excellent old 
 age no less than that of florid youth. "On old men 
 gifted with a noble presence and hale and vigorous, 
 he gazed again and again, and said that he revered in 
 them the delights of nature (natures delitias)." Beasts 
 and birds and all living creatures moved him to ad- 
 miration for the grace with which they had been gifted, 
 each in his own kind. It is even said that he com- 
 posed a funeral oration for a dog which he had loved 
 and which died. 
 
 To this sensibility for all fair things in nature, 
 Alberti added the charm of a singularly sweet temper 
 and graceful conversation. The activity of his mind, 
 which was always being exercised on subjects of grave 
 speculation, removed him from the noise and bustle of 
 commonplace society. He was somewhat silent, in- 
 clined to solitude, and of a pensive countenance; yet 
 no man found him difficult of access: his courtesy was 
 exquisite, and among familiar friends he was noted 
 for the flashes of a delicate and subtle wit. Collections 
 were made of his apothegms by friends, and some are 
 recorded by his anonymous biographer.* Their finer 
 
 * Almost all the facts of Alberti's life are to be found in the 
 Latin biography included in Muratori. It has been conjectured, 
 
122 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 perfume, as almost always happens with good sayings 
 which do not contain the full pith of a proverb, but 
 owe their force, in part at least, to the personality of 
 their author, and to the happy moment of their pro- 
 duction, has evanesced. Here, however, is one which 
 seems still to bear the impress of Alberti's genius: 
 "Gold is the soul of labor, and labor the slave of 
 pleasure." Of women he used to say that their in 
 constancy was an antidote to their falseness; for if a 
 woman could but persevere in what she undertook, all 
 the fair works of men would be ruined. One of his 
 strongest moral sentences is aimed at envy, from which 
 he suffered much in his own life, and against which 
 he guarded with a curious amount of caution. His 
 own family grudged the distinction which his talents 
 gained for him, and a dark story is told of a secret 
 attempt made by them to assassinate him through his 
 servants. Alberti met these ignoble jealousies with a 
 stately calm and a sweet dignity of demeanor, never 
 condescending to accuse his relatives, never seeking to 
 retaliate, but acting always for the honor of his illus- 
 trious house. In the same spirit of generosity he re- 
 fused to enter into wordy warfare with detractors and 
 calumniators, sparing the reputation even of his worst 
 enemy when chance had placed him in his power. 
 This moderation both of speech and conduct was 
 especially distinguished in an age which tolerated the 
 fierce invectives of Filelfo, and applauded the vindictive 
 courage of Cellini. To money Alberti showed a calm 
 indifference. He committed his property to his friends 
 
 and not without plausibility, by the last editor of Alberti's com- 
 plete works, Bonucci, that this Latin life was penned by Albert? 
 himself. 
 
RIMINI. 123 
 
 and shared with them in common. Nor was he less 
 careless about vulgar fame, spending far more pains 
 in the invention of machinery and the discovery of 
 laws than in their publication to the world. His ser- 
 vice was to knowledge, not to glory. Self-control was 
 another of his eminent qualities. With the natural 
 impetuosity of a large heart, and the vivacity of a 
 trained athlete, he yet never allowed himself to be 
 subdued by anger or by sensual impulses, but took 
 pains to preserve his character unstained and dignified 
 before the eyes of men. A story is told of him which 
 may remind us of Goethe's determination to overcome 
 his giddiness. In his youth his head was singularly 
 sensitive to changes of temperature; but by gradual 
 habituation he brought himself at last to endure the 
 extremes of heat and cold bareheaded. In like manner 
 he had a constitutional disgust for onions and honey, 
 so powerful that the very sight of these things made 
 him sick. Yet by constantly viewing and touching 
 what was disagreeable, he conquered these dislikes; 
 and proved that men have a complete mastery over 
 what is merely instinctive in their nature. His courage 
 corresponded to his splendid physical development. 
 When a boy of fifteen, he severely wounded himself in 
 the foot. The gash had to be probed and then sewn 
 up. Alberti not only bore the pain of this operation 
 without a groan, but helped the surgeon with his own 
 hands; and effected a cure of the fever which suc- 
 ceeded, by the solace of singing to his cithern. For 
 music he had a genius of the rarest order; and in 
 painting he is said to have achieved success. Nothing, 
 however, remains of his work; and from what Vasari 
 says of it, we may fairly conclude that he gave less 
 
124 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 care to the execution of finished pictures than to draw- 
 ings subsidiary to architectural and mechanical designs. 
 His biographer relates that when he had completed a 
 painting, he called children and asked them what it 
 meant. If they did not know, he reckoned it a failure. 
 He was also in the habit of painting from memory. 
 While at Venice, he put on canvas the faces of friends 
 at Florence whom he had not seen for months. That 
 the art of painting was subservient in his estimation to 
 mechanics is indicated by what we hear about the 
 camera, in which he showed landscapes by day and 
 the revolutions of the stars by night, so lively drawn 
 that the spectators were affected with amazement. The 
 semi-scientific impulse to extend man's mastery over 
 nature, the magician's desire to penetrate secrets, which 
 so powerfully influenced the development of Leonardo's 
 genius, seems to have overcome the purely aesthetic 
 instincts of Alberti, so that he became in the end 
 neither a great artist like Raphael, nor a great dis- 
 coverer like Galileo, but rather a clairvoyant to whom 
 the miracles of nature and of art lie open. 
 
 After the first period of youth was over, Leo Bat- 
 tista Alberti devoted his great faculties and all his 
 wealth of genius to the study of the law then, as now, 
 the quicksand of the noblest natures. The industry 
 with which he applied himself to the civil and eccle- 
 siastical codes broke his health. For recreation he 
 composed a Latin comedy called PhiloJoxeos, which 
 imposed upon the judgment of scholars, and was 
 ascribed as a genuine antique to Lepidus, the comic 
 poet. Feeling stronger, Alberti returned at the age of 
 twenty to his law studies, and pursued them in the 
 teeth of disadvantages. His health was still uncertain, 
 
RIMINI. 125 
 
 and the fortune of an exile reduced him to the utmost 
 want. It was no wonder that under these untoward 
 circumstances even his Herculean strength gave way. 
 Emaciated and exhausted, he lost the clearness of his 
 eyesight, and became subject to arterial disturbances, 
 which filled his ears with painful sounds. This nervous 
 illness is not dissimilar to that which Rousseau de- 
 scribes in the confessions of his youth. In vain, how- 
 ever, his physicians warned Alberti of impending peril. 
 A man of so much stanchness, accustomed to control 
 his nature with an iron will, is not ready to accept 
 advice. Alberti persevered in his studies, until at last 
 the very seat of intellect was invaded. His memory 
 began to fail him for names, while he still retained 
 with wonderful accuracy whatever he had seen with 
 his eyes. It was now impossible to think of law as a 
 profession. Yet since he could not live without severe 
 mental exercise, he had recourse to studies which tax 
 the verbal memory less than the intuitive faculties of 
 the reason. Physics and mathematics became his chief 
 resource; and he devoted his energies to literature. 
 His Treatise on the Family may be numbered among 
 the best of those compositions on social and speculative 
 subjects in which the Italians of the Renaissance sought 
 to rival Cicero. His essays on the arts are mentioned 
 by Vasari with sincere approbation. Comedies, inter- 
 ludes, orations, dialogues, and poems flowed with 
 abundance from his facile pen. Some were written in 
 Latin, which he commanded more than fairly; some in 
 the Tuscan tongue, of which, owing to the long exile 
 of his family in Lombardy, he is said to have been 
 less a master. It was owing to this youthful illness, 
 from which apparently his constitution never wholly 
 
126 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 recovered, that Alberti's genius was directed to archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 Through his friendship with Flavio Biondo, the 
 famous Roman antiquary, Alberti received an intro- 
 duction to Nicholas V. at the time when this, the first 
 great pope of the Renaissance, was engaged in rebuild- 
 ing the palaces and fortifications of Rome. Nicholas 
 discerned the genius of the man, and employed him as 
 his chief counsellor in all matters of architecture. 
 When the Pope died, he was able, while reciting his 
 long Latin will upon his death-bed, to boast that he 
 had restored the Holy See to its due dignity, and the 
 Eternal City to the splendor worthy of the seat of 
 Christendom. The accomplishment of the second part 
 of his work he owed to the genius of Alberti. After 
 doing thus much for Rome under Thomas of Sarzana, 
 and before beginning to beautify Florence at the in- 
 stance of the Rucellai family, Alberti entered the 
 service of the Malatesta, and undertook to remodel the 
 Cathedral of St. Francis at Rimini. He found it a 
 plain Gothic structure with apse and side chapels. 
 Such churches are common enough in Italy, where 
 pointed architecture never developed its true character 
 of complexity and richness, but was doomed to the 
 vast vacuity exemplified in St. Petronio of Bologna. 
 He left it a strange medley of mediaeval and Renais- 
 sance work, a symbol of that dissolving scene in the 
 world's pantomime, when the spirit of classic art, as 
 yet but little comprehended, was encroaching on the 
 early Christian taste. Perhaps the mixture of styles so 
 startling in St. Francesco ought not to be laid to the 
 charge of Alberti, who had to execute the task of 
 turning a Gothic into a classic building. All that he 
 
RIMINI. 127 
 
 could do was to alter the whole exterior of the church, 
 by affixing a screen-work of Roman arches and 
 Corinthian pilasters, so as to hide the old design and 
 yet to leave the main features of the fabric, the win- 
 dows and doors especially, in statu quo. With the in- 
 terior he dealt upon the same general principle, by not 
 disturbing its structure, while he covered every avail- 
 able square inch of surface with decorations alien to 
 the Gothic manner. Externally, St. Francesco is per- 
 haps the most original and graceful of the many at- 
 tempts made by Italian builders to fuse the mediaeval 
 and the classic styles. For Alberti attempted nothing 
 less. A century clasped before Palladio, approaching 
 the problem from a different point of view, restored 
 the antique in its purity, and erected in the Palazzo 
 della Ragione of Vicenza an almost unique specimen 
 of resuscitated Roman art. 
 
 Internally, the beauty of the Church is wholly due 
 to its exquisite wall-ornaments. These consist for the 
 most part of low reliefs in a soft white stone, many of 
 them thrown out upon a blue ground in the style of 
 Delia Robbia. Allegorical figures designed with the 
 purity of outline we admire in Botticelli, draperies that 
 Burne Jones might copy, troops of singing boys in the 
 manner of Donatello, great angels traced upon the 
 stone so delicately that they seem to be rather drawn 
 than sculptured, statuettes in niches, personifications of 
 all arts and sciences alternating with half-bestial shapes 
 of satyrs and sea-children such are the forms that fill 
 the spaces of the chapel walls, and climb the pilasters, 
 and fret the arches, in such abundance that had the 
 whole church been finished as it was designed, it 
 would have presented one splendid though bizarre 
 
128 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 effect of incrustation. Heavy screens of Verona marble, 
 emblazoned in open arabesques with the ciphers of 
 Sigismondo and Isotta, with coats-of-arms , emblems, 
 and medallion portraits, shut the chapels from the 
 nave. Who produced all this sculpture it is difficult 
 to say. Some of it is very good; much is indifferent. We 
 may hazard the opinion that, besides Bernardo Ciuffagni, 
 of whom Vasari speaks, some pupils of Donatello and 
 Benedetto da Majano worked at it. The influence of 
 the sculptors of Florence is everywhere perceptible. 
 
 Whatever be the merit of these reliefs, there is no 
 doubt that they fairly represent one of the most inter- 
 esting moments in the history of modern art. Gothic 
 inspiration had failed; the early Tuscan style of the 
 Pisani had been worked out; Michael Angelo was yet 
 far distant, and the abundance of classic models had 
 not overwhelmed originality. The sculptors of the 
 school of Ghiberti and Donatello, who are represented 
 in this church, were essentially pictorial, preferring low 
 to high relief, and relief in general to detached figures. 
 Their style, like the style of Boiardo in poetry, of 
 Botticelli in painting, is specific to Italy in the middle 
 of the fifteenth century. Mediaeval standards of taste 
 were giving way to classical, Christian sentiment to 
 Pagan; yet the imitation of the antique had not been 
 carried so far as to efface the spontaneity of the artist, 
 and enough remained of Christian feeling to tinge the 
 fancy with a grave and sweet romance. The sculptor 
 had the skill and mastery to express his slightest 
 shade of thought with freedom, spirit, and precision. 
 Yet his work showed no sign of conventionality, no 
 adherence to prescribed rules. Every outline, every 
 fold of drapery, every attitude, was pregnant, to the 
 
RIMINI. I2Q 
 
 artist's own mind at any rate, with meaning. In spite of 
 its symbolism, what he wrought was never mechanically 
 figurative, but gifted with the independence of its own 
 beauty, vital with an inbreathed spirit of life. It was 
 a happy moment, when art had reached consciousness, 
 and the artist had not yet become self-conscious. The 
 hand and the brain then really worked together for the 
 procreation of new forms of grace, not for the repeti- 
 tion of old models, or for the invention of the strange 
 and startling. "Delicate, sweet, and captivating" are 
 good adjectives to express the effect produced upon the 
 mind by the contemplation even of the average work 
 of this period. 
 
 To study the flowing lines of the great angels 
 traced upon the walls of the Chapel of St. Sigismund 
 in the Cathedral of Rimini, to follow the undulations 
 of their drapery that seems to float, to feel the digni- 
 fied urbanity of all their gestures, is like listening to 
 one of those clear early Italian compositions for the 
 voice, which surpasses in suavity of tone and grace of 
 movement all that Music in her full-grown vigor has 
 produced. There is, indeed, something infinitely charm- 
 ing in the crepuscular moments of the human mind. 
 Whether it be the rath loveliness of an art still im- 
 mature, or the beauty of art upon the wane whether, 
 in fact, the twilight be of morning or of evening, we 
 find in the masterpieces of such periods a placid calm 
 and chastened pathos, as of a spirit self-withdrawn 
 from vulgar cares, which in the full light of meridian 
 splendor is lacking. In the Church of St. Francesco 
 at Rimini the tempered clearness of the dawn is just 
 about to broaden into day. 
 
 Skffches in Italy. 9 
 
I3O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 RAVENNA. 
 
 THE Emperor Augustus chose Ravenna for one of 
 his two naval stations, and in course of time a new 
 city arose by the seashore, which received the name 
 of Portus Classis. Between this harbor and the mother 
 city a third town sprang up, and was called Csesarea. 
 Time and neglect, the ravages of war, and the en- 
 croaching powers of Nature, have destroyed these 
 settlements, and nothing now remains of the three 
 cities but Ravenna. It would seem that in classical 
 times Ravenna stood, like modern Venice, in the 
 centre of a huge lagoon, the fresh waters of the Ronco 
 and the Po mixing with the salt waves of the Adriatic 
 round its very walls. The houses of the city were 
 built on piles; canals instead of streets formed the 
 means of communication, and these were always filled 
 with water artificially conducted from the southern 
 estuary of the Po. Round Ravenna extended a vast 
 morass, for the most part under shallow water, but 
 rising at intervals into low islands like the Lido or 
 Murano or Torcello which surround Venice. These 
 islands were celebrated for their fertility: the vines 
 and fig-trees and pomegranates, springing from a fat 
 and fruitful soil, watered 1 with constant moisture, and 
 fostered by a mild sea-wind and liberal sunshine, 
 yielded crops that for luxuriance and quality sur- 
 passed the harvests of any orchards on the mainland. 
 
RAVENNA. 131. 
 
 All the conditions of life in old Ravenna seem to have 
 resembled those of modern Venice; the people went 
 about in gondolas, and in the early morning barges 
 laden with fresh fruit or meat and vegetables flocked 
 from all quarters to the city of the sea.* Water also 
 had to be procured from the neighboring shore, for, 
 as Martial says, a well at Ravenna was more valuable 
 than a vineyard. Again, between the city and the 
 mainland ran a long low causeway all across the 
 lagoon like that on which the trains now glide into 
 Venice. Strange to say, the air of Ravenna was re- 
 markably salubrious: this fact, and the ease of life that 
 prevailed there, and the security afforded by the situa- 
 tion of the town, rendered it a most desirable retreat 
 for the monarchs of Italy during those troublous times 
 in which the empire nodded to its fall. Honorius 
 retired to its lagoons for safety; Odoacer, who de- 
 throned the last Caesar of the West, succeeded him; 
 and was in turn supplanted by Theodoric the Ostro- 
 goth. Ravenna, as we see it now, recalls the peaceful 
 and half-Roman rule of the great Gothic king. His 
 palace, his churches and the mausoleum in which his 
 daughter Amalasuntha laid the hero's bones, have sur- 
 vived the sieges of Belisarius and Astolphus, the con- 
 quest of Pepin, the bloody quarrels of iconoclasts 
 with the children of the Roman Church, the mediaeval 
 wars of Italy, the victory of Gaston de Foix, and still 
 stand gorgeous with marbles and mosaics in spite of 
 time and the decay of all around them. 
 
 As early as the sixth century, the sea had already 
 
 * We may compare with Venice what is known about the 
 ancient. Hellenic city of Sybaris. Sybaris and Ravenna were the 
 Greek and Roman Venice of antiquity. 
 
132 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 retreated to such a distance from Ravenna that 
 orchards and gardens were cultivated on the spot 
 where once the galleys of the Caesars rode at anchor. 
 Groves of pines sprang up along the shore, and in 
 their lofty tops the music of the wind moved like the 
 ghost of waves and breakers plunging upon distant 
 sands. This Pinetum stretches along the shore of the 
 Adriatic for about forty miles, forming a belt of variable 
 width between the great marsh and the tumbling sea. 
 From a distance the bare stems and velvet crowns of 
 the pine-trees stand up like palms that cover an oasis 
 on Arabian sands; but at a nearer view the trunks 
 detach themselves from an inferior forest-growth of 
 juniper and thorn and ash and oak, the tall roofs of 
 the stately firs shooting their breadth of sheltering 
 greenery above the lower and less sturdy brushwood. 
 It is hardly possible to imagine a more beautiful and 
 impressive scene than that presented by these long 
 alleys of imperial pines. They grow so thickly one 
 behind another that we might compare them to the 
 pipes of a great organ, or the pillars of a Gothic 
 church, or the basaltic columns of the Giant's Cause- 
 way. Their tops are ever green and laden with the 
 heavy cones from which Ravenna draws considerable 
 wealth. Scores of peasants are quartered on the out- 
 skirts of the forest, whose business it is to scale the 
 pines and rob them of their fruit at certain seasons of 
 the year. Afterwards they dry the fir-cones in the 
 sun, until the nuts which they contain fall out. The 
 empty husks are sold for fire-wood, and the kernels in 
 their stony shells reserved for exportation. You may 
 see the peasants, men, women, and boys, sorting them 
 by millions, drying and sifting them upon the open 
 
RAVENNA. 133 
 
 spaces of the wood, and packing them in sacks to 
 send abroad through Italy. The pinocchi, or kernels, 
 of the stone-pine are largely used in cookery, and 
 those of Ravenna are prized for their good quality 
 and aromatic flavor. When roasted or pounded, they 
 taste like a softer and more mealy kind of almonds. 
 The task of gathering this harvest is not a little 
 dangerous. They have to cut notches in the straight 
 shafts, and having climbed, often, to the height of 
 eighty feet, to lean upon the branches, and detach the 
 fir-cones with a pole and this for every tree. Some 
 lives, they say, are yearly lost in the business. 
 
 As may be imagined, the spaces of this great 
 forest form the haunt of innumerable living creatures. 
 Lizards run about by myriads in the grass. Doves 
 coo among the branches of the pines, and nightingales 
 pour their full-throated music all day and night from 
 thickets of white-thorn and acacia. The air is sweet 
 with aromatic scents: the resin of the pine and juniper, 
 the may-flowers and acacia-blossoms, the violets that 
 spring by thousands in the moss, the wild roses and 
 faint honeysuckles which throw fragrant arms from 
 bough to bough of ash or maple, join to make one 
 most delicious perfume. And though the air upon the 
 neighboring marsh is poisonous, here it is dry, and 
 spreads a genial health. The sea-wind murmuring 
 through these thickets at nightfall or misty sunrise 
 conveys no fever to the peasants stretched among their 
 flowers. They watch the red rays of sunset flaming 
 through the columns of the leafy hall, and flaring on 
 its fretted rafters of entangled boughs; they see the 
 stars come out, and Hesper gleam, an eye of bright- 
 ness, among dewy branches; the moon walks silver- 
 
134 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 footed on the velvet tree-tops, while they sleep beside 
 the camp-fires; fresh morning wakes them to the sound 
 of birds and scent of thyme and twinkling of dewdrops 
 on the grass around. Meanwhile ague, fever, and 
 death have been stalking all night long about the 
 plain, within a few yards of their couch, and not one 
 pestilential breath has reached the charmed precincts 
 of the forest 
 
 You may ride or drive for miles along green aisles 
 between the pines in perfect solitude; and yet the 
 creatures of the wood, the sunlight and the birds, the 
 flowers and tall majestic columns at your side, prevent 
 all sense of loneliness or fear. Huge oxen haunt the 
 wilderness gray creatures, with mild eyes and spread- 
 ing horns and stealthy tread. Some are patriarchs of 
 the forest, the fathers and the mothers of many genera- 
 tions who have been carried from their sides to serve 
 in ploughs or wagons on the Lombard plain. Others 
 are yearling calves, intractable and ignorant of labor. 
 In order to subdue them to the yoke, it is requisite to 
 take them very early from their native glades, or else 
 they chafe and pine away with weariness. Then there 
 is a sullen canal, which flows through the forest from 
 the marshes to the sea; it is alive with frogs and 
 newts and snakes. You may see these serpents basking 
 on the surface among thickets of the flowering rush, 
 or coiled about the lily leaves and flowers lithe 
 monsters, slippery and speckled, the tyrants of the fen. 
 
 It is said that when Dante was living at Ravenna 
 he would spend whole days alone among the forest 
 glades, thinking of Florence and her civil wars, and 
 meditating cantos of his poem. Nor have the influences 
 of the pine wood failed to leave their trace upon his 
 
RAVENNA. 135 
 
 verse. The charm of its summer solitude seems to 
 have sunk into his soul; for when he describes the 
 whispering of winds and singing birds among the 
 boughs of his terrestrial paradise, he says: 
 
 Non pero dal lor esser dritto sparte 
 Tanto, che gli augelletti per le cime 
 Lasciasser d'operare ogni lor arte : 
 
 Ma con piena letizia Paure prime, 
 Cantando, ricevano intra le foglie, 
 Che tenevan bordone alle sue rime 
 
 Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie 
 Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi, 
 Quand' Eolo Scirocco fuor discioglie. 
 
 With these verses in our minds, while wandering 
 down the grassy aisles, beside the waters of the solitary 
 place, we seem to meet that lady singing as she went, 
 and plucking flower by flower, "like Proserpine when 
 Ceres lost a daughter, and she lost her spring." There, 
 too, the vision of the griffin and the car, of singing 
 maidens, and of Beatrice descending to the sound of 
 Benedictus and of falling flowers, her flaming robe 
 and mantle green as grass, and veil of white, and 
 olive crown, all flashed upon the poet's inner eye, and 
 he remembered how he bowed before her when a 
 boy. There is yet another passage in Avhich it is dif- 
 ficult to believe that Dante had not the pine forest in 
 his mind. When Virgil and the poet were waiting in 
 anxiety before the gates of Dis, when the Furies on 
 the wall were tearing their breasts and crying, "Venga 
 Medusa, e si '1 farem di smalto," suddenly across the 
 hideous river came a sound like that which whirlwinds 
 make among the shattered branches and bruised stems 
 of forest trees; and Dante, looking out with fear upon 
 
136 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 the foam and spray and vapor of the flood, saw thou- 
 sands of the damned flying before the face of one 
 who forded Styx with feet unwet. "Like frogs," he 
 says, "they fled, who scurry through the water at the 
 sight of their foe, the serpent, till each squats and 
 hides himself close to the ground." The picture of 
 the storm among the trees might well have occurred 
 to Dante's mind beneath the roof of pine boughs. Nor 
 is there any place in which the simile of the frogs 
 and water-snake attains such dignity and grandeur. I 
 must confess that till I saw the ponds and marshes of 
 Ravenna, I used to fancy that the comparison was 
 somewhat below the greatness of the subject; but there 
 so grave a note of solemnity and desolation is struck, 
 the scale of Nature is so large, and the serpents coil- 
 ing in and out among the lily leaves and flowers are 
 so much in their right place, that they suggest a scene 
 by no means unworthy of Dante's conception. 
 
 Nor is Dante the only singer who has invested 
 this wood with poetical associations. It is well 
 known that Boccaccio laid his story of Honoria in the 
 pine forest, and every student of English literature 
 must be familiar with the noble tale in verse which 
 Dryden has founded on this part of the Decameron. 
 We all of us have followed Theodore, and watched 
 with him the tempest swelling in the grove, and 
 seen the hapless ghost pursued by demon hounds and 
 hunter down the glades. This story should be read 
 while storms are gathering upon the distant sea, or 
 thunder-clouds descending from the Apennines, and 
 when the pines begin to rock and surge beneath the 
 stress of laboring winds. Then runs the sudden flash 
 of lightning like a rapier through the boughs, the rain 
 
RAVENNA. 137 
 
 streams hissing down, and the thunder "breaks like a 
 whole sea overhead." 
 
 With the Pinetum the name of Byron will be for- 
 ever associated. During his two years' residence in 
 Ravenna he used to haunt its wilderness, riding alone 
 or in the company of friends. The inscription placed 
 above the entrance to the house he occupied alludes to 
 it as one of the objects which principally attracted the 
 poet to the neighborhood of Ravenna: "Impaziente 
 di visitare 1'antica selva, che inspire gia il Divino e 
 Giovanni Boccaccio." We know, however, that a more 
 powerful attraction, in the person of the Countess 
 Guiccioli, maintained his fidelity to "that place of old 
 renown, once in the Adrian Sea, Ravenna." 
 
 Between the Bosco, as the people of Ravenna call 
 this pine wood, and the city, the marsh stretches for a 
 distance of about three miles. It is a plain intersected 
 by dikes and ditches, and mapped out into innumer- 
 able rice-fields. For more than half a year it lies 
 under water, and during the other months exhales a 
 pestilential vapor, which renders it as uninhabitable as 
 the Roman Campagna; yet in spring-time this dreary 
 flat is even beautiful. The young blades of the rice 
 shoot up above the water, delicately green and tender. 
 The ditches are lined with flowering rush and golden 
 flags, while white and yellow lilies sleep in myriads 
 upon the silent pools. Tamarisks wave their pink and 
 silver tresses by the road, and wherever a plot of 
 mossy earth emerges from the marsh, it gleams with 
 purple orchises and flaming marigolds; but the soil 
 beneath is so treacherous and spongy that these 
 splendid blossoms grow like flowers in dreams or fairy 
 stories. You try in vain to pick them; they elude 
 
138 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 your grasp, and flourish in security beyond the reach 
 of arm or stick. 
 
 Such is the sight of the old town of Classis. Not 
 a vestige of the Roman city remains, not a dwelling or 
 a ruined tower, nothing but the ancient church of S. 
 Apollinare in Classe. Of all desolate buildings this is 
 the most desolate. Not even the deserted grandeur of 
 S. Paolo beyond the walls of Rome can equal it. Its 
 bare round campanile gazes at the sky, which here 
 vaults only sea and plain a perfect dome, star- 
 spangled like the roof of Galla Placidia's tomb. Ra- 
 venna lies low to west, the pine wood stretches away 
 in long monotony to east. There is nothing else to be 
 seen except the spreading marsh, bounded by dim 
 snowy Alps and purple Apennines, so very far away 
 that the level rack of summer clouds seem more at- 
 tainable and real. What sunsets and sunrises that 
 tower must see; what glaring lurid after-glows in 
 August, when the red light scowls upon the pestilential 
 fen; what sheets of sullen vapor rolling over it in 
 autumn; what breathless heats, and rain-clouds big 
 with thunder; what silences; what unimpeded blasts 
 of winter winds ! One old monk tends this deserted 
 spot. He has the huge church, with its echoing aisles 
 and marble columns and giddy bell-tower and cloistered 
 corridors, all to himself. At rare intervals, priests from 
 Ravenna come to sing some special mass at these cold 
 altars; pious folks make vows to pray upon their 
 mouldy steps and kiss the relics which are shown on 
 great occasions. But no one stays; they hurry, after 
 muttering their prayers, from the fever-stricken spot, 
 reserving their domestic pieties and customary devo- 
 tions for the brighter and newer chapels of the fashion- 
 
RAVENNA. 1 39 
 
 able churches in Ravenna. So the old monk is left 
 alone to sweep the marsh water from his church floor, 
 and to keep the green moss from growing too thickly 
 on its monuments. A clammy conferva covers every- 
 thing except the mosaics upon tribune, roof, and 
 clerestory, which defy the course of age. Christ on 
 his throne sedet ceternumque sedebit: the saints around 
 him glitter with their pitiless uncompromising eyes and 
 wooden gestures, as if twelve centuries had not passed 
 over them, and they were nightmares only dreamed last 
 night, and rooted in a sick man's memory. For those 
 gaunt and solemn forms there is no change of life or 
 end of days. No fever touches them; no dampness 
 of the wind and rain loosens their firm cement. They 
 stare with senseless faces in bitter mockery of men 
 who live and die and moulder away beneath. Their 
 poor old guardian told us it was a weary life. He has 
 had the fever three times, and does not hope to sur- 
 vive many more Septembers. The very water that he 
 drinks is brought him from Ravenna; for the vast fen, 
 though it pours its overflow upon the church floor, and 
 spreads like a lake around, is death to drink. The 
 monk had a gentle woman's voice and mild brown 
 eyes. What terrible crime had consigned him to this 
 living tomb? For what past sorrow is he weary of his 
 life? What anguish of remorse has driven him to such 
 a solitude? Yet he looked simple and placid; his 
 melancholy was subdued and calm, as if life were over 
 for him, and he were waiting for death to come with 
 a friend's greeting upon noiseless wings some summer 
 night across the fen-lands in a cloud of soft destructive 
 fever-mist 
 
 Another monument upon the plain is worthy of a 
 
I4O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 visit. It is the so-called Colonna dei Francesi, a cinque- 
 cento pillar of Ionic design, erected on the spot where 
 Gaston de Foix expired victorious after one of the 
 bloodiest battles ever fought. The Ronco, a straight, 
 sluggish stream, flows by the lonely spot; mason-bees 
 have covered with laborious stucco-work the scrolls 
 and leafage of its ornaments, confounding epitaphs and 
 trophies under their mud houses. A few cypress-trees 
 stand round it, and the dogs and chickens of a neigh- 
 boring farm-yard make it their rendezvous. Those 
 mason-bees are like posterity, which settles down upon 
 the ruins of a Baalbec or a Luxor, setting up its tents 
 and filling the fair spaces of Hellenic or Egyptian 
 temples with clay hovels. Nothing differs but the 
 scale; and while the bees content themselves with fill- 
 ing up and covering, man destroys the silent places of 
 the past which he appropriates. 
 
 In Ravenna itself, perhaps what strikes us most is 
 the abrupt transition everywhere discernible from monu- 
 ments of vast antiquity to buildings of quite modern 
 date. There seems to be no interval between the 
 marbles and mosaics of Justinian or Theodoric and the 
 insignificant frippery of the last century. The churches 
 of Ravenna S. Vitale, S. Apollinare, and the rest 
 are too well known and have been too often described 
 by enthusiastic antiquaries, to need a detailed notice 
 in this place. Every one is aware that the ecclesiastical 
 customs and architecture of the early Church can be 
 studied in greater perfection here than elsewhere. Not 
 even the basilicas and mosaics of Rome, nor those of 
 Palermo and Monreale, are equal for historical interest 
 to those of Ravenna. Yet there is not one single church 
 which remains entirely unaltered and unspoiled. The 
 
RAVENNA. 14! 
 
 imagination has to supply the atrium or outer portico 
 from one building, the vaulted baptistery with its marble 
 font from another, the pulpits and ambones from a 
 third, the tribune from a fourth, the round brick bell- 
 tower from a fifth, and then to cover all the con- 
 cave roofs and chapel walls with grave and glittering 
 mosaics. 
 
 There is nothing more beautiful in decorative art 
 than the mosaics of such tiny buildings as the tomb of 
 Galla Placidia or the chapel of the bishop's palace. 
 They are like jewelled and enamelled cases; not an 
 inch of wall can be seen which is not covered with 
 elaborate patterns of the brightest colors. Tall date- 
 palms spring from the floor with fruit and birds among 
 their branches, and between them stand the pillars and 
 apostles of the Church. In the spandrels and lunettes 
 above the arches and the windows angels fly with 
 white, extended wings. On every vacant place are 
 scrolls and arabesques of foliage birds and beasts, 
 doves drinking from the vase, and peacocks spreading 
 gorgeous plumes a maze of green and gold and blue. 
 Overhead, the vault is powdered with stars gleaming 
 upon the deepest azure, and in the midst is set an 
 aureole embracing the majestic head of Christ, or else 
 the symbol of the sacred fish, or the hand of the 
 Creator pointing from a cloud. In Galla Placidia's 
 tomb these storied vaults spring above the sarcophagi 
 of empresses and emperors, each lying in the place 
 where he was laid more than twelve centuries ago. 
 The light which struggles through the narrow windows 
 serves to harmonize the brilliant hues and make a 
 gorgeous gloom. 
 
 Besides these more general and decorative subjects, 
 
142 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 many of the churches are adorned with historical 
 mosaics, setting forth the Bible narrative or incidents 
 from the life of Christian emperors and kings. In S. 
 Apollinare Nuovo there is a most interesting treble 
 series of such mosaics extending over both walls of 
 the nave. On the left hand, as we enter, we see the 
 town of Classis; on the right the palace of Theodoric, 
 its doors and loggie rich with curtains, and its friezes 
 blazing with colored ornaments. From the city gate of 
 Classis virgins issue and proceed in a long line until 
 they reach Madonna seated on a throne with Christ 
 upon her knees and the three kings in adoration at 
 her feet. From Theodoric's palace door a similar pro- 
 cession of saints and martyrs carry us to Christ sur- 
 rounded by archangels. Above this double row of 
 saints and virgins stand the fathers and prophets of 
 the Church, and highest underneath the roof are 
 pictures from the life of our Lord. It will be remem- 
 bered in connection with these subjects that the women 
 sat upon the left and the men upon the right side of 
 the church. Above the tribune, at the east end of the 
 church, it was customary to represent the Creative 
 Hand, or the monogram of the Saviour, or the head 
 of Christ with the letters A and 42. Moses and Elijah 
 frequently stand on either side to symbolize the trans- 
 figuration, while the saints and bishops specially con- 
 nected with the church appeared upon a lower row. 
 Then on the side walls were depicted such subjects as 
 Justinian and Theodora among their courtiers, or the 
 grant of the privileges of the church to its first founder 
 from imperial patrons, with symbols of the old Hebraic 
 ritual Abel's lamb, the sacrifice of Isaac, Melchisedec's 
 offering of bread and wine which were regarded as 
 
RAVENNA. 143 
 
 the types of Christian ceremonies. The baptistery was 
 adorned with appropriate mosaics representing Christ's 
 baptism in Jordan. 
 
 Generally speaking, one is struck with the dignity 
 of these designs, and especially with the combined 
 majesty and sweetness of the face of Christ. The 
 sense for harmony of hue displayed in their composi- 
 tion is marvellous. It would be curious to trace in 
 detail the remnants of classical treatment which may 
 be discerned Jordan, for instance, pours his water 
 from an urn like a river-god crowned with sedge or 
 to show what points of ecclesiastical tradition are 
 established by these ancient monuments. We find Ma- 
 riolatry already imminent, the names of the three kings, 
 Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the four evangelists 
 as we now recognize them, and many of the rites and 
 vestments which ritualists of all denominations regard 
 with superstitious reverence. 
 
 There are two sepulchral monuments in Ravenna 
 which cannot be passed over unnoticed. The one is 
 that of Theodoric the Goth, crowned by its semisphere 
 of solid stone, a mighty tomb, well worthy of the con- 
 queror and king. It stands in a green field, surrounded 
 by acacias, where the nightingales sing ceaselessly in 
 May. The mason-bees have covered it and the water 
 has invaded its sepulchral vaults. In spite of many 
 trials, it seems that human art is unable to pump out 
 the pond and clear the frogs and efts from the chamber 
 where the great Goth was laid by Amalasuntha. 
 
 The other is Dante's temple, with its bass-relief and 
 withered garlands. The story of his burial and of the 
 discovery of his real tomb is fresh in the memory of 
 every one. But the "little cupola, more neat than 
 
144 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 solemn," of which Lord Byron speaks, will continue to 
 be the goal of many a pilgrimage. For myself 
 though I remember Chateaubriand's bareheaded genu- 
 flection on its threshold, Alfieri's passionate prostration 
 at the altar-tomb, and Byron's offering of poems on 
 the poet's shrine I confess that a single canto of the 
 Inferno, a single passage of the Vita Nuova, seems 
 more full of soul-stirring associations than the place 
 where, centuries ago, the mighty dust was laid. It is 
 the spirit that lives and makes alive. And Dante's 
 spirit seems more present with us under the pine 
 branches of the Bosco than, beside his real or fancied 
 tomb. "He is risen" "Lo, I am with you alway" 
 these are the words that ought to haunt us in a burying- 
 ground. There is something affected and self-conscious 
 in overpowering grief or enthusiasm or humiliation at 
 a tomb. 
 
PARMA. 
 
 PARMA. 
 
 PARMA is perhaps the brightest Residenzstadt of the 
 second class in Italy. Built on a sunny and fertile 
 tract of the Lombard plain, within view of the Alps, 
 and close beneath the shelter of the Apennines, it 
 shines like a well-set gem with stately towers and cheer- 
 ful squares in the midst of verdure. The cities of 
 Lombardy are all like large country-houses: walking 
 out of their gates, you seem to be stepping from a 
 door or window that opens on a trim and beautiful 
 garden, where mulberry-tree is married to mulberry by 
 festoons of vines, and where the maize and sunflower 
 stand together in rows between patches of flax and 
 hemp. But it is not in order to survey the union of 
 well-ordered husbandry with the civilities of ancient 
 city-life that we break the journey at Parma between 
 Milan and Bologna. We are attracted rather by the 
 fame of one great painter, whose work, though it may 
 be studied piecemeal in many galleries of Europe, in 
 Parma has a fulness, largeness, and mastery that can 
 nowhere else be found. In Parma alone Correggio 
 challenges comparison with Raphael, with Tintoretto, 
 with all the supreme decorative painters who have 
 deigned to make their art the handmaid of architecture. 
 Yet even in the cathedral and the church of St. Gio- 
 vanni, where Correggio's frescos cover cupola and 
 chapel wall, we could scarcely comprehend his great- 
 
 Sketches in Italy, 10 
 
146 SKETCHES IN ITALV. 
 
 ness now so cruelly have time and neglect dealt with 
 those delicate dream-shadows of celestial fairy-land 
 were it not for an interpreter who consecrated a life- 
 time to the task of translating his master's poetry of 
 fresco into the prose of engraving. That man was 
 Paolo Toschi a name to be ever venerated by all 
 lovers of the arts, since without his guidance we should 
 hardly know what to seek for in the ruined splendors 
 of the domes of Parma, or even, seeking, how to find 
 the object of our search. Toschi's labor was more 
 effectual than that of a restorer however skilful, more 
 loving than that of a follower however faithful. He 
 respected Correggio's handiwork with religious scrupul- 
 ousness, adding not a line or tone or touch of color to 
 the fading frescos; but he lived among them, aloft on 
 scaffoldings, and face to face with the originals which 
 he designed to reproduce. By long and close familiarity, 
 by obstinate and patient interrogation, he divined Cor- 
 reggio's secret, and was able at last to see clearly 
 through the mists of cobweb and mildew and altar 
 smoke, and through the still more cruel travesty of so- 
 called restoration. What he discovered he faithfully 
 committed first to paper in water-colors, and then to 
 copperplate with the burin; so that we enjoy the privilege 
 of seeing Correggio's masterpieces as Toschi saw them, 
 with the eyes of genius and of love and of long scientific 
 study. It is not too much to say that some of Cor- 
 reggio's most charming compositions for example, the 
 dispute of St. Augustine and St. John have been re- 
 suscitated from the grave by Toschi's skill. The original 
 offers nothing but a mouldering surface from which the 
 painter's work has dropped in scales. The engraving 
 presents a design which we doubt not was Correggio's, 
 
PARMA. 147 
 
 for it corresponds in all particulars to the style and 
 spirit of the master. To be critical in dealing with so 
 successful an achievement of restoration and translation 
 is difficult. Yet it may be admitted once and for all 
 that Toschi has not unfrequently enfeebled his original. 
 Under his touch Correggio loses somewhat of his 
 sensuous audacity, his dithyrambic ecstasy, and ap- 
 proaches the ordinary standard of prettiness and grace- 
 ful beauty. The Diana of the Camera di S. Paolo, for 
 instance, has the strong calm splendor of a goddess: 
 the same Diana in Toschi's engraving seems about to 
 smile with girlish joy. In a word, the engraver was a 
 man of a more common stamp more timid and more 
 conventional than the painter. But this is after all a 
 trifling deduction from the value of his work. 
 
 Our debt to Paolo Toschi is such that it would be 
 ungrateful not to seek some details of his life. The 
 few that can be gathered even at Parma are brief and 
 bald enough. The newspaper articles and funeral 
 panegyrics which refer to him are as barren as all 
 such occasional notices in Italy have always been, the 
 panegyrist seeming more anxious about his own style 
 than eager to communicate information. Yet a bare 
 outline of Toschi's biography may be supplied. He 
 was born at Parma in 1788. His father was cashier 
 of the post-office, and his mother's name was Anna 
 Maria Brest. Early in his youth he studied painting 
 at Parma under Biagio Martini; and in 1809 he went 
 to Paris, where he learned the art of engraving from 
 Bervic, and of etching from Oortman. In Paris he 
 contracted an intimate friendship with the painter 
 Gerard. But after ten years he returned to Parma, 
 where he established a company and school of en- 
 
 10* 
 
148 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 gravers in concert with his friend Antonio Isac. Maria 
 Louisa, the then duchess, under whose patronage the 
 arts flourished at Parma (witness Bodoni's exquisite 
 typography), soon recognized his merit, and appointed 
 him Director of the Ducal Academy. He then formed 
 the project of engraving a series of the whole of Cor- 
 reggio's frescos. The undertaking was a vast one. 
 Both the cupolas of St. John and the cathedral, to- 
 gether with the vault of the apse of St. Giovanni * and 
 various portions of the side aisles, and the so-called 
 Camera di S. Paolo, are covered by frescos of Cor- 
 reggio and his pupil Parmegiano. These frescos have 
 suffered so much from neglect and time, and from un- 
 intelligent restoration, that it is difficult in many cases 
 to determine their true character. Yet Toschi did not 
 content himself with selections, or shrink from the 
 task of deciphering and engraving the whole. He 
 formed a school of disciples, among whom were Carlo 
 Raimondi of Milan, Antonio Costa of Venice, Edward 
 Eichens of Berlin, Aloisio Juvara of Naples, Antonio 
 Dalco, Giuseppe Magnani, and Lodovico Bisola of 
 Parma, and employed them as assistants in his work. 
 Death overtook him in 1854, before it was finished; 
 and now the water-color drawings which are exhibited 
 in the gallery of Parma prove to what extent the 
 achievement fell short of his design. Enough, however, 
 was accomplished to place the chief masterpieces of 
 Correggio beyond the possibility of utter oblivion. 
 
 The fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin upon the semi- 
 dome of St. Giovanni is the work of a copyist, Cesare Aretusi. But 
 part of the original fresco, which was removed in 1684, exists in 
 a good state of preservation at the end of the long gallery of the 
 library. 
 
PARMA. 1 49 
 
 To the piety of his pupil Carlo Raimondi, the 
 bearer of a name illustrious in the annals of engrav- 
 ing, we owe a striking portrait of Toschi. The master 
 is represented on his seat upon the scaffold in the 
 dizzy half-light of the dome. The shadowy forms of 
 saints and angels are around him. He has raised his 
 eyes from his cartoon to study one of these. In his 
 right hand is the opera-glass with which he scrutinizes 
 the details of distant groups. The upturned face, with 
 its expression of contemplative intelligence, is like that 
 of an astronomer accustomed to commerce with things 
 above the sphere of common life, and ready to give 
 account of all that he has gathered from his observa- 
 tion of a world not ours. In truth, the world created 
 by Correggio and interpreted by Toschi is very far 
 removed from that of actual existence. No painter has 
 infused a more distinct individuality into his work, 
 realizing by imaginative force and powerful projection 
 an order of beauty peculiar to himself before which it 
 is impossible to remain quite indifferent. We must 
 either admire the manner of Correggio or else shrink 
 from it with the distaste which sensual art is apt to 
 stir in natures of a severe or simple type. 
 
 What, then, is the Correggiosity of Correggio? In 
 other words, what is the characteristic which, pro- 
 ceeding from the personality of the artist, is impressed 
 on all his work? The answer to this question, though 
 by no means simple, may, perhaps, be won by a pro- 
 cess of gradual analysis. The first thing that strikes 
 us in the art of Correggio is that he has aimed at the 
 realistic representation of pure unrealities. His saints 
 and angels are beings the like of whom we have 
 hardly seen upon the earth. Yet they are displayed 
 
15O SKETCHES M ITALY. 
 
 before us with all the movement and the vivid truth 
 of nature. Next we feel that what constitutes the 
 superhuman, visionary quality of these creatures is 
 their uniform beauty of a merely sensuous type. They 
 are all created for pleasure, not for thought or passion 
 or activity or heroism. The uses of their brains, their 
 limbs, their every feature, end in enjoyment; innocent 
 and radiant wantonness is the condition of their whole 
 existence. Correggio conceived the universe under 
 the one mood of sensuous joy: his world was bathed 
 in luxurious light; its inhabitants were capable of 
 little beyond a soft voluptuousness. Over the domain 
 of tragedy he had no sway, and very rarely did he 
 attempt to enter on it: nothing, for example, can 
 be feebler than his endeavor to express anguish in 
 the distorted features of Madonna, St. John, and the 
 Magdalen, who are bending over the dead body of a 
 Christ extended in the attitude of languid repose. 
 In like manner, he could not deal with subjects which 
 demand a pregnancy of intellectual meaning. He paints 
 the three Fates like young and joyous Bacchantes. 
 Place rose-garlands and thyrsi in their hands instead 
 of the distaff and the thread of human destinies, and 
 they might figure appropriately upon the panels of a 
 banquet-chamber in Pompeii. In this respect Correggio 
 might be termed the Rossini of painting. The melodies 
 of the Stabat Mater Fac ut portent, or Quis est homo 
 are the exact analogues in music of Correggio's volup- 
 tuous renderings of grave or mysterious motives. Nor, 
 again, did he possess that severe and lofty art of 
 composition which subordinates the fancy to the reason, 
 and which seeks for the highest intellectual beauty in 
 a kind of architectural harmony supreme above the 
 
PARMA. 151 
 
 melodies of gracefulness in detail. The Florentines 
 and those who shared their spirit Michael Angelo 
 and Leonardo and Raphael deriving this principle 
 of design from the geometrical art of the Middle Ages, 
 converted it to the noblest uses in their vast, well- 
 ordered compositions. But Correggio ignored the laws 
 of scientific construction. It was enough for him lf> 
 produce a splendid and brilliant effect by the life 
 and movement of his figures and by the intoxicating 
 beauty of his forms. His type of beauty, too, is by 
 no means elevated. Leonardo painted souls whereof 
 the features and the limbs are but an index. The 
 charm of Michael Angelo's ideal is like a flower upon 
 a tree of rugged strength. Raphael aims at the loveli- 
 ness which cannot be disjoined from goodness. But Cor- 
 reggio is contented with bodies " delicate and desirable." 
 His angels are genii disimprisoned from the perfumed 
 chalices of flowers, houris of an erotic paradise, ele- 
 mental spirits of nature wantoning in Eden in her 
 prime. To accuse the painter of conscious immorality, 
 or of what is stigmatized as sensuality, would be as 
 ridiculous as to class his seraphic beings among the 
 products of the Christian imagination. They belong 
 to the generation of the fauns. Like fauns, they com- 
 bine a certain savage wildness, a dithyrambic ecstasy 
 of inspiration, a delight in rapid movement as they 
 revel amid clouds or flowers, with the permanent and 
 all-pervading sweetness of the master's style. When 
 infantine or childlike, these celestial sylphs are scarcely 
 to be distinguished for any noble quality of beauty 
 from Murillo's cherubs, and are far less divine than 
 the choir of children who attend Madonna in Titian's 
 "Assumption." But in their boyhood and their prime 
 
152 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 of youth they acquire a fulness of sensuous vitality 
 and a radiance that are peculiar to Correggio. The 
 lily-bearer who helps to support St. Thomas beneath 
 the dome of the cathedral at Parma, the groups of 
 seraphs who crowd behind the Incoronata of St. Gio- 
 vanni, and the two wild-eyed, open-mouthed St. Johns 
 slbtioned at each side of the celestial throne are among 
 the most splendid instances of the adolescent loveliness 
 conceived by Correggio. Where the painter found their 
 models may be questioned but not answered; for he 
 has made them of a different fashion from the race of 
 mortals: no court of Roman emperor or Turkish sultan, 
 though stocked with the flowers of Bithynian and Cir- 
 cassian youth, have*&en their like. Mozart's Cherubino 
 seems to have sat for all of them. At any rate, they 
 incarnate the very spirit of the songs he sings. 
 
 As a consequence of this predilection for sensuous 
 and voluptuous forms, Correggio had no power of 
 imagining grandly or severely. Satisfied with material 
 realism in his treatment even of sublime mysteries, he 
 converts the hosts of heaven into a " fricassee of frogs," 
 according to the old epigram. His apostles, gazing 
 after the Virgin who has left the earth, are thrown 
 into attitudes so violent and so dramatically fore- 
 shortened that, seen from below upon the pavement of 
 the cathedral, little of their form is distinguishable 
 except legs and arms in vehement commotion. Very 
 different is Titian's opbr)ction of this scene. To 
 express the spiritual meaning, the emotion of Madonna's 
 transit, with all the pomp which color and splendid 
 composition can convey, is Titian's sole care; whereas 
 Correggio appears to have been satisfied with realizing 
 the tumult of heaven rushing to meet earth, and earth 
 
PARMA. 153 
 
 straining upward to ascend to heaven in violent com- 
 motion a very orgasm of frenetic rapture. The 
 essence of the event is forgotten: its external mani- 
 festation alone is presented to the eye; and only the 
 accessories of beardless angels and cloud-encumbered 
 cherubs are really beautiful amid a surge of limbs in 
 restless movement. More dignified, because designed 
 with more repose, is the Apocalypse of St. John 
 painted upon the cupola of St. Giovanni. The apostles 
 throned on clouds, with which the dome is filled, gaze 
 upward to one point. Their attitudes are noble; their 
 form is heroic; in their eyes there is the strange 
 ecstatic look by which Correggio interpreted his sense 
 of supernatural vision: it is a gaze not of contempla- 
 tion or deep thought, but of wild, half-savage joy, as 
 if these saints also had become the elemental genii of 
 cloud and air, spirits emergent from ether, the sala- 
 manders of an empyrean intolerable to mortal sense. 
 The point on which their eyes converge, the culmina- 
 tion of their vision, is the figure of Christ. Here all 
 the weakness of Correggio's method is revealed. He 
 had undertaken to realize by no ideal allegorical 
 suggestion, by no symbolism of architectural grouping, 
 but by actual prosaic measurement, by corporeal form 
 in subjection to the laws of perspective and fore- 
 shortening, things which in their very essence admit 
 of only a figurative revelation. Therefore his Christ, 
 the centre of all those earnest eyes, is contracted to a 
 shape in which humanity itself is mean, a sprawling 
 figure which irresistibly reminds one of a frog. The 
 clouds on which the saints repose are opaque and 
 solid; cherubs in countless multitudes, a swarm of 
 merry children, crawl about upon these feather-beds 
 
154 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 of vapor, creep between the legs of the apostles, and 
 play at bopeep behind their shoulders. There is no 
 propriety in their appearance there. They take no 
 interest in the beatific vision. They play no part 
 in the celestial symphony; nor are they capable of 
 more than merely infantine enjoyment. Correggio has 
 sprinkled them lavishly like living flowers about his 
 cloud-land, because he could not sustain a grave and 
 solemn strain of music, but was forced by his tempera- 
 ment to overlay the melody with roulades. Gazing at 
 these frescos, the thought came to me that Correggio 
 was like a man listening to sweetest flute-playing, and 
 translating phrase after phrase as they passed through 
 his fancy into laughing faces, breezy tresses, and rolling 
 mists. Sometimes a grander cadence reached his ear; 
 and then St. Peter with the keys, or St. Augustine of 
 the mighty brow, or the inspired eyes of St. John, 
 took form beneath his pencil. But the light airs re- 
 turned, and rose and lily faces bloomed again for him 
 among the clouds. It is not therefore in dignity or 
 sublimity that Correggio excels, but in artless grace 
 and melodious tenderness. The Madonna della Scala 
 clasping her baby with a caress which the little child 
 returns, St. Catherine leaning in a rapture of ecstatic 
 love to wed the infant Christ, St. Sebastian in the 
 bloom of almost boyish beauty, are the so-called 
 sacred subjects to which the painter was adequate, 
 and which he has treated with the voluptuous tender- 
 ness we find in his pictures of Leda and Danae and 
 lo. Could these saints and martyrs descend from 
 Correggio's canvas, and take flesh, and breathe, and 
 begin to live; of what high action, of what grave 
 passion, of what exemplary conduct in any walk of 
 
PARMA. 155 
 
 life would they be capable? That is the question 
 which they irresistibly suggest; and we are forced to 
 answer, None! The moral and religious world did 
 not exist for Correggio. His art was but a way of 
 seeing carnal beauty in a dream that had no true 
 relation to reality. 
 
 Correggio's sensibility to light and color was exactly 
 on a par with his feeling for form. He belongs to the 
 poets of chiaroscuro and the poets of coloring; but in 
 both regions he maintains the individuality so strongly 
 expressed in his choice of purely sensuous beauty. 
 Tintoretto makes use of light and shade for investing 
 his great compositions with dramatic intensity. Rem- 
 brandt interprets sombre and fantastic moods of the 
 mind by golden gloom and silvery irradiation, translat- 
 ing thought into the language of penumbral mystery. 
 Leonardo studies the laws of light scientifically, so 
 that the proper roundness and effect of distance should 
 be accurately rendered, and all the subtleties of nature's 
 smiles be mimicked. Correggio is content with fixing 
 on his canvas the dn'jQi&pov y&aapa, the many-twinkling 
 laughter of light in motion, rained down through fleecy 
 clouds or trembling foliage, melting into half-shadows, 
 bathing and illuminating every object with a soft caress. 
 There are no tragic contrasts of splendor sharply de- 
 fined on blackness, no mysteries of half-felt and per- 
 vasive twilight, no studied accuracies of noonday clear- 
 ness in his work. Light and shadow are woven to- 
 gether on his figures like an impalpable Coan gauze, 
 aerial and transparent, enhancing the palpitations of 
 voluptuous movement which he loved. His coloring, 
 in like manner, has none of the superb and mundane 
 pomp which the Venetians affected: it does not glow 
 
156 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 or burn or beat the fire of gems into our brain; joyous 
 and wanton, it seems to be exactly such a beauty- 
 bloom as sense requires for its satiety. There is no- 
 thing in his hues to provoke deep passion or to stimulate 
 the yearnings of the soul: the pure blushes of the dawn 
 and the crimson pyres of sunset are nowhere in the 
 world that he has painted. But that chord of jocund 
 color which may fitly be married to the smiles of light, 
 the blues which are found in laughing eyes, the pinks 
 that tinge the cheeks of early youth, and the warm 
 yet silvery tones of healthy flesh, mingle as in a mar- 
 vellous pearl-shell on his pictures. Both chiaroscuro 
 and coloring have this supreme purpose in art, to affect 
 the sense like music, and like music to create a mood 
 in the soul of the spectator. Now the mood which 
 Correggio stimulates is one of natural and thoughtless 
 pleasure. To feel his influence and at the same mo- 
 ment to be the subject of strong passion, or fierce lust, 
 or heroic resolve, or profound contemplation, or pensive 
 melancholy, is impossible. Wantonness, innocent be- 
 cause unconscious of sin, immoral because incapable 
 of any serious purpose, is the quality which prevails in 
 all that he has painted. The pantomimes of a Moham- 
 medan paradise might be put upon the stage after 
 patterns supplied by this least spiritual of painters. 
 
 It follows from this analysis that the Correggiosity 
 of Correggio, that which sharply distinguished him 
 from all previous artists, was the faculty of painting a 
 purely voluptuous dream of beautiful beings in per- 
 petual movement, beneath the laughter of morning 
 light, in a world of never- failing ,April hues. When 
 he attempts to depart from the fairy-land of which he 
 was the Prospero, and to match himself with the 
 
PARMA. 157 
 
 masters of sublime thought or earnest passion, he 
 proves his weakness. But within his own magic circle 
 he reigns supreme, no other artist having blended the 
 witcheries of coloring, chiaroscuro, and faunlike love- 
 liness of form into a harmony so perfect in its sensuous 
 charm. Bewitched by the strains of the siren, we 
 pardon affectations of expression, emptiness of mean- 
 ing, feebleness of composition, exaggerated and melo- 
 dramatic attitudes. There is what Goethe calls a 
 daemonic influence in the art of Correggio: "in poetry," 
 said Goethe to Eckermann, "especially in that which 
 is unconscious, before which reason and understanding 
 fall short, and which therefore produces effects so far 
 surpassing all conception, there is always something 
 daemonic." It is not to be wondered that Correggio, 
 possessed of this daemonic power in the highest degree, 
 and working to a purely sensuous end, should have 
 exercised a fatal influence over art. His successors, 
 attracted by an intoxicating loveliness which they could 
 not analyze, which had nothing in common with the 
 reason or the understanding, but was like a glamour 
 cast upon the soul in its most secret sensibilities, threw 
 themselves blindly into the imitation of Correggio's 
 faults. His affectation, his want of earnest thought, 
 his neglect of composition, his sensuous realism, his 
 all-pervading sweetness, his infantine prettiness, his 
 substitution of thaumaturgical effects for conscientious 
 labor, admitted only too easy imitation, and were but 
 too congenial with the spirit of the late Renaissance. 
 Cupolas through the length and breadth of Italy began 
 to be covered with clouds and simpering cherubs in 
 the convulsions of artificial ecstasy. The attenuated 
 elegance of Parmigiano, the attitudinizing of Anselmi's 
 
158 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 saints and angels, and a general sacrifice of what is 
 solid and enduring to sentimental gewgaws on the part 
 of all painters who had submitted to the magic of Cor- 
 reggio, proved how easy it was to go astray with the 
 great master. Meanwhile no one could approach him 
 in that which was truly his own the delineation of a 
 transient moment in the life of sensuous beauty, the 
 painting of a smile on Nature's face, when light and 
 color tremble in harmony with the movement of joyous 
 living creatures. Another daemonic nature of a far 
 more powerful type contributed his share to the ruin 
 of art in Italy. Michael Angelo's constrained attitudes 
 and muscular anatomy were imitated by painters and 
 sculptors, who thought that the grand style lay in the 
 presentation of theatrical athletes, but who could not 
 seize the secret whereby the great master made even 
 the bodies of men and women colossal trunks and 
 writhen limbs interpret the meanings of his deep and 
 melancholy soul. 
 
 It is a sad law of progress in art that when the 
 aesthetic impulse is on the wane, artists should perforce 
 select to follow the weakness rather than the vigor of 
 their predecessors. While painting was in the ascendant, 
 Raphael could take the best of Perugino and discard 
 the worst; in its decadence Parmigiano reproduces the 
 affectations of Correggio, and Bernini carries the ex- 
 aggerations of Michael Angelo to absurdity. All arts 
 describe a parabola. The force which produces them 
 causes them to rise throughout their growth up to a 
 certain point, and then to descend more gradually in 
 a long and slanting line of regular declension. There 
 is no real break of continuity. The end is the result 
 of simple exhaustion. Thus the last of our Elizabethan 
 
PARMA. 159 
 
 dramatists, Shirley and Crowne and Killigrevv, pushed 
 to its ultimate conclusion the principle inherent in 
 Marlowe, not attempting to break new ground, nor 
 imitating the excellences so much as the defects of 
 their forerunners. Thus, too, the Pointed style of 
 architecture in England gave birth first to what is 
 called the Decorated, next to the Perpendicular, and 
 finally expired in the Tudor. Each step was a step 
 of progress at first for the better, at last for the worse 
 but logical, continuous, necessitated.* 
 
 It is difficult to leave Correggio without at least 
 posing the question of the difference between moralized 
 and merely sensual art. Is all art excellent in itself 
 and good in its effect that is beautiful and earnest? 
 There is no doubt that Correggio's work is in a way 
 most beautiful; and it bears unmistakable signs of the 
 master having given himself with single-hearted devo- 
 tion to the expression of that phase of loveliness which 
 he could apprehend. In so far we must admit that 
 his art is both excellent and solid. Yet we are unable 
 to conceive that any human being could be made 
 better stronger for endurance, more fitted for the 
 uses of the world, more sensitive to what is noble in 
 nature by its contemplation. At the best, Correggio 
 does but please us in our lighter moments, and we are 
 apt to feel that the pleasure he has given is of an 
 enervating kind. To expect obvious morality of any 
 artist is confessedly absurd. It is not the artist's 
 province to preach, or even to teach, except by remote 
 suggestion. Yet the mind of the artist may be highly 
 
 * See the chapter on "Greek Tragedy and Euripides" in my 
 Greek Poets, vol. n., for a further development of this view of 
 artistic evolution. 
 
l6o SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 moralized, and then he takes rank not merely with the 
 ministers to refined pleasure, but also with the educators 
 of the world. He may, for example, be penetrated 
 with a just sense of humanity like Shakespeare, or with 
 a sublime temperance like Sophocles, instinct with 
 prophetic intuition like Michael Angelo, or with pas- 
 sionate experience like Beethoven. The mere sight of 
 the work of Pheidias is like breathing pure health- 
 giving air. Milton and Dante were steeped in religious 
 patriotism; Goethe was pervaded with philosophy, and 
 Balzac with scientific curiosity. Ariosto, Cervantes, 
 and even Boccaccio are masters in the mysteries of 
 common life. In all these cases the tone of the artist's 
 mind is felt throughout his work: what he paints or 
 sings or writes conveys a lesson while it pleases. On 
 the other hand, depravity in an artist or a poet per- 
 colates through work which has in it nothing positive 
 of evil, and a very miasma of poisonous influence may 
 rise from the apparently innocuous creations of a tainted 
 soul. Now Correggio is moralized in neither way 
 neither as a good or as a bad man, neither as an acute 
 thinker nor as a deliberate voluptuary. He is simply 
 sensuous. On his own ground he is even very fresh 
 and healthy: his delineation of youthful maternity, for 
 example, is as true as it is beautiful; and his sympathy 
 with the gleefulness of children is devoid of affectation. 
 We have then only to ask ourselves whether the defect 
 in him of all thought and feeling which is not at once 
 capable of graceful fleshly incarnation, be sufficient to 
 lower him in the scale of artists. This question must 
 of course be answered according to our definition of 
 the purposes of art. There is no doubt that the most 
 highly organized art that which absorbs the most 
 
PARMA. l6l 
 
 numerous human qualities and effects a harmony be- 
 tween the most complex elements is the noblest. 
 Therefore the artist who combines moral elevation and 
 power of thought with a due appreciation of sensual 
 beauty is more elevated and more beneficial than one 
 whose domain is simply that of carnal loveliness. Cor- 
 reggio, if this be so, must take a comparatively low 
 rank. Just as we welcome the beautiful athlete for 
 the radiant life that is in him, but bow before the 
 personality of Sophocles, whose perfect form enshrined 
 a noble and highly educated soul, so we gratefully 
 accept Correggio for his grace, while we approach the 
 consummate art of Michael Angelo with reverent awe. 
 It is necessary in aesthetics, as elsewhere, to recognize 
 a hierarchy of excellence, the grades of which are 
 determined by the greater or less comprehensiveness 
 of the artist's nature expressed in his work. At the 
 same time, the calibre of the artist's genius must be 
 estimated; for eminent greatness, even of a narrow 
 kind, will always command our admiration; and the 
 amount of his originality has also to be taken into ac- 
 count. What is unique has, for that reason alone, a 
 claim on our consideration. Judged in this way, Cor- 
 reggio deserves a place, say, in the sweet planet Venus, 
 above the moon and above Mercury, among the artists 
 who have not advanced beyond the contemplations 
 which find their proper outcome in love. Yet, even 
 thus, he aids the culture of humanity. "We should 
 take care," said Goethe, apropos of Byron, to Ecker- 
 mann, "not to be always looking for culture in the 
 decidedly pure and moral. Everything that is great 
 promotes cultivation as soon as we are aware of it." 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 
 
1 62 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 CANOSSA. 
 
 ITALY is less the land of what is venerable in anti- 
 quity than of beauty, by divine right young eternally 
 in spite of age. This is due partly to her history and 
 art and literature, partly to the temper of the races 
 who have made her what she is, and partly to her 
 natural advantages. Her oldest architectural remains, 
 the temples of Paestum and Girgenti, or the gates of 
 Perugia and Volterra, are so adapted to Italian land- 
 scape and so graceful in their massive strength, that 
 we forget the centuries which have passed over them. 
 We leap as by a single bound from the times of Roman 
 greatness to the new birth of humanity in the fourteenth 
 century, forgetting the many years during which Italy, 
 like the rest of Europe, was buried in what our an- 
 cestors called Gothic barbarism. The illumination cast 
 upon the classic period by the literature of Rome and 
 by the memory of her great men is so vivid that we 
 feel the days of the republic and the empire to be 
 near us; while the Italian Renaissance is so truly a 
 revival of that former splendor, a resumption of the 
 music interrupted for a season, that it is extremely 
 difficult to form any conception of the five long cen- 
 turies which elapsed between the Lombard invasion in 
 568 and the accession of Hildebrand to the Pontificate 
 in 1073. So true is it that nothing lives and has reality 
 for us but what is spiritual, intellectual, self-possessed 
 
CANOSSA. 1 63 
 
 in personality and consciousness. When the Egyptian 
 priest said to Solon, "You Greeks are always children," 
 he intended a gentle sarcasm, but he implied a com- 
 pliment; for the quality of imperishable youth belonged 
 to the Hellenic spirit, and has become the heritage of 
 every race which partook of it. And this spirit in no 
 common degree has been shared by the Italians of the 
 earlier and the later classic epoch. The land is full 
 of monuments pertaining to those two brilliant periods; 
 and whenever the voice of poet has spoken or the 
 hand of artist has been at work, that spirit, as dis- 
 tinguished from the spirit of medievalism , has found 
 expression. 
 
 Yet it must be remembered that during the five 
 centuries above-mentioned Italy was given over to Lom- 
 bards, Franks, and Germans. Feudal institutions, alien 
 to the social and political ideals of the classic world, 
 took a tolerably firm hold on the country. The Latin 
 element remained silent, passive, in abeyance, under- 
 going an important transformation. It was in the course 
 of those five hundred years that the Italians as a modern 
 people, separable from their Roman ancestors, were 
 formed. At the close of this obscure passage in Italian 
 history, their communes, the foundation of Italy's future 
 independence and the source of her peculiar national 
 development, appeared in all the vigor and audacity 
 of youth. At its close the Italian genius presented 
 Europe with its greatest triumph of constructive ability, 
 the papacy. At its close, again, the series of supreme 
 artistic achievements, starting with the architecture of 
 churches and public palaces, passing on to sculpture 
 and painting, and culminating in music, which only 
 ended with the temporary extinction of national vitality 
 
164 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 in the seventeenth century, was simultaneously begun 
 in all the provinces of the peninsula. 
 
 So important were these five centuries of incubation 
 for Italy, and so little is there left of them to arrest 
 the attention of the student, dazzled as he is by the 
 ever-living glories of Greece, Rome, and the Renais- 
 sance, that a visit to the ruins of Canossa is almost 
 a duty. There, in spite of himself, by the very isola- 
 tion and forlorn abandonment of what was once so 
 formidable a seat of feudal despotism and ecclesiastical 
 tyranny, he is forced to confront the obscure but mighty 
 spirit of the Middle Ages. There, if anywhere, the men 
 of those iron-hearted times anterior to the Crusades 
 will acquire distinctness for his imagination when he 
 recalls the three main actors in the drama enacted on 
 the summit of Canossa's rock in the bitter winter of 
 1077. 
 
 Canossa lies almost due south of Reggio d'Emilia, 
 upon the slopes of the Apennines. Starting from 
 Reggio, the carriage-road keeps to the plain for some 
 while in a westerly direction, and then bends away 
 towards the mountains. As we approach their spurs 
 the ground begins to rise. The rich Lombard tilth 
 of maize and vine gives place to English-looking 
 hedgerows, lined with oaks, and studded with hand- 
 some dark tufts of green hellebore. The hills descend 
 in melancholy earth-heaps on the plain, crowned here 
 and there with ruined castles. Four of these mediaeval 
 strongholds, called Bianello, Montevetro, Monteluzzo, 
 and Montezano, give the name of Quattro Castelli to 
 the commune. The most important of them, Bianello, 
 which, next to Canossa, was the strongest fortress pos- 
 sessed by the Countess Matilda and her ancestors, 
 
CANOSSA. 1 65 
 
 still presents a considerable mass of masonry, roofed, 
 and habitable. The group formed a kind of advance- 
 guard for Canossa against attack from Lombardy. 
 After passing Quattro Castelli, we enter the hills, 
 climbing gently upward between barren slopes of ashy 
 gray earth the debris of most ancient Apennines 
 crested at favorable points with lonely towers. In 
 truth, the whole country bristles with ruined forts, 
 making it clear that during the Middle Ages Canossa 
 was but the centre of a great military system, the core 
 and kernel of a fortified position which covered an 
 area to be measured by scores of square miles, reach- 
 ing far into the mountains, and buttressed on the plain. 
 As yet, however, after nearly two hours' driving, Ca- 
 nossa has not come in sight. At last a turn in the 
 road discloses an opening in the valley of the Enza 
 to the left. Up this lateral gorge we see first the 
 Castle of Rossena, on its knoll of solid red rock, flam- 
 ing in the sunlight; and then, further withdrawn, de- 
 tached from all surrounding objects, and reared aloft 
 as though to sweep the sea of waved and broken hills 
 around it, a sharp horn of hard white stone. That is 
 Canossa the alba Canossa, the Candida petra of its 
 rhyming chronicler. There is no mistaking the com- 
 manding value of its situation. At the same time the 
 brilliant whiteness of Canossa's rocky hill, contrasted 
 with the red gleam of Rossena, and outlined against 
 the prevailing dulness of these earthy Apennines, 
 secures a picturesque individuality concordant with its 
 unique history and unrivalled strength. 
 
 There is still a journey of two hours before the 
 castle can be reached, and this may be performed on 
 foot or horseback. The path winds upward over 
 
1 66 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 broken ground; following the arte of curiously jumbled 
 and thwarted hill-slopes; passing beneath the battle- 
 ments of Rossena, whence the unfortunate Everelina 
 threw herself in order to escape the savage love of 
 her lord and jailer; and then skirting those horrid 
 earthen baize which are so common and so unattractive 
 a feature of Apennine scenery. The most hideous 
 baize to be found in the length and breadth of Italy 
 are probably those of Volterra, from which the citizens 
 themselves recoil with a kind of terror, and which lure 
 melancholy men by intolerable fascination on to suicide. 
 Forever crumbling, altering with frost and rain, dis- 
 charging gloomy glaciers of slow-crawling mud, and 
 scarring the hill-side with tracts of barrenness, these 
 earth-precipices are among the most ruinous and dis- 
 comfortable failures of nature. They have not even 
 so much of wildness or grandeur as forms the saving 
 merit of nearly all wasteful things in the world, and 
 can only be classed with the desolate ghiare of Italian 
 river-beds. 
 
 Such as they are, these baize form an appropriate 
 preface to the gloomy and repellent isolation of Canossa. 
 The rock towers from a narrow platform to the height 
 of rather more than one hundred and sixty feet from 
 its base. The top is fairly level, forming an irregular 
 triangle, of which the greatest length is about two 
 hundred and sixty feet, and the width about one hun- 
 dred feet. Scarcely a vestige of any building can be 
 traced either upon the platform or the summit, with 
 the exception of a broken wall and windows supposed 
 to belong to the end of the sixteenth century. The 
 ancient castle, with its triple circuit of walls, enclosing 
 barracks for the garrison, lodgings for the lord and 
 
CANOSSA. 167 
 
 his retainers, a stately church, a sumptuous monastery, 
 storehouses, stables, workshops, and all the various 
 buildings of a fortified stronghold, have utterly dis- 
 appeared. The very passage of approach cannot be 
 ascertained; for it is doubtful whether the present ir- 
 regular path that scales the western face of the rock 
 be really the remains of some old staircase, correspond- 
 ing to that by which Mont St. Michel in Normandy is 
 ascended. One thing is tolerably certain that the 
 three walls of which we hear so much from the chro- 
 niclers, and which played so picturesque a part in the 
 drama of Henry IV.'s penance, surrounded the cliff at 
 its base, and embraced a large acreage of ground. The 
 citadel itself must have been but the acropolis or keep 
 of an extensive fortress. 
 
 There has been plenty of time since the year 1255, 
 when the people of Reggio sacked and destroyed 
 Canossa, for Nature to resume her undisputed sway by 
 obliterating the handiwork of men; and at present 
 Nature forms the chief charm of Canossa. Lying one 
 afternoon of May on the crisp short grass at the edge 
 of a precipice purple with iris in full blossom, I sur- 
 veyed, from what were once the battlements of Ma- 
 tilda's castle, a prospect than which there is none more 
 spirit-stirring, by reason of its beauty and its manifold 
 associations, in Europe. The lower castle-crowded 
 hills have sunk. Reggio lies at our feet, shut in be- 
 tween the crests of Monte Carboniano and Monte delle 
 Celle. Beyond Reggio stretches Lombardy the fairest 
 and most memorable battle-field of nations, the richest 
 and most highly cultivated garden of civilized industry. 
 Nearly all the Lombard cities may be seen, some of 
 them faint like bluish films of vapor, some clear with 
 
1 68 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 dome and spire. There is Modena and her Ghirlandina, 
 Carpi, Parma, Mirandola, Verona, Mantua, lie well-de- 
 fined and russet on the flat green map; and there 
 flashes a bend of lordly Po; and there the Euganeans 
 rise like islands, telling us where Padua and Ferrara 
 nestle in the amethystine haze. Beyond and above all 
 to the northward sweep the Alps, tossing their silvery 
 crests up into the cloudless sky from the violet mist 
 that girds their flanks and drowns their basements. 
 Monte Adamello and the Ortler, the cleft of the Brenner, 
 and the sharp peaks of the Venetian Alps are all dis- 
 tinctly visible. An eagle flying straight from our eyrie 
 might traverse Lombardy and light among the snow- 
 fields of the Valtelline between sunrise and sundown. 
 Nor is the prospect tame to southward. Here the 
 Apennines roll, billow above billow, in majestic de- 
 solation, soaring to snow summits in the Pellegrino 
 region. As our eye attempts to thread that labyrinth 
 of hill and vale, we tell ourselves that those roads wind 
 to Tuscany, and yonder stretches Garfagnana, where 
 Ariosto lived and mused in honorable exile from the 
 world he loved. 
 
 It was by one of the mountain passes that lead 
 from Lucca northward that the first founder of Canossa 
 is said to have travelled early in the tenth century. 
 Sigifredo, if the tradition may be trusted, was very 
 wealthy; and with his money he bought lands and 
 signorial rights at Reggio, bequeathing to his children, 
 when he died, about 945, a patrimony which they de- 
 veloped into a petty kingdom. Azzo, his second son, 
 fortified Canossa, and made it his principal place of 
 residence. When Lothair, King of Italy, died, in 950, 
 leaving his beautiful widow to the ill-treatment of his 
 
CANOSSA. 169 
 
 successor, Berenger, Adelaide found a protector in this 
 Azzo. She had been imprisoned on the Lake of Garda; 
 but managing to escape in man's clothes to Mantua, 
 she thence sent news of her misfortunes to Canossa. 
 Azzo lost no time in riding with his knights to her 
 relief, and brought her back in safety to his mountain 
 fastness. It is related that Azzo was afterwards in- 
 strumental in calling Otho into Italy and procuring his 
 marriage with Adelaide, in consequence of which 
 events Italy became a fief of the Empire. Owing to 
 the part he played at this time, the Lord of Canossa 
 was recognized as one of the most powerful vassals of 
 the German emperor in Lombardy. Honors were 
 heaped upon him; and he grew so rich and formidable 
 that Berenger, the titular King of Italy, laid siege to 
 his fortress of Canossa. The memory of this siege, 
 which lasted for three years and a half, is said still to 
 linger in the popular traditions of the place. When 
 Azzo died, at the end of the tenth century, he left to 
 his son Tedaldo the title of Count of Reggio and Mo- 
 dena; and this title was soon after raised to that of 
 Marquis. The Marches governed as Vicar of the Em- 
 pire by Tedaldo included Reggio, Modena, Ferrara, 
 Brescia, and probably Mantua. They stretched, in fact, 
 across the north of Italy, forming a quadrilateral be- 
 tween the Alps and Apennines. Like his father, Tedaldo 
 adhered consistently to the imperial party; and when 
 he died and was buried at Canossa, he in his turn 
 bequeathed to his son Bonifazio a power and jurisdic- 
 tion increased by his own abilities. Bonifazio held 
 the state of a sovereign at Canossa, adding the Duchy 
 of Tuscany to his father's fiefs, and meeting the allied 
 forces of the Lombard barons in the field of Coviolo 
 
I JO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 like an independent potentate. His power and splendor 
 were great enough to rouse the jealousy of the emperor; 
 but Henry in. seems to have thought it more prudent 
 to propitiate this proud vassal, and to secure his kind- 
 ness, than to attempt his humiliation. Bonifazio mar- 
 ried Beatrice, daughter of Frederick, Duke of Lorraine 
 her whose marble sarcophagus in the Campo Santo 
 at Pisa is said to have inspired Niccola Pisano with 
 his new style of sculpture. Their only child, Matilda, 
 was born, probably at Lucca, in 1046; and six years 
 after her birth, Bonifazio, who had swayed his subjects 
 like an iron-handed tyrant, was murdered. To the 
 great house of Canossa, the rulers of one third of Italy, 
 there now remained only two women, Bonifazio's widow, 
 Beatrice, and his daughter, Matilda. Beatrice married 
 Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine, who was recognized by 
 Henry IV. as her husband and as feudatory of the 
 empire in the full place of Boniface. He died about 
 1070; and in this year Matilda was married by proxy 
 to his son, Godfrey the Hunchback, whom, however, 
 she did not see till the year 1072. The marriage was 
 not a happy one; and the question has even been dis- 
 puted among Matilda's biographers whether it was 
 ever consummated. At any rate, it did not last long; 
 for Godfrey was killed at Antwerp in 1076. In this 
 year Matilda also lost her mother, Beatrice, who died 
 at Pisa, and was buried in the cathedral. 
 
 By this rapid enumeration of events it will be seen 
 how the power and honors of the house of Canossa, 
 including Tuscany, Spoleto, and the fairest portions of 
 Lombardy, had devolved upon a single woman of the 
 age of thirty at the moment when the fierce quarrel 
 between pope and emperor began in the year 1076. 
 
CANOSSA. 171 
 
 Matilda was destined to play a great, a striking, and 
 a tragic part in the opening drama of Italian history. 
 Her decided character and uncompromising course of 
 action have won for her the name of "la gran donna 
 d'ltalia," and have caused her memory to be blessed 
 or execrated, according as the temporal pretensions 
 and spiritual tyranny of the papacy may have found 
 supporters or opponents in posterity. She was reared 
 from childhood in habits of austerity and unquestion- 
 ing piety. Submission to the Church became for her 
 not merely a rule of conduct, but a passionate en- 
 thusiasm. She identified herself with the cause of 
 four successive popes, protected her idol, the terrible 
 and iron-hearted Hildebrand, in the time of his ad- 
 versity; remained faithful to his principles after his 
 death; and having served the Holy See with all her 
 force and all that she possessed through all her life- 
 time, she bequeathed her vast dominions to it on her 
 death-bed. Like some of the greatest mediaeval cha- 
 racters like Hildebrand himself Matilda was so 
 thoroughly of one piece that she towers above the 
 mists of ages with the massive grandeur of an in- 
 carnated idea. She is for us the living statue of a 
 single thought, an undivided impulse, the more than 
 woman born to represent her age. Nor was it without 
 reason that Dante symbolized in her the love of Holy 
 Church; though students of the Purgatory will hardly 
 recognize the lovely maiden, singing and plucking 
 flowers beside the stream of Lethe, in the stern and 
 warlike chatelaine of Canossa. Unfortunately we know 
 but little of Matilda's personal appearance. Her health 
 was not strong; and it is said to have been weakened, 
 especially in her last illness, by ascetic observances 
 
I 72 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Yet she headed her own troops, armed with sword 
 and cuirass, avoiding neither peril nor fatigue in the 
 quarrels of her master, Gregory. Up to the year 1622 
 two strong suits of mail were preserved at Quattro 
 Castelli, which were said to have been worn by her in 
 battle, and which were afterwards sold on the market- 
 place at Reggio. This habit of donning armor does 
 not, however, prove that Matilda was exceptionally 
 vigorous; for in those savage times she could hardly 
 have played the part of heroine without participating 
 personally in the dangers of warfare. 
 
 No less monumental in the plastic unity of his 
 character was the monk Hildebrand, who for twenty 
 years before his elevation to the papacy had been the 
 maker of popes and the creator of the policy of Rome. 
 When he was himself elected in the year 1073, and 
 had assumed the name of Gregory VII., he immediately 
 began to put in practice the plans for Church ag- 
 grandizement he had slowly matured during the pre- 
 vious quarter of a century. To free the Church from 
 its subservience to the Empire; to assert the Pope's 
 right to ratify the election of the emperor and to ex- 
 ercise jurisdiction over him; to place ecclesiastical 
 appointments in the sole power of the Roman See; 
 and to render the celibacy of the clergy obligatory, 
 were the points he had resolved to carry. Taken singly 
 and together, these chief aims of Hildebrand's policy 
 had but one object the magnification of the Church 
 at the expense both of the people and of secular 
 authorities, and the further separation of the Church 
 from the ties and sympathies of common life that 
 bound it to humanity. To accuse Hildebrand of per- 
 sonal ambition would be but shallow criticism, though 
 
CANOSSA. 173 
 
 it is clear that his inflexible and puissant nature found 
 a savage selfish pleasure in trampling upon power and 
 humbling pride at warfare with his own. Yet his was 
 in no sense an egotistic purpose, like that which moved 
 the popes of the Renaissance to dismember Italy for 
 their bastards. Hildebrand, like Matilda, was himself 
 the creature of a great idea. These two potent per- 
 sonalities completely understood each other, and worked 
 towards a single end. The mythopoeic fancy might 
 conceive of them as the male and female manifesta- 
 tions of one dominant faculty, the spirit of ecclesiastical 
 dominion incarnate in a man and woman of almost 
 superhuman mould. 
 
 Opposed to them, as the third actor in the drama 
 of Canossa, was a man of feebler mould. Henry IV., 
 King of Italy, but not yet crowned emperor, had none 
 of his opponents' unity of purpose or monumental 
 dignity of character. At war with his German feuda- 
 tories, browbeaten by rebellious sons, unfaithful and 
 cruel to his wife, vacillating in the measures he adopted 
 to meet his divers difficulties, at one time tormented 
 by his conscience into cowardly submission, and at 
 another treasonably neglectful of the most solemn obli- 
 gations, Henry was no match for the stern wills against 
 which he was destined to break in unavailing passion. 
 Early disagreements with Gregory had culminated in 
 his excommunication. The German nobles abandoned 
 his cause; and Henry found it expedient to summon a 
 council in Augsburg for the settlement of matters in 
 dispute between the empire and the papacy. Gregory 
 expressed his willingness to attend this council, and 
 set forth from Rome accompanied by the Countess 
 Matilda in December, 1076. He did not, however, 
 
174 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 travel farther than Vercelli, for news here reached him 
 that Henry was about to enter Italy at the head of a. 
 powerful army. Matilda hereupon persuaded the Holy 
 Father to place himself in safety among her strong- 
 holds of Canossa. Thither accordingly Gregory retired 
 before the ending of that year; and bitter were the 
 sarcasms uttered by the imperial partisans in Italy 
 upon this protection offered by a fair countess to the 
 monk who had been made a pope. The foul calumnies 
 of that bygone age would be unworthy of even so 
 much as this notice, if we did not trace in them the 
 ineradicable Italian tendency to cynical insinuation a 
 tendency which has involved the history of the Re- 
 naissance popes in an almost impenetrable mist of lies 
 and exaggerations. 
 
 Henry was in truth upon his road to Italy, but 
 with a very different attendance from that which Gregory 
 expected. Accompanied by Bertha, his wife, and his 
 boy son Conrad, the emperor elect left Spires in the 
 condition of a fugitive, crossed Burgundy, spent Christ- 
 mas at Besanjon, and journeyed to the foot of Mont 
 Cenis. It is said that he was followed by a single 
 male servant of mean birth; and if the tale of his ad- 
 ventures during the passage of the Alps can be cre- 
 dited, history presents fewer spectacles more picturesque 
 than the straits to which this representative of the Caesars, 
 this supreme chief of feudal civility, this ruler destined 
 still to be the leader of mighty armies and the father 
 of a line of monarchs, was exposed. Concealing his 
 real name and state, he induced some shepherds to 
 lead him and his escort through the thick snows to 
 the summit of Mont Cenis; and by the help of these 
 men the imperial party were afterwards let down the 
 
CANOSSA. 175 
 
 snow-slopes on the farther side by means of ropes. 
 Bertha and her women were sewn up in hides and 
 dragged across the frozen surface of the winter drifts. 
 It was a year memorable for its severity. Heavy snow 
 had fallen in October, which continued ice-bound and 
 unyielding till the following April. 
 
 No sooner had Henry reached Turin than he set 
 forward again in the direction of Canossa. The fame 
 of his arrival preceded him, and he found that his 
 party was far stronger in Italy than he had ventured 
 to expect. Proximity to the Church of Rome divests 
 its fulminations of half their terrors. The Italian bishops 
 and barons, less superstitious than the Germans, and 
 with greater reason to resent the domineering grasping- 
 ness of Gregory, were ready to espouse the emperor's 
 cause. Henry gathered a formidable force as he 
 marched onward across Lombardy; and some of the 
 most illustrious prelates and nobles of the South were 
 in his suite. A more determined leader than Henry 
 proved himself to be might possibly have forced Gregory 
 to some accommodation, in spite of the strength of 
 Canossa and the Pope's invincible obstinacy, by proper 
 use of these supporters. Meanwhile the adherents of 
 the Church were mustered in Matilda's fortress; among 
 whom may be mentioned Azzo, the progenitor of Este 
 and Brunswick; Hugo, Abbot of Clugny; and the 
 princely family of Piedmont. "I am become a second 
 Rome," exclaims Canossa, in the language of Matilda's 
 rhyming chronicler; "all honors are mine; I hold at 
 once both pope and king, the princes of Italy and 
 those of Gaul, those of Rome, and those from far be- 
 yond the Alps." The stage was ready; the audience 
 had assembled; and now the three great actors were 
 
176 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 about to meet. Immediately upon his arrival at Canossa, 
 Henry sent for his cousin, the Countess Matilda, and 
 besought her to intercede for him with Gregory. He 
 was prepared to make any concessions or to undergo 
 any humiliations if only the ban of excommunication 
 might be removed; nor, cowed as he was by his own 
 superstitious conscience, and by the memory of the 
 opposition he had met with from his German vassals, 
 does he seem to have once thought of meeting force 
 with force, and of returning to his Northern kingdom 
 triumphant in the overthrow of Gregory's pride. Ma- 
 tilda undertook to plead his cause before the Pontiff. 
 But Gregory was not to be moved so soon to mercy. 
 "If Henry has in truth repented," he replied, "let him 
 lay down crown and sceptre and declare himself un- 
 worthy of the name of king." The only point con- 
 ceded to the suppliant was that he should be admitted 
 in the garb of a penitent within the precincts of the 
 castle. Leaving his retinue outside the walls, Henry 
 entered the first series of outworks, and was thence 
 conducted to the second, so that between him and the 
 citadel itself there still remained the third of the sur- 
 rounding bastions. Here he was bidden to wait the 
 Pope's pleasure; and here, in the midst of that bitter 
 winter weather, while the fierce winds of the Apennines 
 were sweeping sleet upon him in their passage from 
 Monte Pellegrino to the plain, he knelt barefoot, clothed 
 in sack-cloth, fasting from dawn till eve, for three whole 
 days. On the morning of the fourth day, judging that 
 Gregory was inexorable, and that his suit would not 
 be granted, Henry retired to the Chapel of St. Nicholas, 
 which stood within this second precinct. There he 
 called to his aid the Abbot of Clugny and the countess, 
 
CANOSSA. 177 
 
 both of whom were his relations, and who, much as 
 they might sympathize with Gregory, could hardly be 
 supposed to look with satisfaction on their royal kins- 
 man's outrage. The abbot told Henry that nothing in 
 the world could move the Pope; but Matilda, when in 
 turn he fell before her knees and wept, engaged to do 
 for him the utmost. She probably knew that the mo- 
 ment for unbending had arrived, and that her imperious 
 guest could not with either decency or prudence pro- 
 long the outrage offered to the civil chief of Christen- 
 dom. It was the 25th of January when the emperor 
 elect was brought, half dead with cold and misery, 
 into the Pope's presence. There he prostrated himself 
 in the dust, crying aloud for pardon. It is said that 
 Gregory first placed his foot upon Henry's neck, utter- 
 ing these words of Scripture: "Super aspidem et basi- 
 liscum ambulabis, et conculcabis leonem et draconem," 
 and that then he raised him from the earth and formally 
 pronounced his pardon. The prelates and nobles who 
 took part in this scene were compelled to guarantee 
 with their own oaths the vows of obedience pronounced 
 by Henry; so that in the very act of reconciliation a 
 new insult was offered to him. After this Gregory said 
 mass, and permitted Henry to communicate; and at 
 the close of the day a banquet was served, at which 
 the king sat down to meat with the Pope and the 
 countess. 
 
 It is probable that, while Henry's penance was 
 performed in the castle courts beneath the rock, his 
 reception by the Pope, and all that subsequently hap- 
 pened, took place in the citadel itself. But of this we 
 have no positive information. Indeed, the silence of 
 the chronicles as to the topography of Canossa is pe- 
 
 Sketches in Italy. I2 
 
178 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 culiarly unfortunate for lovers of the picturesque in 
 historic detail, now that there is no possibility of 
 tracing the outlines of the ancient building. Had the 
 author of the Vita Mathildis (Muratori, vol. v.) foreseen 
 that his beloved Canossa would one day be nothing 
 but a mass of native rock, he would undoubtedly have 
 been more explicit on these points, and much that is 
 vague about an event only paralleled by our Henry II.'s 
 penance before Becket's shrine at Canterbury might 
 now be clear. 
 
 Very little remains to be told about Canossa. 
 During the same year 1077 Matilda made the cele- 
 brated donation of her fiefs to Holy Church. This 
 was accepted by Gregory in the name of St. Peter, and 
 it was confirmed by a second deed during the pon- 
 tificate of Urban IV., in 1 102. Though Matilda sub- 
 sequently married Guelfo d'Este, son of the Duke of 
 Bavaria, she was speedily divorced from him; nor was 
 there any heir to a marriage ridiculous by reason of 
 disparity of age, the bridegroom being but eighteen, 
 while the bride was forty-three in the year of her 
 second nuptials. During one of Henry's descents into 
 Italy, he made an unsuccessful attack upon Canossa, 
 assailing it at the head of a considerable force one 
 October morning in 1092. Matilda's biographer in- 
 forms us that the mists of autumn veiled his beloved 
 fortress from the eyes of the beleaguerers. They had 
 not even the satisfaction of beholding the unvanquished 
 citadel; and, what was more, the banner of the em- 
 peror was seized and dedicated as a trophy in the 
 Church of S. Apollonio. In the following year the 
 countess opened her gates of Canossa to an illustrious 
 fugitive, Adelaide, the wife of her old foeman, Henry, 
 
CANOSSA. 179 
 
 who had escaped with difficulty from the insults and 
 the cruelty of her husband. After Henry's death, his 
 son, the Emperor Henry V., paid Matilda a visit in her 
 castle of Bianello, addressed her by the name of mo- 
 ther, and conferred upon her the vice-regency of Li- 
 guria. At the age of sixty-nine she died, in 1115, at 
 Bondeno de' Roncori, and was buried, not among her 
 kinsmen at Canossa, but in an abbey of St. Benedict 
 near Mantua. With her expired the main line of the 
 noble house she represented; though Canossa, now 
 made a fief of the empire in spite of Matilda's dona- 
 tion, was given to a family which claimed descent from 
 Bonifazio's brother Conrad, a young man killed in the 
 battle of Coviolo. This family, in its turn, was ex- 
 tinguished in the year 1570; but a junior branch still 
 exists at Verona. It will be remembered that Michel 
 Angelo Buonarroti claimed kinship with the Count of 
 Canossa; and a letter from the count is extant acknow- 
 ledging the validity of his pretension. 
 
 As far back as 1255 the people of Reggio destroyed 
 the castle; nor did the nobles of Canossa distinguish 
 themselves in subsequent history among those families 
 who based their despotisms on the debris of the im- 
 perial power in Lombardy. It seemed destined that 
 Canossa and all belonging to it should remain as a 
 mere name and memory of the outgrown Middle Ages. 
 Estensi, Carraresi, Visconti, Bentivogli, and Gonzaghi 
 belong to a later period of Lombard history, and mark 
 the dawn of the Renaissance. 
 
 As I lay and mused that afternoon of May upon 
 the short grass, cropped by two gray goats whom a 
 little boy was tending, it occurred to me to ask the 
 woman who had served me as guide whether any 
 
l8o SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 legend remained in the country concerning the Countess 
 Matilda. She had often, probably, been asked this 
 question by other travellers. Therefore she was more 
 than usually ready with an answer, which, as far as 
 I could understand her dialect, was this: Matilda was 
 a great and potent witch, whose summons the devil 
 was bound to obey. One day she aspired, alone of 
 all her sex, to say mass; but when the moment came 
 for sacring the elements a thunderbolt fell from the 
 clear sky and reduced her to ashes.* That the most 
 single-hearted handmaid of the Holy Church, whose 
 life was one long devotion to its ordinances, should 
 survive in this grotesque myth, might serve to point a 
 satire upon the vanity of earthly fame. The legend 
 in its very extravagance is a fanciful distortion of the 
 truth. 
 
 * I find that this story is common in the country round Canossa. 
 It is mentioned by Professor A. Ferretti in his monograph entitled 
 Canossa, StudieRicerchc (Reggio, 1876), a work to which I am 
 indebted, and which will repay careful study. 
 
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. l8l 
 
 CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. 
 
 FEW people visit Crema. It is a little country 
 town of Lombardy, between Cremona and Treviglio, 
 with no historic memories but very misty ones belong- 
 ing to the days of the Visconti dynasty. On every 
 side around the city walls stretch smiling vineyards 
 and rich meadows, where the elms are married to the 
 mulberry-trees by long festoons of foliage hiding purple 
 grapes, where the sunflowers droop their heavy golden 
 heads among tall stems of millet and gigantic maize, 
 and here and there a ricecrop ripens in the marshy 
 loam. In vintage time the carts, drawn by their white 
 oxen, come creaking townward in the evening, laden 
 with blue bunches. Down the long straight roads, 
 between rows of poplars, they creep on; and on the 
 shafts beneath the pyramid of fruit lie contadini stained 
 with lees of wine. Far off across that "waveless sea" 
 of Lombardy, which has been the battle-field of count- 
 less generations, rise the dim, gray Alps, or else 
 pearled domes of thunder-clouds in gleaming masses 
 over some tall solitary tower. Such backgrounds, full 
 of peace, suggestive of almost infinite distance, and 
 dignified with colors of incomparable depth and 
 breadth, the Venetian painters loved. No landscape 
 in Europe is more wonderful than this thrice wonder- 
 ful in the vastness of its arching heavens, in the still- 
 ness of its level plain, and in the bulwark of huge 
 
1 82 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 crested mountains, reared afar like bastions against 
 the northern sky. 
 
 The little town is all alive in this September 
 weather. At every corner of the street, under rustling 
 abeles and thick-foliaged planes, at the doors of 
 palaces and in the yards of inns, men, naked from the 
 thighs downward, are treading the red must into vats 
 and tuns; while their mild-eyed oxen lie beneath them 
 in the road, peaceably chewing the cud between one 
 journey to the vineyard and another. It must not be 
 imagined that the scene of Alma Tadema's "Roman 
 Vintage," or what we fondly picture to our fancy of 
 the Athenian Lenaea, is repeated in the streets of 
 Crema. This modern treading of the wine-press is a 
 very prosaic affair. The town reeks with a sour smell 
 of old casks and crushed grape-skins, and the men 
 and women at work bear no resemblance whatever 
 to Bacchus and his crew. Yet even as it is, the Lom- 
 bard vintage, beneath floods of sunlight and a pure 
 blue sky, is beautiful; and he who would fain make 
 acquaintance with Crema, should time his entry into 
 the old town, if possible, on some still, golden after- 
 noon of autumn. It is then, if eve;, that he will learn 
 to love the glowing brickwork of its churches and the 
 quaint terra-cotta traceries that form its chief artistic 
 charm. 
 
 How the unique brick architecture of the Lombard 
 cities took its origin whether from the precepts of 
 Byzantine aliens in the earliest Middle Ages, or from 
 the native instincts of a mixed race composed of 
 Gallic, Ligurian, Roman, and Teutonic elements, under 
 the leadership of Longobardic rulers is a question 
 for antiquarians to decide. There can, however, be 
 
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. 183 
 
 no doubt that the monuments of the Lombard style, 
 as they now exist, are no less genuinely local, no less 
 characteristic of the country they adorn, no less in- 
 digenous to the soil they sprang from, than the Attic 
 colonnades of Mnesicles and Ictinus. What the marble 
 quarries of Pentelicus were to the Athenian builders, 
 the clay beneath their feet was to those Lombard 
 craftsmen. From it they fashioned structures as endur- 
 ing, towers as -majestic, and cathedral aisles as solemn 
 as were ever wrought from chiselled stone. There is 
 a true sympathy between those buildings and the 
 Lombard landscape, which by itself might suffice to 
 prove the originality of their almost unknown architects. 
 The rich color of the baked clay finely modulated 
 from a purplish red, through russet, crimson, pink, and 
 orange, to pale yellow and dull gray harmonizes with 
 the brilliant greenery of Lombard vegetation and with 
 the deep azure of the distant Alpine range. Reared 
 aloft above the flat expanse of plain, those square 
 torront, tapering into octagons and crowned with 
 slender cones, break the long sweeping lines and in- 
 finite horizons with a contrast that affords relief, and 
 yields a resting-place to tired eyes; while, far away, 
 seen haply from some bridge above Ticino, or some 
 high-built palace loggia, they gleam like columns of 
 pale rosy fire against the front of mustering storm- 
 clouds blue with rain. In that happy orchard of Italy, 
 a pergola of vines in leaf, a clump of green acacias, 
 and a campanile soaring above its church roof, brought 
 into chance combination with the reaches of the plain 
 and the dim mountain-range, make up a picture elo- 
 quent in its suggestive beauty. 
 
 Those ancient builders wrought cunningly with 
 
184 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 their material. The bricks are fashioned and fixed to 
 last for all time. Exposed to the icy winds of a Lom- 
 bard winter, to the fierce fire of a Lombard summer, 
 and to the moist vapors of a Lombard autumn; 
 neglected by unheeding . generations; with flowers 
 clustering in their crannies, and birds nesting in their 
 eaves, and mason-bees filling the delicate network of 
 their traceries they still present angles as sharp as 
 when they were but finished, and joints as nice as 
 when the mortar dried in the first months of their 
 building. This immunity from age and injury they 
 owe partly to the imperishable nature of baked clay; 
 partly to the care of the artists who selected and 
 mingled the right sorts of earth, burned them with 
 scrupulous attention, and fitted them together with a 
 patience born of loving service. Each member of the 
 edifice was designed with a view to its ultimate place. 
 The proper curve was ascertained for cylindrical 
 columns and for rounded arches. Larger bricks were 
 moulded for the supporting walls, and lesser pieces 
 were adapted to the airy vaults and lanterns. In the 
 brickfield and the kiln the whole church was planned 
 and wrought out in its details, before the hands that 
 made a unity of all these scattered elements were set 
 to the work of raising it in air. When they came to 
 put the puzzle together, they laid each brick against 
 its neighbor, filling up the almost imperceptible inter- 
 stices with liquid cement composed of quicklime and 
 fine sand in water. After five centuries the seams 
 between the layers of bricks that make the bell-tower 
 of S. Gottardo at Milan yield no point of vantage to 
 the penknife or the chisel. 
 
 Nor was it in their welding of the bricks alone 
 
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. 1 85 
 
 that these craftsmen showed their science. They were 
 wont to enrich the surface with marble, sparingly but 
 effectively employed -as in those slender detached 
 columns which add such beauty to the octagon of 
 S. Gottardo, or in the string-courses of strange beasts 
 and reptiles that adorn the church-fronts of Pavia. 
 They called to their aid the mandorlato of Verona, 
 supporting their porch pillars on the backs of couchant 
 lions, inserting polished slabs on their facades, and 
 building huge sarcophagi into their cloister alleys. Be- 
 tween terra-cotta and this marble of Verona there 
 exists a deep and delicate affinity. It took the name 
 of mandorlato, I suppose, from a resemblance to al- 
 mond blossoms. But it is far from having the simple 
 beauty of a single hue. Like all noble veined stones, 
 it passes by a series of modulations and gradations 
 through a gamut of associated rather than contrasted 
 tints. Not the pink of the almond blossom only , but 
 the creamy whiteness of the almond kernel and the 
 dull yellow of the almond nut may be found in it; 
 and yet these colors are so blended and blurred to 
 all-pervading mellowness, that nowhere is there any 
 shock of contrast or violence of a preponderating tone. 
 The veins which run in labyrinths of crossing, curv- 
 ing, and contorted lines all over its smooth surface 
 add, no doubt, to this effect of unity. The polish, 
 lastly, which it takes, makes the mandorlato shine like 
 a smile upon the sober face of the brickwork; for, 
 serviceable as terra-cotta is for nearly all artistic pur- 
 poses, it cannot reflect light or gain the illumination 
 which comes from surface brightness. 
 
 What the clay can do almost better than any 
 crystalline material, may be seen in the mouldings so 
 
1 86 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 characteristic of Lombard architecture. Geometrical 
 patterns of the rarest and most fanciful device; scrolls 
 of acanthus-foliage, and traceries of tendrils; Cupids 
 swinging in festoons of vines; angels joining hands in 
 dance, with fluttering skirts and windy hair, and 
 mouths that symbol singing; grave faces of old men 
 and beautiful profiles of maidens leaning from medal- 
 lions; wide-winged genii filling the spandrils of cloister 
 arches, and cherubs clustered in the rondure of rose- 
 windows ornaments like these, wrought from the 
 plastic clay, and adapted with true taste of the require- 
 ments of the architecture, are familiar to every one 
 who has studied the church-front of Crema, the cloisters 
 of the Certosa, the courts of the Ospedale Maggiore 
 at Milan, or the public palace of Cremona. 
 
 If the mandorlato give a smile to those majestic 
 Lombard buildings, the terra-cotta decorations add 
 the element of life and movement. The thought of 
 the artist in its first freshness and vivacity is felt in 
 them. They have all the spontaneity of improvisa- 
 tion, the seductive melody of unpremeditated music. 
 Moulding the supple earth with "hand obedient to 
 the brain," the plasticatore has impressed his most 
 fugitive dreams of beauty on it without effort; and 
 what it cost him but a few fatigueless hours to fashion, 
 the steady heat of the furnace has gifted with im- 
 perishable life. Such work, no doubt, has the defects 
 of its qualities. As there are few difficulties to over- 
 come, it suffers from a fatal facility nee pluteum cadit 
 nee demorsos sapit ungues. It is, therefore, apt to be 
 unequal, touching at times the highest point of in- 
 spiration, as in the angels of Guccio at Perugia, and 
 sinking not unfrequently into the commonplace of 
 
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. 187 
 
 easy-going triviality, as in the common floral traceries 
 of Milanese windows. But it is never labored, never 
 pedantic, never dulled by the painful effort to subdue 
 an obstinate material to the artist's will. If marble is 
 required to develop the strength of the few supreme 
 sculptors, terra-cotta saves intact the fancies of a crowd 
 of lesser men. 
 
 When we reflect that all the force, solemnity, and 
 beauty of the Lombard buildings was evoked from 
 clay, we learn from them this lesson: that the thought 
 of man needs neither precious material nor yet stub- 
 born substance for the production of enduring master- 
 pieces. The red earth was enough for God when he 
 made man in his own image; and mud dried in the 
 sun suffices for the artist, who is next to God in his 
 creative faculty since non merita name di creatore se 
 non Iddio ed il poet a. After all, what is more ever- 
 lasting than terra-cotta? The hobnails of the boys 
 who ran across the brickfields in the Roman town of 
 Silchester may still be seen, mingled with the impress 
 of the feet of dogs and hoofs of goats, in the tiles dis- 
 covered there. Such traces might serve as a metaphor 
 for the footfall of artistic genius, when the form-giver 
 has stamped his thought upon the moist clay, and 
 fire has made that imprint permanent. 
 
 Of all these Lombard edifices, none is more beauti- 
 ful than the Cathedral of Crema, with its delicately 
 finished campanile, built of choicely tinted yellow 
 bricks, and ending in a lantern of the gracefullest, 
 most airily capricious fancy. This bell-tower does not 
 display the gigantic force of Cremona's famous tor- 
 razzo, shooting three hundred and ninety-six feet into 
 blue ether from the city square; nor can it rival the 
 
1 88 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 octagon of S. Gottardo for warmth of hue. Yet it has 
 a character of elegance, combined with boldness of 
 invention, that justifies the citizens of Crema in their 
 pride. It is unique; and he who has not seen it does 
 not know the whole resources of the Lombard style. 
 The faade of the cathedral displays that peculiar 
 blending of Byzantine or Romanesque round arches 
 with Gothic details in the windows, and with the acute 
 angle of the central pitch which forms the characteristic 
 quality of the late trecento Lombard manner. In its 
 combination of purity and richness it corresponds to 
 the best age of decorated work in English Gothic. 
 What, however, strikes a Northern observer is the 
 strange detachment of this elaborate facade from the 
 main structure of the church. Like a frontispiece cut 
 out of cardboard and pierced with ornamental open- 
 ings, it shoots far above the low roof of the nave; so 
 that at night the moon, rising above the southern aisle, 
 shines through its topmost window, and casts the 
 shadow of its tracery upon the pavement of the 
 square. This is a constructive blemish to which the 
 Italians in no part of the peninsula were sensitive. 
 They seem to have regarded their church-fronts as in- 
 dependent of the edifice, capable of separate treatment, 
 and worthy in themselves of being made the subject 
 of decorative skill. 
 
 In the so-called Santuario of Crema a circular 
 church dedicated to S. Maria della Croce, outside the 
 walls the Lombard style has been adapted to the 
 manner of the Mid Renaissance. This church was 
 raised in the last years of the fifteenth century by 
 Gian Battista Battagli, an architect of Lodi, who fol- 
 lowed the pure rules of taste bequeathed to North 
 
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. 189 
 
 Italian builders by Bramante. The beauty of the 
 edifice is due entirely to its tranquil dignity and 
 harmony of parts, the lightness of its circling loggia, 
 and the just proportion maintained between the central 
 structure and the four projecting porticos. The sharp 
 angles of these vestibules afford a contrast to the 
 simplicity of the main building, while their clustered 
 cupolas assist the general effect of roundness aimed at 
 by the architect. Such a church as this proves how 
 much may be achieved by the happy distribution of 
 architectural masses. It was the triumph of the best 
 Renaissance style to attain lucidity of treatment, and 
 to produce beauty by geometrical proportion. When 
 Leo Battista Alberti complained to his friend, Matteo 
 di Bastia, that a slight alteration of the curves in his 
 design for S. Francesco at Rimini would "spoil his 
 music," cib che tu muti discorda tutta quella musica, 
 this is what he meant. The melody of lines and the 
 harmony of parts made a symphony to his eyes no 
 less agreeable than a concert of tuned lutes and voices 
 to his ears; and to this concord he was so sensitive 
 that any deviation was a discord. 
 
 After visiting the church of Crema and sauntering 
 about the streets awhile, there is nothing left to do 
 but to take refuge in the old Albergo del Pozzo. This 
 is one of those queer Italian inns which carry you 
 away at once into a scene of Goldoni. It is part, of 
 some palace where nobles housed their bravi in the 
 sixteenth century, and which the lesser people of to- 
 day have turned into a dozen habitations. Its great 
 stone staircase leads to a saloon upon which the various 
 bedchambers open; and round its court-yard runs an 
 open balcony, and from the court grows up a fig-tree, 
 
I go SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 poking ripe fruit against a bedroom window. Oleanders 
 in tubs and red salvias in pots, and kitchen herbs in 
 boxes flourish on the pavement, where the hostler 
 comes to wash his carriages, and where the barber 
 shaves the poodle of the house. Visitors to the Albergo 
 del Pozzo are invariably asked if they have seen the 
 Museo; and when they answer in the negative, they 
 are conducted with some ceremony to a large room on 
 the ground-floor of the inn looking out upon the court- 
 yard and the fig-tree. It was here that I gained the 
 acquaintance of Signor Folcioni and became possessor 
 of an object that has made the memory of Crema 
 doubly interesting to me ever since. 
 
 When we entered the Museo we found a little old 
 man, gentle, grave, and unobtrusive, varnishing the 
 ugly portrait of some signor of the Cinque Cento. 
 Round the walls hung pictures of mediocre value in 
 dingy frames, but all of them bore sounding titles. 
 Titians, Leonardos, Guido Renis, and Luinis looked 
 down and waited for a purchaser. In truth this 
 museum was a bnc-d-brac shop of a sort that is com- 
 mon enough in Italy, where treasures of old lace, glass, 
 armor, furniture, and tapestry may still be met with. 
 Signor Folcioni began by pointing out the merits of 
 his pictures; and after making due allowance for his 
 zeal as amateur and dealer, it was possible to join in 
 some of his eulogiums. A would-be Titian, for in- 
 stance, bought in Verona from a noble house in ruins, 
 showed Venetian wealth of color in its gemmy greens 
 and lucid crimsons shining from a background deep 
 and glowing. Then he led us to a walnut-wood bureau 
 of late Renaissance work, profusely carved with nymphs 
 and Cupids, and armed men, among festoons of fruits 
 
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. IQI 
 
 embossed in high relief. Deeply drilled worm-holes 
 set a seal of antiquity upon the blooming faces and 
 luxuriant garlands, like the touch of Time who " delves 
 the parallels in beauty's brow." On the shelves of an 
 ebony cabinet close by he showed us a row of cups 
 cut out of rock-crystal and mounted in gilt silver, with 
 heaps of engraved gems, old snuff-boxes, coins, medals, 
 sprays of coral, and all the indescribable lumber that 
 one age flings aside as worthless for the next to pick 
 up from the dust-heap and regard as precious. Surely 
 the genius of culture in our century might be com- 
 pared to a chiffonnier of Paris, who, when the night 
 has fallen, goes into the streets, bag on back and 
 lantern in hand, to rake up the waifs and strays a day 
 of whirling life has left him. 
 
 The next curiosity was an ivory carving of St. 
 Anthony preaching to the fishes, so fine and small you 
 held it on your palm and used a lens to look at it. 
 Yet there stood the Santo gesticulating, and there were 
 the fishes in rows the little fishes first, and then the 
 middle-sized, and last of all the great big fishes, almost 
 out at sea, with their heads above the water and their 
 mouths wide open, just as the Fioretti di Francesco de- 
 scribes them. After this came some original drawings 
 of doubtful interest, and then a case of fifty-two nielli. 
 These were of unquestionable value; for has not Ci- 
 cognara engraved them on a page of his classic mono- 
 graph? The thin silver plates, over which once passed 
 the burin of Maso Finiguerra, cutting lines finer than 
 hairs, and setting here a shadow in dull acid-eaten 
 gray, and there a high light of exquisite polish, were 
 far more delicate than any proofs impressed from 
 them. These frail masterpieces of Florentine art the 
 
I 92 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 first beginnings of line engraving we held in our 
 hands while Signor Folcioni read out Cicognara's com- 
 mentary in a slow, impressive voice, breaking off now 
 and then to point at the originals before us. 
 
 The sun had set, and the room was almost dark, 
 when he laid his book down, and said, "I have not 
 much left to show yet stay! Here are still some 
 little things of interest." He then opened the door in- 
 to his bedroom and took down from a nail above his 
 bed a wooden crucifix. Few things have fascinated 
 me more than this crucifix produced without parade, 
 half negligently, from the dregs of his collection by a 
 dealer in old curiosities at Crema. The cross was, or 
 t's for it is lying on the table now before me twenty- 
 one inches in length, made of strong wood, covered 
 with coarse yellow parchment, and shod at the four 
 ends with brass. The Christ is roughly hewn in red- 
 dish wood, colored scarlet where the blood streams 
 from the five wounds. Over the head an oval medal- 
 lion, nailed into the cross, serves as frame-work to a 
 miniature of the Madonna, softly smiling with a Cor- 
 reggiesque simper. The whole crucifix is not a work 
 of art, but such as may be found in every convent. 
 Its date cannot be earlier than the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. As I held it in my hand, I thought 
 perhaps this has been carried to the bedside of the 
 sick and dying; preachers have brandished it from the 
 pulpit over conscience-stricken congregations; monks 
 have knelt before it on the brick floor of their cells, 
 and novices have kissed it in the vain desire to drown 
 their yearnings after the relinquished world; perhaps 
 it has attended criminals to the scaffold, and heard the 
 secrets of repentant murderers; but why should it be 
 
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. 1 93 
 
 shown me as a thing of rarity? These thoughts passed 
 through my mind, while Signor Folcioni quietly re- 
 marked, "I bought this cross from the Frati when their 
 convent was dissolved in Crema." Then he bade me 
 turn it round, and showed a little steel knob fixed into 
 the back between the arms. This was a spring. He 
 pressed it, and the upper and lower parts of the cross 
 came asunder; and, holding the top like a handle, I 
 drew out as from a scabbard a sharp steel blade, con- 
 cealed in the thickness of the wood behind the very 
 body of the agonizing Christ. What had been a cruci- 
 fix became a deadly poniard in my grasp, anft the 
 rust upon it in the twilight looked like blood. "I have 
 often wondered," said Signor Folcioni, "that the Frati 
 cared to sell me this." 
 
 There is no need to raise the question of the 
 genuineness of this strange relic though I confess to 
 having had my doubts about it or to wonder for what 
 nefarious purposes the impious weapon was designed 
 whether the blade was inserted by some rascal monk 
 who never told the tale, or whether it was used on 
 secret service by the friars. On its surface the infernal 
 engine carries a dark certainty of treason, sacrilege, 
 and violence. Yet it would be wrong to incriminate 
 the Order of St. Francis by any suspicion, and idle to 
 seek the actual history of this mysterious weapon. A 
 writer of fiction could, indeed, produce some dark tale 
 in the style of De Stendhal's nouvelles, and christen it 
 "The Crucifix of Crema." And how delighted would 
 Webster have been if he had chanced to hear of such 
 a sword-sheath ! He might have placed it in the hands 
 of Bosola for the keener torment of his duchess. 
 Flamineo might have used it; or the disguised friars 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 1 3 
 
IQ4 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 who made the death-bed of Bracciano hideous might 
 have plunged it in the duke's heart after mocking 
 his eyes with the figure of the suffering Christ. To 
 imagine such an instrument of moral terror mingled 
 with material violence lay within the scope of Webster's 
 sinister and powerful genius. But unless he had seen 
 it with his eyes, what poet would have ventured to 
 devise the thing and display it even in the dumb show 
 of a tragedy? Fact is more wonderful than romance. 
 No apocalypse of Antichrist matches what is told of 
 Roderigo Borgia; and the crucifix of Crema exceeds 
 the sftmbre fantasy of Webster. 
 
 Whatever may be the truth about this cross, it has 
 at any rate the value of a symbol or a metaphor. The 
 idea which it materializes, the historical events of 
 which it is a sign, may well arrest attention. A sword 
 concealed in the crucifix! What emblem brings more 
 forcibly to mind than this that two-edged glaive of 
 persecution which Dominic unsheathed to mow down 
 the populations of Provence and to make Spain desti- 
 tute of men? Looking upon the crucific of Crema, 
 we may seem to see pestilence-stricken multitudes of 
 Moors and Jews dying on the coasts of Africa and 
 Italy. The Spaniards enter Mexico, and this is the 
 cross they carry in their hands. They take possession 
 of Peru, and while the gentle people of the Incas 
 come to kiss the bleeding brows of Christ they plunge 
 this dagger in their sides. What, again, was the tem- 
 poral power of the Papacy but a sword imbedded in 
 a cross? Each Papa Re, when he ascended the Holy 
 Chair, was forced to take the crucifix of Crema and 
 to bear it till his death. A long procession of war- 
 loving pontiffs, levying armies and paying captains 
 
CREMA AND THE CRUCIFIX. 1 95 
 
 with the pence of St. Peter, in order to keep by arms 
 the lands they had acquired by fraud, defiles before 
 our eyes. First goes the terrible Sixtus IV., who died 
 of grief when news was brought him that the Italian 
 princes had made peace. He it was who sanctioned 
 the conspiracy to murder the Medici in church at the 
 moment of the elevation of the Host. The brigands 
 hired to do this work refused at the last moment. The 
 sacrilege appalled them. "Then," says the chronicler, 
 "was found a priest who, being used to churches, had 
 no scruple." The poniard this priest carried was this 
 crucifix of Crema. After Sixtus came the blood-stained 
 Borgia; and after him Julius II., whom the Romans in 
 triumphal songs proclaimed a second Mars, and who 
 turned, as Michael Angelo expressed it, the chalices of 
 Rome into swords and helms. Leo X., who dismem- 
 bered Italy for his brother and nephew; and Clement VIL, 
 who broke the neck of Florence and delivered the 
 Eternal City to the spoiler, follow. Of the antinomy 
 between the vicariate of Christ and an earthly kingdom 
 incarnated by these and other holy fathers, what sym- 
 bol could be found more fitting than a dagger with a 
 crucifix for case and covering? 
 
 It is not easy to think or write of these matters 
 without rhetoric. When I laid my head upon my pil- 
 low that night in the Albergo del Pozzo at Crema it 
 was full of such thoughts; and when at last sleep came, 
 it brought with it a dream begotten doubtless by the 
 perturbation of my fancy. For I thought that a brown 
 Franciscan, with hollow cheeks and eyes aflame be- 
 neath his heavy cowl, sat by my bedside, and, as he 
 raised the crucifix in his lean, quivering hands, whis- 
 pered a tale of deadly passion and of dastardly re- 
 
196 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 venge. His confession carried me away to a convent 
 garden of Palermo; and there was love in the story, 
 and hate that is stronger than love, and, for the end- 
 ing of the whole matter, remorse which dies not even 
 in the grave. Each new possessor of the crucifix of 
 Crema, he told me, was forced to hear from him in 
 dreams his dreadful history. But, since it was a 
 dream and nothing more, why should I repeat it? I 
 have wandered far enough already from the vintage 
 and the sunny churches of the little Lombard town. 
 
 MONTE GENEROSO. 
 
 THE long, hot days of Italian summer were settling 
 down on plain and country when, in the last week of 
 May, we travelled northward from Florence and Bologna 
 seeking coolness. That was very hard to find in Lom- 
 bardy. The days were long and sultry, the nights 
 short, without a respite from the heat. Milan seemed 
 a furnace, though in the Duomo and the narrow shady 
 streets there was a twilight darkness which at least 
 looked cool. Long may it be before the Northern 
 spirit of improvement has taught the Italians to despise 
 the wisdom of their forefathers, who built those sombre 
 streets of palaces with overhanging eaves, that, almost 
 meeting, form a shelter from the fiercest sun. The 
 lake country was even worse than the towns; the sun- , 
 light lay all day asleep upon the shining waters, and 
 no breeze came to stir their surface or to lift the tepid 
 
MONTE GENEROSO. 1 97 
 
 veil of haze, through which the stony mountains, with 
 their yet unmelted patches of winter snow, glared as 
 if in mockery of coolness. 
 
 Then we heard of a new inn, which had just been 
 built by an enterprising Italian doctor below the very 
 top of Monte Generoso. There was a picture of it in 
 the hotel at Cadenabbia, but this gave but little idea 
 of any particular beauty. A big square house, with 
 many windows, and the usual ladies on mules, and 
 guides with alpenstocks, advancing towards it, and 
 some round bushes growing near, was all it showed. 
 Yet there hung the real Monte Generoso above our 
 heads, and we thought it must be cooler on its height 
 than by the lake-shore. To find coolness was the great 
 point with us just then. Moreover, some one talked 
 of the wonderful plants that grew among its rocks, and 
 of its grassy slopes enamelled with such flowers as 
 make our cottage-gardens at home gay in summer, not 
 to speak of others rarer and peculiar to the region of 
 the Southern Alps. Indeed, the Generoso has a name 
 for flowers, and it deserves it, as we presently found. 
 
 This mountain is fitted by its position for com- 
 manding one of the finest views in the whole range of 
 the Lombard Alps. A glance at the map shows that. 
 Standing out pre-eminent among the chain of lower 
 hills to which it belongs, the lakes of Lugano and 
 Como with their long arms enclose it on three sides, 
 while on the fourth the plain of Lombardy with its 
 many cities, its rich pasture-lands and corn-fields inter- 
 sected by winding river-courses and straight intermin- 
 able roads, advances to its very foot. No place could 
 be better chosen for surveying that contrasted scene of 
 plain and mountain which forms the great attraction 
 
ig8 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 of the outlying buttresses of the central Alpine mass. 
 The superiority of the Monte Generoso to any of the 
 similar eminences on the northern outskirts of Switzer- 
 land is great. In richness of color, in picturesqueness 
 of suggestion, in sublimity and breadth of prospect, its 
 advantages are incontestable. The reasons for this 
 superiority are obvious. On the Italian side the tran- 
 sition from mountain to plain is far more abrupt; the 
 atmosphere being clearer, a larger sweep of distance 
 is within our vision; again, the sunlight blazes all day 
 long upon the very front and forehead of the distant 
 Alpine chain, instead of merely slanting along it, as it 
 does upon the northern side. 
 
 From Mendrisio, the village at the foot of the 
 mountain, an easy mule-path leads to the hotel, wind- 
 ing first through English-looking hollow lanes with real 
 hedges, which are rare in this country, and English 
 primroses beneath them. Then comes a forest region 
 of luxuriant chestnut-trees, giants with pink boles just 
 bursting into late leafage, yellow and tender, but too 
 thin as yet for shade. A little higher up, the chest- 
 nuts are displaced by wild laburnums bending under 
 their weight of flowers. The graceful branches meet 
 above our heads, sweeping their long tassels against 
 our faces as we ride beneath them, while the air for a 
 good mile is full of fragrance. It is strange to be re- 
 minded in this blooming labyrinth of the dusty suburb 
 roads and villa gardens of London. The laburnum is 
 pleasant enough in St. John's Wood or the Regent's 
 Park in May a tame domesticated thing of brightness 
 amid smoke and dust. But it is another joy to see it 
 flourishing in its own home, clothing acres of the 
 mountain-side in a very splendor of spring-color, ming- 
 
MONTE GENEROSO. IQ9 
 
 ling its paler blossoms with the golden broom of our 
 own hills, and with the silver of the hawthorn and wild 
 cherry. Deep beds of lilies-of-the-valley grow every- 
 where beneath the trees; and in the meadows purple 
 columbines, white asphodels, the Alpine spiraea, tall, 
 with feathery leaves, blue scabius, golden hawkweeds, 
 turkscap lilies, and, better than all, the exquisite narcis- 
 sus poeticus, with its crimson-tipped cup, and the pure 
 pale lilies of San Bruno are crowded in a maze of 
 dazzling brightness. Higher up the laburnums disap- 
 pear, and flaunting crimson peonies gleam here and 
 there upon the rocks, until at length the gentians and 
 white ranunculuses of the higher Alps displace the less 
 hardy flowers of Italy. 
 
 About an hour below the summit of the mountain 
 we came upon the inn, a large clean building, with 
 scanty furniture and snowy wooden floors, guiltless of 
 carpets. It is big enough to hold about a hundred 
 guests; and Dr. Pasta, who built it, a native of Men- 
 drisio, was gifted either with much faith or with a 
 real prophetic instinct.* Anyhow he deserves com- 
 mendation for his spirit of enterprise. As yet the 
 house is little known to English travellers: it is mostly 
 frequented by Italians from Milan, Novara, and other 
 cities of the plain, who call it the Italian Righi, and 
 come to it, as cockneys go to Richmond, for noisy 
 picnic excursions, or at most for a few weeks' villeggia- 
 
 * It is but just to Dr. Pasta to remark that the above sentence 
 was written more than ten years ago. Since then he has enlarged 
 and improved his house in many ways, furnished it more luxuriously, 
 made paths through the beechwoods round it, and brought excellent 
 water at a great cost from a spring near the summit of the moun- 
 tain. A more charming residence from early spring to late autumn 
 can. scarcely be discovered. 
 
2OO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 tura in the summer heats. When we were there in 
 May the season had scarcely begun, and the only in- 
 mates besides ourselves were a large party from Milan, 
 ladies and gentlemen in holiday guise, who came, 
 stayed one night, climbed the peak at sunrise, and de- 
 parted amid jokes and shouting and half-childish play, 
 very unlike the doings of a similar party in sober Eng- 
 land. After that the stillness of nature descended on 
 the mountain, and the sun shone day after day upon 
 that great view which seemed created only for our- 
 selves. And what a view it was! The plain, stretching 
 up to the high horizon, where a misty range of pink 
 cirrus-clouds alone marked the line where earth ended 
 and the sky began, was islanded with cities and villages 
 innumerable, basking in the hazy shimmering heat. 
 Milan, seen through the doctor's telescope, displayed 
 its Duomo perfect as a microscopic shell, with all its 
 exquisite fret-work, and Napoleon's arch of triumph 
 surmounted by the four tiny horses, as in a fairy's 
 dream. Far off, long silver lines marked the lazy 
 course of Po and Ticino, while little lakes like Varese 
 and the lower end of Maggiore spread themselves out, 
 connecting the mountains with the plain. 
 
 Five minutes' walk from the hotel brought us to a 
 ridge where the precipice fell suddenly and almost 
 sheer over one arm of Lugano Lake. Sullenly out- 
 stretched asleep it lay beneath us, colored with the 
 tints of fluor-spar, or with the changeful green and 
 azure of a peacock's breast. The depth appeared im- 
 measurable. San Salvadore had receded into insigni- 
 ficance; the houses and churches and villas of Lugano 
 bordered the lake-shore with an uneven line of white- 
 ness. And over all there rested a blue mist of twilight 
 
MONTE GENEROSO. 2OI 
 
 and of haze, contrasting with the clearness of the peaks 
 above. It was sunset when we first came here; and, 
 wave beyond wave, the purple Italian hills tossed their 
 crested summits to the foot of a range of stormy clouds 
 that shrouded the high Alps. Behind the clouds was 
 sunset, clear and golden; but the mountains had put 
 on their mantle for the night, and the hem of their 
 garment was all we were to see. And yet over the 
 edge of the topmost ridge of cloud, what was that long 
 hard line of black, too solid and immovable for cloud, 
 rising into four sharp needles clear and well defined? 
 Surely it must be the familiar outline of Monte Rosa 
 itself, the form which every one who loves the Alps 
 knows well by heart, which picture-lovers know from 
 Ruskin's woodcut in the Modern Painters. For a mo- 
 ment only the vision stayed: then clouds swept over it 
 again, and from the place where the empress of the 
 Alps had been a pillar of mist shaped like an angel's 
 wing, purple and tipped with gold, shot up against the 
 pale green sky. That cloud-world was a pageant in 
 itself, as grand and more gorgeous perhaps than the 
 mountains would have been. Deep down through the 
 hollows of the Simplon a thunderstorm was driving; 
 and we saw forked flashes once and again, as in a 
 distant world, lighting up the valleys for a moment, 
 and leaving the darkness blacker behind them as the 
 storm blurred out the landscape forty miles away. 
 Darkness was coming to us too, though our sky was 
 clear and the stars were shining brightly. At our feet 
 the earth was folding itself to sleep; the plain was 
 wholly lost; little islands of white mist had formed 
 themselves, and settled down upon the lakes and on 
 their marshy estuaries; the birds were hushed; the 
 
2O2 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 gentian-cups were filling to the brim with dew. Night 
 had descended on the mountain and the plain; the 
 show was over. 
 
 The dawn was whitening in the east next morning 
 when we again scrambled through the dwarf beech- 
 wood to the precipice above the lake. Like an ink- 
 blot it lay, unruffled, slumbering sadly. Broad sheets 
 of vapor brooded on the plain, telling of miasma and 
 fever, of which we on the mountain, in the pure cool 
 air, knew nothing. The Alps were all there now 
 cold, unreal, stretching like a phantom line of snowy 
 peaks from the sharp pyramids of Monte Viso and the 
 Grivola in the west to the distant Bernina and the 
 Ortler in the east. Supreme among them towered 
 Monte Rosa queenly, triumphant, gazing down in 
 proud pre-eminence, as she does when seen from any 
 point of the Italian plain. There is no mountain like 
 her. Mont Blanc himself is scarcely so regal; and she 
 seems to know it, for even the clouds sweep humbled 
 round her base, girdling her at most, but leaving her 
 crown clear and free. Now, however, there were no 
 clouds to be seen in all the sky. The mountains had 
 a strange unshriven look, as if waiting to be blessed. 
 Above them, in the cold gray air, hung a low black 
 arch of shadow, the shadow of the bulk of the huge 
 earth, which still concealed the sun. Slowly, slowly 
 this dark line sank lower, till, one by one, at last, the 
 peaks caught first a pale pink flush; then a sudden 
 golden glory flashed from one to the other, as they 
 leaped joyfully into life. It is a supreme moment this 
 first burst of life and light over the sleeping world, as 
 one can only see it on rare days and in rare places 
 like the Monte Generoso. The earth enough of it at 
 
MONTE GENEROSO. 2O3 
 
 least for us to picture to ourselves the whole lies at 
 our feet; and we feel as the Saviour might have felt, 
 when from the top of that high mountain he beheld 
 the kingdoms of the world and all the glory of them. 
 Strangely and solemnly may we imagine to our fancy 
 the lives that are being lived down in those cities of 
 the plain: how many are waking at this very moment 
 to toil and a painful weariness, to sorrow, or to "that 
 unrest which men miscall delight;" while we upon our 
 mountain buttress, suspended in mid-heaven and for a 
 while removed from daily cares, are drinking in the 
 beauty of the world that God has made so fair and 
 wonderful. From this same eyrie, only a few years 
 ago, the hostile armies of France, Italy, and Austria 
 might have been watched moving in dim masses across 
 the plains, for the possession of which they were to 
 clash in mortal fight at Solferino and Magenta. All is 
 peaceful now. It is hard to picture the waving corn- 
 fields trodden down, the burning villages and ransacked 
 vineyards, all the horrors of real war to which that 
 fertile plain has been so often the prey. But now 
 these memories of 
 
 "Old, unhappy, far-off things, 
 And battles long ago, " 
 
 do but add a calm and beauty to the radiant scene 
 that lies before us. And the thoughts which it suggests, 
 the images with which it stores our mind, are not 
 without their noblest uses. The glory of the world 
 sinks deeper into our shallow souls than we well know; 
 and the spirit of its splendor is always ready to revisit 
 us on dark and dreary days at home with an un- 
 speakable refreshment. Even as I write, I seem to see 
 the golden glow sweeping in broad waves over the 
 
2O4 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 purple hills nearer and nearer, till the lake brightens 
 at our feet, and the windows of Lugano flash with 
 sunlight, and little boats creep forth across the water 
 like spiders on a pond, leaving an arrowy track of 
 light upon the green behind them, while Monte Sal- 
 vadore with its tiny chapel and a patch of the further 
 landscape are still kept in darkness by the shadow of 
 the Generoso itself. The birds wake into song as the 
 sun's light comes; cuckoo answers cuckoo from ridge 
 to ridge; dogs bark; and even the sounds of human 
 life rise up to us: children's voices and the murmurs 
 of the market-place ascending faintly from the many 
 villages hidden among the chestnut-trees beneath our 
 feet; while the creaking of a cart we can but just see 
 slowly crawling along the straight road by the lake is 
 heard at intervals. 
 
 The full beauty of the sunrise is but brief. Already 
 the low lakelike mists we saw last night have risen 
 and spread, and shaken themselves out into masses of 
 summer clouds, which, floating upward, threaten to 
 envelop us upon our vantage-ground. Meanwhile they 
 form a changeful sea below, blotting out the plain, 
 surging up into the valleys with the movement of a 
 billowy tide, attacking the lower heights like the ad- 
 vance-guard of a besieging army, but daring not as 
 yet to invade the cold and solemn solitudes of the 
 snowy Alps. These, too, in time, when the sun's heat 
 has grown strongest, will be folded in their midday pall 
 of sheltering vapor. 
 
 The very summit of Monte Generoso must not be 
 left without a word of notice. The path to it is as 
 easy as the sheep-walks on an English down, though 
 cut along grass-slopes descending at a perilously sharp 
 
MONTE GENEROSO. 2O5 
 
 angle. At the top the view is much the same, as far 
 as the grand features go, as that which is commanded 
 from the cliff by the hotel. But the rocks here are 
 crowded with rare Alpine flowers delicate golden 
 auriculas with powdery leaves and stems, pale yellow 
 cowslips, imperial purple saxifrages, soldanellas at the 
 edge of lingering patches of the winter snow, blue 
 gentians, crocuses, and the frail, rosy-tipped ranun- 
 culus, called glacialis. Their blooming time is brief. 
 When summer comes the mountain will be bare and 
 burned, like all Italian hills. The Generoso is a very 
 dry mountain, silent and solemn from its want of 
 streams. There is no sound of falling waters on its 
 crags; no musical rivulets flow down its sides, led 
 carefully along the slopes, as in Switzerland, by the 
 peasants, to keep their hay-crops green and gladden 
 the thirsty turf throughout the heat and drought of 
 summer. The soil is a Jurassic limestone: the rain 
 penetrates the porous rock, and sinks through cracks 
 and fissures, to reappear above the base of the moun- 
 tain in a full-grown stream. This is a defect in the 
 Generoso, as much to be regretted as the want of 
 shade upon its higher pastures. Here, as elsewhere in 
 Piedmont, the forests are cut for charcoal: the beech- 
 scrub, which covers large tracts of the hills, never 
 having the chance of growing into trees much higher 
 than a man. It is this which makes an Italian moun- 
 tain at a distance look woolly, like a sheep's back. 
 Among the brushwood, however, lilies-of-the-valley 
 and Solomon's-seals delight to grow; and the league- 
 long beds of wild strawberries prove that when the 
 laburnums have faded the mountain will become a 
 garden of feasting. 
 
206 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 It was on the crest of Monte Generoso, late one 
 afternoon in May, that we saw a sight of great beauty. 
 The sun had yet about an hour before it sank behind 
 the peaks of Monte Rosa, and the sky was clear, ex- 
 cept for a few white clouds that floated across the plain 
 of Lombardy. Then as we sat upon the crags, tufted 
 with soldanellas and auriculas, we could see a fleecy 
 vapor gliding upward from the hollows of the moun- 
 tain, very thin and pale, yet dense enough to blot the 
 landscape to the south and east from sight. It rose 
 with an imperceptible motion, as the Oceanides might 
 have soared from the sea to comfort Prometheus in 
 the tragedy of ^Eschylus. Already the sun had touched 
 its upper edge with gold, and we were expecting to 
 be enveloped in a mist; when suddenly upon the out- 
 spread sheet before us there appeared two forms, 
 larger than life, yet not gigantic, surrounded with halos 
 of such tempered iridescence as the moon half hidden 
 by a summer cloud is wont to make. They were the 
 glorified figures of ourselves; and what we did the 
 phantoms mocked, rising or bowing, or spreading wide 
 their arms. Some scarce-felt breeze prevented the 
 vapor from passing across the ridge to westward, 
 though it still rose from beneath, and kept fading 
 away into thin air above our heads. Therefore the 
 vision lasted as long as the sun stayed yet above the 
 Alps; and the images with their aureoles shrank and 
 dilated with the undulations of the mist. I could not 
 but think of that old formula for an anthropomorphic 
 deity "the Brocken-spectre of the human spirit pro- 
 jected on the mists of the Non-ego." Even like those 
 cloud-phantoms are the gods made in the image of 
 man, who have been worshipped through successive 
 
MONTE GENEROSO. 2QJ 
 
 ages of the world, gods dowered with like passions to 
 those of the races who have crouched before them, 
 gods cruel and malignant and lustful, jealous and noble 
 and just, radiant or gloomy, the counterparts of men 
 upon a vast and shadowy scale. But here another 
 question rose. If the gods that men have made and 
 ignorantly worshipped be really but glorified copies of 
 their own souls, where is the sun in this parallel? 
 Without the sun's rays the mists of Monte Generoso 
 could have shown no shadowy forms. Without some 
 other power than the mind of man, could men have 
 fashioned for themselves those ideals that they named 
 their gods? Unseen by Greek or Norseman or Hindoo, 
 the potent force by which alone they could externalize 
 their image existed outside them, independent of their 
 thought. Nor does the trite epigram touch the sur- 
 face of the real mystery. The sun, the human beings 
 on the mountain, and the mists are all parts of one 
 material universe: the transient phenomenon we wit- 
 nessed was but the effect of a chance combination. Is, 
 then, the anthropomorphic God as momentary and as 
 accidental in the system of the world as that vapory 
 spectre? The God in whom we live and move and 
 have our being must be far more all-pervasive, more 
 incognizable by the souls of men, who doubt not for 
 one moment of his presence and his power. Except 
 for purposes of rhetoric the metaphor that seemed so 
 clever fails. Nor, when once such thoughts have been 
 stirred in us by such a sight, can we do better than 
 repeat Goethe's sublime profession of a philosophic 
 mysticism. This translation I made one morning on 
 the Pasterze Gletscher beneath the spires of the Gross 
 Glockner: 
 
208 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 To Him who from eternity, self-stirred, 
 Himself hath made by His creative word! 
 To Him, supreme, who causeth faith to be, 
 Trust, hope, love, power, and endless energy! 
 To Him who, seek to name Him as we will, 
 Unknown within Himself abideth still! 
 
 Strain ear and eye, till sight and sense be dim; 
 
 Thou'lt find but faint similitudes of Him: 
 
 Yea, and thy spirit in her flight of flame 
 
 Still strives to gauge the symbol and the name : 
 
 Charmed and compelled thou climb'st from height to height, 
 
 And round thy path the world shines wonderous bright ; 
 
 Time, space, and size, and distance cease to be, 
 
 And every step is fresh infinity. 
 
 What were the God who sat outside to scan 
 
 The spheres that 'neath His finger circling ran? 
 
 God dwells within, and moves the world, and moulds, 
 
 Himself and nature in one form enfolds: 
 
 Thus all that lives in Him and breathes and is 
 
 Shall ne'er His puissance, ne'er His spirit miss. 
 
 The soul of man, too, is a universe : 
 
 Whence follows it that race with race concurs 
 
 In naming all it knows of good and true 
 
 God yea, its own God; and with homage due 
 
 Surrenders to His sway both earth and heaven; 
 
 Fears Him, and loves, where place for love is given. 
 
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO. 2OQ 
 
 COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO. 
 
 To which of the Italian lakes should the palm of 
 beauty be accorded? This question may not un- 
 frequently have moved the idle minds of travellers, 
 wandering through that loveliest region from Orta to 
 Garda from little Orta, with her gem-like island, 
 rosy granite crags, and chestnut-covered swards above 
 the Colma, to Garda, bluest of all waters, surveyed in 
 majestic length from Desenzano or poetic Sirmione, a 
 silvery sleeping haze of hill and cloud and heaven and 
 clear waves bathed in modulated azure. And between 
 these extreme points what varied lovelinesses lie in 
 broad Maggiore, winding Como, Varese with the laugh- 
 ing face upturned to heaven, Lugano overshadowed by 
 the crested crags of Monte Generoso, and Iseo far 
 withdrawn among the rocky Alps! He who loves im- 
 mense space, cloud shadows slowly sailing over purple 
 slopes, island gardens, distant glimpses of snow-capped 
 mountains, breadth, air, immensity and flooding sun- 
 light, will choose Maggiore. But scarcely has he cast 
 his vote for this, the Juno of the divine rivals, when 
 he remembers the triple lovelinesses of the Larian 
 Aphrodite, disclosed in all their placid grace from 
 Villa Serbelloni the green blue of the waters, clear 
 as glass, opaque through depth; the millefleurs roses 
 clambering into cypresses by Cadenabbia; the labur- 
 nums hanging their yellow clusters from the clefts of 
 
 Sketches in Italy. H 
 
2IO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Sasso Rancio; the oleander arcades of Varenna; the 
 wild white limestone crags of San Martino, which he 
 has climbed to feast his eyes with the perspective, 
 magical, serene, Leonardesquely perfect, of the distant 
 gates of Adda. Then while this modern Paris is yet 
 doubting, perhaps a thought may cross his mind of 
 sterner, solitary Lake Iseo the Pallas of the three. 
 She offers her own attractions. The sublimity of 
 Monte Adamello, dominating Lovere and all the low- 
 land like Hesiod's hill of Virtue reared aloft above 
 the plain of common life, has charms to tempt heroic 
 lovers. Nor can Varese be neglected. In some pic- 
 turesque respects, Varese is the most perfect of the 
 lakes. Those long lines of swelling hills that lead 
 into the level yield an infinite series of placid fore- 
 grounds, pleasant to the eye by contrast with the 
 dominant snow-summits, from Monte Viso to Monte 
 Leone: the sky is limitless to southward; the low 
 horizons are broken by bell-towers and farm-houses; 
 while armaments of clouds are ever rolling in the 
 interval of Alps and plain. 
 
 Of a truth, to decide which is the queen of the 
 Italian lakes is but an infinita quaslio; and the mere 
 raising of it is folly. Still each lover of the beautiful 
 may give his vote; and mine, like that of shepherd 
 Paris, is already given to the Larian goddess. Words 
 fail in attempting to set forth charms which have to 
 be enjoyed, or can at best but lightly be touched with 
 most consumate tact, even as great poets have already 
 touched on Como Lake from Virgil with his "Lari 
 maxume," to Tennyson and the Italian Manzoni. The 
 threshold of the shrine is, however, less consecrated 
 ground; and the Cathedral of Como may form a 
 
COMO AND IL MEDEGfflNO. 2 I I 
 
 vestibule to the temple where silence is more golden 
 than the speech of a describer. 
 
 The Cathedral of Como is perhaps the most per- 
 fect building in Italy for illustrating the fusion of 
 Gothic and Renaissance styles, both of a good type 
 and exquisite in their sobriety. The Gothic ends with 
 the nave. The noble transepts and the choir, each 
 terminating in a rounded tribune of the same dimen- 
 sions, are carried out in a simple and decorous Bra- 
 mantesque manner. The transition from the one style 
 to the other is managed so felicitously, and the sym- 
 pathies between them are so well developed, that there 
 is no discord. What we here call Gothic is conceived 
 in a truly Southern spirit, without fantastic ef- 
 florescence or imaginative complexity of multiplied 
 parts; while the Renaissance manner, as applied by 
 Tommaso Rodari, has not yet stiffened into the life- 
 less Neo-Latinism of the later Cinque Cento, it is still 
 distinguished by delicate inventiveness and beautiful 
 subordination of decorative detail to architectural 
 effect. Under these happy conditions we feel that the 
 Gothic of the nave, with its superior severity und 
 sombreness, dilates into the lucid harmonies of choir 
 and transepts like a flower unfolding. In the one the 
 mind is tuned to inner meditation and religious awe; 
 in the other the worshipper passes into a temple of 
 the clear explicit faith as an initiated neophite might 
 be received into the meaning of the mysteries. 
 
 After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the 
 district of Como seems to have maintained more 
 vividly than the rest of Northern Italy some memory 
 of classic art. Magistri Comacini is a title frequently 
 inscribed upon deeds and charters of the earlier 
 
212 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Middle Ages, as synonymous with sculptors and archi- 
 tects. This fact may help to account for the purity 
 and beauty of the Duomo. It is the work of a race 
 in which the tradition of delicate artistic invention had 
 never been wholly interrupted. To Tommaso Rodari, 
 and his brothers, Bernardino and Jacopo, the world 
 owes this sympathetic fusion of the Gothic and the 
 Bramantesque styles; and theirs too is the sculpture 
 with which the Duomo is so richly decorated. They 
 were natives of Maroggia, a village near Mendrisio, 
 beneath the crests of Monte Generoso, close to 
 Campione, which sent so many able craftsmen out 
 into the world between the years 1300 and 1500. 
 Indeed the name of Campionesi would probably have 
 been given to the Rodari, had they left their native 
 province for service in Eastern Lombardy. The body 
 of the Duomo had been finished when Tommaso Rodari 
 was appointed master of the fabric in 1487. To com- 
 plete the work by the addition of a tribune was his 
 duty. He prepared a wooden model and exposed it, 
 after the fashion of those times, for criticism in his 
 bottega; and the usual difference of opinion arose 
 among the citizens of Como concerning its merits. 
 Cristoforo Solaro, surnamed II Gobbo, was called in 
 to advise. It may be remembered that when Michael 
 Angelo first placed his Pieta in St. Peter's, rumor gave 
 it to this celebrated Lombard sculptor, and the 
 Florentine was constrained to set his own signature 
 upon the marble. The same Solaro carved the monu- 
 ment of Beatrice Sforza in the Certosa of Pavia. He 
 was indeed in all points competent to criticise or to 
 confirm the design of his fellow-craftsman, fl Gobbo 
 disapproved of the proportions chosen by Rodari, and 
 
COMO AND IL MEDEGHTNO. 2 13 
 
 ordered a new model to be made; but after much dis- 
 cussion, and some concessions on the part of Rodari, 
 who is said to have increased the number of the 
 windows and lightened the orders of his model, the 
 work was finally intrusted to the master of Maroggia. 
 
 Not less creditable than the general design of the 
 tribune is the sculpture executed by the brothers. 
 The north side door is a master-work of early Renais- 
 sance chiselling, combining mixed Christian and clas- 
 sical motives with a wealth of floral ornament. Inside, 
 over the same door, is a procession of children seem- 
 ing to represent the Triumph of Bacchus, with perhaps 
 some Christian symbolism. Opposite, above the south 
 door, is a frieze of fighting Tritons horsed sea deities 
 pounding one another with bunches of fish and splash- 
 ing the water, in Mantegna's spirit. The doorways of 
 the fajade are decorated with the same rare workman- 
 ship and the canopies, supported by naked fauns and 
 slender twisted figures, under which the two Plinies 
 are seated, may be reckoned among the supreme 
 achievements of delicate Renaissance sculpture. The 
 Plinies are not like the work of the same master. 
 They are older, stiffer, and more Gothic. The chief 
 interest attaching to them is that they are habited and 
 seated after the fashion of Humanists. This consecra- 
 tion of the two pagan saints beside the portals of the 
 Christian temple is truly characteristic of the fifteenth 
 century in Italy. Beneath are little bass-reliefs re- 
 presenting scenes from their respective lives, in the 
 style of carved predellas on the altars of saints. 
 
 The whole church is peopled with detached statues, 
 among which a Sebastian in the Chapel of the Madonna 
 must be mentioned as singularly beautiful. It is a 
 
214 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 finely modelled figure, with the full life and exuberant 
 adolescence of Venetian inspiration. A peculiar feature 
 of the external architecture is the series of Atlantes, 
 bearing on their shoulders urns, heads of lions, and 
 other devices, and standing on brackets round the upper 
 cornice just below the roof. They are of all sorts: 
 young and old, male and female; classically nude and 
 boldly outlined. These water-conduits, the work of 
 Bernardo Bianco and Francesco Rusca, illustrate the 
 departure of the earlier Renaissance from the Gothic 
 style. They are gargoyles; but they have lost the 
 grotesque element. At the same time the sculptor, 
 while discarding Gothic tradition, has not betaken him- 
 self yet to a servile imitation of the antique. He has 
 used invention, and substituted for grinning dragons' 
 heads something wild and bizarre of his own in 
 harmony with classic taste. 
 
 The pictures in the chapels, chiefly by Luini and 
 Ferrari an idyllic Nativity, with faun-like shepherds 
 and choirs of angels a sumptuous adoration of the 
 Magi a jewelled Sposalizio with abundance of golden 
 hair flowing over draperies of green and crimson will 
 interest those who are as yet unfamiliar with Lombard 
 painting. Yet their architectural setting, perhaps, is 
 superior to their intrinsic merit as words of art; and 
 their chief value consists in adding rare dim flakes of 
 color to the cool light of the lovely church. More 
 curious, because less easily matched, is the gilded 
 wood-work above the altar of S. Abondio, attributed to 
 a German carver, but executed, for the most part, in 
 the purest Luinesque manner. The pose of the enthroned 
 Madonna, the type and gesture of St. Catherine, and 
 the treatment of the Pieta above, are thoroughly Lorn- 
 
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO. 
 
 bard, showing how Luini's ideal of beauty could be 
 expressed in carving. Some of the choicest figures in 
 the Monastero Maggiore at Milan seem to have de- 
 scended from the walls and stepped into their taber- 
 nacles on this altar. Yet the style is not maintained 
 consistently. In the reliefs illustrating the life of 
 S. Abondio, we miss Luini's childlike grace, and find 
 instead a something that reminds us of Donatello a 
 seeking after the classical in dress, carriage, and group- 
 ing of accessory figures. It may have been that the 
 carver, recognizing Luini's defective composition, and 
 finding nothing in that master's manner adapted to the 
 spirit of relief, had the good taste to render what was 
 Luinesquely lovely in his female figures, and to fall 
 back on a severer model for his bass-reliefs. 
 
 The building-fund for the Duomo was raised in 
 Como and its districts. Boxes were placed in all the 
 churches to receive the alms of those who wished to 
 aid the work. The clergy begged in Lent, and preached 
 the duty of contributing on special days. Presents of 
 lime and bricks and other materials were thankfully 
 received. Bishops, canons, and municipal magistrates 
 were expected to make costly gifts on taking office. 
 Notaries, under penalty of paying one hundred soldi if 
 they neglected their engagement, were obliged to per- 
 suade testators, cum bonis modis dulciter, to inscribe the 
 Duomo on their wills. Fines for various offences were 
 voted to the building by the city. Each new burgher 
 paid a certain sum; while guilds and farmers of the 
 taxes bought monopolies and privileges at the price of 
 yearly subsidies. A lottery was finally established for 
 the benefit of the fabric. Of course each payment to 
 the good work carried with it spiritual privileges; and 
 
2l6 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 so willingly did the people respond to the call of the 
 Church, that during the sixteenth century the sums sub- 
 scribed amounted to two hundred thousand golden 
 crowns. Among the most munificent donators are 
 mentioned the Marchese Giacomo Gallio, who be- 
 queathed two hundred and ninety thousand lire, and a 
 Benzi, who gave ten thousand ducats. 
 
 While the people of Como were thus straining every 
 nerve to complete a pious work, which, at the same 
 time, is one of the most perfect masterpieces of Italian 
 art, their lovely lake was turned into a pirate's strong- 
 hold, and its green waves stained with slaughter of con- 
 flicting navies. So curious is this episode in the history 
 of the Larian lake that it is worth while to treat of it 
 at some length. Moreover, the lives of few captains of 
 adventure offer matter more rich in picturesque details 
 and more illustrative of their times than that of Gian 
 Giacomo de' Medici, the Larian corsair, long known 
 and still remembered as II Medeghino. He was born 
 in Milan in 1498, at the beginning of that darkest and 
 most disastrous period of Italian history, when the old 
 fabric of social and political existence went to ruin 
 under the impact of conflicting foreign armies. He 
 lived on until the year 1555, witnessing and taking 
 part in the dismemberment of the Milanese duchy, 
 playing a game of hazard at high stakes for his own 
 profit with the two last Sforzas, the Empire, the French, 
 and the Swiss. At the beginning of the century, while 
 he was still a youth, the rich valley of the Valtelline, 
 with Bormio and Chiavenna, had been assigned to the 
 Grisons. The Swiss cantons, at the same time, had 
 possessed themselves of Lugano and Bellinzona. By 
 these two acts of robbery the mountaineers tore a 
 
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO. 217 
 
 portion of its fairest territory from the duchy; and 
 whoever ruled in Milan, whether a Sforza, or a Spanish 
 viceroy, or a French general, was impatient to recover 
 the lost jewel of the ducal crown. So much has to be 
 premised, because the scene of our hero's romantic ad- 
 ventures was laid upon the borderland between the 
 duchy and the cantons. Intriguing at one time with 
 the Duke of Milan, at another with his foes the French 
 or Spaniards, II Medeghino found free scope for his 
 peculiar genius in a guerilla warfare, carried on with 
 the avowed purpose of restoring the Valtelline to Milan. 
 To steer a plain course through that chaos of politics, 
 in which the modern student, aided by the calm clear 
 lights of history and meditation, cannot find a clew, 
 was, of course, impossible for an adventurer whose one 
 aim was to gratify his passions and exalt himself at 
 the expense of others. It is, therefore, of little use to 
 seek motives of state-craft or of patriotism in the con- 
 duct of II Medeghino. He was a man shaped accord- 
 ing to Machiavelli's standard of political morality self- 
 reliant, using craft and force with cold indifference to 
 moral ends, bent only upon wringing for himself the 
 largest share of this world's power from men who, like 
 himself, identified virtue with unflinching and immitig- 
 able egotism. 
 
 II Medeghino's father was Bernardo de' Medici, a 
 Lombard, who neither claimed nor could have proved 
 cousinship with the great Medicean family of Florence. 
 His mother was Cecilia Serbelloni. The boy was 
 educated in the fashionable humanistic studies, nourish- 
 ing his young imagination with the tales of Roman 
 heroes. The first exploit by which he proved his vtrtit 
 was the murder of a man he hated, at the age of 
 
2l8 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 sixteen. This "virile act of vengeance," as it was 
 called, brought him into trouble, and forced him to 
 choose the congenial profession of arms. At a time 
 when violence and vigor passed for manliness, a 
 spirited assassination formed the best of introductions 
 to the captains of mixed mercenary troops. II Medeghino 
 rose in favor with his generals, helped to reinstate 
 Francesco Sforza in his capital, and, returning himself 
 to Milan, inflicted severe vengeance on the enemies 
 who had driven him to exile. It was his ambition, at 
 this early period of his life, to be made governor of 
 the Castle of Musso, on the Lake of Como. While 
 fighting in the neighborhood, he had observed the un- 
 rivalled capacities for defence presented by its site; 
 and some prevision of his future destinies now urged 
 him to acquire it, as the basis for the free marauding 
 life he planned. The headland of Musso lies about 
 half-way between Gravedona and Menaggio, on the 
 right shore of the Lake of Como. Planted on a 
 pedestal of rock and surmounted by a sheer cliff, there 
 then stood a very ancient tower, commanding this pro- 
 montory on the side of the land. Between it and the 
 water the Visconti, in more recent days, had built a 
 square fort; and the headland had been further 
 strengthened by the addition of connecting walls and 
 bastions pierced for cannon. Combining precipitous 
 cliffs, strong towers, and easy access from the lake be- 
 low, this fortress of Musso was exactly the fit station 
 for a pirate. So long as he kept the command of the 
 lake, he had little to fear from land attacks, and had 
 a splendid basis for aggressive operations. II Medeghino 
 made his request to the Duke of Milan; but the fox- 
 like Sforza would not grant him a plain answer. At 
 
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO. 210, 
 
 length he hinted that if his suitor chose to rid him of 
 a troublesome subject, the noble and popular Astore 
 Visconti, he should receive Musso for payment. Crimes 
 of bloodshed and treason sat lightly on the adventurer's 
 conscience. In a short time he compassed the young 
 Visconti's death, and claimed his reward. The duke 
 despatched him thereupon to Musso, with open letters 
 to the governor, commanding him to yield the castle 
 to the bearer. Private advice, also intrusted to II 
 Medeghino, bade the governor, on the contrary, cut the 
 bearer's throat. The young man, who had the sense 
 to read the duke's letter, destroyed the secret docu- 
 ment and presented the other, or, as one version of the 
 story goes, forged a ducal order in his own favor.* At 
 any rate, the castle was placed in his hands; and 
 affecting to know nothing of the duke's intended 
 treachery, II Medeghino took possession of it as a 
 trusted servant of the ducal crown. 
 
 As soon as he was settled in his castle, the free- 
 booter devoted all his energies to rendering it still 
 more impregnable by strengthening the walls and break- 
 ing the cliffs into more horrid precipices. In this work 
 he was assisted by his numerous friends and followers; 
 for Musso rapidly became, like ancient Rome, an 
 asylum for the ruffians and outlaws of neighboring 
 provinces. It is even said that his sisters, Clarina and 
 Margherita, rendered efficient aid with manual labor. 
 The mention of Clarina's name justifies a parenthetical 
 side-glance at II Medeghino's pedigree, which will serve 
 to illustrate the exceptional conditions of Italian society 
 
 * I cannot see clearly through these transactions, the muddy 
 waters of decadent Italian plot and counterplot being inscrutable 
 to senses assisted by nothing more luminous than mere tradition. 
 
22O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 during this age. She was married to the Count Giberto 
 Borromeo, and became the mother of the pious Carlo 
 Borromeo, whose shrine is still adored at Milan in the 
 Duomo. n Medeghino's brother, Giovan Angelo, rose 
 to the papacy, assuming the title of Pius IV. Thus, 
 this murderous marauder was the brother of a pope 
 and the uncle of a saint; and these three persons of 
 one family embraced the various degrees and typified 
 the several characters which flourished with peculiar 
 lustre in Renaissance Italy the captain of adventure 
 soaked in blood, the churchman unrivalled for intrigue, 
 and the saint aflame with holiest enthusiasm. II Mede- 
 ghino was short of stature, but well made and power- 
 ful; broad-chested; with a penetrating voice and win- 
 ning countenance. He dressed simply, like one of his 
 own soldiers; slept but little; was insensible to carnal 
 pleasure; and though he knew how to win the affection 
 of his men by jovial speech, he maintained strict dis- 
 cipline in his little army. In all points he was an 
 ideal bandit chief, never happy unless fighting or plan- 
 ning campaigns, inflexible of purpose, bold and cun- 
 ning in the execution of his schemes, cruel to his 
 enemies, generous to his followers, sacrificing all con- 
 siderations, human and divine, to the one aim of his 
 life self-aggrandizement by force and intrigue. He 
 knew well how to make himself both feared and re- 
 spected. One instance of his dealing will suffice. A 
 gentleman of Bellano, Polidoro Boldoni, in return to 
 his advances, coldly replied that he cared for neither 
 amity nor relationship with thieves and robbers; 
 whereupon II Medeghino extirpated his family almost 
 to a man. 
 
 Soon after his settlement in Musso, II Medeghino, 
 
COMO AND EL MEDEGHINO. 221 
 
 wishing to secure the gratitude of the duke, his master, 
 began war with the Grisons. From Coire, from the 
 Engadine, and from Davos the Alpine pikemen were 
 now pouring down to swell the troops of Francis I.; 
 and their road lay through the Lake of Como. II 
 Medeghino burned all the boats upon the lake, except 
 those which he took into his own service, and thus 
 made himself master of the water passage. He then 
 swept the "length of lordly Lario" from Colico to 
 Lecco, harrying the villages upon the shore, and cut- 
 ting off the bands of journeying Switzers at his pleasure. 
 Not content with this guerilla, he made a descent upon 
 the territory of the Trepievi, and pushed far up to- 
 wards Chiavenna, forcing the Grisons to recall their 
 troops from the Milanese. These acts of prowess con- 
 vinced the duke that he had found a strong ally in 
 the pirate chief. When Francis I. continued his attacks 
 upon the duchy, and the Grisons still adhered to their 
 French paymaster, the Sforza formally invested Gian 
 Giacomo de' Medici with the perpetual governorship 
 of Musso, the Lake of Como, and as much as he could 
 wrest from the Grisons above the lake. Furnished 
 now with a just title for his depredations, II Medeghino 
 undertook the siege of Chiavenna. The town is the 
 key to the valleys of the Splligen and Bregaglia. 
 Strongly fortified and well situated for defence, the 
 burghers of the Grisons well knew that upon its pos- 
 session depended their power in the Italian valleys. 
 To take it by assault was impossible. H Medeghino 
 used craft, entered the castle, and soon had the city 
 at his disposition. Nor did he lose time in sweeping 
 Val Bregaglia. The news of this conquest recalled 
 the Switzers from the duchy; and as they hurried 
 
222 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 homeward just before the battle of Pavia, it may be 
 affirmed that Gian Giacomo de' Medici was instru- 
 mental in the defeat and capture of the French king. 
 The mountaineers had no great difficulty in dislodging 
 their pirate enemy from Chiavenna, the Valtelline, and 
 Val Bregaglia. But he retained his hold on the 
 Trepievi, occupied the Valsassina, took Porlezza, and 
 established himself still more strongly in Musso as the 
 corsair monarch of the lake. 
 
 The tyranny of the Sforzas in Milan was fast going 
 to pieces between France and Spain; and in 1526 the 
 Marquis of Pescara occupied the capital in the name 
 of Charles V. The duke, meanwhile, remained a 
 prisoner in his castello. II Medeghino was now with- 
 out a master; for he refused to acknowledge the Spa- 
 niards, preferring to watch events and build his own 
 power on the ruins of the dukedom. At the head of 
 four thousand men, recruited from the lakes and neigh- 
 boring valleys, he swept the country far and wide, and 
 occupied the rich champaign of the Brianza. He was 
 now lord of the lakes of Como and Lugano, and 
 absolute in Lecco and the adjoining valleys. The 
 town of Como itself alone belonged to the Spaniards; 
 and even Como was blockaded by the navy of the 
 corsair. II Medeghino had a force of seven big ships, 
 with three sails and forty-eight oars, bristling with 
 guns and carrying marines. His flag-ship was a large 
 brigantine, manned by picked rowers, from the mast 
 of which floated the red banner with the golden palle 
 of the Medicean arms. Besides these larger vessels, 
 he commanded a flotilla of countless small boats. It 
 is clear that to reckon with him was a necessity. If 
 he could not be put down with force, he might be 
 
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO. 22J 
 
 bought over by concessions. The Spaniards adopted 
 the second course, and II Medeghino, judging that the 
 cause of the Sforza family was desperate, determined 
 in 1528 to attach himself to the Empire. Charles V. 
 invested him with the Castle of Musso and the larger 
 part of Como lake, including the town of Lecco. He 
 now assumed the titles of Marquis of Musso and Count 
 of Lecco; and in order to prove his sovereignty be- 
 fore the world, he coined money with his own name 
 and devices. 
 
 It will be observed than Gian Giacomo de' Medici 
 had hitherto acted with a single-hearted view to his 
 own interests. At the age of thirty he had raised him- 
 self from nothing to a principality, which, though petty, 
 might compare with many of some name in Italy 
 with Carpi, for example, or Mirandola, or Camerino. 
 Nor did he mean to remain quiet in the prime of life. 
 He regarded Como lake as the mere basis for more 
 arduous undertakings. Therefore, when the whirligig 
 of events restored Francesco Sforza to his duchy in 
 1529, II Medeghino refused to obey his old lord. Pre- 
 tending to move under the duke's orders, but really 
 acting for himself alone, he proceeded to attack his 
 ancient enemies, the Grisons. By fraud and force he 
 worked his way into their territory, seized Morbegno, 
 and overran the Valtelline. He was destined, how- 
 ever, to receive a serious check. Twelve thousand 
 Switzers rose against him on the one hand, on the 
 other the Duke of Milan sent a force by land and 
 water to subdue his rebel subject, while Alessandro 
 Gonzaga marched upon his castles in the Brianza. 
 He was thus assailed by formidable forces from three 
 quarters, converging upon the Lake of Como, and 
 
224 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 driving him to his chosen element, the water. Hastily 
 quitting the Valtelline, he fell back to the Castle of 
 Mandello on the lake, collected his navy, and engaged 
 the ducal ships in a battle off Menaggio. In this battle 
 he was worsted. But he did not lose his courage. 
 From Bellagio, from Varenna, from Bellano, he drove 
 forth his enemies, rolled the cannon of the Switzers 
 into the lake, regained Lecco, defeated the troops of 
 Alessandro Gonzaga, and took the Duke of Mantua 
 prisoner. Had he but held Como, it is probable that 
 he might have obtained such terms at this time as 
 would have consolidated his tyranny. The town of 
 Como, however, now belonged to the Duke of Milan, 
 and formed an excellent basis for operations against 
 the pirate. Overmatched, with an exhausted treasury 
 and broken forces, H Medeghino was at last compelled 
 to give in. Yet he retired with all the honors of war. 
 In exchange for Musso and the lake, the duke agreed 
 to give him thirty-five thousand golden crowns, together 
 with the feud and marquisate of Marignano. A free 
 pardon was promised not only to himself and his 
 brothers, but to all his followers; and the duke further 
 undertook to transport his artillery and munitions of 
 war at his own expense to Marignano. Having con- 
 cluded this treaty under the auspices of Charles V. 
 and his lieutenant, II Medeghino, in March, 1532, set 
 sail from Musso, and turned his back upon the lake 
 forever. The Switzers immediately destroyed the 
 towers, forts, walls, and bastions of the Musso pro- 
 montory, leaving in the midst of their ruins the little 
 chapel of S. Eufemia. 
 
 Gian Giacomo de' Medici, henceforth known to 
 Europe as the Marquis of Marignano, now took service 
 
COMO AND IL MEDEGHINO. 22$ 
 
 under Spain; and through the favor of Anton de Leyva, 
 viceroy for the duchy, rose to the rank of field-marshal. 
 Wehn the Marquis del Vasto succeeded to the Spanish 
 governorship of Milan in 1536, he determined to gratify 
 an old grudge against the ex-pirate, and, having in- 
 vited him to a banquet, made him prisoner. II Mede- 
 ghino was not, however, destined to languish in a 
 dungeon. Princes and kings interested themselves in 
 his fate. He was released, and journeyed to the court 
 of Charles V. in Spain. The emperor received him 
 kindly, and employed him first in the Low Countries, 
 where he helped to repress the burghers of Ghent, 
 and at the siege of Landrecy commanded the Spanish 
 artillery against other Italian captains of adventure; 
 for, Italy being now dismembered and enslaved, her 
 sons sought foreign service where they found best pay 
 and widest scope for martial science. Afterwards the 
 Medici ruled Bohemia as Spanish viceroy; and then, 
 as general of the league formed by the Duke of Flo- 
 rence, the emperor, and the pope to repress the liberties 
 of Tuscany, distinguished himself in that cruel war of 
 extermination which turned the fair Contado of Siena 
 into a poisonous Maremma. To the last II Medeghino 
 preserved the instincts and the passions of a brigand 
 chief. It was at this time that, acting for the Grand- 
 Duke of Tuscany, he first claimed open kinship with 
 the Medici of Florence. Heralds and genealogists pro- 
 duced a pedigree which seemed to authorize this pre- 
 tension; he was recognized, together with his brother, 
 Pius IV., as an offshoot of the great house which had 
 already given dukes to Florence, kings to France, and 
 two popes to the Christian world. In the midst of all 
 this foreign service he never forgot his old dream of 
 
 Sketches in Italy. X 5 
 
226 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 conquering the Valtelline; and in 1547 he made pro- 
 posals to the emperor for a new campaign against the 
 Grisons. Charles V. did not choose to engage in a 
 war the profits of which would have been inconsider- 
 able for the master of half the civilized world, and 
 which might have proved troublesome by stirring up 
 the tameless Switzers. II Medeghino was obliged to 
 abandon a project cherished from the earliest dawn of 
 his adventurous manhood. 
 
 When Gian Giacomo died, in 1555, his brother 
 Battista succeeded to his claims upon Lecco and the 
 Trepievi. His monument, magnificent with five bronze 
 figures, the masterpiece of Leone Lioni, from Menaggio, 
 Michaelangelesque in style, and of consummate work- 
 manship, still adorns the Duomo of Milan. It stands 
 close by the door that leads to the roof. This mauso- 
 leum, erected to the memory of Gian Giacomo and 
 his brother Gabrio, is said to have cost 7800 golden 
 crowns. On the occasion of the pirate's funeral the 
 Senate of Milan put on mourning, and the whole city 
 followed the great robber, the hero of Renaissance 
 virtit, to the grave. 
 
 Between the Cathedral of Como and the corsair 
 Medeghino there is but a slight link. Yet so extra- 
 ordinary were the social circumstances of Renaissance 
 Italy that almost at every turn, on her seaboard, in 
 her cities, from her hill-tops, we are compelled to 
 blend our admiration for the loveliest and purest 
 works of art amid the choicest scenes of nature with 
 memories of execrable crimes and lawless characters. 
 Sometimes, as at Perugia, the nexus is but local. At 
 others, one single figure, like that of Cellini, unites 
 both points of view in a romance of unparalleled 
 
PALERMO. 227 
 
 dramatic vividness. Or, again, beneath the vaults of 
 the Certosa, near Pavia, a masterpiece of the serenest 
 beauty carries our thoughts perforce back to the 
 hideous cruelties and snake-like frauds of its despotic 
 founder. This is the excuse for combining two such 
 diverse subjects in one study. 
 
 PALERMO. 
 
 THE NORMANS IN SICILY. 
 
 SICILY, in the centre of the Mediterranean, has 
 been throughout all history the meeting-place and 
 battle-ground of the races that contributed to civilize 
 the West. It was here that the Greeks measured 
 their strength against Phoenicia, and that Carthage 
 fought her first duel with Rome. Here the bravery of 
 Hellenes triumphed over barbarian force in the victories 
 of Gelon and Timoleon. Here, in the harbor of Syra- 
 cuse, the Athenian Empire succumbed to its own in- 
 temperate ambition. Here, in the end, Rome laid her 
 mortmain upon Greek, Phoenician, and Sikeliot alike, 
 turning the island into a granary and reducing its in- 
 habitants to serfdom. When the classic age had 
 closed, when Belisarius had vainly reconquered from 
 the Goths for the empire of the East the fair island 
 of Persephone and Zeus Olympius, then came the 
 Mussulman, filling up with an interval of Oriental 
 luxury and Arabian culture the period of utter dead- 
 ness between the ancient and the modern world. To 
 
228 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Islam succeeded the conquerors of the house of Haute- 
 ville, Norman knights who had but lately left their 
 Scandinavian shores, and settled in the northern pro- 
 vinces of France. The Normans flourished for a 
 season, and were merged in a line of Suabian princes, 
 old Barbarossa's progeny. German rulers thus came 
 to sway the corn-lands of Trinacria, until the bitter 
 hatred of the popes extinguished the house of Hohen- 
 stauffen upon the battle-field of Grandella and the 
 scaffold of Naples. Frenchmen had the next turn 
 for a brief space only; since Palermo cried to the 
 sound of her tocsins, "Mora, Mora," and the tyranny 
 of Anjou was expunged with blood. Spain, the tardy 
 and patient power which inherited so much from the 
 failure of more brilliant races, came at last, and 
 tightened so firm a hold upon the island that, from 
 the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century, with one brief exception, Sicily be- 
 longed to the princes of Aragon, Castile, and Bourbon. 
 These vicissitudes have left their traces everywhere. 
 The Greek temples of Segeste and Girgenti and 
 Selinus, the Roman amphitheatre of Syracuse, the 
 Byzantine mosaics and Saracenic villas of Palermo, the 
 Norman cathedrals of Monreale and Cefalu, and the 
 Spanish habits which still characterize the life of 
 Sicilian cities, testify to the successive strata of races 
 which have been deposited upon the island. Amid its 
 anarchy of tongues, the Latin alone has triumphed. 
 In the time of the Greek colonists Sicily was polyglot. 
 During the Saracenic occupation it was trilingual. It 
 is now, and during modern history it has always been, 
 Italian. Differences of language and of nationality 
 have gradually been fused into one substance by the 
 
PALERMO. 229 
 
 spirit which emanates from Rome, and vivifies the 
 Latin race. 
 
 The geographical position of Sicily has always in- 
 fluenced its history in a very marked way. The eastern 
 coast, which is turned towards Greece and Italy, has 
 been the centre of Arian civilization in the island, so 
 that during Greek and Roman ascendency Syracuse 
 was held the capital. The western end, which pro- 
 jects into the African sea, was occupied in the time of 
 the Hellenes by Phoenicians, and afterwards by Mus- 
 sulmans: consequently Panormus, the ancient seat of 
 Punic colonists, now called Palermo, became the centre 
 of the Moslem rule, which, inherited entire by the 
 Norman chieftains, was transmitted eventually to Spain. 
 Palermo, devoid of classic monuments, and unknown 
 except as a name to the historians of Greek civiliza- 
 tion, is therefore the modern capital of the island. 
 "Prima sedes, corona regis, et regni caput" is the 
 motto inscribed upon the cathedral porch and the 
 archiepiscopal throne of Palermo: nor has any other 
 city, except Messina,* presumed to contest this title. 
 
 Perhaps there are few spots upon the surface of 
 the globe more beautiful than Palermo. The hills on 
 either hand descend upon the sea with long-drawn 
 delicately-broken outlines, so exquisitely tinted with 
 aerial hues that at early dawn or beneath the blue 
 light of a full moon the panorama seems to be some 
 fabric of the fancy, that must fade away, "like shapes 
 
 * Messina, owing to its mercantile position between the Levant, 
 Italy, and France, and as the key to Sicily from the mainland, 
 might probably have become the modern capital had not the Nor- 
 mans found a state machinery ready to their use centralized at 
 Palermo. 
 
23O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 of clouds we form," to nothing. Within the cradle of 
 these hills, and close upon the tideless water, lies the 
 city. Behind and around on every side stretches the 
 famous Conca d'Oro, or golden shell, a plain of 
 marvellous fertility, so called because of its richness 
 and also because of its shape; for it tapers to a fine 
 point where the mountains meet, and spreads abroad, 
 where they diverge, like a cornucopia, towards the 
 sea. The whole of this long vega is a garden, thick 
 with olive-groves and orange-trees, with orchards of 
 nespole and palms and almonds, with fig-trees and 
 locust-trees, with judas-trees that blush in spring, and 
 with flowers as multitudinously brilliant as the fret- 
 work of sunset clouds. It was here that in the days 
 of the Kelbite dynasty, the sugar-cane and cotton-tree 
 and mulberry supplied both East and West with pro- 
 duce for the banquet and the paper-mill and the silk- 
 loom; and though these industries are now neglected, 
 vast gardens of cactuses still give a strangely Oriental 
 character to the scenery of Palermo, while the land 
 flows with honey-sweet wine instead of sugar. The 
 language in which Arabian poets extolled the charms 
 of this fair land is even now nowise extravagant: "Oh 
 how beautiful is the lakelet of the twin palms and 
 the island where the spacious palace stands! The 
 limpid water of the double springs resembles liquid 
 pearls, and their basin is a sea: you would say that 
 the branches of the trees stretched down to see the 
 fishes in the pool and smile at them. The great fishes 
 swim in those clear waters, and the birds among the 
 gardens tune their songs. The ripe oranges of the 
 island are like fire that burns on boughs of emerald; 
 the pale lemon reminds me of a lover Avho has passed 
 
PALERMO. 231 
 
 the night in weeping for his absent darling. The two 
 palms may be compared to lovers who have gained 
 an inaccessible retreat against their enemies, or raise 
 themselves erect in pride to confound the murmurs 
 and ill thoughts of jealous men. O palms of the two 
 lakelets of Palermo, may ceaseless, undisturbed, and 
 plenteous dews forever keep your freshness!" Such 
 is the poetry which suits the environs of Palermo, 
 where the Moorish villas of La Zisa and La Cuba and 
 La Favara still stand, and where the modern gardens, 
 though wilder, are scarcely less delightful than those 
 beneath which King Roger discoursed with Edrisi, 
 and Gian da Procida surprised his sleeping mistress.* 
 The groves of oranges and lemons are an inexhaustible 
 source of joy: not only because of their "golden lamps 
 in a green night," but also because of their silvery 
 constellations, nebulas, and drifts of stars, in the same 
 green night, and milky ways of blossoms on the 
 ground beneath. As in all Southern scenery, the 
 transition from these perfumed thickly-clustering gar- 
 dens to the bare unirrigated hill-sides is very striking. 
 There the dwarf-palm tufts with its spiky foliage the 
 clefts of limestone rock, and the lizards run in and 
 out among bushes of tree-spurge and wild cactus and 
 gray asphodels. The sea-shore is a tangle of lilac and 
 oleander and laurustinus and myrtle and lentisk and 
 cytisus and geranium. The flowering plants that make 
 our shrubberies gay in spring with blossoms are here 
 wild, running riot upon the sand-heaps of Mondello or 
 beneath the barren slopes of Monte Pellegrino. 
 
 It was into this terrestrial paradise, cultivated 
 through two preceding centuries by the Arabs, who of 
 * Boccaccio, Giorn. v. Nov. 6. 
 
232 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 all races were wisest in the art of irrigation and land- 
 scape-gardening, that the Norsemen entered as con- 
 querors, and lay down to pass their lives.* 
 
 No chapter of history more resembles a romance 
 than that which records the sudden rise and brief 
 splendor of the house of Hauteville. In one generation 
 the sons of Tancred passed from the condition of 
 squires in the Norman vale of Cotentin, to kinghood 
 in the richest island of the Southern sea. The Norse 
 adventurers became sultans of an Oriental capital. The 
 sea-robbers assumed, together with the sceptre, the 
 culture of an Arabian court. The marauders whose 
 armies burned Rome received at papal hands the mitie 
 and dalmatic as symbols of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.** 
 
 * The Saracens possessed themselves of Sicily by a gradual 
 conquest, which began about 827 A. D. Disembarking on the 
 little isle of Pantellaria and the headland of Lilybaeum, where of 
 old the Carthaginians used to enter Sicily, they began by over- 
 running the island for the first four years. In 831 they took 
 Palermo; during the next ten years they subjugated the Val di 
 Mazara; between 841 and 859 they possessed themselves of the Val 
 di Noto; after this they extended their conquest over the seaport 
 towns of the Val Demone, but neglected to reduce the whole of the 
 northeast district. Syracuse was stormed and reduced to ruins after 
 a desperate defence in 878; while Leo, the heir of the Greek Em- 
 pire, contented himself with composing two Anacreontic elegies on 
 the disaster at Byzantium. In 895 Sicily was wholly lost to the 
 Greeks, by a treaty signed between the Saracens and the remaining 
 Christian towns. The Christians during the Mussulman occupation 
 were divided into four classes (i) A few independent municipalities 
 obedient loosely to the Greek Empire; (2) Tributaries who paid the 
 Arabs what they would otherwise have sent to Byzantium; (3) Vas- 
 sals, whose towns had fallen by arms or treaty into the hands of 
 the conquerors, and who, though their property was respected and 
 religion tolerated, were called "dsimmi" or "humbled;" (4) Serfs, 
 prisoners of war, sold as slaves or attached to the soil(Amari, vol. I.). 
 
 ** King Roger, in the mosaics of the Martorana Church at 
 
PALERMO. 233 
 
 The brigands who on their first appearance in Italy 
 had pillaged stables and farm-yards to supply their 
 needs, lived to mate their daughters with princes and 
 to sway the politics of Europe with gold. The free- 
 booters, whose skill consisted in the use of sword and 
 shield, whose brains were vigorous in strategy or state- 
 craft, and whose pleasures were confined to the hunting- 
 field and the wine-cup, raised villas like the Zisa and 
 incrusted the cathedral of Monreale with mosaics. 
 Finally, while the race was yet vigorous, after giving 
 two heroes to the first Crusade, it transmitted its titles, 
 its temper, and its blood to the great emperor who 
 was destined to fight out upon the battle-field of Italy 
 the strife of empire against papacy, and to bequeath 
 to mediaeval Europe the tradition of cosmopolitan 
 culture. The physical energy of this brood of heroes 
 was such as can scarcely be paralleled in history. 
 Tancred de Hauteville begat two families by different 
 wives. Of his children twelve were sons: two of whom 
 stayed with their father in Normandy, while ten sought 
 fame and found a kingdom in the south. Of these, 
 William Iron Arm, the first Count of Apulia; Robert 
 Guiscard, who united Calabria and Apulia under one 
 dukedom, and carried victorious arms against both 
 emperors of East and West; and Roger the Great 
 Count, who added Sicily to the conquests of the Nor- 
 mans and bequeathed the kingdom of South Italy to 
 his son, rose to the highest name. But all the brothers 
 shared the great qualities of the house; and two of 
 them, Humphrey and Drogo, also wore a coronet. 
 Large of limb and stout of heart, persevering under 
 
 Palermo, wears the dalmatic, and receives his crown from the 
 hands of Christ 
 
234 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 difficulties, crafty yet gifted with the semblance of 
 sincerity, combining the piety of pilgrims with the 
 morals of highwaymen, the sturdiness of barbarians 
 with the plasticity of culture, eloquent in the council- 
 chamber and the field, dear to their soldiers for their 
 bravery and to women for their beauty, equally eminent 
 as generals and as rulers, restrained by no scruples 
 but such as policy suggested, restless in their energy, 
 yet neither fickle nor rash, comprehensive in their 
 views, but indefatigable in detail, these lions among 
 men were made to conquer in the face of overwhelm- 
 ing obstacles, and to hold their conquests with a grasp 
 of iron. What they wrought, whether wisely or not for 
 the ultimate advantage of Italy, endures to this day; 
 while the work of so many emperors, republics, and 
 princes has passed and shifted like the scenes in a 
 pantomime. Through them the Greeks, the Lombards, 
 and the Moors were extinguished in the south. The 
 papacy was checked in its attempt to found a province 
 of St. Peter below the Tiber. The republics of Naples, 
 Gaeta, Amalfi, which might have rivalled, perchance, 
 with Milan, Genoa, and Florence, were subdued to a 
 master's hand. In short, to the Normans Italy owed 
 that kingdom of the Two Sicilies which formed one 
 third of her political balance, and which proved the 
 cause of all her most serious revolutions. 
 
 Roger, the youngest of the Hauteville family, and 
 the founder of the kingdom of Sicily, showed by his 
 untamable spirit and sound intellect that his father's 
 vigor remained unexhausted. Each of Tancred's sons 
 was, physically speaking, a masterpiece, and the last 
 was the prime work of all. This Roger, styled the 
 Great Count, begat a second Roger, the first king of 
 
PALERMO. 235 
 
 Sicily, whose son and grandson, both named William, 
 ruled in succession at Palermo. With them the direct 
 line of the house of Hauteville expired. It would 
 seem as if the energy and fertility of the stock had 
 been drained by its efforts in the first three generations. 
 Constance, the heiress of the family, who married 
 Henry VI. and gave birth to the Emperor Frederick II., 
 was daughter of King Roger, and, therefore, third in de- 
 scent from Tancred. Drawing her blood more immedi- 
 ately from the parent stem, she thus transmitted to the 
 princes of the race of Hohenstauffen the vigor of her 
 Norman ancestry unweakened. This was a circumstance 
 of no small moment in the history of Europe. Upon 
 the fierce and daring Suabian stem were grafted the 
 pertinacity, the cunning, the versatility of the Norman 
 adventurers. Young Frederick, while strong and subtle 
 enough to stand for himself against the world, was so 
 finely tempered by the blended strains of his parentage 
 that he received the polish of an Oriental education 
 without effeminacy. Called upon to administer the 
 affairs of Germany, to govern Italy, to contend with the 
 papacy, and to settle by arms and treaties the great 
 Oriental question of his days, Frederick, cosmopolitan 
 from the cradle, was equal to the task. Had Europe 
 been but ready, the Renaissance would have dated 
 from his reign, and a universal empire, if not of poli- 
 tical government, yet of intellectual culture, might have 
 been firmly instituted. 
 
 Of the personal appearance of the Norman chiefs 
 their fair hair, clear eyes, and broad shoulders we 
 hear much from the chroniclers. One minutely studied 
 portrait will serve to bring the whole race vividly be- 
 fore us. Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, the son of 
 
236 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Robert Guiscard, and first cousin to Tancred of Mont- 
 ferrat, was thus described by Anna Comnena, who saw 
 him at her father's court during the first Crusade: 
 "Neither among our own nation (the Greeks) nor among 
 foreigners is there in our age a man equal to Bohemond. 
 His presence dazzled the eyes, as his reputation the 
 fancy. He was one cubit taller than the tallest man 
 known. In his waist he was thin, but broad in his 
 shoulders and chest, without being either too thin or 
 too fat. His arms were strong, his hands full and 
 large, his feet firm and solid. He stooped a little, but 
 through habit only, and not on account of any de- 
 formity. He was fair, but on his cheeks there \vas an 
 agreeable mixture of vermilion. His hair was not loose 
 over his shoulders, according to the fashion of the 
 barbarians, but was cut above his ears. His eyes were 
 blue, and full of wrath and fierceness. His nostrils 
 were large, inasmuch as, having a wide chest and a 
 great heart, his lungs required an unusual quantity of 
 air to moderate the warmth of his blood. His hand- 
 some face had in itself something gentle and softening, 
 but the height of his person and the fierceness of his 
 looks had something wild and terrible. He was more 
 dreadful in his smiles than others in their rage." 
 When we read this description, remembering the ro- 
 mance of Bohemond's ancestry and his own life, we 
 do not wonder at the tales of chivalry. Those "knights 
 of Logres and of Lyoness, Lancelot or Pelleas or 
 Pellenore," with whose adventures our tawny-haired 
 magnificent Plantagenets amused their leisure, become 
 realities. The manly beauty described by the Byzantine 
 princess in words which seem to betray a more than 
 common interest in her handsome foe was hereditary 
 
PALERMO. 237 
 
 in the house of Hauteville. They transmitted it to the 
 last of the Suabian dynasty, to Manfred and Conradin, 
 and to the king Enzio, whose long golden hair fell 
 down from his shoulders to his saddle-bow as he rode, 
 a captive, into Bologna. 
 
 The story of the Norman conquest is told by two 
 chroniclers William of Apulia, who received his 
 materials from Robert Guiscard, and Godfrey Malaterra, 
 who wrote down the oral narrative of Roger. Thus we 
 possess what is tantamount to personal memoirs of the 
 Norman chiefs. Nevertheless, a veil of legendary 
 romance obscures the first appearance of the Scandi- 
 navian warriors upon the scene of history. William of 
 Apulia tells how, in the course of a pilgrimage to St. 
 Michael's shrine on Monte Gargano, certain knights of 
 Normandy were accosted by a stranger of imposing 
 aspect, who persuaded them to draw their swords in 
 the quarrel of the Lombard towns of South Italy against 
 the Greeks. This man was Melo of Bari. Whether 
 his invitation were so theatrically conveyed or not, it 
 is probable that the Norsemen made their first acquaint- 
 ance with Apulia on a pilgrimage to the Italian Michael's 
 mount; and it is certain that Melo, whom we dimly 
 descry as a patriot of enlarged views and indomitable 
 constancy, provided them with arms and horses, raised 
 troops in Salerno and Benevento to assist them, and 
 directed them against the Greeks. This happened in 
 1017. Twelve years later we find the town of Aversa 
 built and occupied by Normans under the control of 
 their Count Rainulf; while another band, headed by 
 Ardoin, a Lombard of Milan, lived at large upon the 
 country, selling its services to the Byzantine Greeks. 
 In the anarchy of Southern Italy at this epoch, when 
 
238 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 the decaying Empire of the East was relaxing its hold 
 upon the Apulian provinces, when the papacy was be- 
 ginning to lift up its head after the ignominy of Theo- 
 dora and Marozia, and the Lombard power was slowly 
 dissolving upon its ill-established foundations, the Nor- 
 man adventurers pursued a policy which, however 
 changeful, was invariably self-advantageous. On what- 
 ever side they fought, they took care that the profits 
 of war should accrue to their own colony. Quarrel as 
 they might among themselves, they were always found 
 at one against a common foe. And such was their 
 reputation in the field that the hardiest soldiers errant 
 of all nations joined their standard. Thus it fell out 
 that when Ardoin and his Normans had helped Maniaces 
 to wrest the eastern districts of Sicily from the Moors, 
 they returned, upon an insult offered by the Greek 
 general, to extend the right hand of fellowship to 
 Rainulf and his Normans of Aversa. "Why should you 
 stay here like a rat in his hole, when with our help 
 you might rule those fertile plains, expelling the women 
 in armor who keep guard over them?" The agreement 
 of Ardoin and Rainulf formed the basis of the future 
 Norman power. Their companies joined forces. Melfi 
 was chosen as the centre of their federal government. 
 The united Norman colony elected twelve chiefs or 
 counts of equal authority; and henceforth they thought 
 only of consolidating their ascendency over the effete 
 races which had hitherto pretended to employ their 
 arms. The genius of their race and age, however, was 
 unfavorable to federations. In a short time the ablest 
 man among them, the true king, by right of personal 
 vigor and mental cunning, showed himself. It was at 
 this point that the house of Hauteville rose to the 
 
PALERMO. 239 
 
 altitude of its romantic destiny. William Iron Arm was 
 proclaimed Count of Apulia. Two of his brothers suc- 
 ceeded him in the same dignity. His half-brother, 
 Roberd Guiscard, imprisoned one Pope,* Leo IX., and 
 wrested from another, Nicholas II., the title of Duke of 
 Apulia and Calabria. By the help of his youngest 
 brother, Roger, he gradually completed the conquest of 
 Italy below the Tiber, and then addressed himself to 
 the task of subduing Sicily. The papacy, incapable of 
 opposing the military vigor of the Northmen, was dis- 
 tracted between jealousy of their growing importance 
 and desire to utilize them for its own advantage.** The 
 temptation to employ these filial pirates as a cat's-paw 
 for restoring Sicily to the bosom of the Church was 
 too strong to be resisted. In spite of many ebbs and 
 flows of policy, the favor which the Popes accorded to 
 the Normans gilded the might and cunning of the ad- 
 venturers with the specious splendor of acknowledged 
 
 * The Normans were lucky in getting hold of popes. King 
 Roger caught Innocent II. at San Germane in 1139, and got from 
 him the confirmation of all his titles. 
 
 ** Even the great Hildebrand wavered in his policy towards 
 Robert Guiscard. Having raised an army by the help of the 
 Countess Matilda in 1074, he excommunicated Robert and made 
 war against him. Robert proved more than his match in force and 
 craft; and Hildebrand had to confirm his title as duke, and de- 
 signate him Knight of St. Peter in 1080. When Robert drove the 
 emperor Henry IV. from Rome, and burned the city of the Ccelian, 
 Hildebrand retired with his terrible defender to Salerno, and died 
 there in 1085. Robert and both Rogers were good sons of the 
 Church, deserving the titles of "Terror of the faithless," "Sword 
 of the Lord drawn from the scabbard of Sicily," as long as they 
 were suffered to pursue their own schemes of empire. They re- 
 spected the Pope's person and his demesne of Benevento; they were 
 largely liberal in donations to churches and abbeys. But they did 
 not suffer their piety to interfere with their ambition. 
 
24O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 sanctity. The time might come for casting off these 
 powerful allies and adding their conquests to the patri- 
 mony of St. Peter. Meanwhile it costs nothing to give 
 away what does not belong to one, particularly when 
 by doing so a title to the same is gradually formed. 
 So the Popes reckoned. Robert and Roger went forth 
 with banners blessed by Rome to subjugate the island 
 of the Greek and Moor. 
 
 The honors of this conquest, paralleled for bold- 
 ness only by the achievements of Cortez and Pizarro, 
 belong to Roger. It is true that since the fall of the 
 Kelbite dynasty Sicily had been shaken by anarchy 
 and despotism, by the petty quarrels of princes and 
 party leaders, and to some extent also by the invasion 
 of Maniaces. Yet on the approach of Roger with a 
 handful of Norman knights, "the island was guarded," 
 to quote Gibbon's energetic phrase, "to the water's 
 edge." For some years he had to content himself with 
 raids and harrying excursions, making Messina, which 
 he won from the Moors by the aid of their Christian 
 serfs and vassals, the basis of his operations, and 
 retiring from time to time across the Faro with booty 
 to Reggio. The Mussulmans had never thoroughly 
 subdued the northeastern highlands of Sicily. Satis- 
 fied with occupying the whole western and southern 
 sections of the island, with planting their government 
 firmly at Palermo, destroying Syracuse, and establishing 
 a military post on the heights of Castro Giovanni, they 
 had somewhat neglected the Christian population of 
 the Val Demone. Thus the key to Sicily upon the 
 Italian side fell into the hands of the invaders. From 
 Messina Roger advanced by Rametta and Centorbi to 
 Troina, a hill-town raised high above the level of the 
 
PALERMO. 241 
 
 sea, within view of the solemn blue-black pyramid of 
 ^Etna. There he planted a garrison in 1062, two years 
 after his first incursion into the island. The interval 
 had been employed in marches and countermarches, 
 descents upon the vale of Catania, and hurried ex- 
 peditions as far as Girgenti, on the southern coast. 
 One great battle is recorded beneath the walls of Castro 
 Giovanni, when six hundred Norman knights, so say 
 the chroniclers, engaged with fifteen thousand of the 
 Arabian chivalry and one hundred thousand foot- 
 soldiers. However great the exaggeration of these 
 numbers, it is certain that the Christian fought at fear- 
 ful odds that day, and that all the eloquence of Roger, 
 who wrought on their fanaticism in his speech before 
 the battle, was needed to raise their courage to the 
 sticking-point. The scene of the great rout of Saracens 
 which followed is in every respect memorable. Castro 
 Giovanni, the old Enna of the Greeks and Romans, 
 stands on the top of a precipitous mountain, two thou- 
 sand feet above a plain which waves with corn. A 
 sister height, Calascibetta, raised nearly to an equal 
 altitude, keeps ward over the same valley; and from 
 their summits the whole of Sicily is visible. Here in 
 old days Demeter from her rock-built temple could 
 survey vast tracts of hill and dale, breaking downward 
 to the sea and undulating everywhere with harvest 
 The much-praised lake and vale of Enna* are now a 
 
 * Cicero's description of Enna is still accurate : "Enna is placed 
 in a very lofty and exposed situation, at the top of which is a table- 
 land and never-failing supply of springs. The whole site is cut off 
 from access, and precipitous." But when he proceeds to say, 
 ' ' many groves and lakes surround it and luxuriant flowers through 
 all the year," we cannot follow him. The only quality which Enna 
 has not lost is the impregnable nature of its cliffs. A few ; poplars 
 
 Sketches in Italy. *6 
 
242 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 desolate sulphur district, void of beauty, with no flowers 
 to tempt Proserpine. Yet the landscape is eminently 
 noble because of its breadth bare, naked hills stretch- 
 ing in every direction to the sea that girdles Sicily, 
 peak rising above peak and town-capped eyrie above 
 eyrie while JEina., wreathed with snow, and purple 
 with the peculiar color of its coal-black lava seen 
 through light-irradiated air, sleeps far off beneath a 
 crown of clouds. Upon the corn-fields in the centre of 
 this landscape the multitudes of the infidels were 
 smitten hip and thigh by the handful of Christian 
 warriors. Yet the victory was by no means a decisive 
 one. The Saracens swarmed round the Norman fortress 
 of Troina; where, during a severe winter, Roger and 
 his young wife, Judith of Evreux, whom he had loved 
 in Normandy, and who journeyed to marry him amid 
 the din of battles, had but one cloak to protect them 
 both from the cold. The traveller who even in April 
 has experienced the chill of a high-set Sicilian village 
 will not be inclined to laugh at the hardships revealed 
 by this little incident. Yet the Normans, one and all, 
 were stanch. A victory over their assailants in the 
 
 and thorns are all that remain of its forests. Did we not know that 
 the myth of Demeter and Persephone was a poem of seed-time and 
 harvest, we might be tempted, while sitting on the crags of Castro 
 Giovanni and looking towards the lake, to fancy that in old days a 
 village dependent upon Enna, and therefore called her daughter, 
 might have occupied the site of the lake, and that this village might 
 have been withdrawn into the earth by the volcanic action which 
 produced the cavity. Then people would have said that Demeter 
 had lost Persephone and sought her vainly through all the cities of 
 Sicily; and if this happened in spring Persephone might well have 
 been thought to have been gathering flowers at the time when 
 Hades took her to himself. So easy and yet so dangerous is it to 
 rationalize a legend. 
 
PALERMO. 243 
 
 spring gave them courage to push their arms as far as 
 the river Himera and beyond the Simeto, while a de- 
 feat of fifty thousand Saracens by four hundred Nor- 
 mans at Cerami opened the way at last to Palermo. 
 Reading of these engagements, we are led to remember 
 how Gelon smote his Punic foes upon the Himera, and 
 Timoleon arrayed Greeks by the ten against Carthagi- 
 nians by the thousand on the Crimisus. The battle- 
 fields are scarcely altered; the combatants are as un- 
 equally matched, and represent analogous races. It is 
 still the combat of a few heroic Europeans against the 
 hordes of Asia. In the battle of Cerami it is said that 
 St. George fought visibly on horseback before the 
 Christian band, like that wide-winged chivalrous arch- 
 angel whom Spinello Aretino painted beside Sant' 
 Efeso in the press of men upon the walls of the Pisan 
 Campo Santo. 
 
 The capture of Palermo cost the Normans another 
 eight years, part of which was spent according to their 
 national tactics in plundering expeditions, part in the 
 subjugation of Catania and other districts, part in the 
 blockade of the capital by sea and land. After the 
 fall of Palermo, it only remained for Roger to reduce 
 isolated cities Taormina, Syracuse,* Girgenti, and 
 Castro Giovanni to his sway. The last-named and 
 strongest hold of the Saracens fell into his hands by 
 the treason of Ibn-Hamud in 1087, and thus, after 
 thirty years' continual effort, the two brothers were at 
 last able to divide the island between them. The 
 lion's share, as was due, fell to Roger, who styled him- 
 self Great Count of Sicily and Calabria. In 1098, 
 
 * In this siege, as in that of the Athenians, and of the Saracens 
 8/8 A.D., decisive engagements took place in the great harbor. 
 
244 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Urban H, a politician of the school of Cluny, who well 
 understood the scope of Hildebrand's plan for subject- 
 ing Europe to the court of Rome, rewarded Roger for 
 his zeal in the service of the Church with the title of 
 Hereditary Apostolical Legate. The Great Count was 
 now on a par with the most powerful monarchs of 
 Europe. In riches he exceeded all; so that he was 
 able to wed one daughter to the King of Hungary, 
 another to Conrad, King of Italy, a third to Raimond, 
 Count of Provence and Toulouse, dowering them all 
 with imperial splendor and munificence. 
 
 Hale and vigorous, his life was prolonged through 
 a green old-age until his seventieth year. When he 
 died, in noi, he left two sons by his third wife, 
 Adelaide. Roger, the younger of the two, destined to 
 succeed his father, and (on the death of his cousin, 
 William, Duke of Apulia, in 1127) to unite South Italy 
 and Sicily under one crown, was only four years old 
 at the death of the Great Count. Inheriting all the 
 valor and intellectual qualities of his family, he rose 
 to even higher honor than his predecessors. In 1130 
 he assumed the style of King of Sicily, no doubt with 
 the political purpose of impressing his Mussulman 
 subjects; and nine years later, when he took Innocent 
 captive at San Germano, he forced from the half- 
 willing pontiff a confirmation of this title as well as the 
 investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and Capua. The extent 
 of his sway is recorded in the line engraved upon his 
 sword: 
 
 "Appulus et Calaber Siculus mihi servit et Afer." 
 
 King Roger died in 1154, and bequeathed his king- 
 doms to his son William, surnamed the Bad; who in 
 
PALERMO. 245 
 
 his turn left them to a William called the Good, in 
 1 1 66. The second William died in 1189, transmitting 
 his possessions by will to Constance, wife of the Suabian 
 emperor. These two Williams, the last of the Haute- 
 ville monarchs of Sicily, were not altogether unworthy 
 of their Norman origin. William the Bad could rouse 
 himself from the sloth of his seraglio to head an army; 
 William the Good, though feeble in foreign policy and 
 no general, administered the State with clemency and 
 wisdom. 
 
 Sicily under the Normans offered the spectacle of 
 a singularly hybrid civilization. Christians and North- 
 men, adopting the habits and imbibing the culture of 
 their Mussulman subjects, ruled a mixed population of 
 Greeks, Arabs, Berbers, and Italians. The language of 
 the princes was French; that of the Christians in their 
 territory, Greek and Latin; that of their Mohammedan 
 subjects, Arabic. At the same time the Scandinavian 
 Sultans of Palermo did not cease to play an active 
 part in the affairs, both civil and ecclesiastical, of 
 Europe. The children of the Vikings, though they 
 spent their leisure in harems, exercised, as hereditary 
 Legates of the Holy See, a peculiar jurisdiction in the 
 Church of Sicily. They dispensed benefices to the 
 clergy, and assumed the mitre and dalmatic, together 
 with the sceptre and the crown, as symbols of their 
 authority in Church as well as State. As a conse- 
 quence of this confusion of nationalities in Sicily, we 
 find French and English ecclesiastics* mingling at 
 
 * The English Gualterio Offamilio, or Walter of the Mill, Arch- 
 bishop of Palermo during the reign of William the Good, by his in- 
 trigues brought about the match between Constance and Henry VI. 
 Richard Palmer at the same time was Bishop of Syracuse. Stephen 
 
246 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 court with Moorish freedmen and Oriental odalisques, 
 Apulian captains fraternizing with Greek corsairs, 
 Jewish physicians in attendance on the person of the 
 prince, and Arabian poets eloquent in his praises. The 
 very money with which Roger subsidized his Italian 
 allies was stamped with Cuphic letters,* and there is 
 reason to believe that the reproach against Frederick 
 of being a false coiner arose from his adopting the 
 Eastern device of plating copper pieces to pass for 
 silver. The commander of Roger's navies and his 
 chief minister of State was styled, according to Oriental 
 usage, Emir or Ammiraglio. George of Antioch, who 
 swept the shores of Africa, the Morea, and the Black 
 Sea, in his service, was a Christian of the Greek Church, 
 who had previously held an office of finance under 
 Temin, Prince of Mehdia. The workers in his silk- 
 factories were slaves from Thebes and Corinth. The 
 pages of his palace were Sicilian or African eunuchs. 
 His charters ran in Arabic as well as Greek and Latin. 
 His jewellers engraved the rough gems of the Orient 
 with Christian mottoes in Semitic characters.** His 
 architects were Mussulmans, who adapted their native 
 style to the requirements of Christian ritual, and in- 
 
 des Rotrous, a Frenchman of the Counts of Perche, preceded 
 Walter of the Mill in the Arch See of Palermo. 
 
 * Frederick Barbarossa's soldiers are said to have bidden the 
 Romans: "Take this German iron in change for Arab gold. This 
 pay your master gives you, and this is how Franks win empire." 
 Amari, vol. III. p. 468. 
 
 ** The embroidered skull-cap of Constance of Aragon, wife of 
 Frederick II., in the sacristy of the cathedral at Palermo, is made 
 of gold thread thickly studded with pearls and jewels rough sap- 
 phires and carbuncles, among which may be noticed a red carnelian 
 engraved in Arabic with this sentence, "In Christ, God, I put my 
 hope. " 
 
PALERMO. 247 
 
 scribed the walls of cathedrals with Catholic legends 
 in the Cuphic language. The predominant characteristic 
 of Palermo was Orientalism. Religious toleration was 
 extended to the Mussulmans, so that the two creeds, 
 Christian and Mohammedan, flourished side by side. 
 The Saracens had their own quarters in the towns, 
 their mosques and schools, and cadis for the adminis- 
 tration of petty justice. French and Italian women in 
 Palermo adopted the Oriental fashions of dress. The 
 administration of law and government was conducted 
 on Eastern principles. In nothing had the Mussulmans 
 shown greater genius than in their system of internal 
 state-craft. Count Roger found a machinery of taxation 
 in full working order, officers acquainted with the re- 
 sources of the country, books and schedules constructed 
 on the principles of strictest accuracy, a whole bureau- 
 cracy, in fact, ready to his use. By applying this 
 machinery he became the richest potentate in Europe, 
 at a time when the Northern monarchs were dependent 
 upon feudal aids and precarious revenues from crown 
 lands. In the same way the Saracens bequeathed to 
 the Normans the court system, which they in turn had 
 derived from the princes of Persia and the example of 
 Constantinople. Roger found it convenient to continue 
 that organization of pages, chamberlains, ushers, secre- 
 taries, viziers, and masters of the wardrobe, invested 
 each with some authority of State according to his 
 rank, which confined the administration of an Eastern 
 kingdom to the walls of the palace.* At Palermo, 
 
 * The Arabic title of K&id, which originally was given to a 
 subordinate captain of the guard, took a wide significance at the 
 Norman court. Latinized to gaytus, and Graecized under the form 
 of xairoi, it frequently occurs in chronicles and diplomas to denote 
 
248 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Europe saw the first instance of a court not wholly 
 unlike that which Versailles afterwards became. The 
 intrigues which endangered the throne and liberty of 
 William the Bad, and which perplexed the policy of 
 William the Good, were court-conspiracies of a kind 
 common enough at Constantinople. In this court life 
 men of letters and erudition played a first part three 
 centuries before Petrarch taught the princes of Italy to 
 respect the pen of a poet 
 
 King Roger, of whom the court geographer, Edrisi, 
 writes that "he did more sleeping than any other man 
 waking," was surrounded during his leisure moments, 
 beneath the palm-groves of Favara, with musicians, 
 historians, travellers, mathematicians, poets, and astrolo- 
 gers of Oriental breeding. At his command Ptolemy's 
 Optics were translated into Latin from the Arabic. 
 The prophecies of the Erythrean Sibyl were rendered 
 accessible in the same way. His respect for the occult 
 sciences was proved by his disinterring the bones of 
 Virgil from their resting-place at Posilippo, and placing 
 them in the Castel dell' Uovo, in order that he might 
 have access through necromancy to the spirit of the 
 Roman wizard. It may be remembered, in passing, 
 that Palermo, in one of her mosques, already held 
 
 a high minister of State. Matteo of Ajello who exercised so 
 powerful an influence over the policy of William the Good, head- 
 ing the Mussulman and national party against the great ecclesiastics 
 who were intriguing to draw Sicily into the entanglements of Eu- 
 ropean diplomacy was a Kaid. Matteo favored the cause of 
 Tancred, Walter of the Mill espoused that of the Germans, during 
 the war of succession which followed upon William's death. The 
 barons of the realm had to range themselves under these two 
 leaders to such an extent were the affairs of State hi Sicily within 
 the grasp of courtiers and churchmen. 
 
PALERMO. 249 
 
 suspended between earth and air the supposed relics 
 of Aristotle. Such were the saints of modern culture 
 in its earliest dawning. While Venice was robbing 
 Alexandria of the body of St. Mark, Palermo and 
 Naples placed themselves beneath the protection of a 
 philosopher and a poet. But Roger's greatest literary 
 work was the compilation of a treatise of universal 
 geography. Fifteen years were devoted to the task; 
 and the manuscript, in Arabic, drawn up by the philo- 
 sopher Edrisi, appeared only six weeks before the 
 king's death in 1154. This book, called The Book of 
 Roger, or the Delight of Whoso Loves to Make the 
 Circuit of the World, was based upon the previous 
 labors of twelve geographers, classical and Mussulman. 
 But aiming at greater accuracy than could be obtained 
 by a merely literary compilation, Roger caused pilgrims, 
 travellers, and merchants of all countries to be assembled 
 for conference and examination before him. Their ac- 
 counts were sifted and collated. Edrisi held the pen 
 while Roger questioned. Measurements and distances 
 were carefully compared; and a vast silver disk was 
 constructed, on which all the seas, islands, continents, 
 plains, rivers, mountain-ranges, cities, roads, and harbors 
 of the known world were delineated. The text supplied 
 an explanatory description of this map, with tables of 
 the products, habits, races, religions, and qualities, 
 both physical and moral, of all climates. The precious 
 metal upon which the map was drawn proved its ruin, 
 and the Geography remained in the libraries of Arab 
 scholars. Yet this was one of the first great essays of 
 practical exploration and methodical statistic, to which 
 the genius of the Norseman and the Arab each con- 
 tributed a quota. The Arabians, by their primitive 
 
250 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 nomadic habits, by the necessities of their system of 
 taxation, by their predilection for astrology, by their 
 experience as pilgrims, merchants, and poets errant, 
 were specially qualified for the labor of geographical 
 investigation. Roger supplied the unbounded curiosity 
 and restless energy of his Scandinavian temper, the 
 kingly comprehensive intellect of his race, and the 
 authority of a prince who was powerful enough to 
 compel the service of qualified collaborators. 
 
 The architectural works of the Normans in Palermo 
 reveal the same ascendency of Arab culture. San 
 Giovanni degli Eremiti, with its low white rounded 
 domes, is nothing more or less than a little mosque 
 adapted to the rites of Christians.* The country 
 palaces of the Zisa and the Cuba, built by the two 
 Williams, retain their ancient Moorish character. Stand- 
 ing beneath the fretted arches of the hall of the Zisa, 
 through which a fountain flows within a margin of 
 carved marble, and looking on the landscape from its 
 open porch, we only need to reconstruct in fancy the 
 green gardens and orange-groves, where fair-haired 
 Normans whiled away their hours among black-eyed 
 odalisques and graceful singing boys from Persia. 
 Amid a wild tangle of orange and lemon trees over- 
 grown with scarlet passion-flowers, the pavilion of the 
 Cubola, built of hewn stone and open at each of its 
 four sides, still stands much as it stood when William II. 
 paced through flowers from his palace of the Cuba, to 
 enjoy the freshness of the evening by the side of its 
 fountain. The views from all these Saracenic villas 
 over the fruitful valley of the Golden Horn and the 
 
 Tradition asserts that the tocsin of this church gave the signal 
 in Palermo to the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers. 
 
PALERMO. 251 
 
 turrets of Palermo and the mountains and the distant 
 sea are ineffably delightful. When the palaces were 
 new when the gilding and the frescos still shone 
 upon their honey-combed ceilings, when their mosaics 
 glittered in noonday twilight, and their amber-colored 
 masonry was set in shade of pines and palms, and the 
 cool sound of rivulets made music in their courts and 
 gardens, they must have well deserved their Arab 
 titles of "Sweet Waters" and "The Glory" and "The 
 Paradise of Earth." 
 
 But the true splendor of Palermo, that which 
 makes this city one of the most glorious of the South, 
 is to be sought in its churches in the mosaics of the 
 Cappella Palatina, founded by King Roger; in the vast 
 aisles and cloisters of Monreale, built by King William 
 the Good at the instance of his Chancellor Matteo;* 
 in the Cathedral of Palermo, begun by Offamilio; and 
 in the Martorana, dedicated by George the Admiral. 
 These triumphs of ecclesiastical architecture, none the 
 less splendid because they cannot be reduced to rule 
 or assigned to any single style, were the work of 
 Saracen builders assisted by Byzantine, Italian, and 
 Norman craftsmen. The genius of Latin Christianity 
 determined the basilica shape of the Cathedral of 
 Monreale. Its bronze doors were wrought by smiths 
 of Trani and Pisa. Its walls were incrusted with the 
 mosaics of Constantinople. The wood -work of its 
 roof, and the emblazoned patterns in porphyry and 
 serpentine and glass and smalto which cover its whole 
 surface, were designed by Oriental decorators. Nor- 
 man sculptors added their dog-tooth and chevron to 
 
 * Matteo of Ajello induced William to found an archbishopric 
 at Monreale in order to spite his rival Offamilio. 
 
252 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 the rhouldings of its porches; Greeks, Frenchmen, and 
 Arabs may have tried their skill in turn upon the 
 multitudinous ornaments of its cloister capitals. "The 
 like of which church," said Lucius III., in 1182, "hath 
 not been constructed by any king even from ancient 
 times, and such an one as must compel all men to ad- 
 miration." These words remain literally and emphatically 
 true. Other cathedrals may surpass that of Monreale 
 in sublimity, simplicity, bulk, strength, or unity of 
 plan. None can surpass it in the strange romance 
 with which the memory of its many artificers invests 
 it None again can exceed it in richness and glory, 
 in the gorgeousness of a thousand decorative elements 
 subservient to one controlling thought. "It is evident," 
 says Fergusson in his History of Architecture, "that all 
 the architectural features in the building were sub- 
 ordinate in the eyes of the builders to the mosaic 
 decorations, which cover every part of the interior, 
 and are, in fact, the glory and the pride of the edifice, 
 and alone entitle it to rank among the finest of 
 mediaeval churches." The whole of the Christian 
 history is depicted in this series of mosaics; but on 
 first entering one form alone compels attention. The 
 semi-dome of the eastern apse above the high-altar is 
 entirely filled with a gigantic half-length figure of 
 Christ He raises his right hand to bless, and with 
 his left holds an open book on which is written in 
 Greek and Latin, "I am the light of the world." His 
 face is solemn and severe, rather than mild or piteous; 
 and round his nimbus runs the legend 'Irjaov? XQIGTOS 
 6 fiavroxQaicoQ. Below him, on a smaller scale, are 
 ranged the archangels and the mother of the Lord, 
 who holds the child upon her knees. Thus Christ 
 
PALERMO. 253 
 
 appears twice upon this wall, once as the Omnipotent 
 Wisdom, the Word by whom all things were made, 
 and once as God deigning to assume a shape of flesh 
 and dwell with men. The magnificent image of 
 supreme deity seems to fill with a single influence and 
 to dominate the whole building. The house with all 
 its glory is his. He dwells there like Pallas in her 
 Parthenon or Zeus in his Olympian temple. To left 
 and right over every square inch of the cathedral 
 blaze mosaics, which portray the story of God's deal- 
 ings with the human race from the creation down- 
 ward, together with those angelic beings and saints 
 who symbolize each in his own degree some special 
 virtue granted to mankind. The walls of the fane are 
 therefore an open book of history, theology, and ethics 
 for all men to read. 
 
 The superiority of mosaics over fresco as an 
 architectural adjunct on this gigantic scale is apparent 
 at a glance in Monreale. Permanency of splendor 
 and glowing richness of tone are all on the side of 
 the mosaics. Their true rival is painted glass. The 
 jewelled churches of the South are constructed for the 
 display of colored surfaces illuminated by sunlight 
 falling on them from narrow windows, just as those of 
 the North Rheims, for example, or Le Mans are 
 built for the transmission of light through a variegated 
 medium of transparent hues. The painted windows 
 of a Northern cathedral find their proper counterpart 
 in the mosaics of the South. The Gothic architect 
 strove to obtain the greatest amount of translucent 
 surface. The Byzantine builder directed his attention 
 to securing just enough light for the illumination of 
 his glistening walls. The radiance of the Northern 
 
254 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 church was similar to that of flowers or sunset clouds 
 or jewels. The glory of the Southern temple was that 
 of dusky gold and gorgeous needlework. The North 
 needed acute brilliancy as a contrast to external gray- 
 ness. The South found rest from the glare and glow 
 of noonday in these sombre splendors. Thus Chris- 
 tianity, both of the South and of the North, decked 
 her shrines with color. Not so the paganism of Hellas. 
 With the Greeks, color, though used in architecture, 
 was severely subordinated to sculpture. Toned and 
 modified to a calculated harmony with actual nature, 
 it did not, as in a Christian church, create a world 
 beyond the world, a paradise of supersensual ecstasy, 
 but remained within the limits of the known. Light 
 falling upon carved forms of gods and heroes, bathing 
 clear-cut columns and sharp bass-reliefs in simple lustre, 
 was enough for the Phcebean rites of Hellas. Though 
 we know that red and blue and green and gilding 
 were employed to accentuate the mouldings of Greek 
 temples, yet neither the gloomy glory of mosaics nor 
 the gemmed fretwork of storied windows was needed 
 to attune the souls of Hellenic worshippers to de- 
 votion. 
 
 Less vast than Monreale, but even more beautiful, 
 because the charm of mosaic increases in proportion 
 as the surface it covers may be compared to the 
 the interior of a casket, is the Cappella Palatina of the 
 royal palace in Palermo. Here, again, the whole de- 
 sign and ornament are Arabo-Byzantine. Saracenic 
 pendentives with Cuphic legends incrust the richly 
 painted ceiling of the nave. The roofs f of the apses 
 and the walls are coated with mosaics, in which the 
 Bible history, from the dove that brooded over Chaos 
 
PALERMO. 255 
 
 to the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul, receives a grand 
 though formal presentation. Beneath the mosaics are 
 ranged slabs of gray marble, edged and divided with 
 delicate patterns of inserted glass resembling drapery 
 with richly embroidered' fringes. The floor is inlaid 
 with circles of serpentine and porphyry encased in 
 white marble, and surrounded by winding bands of 
 Alexandrine work. Some of these patterns are re- 
 stricted to the five tones of red, green, white, black, 
 and pale yellow. Others add turquoise blue and 
 emerald and scarlet and gold. Not a square inch of 
 the surface floor, roof, walls, or cupola is free from 
 exquisite gemmed work of precious marbles. A can- 
 delabrum of fanciful design, combining lions devouring 
 men and beasts, cranes, flowers, and winged genii, 
 stands by the pulpit. Lamps of chased silver hang 
 from the roof. The cupola blazes with gigantic arch- 
 angels, stationed in a ring beneath the supreme figure 
 and face of Christ. Some of the Ravenna churches 
 are more historically interesting, perhaps, than this 
 little masterpiece of the mosaic art. But none is so 
 rich in detail and lustrous in effect. It should be 
 seen at night, when the lamps are lighted in a 
 pyramid around the sepulchre of the dead Christ on 
 Holy Thursday, when partial gleams strike athwart the 
 tawny gold of the arches and fall upon the profile 
 of a priest declaiming in voluble Italian to a listening 
 crowd. 
 
 Such are a few of the monuments which still re- 
 main to show of what sort was the mixed culture of 
 Normans, Saracens, Italians, and Greeks at Palermo. 
 In scenes like these the youth of Frederick II. was 
 passed: for at the end, while treating of Palermo, we 
 
256 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 are bound to think again of the emperor who inherited 
 from his German father the ambition of the Hohen- 
 stauffens, and from his Norman mother the fair fields 
 and Oriental traditions of Sicily. The strange history 
 of Frederick an intellect of the eighteenth century 
 born out of date, a cosmopolitan spirit in the age of 
 St. Louis, the crusader who conversed with Moslem 
 sages on the threshold of the Holy Sepulchre, the 
 Sultan of Lucera* who persecuted Paterini while he 
 respected the superstition of Saracens, the anointed 
 successor of Charlemagne, who carried his harem with 
 him to the battle-fields of Lombardy and turned in- 
 fidels loose upon the provinces of Christ's Vicar 
 would be inexplicable were it not that Palermo still 
 reveals in all her monuments the genius loci which 
 gave spiritual nurture to this phoenix among kings. 
 From his Mussulman teachers Frederick derived the 
 philosophy to which he gave a vogue in Europe. From 
 his Arabian predecessors he learned the arts of internal 
 administration and finance which he transmitted to the 
 princes of Italy. In imitation of Oriental courts, he 
 adopted the practice of verse composition, which gave 
 the first impulse to Italian literature. His Grand 
 Vizier, Piero Delle Vigne, set an example to Petrarch, 
 
 Charles of Anjou gave this nickname to Manfred, who carried 
 on the Siculi- Norman tradition. Frederick, it may here be men- 
 tioned, had transferred his Saracen subjects of the vale of Mazara 
 to Lucera in the Capitanate. He employed them as trusty troops 
 in bis warfare with the popes and preaching friars. Nothing shows 
 the confusion of the century in matters ecclesiastical and religious 
 more curiously than that Frederick, who conducted a crusade and 
 freed the Holy Sepulchre, should not only have tolerated the religion 
 of Mussulmans, but also have armed them against the head of the 
 Church. What we are apt to regard as religious questions really 
 belonged at that period to the sphere of politics. 
 
PALERMO. 257 
 
 not only by composing the first sonnet in Italian, but 
 also by showing to what height a low-born secretary 
 versed in art and law might rise. In a word, the zeal 
 for liberal studies, the luxury of life, the religious in- 
 differentism, the bureaucratic system of State govern- 
 ment, which mark the age of the Italian Renaissance, / 
 found their first manifestation within the bosom of the 
 Middle Ages in Frederick. While our King John was 
 signing Magna Charta, Frederick had already lived 
 long enough to comprehend, at least in outline, what 
 is meant by the spirit of modern culture.* It is true 
 that the so-called Renaissance followed slowly and by 
 tortuous paths upon the death of Frederick. The 
 Church obtained a complete victory over his family 
 and succeeded in extinguishing the civilization of 
 Sicily. Yet the fame of the emperor who transmitted 
 questions of sceptical philosophy to Arab sages, who I 
 conversed familiarly with men of letters, who loved 
 splendor and understood the arts of refined living, sur- 
 vived both long and late in Italy. His power, his 
 wealth, his liberality of soul and lofty aspirations, 
 formed the theme of many a tale and poem. Dante 
 places him in hell among the heresiarchs; and truly 
 the splendor of his supposed infidelity found for him 
 a goodly following. Yet Dante dated the rise of 
 Italian literature from the blooming period of the 
 Sicilian court. Frederick's unorthodoxy proved no 
 drawback to his intellectual influence. More than any 
 other man of mediaeval times, he contributed, if only 
 as the memory of a mighty name, to the progress of 
 civilized humanity. 
 
 * It is curious to note that in this year, 1215, the date of Magna 
 Charta, Frederick took the Cross at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
 
 Skefches in Italy. ' 7 
 
258 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Let us take leave both of Frederick and of Palermo, 
 that centre of converging influences which was his 
 cradle, in the cathedral where he lies gathered to his 
 fathers. This church, though its rich sunbrowned 
 yellow* reminds one of the tone of Spanish buildings, 
 is like nothing one has seen elsewhere. Here, even 
 more than at Monreale, the eye is struck with a fusion 
 of styles. The western towers are grouped into some- 
 thing like the clustered sheafs of the Caen churches; 
 the windows present Saracenic arches; the southern 
 porch is covered with foliated incrustations of a late 
 and decorative Gothic style; the exterior of the apse 
 combines Arabic inlaid patterns of black and yellow 
 with the Greek honeysuckle; the western door adds 
 Norman dog-tooth and chevron to the Saracenic billet. 
 Nowhere is any one tradition firmly followed. The 
 whole wavers, and yet is beautiful like the immature 
 eclecticism of the culture which Frederick himself 
 endeavored to establish in his Southern kingdoms. 
 Inside there is no such harmony of blended voices: 
 all the strange tongues which speak together on the 
 outside, making up a music in which the far North 
 and ancient Byzance and the delicate East sound each 
 a note, are hushed. The frigid silence of the Palladian 
 
 * Nearly all cities have their own distinctive color. That of 
 Venice is a pearly white, suggestive of every hue in delicate abey- 
 ance, and that of Florence is a sober brown. Palermo displays a 
 rich yellow ochre passing at the deepest into orange, and at the 
 lightest into primrose. This is the tone of the soil, of sun-stained 
 marble, and of the rough ashlar masonry of the chief buildings. 
 Palermo has none of the glaring whiteness of Naples , nor yet of 
 that parti-colored gradation of tints which adds gayety to the 
 grandeur of Genoa, 
 
PALERMO. 259 
 
 style reigns there simple, indeed, and dignified, but 
 lifeless as the century in which it flourished. 
 
 Yet there, in a side chapel near the western door, 
 stand the porphyry sarcophagi which shrine the bones 
 of the Hautevilles and their representatives. There 
 sleeps King Roger "Dux strenuus et primus Rex 
 Siciliae" with his daughter Constance in her purple 
 chest beside him. Henry VI. and Frederick II. and 
 Constance of Aragon complete the group, which sur- 
 passes for interest all sepulchral monuments even the 
 tombs of the Scaligers at Verona except only, perhaps, 
 the statues of the nave of Innspruck. Very sombre 
 and stately are these porphyry resting-places of 
 princes born in the purple, assembled here from lands 
 so distant from the craggy heights of Hohenstauffen, 
 from the green orchards of Cotentin, from the dry 
 hills of Aragon. They sleep, and the centuries pass 
 by. Rude hands break open the granite lids of their 
 sepulchres to find tresses of yellow hair and frag- 
 ments of imperial mantles embroidered with the 
 hawks and stags the royal hunter loved. The church 
 in which they lie changes with the change of taste in 
 architecture and the manners of successive ages. But 
 the huge stone arks remain unmoved, guarding their 
 freight of mouldering dust beneath gloomy canopies of 
 stone that temper the sunlight as it streams from the 
 chapel windows. 
 
 '7' 
 
260 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 
 
 THE traveller in Sicily is constantly reminded of 
 classical history and literature. While tossing, it may 
 be, at anchor in the port of Trapani, and wondering 
 when the tedious Libeccio will release him, he must 
 perforce remember that here ^Eneas instituted the 
 games for Anchises. Here Mnestheus and Gyas and 
 Sergestus and Cloanthus raced their galleys; on yonder 
 little isle the Centaur struck; and that was the rock 
 which received the dripping Menoetes: 
 
 Ilium et labentem Teucri et risere natantem, 
 Et salsos rident revomentem pectore fluctus. 
 
 Or crossing a broken bridge at night in the lumbering 
 diligence, guarded by infantry with set bayonets, and 
 wondering on which side of the ravine the brigands 
 are in ambush, he suddenly calls to mind that this 
 torrent was the ancient Halycus, the border between 
 Greeks and Carthaginians, established of old, and 
 ratified by Timoleon after the battle of the Crimisus. 
 Among the bare gray hills of Segeste his thoughts 
 revert to that strange story told by Herodotus of 
 Philippus, the young soldier of Crotona, whose beauty 
 was so great that when the Segesteans found him slain 
 among their foes they raised the corpse and burned it 
 on a pyre of honor, and built a hero's temple over 
 the urn that held his ashes. The first sight of 
 makes us cry with Theocritus, A'tva. fia-tsQ epa 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 26 1 
 
 Airva. The solemn heights of Castro 
 Giovanni bring lines of Ovid to our lips: 
 
 Haud procul Hennaeis lacus est a moenibus altse 
 Nomine Fergus aquas. Non illo plura Caystros 
 Carmina cygnorum labentibus audit in undis. 
 Silva coronat aquas, cingens latus omne; suisque 
 Frondibus ut velo Phoebeos summovet ignes. 
 Frigora dant rami, Tyrios humus humida flores. 
 Perpetuum ver est. 
 
 We look, indeed, in vain for the leafy covert and the 
 purple flowers that tempted Proserpine. The place is 
 barren now: two solitary cypress-trees mark the road 
 which winds downward from a desolate sulphur mine, 
 and the lake is clearly the crater of an extinct volcano. 
 Yet the voices of old poets are not mute. "The rich 
 Virgilian rustic measure" recalls a long-since buried 
 past. Even among the wavelets of the Faro, we re- 
 member Homer scanning the shore if haply somewhere 
 yet may linger the wild fig-tree which saved Ulysses 
 from the whirlpool of Chaiybdis. At any rate, we 
 cannot but exclaim with Goethe, "Now all these coasts, 
 gulfs, and creeks, islands and peninsulas, rocks and 
 sandbanks, wooded hills, soft meadows, fertile fields, 
 neat gardens, hanging grapes, cloudy mountains, con- 
 stant cheerfulness of plains, cliffs, and ridges, and the 
 surrounding sea, with such manifold variety are present 
 in my mind; now is the Odyssey for the first time be- 
 come to me a living world." 
 
 But, rich as the whole of Sicily may be in classical 
 associations, two places, Syracuse and Girgenti, are 
 pre-eminent for the power of bringing the Greek past 
 forcibly before us. Their interest is of two very dif- 
 ferent kinds. Girgenti still displays the splendor of 
 temples placed upon a rocky cornice between sea and 
 
262 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 olive-groves. Syracuse has nothing to show but the 
 scene of world-important actions. Yet the great deeds 
 recorded by Thucydides, the conflict between eastern 
 and western Hellas which ended in the annihilation 
 of the bright, brief, brilliant reality of Athenian em- 
 pire, remain so clearly written on the hills and harbors 
 and marsh-lands of Syracuse that no place in the world 
 is topographically more memorable. The artist, whether 
 architect or landscape-painter or poet, finds full enjoy- 
 ment at Girgenti. The historian must be exacting, 
 indeed, in his requirements if he is not satisfied with 
 Syracuse. 
 
 What has become of Syracuse, "the greatest of 
 Greek cities and the fairest of all cities" even in the 
 days of Cicero? Scarcely one stone stands upon an- 
 other of all' those temples and houses. The five towns 
 which were included by the walls have now shrunk to 
 the little island which the first settlers named Ortygia, 
 where the sacred fountain of Arethusa seemed to their 
 home-loving hearts to have followed them from Hellas.* 
 Nothing survives but a few columns of Athene's temple 
 built into a Christian church, with here and there the 
 marble masonry of a bath or the Roman stone-work of 
 an amphitheatre. There are not even any mounds or 
 deep deposits of rubble mixed with pottery to show 
 that here once a town had been.** Etiam periere rutnce. 
 The vast city, devastated for the last time by the Sa- 
 racens in 878 A.D., has been reduced to dust and 
 * The fountain of Arethusa, recently rescued from the washer- 
 women of Syracuse, is shut off from the Great Harbor by a wall 
 and planted with papyrus. Taste has not been displayed in the 
 bear-pit architecture of its circular enclosure. 
 
 ** This is not strictly true of Achradina, where some dtbris may 
 still be found worth excavating. 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 263 
 
 swept by the sirocco into the sea. This is the explana- 
 tion of its utter ruin. The stone of Syracuse is friable 
 and easily disintegrated. The petulant moist wind of 
 the southeast corrodes its surface, and when it falls it 
 crumbles to powder. Here, then, the elements have 
 had their will unchecked by such sculptured granite 
 as in Egypt resists the mounded sand of the desert, 
 or by such marble colonnades as in Athens have calmly 
 borne the insults of successive sieges. What was hewn 
 out of the solid rock the semicircle of the theatre, 
 the street of the tombs with its deeply dented chariot- 
 ruts, the gigantic quarries from which the material of 
 the metropolis was scooped, the catacombs which bur- 
 row for miles underground alone prove how mighty 
 must have been the Syracuse of Dionysius. Truly, 
 "the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattered her poppy, 
 and deals with the memory of men without distinction 
 to merit of perpetuity." Standing on the beach of the 
 Great Harbor or the Bay of Thapsus, we may repeat 
 almost word by word Antipater's solemn lament over 
 Corinth: 
 
 Where is thy splendor now, thy crown of towers, 
 
 Thy beauty visible to all men's eyes, 
 
 The gold and silver of thy treasuries, 
 Thy temples of blest gods, the woven bowers 
 Where long-stoled ladies walked in tranquil hours, 
 
 Thy multitudes like stars that crowd the skies? 
 
 All, all are gone. Thy desolation lies 
 Bare to the night. The elemental powers 
 Resume their empire: on this lonely shore 
 
 Thy deathless Nereids, daughters of the sea, 
 
 Wailing 'mid broken stones unceasingly, 
 Like halcyons when the restless south winds roar, 
 Sing the sad story of thy woes of yore : 
 
 These plunging waves are all that's left to thee. 
 
264 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 Time, however, though he devours his children, cannot 
 utterly destroy the written record of illustrious deeds 
 or the theatre of their enactment. Therefore, with 
 Thucydides in hand, we may still follow the events 
 of that Syracusan siege which decided the destinies 
 of Greece, and, by the fall of Athens, raised Sparta, 
 Macedonia, and finally Rome to the hegemony of the 
 civilized world. 
 
 There are few students of Thucydides and Grote 
 who would not be surprised by the small scale of the 
 cliffs, and the gentle incline of Epipolae the rising 
 ground above the town of Syracuse, upon the slope of 
 which the principal operations of the Athenian siege 
 took place.* Maps, and to some extent also the 
 language of Thucydides, who talks of the 
 or practicable approaches to Epipolae, and the 
 or precipices by which it was separated from the 
 plain, would lead one to suppose that the whole region 
 was on each hand rocky and abrupt. In reality it is 
 extremely difficult to distinguish the rising ground of 
 Epipolse upon the southern side from the plain, so 
 very gradual is the line of ascent and so comparatively 
 even is the rocky surface of the hill. Thucydides, in 
 narrating the night attack of Demosthenes upon the 
 lines of Gylippus (book vii. 43-45), lays stress upon 
 the necessity of approaching Epipolae from the western 
 
 * Epipolae is in shape a pretty regular isosceles triangle, of 
 which the apex is Mongibellisi or Euryalus, and the base Achradina 
 or the northern quarter of the ancient city. Thucydides describes 
 it as %(ooiov dnoxQrjfivov IB xnl vneo irfs no/.ecos svd"vs xetuevov 
 aQ rb aU.o %iaoK)v xal fte'xoi rrfs n6).ecoe 
 
 mxMi'3 TS loTt xnl imiprtves nnv ei'aca' xal cafouaarai vno 
 ta)i> Svoaxooiwi' Sta TO iTUTtol.rji tov aAJ.ov slrai ' 
 (VI. 96). 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 265 
 
 side by Euryalus, and again asserts that during the 
 hurried retreat of the Athenians great numbers died 
 by leaping from the cliffs, while still more had to 
 throw away their armor. At this time the Athenian 
 army was encamped upon the shore of the Great 
 Harbor, and held trenches and a wall that stretched 
 from that side at least half way across Epipolse. It 
 seems therefore strange that, unless their movements 
 were impeded by counterworks and lines of walls, of 
 which we have no information, the troops of Demos- 
 thenes should not, at least in their retreat, have been 
 able to pour down over the gentle descent of Epipolae 
 towards the Anapus, instead of returning to Euryalus. 
 Anyhow, we can scarcely discern cliffs of more than 
 ten feet upon the southern slope of Epipolse, nor can 
 we understand why the Athenians should have been 
 forced to take these in their line of retreat. There 
 must have been some artificial defences of which we 
 read nothing, and of which no traces now remain, but 
 which were sufficient to prevent them from choosing 
 their ground. Slight difficulties of this kind raise the 
 question whether the wonderful clearness of Thucydides 
 in detail was really the result of personal observation, 
 or whether his graphic style enabled him to give the 
 appearance of scrupulous accuracy. I incline to think 
 that the author of the sixth and seventh books of the 
 History must have visited Syracuse, and that if we 
 could see his own map of Epipolse we should better 
 be able to understand the difficulties of the backward 
 night march of Demosthenes, by discovering that there 
 was some imperative necessity for not descending, as 
 seems natural, upon the open slope of the hill to the 
 south. The position of Euryalus at the extreme point 
 
266 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 called Mongibellisi is clear enough. Here the ground, 
 which has been continually rising from the plateau of 
 Achradina (the northern suburb of Syracuse), comes 
 to an abrupt finish. Between Mongibellisi and the 
 Belvedere hill beyond there is a deep depression, and 
 the slope to Euryalus either from the south or north 
 is gradual. It was a gross piece of neglect on the 
 part of Nikias not to have fortified this spot on his 
 first investment of Epipolae, instead of choosing Lab- 
 dalum, which, wherever we may place it, must have 
 been lower down the hill to the east. For Euryalus 
 is the key to Epipolae. It was here that Nikias him- 
 self ascended in the first instance, and that afterwards 
 he permitted Gylippus to enter and raise the siege, 
 and lastly that Demosthenes, by overpowering the in- 
 sufficient Syracusan guard, got at night within the 
 lines of the Spartan general. Thus the three most 
 important movements of the siege were made upon 
 Euryalus. Dionysius, when he enclosed Epipolse with 
 walls, recognized the value of the point, and fortified 
 it with the castle which remains, and to which, as 
 Colonel Leake believes, Archimedes, at the order of 
 Hiero II., made subsequent additions. This castle is 
 one of the most interesting Greek ruins extant. A little 
 repair would make it even now a substantial place of 
 defence, according to Greek tactics. Its deep foss is 
 cut in the solid rock, and furnished with subterranean 
 magazines for the storage of provisions. The three 
 piles of solid masonry on which the drawbridge rested 
 still stand in the centre of this ditch. The oblique 
 grand entrance to the foss descends by a flight of 
 well-cut steps. The rock itself over which the fort 
 was raised is honey-combed with excavated passages 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 267 
 
 for infantry and cavalry, of different width and height, 
 so that one sort can be assigned to mounted horsemen 
 and another to foot-soldiers. The trap-doors which 
 led from these galleries into the fortress are provided 
 with rests for ladders, that could be let down to help 
 a sallying force, or drawn up to impede an advancing 
 enemy. The inner court for stabled horses and the 
 stations for the catapults are still in tolerable preserva- 
 tion. Thus the whole arrangement of the stronghold 
 can be traced, not dimly, but distinctly. Being placed 
 on the left side of the chief gate of Epipolse, the oc- 
 cupants of the fort could issue to attack a foe ad- 
 vancing towards that gate in the rear. At the same 
 time the subterranean galleries enabled them to pour 
 out upon the other side, if the enemy had forced an 
 entrance, while the minor passages and trap-doors 
 provided a retreat in case the garrison were over- 
 powered in one of their offensive operations. The 
 view from Euryalus is extensive. To the left rises 
 JEtna,, snowy, solitary, broadly vast, above the plain of 
 Catania, the curving shore, Thapsus, and the sea. 
 Syracuse itself, a thin white line between the harbor 
 and the open sea, a dazzling streak between two blues, 
 terminates the slope of Epipolae, and on the right 
 hand stretch the marshes of Anapus, rich with vines 
 and hoary with olives. 
 
 By far the most interesting localities of Syracuse 
 are the Great Harbor and the stone-quarries. When 
 the sluggish policy and faint heart of Nikias had 
 brought the Athenians to the verge of ruin, when Gy- 
 lippus had entered the besieged city, and Plemmyrium 
 had been wrested from the invaders, and Demosthenes 
 had failed in his attack upon Epipolse, and the blockad- 
 
268 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 ing trenches had been finally evacuated, no hope re- 
 mained for the armament of Athens except only in 
 retreat by water. They occupied a palisaded encamp- 
 ment upon the shore of the harbor, between the mouth 
 of the Anapus and the city; whence they attempted to 
 force their way with their galleys to the open sea. 
 Hitherto the Athenians had been supreme upon their 
 own element; but now the Syracusans adopted tactics 
 suited to the narrow basin in which the engagements 
 had to take place. Building their vessels with heavy 
 beaks, they crushed the lighter craft of the Athenians, 
 which had no room for flank movements and rapid 
 evolutions. A victory was thus obtained by the Syra- 
 cusan navy; the harbor was blockaded with chains by 
 the order of Gylippus; the Athenians were driven back 
 to their palisades upon the fever-haunted shore. Their 
 only chance seemed to depend upon a renewal of the 
 sea-fight in the harbor. The supreme moment arrived. 
 What remained of the Athenian fleet, in numbers still 
 superior to that of their enemies, steered straight for 
 the mouth of the harbor. The Syracusans advanced 
 from the naval stations of Ortygia to meet them. The 
 shore was thronged with spectators, Syracusans tre- 
 mulous with the expectation of a decisive success, 
 Athenians on the tenter-hooks of hope and dread. In 
 a short time the harbor became a confused mass of 
 clashing triremes; the water beaten into bloody surf 
 by banks of oars; the air filled with shouts from the 
 combatants and exclamations from the looker-on: <Uo- 
 og, pot], vixawzeg, xQarovpsvoi, aW.ct uaa Iv 
 nfya GTQuroTisdov nokvsidq dvayxd^oiro 
 Then after a struggle, in which desperation 
 gave energy to the Athenians, and ambitious hope in- 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 269 
 
 spired their foes with more than wonted vigor, the 
 fleet of the Athenians was finally overwhelmed. The 
 whole scene can be reproduced with wonderful dis- 
 tinctness; for the low shores of Plemmyrium, the city 
 of Ortygia, the marsh of Lysimeleia, the hills above 
 the Anapus, and the distant dome of JEina. are the 
 same as they were upon that memorable day. Nothing 
 has disappeared except the temple of Zeus Olympius 
 and the buildings of Temenitis. 
 
 What followed upon the night of that defeat is less 
 easily realized. Thucydides, however, by one touch 
 reveals the depth of despair to which the Athenians 
 had sunk. They neglected to rescue the bodies of 
 their dead from the Great Harbor, or to ask for a 
 truce, according to hallowed Greek usage, in order 
 that they might perform the funeral rites. To such an 
 extent was the army demoralized. Meanwhile within 
 the city the Syracusans kept high festival, honoring 
 their patron Herakles, upon whose day it happened 
 that the battle had been fought. Nikias neglected this 
 opportunity of breaking up his camp and retiring un- 
 molested into the interior of the island. When after 
 the delay of two nights and a day he finally began to 
 move, the Syracusans had blockaded the roads. How 
 his own division capitulated by the blood-stained banks 
 of the Asinarus after a six days' march of appalling 
 misery, and how that of Demosthenes surrendered in 
 the olive-field of Polyzelus, is too well known. 
 
 One of the favorite excursions from modern Syra- 
 cuse takes the traveller in a boat over the sandy bar 
 of the Anapus, beneath the old bridge which joined 
 the Helorine road to the city, and up the river to its 
 junction with the Cyane. This is the ground traversed 
 
270 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 by the army, first in their attempted flight, and then 
 in their return as captives to Syracuse. Few, perhaps, 
 who visit the spot, think as much of that last act in a 
 world-historical tragedy, as of the picturesque com- 
 positions made by arundo donax, castor-oil plant, yellow 
 flags, and papyrus, on the river-banks and promontories. 
 Like miniature palm-groves these water-weeds stand 
 green and golden against the bright blue sky, feather- 
 ing above the boat which slowly pushes its way through 
 clinging reeds. The huge red oxen of Sicily in the 
 marsh on either hand toss their spreading horns and 
 canter off knee- deep in ooze. Then comes the fountain 
 of Cyane, a broad round well of water, thirty feet in 
 depth, but quite clear, so that you can see the pebbles 
 at the bottom and fishes swimming to and fro among 
 the weeds. Papyrus-plants edge the pool; thick and 
 tufted, they are exactly such as one sees carved or 
 painted upon Egyptian architecture of the Ptolemaic 
 period. 
 
 With Thucydides still in hand, before quitting Syra- 
 cuse we must follow the Athenian captives to their 
 prison-grave. The Latomia de' Cappuccini is a place 
 which it is impossible to describe in words, and of 
 which no photographs give any notion. Sunk to the 
 depth of a hundred feet below the level of the soil, 
 with sides perpendicular and in many places as smooth 
 as though the chisel had just passed over them, these 
 vast excavations produce the impression of some huge 
 subterranean gallery, widening here and there into 
 spacious halls, the whole of which has been unroofed 
 and opened to the air of heaven. It is a solemn and 
 romantic labyrinth, where no wind blows rudely, and 
 where orange-trees shoot upward luxuriantly to meet 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 27 1 
 
 the light. The wild fig bursts from the living rock, 
 mixed with lentisk-shrubs and pendent caper-plants. 
 Old olives split the masses of fallen cliff with their 
 tough, snake-like, slowly corded and compacted roots. 
 Thin flames of pomegranate-flowers gleam amid foliage 
 of lustrous green; and lemons drop unheeded from 
 femininely fragile branches. There, too, the ivy hangs 
 in long festoons, waving like tapestry to the breath of 
 stealthy breezes; while under foot is a tangle of acanthus, 
 thick curling leaves of glossiest green, surmounted by 
 spikes of dull lilac-blossoms. Wedges and columns 
 and sharp teeth of the native rock rear themselves 
 here and there in the midst of the open spaces to the 
 sky, worn fantastically into notches and saws by the 
 action of sirocco. A light yellow calcined by the sun 
 to white is the prevailing color of the quarries. But 
 in shady places the limestone takes a curious pink 
 tone of great beauty, like the interior of some sea- 
 shells. The reflected lights, too, and half-shadows in 
 their scooped-out chambers, make a wonderful natural 
 chiaroscuro. The whole scene is now more picturesque 
 in a sublime and grandiose style than forbidding. 
 There is even one spot planted with magenta-colored 
 rnesembrianthemums of dazzling brightness; and the 
 air is loaded with the drowsy perfume of lemon-blos- 
 soms. Yet this is the scene of a great agony. This 
 garden was once the Gethsemane of a nation, where 
 nine thousand free men of the proudest city of Greece 
 were brought by an unexampled stroke of fortune to 
 slavery, shame, and a miserable end. Here they 
 dwindled away, worn out by wounds, disease, thirst, 
 hunger, heat by day and cold by night, heart-sickness, 
 and the insufferable stench of putrefying corpses. The 
 
2J2 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 pupils of Socrates, the admirers of Euripides, the 
 orators of the Pnyx, the athletes of the Lyceum, lovers 
 and comrades and philosophers, died here like dogs; 
 and the dames of Syracuse stood doubtless on those 
 parapets above, and looked upon them like wild beasts. 
 What the Gorgo of Theocritus might have said to her 
 friend Praxinoe on the occasion would be the subject 
 for an idyl d la Browning! How often, pining in those 
 great glaring pits, which were not then curtained with 
 ivy or canopied by olive-trees, must the Athenians have 
 thought with vain remorse of their own Rhamnusian 
 Nemesis, the goddess who held scales adverse to the 
 hopes of men, and bore the legend "Be not lifted up!" 
 How often must they have watched the dawn walk 
 forth fire-footed upon the edge of those bare crags, or 
 the stars slide from east to west across the narrow 
 space of sky! How they must have envied the un- 
 fettered clouds sailing in liquid ether, or traced the 
 far flight of hawk and swallow, sighing, " Oh that I too 
 had the wings of a bird!" The weary eyes turned 
 upward found no change or respite, save what the 
 frost of night brought to the fire of day, and the 
 burning sun to the pitiless cold constellations. 
 
 A great painter, combining Bore's power over space 
 and distance with the distinctness of Flaxman's design 
 and the coloring of Alma Tadema, might possibly 
 realize this agony of the Athenian captives in the 
 stone-quarries. The time of day chosen for the picture 
 should be full noon, with its glare of light and sharply 
 defined vertical shadows. The crannies in the straight 
 sides of the quarry should here and there be tufted 
 with a few dusty creepers and wild fig-trees. On the 
 edge of the sky-line stand parties of Syracusan citizens 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 273 
 
 with their wives and children (shaded by umbrellas), 
 richly dressed, laughing and triumphing over the misery 
 beneath. In the full foreground there are placed two 
 figures. A young Athenian has just died of fever. His 
 body lies stretched along the ground, the head resting 
 on a stone, and the face turned to the sky. Beside 
 him kneels an older warrior, sunburnt and dry with 
 thirst, but full as yet of vigor. He stares with wide 
 despair-smitten eyes straight out, as though he had 
 lately been stretched upon the corpse, but had risen 
 at the sound of movement, or some supposed word of 
 friends close by. His bread lies untasted near him, 
 and the half-pint of water his day's portion has 
 been given to bathe the forehead of his dying friend. 
 They have stood together through the festival of leave- 
 taking from Peirseus, through the battles of Epipolse, 
 through the retreat and the slaughter at the passage 
 of the Asinarus. But now it has come to this, and 
 death has found the younger. Perhaps the friend be- 
 side him remembers some cool wrestling-ground in far- 
 off Athens, or some procession up the steps of the 
 Acropolis, where first they met. Anyhow his fixed 
 gaze now shows that he has passed in thought at least 
 beyond the hell around him. Not far behind should 
 be ranged groups of haggard men, with tattered clothes 
 and dulled or tigerish eyes, some dignified, some 
 broken down by grief; while here and there newly 
 fallen corpses, and in one hideous corner a great heap 
 of abandoned dead, should point the ghastly words of 
 Thucydides: row VEXQWV opov in 
 
 ftfVCOV. 
 
 Every landscape has some moment of its own at 
 which it should be seen for the first time. Mediaeval 
 
 Sketches in Italy. l & 
 
274 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 cities, with their narrow streets and solemn spires, de- 
 mand the twilight of a summer night. Mediterranean 
 islands show their best in the haze of afternoon, when 
 sea and sky and headland are bathed in aerial blue, 
 and the mountains seem to be made of transparent 
 amethyst. The first sight of the Alps should be taken 
 at sunset from some point of vantage, like the terrace 
 at Berne, or the castle walls of Salzburg. If these for- 
 tunate moments be secured, all after-knowledge of 
 locality and detail serves to fortify and deepen the 
 impression of picturesque harmony. The mind has 
 then conceived a leading thought, which gives ideal 
 unity to scattered memories and invests the crude 
 reality with an aesthetic beauty. The lucky moment 
 for the landscape of Girgenti is half an hour past sun- 
 set in a golden after-glow. Landing at the port named 
 after Empedocles, having caught from the sea some 
 glimpses of temple-fronts emergent on green hill-slopes 
 among almond-trees, with Pindar's epithet of " splendor- 
 loving" in my mind, I rode on such an evening up the 
 path which leads across the Drago to Girgenti. The 
 way winds through deep-sunk lanes of rich amber 
 sandstone, hedged with cactus and dwarf-palm, and 
 set with old gnarled olive-trees. As the sunlight faded, 
 Venus shone forth in a luminous sky, and the deep 
 yellows and purples overhead seemed to mingle with 
 the heavy scent of orange-flowers from scarcely visible 
 groves by the roadside. Saffron in the west and violet 
 in the east met midway, composing a translucent at- 
 mosphere of mellow radiance, like some liquid gem 
 dolce color d' oriental berillo. Girgenti, far off and far 
 up, gazing seaward, and rearing her topaz-colored 
 bastions into that gorgeous twilight, shone like the 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 275 
 
 aerial vision of cities seen in dreams or imaged in the 
 clouds. Hard and sharp against the sallow line of 
 sunset leaned grotesque shapes of cactuses like hydras, 
 and delicate silhouettes of young olive-trees like sylphs: 
 the river ran silver in the hollow, and the mountain- 
 side on which the town is piled was solid gold. Then 
 came the dirty dull interior of Girgenti, misnamed the 
 magnificent. But no disenchantment could destroy the 
 memory of that vision, and Pindar's yildy'kaog 'Axgdyag 
 remains in my mind a reality.* 
 
 The temples of Girgenti are at the distance of two 
 miles from the modern town. Placed upon the edge 
 of an irregular plateau which breaks off abruptly into 
 cliffs of moderate height below them, they stand in a 
 magnificent row between the sea and plain on one 
 side, and the city and the hills upon the other. Their 
 color is that of dusky honey or dun amber; for they 
 are not built of marble, but of sandstone, which at 
 some not very distant geological period must have 
 been a sea-bed. Oyster and scallop shells are im- 
 bedded in the roughly hewn masonry, while here and 
 there patches of a red deposit, apparently of broken 
 coralline, make the surface crimson. The vegetation 
 against which the ruined colonnades are relieved con- 
 sists almost wholly of almond and olive trees, the 
 bright green foliage of the one mingling with the grays 
 of the other, and both enhancing the warm tints of the 
 
 * Lest I should seem to have overstated the splendor of this 
 sunset view, I must remark that the bare dry landscape of the South 
 is peculiarly fortunate in such effects. The local tint of the Girgenti 
 rock is yellow. The vegetation on the hillside is sparse. There is 
 nothing to prevent the colors of the sky being reflected upon the 
 vast amber-tinted surface, which then glows with indescribable 
 glory. 
 
 18* 
 
276 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 stone. This contrast of colors is very agreeable to the 
 eye; yet when the temples were perfect it did not 
 exist. There is no doubt that their surface was coated 
 with a fine stucco, wrought to smoothness, toned like 
 marble, and painted over with the blue and red and 
 green decorations proper to the Doric style. This fact 
 is a practical answer to those aesthetic critics who 
 would fain establish that the Greeks practised no de- 
 ception in their arts. The whole effect of the colon- 
 nades of Selinus and Girgenti must have been an 
 illusion, and their surface must have needed no less 
 constant reparation than the exterior of a Gothic ca- 
 thedral. The sham jewelry frequently found in Greek 
 tombs, and the curious mixture of marble with sand- 
 stone in the sculptures from Selinus, are other instances 
 that Greeks no less than modern artists condescended 
 to trickery for the sake of effect. In the series of the 
 metopes from Selinus now preserved in the museum at 
 Palermo, the flesh of the female persons is represented 
 by white marble , while that of the men, together with 
 the dresses and other accessories, is wrought of com- 
 mon stone. Yet the bass-reliefs in which this pecu- 
 liarity occurs belong to the best period of Greek 
 sculpture, and the groups are not unworthy for spirit 
 and design to be placed by the side of the metopes of 
 the Parthenon. Most beautiful, for example, is the 
 contrast between the young unarmed Hercules and the 
 Amazon he overpowers. His naked man's foot grasps 
 with the muscular energy of an athlete her soft and 
 helpless woman's foot, the roughness of the sandstone 
 and the smoothness of the marble really heightening 
 the effect of difference. 
 
 Though ranged in a row along the same cornice, 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 277 
 
 the temples of Girgenti, originally at least six in 
 number, were not so disposed that any of their archi- 
 tectural lines should be exactly parallel. The Greeks 
 disliked formality; the carefully calculated asymmetreia 
 in the disposition of their groups of buildings secured 
 variety of effect as well as a broken surface for the 
 display of light and shadow. This is very noticeable 
 on the Acropolis of Athens, where, however regular 
 may be the several buildings, all are placed at different 
 angles to each other and the hill. Only two of the 
 Girgenti temples survive in any degree of perfection 
 the so-called Concordia and the Juno Lacinia. The 
 rest are but mere heaps of mighty ruins, with here 
 and there a broken column, and in one place an angle 
 of a pediment raised upon a group of pillars. The 
 foundations of masonry which supported them and the 
 drums of their gigantic columns are tufted with wild 
 palm, aloe, asphodel, and crimson snap-dragon. Yellow- 
 blossoming sage and mint and lavender and migno- 
 nette sprout in the crevices where snakes and lizards 
 harbor. The grass around is gemmed with blue pim- 
 pernel and convolvulus. Gladiolus springs amid the 
 young corn-blades beneath the almond-trees; while a 
 beautiful little iris makes the most unpromising dry 
 places brilliant with its delicate grays and blues. In 
 cooler and damper hollows, around the boles of old 
 olives and under ruined arches, flourishes the tender 
 acanthus, and the roadsides are gaudy with a yellow 
 daisy flower, which may perchance be the ekfygvaos of 
 Theocritus. Thus the whole scene is a wilderness of 
 brightness, less radiant but more touching than when 
 processions of men and maidens bearing urns and 
 laurel-branches, crowned with ivy or with myrtle, paced 
 
278 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 along those sandstone roads, chanting paeans and pro- 
 sodial hymns, towards the glistening porches and hy- 
 psethral cells. 
 
 The only temple about the name of which can be 
 no doubt, is that of Zeus Olympius. A prostrate giant 
 who once with nineteen of his fellows helped to sup- 
 port the roof of this enormous fane, and who now lies 
 in pieces among the asphodels, remains to prove that 
 this was the building begun by the Agrigentines after 
 the defeat of the Phoenicians at the Himera, when 
 slaves were many and spoil was abundant, and Hellas 
 both in Sicily and on the mainland felt a more than 
 usual thrill of gratitude to their ancestral deity. The 
 greatest architectural works of the island, the temples 
 of Segeste and Selinus as well as those of Girgenti, 
 were begun between this period and the Carthaginian 
 invasion of 409 B.C. The victory of the Hellenes 
 over the barbarians in 480 B.C., symbolized in the 
 victory of Zeus over the enslaved Titans of this temple, 
 gave a vast impulse to their activity and wealth. After 
 the disastrous incursion of the same foes seventy years 
 later, the western Greek towns of the island received 
 a check from which they never recovered. Many of 
 their noblest buildings remained unfinished. The 
 question which rises to the lips of all who contemplate 
 the ruins of this gigantic temple and its compeer de- 
 dicated to Heracles is this: Who wrought the destruc- 
 tion of works so solid and enduring? For what pur- 
 pose of spite or interest were those vast columns in 
 the very flutings of which a man can stand with ease 
 felled like forest pines? One sees the mighty pillars 
 lying as they sank, like swaths beneath the mower's 
 scythe. Their basements are still in line. The drums 
 
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 279 
 
 which composed them have fallen asunder, but main- 
 tain their original relation to each other on the ground. 
 Was it earthquake or the hand of man that brought 
 them low? Poggio Bracciolini tells us that in the 
 fifteenth century they were burning the marble build- 
 ings of the Roman Campagna for lime. We know that 
 the Senator Brancaleone made havoc among the classic 
 monuments occupied as fortresses by Frangipani and 
 Savelli and Orsini. We understand how the Farnesi 
 should have quarried the Coliseum for their palace. 
 But here, at the distance of three miles from Girgenti, 
 in a comparative desert, what army, or what band of 
 ruffians, or what palace-builders could have found it 
 worth their while to devastate mere mountains of 
 sculptured sandstone? The Romans invariably re- 
 spected Greek temples. The early Christians used 
 them for churches and this accounts for the com- 
 parative perfection of the Concordia. It was in the 
 age of the Renaissance that the ruin of Girgenti's 
 noblest monuments occurred. The temple of Zeus 
 Olympius was shattered in the fifteenth century, and 
 in the next its fragments were used to build a break- 
 water. The demolition of such substantial edifices is 
 as great a wonder as their construction. We marvel 
 at the energy which must have been employed on their 
 overthrow no less than at the art which raised such 
 blocks of stone and placed them in position. 
 
 While so much remains both at Syracuse and at 
 Girgenti to recall the past, we are forced here, as at 
 Athens, to feel how very little we really know about 
 Greek life. We cannot bring it up before our fancy 
 with any clearness, but rather in a sort of hazy dream, 
 from which some luminous points emerge. The en- 
 
28O SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 trance of an Olympian victor through the breach in 
 the city walls of Girgenti, the procession of citizens 
 conducting old Timoleon in his chariot to the theatre, 
 the conferences of the younger Dionysius with Plato in 
 his guarded palace-fort, the stately figure of Empedocles 
 presiding over incantations in the marshes of Selinus, 
 the austerity of Dion and his mystic dream, the 
 first appearance of stubborn Gylippus with long Lace- 
 daemonian hair in the theatre of Syracuse such pic- 
 turesque pieces of history we may fairly well recapture. 
 But what were the daily occupations of the Simsetha 
 of Theocritus? What was the state-dress of the splendid 
 Queen Philistis, whose name may yet be read upon her 
 seat, and whose face adorns the coins of Syracuse? 
 How did the great altar of Zeus look, when the oxen 
 were being slaughtered there by hundreds, in a place 
 which must have been shambles and meat-market and 
 temple all in one? What scene of architectural splendor 
 met the eyes of the swimmers in the Piscina of Girgenti? 
 How were the long hours of so many days of leisure 
 occupied by the Greeks, who had each three pillows 
 to his head in "splendor-loving Acragas?" Of what 
 sort was the hospitality of Gellias? Questions like 
 these rise up to tantalize us with the hopelessness of 
 ever truly recovering the life of a lost race. After all 
 the labor of antiquary and the poet, nothing remains 
 to be uttered but such moralizings as Sir Thomas 
 Browne poured forth over the urns discovered at Old 
 Walsingham: "What time the persons of these ossua- 
 ries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept 
 with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide 
 solution. But who were the proprietaries of these 
 bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a 
 
AMALFI, PJESTUM, CAPRI. 28 I 
 
 question above antiquarism; not to be resolved by 
 man, nor easily perhaps by spirits except we consult 
 the provincial guardians, or tutelary observators." 
 Death reigns over the peoples of the past, and we 
 must fain be satisfied to cry with Raleigh: "O eloquent, 
 just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou 
 hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; 
 and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast 
 cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn 
 together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, 
 cruelty, and ambition of men, and covered it all over 
 with these two narrow words, hie jacet" Even so. 
 Yet while the cadence of this august rhetoric is yet in 
 our ears, another voice is heard as of the angel seated 
 by a void and open tomb, "Why seek ye the living 
 among the dead?" The spirit of Hellas is indestruc- 
 tible, however much the material existence of the Greeks 
 be lost beyond recovery; for the life of humanity is 
 not many but one, not parcelled into separate moments, 
 but continuous. 
 
 AMALFI, P^STUM, CAPRI. 
 
 THE road between Vietri and Amalfi is justly 
 celebrated as one of the most lovely pieces of coast 
 scenery in Italy. Its only rivals are the roads from 
 Castellamare to Sorrento, from Genoa to Sestri, and 
 from Nice to Mentone. Each of these has its own 
 charm; and yet their similarity is sufficient to invite 
 comparison: under the spell of each in turn we are 
 inclined to say, This then, at all events, is the most 
 
282 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 beautiful. On first quitting Vietri, Salerno is left low 
 down upon the sea-shore, nestling into a little corner 
 of the bay which bears its name, and backed up by 
 gigantic mountains. With each onward step these 
 mountain-ranges expand in long aerial line, revealing 
 reaches of fantastic peaks, that stretch away beyond the 
 plain of Paestum, till they end at last in mist and sun- 
 beams shimmering on the sea. On the left hand 
 hangs the cliff above the deep salt water, with here 
 and there a fig-tree spreading fanlike leaves against 
 the blue beneath. On the right rises the hill-side, 
 clothed with myrtle, lentisk, cistus, and pale yellow 
 coronilla a tangle as sweet with scent as it is gay 
 with blossom. Over the parapet that skirts the pre- 
 cipice lean heavy-foliaged locust-trees, and the terraces 
 in sunny nooks are set with lemon-orchards. There 
 are but few olives, and no pines. Meanwhile each 
 turn in the road brings some change of scene: now a 
 village with its little beach of gray sand, lapped by 
 clearest sea-waves, where bare-legged fishermen mend 
 their nets, and naked boys bask like lizards in the 
 sun; now towering bastions of weird rock, broken into 
 spires and pinnacles like those of Skye, and colored 
 with bright hues of red and orange; then a ravine, 
 where the thin thread of a mountain streamlet seems 
 to hang suspended upon ferny ledges in the limestone 
 or a precipice defined in profile against sea and 
 sky, with a lad, half dressed in goat-skin, dangling his 
 legs into vacuity and singing or a tract of cultivation, 
 where the orange, apricot, and lemon trees nestle to- 
 gether upon terraces with intermingled pergolas of vines. 
 Amalfi and Atrani lie close together in two of 
 these ravines, the mountains almost arching over them, 
 
AMALFI, P^STUM, CAPRI. 283 
 
 and the sea washing their very house-walls. Each 
 has its crowning campanile; but that of Amalfi is the 
 stranger of the two, like a Moorish tower at the top, 
 and colored with green and yellow tiles that glitter 
 in the sunlight. The houses are all dazzling white, 
 plastered against the naked rock, rising on each other's 
 shoulders to get a glimpse of earth and heaven, jutting 
 out on coigns of vantage from the toppling cliff, and 
 pierced with staircases as dark as night at noonday. 
 Some frequented lanes lead through the basements of 
 these houses; and as the donkeys pick their way from 
 step to step in the twilight, bare-chested macaroni- 
 makers crowd forth like ants to see us strangers pass. 
 A myriad of swallows or a swarm of mason-bees might 
 build a town like this. 
 
 It is not easy to imagine the time when Amalfi 
 and Atrani were one town, with docks and arsenals 
 and harborage for their associated fleets, and when 
 these little communities were second in importance to 
 no naval power of Christian Europe. The Byzantine 
 Empire lost its hold on Italy during the eighth century; 
 and after this time the history of Calabria is mainly 
 concerned with the republics of Naples and Amalfi, 
 their conflict with the Lombard dukes of Benevento, 
 their opposition to the Saracens, and their final sub- 
 jugation by Norman conquerors of Sicily. Between 
 the year 839 A.D., when Amalfi freed itself from the 
 control of Naples and the yoke of Benevento, and the 
 year 1131, when Roger of Hauteville incorporated the 
 republic in his kingdom of the Two Sicilies, this 
 city was the foremost naval and commercial port of 
 Italy. The burghers of Amalfi elected their own doge; 
 founded the Hospital of Jerusalem, whence sprang 
 
284 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 the knightly order of St. John; gave their name to 
 the richest quarter in Palermo; and owned trading 
 establishments or factories in all the chief cities of 
 the Levant Their gold coinage of /art formed the 
 standard of currency before the Florentines had 
 stamped the lily and St. John upon the Tuscan florin. 
 Their shipping regulations supplied Europe with a 
 code of maritime laws. Their scholars, in the darkest 
 depth of the dark ages, prized and conned a famous 
 copy of the Pandects of Justinian; and their seamen 
 deserved the fame of having first used, if they did 
 not actually invent, the compass. 
 
 To modern visitors those glorious centuries of 
 Amalfitan power and independence cannot but seem 
 fabulous; so difficult is it for us to imagine the condi- 
 tions of society in Europe when a tiny city, shut in 
 between barren mountains and a tideless sea, without 
 a circumjacent territory, and with no resources but 
 piracy or trade, could develop maritime supremacy in 
 the Levant and produce the first fine flowers of liberty 
 and culture. 
 
 If the history of Amalfi's early splendor reads like 
 a brilliant legend, the story of its premature extinction 
 has the interest of a tragedy. The republic had grown 
 and flourished on the decay of the Greek Empire. 
 When the hard-handed race of Hauteville absorbed 
 the heritage of Greeks and Lombards and Saracens in 
 Southern Italy, these adventurers succeeded in annex- 
 ing Amalfi. But it was not their interest to extinguish 
 the state. On the contrary, they relied for assistance 
 upon the navies and the armies of the little common- 
 wealth. New powers had meanwhile arisen in the 
 North of Italy, who were jealous of rivalry upon the 
 
AMALFI, PJESTUM, CAPRI. 285 
 
 open seas; and when the Neapolitans resisted King 
 Roger in 1135, they called Pisa to their aid, and sent 
 her fleet to destroy Amalfi. The ships of Amalfi were 
 on guard with Roger's navy in the Bay of Naples. 
 The armed citizens were, under Roger's orders, at 
 Aversa. Meanwhile the home of the republic lay 
 defenceless on its mountain-girdled seaboard. The 
 Pisans sailed into the harbor, sacked the city, and 
 carried off the famous Pandects of Justinian as a 
 trophy. Two years later they returned, to complete 
 the work of devastation. Amalfi never recovered from 
 the injuries and the humiliation of these two attacks. 
 It was ever thus that the Italians, like the children of 
 the dragon's teeth which Cadmus sowed, consumed 
 each other. Pisa cut the throat of her sister-port 
 Amalfi, and Genoa gave a mortal wound to Pisa, when 
 the waters of Meloria were dyed with blood in 1284. 
 Venice fought a duel to the death with Genoa in 
 the succeeding century; and what Venice failed to 
 accomplish was completed by Milan and the lords of 
 the Visconti dynasty, who crippled and enslaved the 
 haughty queen of the Ligurian Riviera. 
 
 The naval and commercial prosperity of Amalfi 
 was thus put an end to by the Pisans in the twelfth 
 century. But it was not then that the town assumed 
 its present aspect. What surprises the student of 
 history more than anything is the total absence of for- 
 tifications, docks, arsenals, and breakwaters, bearing 
 witness to the ancient grandeur of a city which num- 
 bered fifty thousand inhabitants, and traded with 
 Alexandria, Syria, and the far East. Nothing of the 
 sort, with the exception of a single solitary tower upon 
 the Monte Aureo, is visible. Nor will he fail to re- 
 
286 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 member that Amalfi and Atrani, which are now divided 
 by a jutting mountain buttress, were once joined by a 
 tract of sea-beach, where the galleys of the republic 
 rested after sweeping the Levant, and where the fisher- 
 men drew up their boats upon the smooth gray sand. 
 That also has disappeared. The violence of man was 
 not enough to reduce Amalfi to its present state of in- 
 significance. The forces of nature aided partly by 
 the gradual subsidence of the land, which caused the 
 lower quarters of the city to be submerged, and 
 separated Amalfi from her twin-port by covering the 
 beach with water partly by a fearful tempest, accom- 
 panied by earthquake, in 1343. Petrarch, then resi- 
 dent at Naples, witnessed the destructive fury of this 
 great convulsion, and the description he wrote of it 
 soon after its occurrence is so graphic that some notice 
 may well be taken of it here. 
 
 His letter, addressed to the noble Roman Giovanni 
 Colonna, begins with a promise to tell something of a 
 storm which deserved the title of "poetic," and in a 
 degree so superlative that no epithet but "Homeric" 
 would suffice to do it justice. This exordium is sin- 
 gularly characteristic of Petrarch, who never forgot 
 that he was a literary man, and lost no opportunity of 
 dragging the great names of antiquity into his rhe- 
 torical compositions. The catastrophe was hardly un- 
 expected; for it had been prophesied by an astrological 
 bishop, whom Petrarch does not name, that Naples 
 would be overwhelmed by a terrible disaster in De- 
 cember, 1343. The people were, therefore, in a state 
 of wild anxiety, repenting of their sins, planning a 
 total change of life under the fear of imminent death, 
 and neglecting their ordinary occupations. On the 
 
AMALFI, P^ESTUM, CAPRI. 287 
 
 day of the predicted calamity women roamed in trem- 
 bling crowds through the streets, pressing their babies 
 to their breasts, and besieging the altars of the saints 
 with prayers. Petrarch, who shared the general dis- 
 quietude, kept watching the signs of the weather; but 
 nothing happened to warrant an extraordinary panic. 
 At sunset the sky was quieter than usual; and he 
 could discern none of the symptoms of approaching 
 tempest, to which his familiarity with the mountains of 
 Vaucluse accustomed him. After dusk he stationed 
 himself at a window to observe the moon until she 
 went down, before midnight, obscured by clouds. Then 
 he betook himself to bed; but scarcely had he fallen 
 into his first sleep when a most horrible noise aroused 
 him. The whole house shook; the night-light on his 
 table was extinguished; and he was thrown with 
 violence from his couch. He was lodging in a con- 
 vent; and soon after this first intimation of the tempest 
 he heard the monks calling to each other through the 
 darkness. From cell to cell they hurried, the ghastly 
 gleams of lightning falling on their terror-stricken 
 faces. Headed by the Prior, and holding crosses and 
 relics of the saints in their hands, they now assembled 
 in Petrarch's chamber. Thence they proceeded in a 
 body to the chapel, where they spent the night in 
 prayer and expectation of impending ruin. It would 
 be impossible, says the poet, to relate terrors of that 
 hellish night the deluges of rain, the screaming of the 
 wind, the earthquake, the thunder, the howling of the 
 sea, and the shrieks of agonizing human beings. All 
 these horrors were prolonged, as though by some 
 magician's spell, for what seemed twice the duration 
 of a natural night. It was so dark that at last by con- 
 
288 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 jecture rather than the testimony of their senses they 
 knew that day had broken. A hurried mass was said. 
 Then, as the noise in the town above them began to 
 diminish, and a confused clamor from the sea-shore 
 continually increased, their suspense became unen- 
 durable. They mounted their horses, and descended 
 to the port to see and perish. A fearful spectacle 
 awaited them. The ships in the harbor had broken 
 their moorings, and were crashing helplessly together. 
 The strand was strewn with mutilated corpses. The 
 breakwaters were submerged, and the sea seemed 
 gaining momently upon the solid land. A thousand 
 watery mountains surged up into the sky between the 
 shore and Capri; and these massive billows were not 
 black or purple, but hoary with a livid foam. After 
 describing some picturesque episodes such as the 
 gathering of the knights of Naples to watch the ruin 
 of their city, the procession of court ladies headed 
 by the queen to implore the intercession of Mary, and 
 the wreck of a vessel freighted with four hundred con- 
 victs bound for Sicily Petrarch concludes with a 
 fervent prayer that he may never have to tempt the 
 sea, of whose fury he had seen so awful an example. 
 
 The capital on this occasion escaped the ruin 
 prophesied. But Amalfi was inundated; and what the 
 waters then gained has never been restored to man. 
 This is why the once so famous city ranks now upon 
 a level with quiet little towns whose names are hardly 
 heard in history with San Remo or Rapallo or Chiavari 
 and yet it is still as full of life as a wasp's nest, 
 especially upon the molo, or raised piazza paved with 
 bricks, in front of the Albergo de' Cappuccini. The 
 changes of scene upon this tiny square are so frequent 
 
AMALFI, PJESTUM, CAPRI. 289 
 
 as to remind one of a theatre. Looking down from 
 the inn-balcony, between the glazy green pots gay with 
 scarlet amaryllis-bloom , we are inclined to fancy that 
 the whole has been prepared for our amusement. In 
 the morning the corn for the macaroni-flour, after being 
 washed, is spread out on the bricks to dry. In the 
 evening the city magnates promenade and whisper. 
 Dark-eyed women, with orange or crimson kerchiefs 
 for head-gear, cross and recross, bearing baskets on 
 their shoulders. Great, lazy, large-limbed fellows, girt 
 with scarlet sashes and finished off with dark-blue 
 nightcaps (for a contrast to their saffron-colored shirts, 
 white breeches, and sunburnt calves), slouch about or 
 sleep face downward on the parapets. On either side 
 of this same molo stretches a miniature beach of sand 
 and pebble, covered with nets, which the fishermen 
 are always mending, and where the big boats lade or 
 unlade, trimming for the sardine fishery, or driving in 
 to shore with a whirr of oars and a jabber of dis- 
 cordant voices. As the land-wind freshens, you may 
 watch them set off one by one, like pigeons taking 
 flight, till the sea is flecked with twenty sail all scud- 
 ding in the same direction. The torrent runs beneath 
 the molo, and finds the sea beyond it; so that here, 
 too, are the washerwomen, chattering like sparrows; 
 and everywhere the naked boys, like brown sea-urchins, 
 burrow in the clean warm sand, or splash the shallow 
 brine. If you like the fun, you may get a score of 
 them to dive together and scramble for coppers in the 
 deeper places, their lithe bodies gleaming wan beneath 
 the water in a maze of interlacing arms and legs. 
 
 Over the whole busy scene rise the gray hills, 
 soaring into blueness of air-distance, turreted here and 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 19 
 
2 go SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 there with ruined castles, capped with parti-colored 
 campanili and white convents, and tufted through their 
 whole height with the orange and the emerald of the 
 great tree-spurge, and with the live gold of the blos- 
 soming broom. It is difficult to say when this picture 
 is most beautiful whether in the early morning, when 
 the boats are coming back from their night-toil upon 
 the sea, and along the headlands in the fresh light lie 
 swaths of fleecy mist, betokening a still, hot day; or 
 at noontide, when the houses on the hill stand, tinted 
 pink and yellow, shadowless-like gems, and the great 
 caruba-trees above the tangles of vines and figs are 
 blots upon the steady glare; or at sunset, when violet 
 and rose, reflected from the eastern sky, make all these 
 terraces and peaks translucent with a wondrous glow. 
 The best of all, perhaps, is night, with a full moon 
 hanging high overhead. Who shall describe the 
 silhouettes of boats upon the shore or sleeping on the 
 misty sea? On the horizon lies a dusky film of brown- 
 ish golden haze, between the moon and the glimmering 
 water; and here and there a lamp or candle burns 
 with a deep red. Then is the time to take a boat and 
 row upon the bay, or, better, to swim out into the 
 waves and trouble the reflections from the steady stars. 
 The mountains, clear and calm, with light-irradiated 
 chasms and hard shadows cast upon the rock, soar up 
 above a city built of alabaster, or sea-foam, or summer 
 clouds. The whole is white and wonderful: no similes 
 suggest an analogue for the lustre, solid and trans- 
 parent, of Amalfi nestling in moonlight between the 
 gray-blue sea and lucid hills. Stars stand on all the 
 peaks, and twinkle, or keep gliding, as the boat moves, 
 down the craggy sides, Stars are mirrored on the 
 
AMALFI, PJESTUM, CAPRI. 2QI 
 
 marble of the sea, until one knows not whether the 
 oar has struck sparks from a star image or has scat- 
 tered diamonds of phosphorescent brine. 
 
 All this reads like a rhapsody; but indeed it is 
 difficult not to be rhapsodical when a May night of 
 Amalfi is in the memory, with the echo of rich baritone 
 voices chanting Neapolitan songs to a mandoline. It 
 is fashionable to complain that these Italian airs are 
 opera-tunes; but this is only another way of saying 
 that the Italian opera is the genuine outgrowth of 
 national melody, and that Weber was not the first, 
 as some German critics have supposed, to string to- 
 gether Volkslieder for the stage. Northerners, who 
 have never seen or felt the beauty of the South, talk 
 sad nonsense about the superiority of German over 
 Italian music. It is true that much Italian music is 
 out of place in Northern Europe, where we seem to 
 need more travail of the intellect in art. But the 
 Italians are rightly satisfied with such facile melody 
 and such simple rhythms as harmonize with sea and 
 sky and boon earth sensuously beautiful. "Perch6 
 pensa? Pensando s'invecchia," expresses the same 
 habit of mind as another celebrated saying, "La musica 
 e il lamento dell' amore o la preghiera agli Dei." 
 Whatever may be the value of Italian music, it is in 
 concord with such a scene as Amalfi by moonlight; 
 and he who does not appreciate this, no less than 
 some more artificial combination of sights and sounds 
 in Wagner's theatre at Bayreuth, has scarcely learned 
 the first lesson in the lore of beauty. 
 
 There is enough and to spare for all tastes at 
 Amalfi. The student of architecture may spend hours 
 in the cathedral, pondering over its high-built western 
 
 19* 
 
2 Q2 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 front, and wonder whether there is more of Moorish 
 or of Gothic in its delicate arcades. The painter may 
 transfer its campanile, glittering like dragon's scales, 
 to his canvas. The lover of the picturesque will 
 wander through its aisle at mass-time, watching the 
 sunlight play upon those upturned Southern faces with 
 their ardent eyes; and happy is he who sees young 
 men and maidens on Whit-Sunday crowding round the 
 chancel-rails to catch the marigolds and gillyflowers 
 scattered from baskets which the priest has blessed. 
 Is this a symbol of the Holy Spirit's gifts, or is it some 
 quaint relic of Pagan sparsiones ? This question, with 
 the memory of Pompeian graffiti in our mind, may 
 well suggest itself in Southern Italy, where old and 
 new faiths are so singularly blended. Then there is 
 Ravello on the hills above. The path winds upward 
 between stone walls tufted with maidenhair; and ever 
 nearer grow the mountains, and the sea-line soars into 
 the sky. An Englishman has made his home here in 
 a ruined Moorish villa, with cool colonnaded cloisters 
 and rose-embowered terraces, lending far prospect over 
 rocky hills and olive-girdled villages to Paestum's plain. 
 The churches of Ravello have rare mosaics and bronze 
 doors and marble pulpits, older perhaps than those of 
 Tuscany, which tempt the archseologist to ask if 
 Nicholas the Pisan learned his secret here. But who 
 cares to be a sober antiquary at Amain? Far pleasanter 
 is it to climb the staircase to the Capuchins, and linger 
 in those caverns of the living rock, and pluck the 
 lemons hanging by the mossy walls; or to row from 
 cove to cove along the shore, watching the fishes 
 swimming in the deeps beneath, and the medusas 
 spreading their filmy bells; to land upon smooth slabs 
 
AMALFI, P^ESTUM, CAPRI. 2Q3 
 
 of rock, where corallines wave to and fro; or to rest 
 on samphire-tufted ledges, when the shadows slant 
 beneath the westering sun. 
 
 There is no point in all this landscape which 
 does not make a picture. Painters might even com- 
 plain that* the pictures are too easy and the poetry too 
 facile, just as the musicians find the melodies of this 
 fair land too simple. No effect, carefully sought and 
 strenuously seized, could enhance the mere beauty of 
 Amalfi bathed in sunlight. You have only on some 
 average summer day to sit down and paint the scene. 
 Little scope is afforded to suggestions of far-away 
 weird thoughts, or for elaborately studied motives. 
 Daubigny and Corot are as alien here as Blake or Durer. 
 
 What is wanted, and what no modern artist can 
 successfully recapture from the wasteful past, is the 
 mythopceic sense the apprehension of primeval powers 
 akin to man, growing into shape and substance on the 
 borderland between the world and the keen human 
 sympathies it stirs in us. Greek mythology was the 
 proper form of art for scenery like this. It gave the 
 final touch to all its beauties and added to its sensuous 
 charm an inbreathed spiritual life. No exercise of 
 the poetic faculty, far less that metaphysical mood of 
 the reflective consciousness which "leads from nature 
 up to nature's God," can now supply this need. From 
 sea and earth and sky, in those creative ages when 
 the world was young, there leaned to greet the men 
 whose fancy made them, forms imagined and yet real 
 human, divine the archetypes and everlasting 
 patterns of man's deepest sense of what is wonderful 
 in nature. Feeling them there, forever there, inalien- 
 able, ready to start forth and greet successive genera- 
 
SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 tions as the Hamadryad greeted Rhaicos from his 
 father's oak those mythopoets called them by im- 
 mortal names. All their pent-up longings, all passions 
 that consume, all aspirations that inflame the desire 
 for the impossible, which is disease; the day-dreams 
 and visions of the night, which are spontaneous poems 
 were thus transferred to nature. And nature, re- 
 sponsive to the soul that loves her, gave them back 
 transfigured and translated into radiant beings of like 
 substance with mankind. It was thus, we feel, upon 
 these Southern shores that the gods of Greece came into 
 being. The statues in the temples were the true fine 
 flower of all this beauty, the culmination of the poetry 
 which it evoked in hearts that feel and brains that think. 
 In Italy, far more than in any other part of Europe, 
 the life of the present is imposed upon the strata of 
 successive past lives. Greek, Latin, Moorish, and me- 
 diaeval civilizations have arisen, flourished, and decayed 
 on nearly the same soil; and it is common enough to 
 find one city, which may have perished twenty cen- 
 turies ago, neighbor to another that enjoyed its brief 
 prosperity in the middle of our era. There is not, for 
 example, the least sign of either Greek or Roman at 
 Amalfi. Whatever may have been the glories of the 
 republic in the early Middle Ages, they had no rela- 
 tion to the classic past. Yet a few miles off along 
 the bay rise the ancient Greek temples of Paestum, 
 from a desert with no trace of any intervening oc- 
 cupants. Poseidonia was founded in the sixth century 
 before Christ, by colonists from Sybaris. Three cen- 
 turies later the Hellenic element in this settlement, 
 which must already have become a town of no little 
 importance, was submerged by a deluge of recurrent 
 
AMALFI, IVESTUM, CAPRI. 2 95 
 
 barbarism. Under the Roman rule it changed its name 
 t.o Paestum, and was prosperous. The Saracens de- 
 stroyed it in the ninth century of our era; and Robert 
 Guiscard carried some of the materials of its buildings 
 to adorn his new town of Salerno. Since then the 
 ancient site has been abandoned to malaria and soli- 
 tude. The very existence of Psestum was unknown, 
 except to wandering herdsmen and fishers coasting 
 near its ruined colonnades, until the end of the last 
 century. Yet, strange to relate, after all these revolu- 
 tions, and in the midst of this total desolation, the 
 only relics of the antique city are three Greek temples, 
 those very temples where the Hellenes, barbarized by 
 their Lucanian neighbors, met to mourn for their lost 
 liberty. It is almost impossible to trace more than the 
 mere circuit of the walls of Poseidonia. Its port, if 
 port it had in Roman days, has disappeared. Its 
 theatre is only just discernible. Still not a column of 
 the great hypaethral temple, built by Sybarite colo- 
 nists two thousand and five hundred years ago, to be 
 a house for Zeus or for Poseidon, has been injured. 
 The accidents that erased far greater cities, like Syra- 
 cuse, from the surface of the earth pillage, earth- 
 quake, the fury of fanatics, the slow, decay of perish- 
 able stone, or the lust of palace-builders in the Middle 
 Ages have spared those three houses of the gods, 
 over whom, in the days of Alexander, the funeral hymn 
 was chanted by the enslaved Hellenes. 
 
 "We do the same," said Aristoxenus in his Con- 
 vivial Miscellanies, "as the men of Poseidonia, who 
 dwell on the Tyrrhenian Gulf. It befell them, having 
 been at first true Hellenes, to be utterly barbarized, 
 changing to Tyrrhenes or Romans, and altering their 
 
2Q6 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 language, together with their other customs. Yet they 
 still observe one Hellenic festival, when they meet to- 
 gether and call to remembrance their old names and 
 bygone institutions; and having lamented one to the 
 other, and shed bitter tears, they afterwards depart to 
 their own homes. Even thus a few of us also, now 
 that our theatres have been barbarized, and this art of 
 music has gone to ruin and vulgarity, meet together 
 and remember what once music was."* 
 
 This passage has a strange pathos, considering how 
 it was penned, and how it has come down to us, 
 tossed by the dark, indifferent stream of time. The 
 Aristoxenus who wrote it was a pupil of the Peripatetic 
 school, born at Tarentum, and therefore familiar with 
 the vicissitudes of Magna Grsecia. The study of music 
 was his chief preoccupation; and he used this episode 
 in the agony of an enslaved Greek city, to point his 
 own conservative disgust for innovations in an art of 
 which we have no knowledge left. The works of 
 Aristoxenus have perished, and the fragment I have 
 quoted is imbedded in the gossip of Egyptian Athe- 
 naeus. In this careless fashion has been opened for 
 us, as it were, a little window on a grief now buried 
 in the oblivion ofa hundred generations. After read- 
 ing his words one May morning, beneath the pediment 
 of Paestum's noblest ruin, I could not refrain from 
 thinking that if the spirits of those captive Hellenes 
 were to revisit their old habitations, they would change 
 their note of wailing into a thin ghostly paean when 
 they found that Romans and Lucanians had passed 
 away, that Christians and Saracens had left alike no 
 trace behind, while the houses of their own 
 * Athenaeus, xiv. 632. 
 
AMALFI, PJESTUM, CAPRI. 2Q7 
 
 frsoi dawn-facing deities were still abiding in the 
 pride of immemorial strength. Who knows whether 
 buffalo-driver or bandit may not ere now have seen 
 processions of these Poseidonian phantoms, bearing 
 laurels and chanting hymns on the spot where once 
 they fell each on the other's neck to weep? Gathering 
 his cloak around him and cowering closer to his fire 
 of sticks, the night- watcher in those empty colonnades 
 may have mistaken the Hellenic outlines of his 
 shadowy visitants for fevered dreams, and the melody 
 of their evanished music for the whistling of night 
 winds or the cry of owls. So abandoned is Paestum in 
 its solitude that we know not even what legends may 
 have sprung up round those relics of a mightier age. 
 
 The shrine is ruined now; and far away 
 
 To east and west stretch olive-groves, whose shade 
 
 Even at the height of summer noon is gray. 
 
 Asphodels sprout upon the plinth decayed 
 
 Of these low columns, and the snake hath found 
 
 Her haunt 'neath altar-steps with weeds o'erlaid. 
 
 Yet this was once a hero's temple, crowned 
 With myrtle-boughs by lovers, and with palm 
 By wrestlers, resonant with sweetest sound 
 
 Of flute and fife in summer evening's calm, 
 
 And odorous with incense all the year, 
 
 With nard and spice, and galbanum and balm. 
 
 These lines sufficiently express the sense of desola- 
 tion felt at Psestum, except that the scenery is more 
 solemn and mournful, and the temples are too august 
 to be the shrine of any simple hero. There are no 
 olives. The sea plunges on its sandy shore within the 
 space of half a mile to westward. Far and wide on 
 either hand stretch dreary fever-stricken marshes. The 
 
2Q8 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 plain is bounded to the north and east and south with 
 mountains, purple, snow-peaked, serrated, and grandly 
 broken like the hills of Greece. Driving over this vast 
 level where the Silarus stagnates , the monotony of the 
 landscape is broken now and then by a group of 
 buffaloes standing up to their dewlaps in reeds, by 
 peasants on horseback, with goads in their hands and 
 muskets slung athwart their backs, or by patrols of 
 Italian soldiers crossing and re-crossing on the brigand- 
 haunted roads. Certain portions have been reclaimed 
 from the swamp, and here may be seen white oxen in 
 herds of fifty grazing; or gangs of women at field- 
 labor, with a man to oversee them, cracking a long 
 hunting-whip; or the mares and foals of a famous 
 stud-farm browsing under spreading pines. There are 
 no villages, and the few farm-houses are so widely 
 scattered as to make us wonder where the herdsmen 
 and field- workers, scanty as they are, can possibly be 
 lodged. 
 
 At last the three great temples come in sight. The 
 rich orange of the central building contrasts with the 
 paler yellow of its two companions, while the glowing 
 color of all three is splendidly relieved against green 
 vegetation and blue mountain-flanks. Their material 
 is travertine a calcareous stone formed by the deposit 
 of petrifying waters, which contains fragments of reeds, 
 spiral shells, and other substances, imbedded in the 
 porous limestone. In the flourishing period of old 
 Poseidonia these travertine columns were coated with 
 stucco, worked to a smooth surface, and brilliantly 
 tinted to harmonize with the gay costumes of a Greek 
 festival. Even now this coating of fine sand, mingled 
 with slaked lime and water, can be seen in patches on 
 
AMALFI, PJESTUM, CAPRI. 2QQ 
 
 the huge blocks of the masonry. Thus treated, the 
 travertine lacked little of the radiance of marble, for 
 it must be remembered that the Greeks painted even 
 the Pentelic cornice of the Parthenon with red and blue. 
 Nor can we doubt that the general effect of brightness 
 suited the glad and genial conditions of Greek life. 
 
 All the surroundings are altered now, and the lover 
 of the picturesque may be truly thankful that the 
 hand of time, by stripping the buildings of this stucco, 
 without impairing their proportions, has substituted a 
 new harmony of tone between the native stone and 
 the surrounding landscape, no less sympathetic to the 
 present solitude than the old symphony of colors was 
 to the animated circumstances of a populous Greek 
 city. In this way those critics who defend the poly- 
 chrome decorations of the classic architects, and those 
 who contend that they cannot imagine any alteration 
 from the present toning of Greek temples for the 
 better, are both right. 
 
 In point of color the Psestum ruins are very similar 
 to those of Girgenti; but owing to their position on a 
 level plain, in front of a scarcely indented sea-shore, 
 we lack the irregularity which adds so much charm 
 to the row of temples on their broken cliff in the old 
 town of Agrigentum. In like manner the celebrated 
 asymmelreia of the buildings of the Athenian Acro- 
 polis, which causes so much variety of light and shade 
 upon the temple-fronts, and offers so many novel points 
 of view when they are seen in combinations, seems to 
 have been due originally to the exigencies of the 
 ground. At Psestum, in planning out the city, there 
 can have been no utilitarian reasons for placing the 
 temples at odd angles, either to each other or the 
 
3OO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 shore. Therefore we see them now almost exactly in 
 line and parallel, though at unequal distances. If 
 something of picturesque effect is thus lost at Paestum 
 through the flatness of the ground, something of im- 
 pressive grandeur, on the other hand, is gained by the 
 very regularity with which those phalanxes of massive 
 Doric columns are drawn up to face the sea. 
 
 Poseidonia, as the name betokens, was dedicated 
 to the god of the sea; and the coins of the city are 
 stamped with his effigy bearing a trident, and with his 
 sacred animal, the bull. It has therefore been con- 
 jectured that the central of the three temples which 
 was hypaethral and had two entrances, east and west 
 belonged to Poseidon; and there is something fine 
 in the notion of the god being thus able to pass to 
 and fro from his cella through those sunny peristyles, 
 down to his chariot, yoked with sea-horses, in the 
 brine. Yet hypaethral temples were generally con- 
 secrated to Zeus, and it is therefore probable that the 
 traditional name of this vast edifice is wrong. The 
 names of the two other temples, Tempio di Cerere and 
 Basilica ) are wholly unsupported by any proof or 
 probability. The second is almost certainly founded on 
 a mistake; and if we assign the largest of the three 
 shrines to Zeus, one or other of the lesser belonged 
 most likely to Poseidon. 
 
 The style of the temples is severe and primitive. 
 In general effect their Doric architecture is far sterner 
 than that adapted by Ictinus to the Parthenon. The 
 entablature seems somewhat disproportioned to the 
 columns and the pediment; and, owing to this cause, 
 there is a general effect of heaviness. The columns, 
 again, are thick-set; nor is the effect of solidity re- 
 
AMALFI, P-ffiSTUM, CAPRI. 3O1 
 
 moved by their gradual narrowing from the base up- 
 ward. The pillars of the Neptune are narrowed in a 
 straight line; those of the Basilica and Ceres by a 
 gentle curve. Study of these buildings, so sublime in 
 their massiveness, so noble in the parsimony of their 
 decoration, so dignified in their employment of the 
 simplest means for the attainment of an indestructible 
 effect of harmony, heightens our admiration for the 
 Attic genius which found in this grand manner of the 
 elder Doric architects resources as yet undeveloped; 
 creating, by slight and subtle alterations of outline, 
 proportion, and rhythm of parts, what may fairly be 
 classed as a style unique, because exemplified in only 
 one transcendent building. 
 
 It is difficult not to return again and again to the 
 beauty of coloring at Paestum. Lying basking in the 
 sun upon a flat slab of stone, and gazing eastward, we 
 overlook a foreground of dappled light and shadow, 
 across which the lizards run quick streaks of living 
 emerald making the bunches of yellow rue and little 
 white serpyllum in the fissures of the masonry nod as 
 they hurry past. Then come two stationary columns, 
 built, it seems, of solid gold, when the sunbeams strike 
 along their russet surface. Between them lies the 
 landscape, a medley first of brakefern and asphodel 
 and feathering acanthus and blue spikes of bugloss; 
 then a white farm in the middle distance, rooted with 
 the reddest tiles and sheltered by a velvety umbrella 
 pine. Beyond and above the farm, a glimpse of 
 mountains purple almost to indigo with cloud shadows, 
 and flecked with snow. Still higher but for this we 
 have to raise our head a little the free heavens en- 
 closed within the framework of the tawny travertine, 
 
3O2 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 across which sail hawks and flutter jackdaws, sharply 
 cut against the solid sky. Down from the architrave, 
 to make the vignette perfect, hang tufts of crimson 
 snapdragons. Each opening in the peristyle gives a 
 fresh picture. 
 
 The temples are overgrown with snapdragons and 
 mallows, yellow asters and lilac gillyflowers, white 
 allium and wild fig. When a breeze passes, the whole 
 of this many-colored tapestry waves gently to and 
 fro. The fields around are flowery enough; but where 
 are the roses? I suppose no one who has read his 
 Virgil at school crosses the plain from Salerno to 
 Paestum without those words of the Georgics ringing 
 in his ears: biferique rosaria Pcesti. They have that 
 wonderful Virgilian charm which, by a touch, trans- 
 forms mere daily sights and sounds, and adds poetic 
 mystery to common things. The poets of ancient 
 Rome seem to have felt the magic of this phrase; for 
 Ovid has imitated the line in his Metamorphoses, tamely 
 substituting lepidi for the suggestive biferi, while again 
 in his Elegies he uses the same termination with 
 odoraii for his epithet. Martial sings of Pastana rosce 
 and Pastani gloria run's. Even Ausonius, at the 
 very end of Latin literature, draws from the rosaries 
 of Poestum a pretty picture of beauty doomed to pre- 
 mature decline: 
 
 Vidi Psestano gaudere rosaria cultu 
 Exoriente novo roscida Lucifero. 
 
 "I have watched the rose-beds that luxuriate on Paestum's well- 
 tilled soil, all dewy in the young light of the rising dawn-star." 
 
 What a place, indeed, was this for a rose-garden, 
 spreading far and wide along the fertile plain, with 
 its deep loam reclaimed from swamps and irrigated 
 
AMALFI, R/ESTUM, CAPRI. 303 
 
 by the passing of perpetual streams! But where are the 
 roses now? As well ask, ou sont les neiges d'antan? 
 
 We left Amalfi for Capri in the freshness of an 
 early morning at the end of May. As we stepped 
 into our six-oared boat the sun rose above the horizon, 
 flooding the sea with gold and flashing on the ter- 
 races above Amalfi. High up along the mountains 
 hung pearly and empurpled mists, set like resting- 
 places between a world too beautiful and heaven too 
 far for mortal feet. Not a breath of any wind was 
 stirring. The water heaved with a scarcely perceptible 
 swell, and the vapors lifted gradually as the sun's rays 
 grew in power. Here the hills descend abruptly on 
 the sea, ending in cliffs where light reflected from the 
 water dances. Huge caverns open in the limestone; 
 on their edges hang stalactites like beards, and the 
 sea within sleeps dark as night. For some of these 
 caves the maidenhair fern makes a shadowy curtain; 
 and all of them might be the home of Proteus, or of 
 Calypso, by whose side her mortal lover passed his 
 nights in vain homesickness: 
 
 iv OTitaoi y^atpvooiai Tiao ovx td'ekcov id'EJ.ova'^. 
 
 This is a truly Odyssean journey. Soon the islands 
 of the Sirens come in sight bare bluffs of rock, shaped 
 like galleys taking flight for the broad sea. As we 
 row past in this ambrosial weather, the oarsmen keep- 
 ing time and ploughing furrows in the fruitless fields 
 of Nereus, it is not difficult to hear the siren voices 
 for earth and heaven and sea make melodies far 
 above mortal singing. The water round the Galli 
 so the islands are now called, as antiquaries tell us, 
 from an ancient fortress named Guallo is very deep, 
 
304 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 and not a sign of habitation is to be seen upon them. 
 In bygone ages they were used as prisons; and many 
 doges of Amalfi languished their lives away upon those 
 shadeless stones, watching the sea around them blaze 
 like a burnished shield at noon, and the peaks of Capri 
 deepen into purple when the west was glowing after 
 sunset with the rose and daffodil of Southern twilight. 
 
 The end of the Sorrentine promontory, Point Cam- 
 panella, is absolutely barren gray limestone, with the 
 scantiest overgrowth of rosemary and myrtle. A more 
 desolate spot can hardly be imagined. But now the 
 morning breeze springs up behind; sails are hoisted, 
 and the boatmen ship their oars. Under the albatross 
 wings of our lateen sails we scud across the freshening 
 waves. The precipice of Capri soars against the sky, 
 and the Bay of Naples expands before us with those 
 sweeping curves and azure amplitude that all the poets 
 of the world have sung. Even thus the mariners of 
 ancient Hellas rounded this headland when the world 
 was young. Rightly they named yon rising ground, 
 beneath Vesuvius, Posilippo rest from grief. Even 
 now, after all those centuries of toil, though the mild 
 mountain has been turned into a mouth of murderous 
 fire, though Roman emperors and Spanish despots have 
 done their worst to mar what nature made so perfect, 
 we may here lay down the burden of our cares, gain- 
 ing tranquillity by no mysterious lustral rites, no peni- 
 tential prayers or offerings of holocausts, but by the 
 influence of beauty in the earth and air, and by sym- 
 pathy with a people unspoiled in their healthful life of 
 labor alternating with simple joy. 
 
 The last hour of the voyage was beguiled by stories 
 of our boatmen, some of whom had seen service on 
 
AMALFI, P^STUM, CAPRI. 3O$ 
 
 distant seas, while others could tell of risks on shore 
 and love adventures. They showed us how the tunny- 
 nets were set, and described the solitary life of the 
 tunny-watchers, in their open boats, waiting to spear 
 the monsters of the deep entangled in the chambers 
 made for them beneath the waves. How much of 
 -^schylean imagery, I reflected, is drawn from this old 
 fisher's art the toils of Clytemnestra and the tragedy 
 of Psyttaleia rising to my mind. One of the crew had 
 his little son with him, a child of six years old: and 
 when the boy was restless, his father spoke of Bar- 
 barossa and Timberio (sic] to keep him quiet; for the 
 memory of the Moorish pirate and the mighty emperor 
 is still alive here. The people of Capri are as familiar 
 with Tiberius as the Bretons with King Arthur; and the 
 hoof-mark of illustrious crime is stamped upon the island. 
 Capri offers another example of the versatility of 
 Southern Italy. If Amalfi brings back to us the naval 
 and commercial prosperity of the early Middle Ages; 
 if Paestum remains a monument of the oldest Hellenic 
 civilization, Capri, at a few miles' distance, is dedicated 
 to the Roman emperor who made it his favorite resi- 
 dence, when, life-weary with the world and all its 
 shows, he turned these many peaks and slumbering 
 caves into a summer palace for the nursing of his 
 brain-sick phantasy. Already, on landing, we are led 
 to remember that from this shore was loosed the galley 
 bearing that great letter verbosa et grandis epistola 
 which undid Sejanus and shook Rome. Riding to 
 Ana-Capri and the Salto di Tiberio, exploring the 
 remains of his favorite twelve villas, and gliding over 
 the smooth waters paved with the white marbles of 
 his baths, we are forever, attended by the same for- 
 
 Sketches in Italy. 2O 
 
306 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 bidding spectre. Here, perchance, were the sedes 
 arcanarum libidinum whereof Suetonius speaks; the 
 Spintrian medals, found in these recesses, still bear 
 witness that the biographer trusted no mere fables for 
 the picture he has drawn. Here, too, below the Villa 
 Jovis, gazing seven hundred feet sheer down into the 
 waves, we tread the very parapet whence fell the 
 victims of that maniac lust for blood. "After long 
 and exquisite torments," says the Roman writer, "he 
 ordered condemned prisoners to be cast into the sea 
 before his eyes; marines were stationed near to pound 
 the fallen corpses with poles and oars, lest haply breath 
 should linger in their limbs." The Neapolitan Museum 
 contains a little bass-relief representing Tiberius, with 
 the well-known features of the Claudian house, seated 
 astride upon a donkey, with a girl before him. A slave 
 is leading the beast and its burden to a terminal statue 
 under an olive-tree. This curious relic, discovered 
 some while since at Capri, haunted my fancy as I 
 climbed the olive-planted slopes to his high villa on 
 the Arx Tiberii. It is some relief, amid so much that 
 is tragic in the associations of this place, to have the 
 horrible Tiberius burlesqued and brought into donkey- 
 riding relation with the tourist of to-day. And what 
 an ironical revenge of time it is that his famous Salto 
 should be turned into a restaurant, where the girls 
 dance tarantella for a few coppers; that a toothless 
 hermit should occupy a cell upon the very summit of 
 his Villa Jovis; and that the Englishwoman's comfort- 
 able hotel should be called Timberio by the natives! 
 A spiritualist might well believe that the emperor's ghost 
 was forced to haunt the island, and to expiate his old 
 atrocities by gazing on these modern vulgarisms. 
 
AMALFI, P^STUM, CAPRI. 307 
 
 Few problems suggested by history are more darkly 
 fascinating than the madness of despots; and of this 
 madness, whether inherent in their blood or encouraged 
 by the circumstance of absolute autocracy, the em- 
 perors of the Claudian and Julian houses furnish the 
 most memorable instance.* It is this that renders 
 Tiberius ever present to our memory at Capri. Nor 
 will the student of Suetonius forget his even more 
 memorable grand-nephew Caligula. The following 
 passage is an episode from the biography of that im- 
 perial maniac, whose portrait in green basalt, with the 
 strain of dire mental tension on the forehead, is still 
 so beautfful that we are able at this distance of time 
 to pity more than loathe him. "Above all, he was 
 tormented with nervous irritation, by sleeplessness; for 
 lie enjoyed not more than three hours of nocturnal 
 repose, nor even these in pure untroubled rest, but 
 agitated by phantasmata of portentous augury; as, for 
 example, upon one occasion, among other spectral 
 visions, he fancied that he saw the sea, under some 
 definite impersonation, conversing with himself. Hence 
 it was, and from this incapacity of sleeping, and from 
 weariness of lying awake, that he had fallen into habits 
 of ranging all night long through the palace, some- 
 times throwing himself on a couch, sometimes wander- 
 ing along the vast corridors, watching for the earliest 
 dawn, and anxiously wishing its approach." Those 
 corridors, or loggie, where Caligula spent his wakeful 
 hours, opened perchance upon this Bay of Naples, if 
 
 * De Quincey, in his essay on The C&sars, has worked out this 
 subject with such artistic vividness that no more need be said. From 
 his pages I have quoted the paraphrastic version of Suetonius that 
 follows. 
 
 20* 
 
308 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 not upon the sea-waves of his favorite Porto d' Anzto; 
 for we know that one of his great follies was a palace 
 built above the sea on piles at Baise; and where else 
 could Pelagus, with his cold azure eyes and briny 
 locks, have more appropriately terrified his sleep with 
 prophecy conveyed in dreams? The very nature of 
 this vision, selected for such special comment by Sue- 
 tonius as to show that it had troubled Caligula pro- 
 foundly, proves the fantastic nature of the man, and 
 justifies the hypothesis of insanity. 
 
 But it is time to shake off the burden of the past. 
 Only students, carrying superfluity of culture in their 
 knapsacks, will ponder over the imperial lunatics who 
 made Capri and Baiae fashionable in the days of an- 
 cient Rome. Neither Tiberius nor Caligula, nor yet 
 Ferdinand of Aragon or Bomba, for that matter, has 
 been able to leave trace of vice or scar of crime on 
 nature in this Eden. A row round the island, or a 
 supper-party in the loggia above the sea at sunset-time 
 is no less charming now, in spite of Roman or Spanish 
 memories, than when the world was young. 
 
 Sea-mists are frequent in the early summer morn- 
 ings, swathing the cliffs of Capri in impenetrable wool 
 and brooding on the perfectly smooth water till the 
 day-wind rises. Then they disappear like magic, roll- 
 ing in smoke- wreaths from the surface of the sea, con- 
 densing into clouds and climbing the hill-sides like 
 Oceanides in quest of Prometheus, or taking their 
 station on the watch-towers of the world, as in the 
 chorus of the Nephelai. Such a morning may be 
 chosen for the giro of the island. The blue grotto 
 loses nothing of its beauty, but rather gains by con- 
 trast, when passing from dense fog you find yourself 
 
AMALFI, P^ESTUM, CAPRI. 3OQ 
 
 transported to a world of wavering subaqueous sheen. 
 It is only through the opening of the very topmost 
 arch that a boat can glide into this cavern; the arch 
 itself spreads downward through the water, so that all 
 the light is transmitted from beneath and colored by 
 the sea. The grotto is domed in many chambers; and 
 the water is so clear that you can see the bottom, 
 silvery, with black-finned fishes diapered upon the 
 blue-white sand. The flesh of a diver in this water 
 showed like the faces of children playing at snap- 
 dragon; all around him the spray leaped up with living 
 fire; and when the oars struck the surface, it was as 
 though a phosphorescent sea had been smitten, and 
 the drops ran from the blades in blue pearls. I have 
 only once seen anything (outside the magic world of a 
 pantomime) to equal these effects of blue and silver; 
 and that was when I made my way into an ice-cave 
 in the Great Aletsch glacier not an artificial gallery 
 such as they cut at Grindelwald, but a natural cavern, 
 arched, hollowed into fanciful recesses, and hung with 
 stalactites of pendent ice. The difference between the 
 glacier-cavern and the sea-grotto was that in the former 
 all the light was transmitted through transparent sides, 
 so that the whole was one uniform azure, except in 
 rare places where little chinks opened upward to the 
 air, and the light of day came glancing with a roseate 
 flush. In the latter the light sent from beneath through 
 the water played upon a roof of rock; reflections inter- 
 mingled with translucence; and a greater variety of 
 light and shadow compensated the lack of that strange 
 sense of being shut within a solid gem. 
 
 Numberless are the caves at Capri. The so-called 
 green grotto has the beauty of moss-agate in its liquid 
 
3IO SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 floor; the red grotto shows a Avarmer chord of color, 
 and where there is no other charm to notice, endless 
 beauty may be found in the play of sunlight upon 
 roofs of limestone, tinted with yellow, orange, and pale 
 pink, mossed over, hung with fern, and catching tones 
 of blue or green from the still deeps beneath. 
 
 Sheets of water, wherever found, are the most 
 subtle heighteners of color. To those who are familiar 
 with Venetian or Mantuan sunsets, who have seen the 
 flocks of flamingoes reflected on the lagoons of Tunis, 
 or who have watched stormy red flakes tossed from 
 crest to crest of great Atlantic waves on our own 
 coasts, this need hardly be said. Yet I cannot leave 
 this beauty of the sea at Capri without touching on a 
 melodrama of light and color I once saw at Cast ell a- 
 mare. It was a festa-night, when the people sent up 
 rockets and fireworks of every hue from the harbor 
 breakwater. The surf rolled shoreward like a bath of 
 molten metals, all confused of blue and red and green 
 and gold dying dolphin tints that burned strangely 
 beneath the purple skies and tranquil stars. Boats at 
 sea hung out their crimson cressets, flickering in long 
 lines on the bay; and larger craft moved slowly with 
 rows of lamps defining their curves; while the full 
 moon shed over all her "vitreous pour, just tinged with 
 blue." To some tastes this mingling of natural and 
 artificial effects would seem unworthy of sober notice; 
 but I confess to having enjoyed it with childish eager- 
 ness like music never to be forgotten. 
 
 After a day upon the water it is pleasant to rest 
 at sunset in the loggia above the sea. The Bay of 
 Naples stretches far and wide in front, beautiful by 
 reason chiefly of the long fine line descending from 
 
AMALFI, P-iESTUM, CAPRI. 311 
 
 Vesuvius, dipping almost to a level and then gliding 
 up to join the highlands of the north. Now sun and 
 moon begin to mingle waning and waxing splendors. 
 The cliffs above our heads are still blushing a deep 
 game-color, like the heart of some tea-rose ; when lo, 
 the touch of the huntress is laid upon those eastern 
 pinnacles, and the horizon glimmers with her rising. 
 Was it on such a night that Ferdinand of Aragon fled 
 from his capital before the French, with eyes turned 
 ever to the land he loved, chanting, as he leaned from 
 his galley's stern, that melancholy psalm "Except the 
 Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain" 
 and seeing Naples dwindle to a white blot on the 
 purple shore? 
 
 Our journey takes the opposite direction. Fare- 
 well to Capri, welcome to Sorrento! The roads are 
 sweet with scent of acacia and orange-flowers. When 
 you walk in a garden at night, the white specks 
 beneath your feet are fallen petals of lemon-blossoms. 
 Over the walls hang cataracts of roses, honey-pale 
 clusters of the Banksia rose, and pink bushes of the 
 China rose, growing as we never see them grow with 
 us. The gray rocks wave with gladiolus feathers of 
 crimson, set amid tufts of rosemary and myrtle and 
 tree-spurge. In the clefts of sandstone and behind 
 the orchard walls, sleeps a dark green night of foliage, 
 in the midst of which gleam globed oranges, and 
 lemons dropping like great pearls of palest amber 
 dew. It is difficult to believe that the lemons have 
 not grown into length by their own weight, as though 
 mere hanging on the bough prevented them from being 
 round so waxen are they. Overhead soar stone-pines 
 a roof of sombre green, a lattice-work of strong red 
 
312 SKETCHES IN ITALY. 
 
 branches, through which the moon peers wonderfully. 
 One part of this marvellous piano is bare rock tufted 
 with keen-scented herbs, and sparsely grown with 
 locust-trees and olives. Another waves from sea to 
 summit with beech-copses and oak-woods, as verdant 
 as the most abundant English valley. Another region 
 turns its hoary raiment of olive-gardens to the sun and 
 sea, or flourishes with fig and wine. Everywhere the 
 houses of men are dazzling white, perched on natural 
 coigns of vantage, clustered on the brink of brown 
 cliffs, nestling under mountain eaves, or piled up from 
 the sea-beach in ascending tiers, until the broad knees 
 of the hills are reached, and great Pan, the genius of 
 solitude in nature, takes unto himself a region yet un- 
 tenanted by man. The occupations of the sea and 
 land are blended together on this shore; and the 
 people are both blithe and gentle. It is true that their 
 passions are upon the surface, and that the knife is 
 ready to their hand. But the combination of fierce- 
 ness and softness in them has an infinite charm when 
 one has learned by observation that their lives are 
 laborious and frugal, and that their honesty is hardly 
 less than their vigor. Happy, indeed, are they so 
 happy that, but for crimes accumulated through suc- 
 cessive generations by bad governors, and but for 
 superstitions cankering the soul within, they might 
 deserve what Shelley wrote of his imagined island in 
 Epipsychidion. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER. 
 
UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 593 455 9 
 
 SITY OF <J A | H .| 
 
 3 'l2 10 00635 8038