3 1822 01958 4796
TMk
"^5§F^i^3^' •
B5 I |i
WmM if
?ff\?«
I IT
Urn
Social Sciences & Humanities Library
University of California, San Diego
Please Note: This item is subject to recall.
Date Due
^
APR * f 1996
CI 39 (2J9S)
UCSD Lb.
LIBRA
UNlVsR: ,-y p
CALIFORNIA
SAN DIEGO
*
[P UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO
3 1822 01958 4796
SKETCHES
ITALY AND GREECE.
[Some of these Essays are reprinted from the " Cornhill
Magazine " and the " Fortnightly Review."]
SKETCHES
ITALY AND GREECE.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS,
AUTHOR OF "AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF DANTE," AND
"STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS."
LONDON:
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE.
1874.
[ All rights reserved^
To
7. c. s.
CONTENTS.
—^
The Cornice, .....
PAGE
I
Ajaccio, ......
23
Siena, .......
• 42
Perugia, ......
68
Orvieto, ......
95
Popular Songs of Tuscany.
114
Palermo, ......
143
Syracuse and Girgenti, ....
174
Etna, .......
195
Athens, ......
207
Rimini, .......
234
Ravenna, ......
253
Parma, .......
267
Monte Generoso, .....
283
The Love of the Alps, . . . . .
295
Old Towns of Provence, .
3i6
Eight Sonnets of Petrarch, . . . .
332
SKETCHES
ITALY AND GREECE.
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
vapour, and the rocky nest of Esa seemed suspended in
a chaos between sea and sky. Sometimes 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 Mentane'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 flower
A
2 THE CORNICE.
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 clear north wind was blowing cloud and
mist away. Out upon the hills we went, not caring
much what path we took ; for everything was beautiful,
and hill and vale were full of garden walks. Through
lemon-groves, — pale, golden, tender trees, — and olives,
stretching their grey 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 bottom, 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 recog-
nised this fountain 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 chest-
nuts in, the fire, and softly drinking deep healths to
Ageanax far off upon the waves. It is impossible to go
wrong in these valleys. They are cultivated to the
height of about five hundred feet above the sea, in ter-
* This begs the question whether AewcoW does not properly mean snow-
flake, or some such flower. Violets in Greece, however, were often used
for crowns : lo<TT£<j>avo<> is the epithet of Homer for Aphrodite, and of Aristo-
phanes for Athens.
THE CORNICE. 3
races laboriously built up with walls, earthed and man-
ured, and irrigated by means of tanks and aqueducts.
Above this level, where the virgin soil has not been
yet reclaimed, 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, con-
tinue the vegetation, till it finally ends in bare grey
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, at the present day, there are old
men who in their youth are 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 unfur-
rowed 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 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
4 THE CORNICE.
backwards and forwards, up and down their tiny square.
Vehemently gesticulating, loudly chattering, they talked
as if 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 Ag-
nese 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 civilisation, in which nations, arts, and religions
have gone by and left but few traces, — some wrecks of
giant walls, some excavated 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 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 harmony. 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-
THE CORNICE. 5
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 hun-
dred branches ; every branch distinct, and feathered with
innumerable sparks and spikelets of white, wavy, green-
ish light. These are the leaves, and the stems are grey
with lichens. The sky and sea— rtwo blues, one full of
sunlight and the other purple — set these fountains of
perennial brightness like gems in lapis lazuli. At a dis-
tance 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 sil-
ver. But underneath their covert, in the shade, grey
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 Garden of the Agony, and the
trees seem always whispering of sacred things. How
people can blaspheme 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
* 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.
6 THE CORNICE.
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 spilt 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. Everything 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 white, the mountains
just as grey 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
THE CORNICE. 7
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 ane-
mones. Everything 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, contain-
ing 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 agonising upward
eyes and ashy aureole above the bleeding thorns. Thus
I stepped suddenly away from the outward pomp and
bravery of nature to the inward aspirations, agonies,
and martyrdoms 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
heavenward, inward, to the infinite unseen beyond us
and within our souls. Nothing can take us back to
Phcebus or to Pan. Nothing can again identify us with
the simple natural earth. " Une immense esperance a
traverse" 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
8 THE CORNICE.
strange contrast. The worship of men in those old
times was symbolised by dances in the evening, ban-
quets, 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 secluded cloisters,
— these are the human forms which gather round such
chapels ; and the motto of the worshippers consists in
this, " Do often violence to thy desire." In the Tyrol
we have seen whole villages praying together at day-
break before their day's work, singing their Miserere
and their Gloria and their Dies Irce to the sound of
crashing organs and jangling bells ; appealing in the
midst of Nature's splendour to the Spirit which is above
Nature, which dwells in darkness rather than light, and
loves the yearnings and 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 summoning 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 Pales-
tine. We call the white flowers stars of Bethlehem.
The large sceptre-reed ; the fig-tree, lingering in barren-
ness when other trees are full of fruit ; the locust-beans
of the Caruba : — for one suggestion of Greek idylls there
is yet another, of far deeper, dearer power.
But who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at
the Cap St Martin ? Down to the verge of the sea stretch
the tall, twisted stems of Levant pines, and on the caverned
THE CORNICE. 9
limestonebreaks the deep blue water. Dazzling as marble
are these rocks, pointed and honeycombed with constant
dashing of the restless sea, tufted with corallines and
grey 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. Samphire, very salt and fragrant, grows
in the rocky honeycomb ; then lentisk and beach-lov-
ing myrtle, both exceeding 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. One distant tip of snow, seen
far away behind the hills, reminds us of an alien, unre-
membered winter. While dreaming there, this fancy
came into my head : Polyphemus 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 Poly-
phemus 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, having filled her lap with blue-bells, quite
forgot the leaping 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
io THE CORNICE.
swift streamlet she danced laughingly, and made her-
self 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 trickling
streams and overgrown with English primroses ; or to
enter the village of Roccabruna, with its mediaeval castle
and the motto on its walls, Tempora labitntur tacitisque
scncscimns 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 morticed into one an-
other, dovetailed by the art of years gone by, and riveted
by age. The same plants grow from both alike — spurge,
cistus, rue, and henbane, constant to the desolation of
abandoned dwellings. 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 neighbour'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 mon-
keys, 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 cen-
tury. It is the sunniest and most sheltered spot of all
the coast. Long ago Lucan said of Monaco, " Non
Corns in ilium jus habet aut ZepJiyrus ; " winter never
comes to nip its tangled cactuses, and aloes, and ger-
aniums. The air swoons with the scent of lemon-droves ;
THE CORNICE. II
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.
Inside the church is a seething mass of country-folk
and townspeople, mostly women, and these almost all
old, but picturesque beyond description ; kerchiefs of
every colour, wrinkles of every shape and depth, skins
of every tone of brown and yellow, voices of every gruff-
ness, 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 holiday — a
general enjoyment of gala dresses and friendly greetings,
very different from the silence, immobility, and noli me
taiigere 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 monotony. 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
12 THE CORNICE.
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 primeval 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 grey upon their thick
clay soil. Yet the wealth of flowers in the fat earth is
wonderful. One might fancy oneself in a weedy farm
flower-bed invaded by stray oats and beans and cab-
bages 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 maiden-
hair and briar and clematis and sarsaparilla.
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 incense,
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 recur-
ring in the spring-time of the year. What a differ-
ence beneath this superficial similarity ! icaXbs ve/cv<i ola
THE CORNICE. 13
Kadevhwv — attritus cegra 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 leaning
from a window, blowing bubbles. The bubbles floated
down the street, of every colour, round and trembling,
like the dreams of life which children dream. 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 spreading 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 frequent 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 ferocious 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.
H THE CORNICE.
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 and disgusting loads. It is not a handsome race,
but 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. Notwith-
standing 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 brickwork,
climb the six stories, to blossom out into a pergola
upon the roof. Look at that mass of greenery and
colours, 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 ; l'Eterno 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 gillyflowers, placed there by pious, simple,
praying hands — by maidens come to tell their sorrows
THE CORNICE. 15
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
Remo. There stands the Palace Borea — a truly
princely pile, built in the last Renaissance style of
splendour, 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 anthill of a hundred
houses, shops, and offices, the Boreas of to-day retain-
ing 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 tasselled 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 pinnacles and pyramids and dome bubbles,
with windows showing heavy bells, old clocks, and sun-
1 6 THE CORNICE,
dials 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
grey horizontal lines. Then there are convents, legions
of them, large white edifices, Jesuitical apparently for
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 greyness. 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 skins, 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
whitebait, with cuttlefish — amorphous objects stretching
shiny feelers on the hot dry sand — and prickly purple
eggs of the sea-urchin. Women go about their labour
through the throng, some carrying stones upon their
THE CORNICE. 17
heads, or unloading boats and bearing 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.
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 of the sierra which
surrounds San Remo, a hill-country something like the
Jura, undulating and green to the very top with mari-
time 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 indistinguishably. Spanish chest-
nuts 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 changeless-
ness 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
B
iS THE CORNICE.
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 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, coloured 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 : " Laudato sia
Dio mio Signore, con tutte le creature, specialmente
messer lo frate sole ; per suor luna, e per le stelle ; per
frate vento e per l'aire, e nuvolo, e sereno e ogni tempo."
* Dante, Par. xi. 106.
THE CORNICE. 19
Half the value of this hymn would be lost were we to
forget how it was written, in what solitudes and moun-
tains far from men, or to ticket it 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 considered ;
but one which accorded with the delusion that this
world is a cave of care, the other world a place of tor-
ture or undying bliss, death the prime object of our
meditation, and lifelong 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
20 THE CORNICE.
creature be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy
doctrine. There is no creature so small and vile that
does not show forth the goodness of God." With this
sentence bound about their foreheads, walked Fra Ange-
lico 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 co7iditione humancB miseries," 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 disc or ball, but " an innumer-
able 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 spirit-
ual things were ever present, and as clear as day. Yet
did they not forget that spiritual things are symbolised
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
THE CORNICE. 21
awfulness of human destinies. We to whom hills are
hills, and seas are seas, and stars are ponderable quan-
tities, speak, write, and reason of them as of objects
interesting in themselves. The monks were less con-
cerned 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 stan-
dards, were unobservant of natural beauties. They
make but brief and general remarks upon landscapes
and the like. The ttovtigov re kv/acltcov avrjpiOfxov <ye\acr/xa
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, omnipotent and omni-
present, above all, and see in Nature lessons of divine
government. Since Paley somewhat overstrained the
latter point of view, we have returned vaguely to Greek
fancies. Perhaps 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 to
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
22 THE CORNICE.
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
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, faraway,
the lighthouses 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 irregular 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 trans-
parent as the moon when seen in April sunlight, yet not
to be confounded with the shape of any cloud. If
Mentone speaks of Greek legends, and San Romolo
restores the monastic past, we feel ourselves at Bor-
dighera transported 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 Castellammare and Amalfi, and the island of
Corfu, are its only rivals in this style of scenery. From Cannes to Sestri
is one continuous line of exquisitely modulated landscape beauty, which
can only be fully appreciated by travellers in carriage or on foot.
A J A C C I O.
It generally happens that visitors to Ajaccio pass over
from the Cornice coast, leaving Nice at night, and
waking about sunrise to find themselves beneath
the frowning mountains of Corsica. The difference
between the scenery of the island and the shores which
they have left is very striking. Instead of the rocky
mountains of the Cornice, intolerably dry and barren at
their summits, but covered at their base with villages
and ancient towns and olive-fields, Corsica presents a
scene of solitary and peculiar grandeur. The highest
mountain-tops are covered with snow, and beneath the
snow-level to the sea they are as green as Irish or as
English hills, but nearly uninhabited and uncultivated.
Valleys of almost Alpine verdure are succeeded by
tracts of chestnut wood and scattered pines, or deep and
flowery brushwood — the " maquis " of Corsica, which
yields shelter to its traditional outlaws and bandits.
Yet upon these hillsides there are hardly any signs of
life ; the whole country seems abandoned to primeval
wildness and the majesty of desolation. Nothing can
possibly be more unlike the smiling Riviera, every
square mile of which is cultivated like a garden, and
every valley and bay dotted over with white villages.
After steaming for a few hours along this savage coast,
the rocks which guard the entrance to the bay of Ajaccio,
murderous-looking teeth and needles ominously chris-
tened Sanguinari, are passed, and we enter the splendid
24 AJACCIO.
land-locked harbour, on the northern shore of which
Ajaccio is built. About three centuries ago the town,
which used to occupy the extreme or eastern end of the
bay, was removed to a more healthy point upon the
northern coast, so that Ajaccio is quite a modern city.
Visitors who expect to find in it the picturesqueness of
Genoa or San Remo, or even of Mentone, will be sadly
disappointed. It is simply a healthy, well-appointed
town of recent date, the chief merits of which are that
it has wide streets, and is free, externally at least, from
the filth and rubbish of most southern seaports.
But if Ajaccio itself is not picturesque, the scenery
which it commands, and in the heart of which it lies,
is of the most magnificent. The bay of Ajaccio re-
sembles a vast Italian lake — a Lago Maggiore, with
greater space between the mountains and the shore.
From the snow-peaks of the interior, huge granite
crystals clothed in white, to the southern extremity of
the bay, peak succeeds peak and ridge rises behind ridge
in a line of wonderful variety and beauty. The atmos-
pheric changes of light and shadow, cloud and colour,
on this upland country, are as subtle and as various
as those which lend their beauty to the scenery of the
lakes, while the sea below is blue and rarely troubled.
One could never get tired with looking at this view.
Morning and evening add new charms to its sublimity
and beauty. In the early morning Monte d'Oro
sparkles like a Monte Rosa with its fresh snow, and the
whole inferior range puts on the crystal blueness of
dawn among the Alps. In the evening violet and purple
tints and the golden glow of Italian sunset lend a differ-
ent lustre to the fairyland. In fact, the beauties of
Switzerland and Italy are curiously blended in this
landscape.
AJACCIO. 25
In soil and vegetation the country round Ajaccio
differs much from the Cornice. There are very few
olive-trees, nor is the cultivated ground backed up so
immediately by stony mountains ; but between the
sea-shore and the hills there is plenty of space for
pasture-land, and orchards of apricot and peach trees,
and orange-gardens. This undulating champaign, green
with meadows and watered with clear streams, is very
refreshing to the eyes of Northern people, who may
have wearied of the bareness and greyness of Nice or
Mentone. It is traversed by excellent roads, recently
constructed on a plan of the French Government, which
intersect the country in all directions, and offer an
infinite variety of rides or drives to visitors. The
broken granite of which these roads are made is very
pleasant for riding over. Most of the hills through
which they strike after starting from Ajaccio are clothed
with a thick brushwood of box, ilex, lentisk, arbutus,
and laurustinus, which stretches down irregularly into
vineyards, olive-gardens, and meadows. It is, indeed,
the native growth of the island ; for wherever a piece of
ground is left untilled, the macchi grow up, and the
scent of their multitudinous aromatic blossoms is so
strong that it maybe smelt miles out at sea. Napoleon,
at St Helena, referred to this fragrance when he said
that he should know Corsica blindfold by the smell of
its soil. Occasional woods of holm oak make darker
patches on the landscape, and a few pines fringe the
side of enclosure walls or towers. The prickly pear
runs riot in and out among the hedges and upon the
walls, diversifying the colours of the landscape with its
strange grey-green masses and unwieldy fans. In
spring, when peach and almond trees are in blossom,
and when the roadside is starred with asphodels, this
26 AJACCIO.
country is most beautiful in its gladness. The macchi
blaze with cistus flowers of red and silver. Golden
broom mixes with the dark purple of the great French
lavender, and over the whole mass of blossom wave
plumes of Mediterranean heath and sweet-scented yel-
low coronilla. Under the stems of the ilex peep cycla-
mens, pink and sweet ; the hedgerows are a tangle of
vetches, convolvuluses, lupines, orchises, and alliums, with
here and there a purple iris. It would be difficult to
describe all the rare and lovely plants which are found
here in a profusion that surpasses even the flower-
gardens of the Cornice, and reminds one of the most
favoured Alpine valleys in their early spring.
Since the French occupied Corsica they have done
much for the island by improving its harbours and
making good roads, and endeavouring to mitigate the
ferocity of the people. But they have many things to
contend against, and Corsica is still behind the other
provinces of France. The people are idle, haughty,
umbrageous, fiery, quarrelsome, fond of gipsy life, and
retentive through generations of old feuds and preju-
dices to an almost inconceivable extent. Then the
nature of the country itself offers serious obstacles to
its proper colonisation and cultivation. The savage
state of the island and its internal feuds have disposed
the Corsicans to quit the seaboard for their mountain
villages and fortresses, so that the great plains at the
foot of the hills are unwholesome for want of tillage
and drainage. Again, the mountains themselves have
in many parts been stripped of their forests and con-
verted into mere wildernesses of macchi stretching up
and down their slopes for miles and miles of useless
desolation. Another impediment to proper cultivation is
found in the old habit of what is called free pasturage.
AJACCIO. 27
The highland shepherds are allowed by the national
custom to drive down their flocks and herds to the low-
lands during the winter, so that fences are broken, young
crops are browsed over and trampled down, and agri-
culture becomes a mere impossibility. The last and
chief difficulty against which the French have had to
contend, and up to this time with apparent success, is
brigandage. The Corsican system of brigandage is so
very different from that of the Italians, Sicilians, and
Greeks, that a word may be said about its peculiar char-
acter. In the first place, it has nothing at all to do with
robbery and thieving. The Corsican bandit took to a
free life among the macchi, not for the sake of support-
ing himself by lawless depredation, but because he had
put himself under a legal and social ban by murdering
some one in obedience to the strict code of honour of
his country. His victim may have been the hereditary
foe of his house for generations, or else the newly
made enemy of yesterday. But in either case, if he
had killed him fairly, after a due notification of his inten-
tion to do so, he was held to have fulfilled a duty rather
than to have committed a crime. He then betook him-
self to the dense tangles of evergreens which I have
described, where he lived upon the charity of country-
folk and shepherds. In the eyes of those simple people
it was a sacred duty to relieve the necessities of the out-
laws, and to guard them from the bloodhounds of
justice. There was scarcely a respectable family in
Corsica who had not one or more of its members thus
alia campagna, as it was euphemistically styled. The
Corsicans themselves have attributed this miserable state
of things to two principal causes. The first of these was
the ancient bad government of the island : under its
Genoese rulers no justice was administered, and private
28 AJACCIO.
vengeance for homicide or insult became a necessary
consequence among the haughty and warlike families of
the mountain villages. Secondly, the Corsicans have
been from time immemorial accustomed to wear arms in
everyday life. They used to sit at their house doors and
pace the streets with musket, pistol, dagger, and car-
touch-box on their persons ; and on the most trivial
occasion of merriment or enthusiasm they would dis-
charge their firearms. This habit gave a bloody ter-
mination to many quarrels, which might have ended
more peaceably had the parties been unarmed ; and
so the seeds of vendetta were constantly being sown.
Statistics published by the French Government present
a hideous picture of the state of bloodshed in Corsica
even during this century. In one period of thirty years
(between 1821 and 1850) there were 4319 murders in
the island. Almost every man was watching for his
neighbour's life, or seeking how to save his own ; and
agriculture and commerce were neglected for this grisly
game of hide-and-seek. In 1853 the French began to
take strong measures, and, under the Prefect Thuillier,
they hunted the bandits from the macchi, killing between
200 and 300 of them. At the same time an edict was
promulgated against bearing arms. It is forbidden to sell
the old Corsican stiletto in the shops, and no one may
carry a gun, even for sporting purposes, unless he
obtains a special licence. These licences, moreover,
are only granted for short and precisely measured
periods.
In order to appreciate the stern and gloomy character
of the Corsicans it is necessary to leave the smiling gar-
dens of Ajaccio, and to visit some of the more distant
mountain villages — Vico, Cavro, Bastelica, or Bocog-
AJACCIO. 29
nano, any of which may easily be reached from the
capital. Immediately after quitting the seaboard we
enter a country austere in its simplicity, solemn without
relief, yet dignified by its majesty and by the sense of
freedom it inspires. As we approach the mountains, the
macchi become taller, feathering man-high above the
road, and stretching far away upon the hills. Gigantic
masses of granite, shaped like buttresses and bastions,
seem to guard the approaches to these hills; while, look-
ing backward over the green plain, the sea lies smiling
in a haze of blue among the rocky horns and misty head-
lands of the coast. There is a stateliness about the
abrupt inclination of these granite slopes, rising from
their frowning portals by sharp aretes to the snows piled
on their summits, which contrasts in a strange way with
the softness and beauty of the mingling sea and plain
beneath. In no landscape are more various qualities
combined ; in none are they so harmonised as to pro-
duce so strong a sense of majestic freedom and severe
power. Suppose that we are on the road to Corte, and
have now reached Bocognano, the first considerable vil-
lage since we left Ajaccio. Bocognano might be chosen
as typical of Corsican hill-villages, with its narrow street,
and tall tower-like houses of five or six stories high,
faced with rough granite, and pierced with the smallest
windows and very narrow doorways. These buildings
have a mournful and desolate appearance. There is
none of the grandeur of antiquity about them ; no sculp-
tured arms or castellated turrets, or balconies or spacious
staircases, such as are common in the poorest towns of
Italy. The signs of warlike occupation which they offer,
and their sinister aspect of vigilance, are thoroughly pro-
saic. They seem to suggest a state of society in which
3 o AJA CCIO.
feud and violence were systematised into routine.
There is no relief to the savage austerity of their forbid-
ding aspect ; no signs of wealth or household comfort ;
no trace of art, no liveliness and gracefulness of architec-
ture. Perched upon their coigns of vantage, these vil-
lages seem always menacing, as if Saracen pirates, or
Genoese marauders, or bandits bent on vengeance, were
still for ever on the watch. Forests of immensely old
chestnut-trees surround Bocognano on every side, so that
you step from the village streets into the shade of woods
that seem to have remained untouched for centuries.
The country-people support themselves almost entirely
upon the fruit of these chestnuts ; and there is a large
department of Corsica called Castagniccia, from the
prevalence of these trees and the sustenance which
the inhabitants derive from them. Close by the village
brawls a torrent, such as one may see in the Monte Rosa
valleys or the Apennines, but very rarely in Switzer-
land. It is of a pure green colour, absolutely like
Indian jade, foaming round the granite boulders, and
gliding over smooth slabs of polished stone, and eddying
into still, deep pools fringed with fern. Monte d'Oro, one
of the largest mountains of Corsica, soars above, and
from his snows this purest water, undefiled by glacier
mud or the debris of avalanches, melts away. Following
the stream, we rise through the macchi and the chestnut-
woods, which grow more sparely by degrees, until we
reach the zone of beeches. Here the scene seems sud-
denly transferred to the Pyrenees; for the road is carried
along abrupt slopes, thickly set with gigantic beech-
trees, overgrown with pink and silver lichens. In the
early spring their last year's leaves are still crisp with
hoar-frost ; one morning's journey has brought us from
AJACCIO. 31
the summer of Ajaccio to winter on these heights,
where no flowers are visible but the pale hellebore
and tiny lilac crocuses. Snow-drifts stretch by the
roadside, and one by one the pioneers of the vast
pine -woods of the interior appear. A great portion
of the pine-forest {Pinus larix, or Corsican pine, not
larch) between Bocognano and Corte had recently
been burned by accident when we passed by. Nothing
could be more forlorn than the black leafless stems
and branches emerging from the snow. Some of
these trees were mast-high, and some mere saplings.
Corte itself is built among the mountain fastnesses of the
interior. The snows and granite cliffs of Monte Rotondo
overhang it to the north-west, while two fair valleys lead
downward from its eyrie to the eastern coast. The rock
on which it stands rises to a sharp point, sloping south-
ward, and commanding the valleys of the Golo and the
Tavignano. Remembering that Corte was the old capi-
tal of Corsica, and the centre of General Paoli's govern-
ment, we are led to compare the town with Innspriick,
Meran, or Grenoble. In point of scenery and situation
it is hardly second to any of these mountain cities; but
its poverty and bareness are scarcely less striking than
those of Bocognano.
The whole Corsican character, with its stern love of
justice, its furious revengefulness and wild passion for
freedom, seems to be illustrated by the peculiar elements
of grandeur and desolation in this landscape. When we
traverse the forest of Vico or the rocky pasture-lands of
Niolo, the history of the Corsican national heroes,
Giudice della Rocca and Sampiero, becomes intelligible;
nor do we fail to understand some of the mysterious
attraction which led the more daring spirits of the island
32 AJACC10.
to prefer a free life among the macchi and pine-woods
to placid lawful occupations in farms and villages. The
lives of the two men whom I have mentioned are so
prominent in Corsican history, and are so often still
upon the lips of the common people, that it may be
well to sketch their outlines in the foreground of the
Salvator Rosa landscape just described. Giudice was
the governor of Corsica, as lieutenant for the Pisans, at
the end of the thirteenth century. At that time the
island belonged to the republic of Pisa, but the Genoese
were encroaching on them by land and sea, and the
whole life of their brave champion was spent in a des-
perate struggle with the invaders, until at last he died, old,
blind, and in prison, at the command of his savage foes.
Giudice was the title which the Pisans usually conferred
upon their governor, and Delia Rocca deserved it by
right of his own inexorable love of justice. Indeed
justice seems to have been with him a passion, swallow-
ing up all other feelings of his nature. All the stories
which are told of him turn upon this point in his
character ; r and though they may not be strictly true,
they illustrate the stern virtues for which he was cele-
brated among the Corsicans, and show what kind of men
this harsh and gloomy nation loved to celebrate as
heroes. This is not the place either to criticise these
legends or to recount them at full length. The most
famous and the most characteristic may, however, be
briefly told. On one occasion, after a victory over the
Genoese, he sent a message that the captives in his hands
should be released if their wives and sisters came to sue
for them. The Genoese ladies embarked, and arrived in
Corsica, and to Giudice's nephew was intrusted the duty
of fulfilling his uncle's promise. In the course of exe-
AJACCIO. 33
cuting his commission the youth was so smitten with the
beauty of one of the women that he dishonoured her.
Thereupon Giudice had him at once put to death. An-
other story shows the Spartan justice of this hero in a
less savage light. He was passing by a cowherd's cot-
tage, when he heard some young calves bleating. On
inquiring what distressed them, he was told that the
calves had not enough milk to drink after the farm
people had been served. Then Giudice made it a law
that the calves throughout the land should take their
fill before the cows were milked.
Sampiero belongs to a later period of Corsican history.
After a long course of misgovernment the Genoese rule
had become unbearable. There was no pretence of
administering justice, and private vengeance had full
sway in the island. The sufferings of the nation were
so great that the time had come for a new judge or
saviour to rise among them. Sampiero was the son of
obscure parents who lived at Bastelica. But his abilities
very soon' declared themselves, and made a way for him
in the world. He spent his youth in the armies of the
Medici and of the French Francis, gaining great renown
as a brave soldier. Bayard became his friend, and
Francis made him captain of his Corsican bands. But
Sampiero did not forget the wrongs of his native land
while thus on foreign service. He resolved, if possible,
to undermine the power of Genoa, and spent the whole
of his manhood and old age in one long struggle with
their great captain, Stephen Doria. Of his stern patriot-
ism and Roman severity of virtue the following story
is a terrible illustration. Sampiero, though a man of
mean birth, had married an heiress of the noble Corsican
house of the Ornani. His wife, Vannina, was a woman
C
34 AJACCIO.
of timid and flexible nature, who, though devoted to
her husband, fell into the snares of his enemies. Dur-
ing his absence on an embassy to Algiers the Genoese
induced her to leave her home at Marseilles and to seek
refuge in their city, persuading her that this step would
secure the safety of her child. She was starting on her
journey when a friend of Sampiero arrested her, and
brought her back to Aix, in Provence. Sampiero, when
he heard of these events, hurried to France, and was
received by a relative of his, who hinted that he had
known of Vannina's projected flight. "E tu hai taciuto?"
was Sampiero's only answer, accompanied by a stroke
of his poignard that killed the lukewarm cousin.
Sampiero now brought his wife from Aix to Marseilles,
preserving the most absolute silence on the way, and
there, on entering his house, he killed her with his own
hand. It is said that he loved Vannina passionately ;
and when she was dead, he caused her to be buried
with magnificence in the church of St Francis. Like
Giudice, Sampiero fell at last a prey to treachery. The
murder of Vannina had made the Ornani his deadly
foes. In order to avenge her blood, they played into
the hands of the Genoese, and laid a plot by which the
noblest of the Corsicans was brought to death. First,
they gained over to their scheme a monk of Bastelica,
called Ambrogio, and Sampiero's own squire and shield-
bearer, Vittolo. By means of these men, in whom
he trusted, he was drawn defenceless and unattended
into a deeply-wooded ravine near Cavro, not very
far from his birthplace, where the Ornani and their
Genoese troops surrounded him. Sampiero fired his
pistols in vain, for Vittolo had loaded them with the
shot downwards. Then he drew his sword, and began
to lay about him, when the same Vittolo, the Judas,
AJACCIO. 35
stabbed him from behind, and the old lion fell dead by
his friend's hand. Sampiero was sixty-nine when he
died, in the year 1567. It is satisfactory to know that
the Corsicans have called traitors and foes to their
country Vittoli for ever. These two examples of
Corsican patriots are enough ; we need not add to
theirs the history of Paoli — a milder and more humane,
but scarcely less heroic leader. Paoli, however, in
the hour of Corsica's extremest peril, retired to England,
and died in philosophic exile. Neither Giudice nor
Sampiero would have acted thus. The more forlorn
the hope, the more they struggled.
Among the old Corsican customs which are fast
dying out, but which still linger in the remote valleys
of Niolo and Vico, is the voccro, or funeral chant, im-
provised by women at funerals over the bodies of the
dead. Nothing illustrates the ferocious temper and sav-
age passions of the race better than these voceri, many of
which have been written down and preserved. Most of
them are songs of vengeance and imprecation, mingled
with hyperbolical laments and utterances of extrava-
gant grief, poured forth by wives and sisters at the side
of murdered husbands and brothers. The women who
sing them seem to have lost all milk of human kind-
ness, and to have exchanged the virtues of their sex for
Spartan fortitude and the rage of furies. While we
read their turbid lines we are carried in imagination to
one of the cheerless houses of Bastelica or Bocognano,
overshadowed by its mournful chestnut-tree, on which
the blood of the murdered man is yet red. The
gridata, or wake, is assembled in a dark room. On
the wooden board, called tola, the corpse lies stretched ;
and round it are women, veiled in the blue-black
mantle of Corsican costume, moaning and rocking
36 AJACCIO.
themselves upon their chairs. The pasto or conforto^
food supplied for mourners, stands upon a side-table,
and round the room are men with savage eyes and
bristling beards, armed to the teeth, keen for vengeance.
The dead man's musket and pocket-pistol lie beside
him, and his bloody shirt is hung up at his head.
Suddenly the silence, hitherto only disturbed by sup-
pressed groans and muttered curses, is broken by a
sharp cry. A woman rises : it is the sister of the dead
man ; she seizes his shirt, and holding it aloft with
Msenad gestures and frantic screams, gives rhythmic
utterance to her grief and rage. " I was spinning,
when I heard a great noise : it was a gunshot, which
went into my heart, and seemed a voice that cried,
' Run, thy brother is dying.' I ran into the room above ;
I took the blow into my breast ; I said, ' Now he is
dead, there is nothing to give me comfort. Who will
undertake thy vengeance ? When I show thy shirt,
who will vow to let his beard grow till the murderer is
slain ? Who is there left to do it ? A mother near her
death ? A sister ? Of all our race there is only left a
woman, without kin, poor, orphan, and a girl. Yet, O
my brother ! never fear. For thy vengeance thy sister
is enough !
Ma per fa la to bindetta,
Sta siguni, basta anch ella !
Give me the pistol ; I will shoulder the gun ; I will
away to the hills. My brother, heart of thy sister,
thou shalt be avenged!'" A vocero declaimed upon
the bier of Giammatteo and Pasquale, two cousins, by
the sister of the former, is still fiercer and more
energetic in its malediction. This Erinnys of revenge
prays Christ and all the saints to extirpate the
AJACCIO. % 37
murderer's whole race, to shrivel it up till it passes from
the earth. Then, with a sudden and vehement transi-
tion to the pathos of her own sorrow, she exclaims : —
Halla mai bista nissunu
Tumba l'omi pe li canti?
It appears from these words that Giammatteo's enemies
had killed him because they were jealous of his skill in
singing. Shortly after, she curses the curate of the
village, a kinsman of the murderer, for refusing to toll
the funeral bells ; and at last, all other threads of rage
and sorrow being turned and knotted into one, she gives
loose to her raging thirst for blood : " If only I had
a son, to train like a sleuth-hound, that he might track
the murderer ! Oh, if I had a son ! Oh, if I had a
lad!" Her words seem to choke her, and she swoons,
and remains for a short time insensible. When the
Bacchante of revenge awakes, it is with milder feelings
in her heart : " O brother mine, Matteo ! art thou
sleeping ? Here I will rest with thee and weep till
daybreak." It is rare to find in literature so crude
and intense an expression of fiery hatred as these
untranslatable voceri present. The emotion is so
simple and so strong that it becomes sublime by mere
force, and affects us with a strange pathos when con-
trasted with the tender affection conveyed in such terms
of endearment as "my dove," "my flower," "my
pheasant," " my bright painted orange," addressed to
the dead. In the voceri it often happens that there are
several interlocutors : one friend questions and another
answers ; or a kinswoman of the murderer attempts
to justify the deed, and is overwhelmed with deadly
imprecations. Passionate appeals are made to the
corpse : " Arise ! Do you not hear the women cry ?
3 8 AJACCIO.
Stand up. Show your wounds, and let the fountains
of your blood flow ! Alas ! he is dead ; he sleeps ; he
cannot hear ! " Then they turn again to tears and
curses, feeling that no help or comfort can come from
the clay-cold form. The intensity of grief finds strange
language for its utterance. A girl, mourning over her
father, cries : —
Mi l'hannu crucifissatu
Cume Ghiesu Cristu in croce.
Once only, in Viale's collection, does any friend of the
dead remember mercy. It is an old woman, who
points to the crucifix above the bier.
But all the voceri are not so murderous. Several are
composed for girls who died unwedded and before their
time, by their mothers or companions. The language
of these laments is far more tender and ornate. They
praise the gentle virtues and beauty of the girl, her
piety and helpful household ways. The most affecting
of these dirges is that which celebrates the death of
Romana, daughter of Dariola Danesi. Here is a pretty
picture of the girl: "Among the best and fairest
maidens you were like a rose among flowers, like the
moon among stars ; so far more lovely were you than
the loveliest. The youths in your presence were like
lighted torches, but full of reverence; you were cour-
teous to all, but with none familiar. In church they
gazed at you, but you looked at none of them ; and
after mass you said, ' Mother, let us go.' Oh ! who will,
console me for your loss ? Why did the Lord so much
desire you ? But now you rest in heaven, all joy and
smiles ; for the world was not worthy of so fair a face.
Oh, how far more beautiful will Paradise be now ! "
Then follows a piteous picture of the old bereaved
AJACCIO. 39
mother, to whom a year will seem a thousand years,
who will wander among relatives without affection,
neighbours without love; and who, when sickness comes,
will have no one to give her a drop of water, or to wipe
the sweat from her brow, or to hold her hand in death.
Yet all that is left for her is to wait and pray for the
end, that she may join again her darling.
But it is time to return to Ajaccio itself. At present
the attractions and ornaments of the town consist of
a good public library, Cardinal Fesch's large but in-
different collection of pictures, two monuments erected
to Napoleon, and Napoleon's house. It will always
be the chief pride of Ajaccio that she gave birth to
the great emperor. Close to the harbour, in a public
square by the sea-beach, stands an equestrian statue of
the conqueror surrounded by his four brothers on foot.
They are all attired in Roman fashion, and are
turned seaward, to the west, as if to symbolise the
emigration of this family to subdue Europe. There is
something ludicrous and forlorn in the stiffness of the
group — something even pathetic, when we think how
Napoleon gazed seaward from another island, no longer
on horseback, no longer laurel-crowned, an unthroned,
unseated conqueror, on St Helena. His father's house
stands close by. An old Italian waiting-woman, who
had been long in the service of the Murats, keeps it
and shows it. She has the manners of a lady, and
can tell many stories of the various members of the
Buonaparte family. Those who fancy that Napoleon
was born in a mean dwelling of poor parents will be
surprised to find so much space and elegance in these
apartments. Of course his family was not rich by
comparison with the riches of French or English nobles.
But for Corsicans they were well to do, and their house
40 A J AC CIO.
has an air of antique dignity. The chairs of the
entrance-saloon have been literally stripped of their
coverings by enthusiastic visitors : the horse-hair stuff-
ing underneath protrudes itself with a sort of comic
pride, as if protesting that it came to be so tattered in
an honourable service. Some of the furniture seems
new ; but many old presses, inlaid with marbles, agates,
and lapis lazuli, such as Italian families preserve for
generations, have an air of respectable antiquity about
them. Nor is there any doubt that the young Napoleon
led his minuets beneath the stiff girandoles of the formal
dancing-room. There, too, in a dark back chamber, is
the bed in which he was born. At its foot is a photo-
graph of the present Prince Imperial sent by the
Empress Eugenie, who, when she visited the room, wept
much — pianse molto (to use the old lady's phrase) — at
seeing the place where such lofty destinies began. On
the wall of the same room is a portrait of Napoleon
himself as the young general of the republic — with the
citizen's unkempt hair, the fierce fire of the Revol-
ution in his eyes, a frown upon his forehead, lips
compressed, and quivering nostrils ; also one of his
mother, the pastille of a handsome woman, with
Napoleonic eyes and brows and nose, but with a vacant
simpering mouth. Perhaps the provincial artist knew
not how to seize the expression of this feature, the most
difficult to draw. For we cannot fancy that Letizia had
lips without the firmness or the fulness of a majestic
nature.
The whole first story of this house belonged to the
Buonaparte family. The windows look out partly on a
little court and partly on narrow streets. It was, no
doubt, the memory of this home that made Napoleon,
when emperor, design schemes for the good of Corsica
AJACCW. 41
— schemes that might have brought him more honour
than many conquests, but which he had no time or
leisure to carry out. On St Helena his mind often
reverted to them, and he would speak of the gummy
odours of the macchi wafted from the hillsides to the
sea-shore.
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 mountain 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 grey and dusty, the forms of
hill and valley are mean and insignificant ; even the
vegetation seems to sympathise 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, grey beneath the wind, clothe the
hillsides with scanty verdure. Every knoll is crowned
with a village — brown roofs and white house-fronts clus-
tered together on the edge of cliffs, and rising into the
campanile or antique tower, which tells so many stories
of bygone wars and decayed civilisations.
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
SJENA. 43
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 midwinter:
it resembles an exaggerated Sussex, without verdure to
relieve the rolling lines of down, and hill, and valley ;
beautiful alone by reason of its frequent villages and
lucid air. 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, crown-
ing 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 antiquity, which have formed
the seat of three civilisations, 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 states-
men and the warriors 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 cupo-
las and red-brick campanili, spring ; while cypresses and
olive-gardens stretch downwards to the plain. There
is not a single Palladian facade or Renaissance portico
to interrupt the unity of the effect. Over all, in the
distance, rises Radicofani, melting imperceptibly into
sky and plain.
44 SIENA.
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 ascendancy 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 assem-
bled, but which has now for a long time been converted
into prisons, courts of law, and showrooms. 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 is the
State and Majesty of Siena* Around him sit Peace,
Fortitude, and Prudence, Temperance, Magnanimity,
* It is probable that the firm Ghibelline sympathies of the Sienese
people for the Empire were allegorised in this figure ; so that the fresco
represented by form and colour what Dante had expressed in his treatise
" De Monarchic."
SIENA. 45
and Justice, inalienable assessors of a powerful and right-
eous lord. Faith, Hope, and Charity, the Christian
virtues, float like angels in the air above. Armed horse-
men 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 subordinate 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 harmonise 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 vigour 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.
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 sculp-
tured figures of Geometry, Astronomy, and Philosophy,
remind us that education and science flourish under the
dominion of well-balanced laws. The third fresco ex-
hibits the reverse of this fair spectacle. Here Tyranny
presides over a scene of anarchy and wrong. He is a
hideous monster, compounded of all the bestial attri-
butes which indicate force, treason, lechery, and fear.
Avarice and Fraud and Cruelty and War and Fury sit
46 SIENA.
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 colours of reality the two
contrasted pictures.*
Quitting the Palazzo, and threading narrow streets,
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 cathe-
drals designed by national architects. Together with
that of Orvieto, it stands to show what the unassisted
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 ornaments of
exquisite beauty. There are no flying buttresses, no
pinnacles, no deep and fretted doorways, such as form
the charm of French and English architecture ; but
instead of this, the lines of particoloured marbles, the
scrolls and wreaths of foliage, the mosaics and the
frescoes which meet the eye in every direction, satisfy
our sense of variety, producing most agreeable combina-
tions of blending hues and harmoniously connected
forms. The chief fault which offends against our
Northern taste is the predominance of horizontal lines,
* Siena, of all Italian cities, was most subject to revolutions. Comines
describes it as a city which "se gouverne plus follement que ville d'ltalie."
Varchi calls it " un guazzabuglio ed una confusione di repubbliche piuttosto
che bene ordinata e instituta repubblica."
SIENA. 47
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 splendour to a degree almost
unrivalled. Its dome is another point in which the
instinct 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
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 original 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 old 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, re-
mained 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
4 3 SIENA.
the mighty space which would have been enclosed by
marble vaults and columns delicately wrought. The
sculpture on the eastern door shows with what magnifi-
cence the Sienese designed to ornament this portion of
their temple ; while the southern facade rears itself aloft
above the town, like those high arches which testify to
the past splendour of Glastonbury Abbey ; but 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 decoration 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 accumu-
lated 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 expres-
sion with great skill.
Not less peculiar to Siena is the pavement of the cathe-
dral. It is inlaid with a kind of tarsia work in stone, not
unlike that which Baron Triqueti used in his "Marmor
Homericum " — less elaborately decorative, but even
more artistic and subordinate to architectural effect
than the baron's mosaic. Some of these compositions
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 Trismegistus
and the Sibyls meet us at the doorway : in the body of
SIENA. 49
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 vigour and simplicity of the larger
compositions, a special interest attaches to this pave-
ment in connection with the twelfth canto of the " Pur-
gatorio." Did Dante ever tread these stones and
meditate upon their sculptured histories ? That is
what we cannot say; but 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." The strong and simple outlines of the pavement
correspond 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 Deuni 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 depression
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 " Sposae Christi Katherinse
D
50 SIENA.
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 vinai-
grette, the bag in which her alms were placed, the sack-
cloth that she wore beneath her dress, the crucifix from
which she took the wounds of Christ. 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 recorded with scrupulous attention
by devoted followers. Her fame was universal through-
out 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 contemporaries, they. were not so.
The enthusiastic saint and reverent people believed
firmly in these things ; and after the lapse of five cen-
SIENA. 5r
turies her votaries still kiss the floor and steps on which
she trod, still say, " This was the wall on which she
leant when Christ appeared ; this was the corner where
she clothed him, naked and shivering like a beggar-boy;
here he sustained her with angels' 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 splendour. 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 almost unnoticed;
but it was not long before she manifested 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 un-
wearied ardour. 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 hallucinations won the day. Her parents
consented to her assuming the Dominican robe, and at
the age of thirteen she entered the monastic life. From
this moment till her death we see in her the ecstatic, the
philanthropist, and the politician combined to a remark-
able degree. For three whole years she never left her
52 SIENA.
cell except to go to church, maintaining an almost
unbroken silence. Yet when she returned to the world,
convinced at last of having won by prayer and pain the
favour of her Lord, it was to preach to infuriated mobs,
to toil among men dying of the plague, to execute diplo-
matic negotiations, to harangue the republic of Florence,
to correspond with queens, and to interpose between
kings and popes. In the midst of this varied and dis-
tracting career she continued to see visions and to fast
and scourge herself. The domestic virtues and the per-
sonal 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 constantly 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
ardour 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 returning 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 intri-
cate politics of Central Italy, the counsels of licentious
princes and ambitious popes, were in any measure
guided and controlled by such a woman. Alone and
SIENA. 53
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 absolute command, and they,
demoralised, worldly, sceptical, or indifferent as they
might be, were yet so bound by superstition that they
dared not treat with scorn the voice of an enthusiastic
girl.
Absolute disinterestedness, the belief in her own spirit-
ual 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 trades-
man 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 became 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 admiration 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 began her career of public
peacemaker and preacher in Siena, Raymond, her
biographer, says that whole families devoted to vendetta
were reconciled, and that civil strifes were quelled by
54 SIENA.
her letters and addresses. He had seen more than a
thousand people flock to hear her speak ; the confes-
sionals 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 coun-
tenance* She was not beautiful, but her face so shone
with love, and her eloquence was so pathetic in its ten-
derness, that none could hear or look on her without
emotion. Her writings 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, pro-
found 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,
o Deita eterna Cristo Amore ! vieni nel mio cuore ; per
la tua potenza trailo a Te, mio Dio, e concedemi carita
con timore. Liberami, o Amore ineffabile, da ogni mal
pensiero ; riscaldami ed infiammami del tuo dolcissimo
amore, sicche ogni pena mi sembri leggiera. Santo
mio Padre e dolce mio Signore, ora aiutami in ogni
mio ministero. Cristo amore. Cristo amore." The
reiteration of the word " love " is most significant. It
was the keynote of her whole theology, the mainspring
of her life. In no merely figurative sense did she regard
herself as the spouse of Christ, but dwelt upon the bliss,
beyond all mortal happiness, which she enjoyed in
* The part played in Italy by preachers of repentance and peace is
among the most characteristic features of Italian history.
SIENA. 55
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 Ray-
mond, 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 sentence, that he cursed
God, and refused the consolations of religion. Priests
visited him in vain ; his heart was shut and sealed by
the despair of leaving life in all the vigour 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
judgment terrify into contrition. Nor was this strange.
In our days we have seen men open the secrets of their
hearts to women, after repelling the advances of less
touching sympathy. We have seen youths, cold and
cynical enough among their brethren, stand subdued
like little children before her who spoke to them of love
and faith and penitence and hope. The world has not
lost its ladies of the race of St Catherine, beautiful 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
56 SIENA.
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
Tuido 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. Therefore he prayed Catherine,
" Stay with me, do not leave me ; so it shall be well with
me, and I shall die contented;" "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,
meditating 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
martyrdom. 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
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
SIENA. 57
did she triumph in the death of him whom she had saved.
The words of St Catherine herself deserve to be read.
The simplicity, 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 mythologising adora-
tion of the people ready to find a miracle in every act
of her they worshipped — partly by her own tempera-
ment 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 class belong the wonders which are
related of St Catherine's early years, the story of the
candle which burnt 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 hearing
of the hermits of the Thebai'd, she took it into 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 disposi-
tion, and a more than usual aptitude for realising 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 class we may refer the frequent com-
munings with Christ and with the fathers of the Church,
53 SIENA.
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. St Catherine
was constitutionally inclined to hallucinations. At the
age of six, before it was probable that a child should
have laid claim to spiritual gifts which she did not pos-
sess, she burst into loud weeping because her little
brother rudely distracted her attention from the bril-
liant 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 preventing her splendid visions from
fading away, as they almost always do, beneath the
discipline of intellectual education and among the dis-
tractions of daily life. Believing simply in their
heavenly origin, and receiving no secular training
whatsoever, she walked surrounded by a spiritual
world, environed, as her legend 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. In this way her physical forces were depressed,
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
SIENA. 59
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 beggar, to hear him speaking to her
as a friend. Once when the anguish of sin had plagued
her with disturbing 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 : —
Fac me plagis vulnerari —
Cruce hac inebriari —
Fac ut portem Christi mortem,
Passionis fac consortem,
Et plagas recolere.
These are words from the Stabat 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 senti-
ment, 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
60 SIENA.
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 perforate 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 of sects. The people put the most
material construction on all tropes and metaphors :
above the door of St Catherine's chapel at Siena, for
example, it is written —
Haec tenet ara caput Catharinse ; corda requiris ?
Hasc imo Christus pectore clausa tenet.
The frequent conversations which St Catherine 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 ardours 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
* It is not impossible that the stigmata may have been naturally pro-
duced in the person of St Francis or St Catherine. There are cases on
record in which grave nervous disturbances have resulted in such modifica-
tions of the flesh as may have left the traces of wounds in scars and
blisters.
SIENA. 6 1
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
vigour triumphed over these diseased hallucinations of
the cloister, and converted them into the instruments of
effecting patriotic and philanthropic designs. There
was nothing mean or thaumaturgical about her super-
natural environments. 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-aggrandisement or the saving of her
soul, for the greatest, perhaps, which her age presented
to an earnest Catholic. The abuses to which the indul-
gence of temperaments like that of St Catherine
must in many cases have given rise, are obvious.
Hysterical women and half-witted men, without pos-
sessing her abilities and understanding her objects,
beheld unmeaning visions, and dreamed childish dreams.
Others won the reputation 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 backboard 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. The exaggerated, but instructive pictures of
the Abbe show how the trade of miracles is still
carried on, and how in the France of our days, when
62 SIENA.
intellectual vigour 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 move-
ments 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
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 realising 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." Happy times when the eye of
love was still unclouded, 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
SIENA. 63
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 there-
fore 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 of Christ. St
Francis had already received the stigmata ; 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 ; 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 Ignatius,
her successor. Her work was a woman's work — to
make peace, to succour the afflicted, to strengthen the
Church, to purify the hearts of those around her, not to
rule or organise. 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 ;
64 SIENA.
children belong to her sisterhood, and the poor crowd
her shrine on festivals.
Catherine died at Rome on the 29th 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 honour of canonisation from
the hands of Pius II., /Eneas Sylvius, her countryman.
/Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini was perhaps the most remark-
able man that Siena has produced. 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 con-
ferred the highest honours 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 Christendom 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 uncertain 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 cathe-
dral, painted by the hand of Pinturicchio, records the
pride and splendour of the greatest of the Piccolomini.
But honourable 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 ;
SIENA. 65
to have a chamber in its mother church adorned with
the pictured history of his achievements for a monument
— yet we cannot but feel that the better part remains
with St Catherine, whose prayer is still whispered 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
admire in Sodoma's " St Sebastian," at Florence, are
surpassed by his fresco of St Catherine receiving- the
stigmata. This is one of two subjects painted by him
on the walls of her chapel in San Domenico. The
tender devotion, 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. Colourists always liked to
introduce the sweeping lines of her white robes into
their compositions. Fra Bartolommeo, who showed
consummate 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
adoration before the mystery of the Trinity. His
gentle and devout soul sympathised with the spirit of
St Catherine. The fervour of her devotion belonged to
him more truly than the leonine power which he
unsuccessfully attempted to express in his large figure
E
66 SIENA.
of St Mark. Other artists have painted the two St
Catherines together — the princess of Alexandria, crowned
and robed in 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. Ambrogio 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 peculiar
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 St Catherine, 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 doorsteps, with brackets for torches on the walls,
and altars erected in the middle of the street. Troops
of country-folk and townspeople and priests go in and
out to visit the cell of St Catherine ; the upper and the
SIENA. 67
lower chapel, built upon its site, and the hall of the
confratemita 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 saints. 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
undercurrent 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 sun-
light 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 corrup-
tion 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.
PERUGIA.
PERUGIA is the empress of hill-set Italian cities. South-
ward from its 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 sad-
dest months of solitude in 13 13, the mountains curve
continuously 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
majestically 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-fledged trees and budding
flowers, the air is always pure and light and finely
tempered here. City gates, sombre as their own an-
tiquity, 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 bastion or tower of Etruscan,
PERUGIA. 69
Roman, mediaeval architecture, tracing the limits of
the town upon its mountain 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 vapour 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 neighbourhood 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 bas-
reliefs and vases how gloomy and morose were the
superstitions of those obscure forerunners of majestic
Rome. The piazza offers one of the most perfect Gothic
facades, 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 ferocity of feudal heraldry, and from their
claws hang down the chains wrested in old warfare from
some barricaded gateway of Siena. Below is the foun-
70 PERUGIA.
tain, on the many-sided curves of which Giovanni Pisano
sculptured, in quaint statuettes and bas-reliefs, all the
learning of the middle ages, from the Bible history down
to fables of iEsop 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 mercan-
tile disputes, and its exquisite carved woodwork and
frescoes, the masterpiece of Perugino's school. Hard by
is the University, once crowded with native and foreign
students, where the eloquence of Ognibene in the first
dawn of the Renaissance withdrew the gallants of
Perugia — those slim youths with shocks of nut-brown
hair beneath their tiny red caps, whose comely legs, en-
cased in tight-fitting hose of two different colours, look
so strange to modern eyes upon the canvas of Signorelli
— from their dice and wine-cups and amours and dag-
gers, to grave studies in the lore of Greece and Rome.
This piazza, the scene of all the bloodiest tragedies in
Perugian annals, is terminated 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 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 catafalque was raised for the
murdered Astorre, and for his traitorous cousin Grifonetto
PERUGIA. 71
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 emotions
in consummate works of pietistic art. They remember
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 sublim-
ity and freedom in his Madonnas di San Sisto, di
Foligno, and del Cardellino. But the students of mediae-
val history in detail, know Perugia far better as the lion's
lair of one of the most ferocious broods of heroic ruffians
which Italy can boast. To them the name of Perugia
suggests 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 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 painting Pietas while
Astorre and Simonetto were being murdered by the
beautiful young Grifonetto — is a paradox of the purest
water in the history of civilisation. The art of Perugino
* Most of the references in this essay are made to the Perugian chroni-
cles of Graziani, Matarazzo, Bontempi, and Frolliere, in the " Archivio
Storico Italiano," vol. xvi. parts 1 and 2. Ariodante Fabretti's "Biografie
dei Capitani Venturieri dell' Umbria" supply some details.
72 PERUGIA.
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 pas-
sions 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 proportions in the persons of splendid young
athletic despots. Even the names of these Baglioni, As-
torre, Lavinia, Zenobia. Atalanta, Troilo, Ercole, Annibale,
Ascanio, Penelope, Orazio, and so forth, clash with the
sweet mild forms of Perugino, whose very executioners
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 per-
sonality. 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 adoles-
cence, 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 in-
dividuality were therefore strongly accentuated. Life
itself was dramatic in its incidents and motives, its
catastrophes and contrasts. These conditions, eminently
PERUGIA. 73
favourable to the growth of arts and the pursuit of
science, were no less conducive to the hypertrophy 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 neighbours, but bound by faith more
blind and fiercer superstitions, he displayed the contradic-
tions 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 else-
where. Of his purely religious pictures — altar-pieces
of Madonna and Saints, martyrdoms of St Sebastian,
Crucifixions, Ascensions, Annunciations, and Depositions
from the Cross — fine specimens are exhibited in nearly
all the galleries of Europe. A larger number of
his works and of those of his scholars may be
seen assembled in the Pinacoteca 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 decora-
tion of that little hall he concentrated all his powers of
invention. The frescoes of the Transfiguration and the
Nativity, which face the great door, are the triumphs of
his devotional manner. On other panels of the chamber
74 PERUGIA.
he has portrayed the philosophers of Greece and Rome,
the kings and generals of antiquity, the prophets and
the sibyls who announced Christ'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
a harmonious framework for the medallions of the seven
planets. The woodwork with which the hall is lined
below the frescoes, 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 frescoes
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 with-
out 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, exquisite, slim page, with
floating mantle and ribbands 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 St a Maria del Popolo at Rome. A
new age of experience had passed over Raphael between
his execution 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 realise the thought of
classic myths in his new manner. In the same way we
may compare this Transfiguration with Raphael's last
PERUGIA. 75
picture, these sibyls with those of St a Maria della Pace,
these sages with the School of Athens, these warriors
with the Battle of Maxentius. What is characteristic 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
frescoes 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 ribbands and studied draperies clothe and
connect all. The same conventional attitudes of medita-
tive gracefulness are repeated in each group. Yet the
whole effect, if somewhat feeble and insipid, is har-
monious 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 ren-
dered visible in one decorous key. The worst that can
be said of it is that its suavity inclines to mawk-
ishness, and that its quietism borders upon sleepiness.
We find it difficult not to accuse him of affectation. At
the same time we are forced to allow that what he
76 PERUGIA.
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 Pina-
coteca, 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 verging 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 exe-
cuted 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. Therefore the painter who had made his
reputation by placing devout young faces upon twisted
necks, with a background of limpid twilight and calm
landscape, was forced by the fervour of his patrons, and
his own desire for money, to perpetuate pious pretti-
nesses 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
* 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 uscivano e bionde tresse sotto la bella armadura." The same
night his kinsman Pompeo was murdered 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
PERUGIA. 77
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, 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 permission 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 Innocent VIII. 's
nephews had been murdered by them.f Another car-
dinal 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
in uno solo tempo aveste homine 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).
* 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. 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 VI., who was seeking to inveigle
him into his clutches.
78 PERUGIA.
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 accumulated in the service of the Italian
republics, made them omnipotent in their native town.
There they built tall houses on the site which Paul III.
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 sun-
rise 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 vcndcttc 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.
PERUGIA. 79
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, Guido
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 September 1495. The foes of
the Baglioni entered the gates, and began breaking the
iron chains, scrragli, 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 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
* " Era costui al presente di anne 18 o 19 ; ancora non se radeva barba;
e mostrava tanta forza e tanto ardire, e era tanto adatto nel fatto d'arme,
che era gran maraveglia ; e iostrava cum tanta gintilezza e gagliardia, che
homo del mondo non l'aria mai creso ; et aria dato con la punta de la
lancia in nel fondo d'uno bicchiere da la mattina a la sera," &c. (p. 50.)
So PERUGIA.
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 " Mort Arthur : " " According 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, partizans, and crossbow 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 fordone 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 pal-
aces. 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 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.
Therefore in the St George of the Louvre, and in the
mounted horseman trampling upon Heliodorus in the
Stanze of the Vatican, victorious Astorre lives for ever,
immortalised in all his splendour by the painter's art.
PERUGIA. 8 1
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 charac-
teristic 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 has
set his hand to the throat of cousin, and the two heroes
of the piazza are destined to be slain by foulest treach-
ery 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 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 Ganimede," and who combined
the wealth of two chief branches of the Baglioni. In
1 500, when the events about to be related took place, he
was quite a youth. Brave, rich, handsome, and married
to a young wife, Zcnobia Sforza, he was the admiration
of Perugia. He and his wife loved each other dearly ;
and how, indeed, could it be otherwise, since " l'uno e
F
82 PERUGIA.
l'altro sembravano doi angioli di Paradiso '' ? At the
same time he had fallen into the hands of bad and des-
perate counsellors. A bastard of the house, Filippo da
Braccio, his half-uncle, was always at his side, instruct-
ing him not only in the accomplishments of chivalry,
but also in wild ways that brought his name into dis-
repute. Another of his familiars was Carlo Barciglia
Baglioni, an unquiet 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. See-
ing 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 con-
sented 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
* Matarazzo's description of the ruffians who surrounded Grifonetto (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.
PERUGIA. 83
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 Giu-
stina Orsini. At that time the whole Baglioni family
were to be assembled in Perugia, with the single
exception of Marcantonio, 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 occu-
pied 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 bravery, and to the fidelity of their
attendants.* It was thought that they might be
assassinated in their beds. The wedding festivities
began upon the 28th of July, and great is the parti-
cularity with which Matarazzo describes the doings of
each successive day — processions, jousts, triumphal
arches, banquets, balls, and pageants. The night of
the 14th of August was finally set apart for the con-
summation of cl graft 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 courtyard of Guido
Baglioni's palace was to be the signal : each conspirator
* Jacobo Antiquari, the secretary of Lodovico Sforza, in a curious letter,
which gives an account of the massacre, says that he had often reproved
the Baglioni for "sleeping in their beds without any guard or watch, so
that they might easily be overcome by enemies."
84 PERUGIA.
was then to run to the sleeping chamber of his ap-
pointed prey. Two of the principals and fifteen bravi
were told off to each victim : rams and crowbars 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 Grifonetto, was slain in the arms
of his young bride, crying, 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, exclaiming 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 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 indignity the noble limbs were
spared ; then the dead Baglioni were hurriedly consigned
to an unhonoured tomb. Meanwhile the rest of the
* " Quelli che li vidino, e maxime li forastiere studiante assimigliavano
el magnifico Messer Astorre cosi morto ad un antico Romano, perche prima
era unanissimo ; tanto sua figura era degnia e magnia," &c. This is a
touch exquisitely illustrative of the Renaissance enthusiasm for classic
culture.
PERUGIA. 85
intended victims managed to escape. Gianpaolo, as-
sailed by Grifonetto and Gianfrancesco della Corgna,
took refuge with his squire and bedfellow, Maraglia,
upon a staircase leading from his room. While the
squire held the passage with his pike against the foe,
Gianpaolo effected his flight over neighbouring 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 Gianpaolo,
Malatesta and Orazio, afterwards so celebrated in Italian
history for their great feats of arms and their crimes, fled
to her 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
passions, 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 paralysed
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
86 PERUGIA.
lad to be hacked in pieces by his guard. The untrans-
latable words which Matarazzo uses to describe his
death, are touching from the strong impression they
convey of Grifonetto's goodliness : " 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. We cannot
but be reminded of Philippus, whom the Segesteans
found dead among their foes and worshipped for the
exceeding grace of his form. 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 awestruck 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. 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 bless-
ing 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 l'anima
dal formoso corpo, e passo cum infinite benedizioni de
sua matre in cambio de la maledictione che prima li
aveva date."f Here again the style of Matarazzo, 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 tradimcnto. He only remembers how
* Here his lordship received upon his noble person so many wounds
that he stretched his graceful limbs upon the earth.
t And then the noble stripling stretched his right hand to his youthful
mother, pressing the white hand of his mother; and afterwards forthwith
he breathed his soul forth from his beauteous body, and died with number-
less blessings of his mother instead of the curses she had given him before.
PERUGIA. 87
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, leaning 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
"Phcenissae" 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.
It was Atalanta, we may remember, who commissioned
Raphael to paint the so-called Borghese Entombment.
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 commun-
ion with our Lady of sorrows may have sanctified the
grief that had so bitter and so shameful a root of sin.
After the death of Grifonetto, and the flight of the con-
spirators, Gianpaolo took possession of Perugia. All who
were suspected of complicity in the treason were mas-
sacred 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 17th
of July. First he caused the Cathedral to be washed
with wine and re-consecrated. Then he decorated the
* See Matarazzo, p. 134, for this detail.
SS PERUGIA.
Palazzo with the heads of the traitors and with their por-
traits 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 spectators of these bloody broils.
They were now bound 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, f
In the true style of the Baglioni, Marcantonio sought to
vent his sorrow not so much in tears as by new violence.
He prepared and lighted torches, meaning to burn the
whole quarter of Sant' 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
understand the ordinanze di giustizia, by which to be
a noble was a crime in Florence.
From this time forward the whole history of the Bag-
lioni 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 II. at his discretion in 1506, and was
* See Varchi (ed. Lemonnier, 1S57), vol. ii. p. 265, vol. iii. pp. 224,
652, and Corio (Venice, 1554), p. 326, for instances of dipinti per traditori.
f P. 142. " Pareva ogni cosa oscura elacrimosa: 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," &c.
J See Frolliere, p. 437, for a very curious account of his character.
PERUGIA. 89
sneered at by Machiavelli for not consummating his
enormities by killing the warlike Pope.* He again, after
joining the diet of La 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 Costantino 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 poignarded in her Roman farm ;
on hearing the news, he ordered a festival in which he
was engaged, to proceed with redoubled merriment.-f* At
last the time came for him to die by fraud and violence.
Leo X., anxious to remove so powerful a rival from Per-
ugia, lured him in 1520 to Rome under the false protec-
tion of a papal safe-conduct. After a short imprisonment
he had him beheaded 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 execution.^ If so,
he paid dear for his treachery ; for Orazio Baglioni, the
* Fabretti (vol. iii. pp. 193-202, and notes) discusses this circumstance in
detail. Machiavelli's critique runs thus (Discorsi, lib. i. cap. 27) : " Ne
si poteva credere che si fosse astenuto o per bonta, o per coscienza che lo
ritenesse ; perche 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 : ma si conchiuse che gli uomini non sanno essere
onorevolmente tristi, o perfettamente buoni," &c.
' t See Fabretti, vol. iii. p. 230. He is an authority for the details of
Gianpaolo's life.
X Fabretti, vol. iii. p. 230, vol. iv. p. 10.
90 PERUGIA.
second son of Gianpaolo and captain of the Church under
Clement VII., had him murdered in 1527, together with
his two nephews Fileno and Annibale.* This Orazio
was one of the most bloodthirsty 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.f 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.
Malatesta, his elder brother, became one of the most
celebrated generals of the age, holding the batons of the
Venetian and Florentine republics, and managing to
maintain his ascendancy in Perugia in spite of the per-
sistent opposition of successive popes. But his name
is best known in history for one of the greatest public
crimes — a crime which must be ranked with that of
Marshal Bazaine. Intrusted with the defence of
Florence 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 themselves 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 communica-
tion with the enemy, and all the arts that could intimi-
date 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 Italy condemned him.
* See Varchi Stone Florentine, vol. i. p. 224. t Ibid.
PERUGIA. 91
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 citizens ounce by ounce, and has donned
the cap of the biggest traitor in the world."* Consumed
with shame, corroded by an infamous disease, and mis-
trustful of Clement, to whom he had sold his honour,
Malatesta retired to Perugia, and died in 153 1. 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 dis-
lodged four years afterwards, when Paul III. took final
possession 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 au-
daciam." 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 ye
can ; since after me you will be set to draw the cart like
oxen." Frollieri, 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 Grifo-
netto, were both captains of Florence. The one died in
battle in 1554, the other in 1559. Thus ended the illus-
trious family. They are now represented by descendants
from females, and by contadini 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
* Fabretti, vol. iv. p. 206.
92 PERUGIA.
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 Per-
ugia allude to their ascendancy. Matarazzo, who cer-
tainly cannot be accused of hostility to the great house,
describes 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 divulged, and the city had lost all reason and
justice. Every man administered right unto himself,
propria autoritate et vianu 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
poignard to speak to the podesta and other magistrates.
Moreover every man of worth was down-trodden by
bravi whom the nobles favoured ; nor could a citizen
call his property his own. The nobles robbed first 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
* Pp. 102, 103.
PERUGIA. 93
heart to say : * " Though the city suffered great pains
for these nobles, yet the illustrious house of Baglioni
brought her honour throughout Italy, by reason of the
great dignity and splendour 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 neighbours,
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 them-
selves, 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 imagi-
nation 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 I
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
senses. Far overhead soared the calm grey spire into the
infinite air, and the perfection of accomplished beauty
slept beneath in those long lines of nave and choir and
* Page 139.
94 PERUGIA.
transepts. It was but a momentary 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
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 Patmore,
is a wide step.
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 indifferent. 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 its mass of rock among the Apennines.
Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic
blocks which are found like fossils, embedded 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 canebrakes
to stretch irregularly round their dwindled waters.
The weary flatness and utter desolation of this valley
present a sinister contrast to the broad line of the
Apennines, swelling tier on tier, from their oak-girdled
96 OR VIE TO.
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 unfamiliar 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 irresistibly
carried 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 scaling its crags seems insur-
mountable. 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 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.*
* Clement VII., for example, escaped from Rome disguised as a gardener
ORVIETO. 97
To unaccustomed eyes there is something sinister and
terrible about the black and cindery appearance 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 unoccupied ground
intervenes between the walls and the hovels which skirt
the modern town. This, in the times of its splendour,
may have served for oliveyards, vineyards, and pasturage,
in case of siege. There are still some faint traces of dead
gardens left upon its arid wilderness, among the ruins
of a castellated palace, decorated with the cross-keys
and tiara of an unremembered 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 loathliest offal of a foul Italian town. Should you
after the sack in 1527, and to quote the words of Varchi (St Fior, v. 17),
" Entro agli otto di dicembre a due ore di notte in Orvieto, terra di sito
fortissimo, per lo essere ella sopra uno scoglio pieno di tun posta, d'ogni
intorno scosceso e dirupato," &c.
G
p OR VIE TO.
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 all 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 splendours of her art and civilisation.
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 vigour 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 injured
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 gaiety
about them. Like Assisi or Siena, Orvieto is too large
for its population, and merriment flows better from close
crowding than from spacious accommodation. Very
dark, and big, and dirty, and deserted, is the judgment
we pronounce upon the houses ; very filthy and malo-
dorous each passage ; very long this central street ; very
few and sad and sullen the inhabitants ; and where, we
winder, is the promised inn ? In search of this one
walks nearly through the city, until one enters the
OR VIE TO. 99
Piazza, where there is more liveliness. Here cafes
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 courtyard 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 honour 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 readers
of ecclesiastical history that Urban had in 1264 pro-
mulgated 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
ioo OR VIE TO.
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 ardour of the Fraticelli and
by the promulgation of Abbot Joachim's Eternal Gospel.
This new evangelist had preached the doctrine of pro-
gression in religious faith, proclaiming a kingdom of
the Spirit which should transcend the kingdom of the
Son, even as the Christian dispensation 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 an
opposition while they could ; and by establishing the
dogma of transubstantiation, they were enabled to
satisfy the growing 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
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. Fergusson,
in his " Handbook of Architecture," remarks that these
two churches " are perhaps, taken altogether, the most
successful specimens of Italian pointed Gothic." The
Gottico Tedesco had never been received with favour in
OR VIE TO. 10 1
Italy. Remains of Roman architecture, then far more
numerous and perfect than they are at present, con-
trolled 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 expressed in rugged stone than in the marbles
of the South. Northern cathedrals do not depend for
their effect upon the advantages of sunlight or pic-
turesque 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
colour 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 itself*
* In considering why Gothic architecture took so little root in mediaeval
Italy, we must remember that the Italians had maintained 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 masterpieces of Byzantine architecture, and whence they
imported Greek artists in mosaic and stonework. Against these external
circumstances, 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.
102 OR VIE TO.
The Cathedral of Orvieto will illustrate these remarks.
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
decorative art. It is strictly what Fergusson has styled
a " frontispiece ; " for it bears no relation whatever to
the construction of the building. Its three gables rise
high above the aisles. Its pinnacles and parapets and
turrets are stuck on to look agreeable. It is a screen
such as might be completed or left unfinished at will by
the architect. Finished as it is, the facade of Orvieto
is a wilderness of beauties. Its pure white marble has
been mellowed by time to a 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 glasswork. On
every square inch of this wonderful facade have been
lavished invention, skill, and precious material. But
its chief interest centres in the sculptures executed by
OR VIE TO. 103
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
monotony 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
influence 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
inspiration from a Greek sarcophagus, which had been
cast upon the shore at Pisa. He studied the bas-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 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
realise.
Whether it was Nicola or his sons who designed the
bas-reliefs at Orvieto is of little consequence. Vasari
ascribes them to the father ; but we know that he com-
pleted 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
104 OR VIE TO.
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 drawings
from their compositions. And the spirit which pervades
these sculptures may be traced in all succeeding works
of art. It is not classic ; it is modern, though embodied
in a form of beauty modelled on the Greek.
The bas-reliefs are carved on four marble tablets
placed beside the porches of the church, and cor-
responding 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, Michel
Angelo, and Raphael, it might be shown that the Pisani
established modes of treating sacred subjects 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 resemble
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 still be
traced in Ghiberti, are entirely lost in Michel Angelo,
how the supernatural is humanised, how the symbolical
receives an actual expression, and how intellectual
types are substituted for mere local and individual
representations. For instance, the Pisani represent the
OR VIE TO. 105
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, sometimes walking on the
earth, but still far different in conception from the
Creative Father of Michel 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 Michel Angelo 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 re-
present, conduct us to the high altar surrounded by its
shadowy frescoes, and gleaming with the work of carvers
in marble and bronze and precious metals. But our
steps are drawn toward the chapel of the south tran-
sept, where nowa golden light from the autumnal sun-
set falls across a crowd of worshippers. From far and
106 0RV1ET0.
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-coloured kerchiefs, their skinny
fingers fumbling on the rosary, and their mute lips mov-
ing in prayer. The younger women have great listless
eyes and large limbs used to labour. 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 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 frescoes on the roof and walls. The inter-
change 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 around 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 curtain we behold Madonna and
her child — a faint, old, ugly picture, blackened with the
smoke and incense of five hundred years, a wonder-
0RV1ET0. 107
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 faithful 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
unseen, 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
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 Judg-
ment. Then he passed away, and Luca Signorelli, the
rich man who " lived splendidly and loved to dress him-
self in noble clothes," the liberal and courteous gentleman,
took his place upon the scaffold. For all the worldliness
of his attire and the delicacy 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 resurrection, 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
108 OR VIE TO.
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. Para-
dise occupies another portion of the chapel.
Look at the "Fulminati" — so the group of wicked
men are called whose death precedes the judgment.
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 descending 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 to-
gether, falling men, and women clasping to their arms
dead babies scorched with flame. One old man stares
straight forward, 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 judg-
ment — 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,
OR VIE TO.
109
it closes under him. One would think that they were
being born again from solid clay, and growing into
form with labour. The fully risen spirits stand and
walk about, all occupied with the expectation of the
judgment; but those that are in the act of rising, have
no thought but for the strange and toilsome process
of this second birth. Signorelli here, as elsewhere,
proves himself one of the greatest painters by the
simple means with which he produces the most mar-
vellous effects. His composition sways our souls with
all the passion of the terrible scenes that he depicts. Yet
what does it contain ? Two stern angels on the clouds,
a blank grey plain, and a multitude of naked men and
women. In the next compartment Hell is painted.
This is a complicated picture, consisting of a mass of
human beings entangled with torturing fiends. Above
hover demons, bearing damned spirits, and three angels
see that justice takes its course. Signorelli here degen-
erates into no mediaeval ugliness and mere barbarity of
form. His fiends are not the bestial creatures of Pisano's
bas-reliefs, but models of those monsters which Duppa
has engraved from Michel 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 remorseless eyes, can you know them from the
souls they torture. In Hell ugliness and power of mis-
chief come with length of years. Continual growth in
crime distorts the form which once was human ; and
the interchange of everlasting hatred degrades the tor-
mentor and his victim to the same demoniac ferocity.
no OR VIE TO.
To this design the science of foreshortening, and the
profound knowledge of the human form in every pos-
ture, give its chief interest. Paradise is not less won-
derful. Signorelli has contrived to throw variety and
grace into the somewhat monotonous groups which
this subject requires. Above are choirs of angels, not
like Fra 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 move-
ment 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.
After viewing these frescoes, we muse and ask
ourselves why Signorelli's fame is so inadequate to
his deserts ? Partly, no doubt, because he painted
in obscure Italian towns, and left few easel-pictures*
* The Uffizzi Gallery at Florence contains one or two fine specimens
of Luca Signorelli's Holy Families, which show his influence over the
early manner of Michel Angelo. Into the background of one circular
picture he has introduced a group of naked figures, which was
imitated by Buonarotti 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. 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 representing
Madonna in glory with saints, which also contains on a smaller scale than
the principal figures a little design of the Temptation in Eden. You re-
cognise the master's individuality in the muscular and energetic Adam.
OR VIE TO. ill
Besides, the artists of the sixteenth century eclipsed
all their predecessors, and the name of Signorelli has
been swallowed up in that of Michel Angelo. Vasari
said that "esso Michel Angelo imito l'andar di Luca,
come puo vedere ognuno." Nor is it hard to see that
what the one began at Orvieto the other completed
in the 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
colour. Both chose to work in fresco, and selected sub-
jects of the gravest and most elevated character. The
study of anatomy, and the correct drawing of the
naked body, which Luca practised, were carried to
The Dupmo 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 conceived in a truly grand style — noble attitudes, broad draperies,
sombre and rich colouring, masculine massing of the figures in effective
groups. The Christ is especially noble. Swaying a little to the right, he
gives the bread to a kneeling apostle. The composition 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 realised. 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 attrac-
tive. 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 modelling of the vigorous but delicate
left arm stretched forward to support the heavy corpse. This figure is
conceived and executed in a style worthy of the Orvietan frescoes. Sig-
norelli, for whose imagination angels had a special charm, has shown here
U2 OR VIE TO.
perfection by Michel Angelo. Sublimity of thought
and self-restraint pervade their compositions. He who
would understand Buonarotti, 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 accidents of place and time, which
is the chief distinction of Michel Angelo's work. At
the same time, his manner had not suffered from too
close a study of the 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
that his too frequent 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 landscape — Radico-
fani and Montepulciano to the south, Chiusi with its lake, the lake of
Thrasymene, and the whole broad Tuscan plain. The city itself is built
on a projecting buttress of the mountain, to which it clings so closely that,
in climbing to the terrace of St a 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. 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 the
narrow and traditional treatment imposed on him in pictures of this kind.
OR VIE TO. ii 3
on their knees, still careless of the frescoed forms
around them, still praying to Madonna of the Miracles.
The service is wellnigh 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
sounding where, a short while since, the trumpet-blast
of Signorelli's angels seemed to thrill our ears !
11
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
It is a noticeable fact about the popular songs of Tuscany
that they are almost exclusively devoted to love. The
Italians in general have no ballad literature resembling
that of our Border or that of Spain. The tragic his-
tories of their noble families, the great deeds of their
national heroes, and the sufferings of their country during
centuries of warfare, have left but few traces in their
rustic poetry. It is true that some districts are less
utterly barren than others in these records of the past.
The Sicilian people's poetry, for example, preserve a
memory of the famous Vespers ; and one or two terrible
stories of domestic tragedy, like the romance of the
Baronessa di Carini, and the so-called Caso di Sciacca,
may still be heard upon the lips of the people. But
these exceptions are insignificant in comparison with the
vast mass of songs which deal with love ; and I cannot
find that Tuscany, where the language of this minstrelsy
is purest, and where the artistic instincts of the race are
strongest, has anything at all approaching to our ballads.
Though the Tuscan contadini are always singing, it never
happens that
" The plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago."
On the contrary, we may be sure, when we hear their
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 115
voices ringing through the olive-groves or macchi, that
they are chanting
" Some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day, —
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again ; "
or else, since their melodies are by no means uniformly
sad, some ditty of the joyousness of spring-time or the
ecstasy of love. This defect of anything corresponding
to our ballads of "Chevy Chase," or " Sir Patrick Spens,"
or "Gil Morrice," in a poetry which is still so vital with the
life of past centuries, is all the more remarkable because
Italian history is distinguished above that of other nations
by tragic episodes peculiarly suited to poetic treatment.
Many of these received commemoration in the fourteenth
century from Dante ; others were embodied* in the nov-
elle of Boccaccio and Cinthio and Bandello, whence they
passed into the dramas of Shakspere, Webster, Ford, and
their contemporaries. But scarcely an echo can be
traced through all the volumes of the recently collected
popular songs. We must seek for an explanation of this
fact partly in the conditions of Italian life, and partly in
the nature of the Italian imagination. Nowhere in Italy
do we observe that intimate connection between the
people at large and the great nobles which generates the
sympathy of clanship. Politics in most parts of the
peninsula fell at a very early period into the hands either
of irresponsible princes, who ruled like despots, or else of
burghers, who administered the state within the walls of
their Palazzo Pubblico. The people remained passive
spectators of contemporary history. The loyalty of sub-
jects to their sovereign which animates the Spanish
ballads, the loyalty of retainers to their chief which gives
life to the tragic ballads of the Border, did not exist in
n6 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
Italy. Country-folk felt no interest in the doings of
Visconti or Medici or Malatesti sufficient to arouse the
enthusiasm of local bards, or to call forth the celebration
of their princely tragedies in verse. Amid the miseries
of foreign wars and home oppression, it seemed better
to demand from verse and song some mitigation of the
woes of life, some expression of personal emotion, than
to record the disasters which to us at a distance appear
poetic in their grandeur. These conditions of popular
life, although unfavourable to the production of ballad
poetry, would not, however, have been sufficient by
themselves to check its growth, if the Italians had been
strongly impelled to literature of this type by their
nature. The real reason why their Volkslieder are am-
orous and personal is to be found in the quality of their
imagination. The Italian genius is not imaginative in
the highest sense. The Italians have never, either in the
ancient or the modern age, produced a great drama or a
national epic, the "iEneid" and the " Divine Comedy"
being obviously of different species from the " Iliad " or
the " Niebelungen Lied." They shrink, for the most part,
in their poetry, from the representation of what is tragic
and spirit-stirring. They incline to what is cheerful,
brilliant, or pathetic. The dramatic element in human
life, external to the personality of the poet, which
exercised so strong a fascination over our ballad-
bards and playwrights, has but little attraction for the
Italian. When he sings, he seeks to express his own
individual emotions — his love, his joy, his jealousy,
his anger, his despair. The language which he uses is
at the same time direct in its intensity, and hyperbolical
in its display of fancy ; but it lacks those imaginative
touches which exalt the poetry of personal passion into
a sublimer region. Again, the Italians are deficient in a
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 117
sense of the supernatural. The wraiths that cannot
rest because their love is still unsatisfied, the voices which
cry by night over field and fell, the water-spirits and
forest fairies, the second-sight of coming woes, the pre-
sentiment of death, the warnings and the charms and
spells, which fill the popular poetry of all northern
nations, are absent in Italian songs. In the whole of
Tigri's collection I only remember one mention of a ghost.
It is not that the Italians are deficient in superstitions of
all kinds. Every one has heard of their belief in the
evil eye, for instance. But they do not connect this
kind of fetichism with their poetry ; and even their
greatest poets, with the exception of Dante, have shown
no capacity or no inclination for enhancing the imagina-
tive effect of their creations by an appeal to the instinct
of mysterious awe. The truth is that the Italians as a
race are distinguished as much by a firm grasp upon
the practical realities of existence, as by powerful
emotions. They have but little of that dreamy Schwar-
merei with which the people of the north are largely
gifted. The true sphere of their genius is painting.
What appeals to the imagination through the eyes they
have expressed far better than any other modern nation.
But their poetry, like their music, is deficient in tragic
sublimity and in all the higher qualities of imaginative
creation. It may seem paradoxical to say this of the
nation which produced Dante. But we must remember
not to judge races by single and exceptional men of
genius. Petrarch, the Troubadour of exquisite emo-
tions, Boccaccio, who touches all the keys of life so
lightly, Ariosto, with the smile of everlasting April on
his lips, and Tasso, excellent alone when he confines
himself to pathos or the picturesque, are no exceptions
to what I have just said. Yet these poets pursued their
n8 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
art with conscious purpose. The tragic splendour of
Greece, the majesty of Rome, were not unknown to them.
Far more is it true that popular poetry in Italy, proceed-
ing from the hearts of uncultivated peasants and ex-
pressing the national character in its simplicity, displays
none of the stuff from which the greatest works of art
in verse, epics and dramas, can be wrought. But within
its own sphere of personal emotion, this popular poetry
is exquisitely melodious, inexhaustibly rich, unique in
modern literature for the direct expression which it has
given to every shade of passion.
Signor Tigri's collection,* to which I shall confine my
attention in this paper, consists of eleven hundred and
eighty-five rispetti, with the addition of four hundred
and sixty-one stornelli. Rispetto, it may be said in
passing, is the name commonly given throughout Italy
to short poems, varying from six to twelve lines,
constructed on the principle of the octave stanza. That
is to say, the first part of the rispetto consists of four
or six lines with alternate rhymes, while one or more
couplets complete the poem. The stornello, or ritour-
nelle, never exceeds three lines, and owes its name to the
return which it makes at the end of the last line to the
rhyme given by the emphatic word of the first. Brown-
ing, in his poem of Fra Lippo Lippi, has accustomed
English ears to one common species of the stornello,f
which sets out with the name of a flower, and rhymes
with it, as thus : —
" Fior di narciso.
Prigionero d'amore mi son reso,
Nel rimirare il tuo leggiadro viso."
* Canti Popolari Toscani, raccolti e annotati da Giuseppe Tigri.
Volume unico. Firenze, G. Barbera, 1869.
+ This song, called Ciure (Sicilian for fiore) in Sicily, is said by
Signor Pitre to be in disrepute there. He once asked an old dame of
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 119
The divisions of those two sorts of songs, to which
Tigri gives names like The Beauty of Women, The
Beauty of Men, Falling in Love, Serenades, Happy
Love, Unhappy Love, Parting, Absence, Letters, Return
to Home, Anger and Jealousy, Promises, Entreaties and
Reproaches, Indifference, Treachery and Abandonment,
prove with what fulness the various phases of the tender
passion are treated. Through the whole fifteen hundred
the one theme of Love is never relinquished. Only two
persons, " I " and " thou," appear upon the scene ; yet
so fresh and so various are the moods of feeling that one
can read them from first to last without too much satiety.
To seek for the authors of these ditties would be use-
less. Some of them may be as old as the fourteenth
century ; others may have been made yesterday. Some
are the native product of the Tuscan mountain villages,
especially of the regions round Pistoja and Siena, where
on the spurs of the Apennines the purest Italian is
vernacular. Some, again, are importations from other
provinces, caught up by the peasants of Tuscany and
adapted to their taste and style ; for nothing travels faster
than a Volkslied. Born some morning in a noisy street
of Naples, or on the solitary slopes of Radicofani, before
the week is out, a hundred voices are repeating it.
Waggoners and pedlars carry it across the hills to distant
towns. It floats with the fishermen from bay to bay,
and marches with the conscript to his barrack in a far-
off province. Who was the first to give it shape and
form ? No one asks, and no one cares. A student well
Palermo to repeat him some of these ditties. Her answer was: "You
must get them from light women ; I do not know any. They sing them
in bad houses and prisons, where, God be praised, I have never been."
In Tuscany there does not appear to be so marked a distinction between
the flower- song and the rispetto.
120 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
acquainted with the habits of the people in these matters,
says, " If they knew the author of a ditty, they would
not learn it, far less if they discovered that it was a
scholar's." If the cadence takes their ear, they conse-
crate the song at once by placing it upon the honoured
list of " ancient lays." Passing from lip to lip and from
district to district, it receives additions and alterations,
and becomes the property of a score of provinces.
Meanwhile the poet from whose soul it blossomed that
first morning like a flower, remains contented with
obscurity. The wind has carried from his lips the thistle-
down of song, and sown it on a hundred hills and
meadows, far and wide. After such wise is the birth of
all truly popular compositions. Who knows, for in-
stance, the veritable author of many of those mighty
German chorals which sprang into being at the period
of the Reformation ? The first inspiration was given,
probably, to a single mind ; but the melody, as it has
reached us, is the product of a thousand. Thisaccounts
for the variations which in different dialects and districts
the same song presents. Meanwhile it is sometimes
possible to trace the authorship of a ballad with marked
local character to an improvisatore famous in his village,
or to one of those professional rhymesters whom the
country-folk employ in the composition of love-letters
to their sweethearts at a distance. Tommaseo, in the
preface to his Canti Popolari, mentions in particular a
Beatrice di Pian degli Ontani, whose poetry was famous
through the mountains of Pistoja ; and Tigri records by
name a little girl called Cherubina, who made rispetti
by the dozen as she watched her sheep upon the hills.
One of the songs in his collection (page 181) contains a
direct reference to the village letter-writer : —
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 121
" Salutatemi, bella, lo scrivano ;
Non lo conosco e non so chi si sia.
A me mi pare un poeta sovrano,
Tanto gli e sperto nella poesia."
While I am writing thus about the production and
dissemination of these love-songs, I cannot help remem-
bering three days and nights which I once spent at sea
between Genoa and Palermo, in the company of some
conscripts who were going to join their regiment in
Sicily. They were lads from the Milanese and Liguria,
and they spent a great portion of their time in com-
posing and singing poetry. One of them had a fine
baritone voice ; and when the sun had set, his comrades
gathered round him and begged him to sing to them
" Con quella patetica tua voce." Then followed hours
of singing, the low monotonous melodies of his ditties
harmonising wonderfully with the tranquillity of night,
so clear and calm that the sky and all its stars were
mirrored on the sea, through which we moved as if in a
dream. Sometimes the songs provoked conversation,
which, as is usual in Italy, turned mostly upon "le
bellezze delle donne." I remember that once an
animated discussion about the relative merits of blondes
and brunettes nearly ended in a quarrel, when the young-
est of the whole band, a boy of about seventeen, put a
stop to the dispute by theatrically raising his eyes and
arms to heaven and crying, " Tu sei innamorato d'una
grande Diana cacciatrice nera, ed io d'una bella Venere
bionda." Though they were but village lads, they
supported their several opinions with arguments not
unworthy of Firenzuola, and showed the greatest delicacy
of feeling in the treatment of a subject which could
scarcely have failed to reveal any latent coarseness.
The purity of all the Italian love-songs collected by
122 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
Tigri is very remarkable.* Although the passion ex-
pressed in them is Oriental in its vehemence, not a word
falls which could offend a virgin's ear. The one desire
of lovers is lifelong union in marriage. The damo — for
so a sweetheart is termed in Tuscany — trembles until
he has gained the approval of his future mother-in-law,
and forbids the girl he is courting to leave her house to
talk to him at night : —
" Dice che tu ti affacci alia finestra :
Ma non ti dice che tu vada fuora,
Perche, la notte, e cosa disonesta."
All the language of his love is respectful. Signore, or
master of my soul, madonna, anima mia, dolce mio ben,
nobil persona, are the terms of adoration with which he
approaches his mistress. The elevation of feeling and
perfect breeding which Manzoni has so well delineated
in the loves of Renzo and Lucia are traditional among
Italian country-folk. They are conscious that true
gentleness is no matter of birth or fortune : —
" E tu non mi lasciar per poverezza,
Che poverta non guasta gentilezza." t
* It must be remarked that Tigri draws a strong contrast in this
respect between the songs of the mountain districts which he has printed
and those of the towns, and that Pitre, in his edition of Sicilian Volks-
lieder, expressly alludes to the coarseness of a whole class which he had
omitted.
t In a rispetto, of which I subjoin a translation, sung by a poor lad to
a mistress of higher rank, love itself is pleaded as the sign of a gentle soul :
" My state is poor : I am not meet
To court so nobly born a love ;
For poverty hath tied my feet,
Trying to climb too far above.
Yet am I gentle, loving thee ;
Nor need thou shun my poverty."
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 123
This in itself constitutes an important element of culture,
and explains to some extent the high romantic qualities
of their impassioned poetry. The beauty of their land
reveals still more. " O fortunatos nimium sua si bona
norint ! " Virgil's exclamation is as true now as it was
when he sang the labours of Italian country-folk some
nineteen centuries ago. To a traveller from the north
there is a pathos even in the contrast between the country
in which these children of a happier climate toil, and
those bleak, winter-beaten fields where our own peasants
pass their lives. The cold nights and warm days of
Tuscan spring-time are like a Swiss summer. They make
rich pasture and a hardy race of men. Tracts of corn
and oats and rye alternate with patches of flax in full
flower, with meadows yellow with buttercups or pink with
ragged robin ; the young vines, running from bough to
bough of elm and mulberry, are just coming into leaf.
The poplars are fresh with bright green foliage. In the
midst of this blooming plain stand ancient cities ringed
with hills, some rising to snowy Apennines, some covered
with white convents and sparkling with villas. Cypresses
shoot, black and spirelike, amid grey clouds of olive-
boughs upon the slopes ; and above, where vegetation
borders on the barren rock, are masses of ilex and
arbutus interspersed with chestnut-trees not yet in leaf.
Men and women are everywhere at work, ploughing with
great white oxen, or tilling the soil with spades six feet
in length — Sabellian ligones. The songs of nightingales
among acacia-trees, and the sharp scream of swallows
wheeling in air, mingle with the monotonous chant that
always rises from the country-people at their toil. Here
and there on points of vantage, where the hill-slopes
sink into the plain, cluster white villages with flower-like
campanili. It is there that the veglia, or evening
124 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
rendezvous of lovers, the serenades and balls and feste,
of which one hears so much in the popular minstrelsy,
take place. Of course it would not be difficult to paint
the darker shades of this picture. Autumn comes, when
the contadini of Lucca and Siena and Pistoja go forth
to work in the unwholesome marshes of the Maremma,
or of Corsica and Sardinia. Dismal superstitions and
hereditary hatreds cast their blight over a life externally
so fair. The bad government of centuries has perverted
in many ways the instincts of a people naturally mild
and cheerful and peace-loving. But as far as nature
can make men happy, these husbandmen are surely to
be reckoned fortunate, and in their songs we find little
to remind us of what is otherwise than sunny in their lot.
A translator of these Volkslicder has to contend with
difficulties of no ordinary kind. The freshness of their
phrases, the spontaneity of their sentiments, and the
melody of their unstudied cadences, are inimitable. So
again is the peculiar effect of their frequent transitions
from the most fanciful imagery to the language of
prose. No mere student can hope to rival, far less to
reproduce, in a foreign tongue, the charm of verse
which sprang untaught from the hearts of simple folk,
which lives unwritten on the lips of lovers, and which
should never be dissociated from singing * There are,
besides, peculiarities in the very structure of the popular
rispetto. The constant repetition of the same phrase
with slight variations gives an antique force and flavour
to these ditties, like that which we appreciate in our
own ballads, but which may easily, in the translation,
* When the Cherubina, of whom mention has been made above, was
asked by Signor Tigri to dictate some of her rispetti, she answered, "O
signore ! ne dico tanti quando li canto ! . . . ma ora . . . bisognerebbe
averli tutti in visione ; se no, proprio non vengono."
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 125
degenerate into weakness and insipidity. The Tuscan
rhymester, again, allows himself the utmost licence. It
is usual to find mere assonances like bene and piacere,
oro and volo, ala and alata, in the place of rhymes ;
while such remote resemblances of sound as colli and
poggi, lascia and piazza, are far from uncommon. To
match these rhymes by joining "home" and "alone,"
" time " and " shine," &c, would of course be a matter
of no difficulty ; but it has seemed to me on the whole
best to preserve, with some exceptions, such accuracy
as the English ear requires. I fear, however, that, after
all, these wild-flowers of song, transplanted to another
climate and placed in a hothouse, will appear but pale
and hectic by the side of their robuster brethren of the
Tuscan hills.
In the following serenade many of the peculiarities
which I have just noticed occur. I have also adhered
to the irregularity of rhyme which may be usually
observed about the middle of the poem (p. 103) : —
" Sleeping or waking, thou sweet face,
Lift up thy fair and tender brow :
List to thy love in this still place ;
He calls thee to thy window now :
But bids thee not the house to quit,
Since in the night this were not meet.
Come to thy window, stay within ;
I stand without, and sing and sing :
Come to thy window, stay at home ;
I stand without, and make my moan."
Here is a serenade of a more impassioned character
(p. 99) :—
" I come to visit thee, my beauteous queen,
Thee and the house where thou art harboured:
All the long way upon my knees, my queen,
I kiss the earth where'er thy footsteps tread.
126 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
I kiss the earth, and gaze upon the wall,
Whereby thou goest, maid imperial !
I kiss the earth, and gaze upon the house,
Whereby thou farest, queen most beauteous ! "
In the next the lover, who has passed the whole night
beneath his sweetheart's window, takes leave at the
break of day. The feeling of the half hour before
dawn, when the sound of bells rises to meet the growing
light, and both form a prelude to the glare and noise
of day, is expressed with much unconscious poetry
(p. 105) :—
" I see the dawn e'en now begin to peer :
Therefore I take my leave, and cease to sing.
See how the windows open far and near,
And hear the bells of morning, how they ring !
Through heaven and earth the sounds of ringing swell ;
Therefore, bright jasmine flower, sweet maid, farewell !
Through heaven and Rome the sound of ringing goes ;
Farewell, bright jasmine flower, sweet maiden rose!"
The next is more quaint (p. 99) : —
" I come by night, I come, my soul aflame ;
I come in this fair hour of your sweet sleep :
And should I wake you up, it were a shame.
I cannot sleep, and lo ! I break your sleep.
To wake you were a shame from your deep rest ;
Love never sleeps, nor they whom Love hath blest."
A very great many rispetti are simple panegyrics of
the beloved, to find similitude for whose beauty heaven
and earth are ransacked. The compliment of the first
line in the following song is perfect (p. 23) : —
" Beauty was born with you, fair maid :
The sun and moon inclined to you ;
On you the snow her whiteness laid,
The rose her rich and radiant hue :
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 127
Saint Magdalen her hair unbound,
And Cupid taught you how to wound —
How to wound hearts Dan Cupid taught :
Your beauty drives me love-distraught."
The lady in the next was December's child (p. 25) : —
" O beauty, born in winter's night,
Born in the month of spotless snow :
Your face is like a rose so bright ;
Your mother may be proud of you !
She may be proud, lady of love,
Such sunlight shines her house above :
She may be proud, lady of heaven,
Such sunlight to her home is given."
The sea wind is the source of beautv to another
(P. 16):-
" Nay, marvel not you are so fair ;
For you beside the sea were born :
The sea-waves keep you fresh and fair,
Like roses on their leafy thorn.
If roses grow on the rose-bush,
Your roses through midwinter blush ;
If roses bloom on the rose-bed,
Your face can show both white and red."
The eyes of a fourth are compared, after quite a new
and original fashion, to stars (p. 210) : —
" The moon hath risen her plaint to lay
Before the face of Love Divine,
Saying in heaven she will not stay,
Since you have stolen what made her shine :
Aloud she wails with sorrow wan, —
She told her stars and two are gone :
They are not there ; you have them now ;
They are the eyes in your bright brow."
Nor are girls less ready to praise their lovers, but that
128 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
they do not dwell so much on physical perfections.
Here is a pleasant greeting (p. 124) : —
" O welcome, welcome, lily white,
Thou fairest youth of all the valley !
When I 'm with you, my soul is light ;
I chase away dull melancholy.
I chase all sadness from my heart :
Then welcome, dearest that thou art !
I chase all sadness from my side :
Then welcome, O my love, my pride !
I chase all sadness far away:
Then welcome, welcome, love, to-day ! "
The image of a lily is very prettily treated in the next
(P- 79) :—
" I planted a lily yestreen at my window ;
I set it yestreen, and to-day it sprang up :
When I opened the latch and leaned out of my window,
It shadowed my face with its beautiful cup.
O lily, my lily, how tall you are grown !
Remember how dearly I loved you, my own.
lily, my lily, you '11 grow to the sky !
Remember I love you for ever and aye."
The same thought of love growing like a flower receives
another turn (p. 69) : —
" On yonder hill I saw a flower ;
And, could it thence be hither borne,
1 'd plant it here within my bower,
And water it both eve and morn.
Small water wants the stem so straight :
'Tis a love-lily stout as fate.
Small water wants the root so strong :
'Tis a love-lily lasting long.
Small water wants the flower so sheen :
'Tis a love-lily ever green."
Envious tongues have told a girl that her complexion
is not good. She replies, with imagery like that of
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 129
Virgil's "Alba ligustra cadunt, vaccinia nigra leguntur"
(P- 3i):—
" Think it no grief that I am brown,
For all brunettes are born to reign :
White is the snow, yet trodden down ;
Black pepper kings need not disdain:
White snow lies mounded on the vales ;
Black pepper 's weighed in brazen scales."
Another song runs on the same subject (p. 38) : —
" The whole world tells me that I 'm brown.
The brown earth gives us goodly corn;
The clove-pink too, however brown,
Yet proudly in the hand 'tis borne.
They say my love is black, but he
Shines like an angel-form to me:
They say my love is dark as night;
To me he seems a shape of light."
The freshness of the following spring song recalls the
ballads of the Val de Vire in Normandy; (p. 85) : —
" It was the morning of the first of May,
Into the close I went to pluck a flower;
And there I found a bird of woodland gay,
Who whiled with songs of love the silent hour.
O bird, who fliest from fair Florence, how
Dear love begins, I prithee teach me now ! —
Love it begins with music and with song,
And ends with sorrow and with sighs ere long.
Love at first sight is described (p. 79) : —
" The very moment that we met,
That moment Love began to beat :
One glance of love we gave, and swore
Never to part for evermore ;
We swore together, sighing deep,
Never to part till Death's long sleep."
130 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
Here too is a memory of the first days of love (p. 79) : —
" If I remember, it was May
When love began between us two :
The roses in the close were gay,
The cherries blackened on the bough.
cherries black and pears so green !
Of maidens fair you are the queen.
Fruit of black cherry and sweet pear !
Of sweethearts you're the queen, I swear."
The troth is plighted with such promises as these
(p. 230):—
" Or ere I leave you, love divine,
Dead tongues shall stir and utter speech,
And running rivers flow with wine,
And fishes swim upon the beach ;
Or ere I leave or shun you, these
Lemons shall grow on orange-trees."
The girl confesses her love after this fashion (p. 86) : —
" Passing across the billowy sea,
1 let, alas, my poor heart fall ;
I bade the sailors bring it me;
They said they had not seen it fall.
I asked the sailors, one and two ;
They said that I had given it you.
I asked the sailors, two and three ;
They said that I had given it thee."
It is not uncommon to speak of love as a sea. Here is
a curious play upon this image (p. 227) : —
" Ho, Cupid ! Sailor Cupid, ho !
Lend me awhile that bark of thine ;
For on the billows I will go,
To find my love who once was mine :
And if I find her, she shall wear
A chain around her neck so fair,
Around her neck a glittering bond,
Four stars, a lily, a diamond."
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 131
It is also possible that the same thought may occur in
the second line of the next ditty (p. 120) : —
" Beneath the earth I '11 make a way
To pass the sea and come to you.
People will think I 'm gone away ;
But, dear, I shall be seeing you.
People will say that I am dead ;
But we'll pluck roses white and red:
People will think I 'm lost for aye ;
But we '11 pluck roses, you and I."
All the little daily incidents are beautified by love. Here
is a lover who thanks the mason for making his window
so close upon the road that he can see his sweetheart as
she passes (p. 118) : —
" Blest be the mason's hand who built
This house of mine by the roadside,
And made my window low and wide
For me to watch my love go by.
And if I knew when she went by,
My window should be fairly gilt ;
And if I knew what time she went,
My window should be flower-besprent."
Here is a conceit which reminds one of the pretty epistle
of Philostratus, in which the footsteps of the beloved are
called ep7)pei<r/j,£va (piX-q/xaTa (p. 117) : —
" What time I see you passing by,
I sit and count the steps you take :
You take the steps ; I sit and sigh :
Step after step, my sighs awake.
Tell me, dear Love, which more abound,
My sighs or your steps on the ground ?
Tell me, dear Love, which are the most,
Your light steps or the sighs they cost ? "
A girl complains that she cannot see her lover's house
(p. 117):—
1^2 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
" I lean upon the lattice, and look forth
To see the house wherein my lover dwells.
There grows an envious tree that spoils my mirth :
Cursed be the man who set it on these hills !
But when those jealous boughs are all unclad,
I then shall see the cottage of my lad :
When once that tree is rooted from the hills,
I '11 see the house wherein my lover dwells."
In the same mood a girl who has just parted from her
sweetheart is angry with the hill beyond which he is
travelling (p. 167) : —
" I see and see, yet see not what I would :
I see the leaves atremble on the tree :
I saw my love where on the hill he stood,
Yet see him not drop downward to the lea.
traitor hill, what will you do ?
1 ask him, live or dead, from you.
traitor hill, what shall it be ?
1 ask him, live or dead, from thee."
All the songs of love in absence are very quaint. Here
is one which calls our nursery rhymes to mind (p. 1 19) : —
" I would I were a bird so free,
That I had wings to fly away :
Unto that window I would flee,
Where stands my love and grinds all day.
Grind, miller, grind ; the water 's deep !
I cannot grind ; love makes me weep.
Grind, miller, grind ; the waters flow !
I cannot grind ; love wastes me so."
The next begins after the same fashion, but breaks into
a very shower of benedictions (p. 118) : —
" Would God I were a swallow free,
That I had wings to fly away :
Upon the miller's door I 'd be,
Where stands my love and grinds all day :
Upon the door, upon the sill,
Where stays my love ; — God bless him still !
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 133
God bless my love, and blessed be
His house, and bless my house for me ;
Yea, blest be both, and ever blest
My lover's house, and all the rest ! "
The girl alone at home in her garden sees a wood-dove
flying by and calls to it (p. 179) : —
" O dove, who fliest far to yonder hill,
Dear dove, who in the rock hast made thy nest,
Let me a feather from thy pinion pull,
For I will write to him who loves me best.
And when I 've written it and made it clear,
I '11 give thee back thy feather, dove so dear :
And when I've written it and sealed it, then
I '11 give thee back thy feather love-laden."
A swallow is asked to lend the same kind service
(p. 179):—
" O swallow, swallow, flying through the air,
Turn, turn, I prithee, from thy flight above !
Give me one feather from thy wing so fair,
For I will write a letter to my love.
When I have written it and made it clear,
I '11 give thee back thy feather, swallow dear ;
When I have written it on paper white,
I '11 make, I swear, thy missing feather right ;
When once 'tis written on fair leaves of gold,
I '11 give thee back thy wing and flight so bold."
Long before Tennyson's song in the " Princess," it would
seem that swallows were favourite messengers of love.
In the next song which I translate, the repetition of one
thought with delicate variation is full of character
(P- 178) :-
" O swallow, flying over hill and plain,
If thou shouldst find my love, oh bid him come !
And tell him, on these mountains I remain
Even as a lamb who cannot find her home:
And tell him, I am left all, all alone,
Even as a tree whose flowers are overblown :
i34 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
And tell him, I am left without a mate
Even as a tree whose boughs are desolate :
And tell him, I am left uncomforted
Even as the grass upon the meadows dead."
The following is spoken by a girl who has been watch-
ing the lads of the village returning from their autumn
service in the plain, and whose damo comes the last of
all (p. 240) : —
" O dear my love, you come too late !
What found you by the way to do ?
I saw your comrades pass the gate,
But yet not you, dear heart, not you !
If but a little more you'd stayed,
With sighs you would have found me dead ;
If but a while you'd kept me crying,
With sighs you would have found me dying."
The amantium ires find a place too in these rustic ditties.
A girl explains to her sweatheart (p. 240) : —
" 'Twas told me and vouchsafed for true,
Your kin are wroth as wroth can be ;
For loving me they swear at you,
They swear at you because of me ;
Your father, mother, all your folk,
Because you love me, chafe and choke :
Then set your kith and kin at ease ;
Set them at ease and let me die :
Set the whole clan of them at ease ;
Set them at ease and see me die ! "
Another suspects that her damo has paid his suit to a
rival (p. 200) : —
" On Sunday morning well I knew
Where gaily dressed you turned your feet ;
And there were many saw it too,
And came to tell me through the street :
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 135
And when they spoke, I smiled, ah me !
But in my room wept privately ;
And when they spoke, I sang for pride,
But in my room alone I sighed."
Then come reconciliations (p. 223) : —
" Let us make peace, my love, my bliss !
For cruel strife can last no more.
If you say nay, yet I say yes :
Twixt me and you there is no war.
Princes and mighty lords make peace ;
And so may lovers twain, I wis :
Princes and soldiers sign a truce;
And so may two sweethearts like us :
Princes and potentates agree ;
And so may friends like you and me."
There is much character about the following, which is
spoken by the damo (p. 223) : —
" As yonder mountain height I trod,
I chanced to think of your dear name ;
I knelt with clasped hands on the sod,
And thought of my neglect with shame :
I knelt upon the stone, and swore
Our love should bloom as heretofore."
Sometimes the language of affection takes a more ima-
ginative tone, as in the following (p. 232) : —
" Dearest, what time you mount to heaven above,
I '11 meet you holding in my hand my heart :
You to your breast shall clasp me full of love,
And I will lead you to our Lord apart.
Our Lord, when he our love so true hath known,
Shall make of our two hearts one heart alone ;
One heart shall make of our two hearts, to rest
In heaven amid the splendours of the blest."
This was the woman's. Here is the man's (p. 113) : —
" If I were master of all loveliness,
I 'd make thee still more lovely than thou art ;
136 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
If I were master of all wealthiness,
Much gold and silver should be thine, sweetheart .'
If I were master of the house of hell,
I 'd bar the brazen gates in thy sweet face ;
Or ruled the place where purging spirits dwell,
I 'd free thee from that punishment apace.
Were I in paradise, and thou shouldst come,
I 'd stand aside, my love, to make thee room ;
Were I in paradise, well seated there,
I 'd quit my place to give it thee, my fair ! "
Sometimes, but very rarely, weird images are sought to
clothe passion, as in the following (p. I ^6) : —
" Down into hell I went and thence returned :
Ah me ! alas ! the people that were there !
I found a room where many candles burned,
And saw within my love that languished there.
Whenas she saw me, she was glad of cheer,
And at the last she said ; Sweet soul of mine,
Dost thou recall the time long past, so dear,
When thou didst say to me, Sweet soul of mine?
Now kiss me on the mouth, my dearest, here ;
Kiss me that I for once may cease to pine !
So sweet, ah me, is thy dear mouth, so dear,
That of thy mercy prithee sweeten mine !
Now love, that thou hast kissed me, now, I say,
Look not to leave this place again for aye."
Or again in this (p. 232) : —
" Methinks I hear, I hear a voicfe that cries :
Beyond the hill it floats upon the air.
It is my lover come to bid me rise,
If I am fain forthwith toward heaven to fare.
But I have answered him, and said him No !
I 've given my paradise, my heaven, for you :
Till we together go to paradise,
I '11 stay on earth and love your beauteous eyes."
But it is not with such remote and eery thoughts that
the rustic muse of Italy can deal successfully. Far
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 137
better is the following half-playful description of love-
sadness (p. 71) : —
"Ah me, alas ! who knew not how to sigh !
Of sighs I now full well have learned the art :
Sighing at table when to eat I try,
Sighing within my little room apart,
Sighing when jests and laughter round me fly,
Sighing with her and her who know my heart :
I sigh at first, and then I go on sighing;
'Tis for your eyes that I am ever sighing :
I sigh at first, and sigh the whole year through ;
And 'tis your eyes that keep me sighing so."
The next two rispetti, delicious in their naivete, might
seem to have been extracted from the libretto of an
opera, but that they lack the sympathising chorus, who
should have stood at hand, ready to chime in with " he,"
"she" and "they," to the "I," "you," and "we" of the
lovers (p. 123) : —
" Ah, when will dawn that glorious day
When you will softly mount my stair ?
My kin shall bring you on the way:
I shall be first to greet you there.
Ah, when will dawn that day of bliss
When we before the priest say Yes ? "
" Ah, when will dawn that blissful day
When I shall softly mount your stair,
Your brothers meet me on the way,
And one by one I greet them there ?
When comes the day, my staff, my strength,
To call your mother mine at length ?
When will the day come, love of mine,
I shall be yours and you be mine?"
Hitherto the songs have told only of happy love, or of
love returned. Some of the best, however, are unhappy.
Here is one, for instance, steeped in gloom (p. 142) : —
138 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
" They have this custom in fair Naples town ;
They never mourn a man when he is dead:
The mother weeps when she has reared a son
To be a serf and slave by love misled ;
The mother weeps when she a son hath born
To be the serf and slave of galley scorn ;
The mother weeps when she a son gives suck
To be the serf and slave of city luck."
The following contains a fine wild image, wrought out
with strange passion in detail (p. 300) : —
" I '11 spread a table brave for revelry,
And to the feast will bid sad lovers all.
For meat I '11 give them my heart's misery ;
For drink I '11 give these briny tears that fall.
Sorrows and sighs shall be the varletry,
To serve the lovers at this festival :
The table shall be death, black death profound ;
Weep, stones, and utter sighs, ye walls around !
The table shall be death, yea, sacred death ;
Weep, stones, and sigh as one that sorroweth ! "
Nor is the next a whit less in the vein of mad Jero-
nimo (p. 304) :—
" High up, high up, a house I '11 rear,
High up, high up, on yonder height ;
At every window set a snare,
With treason, to betray the night ;
With treason, to betray the stars,
Since I 'm betrayed by my false feres ;
With treason, to betray the day,
Since Love betrayed me, well away ! "
The vengeance of an Italian reveals itself in the ener-
getic song which I quote next (p. 303) : —
" I have a sword ; 'twould cut a brazen bell,
Tough steel 'twould cut, if there were any need :
I 've had it tempered in the streams of hell
By masters mighty in the mystic rede :
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 139
I 've had it tempered by the light of stars ;
Then let him come whose skin is stout as Mars ;
I 've had it tempered to a trenchant blade ;
Then let him come who stole from me my maid."
More mild, but brimful of the bitterness of a soul to
whom the whole world has become but ashes in the death
of love, is the following lament (p. 143) : —
(t Call me the lovely Golden Locks no more,
But call me Sad Maid of the golden hair.
If there be wretched women, sure I think
I too may rank among the most forlorn.
I fling a palm into the sea ; 'twill sink :
Others throw lead, and it is lightly borne.
What have I done, dear Lord, the world to cross ?
Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to dross.
How have I made, dear Lord, dame Fortune wroth ?
Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to froth.
What have I done, dear Lord, to fret the folk ?
Gold in my hand forthwith is turned to smoke."
Here is pathos (p. 172) : —
" The wood-dove who hath lost her mate,
She lives a dolorous life, I ween ;
She seeks a stream and bathes in it,
And drinks that water foul and green :
With other birds she will not mate,
Nor haunt, I wis, the flowery treen ;
She bathes her wings and strikes her breast ;
Her mate is lost : oh, sore unrest ! "
And here is fanciful despair (p. 168) : —
'•' I '11 build a house of sobs and sighs,
With tears the lime I '11 slack ;
And there I '11 dwell with weeping eyes
Until my love come back :
And there I '11 stay with eyes that burn
Until I see my love return."
140 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
The house of love has been deserted, and the lover
comes to moan beneath its silent eaves (p. 171) : —
" Dark house and window desolate !
Where is the sun which shone so fair?
'Twas here we danced and laughed at fate :
Now the stones weep ; I see them there.
They weep, and feel a grievous chill:
Dark house and widowed window-sill ! "
And what can be more piteous than this prayer ? (p.
309)—
" Love, if you love me, delve a tomb,
And lay me there the earth beneath ;
After a year, come see my bones,
And make them dice to play therewith.
But when you 're tired of that game,
Then throw those dice into the flame ;
But when you 're tired of gaming free,
Then throw those dice into the sea."
The simpler expression of sorrow to the death is, as
usual, more impressive. A girl speaks thus within sight
of the grave (p. 308) : —
" Yes, I shall die : what wilt thou gain ?
The cross before my bier will go ;
And thou wilt hear the bells complain,
The Misereres loud and low.
Midmost the church thou 'It see me lie
With folded hands and frozen eye ;
Then say at last, I do repent ! —
Nought else remains when fires are spent."
Here is a rustic CEnone (p. 307) : —
" Fell death, that fliest fraught with woe !
Thy gloomy snares the world ensphere :
Where no man calls, thou lov'st to go ;
But when we call, thou wilt not hear.
Fell death, false death of treachery,
Thou makest all content but me."
POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY. 141
Another is less reproachful, but scarcely less sad (p.
308) :-
" Strew me with blossoms when I die,
Nor lay me 'neath the earth below ;
Beyond those walls, there let me lie,
Where oftentimes we used to go.
There lay me to the wind and rain ;
Dying for you, I feel no pain :
There lay me to the sun above ;
Dying for you, I die of love."
Yet another of these pitiful love-wailings displays much
poetry of expression (p. 271) : —
" I dug the sea, and delved the barren sand :
I wrote with dust and gave it to the wind :
Of melting snow, false Love, was made thy band,
Which suddenly the day's bright beams unbind.
Now am I ware, and know my own mistake —
How false are all the promises you make ;
Now am I ware, and know the fact, ah me !
That who confides in you, deceived will be."
It would scarcely be well to pause upon these very
doleful ditties. Take, then, the following little sere-
nade, in which the lover on his way to visit his mistress
has unconsciously fallen on the same thought as Bion
(P- 85) :-
" Yestreen I went my love to greet,
By yonder village path below :
Night in a coppice found my feet ;
I called the moon her light to show —
O moon, who needst no flame to fire thy face,
Look forth and lend me light a little space ! "
Enough has been quoted to illustrate the character of
the Tuscan popular poetry. These village rispetti
bear the same relation to the canzoniere of Petrarch as
i 4 2 POPULAR SONGS OF TUSCANY.
the ''savage drupe" to the "suave plum." They are,
as it were, the wild stock of that highly artificial flower
of art. Herein lies, perhaps, their chief importance. As
in our ballad literature we may discern the stuff of the
Elizabethan drama undeveloped, so in the Tuscan
people's songs we can trace the crude form of that
poetic instinct which produced the sonnets to Laura.
It is also very probable that some such rustic minstrelsy
preceded the Idylls of Theocritus and the Bucolics of
Virgil ; for coincidences of thought and imagery, which
can scarcely be referred to any conscious study of the
ancients, are not few. Popular poetry has this great
value for the student of literature : it enables him to
trace those forms of fancy and of feeling which are
native to the people, and which must ultimately
determine the character of national art, however much
that may be modified by culture.
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 civilise 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 harbour of Syracuse, the
Athenian Empire succumbed to its own intemperate
ambition. Here, in the end, Rome laid her mortmain
upon Greek, Phoenician, and Sikeliot alike, turning the
island into a granary and reducing its inhabitants to
serfdom. When the classic age had closed, when Beli-
sarius 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 deadness between the ancient and
the modern world. To Islam succeeded the conquerors
of the house of Hauteville, Norman knights who had
but lately left their Scandinavian shores, and settled
in the northern provinces of France. The Normans
flourished for a season, and were merged in a line of
Suabian princes, old Barbarossa's progeny. German
144 PALERMO.
rulers thus came to sway the corn-lands of Trinacria,
until the bitter hatred of the Popes extinguished the
house of Hohenstauffen upon the battle-field of Gran-
della 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 nineteenth
century, with one brief exception, Sicily belonged to
princes of Aragon, Castile, and Bourbon. These vicissi-
tudes 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
characterise the life of Sicilian cities, testify to the suc-
cessive 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 sub-
stance, by the spirit which emanates from Rome, and
vivifies the Latin race.
The geographical position of Sicily has always influ-
enced its history in a very marked way. The eastern
coast, which is turned toward Greece and Italy, has been
the centre of Aryan civilisation in the island, so that
during Greek and Roman ascendancy, Syracuse was
held the capital. The western end, which projects into
PALERMO. 145
the African sea, was occupied in the time of the
Hellenes by Phoenicians, and afterwards by Mussul-
mans : 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 civili-
sation, 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 archiepis-
copal 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 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 toward 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,
* 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 Normans found a state
machinery ready to their use centralised at Palermo.
K
146 PALERMO.
with fig-trees and locust-trees, with judas-trees that
blush in spring, and with flowers as multitudinously
brilliant as the fretwork 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 produce 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 no^ nowise ex-
travagant : " 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 who
has passed 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, undis-
turbed, and plenteous dews for ever keep your fresh-
ness ! " 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 delight-
ful than those beneath which King Roger discoursed
PALERMO. 147
with Edrisi, and Gian da Procida surprised his sleeping
mistress* The groves of oranges and lemons are an inex-
haustible source of joy : not only because of their " golden
lamps in a green night," but also because of their silvery
constellations, nebulae, 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 gardens to the
bare unirrigated hillsides 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 grey as-
phodels. 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 all races were wisest in the arts of irrigation and
landscape - gardening, that the Norsemen entered as
conquerors, and lay down to pass their lives.-f*
* Boccaccio, Giorn. v. Nov. 6.
t 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 Lilyboeum, where of old the Carthaginians used to
enter Sicily, they began by overrunning 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 N.E.
district. Syracuse was stormed and reduced to ruins after a desperate
defence in 878, while Leo, the heir of the Greek Empire, 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
14S PALERMO.
No chapter of history more resembles a romance than
that which records the sudden rise and brief splendour
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 mitre and dalmatic
as symbols of ecclesiastical jurisdiction.* The brigands
who on their first appearance in Italy had pillaged
stables and farmyards to supply their needs, lived to
mate their daughters with princes and to sway the
politics of Europe with gold. The freebooters, whose
skill consisted in the use of sword and shield, whose
brains were vigorous in strategy or statecraft, 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
Saracens and the remaining Christian towns. The Christians during the
Mussulmafl occupation were divided into four classes — (i) A few inde-
pendent municipalities obedient loosely to the Greek Empire ; (2) tribu-
taries who paid the Arabs what they would otherwise have sent to
Byzantium ; (3) vassals, 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. L)
* King Roger in the mosaics of the Martorana Church at Palermo wears
the dalmatic, and receives his crown from the hands of Christ.
PALERMO. 149
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 con-
quests of the Normans 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 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 inde-
fatigable in detail, these lions among men were made to
conquer in the face of overwhelming obstacles, and to
hold their conquests with a grasp of iron. What they
wrought, whether wisely or not for the ultimate advan-
tage 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 extin-
guished in the south. The Papacy was checked in its
150 PALERMO.
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 revolu-
tions.
Roger, the youngest of the Hauteville family, and the
founder of the kingdom of Sicily, showed by his un-
tamable spirit and sound intellect that his father's
vigour 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 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 descent from Tancred.
Drawing her blood more immediately from the parent
stem, she thus transmitted to the princes of the race
of Hohenstauffen the vigour 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.
PALERMO. 151
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 Renais-
sance would have dated from his reign, and a universal
empire, if not of political 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 before
us. Bohemond, Prince of Tarentum, the son of Robert
Guiscard, and first cousin to Tancred of Montferrat, was
thus described by Anna Comnena, who saw him at her
father's court during the first Crusade : " Neither
amongst our own nation (the Greeks), nor amongst
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 deformity. He
was fair, but on his cheeks there was an agreeable mix-
ture 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 handsome face had in
itself something gentle and softening, but the height of
152 PALERMO.
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 descrip-
tion, remembering the romance 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 be-
tray a more than common interest in her handsome foe,
was hereditary in the house of Hauteville. They trans-
mitted 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 ro-
mance obscures the first appearance of the Scandinavian
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 Ban. Whether his invitation
were so theatrically conveyed or not, it is probable that
the Norsemen made their first acquaintance with Apulia
on a pilgrimage to the Italian Michael's mount ; and it
is certain that Melo, whom we dimly descry as a patriot
PALERMO. 153
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 the decaying Empire of the East
was relaxing its hold upon the Apulian provinces, when
the Papacy was beginning to lift up its head after the
ignominy of Theodora and Marozia, and the Lombard
power was slowly dissolving upon its ill-established
foundations, the Norman adventurers pursued a policy
which, however changeful, was invariably self-advan-
tageous. On whatever 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 re-
turned, 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 armour 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
154 PALERMO.
united Norman colony elected twelve chiefs or counts
of equal authority ; and henceforth they thought only
of consolidating their ascendancy over the effete races
which had hitherto pretended to employ their arms.
The genius of their race and age, however, was unfavour-
able to federations. In a short time the ablest man
among them, the true king, by right of personal vigour
and mental cunning, showed himself. It was at this
point that the house of Hauteville rose to the altitude
of its romantic destiny. William Iron Arm was pro-
claimed Count of Apulia. Two of his brothers succeeded
him in the same dignity. His half-brother, Robert
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 vigour of the Northmen, was distracted
between jealousy of their growing importance and desire
to utilise them for its own advantage. f The temptation
* The Normans were lucky in getting hold of Popes. King Roger
caught Innocent II. at San Germano in 1139, and got from him the con-
firmation of all his titles.
+ Even the great Hildebrand wavered in his policy toward 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 designate him Knight of St Peter in 10S0.
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 respected 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. .
PALERMO. 155
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
favour which the Popes accorded to the Normans gilded
the might and cunning of the adventurers with the
specious splendour of acknowledged sanctity. The time
might come for casting off these powerful allies and add-
ing their conquests to the patrimony of St Peter. Mean-
while 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 honours of this conquest, paralleled for boldness
only by the achievements of Cortes and Pizarro, belong
to Roger. It is true that since the fall of the Kelbite
dynasty Sicily had been shaken by anarchy and despot-
ism, 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 ex-
cursions, 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 north-eastern highlands
of Sicily. Satisfied with occupying the whole western
and southern sections of the island, with planting their
government firmly at Palermo, destroying Syracuse, and
establishing a military fort on the heights of Castro
Giovanni, they had somewhat neglected the Christian
populations of the Val Demone. Thus the key to Sicily
1 56 PALERMO.
upon the Italian side fell into the hands of the invaders.
From Messina Roger advanced by Rametta and Cen-
torbi to Troina, a hill-town raised high above the level of
the 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 expedi-
tions 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 Christians fought at
fearful 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 precipi-
tous mountain, two thousand 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 downwards to the sea and undulat-
ing everywhere with harvest. The much praised
lake and vale of Enna* are now a desolate sulphur dis-
* 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 tableland and never-
failing supply of springs. The whole site is cut off from access, and pre-
PALERMO. 157
trict, void of beauty, with no flowers to tempt Proserpine.
Yet the landscape is eminently noble because of its
breadth — bare naked hills stretching in every direction
to the sea that girdles Sicily — peak rising above peak
and town-capped eyrie over eyrie — while Etna, wreathed
with snow, and purple with the peculiar colour 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 spring gave them courage to push their arms as
cipitous." 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 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 toward 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 with-
drawn 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 rationalise a legend.
158 PALERMO.
far as the river Himera and beyond the Simeto, while
a defeat of fifty thousand Saracens by four hundred
Normans 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 Cartha-
ginians by the thousand on the Crimisus. The battle-
fields are scarcely altered ; the combatants are as
unequally 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
StGeorge fought visibly on horseback before theChristian
band, like that wide-winged chivalrous archangel 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 iso-
lated 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 Ibu-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 himself Great Count
of Sicily and Calabria. In 1098, Urban II., a politician
of the school of Cluny, who well understood the scope
of Hildebrand's plan for subjecting Europe to the court
of Rome, rewarded Roger for his zeal in the service of
* In this siege, as in that of the Athenians, and of the Saracens 878
A.D., decisive engagements took place in the great harbour.
PALERMO. 159
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 munificence.
Hale and vigorous, his life was prolonged through a
green old age until his seventieth year ; when he died
in 1101, 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 valour and intellectual
qualities of his family, he rose to even higher honour
than his predecessors. In 11 30 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 1 154, and bequeathed his kingdoms to
his son William, surnamed the Bad ; who in his turn left
them to a William, called the Good, in 1 166. The second
William died in 1 189, transmitting his possessions by will
to Constance, wife of the Suabian emperor. These two
Williams, the last of the Hauteville monarchs of Sicily,
were not altogether unworthy of their Norman origin.
William the Bad could rouse himself from the sloth of
i6o PALERMO.
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 civilisation. Christians and Northmen,
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 Mahommedan
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 consequence of this
confusion of nationalities in Sicily, we find French and
English ecclesiastics* mingling at court with Moorish
freedmen and Oriental odalisques, Apulian captains
fraternising 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 subsidised his Italian allies, was stamped
with Cuphic letters,f and there is reason to believe that
* The English Gualterio Offamilio, or Walter of the Mill, Archbishop
of Palermo during the reign of William the Good, by his intrigues brought
about the match between Constance and Henry VI. Richard Palmer at
the same time was Bishop of Syracuse. Stephen des Rotrous, a French-
man 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 :
PALERMO. 161
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 Temim 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 inscribed 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 Mahommedan, flourished side by side. The Sara-
cens had their own quarters in the towns, their mosques
and schools, and Cadis for the administration of petty
justice. French and Italian women in Palermo adopted
the Oriental fashions of dress. The administration of
justice, again, was conducted on Eastern principles. In
nothing had the Mussulmans shown greater genius
than in their system of internal government. Count
"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 skullcap 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 sapphires and carbuncles,
among which may be noticed a red cornelian engraved in Arabic with this
sentence, " In Christ, God, I put my hope."
L
1 62 PALERMO.
Roger found a machinery of taxation in full working
order, officers acquainted with the resources of the
country, books and schedules constructed on the princi-
ples of strictest accuracy, a whole bureaucracy, 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 organisation of
pages, chamberlains, ushers, secretaries, viziers, and
masters of the wardrobe, invested each with some au-
thority of state according to his rank, which confined the
administration of an Eastern kingdom to the walls of the
palace.* At Palermo, Europe saw the first instance of
a court not wholly unlike that which Versailles after-
wards became. The intrigues which endangered the
throne and liberty of William the Bad, and which per-
plexed the policy of William the Good, were court-con-
spiracies of a kind common enough at Constantinople.
In this court life men of letters and erudition played a
* The Arabic title of A'aiJ, which originally was given to a subordinate
captain of the guard, took a wide significance at the Norman Court.
Latinised to gaytus, and Grecised under the form of kclitos, it frequently
occurs in chronicles and diplomas to denote a high minister of state.
Matteo of Ajello, who exercised so powerful an influence over the
policy of William the Good, heading the Mussulman and national party
against the great ecclesiastics who were intriguing to draw Sicily into the
entanglements of European diplomacy, was a Kaid. Matteo favoured 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 in Sicily within the grasp of courtiers and
churchmen.
PALERMO. 163
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, his-
torians, travellers, mathematicians, poets, and astrologers
of Oriental breeding. At his command Ptolemy's Optics
were translated into Latin from the Arabic. The
prophecies of the Erythrean Sibyl were rendered access-
ible 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 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 philosopher Edrisi, appeared only six weeks before
the king's death in 1 154. 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
labours 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
164 PALERMO.
accounts were sifted and collated. Edrisi held the pen
while Roger questioned. Measurements and distances
were carefully compared ; and a vast silver disc was
constructed, on which all the seas, islands, contin-
ents, plains, rivers, mountain ranges, cities, roads and
harbours 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
contributed a quota. The Arabians, by their primitive
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 labour 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 services of qualified collaborators.
The architectural works of the Normans in Pal-
ermo reveal the same ascendancy 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. Standing be-
neath the fretted arches of the hall of the Zisa, through
* Tradition asserts that the tocsin of this church gave the signal in
Palermo to the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers. ,
PALERMO. 165
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 olive
and lemon trees overgrown 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 turrets of Palermo, and the
mountains and the distant sea, are ineffably delightful.
When the palaces were new — when the gilding and the
frescoes still shone upon their honeycombed ceilings,
when their mosaics glittered in noonday twilight, and
their amber-coloured 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 splendour 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 be-
* Matteo of Ajello induced William to found an archbishopric at Mon-
reale in order to spite his rival Offamilio.
1 66 PALERMO.
cause 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 woodwork 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. Norman
sculptors added their dog-tooth and chevron to the
mouldings 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 con-
structed by any king even from ancient times, and such
an one as must compel all men to admiration." 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 gorgeous-
ness of a thousand decorative elements subservient to
one controlling thought. "It is evident, " says Fer-
gusson in his history of architecture, " that all the
architectural features in the building were subordinate
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 com-
pels attention. The semi - dome of the eastern apse
PALERMO. 167
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
'Irjaow; Xptarbs 6 iravroKpaTwp. 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 appears twice upon this wall, once as the Omni-
potent 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 dealings with
the human race from the Creation downwards, together
with those angelic beings and saints, who symbolise
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 archi-
tectural adjunct on this gigantic scale is apparent at
a glance in Monreale. Permanency of splendour 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 coloured surfaces illuminated by sunlight
falling on them from narrow windows, just as those of
the north — Rheims, for example, or Le Mans — are built
1 68 PALERMO.
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 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 greyness.
The south found rest from the glare and glow of noon-
day in these sombre splendours. Thus Christianity,
both of the south and of the north, decked her shrines
with colour. Not so the Paganism of Hellas. With
the Greeks, colour, 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 bas-reliefs in simple lustre, was
enough for the Phcebean rites of Hellas. Though we
know that red and blue and screen and f^ildincf 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 devotion.
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 interior of
a casket, is the Cappella Palatina of the royal palace in
PALERMO. 169
Palermo. Here, again, the whole design and ornament
are Arabo - Byzantine. Saracenic pendentives with
Cuphic legends incrust the richly painted ceiling of the
nave. The roofs of the apses and the walls are coated
with mosaics, in which the Bible history, from the dove
that brooded over Chaos to the lives of St Peter and
St Paul, receives a grand though formal presentation.
Beneath the mosaics are ranged slabs of grey 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 restricted 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
candelabrum of fanciful design, combining lions devour-
ing 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 remain
to show of what sort was the mixed culture of Normans,
170 PALERMO.
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 are bound to
think again of the Emperor who inherited from his
German father the ambition of the Hohenstauffens, 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 Saint Louis, the crusader
who conversed with Moslem sages on the threshold of
the Holy Sepulchre, the Sultan of Lucera* who perse-
cuted Paterini while he respected the superstition of
Saracens, the anointed successor of Charlemagne, who
carried his harem with him to the battle-fields of Lom-
bardy, and turned Infidels 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 trans-
mitted 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
* Charles of Anjou gave this nickname to Manfred, who carried on the
Siculo-Norman tradition. Frederick, it may here be mentioned, had
transferred his Saracen subjects of the vale of Mazara to Lucera in the
Capitanate. He employed them as trusty troops in his 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. 171
Petrarch, 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 reli-
gious indifferentism, the bureaucratic system of state
government, which mark the age of the Italian Renais-
sance, 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 civilisation of Sicily.
Yet the fame of the Emperor who transmitted questions
of sceptical philosophy to Arab sages, who conversed
familiarly with men of letters, who loved splendour and
understood the arts of refined living, survived 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 splendour of his supposed
infidelity found for him a goodly following. Yet Dante
dates 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 civilised humanity.
Let us take leave both of Frederick and of Palermo,
that centre of converging influences which was his cradle,
* It is curious to note that in this year 1215, the date of Magna Charta,
Frederick took the Cross at Aix-la-Chapelle.
172 PALERMO.
in the cathedral where he lies gathered to his fathers.
This church, though its rich sun-browned yellow* re-
minds 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 something 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 ecclecticism of the cul-
ture which Frederick himself endeavoured 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 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 represen-
tatives. There sleeps King Roger — " Dux Strenuus et
* Nearly all cities have their own distinctive colour. That of Venice is
a pearly white suggestive of every hue in delicate abeyance, 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 particoloured gradation of tints, which adds gaiety to the
grandeur of Genoa.
PALERMO. 173
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
surpasses 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 Hohen-
stauffen, 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
fragments 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.
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
The traveller in Sicily is constantly reminded of classi-
cal 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 Mencetes : — ■
" 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 byTimoleon
after the battle of the Crimisus. Among the bare grey
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 honour, and built
a hero's temple over the urn that held his ashes. The
first sight of Etna makes us cry with Theocritus, Acrva
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 17$
fiarep i/xd. . . ir6\vhei'Speo<; Atrva. The solemn heights
of Castro Giovanni bring lines of Ovid to our lips : —
" Haud procul Hennaeis lacus est a mcenibus altae
Nomine Pergus aquae. 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 downwards 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 remember
Homer, scanning the shore if haply somewhere yet
may linger the wild fig-tree which saved Ulysses from
the whirlpool of Charybdis. At any rate we cannot but
exclaim with Goethe, " Now all these coasts, gulfs, and
creeks, islands and peninsulas, rocks and sand-banks,
wooded hills, soft meadows, fertile fields, neat gardens,
hanging grapes, cloudy mountains, constant 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 become 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 different kinds. Girgenti still displays the
splendour of temples placed upon a rocky cornice
between sea and olive-groves. Syracuse has nothing to
show but the scene of world-important actions. Yet
176 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
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 empire, remain so clearly written on the hills
and harbours 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 enjoyment at Girgenti. The historian must
be exacting indeed in his requirements if he is not satis-
fied 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 another 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 stonework of
an amphitheatre. There are not even any mounds or
deep deposits of rubble mixed with pottery to show
here once a town had been.f Etiam pcriere ruincs.
The vast city, devastated for the last time by the Saracens
in 878 A.D., has been reduced to dust and swept by
the scirocco into the sea. This is the explanation of
its utter ruin. The stone of Syracuse is friable and
easily disintegrated. The petulant moist wind of the
* The fountain of Arethusa, recently rescued from the washerwomen of
Syracuse, is shut off from the Great Harbour 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 dCbris may still be
found worth excavating.
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 177
south-east 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 gi-
gantic quarries from which the material of the metropolis
was scooped, the catacombs which burrow for miles
underground — alone prove how mighty must have been
the Syracuse of Dionysius. Truly " the iniquity of
oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the
memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetu-
ity." Standing on the beach of the Great Harbour or
the Bay of Thapsus, we may repeat almost word by
word Antipater's solemn lament over Corinth : —
" Where is thy splendour 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, thy 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."
Time, however, though he devours his children, cannot
utterly destroy either the written record of illustrious
deeds or the theatre of their enactment. Therefore,
with Thucydides in hand, we may still follow the events
M
178 SYRACUSE AND GIRGEN71.
of that Syracusan siege which decided the destinies of
Greece, and by the fall of Athens, raised Sparta, Mace-
donia, and finally Rome to the hegemony of the
civilised 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 Thucy-
dides, who talks of the 7rpoa/3daei<;, or practicable
approaches to Epipolae, and the fcprj/xvol, 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 Epipolae 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 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 armour. At this time the
Athenian army was encamped upon the shore of the
Great Harbour, and held trenches and a wall that
stretched from that side at least half way across Epipolae.
It seems therefore strange that, unless their move-
* 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 x w P L0V &iroKprm.vov
T€ Kal imtp TTJs TToXeus ciidvs Keip.ivov . . . e^rjpTTjTai. yap to &\\o x < ^P l0V
Kal p-ixp 1 - T V S ToXews eTrixXtves ri e^Ti Kal iirMpavts irav etou ' Kal ihv6p.aoTai
i<TTo twv "ZvpaKoaLoiv Sid. to iimro'K-/]s tov &Wov thai, 'ETwroXal (vi. 96).
SYRACUSE AND G1RGENTI. 179
merits 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 Epipolse
toward 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 suffi-
cient 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 Epipolas, we should better be able to under-
stand the difficulties of the backward night march of
Demosthenes, by discovering that there was some im-
perative 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 called Mongi-
bellisi 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 Epipolas, instead of
choosing Labdalum, which, wherever we may place it,
i So SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
must have been lower down the hill to the east. For
Euryalus is the key to Epipolae. It was here that
Nikias himself ascended in the first instance, and that
afterwards he permitted Gylippus to enter and raise the
siege, and lastly that Demosthenes, by overpowering the
insufficient 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 Epipolae with
walls, recognised the importance 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 ex-
tant. A little repair would make it even now a sub-
stantial 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 draw-
bridge 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 honeycombed with excavated passages
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 sally-
ing 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 preservation. 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 Epipolae, the occupants of the fort
SYHACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 1S1
could issue to attack a foe advancing toward 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 overpowered in one of their offensive
operations. The view from Euryalus is extensive. To
the left rises Etna, snowy, solitary, broadly vast, above
the plain of Catania, the curving shore, Thapsus, and
the sea. Syracuse itself, a thin white line between the
harbour 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 Harbour and the stone quarries. When the
sluggish policy and faint heart of Nikias had brought
the Athenians to the verge of ruin, when Gylippus had
entered the besieged city, and Plemmyrium had been
wrested from the invaders, and Demosthenes had
failed in his attack upon Epipolae, and the block-
ading trenches had been finally evacuated, no hope
remained for the armament of Athens except only
in retreat by water. They occupied a palisaded en-
campment upon the shore of the harbour, 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
1S2 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
obtained by the Syracusan navy ; the harbour 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 harbour.
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 harbour.
The Syracusans advanced from the naval stations of
Ortygia to meet them. The shore was thronged with
spectators, Syracusans tremulous with the expectation
of a decisive success, Athenians on the tenter-hooks of
hope and dread. In a short time the harbour 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
lookers-on : 6\o<pvp/i6s, floi], vi/coovres, Kparovfievot, aWa
orra iv fieydXat KLvhvvw p,eya arparoirehov iroXveLhr) avay/cd-
tpvro cpdiyyeadat. Then after a struggle, in which despe-
ration gave energy to the Athenians, and ambitious hope
inspired their foes with more than wonted vigour, the
fleet of the Athenians was finally overwhelmed. The
whole scene can be reproduced with wonderful distinct-
ness ; for the low shores of Plemmyrium, the city of
Ortygia, the marsh of Lysimeleia, the hills above the
Anapus, and the distant dome of Etna, 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 realised. 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 Harbour,
or to ask for a truce, according to hallowed Greek usage,
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTL 183
in order that they might perform the funeral rites. To
such an extent was the army demoralised. Meanwhile
within the city the Syracusans kept high festival, hon-
ouring their patron Herakles, upon whose day it hap-
pened that the battle had been fought. Nikias neglected
this opportunity of breaking up his camp and retiring
unmolested 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
favourite excursions from modern Syracuse 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 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 compositions 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, feathering 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. Pap-
yrus-plants edge the pool; thick and tufted, they are
1 84 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
exactly such as one sees carved or painted upon Egyp-
tian 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 excava-
tions 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 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, snakelike, 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 scirocco. A light
yellow calcined by the sun to white is the prevailing
colour of the quarries. But in shady places the lime-
stone takes a curious pink tone of great beauty, like the
interior of some sea-shells. The reflected lights too, and
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 185
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-coloured mesembrianthemums of dazzling
brightness ; and the air is loaded with the drowsy
perfume of lemon-blossoms. Yet this is the scene of
a great agony. This garden was once the Gethsemane
of a nation, where 9000 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
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 para-
pets 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 idyll 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 unfettered 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 upwards found
186 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENT1.
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 Dore's power over space
and distance with the distinctness of Flaxman's design
and the colouring of Alma Tadema, might possibly
realise 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 with their w r ives 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,
sunburned and dry with thirst, but full as yet of vigour.
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 Peiraeus, through the battles
of Epipolae, 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 beside him remembers some cool wrestling-
ground in far-off Athens, or some procession up the
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 187
steps of the Acropolis, where first they met. Any-
how 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 : t&v veicpoiv 6/juov eV
aX\,7]\oc<; ^vvvevrjfievcov.
Every landscape has some moment of its own at
which it should be seen for the first time. Mediaeval
cities, with their narrow streets and solemn spires,
demand the twilight of a summer night. Mediter-
ranean islands show their best in the haze of after-
noon, 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 Salz-
bursr. If these fortunate 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 sunset
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 " splen-
dour-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
1 88 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
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 trans-
lucent atmosphere of mellow radiance, like some liquid
gem — do Ice color d 'oriental berillo. Girgenti, far off
and far up, gazing seaward, and rearing her topaz-
coloured bastions into that gorgeous twilight, shone
like the 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
<pL\dy\ao<; 'A/cpdya<; 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 colour
is that of dusky honey or dun amber ; for they are not
built of marble, but of sandstone, which at some not
* Lest I should seem to have overstated the splendour 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
colours of the sky being reflected upon the vast amber-tinted surface, which
then glows with indescribable glory.
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 189
very distant geological period must have been a sea-
bed. Oyster and scallop shells are imbedded 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, consists almost
wholly of almond and olive trees, the bright green
foliage of the one mingling with the greys of the other,
and both enhancing the warm tints of the stone. This
contrast of colours 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 decora-
tions proper to the Doric style. This fact is a practical
answer to those aesthetic critics who would fain establish
that the Greeks practised no deception in their arts.
The whole effect of the colonnades 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 cathedral. The sham jewellery
frequently found in Greek tombs, and the curious
mixture of marble with sandstone 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 common stone. Yet the
bas-reliefs in which this peculiarity 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
igo SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
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, the
temples of Girgenti, originally at least six in number,
were not so disposed that any of their architectural lines
should be exactly parallel. The Greeks disliked for-
mality ; 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 perfec-
tion — 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 mignonette, sprout in the crevices where
snakes and lizards harbour. The grass around is
gemmed with .blue pimpernel and convolvulus. Gladi-
olus 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
greys and blues. In cooler and damper hollows, around
the boles of old olives and under ruined arches, flourishes
SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI. 191
the tender acanthus, and the roadsides are gaudy with
a yellow daisy flower, which may perchance be the
e\i^puo-o9 of Theocritus. Thus the whole scene is a
wilderness of brightness, less radiant but more touch-
ing than when processions of men and maidens bearing
urns and laurel-branches, crowned with ivy or with
myrtle, paced along those sandstone roads, chanting
pseans and prosodial hymns, toward the glistening
porches and hypasthral cells.
The only temple about the name of which there can
be no doubt, is that of Zeus Olympius. A prostrate giant
who once with nineteen of his fellows helped to support
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. 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 dedicated to Herakles is this,
Who wrought the destruction of works so solid and en-
during ? For what purpose 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
192 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
mighty pillars lying as they sank, like swathes beneath
the mower's scythe. Their basements are still in line.
The drums which composed them have fallen asunder,
but maintain 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 sculp-
tured sandstone? The Romansinvariablyrespected Greek
temples. The early Christians used them for churches : —
and this accounts for the comparative 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 breakwater. 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 entrance of an
.S YRA CUSE AND GIR GENTL 193
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 Lacedaemonian hair in
the theatre of Syracuse, — such picturesque pieces of
history we may fairly well recapture. But what were
the daily occupations of the Simaetha of Theocritus ?
What was the state-dress of the splendid Queen Philis-
tis, 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
splendour 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 "splendour-loving Acragas" ? Of
what sort was the hospitality of Gellias ? Questions like
these rise up to tantalise us with the hopelessness of ever
truly recovering the life of a lost race. After all the
labour of the antiquary and the poet, nothing remains to
be uttered but such moralisings as Sir Thomas Browne
poured forth over the urns discovered at Old Walsingham:
" What time the persons of these ossuaries 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 question above antiquarism ; not
to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits
N
i 9 4 SYRACUSE AND GIRGENTI.
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 jacct." 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 indestructible, how-
ever 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 con-
tinuous. •
ETNA.
The eruptions of Etna have blackened the whole land
for miles in every direction. That is the first observation
forced upon one in the neighbourhood of Catania, or
Giarre, or Bronte. From whatever point of view you
look at Etna, it is always a regular pyramid, with long
and gradually sloping sides, broken here and there by
the excrescence of minor craters and dotted over with
villages. The summit crowned with snow, divided into
peak and cone, girdled with clouds, and capped with
smoke, that shifts shape as the wind veers, dominates a
blue-black monstrous mass of out-poured lava. From
the top of Monte Rosso, a subordinate volcano which
broke into eruption in 1669, you can trace the fountain
from which " the unapproachable river of purest fire "
that nearly destroyed Catania, issued. You see it still,
bubbling up like a frozen geyser from the flank of the
mountain, whence the sooty torrent spreads, or rather
sprawls, with jagged edges to the sea. The plain of Cat-
ania lies at your feet, threaded by the Simeto, bounded
by the promontory of Syracuse and the mountains of
Castro Giovanni. This huge amorphous blot upon the
landscape may be compared to an ink-stain on a varie-
gated tablecloth, or to the coal-districts marked upon a
geological atlas, or to the heathen in a missionary map
— the green and red and grey colours standing for
Christians and Mahommedans and Jews of different
196 ETNA.
shades and qualities. The lava, where it has been culti-
vated, is reduced to fertile sand, in which vines and fig-
trees are planted — their tender green foliage contrasting
strangely with the sinister soil that makes them flourish.
All the roads are black as jet, like paths leading to
coal-pits, and the country-folk on mule-back plodding
along them look like Arabs on an infernal Sahara. The
very lizards which haunt the rocks are swart and smutty.
Yet the flora of the district is luxuriant. The gardens
round Catania, nestling into cracks and ridges of the
stiffened flood, are marvellously brilliant with spurge and
fennel and valerian. It is impossible to form a true con-
ception of flower-brightness till one has seen these golden
and crimson tints upon their ground of ebony, or to
realise the blueness of the Mediterranean except in con-
trast with the lava where it breaks into the sea. Copses
of frail oak and ash, undergrown with ferns of every sort;
cactus-hedges, orange-trees grafted with lemons and laden
with both fruits ; olives of scarce two centuries' growth,
and fig-trees knobbed with their sweet produce, overrun
the sombre soil, and spread their boughs against the deep
blue sea and the translucent amethyst of the Calabrian
mountains. Underfoot, a convolvulus with large white
blossoms, binding dingy stone to stone, might be com-
pared to a rope of Desdemona's pearls upon the neck of
Othello.
The villages are perhaps the most curious feature of
this scenery. Their houses, rarely more than one story
high, are walled, paved, and often roofed with the
inflexible materialwhich once was ruinous fire, and is now
the servant of the men it threatened to destroy. The
churches are such as might be raised in Hades to implac-
able Proserpine, such as one might dream of in a vision
of the world turned into hell, such as Baudelaire in his
ETNA. 197
fiction of a metallic landscape might have imagined under
the influence of hasheesh. Their flights of steps are
built of sharply cut black lava blocks no feet can wear.
Their door-jambs and columns and pediments and carved
work are wrought and sculptured of the same gloomy-
masonry. How forbidding are the acanthus-scrolls, how
grim the skulls and cross-bones on these portals ! The
bell-towers, again, are ribbed and beamed with black lava.
A certain amount of the structure is whitewashed, which
serves to relieve the funereal solemnity of the rest. In
an Indian district each of these churches would be a
temple, raised in vain propitiation to the demon of the fire
above and below. Some pictures made by their spires
in combination with the sad village-hovels, the snowy
dome of Etna, and the ever-smiling sea, are quite unique
in their variety of suggestion and wild beauty.
The people have a sorrow-smitten and stern aspect.
Some of the men in the prime of life are grand and
haughty, with the cast-bronze countenance of Roman
emperors. But the old men bear rigid faces of carved
basalt, gazing fixedly before them as though at some
time or other in their past lives they had met Medusa :
and truly Etna in eruption is a Gorgon, which their
ancestors have oftentimes seen shuddering, and fled from
terror-frozen. The white-haired old women, plying their
spindle or distaff, or meditating in grim solitude, sit with
the sinister set features of Fates by their doorways. The
young people are very rarely seen to smile : they open
hard, black, beaded eyes upon a world in which there is
nothing for them but endurance or the fierceness of pas-
sions that delight in blood. Strangely different are these
dwellers on the sides of Etna from the voluble, lithe
sailors of Sciacca or Mazara, with their sunburnt skins
and many-coloured garments.
198 ETNA.
The Val del Bove — a vast chasm in the flank of Etna,
where the very heart of the volcano has been riven and
its entrails bared — is the most impressive spot of all this
region. The road to it leads from Zafferana (so called
because of its crocus-flowers) along what looks like a
series of black moraines, where the lava torrents pouring
from the craters of Etna, have spread out, and reared
themselves in stiffened ridges against opposing moun-
tain buttresses. After toiling for about three hours over
the dismal waste, a point between the native rock of
Etna and the dead sea of lava is reached, which com-
mands a prospect of the cone with its curling smoke,
surmounting a caldron of some four thousand feet in
depth and seemingly very wide. The whole of this
space is filled with billows of blackness, wave on wave,
crest over crest, and dyke by dyke, precisely similar
to a gigantic glacier, swarthy and immovable. The
resemblance of the lava flood to a glacier is extra-
ordinarily striking. One can fancy oneself standing
on the Belvedere at Macugnaga, or the Tacul point
upon the Mer de Glace, in some nightmare, and finding
to one's horror that the radiant snows and river-breeding
ice-fields have been turned by a malignant deity to
sullen, stationary cinders. It is a most hideous place,
like a pit in Dante's Hell, disused for some unexplained
reason, and left untenanted by fiends. The scenery of
the moon, without atmosphere and without life, must be
of this sort ; and such, rolling round in space, may be
some planet that has survived its own combustion.
When the clouds, which almost always hang about
the Val del Bove, are tumbling at their awful play
around its precipices, veiling the sweet suggestion of
distant sea and happier hills that should be visible
the horror of this view is aggravated. Breaking here
ETNA. 199
and there, the billows of mist disclose forlorn tracts of
jet-black desolation, wicked, unutterable, hateful in their
hideousness, with patches of smutty snow above, and
downward - rolling volumes of murky smoke. Shak-
spere, when he imagined the damned spirits confined
to "thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice," divined the
nature of a glacier ; but what line could he have com-
posed, adequate to shadow forth the tortures of a soul
condemned to palpitate for ever between the ridges of
this thirsty and intolerable sea of dead fire ? If the
world-spirit chose to assume for itself the form and
being of a dragon, of like substance to this, impenetrable,
invulnerable, unapproachable, would be its hide. It
requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture
these lava-lakes glowing, as they must have been, when
first outpoured, the bellowing of the crater, the heaving
and surging of the solid earth, the air obstructed with
cinders and whizzing globes of molten rock. Yet in
these throes of devilish activity, the Val del Bove would
be less insufferable than in its present state of suspen-
sion, asleep, but threatening, ready to regurgitate its
flame, but for a moment inert.
An hour's drive from Nicolosi or Zafferana, seaward,
brings one into the richest land of " olive and aloe and
maize and vine " to be found upon the face of Europe.
Here, too, are laughing little towns, white, prosperous,
and gleeful, the very opposite of those sad stations] on
the mountain flank. Every house in Aci Reale has its
courtyard garden filled with orange-trees, and nespole,
and fig-trees, and oleanders. From the grinning corbels
that support the balconies hang tufts of gem-bright
ferns and glowing clove-pinks. Pergolas of vines, bronzed
in autumn, and golden green like chrysoprase beneath
an April sun, fling their tendrils over white walls and
200 ETNA. '
shady loggie. Gourds hang ripening in the steady
blaze. Far and wide stretches a landscape rich with
tilth and husbandry, boon Nature paying back to men
tenfold for all their easy toil. The terrible great moun-
tain sleeps in the distance, innocent of fire. I know
not whether this land be more delightful in spring or
autumn. The little flamelike flakes of brightness upon
vines and fig-trees in April have their own peculiar
charm. But in November the whole vast flank of
Etna glows with the deep blue tone of steel ; the
russet woods are like a film of rust ; the vine-boughs
thrust living carbuncles against the sun. To this
season, when the peculiar earth tints of Etna, its strong
purples and tawny browns, are harmonised with the
decaying wealth of forest and of orchard, I think
the palm of beauty must be given in this land.
The sea is an unchangeable element of charm in all
this landscape. Aci Castello should be visited, and
those strange rocks, called the Ciclopidi, forced by
volcanic pressure from beneath the waves. They are
made of black basalt like the Giant's Causeway; and on
their top can be traced the caps of calcareous stone they
carried with them in the fret and fury of their upheaval
from the sea-bed. Samphire, wild fennel, cactus, and
acanthus clothe them now from crest to basement where
the cliff is not too sheer. By the way, there are few plants
more picturesque than the acanthus in full flower. Its
pale lilac spikes of blossom stand waist-high above a
wilderness of feathering, curving, delicately indented,
burnished leaves — deep, glossy, cool, and green.
This is the place for a child's story of the one-eyed
giant Polyphemus, who fed his flocks among the oak-
woods of Etna, and who, strolling by the sea one summer
evening, saw and loved the fair girl Galatea. She was
ETNA. 201
afraid of him, and could not bear his shaggy-browed
round rolling eye. But he forgot his sheep and goats,
and sat upon the cliffs and piped to her. Meanwhile she
loved the beautiful boy Acis, who ran down from the
copse to play with her upon the sea-beach. They hid
together from Polyphemus in a fern-curtained cavern of
the shore. But Polyphemus spied them out and heard
them laughing together at their games. Then he grew
wroth, and stamped with his huge feet upon the earth,
and made it shake and quiver. He roared and bellowed
in his rage, and tore up rocks and flung them at the
cavern where the children were in hiding, and his eye shot
fire beneath the grisly penthouse of his wrinkled brows.
They, in their sore distress, prayed to heaven ; and their
prayers were heard : Galatea became a mermaid, so
that she might swim and sport like foam upon the crests
of the blue sea ; and Acis was changed into a stream
that leapt from the hills to play with her amid bright
waters. But Polyphemus, in punishment for his rage, and
spite, and jealousy, was forced to live in the mid-furnaces
of Etna. There he growled and groaned and shot forth
flame in impotent fury ; for though he remembered
the gladness of those playfellows, and sought to harm
them by tossing red-hot rocks upon the shore, yet the
light sea ever laughed, and the radiant river found its
way down from the copsewood to the waves. The throes
of Etna in convulsion are the pangs of his great giant's
heart, pent up and sick with love for the bright sea and
gladsome sun ; for, as an old poet sings : —
" There 's love when holy heaven doth wound the earth ;
And love still prompts the land to yearn for bridals :
The rain that falls in rivers from the sky,
Impregnates earth : and she brings forth for men
The flocks and herds and life of teeming Ceres."
E TNA.
To which let us add :
" But sometimes love is barren, when broad hills,
Rent with the pangs of passion, yearn in vain,
Pouring fire tears adown their furrowed cheeks,
And heaving in the impotence of anguish."
There are few places in Europe where the poetic truth
of Greek mythology is more apparent than here upon
the coast between Etna and the sea. Of late, philoso-
phers have been eager to tell us that the beautiful
legends of the Greeks, which contain in the coloured haze
of fancy all the thoughts afterwards expressed by that
divine race in poetry and sculpture, are but decayed
phrases, dead sentences, and words whereof the mean-
ing was forgotten. In this theory there is a certain
truth ; for mythology stands midway between the first
lispings of a nation in its language, and its full-developed
utterances in art. Yet we have only to visit the scenes
which gave birth to some Hellenic myth, and we
perceive at once that, whatever philology may affirm,
the legend was a living poem, a drama of life and
passion transferred from human experience to the
inanimate world by those early myth-makers, who were
the first and the most fertile of all artists. Persephone
was the patroness of Sicily, because amid the billowy
corn-fields of her mother Demeter and the meadow
flowers she loved in girlhood, are ever found sulphurous
ravines and chasms breathing vapour from the pit of
Hades. What were the Cyclops — that race of one-eyed
giants — but the many minor cones of Etna ? Ob-
served from the sea by mariners, or vaguely spoken
of by the natives, who had" reason to dread their
rage, these hillocks became lawless and devouring
giants, each with one round burning eye. Afterwards
the tales of Titans who had warred with Zeus were
ETNA. 203
realised in this spot. Typhoeus or Enceladus made the
mountain heave and snort ; while Hephaestus not
unnaturally forged thunderbolts in the central caverns of
a volcano that never ceased to smoke. To the student of
art and literature, mythology is chiefly interesting in its
latest stages, when, the linguistic origin of special legends
being utterly forgotten, the poets of the race played freely
with its rich material. Who cares to be told that
Achilles was the sun, when the child of Thetis and the
lover of Patroclus has been sung for us by Homer ?
Are the human agonies of the doomed house of Thebes
made less appalling by tracing back the tale of CEdipus
to some prosaic source in old astronomy ? The incest
of Jocasta is the subject of supreme tragic art. It does
not improve the matter, or whitewash the imagination of
the Greeks, as some have fondly fancied, to unravel the
fabric wrought by Homer and by Sophocles, into its raw
material in Aryan dialects. Indeed this new method
of criticism bids fair to destroy for young minds the
human lessons of pathos and heroism in Greek poetry,
and to create an obscure conviction that the greatest
race of artists the world has ever produced were but
dotards, helplessly dreaming over distorted forms of
speech and obsolete phraseology.
Let us bid farewell to Etna from Taormina. All
along the coast between Aci and Giardini the mountain
towers distinct against a sunset sky — divested of its
robe of cloud, translucent and blue as some dark
sea-built crystal. The Val del Bove is shown to be
a circular crater in which the lava has boiled and
bubbled over to the fertile land beneath. As we reach
Giardini, the young moon is shining, and the night is alive
with stars so large and bright that they seem leaning
down to whisper in the ears of our soul. The sea is calm,
204 ETNA.
touched here and there on the fringes of the bays and
headlands with silvery light ; and impendent crags loom
black and sombre against the feeble azure of the moon-
lit sky. Quale per incertam litnam et sub luce maligna:
such is our journey, with Etna, a grey ghost, behind our
path, and the reflections of stars upon the sea, and glow-
worms in the hedges, and the mystical still splendour of
the night, that, like Death, liberates the soul, raising it
above all common things, simplifying the outlines of the
earth as well as our own thoughts to one twilight hush
of aerial tranquillity. It is a strange compliment to such
a landscape to say that it recalls a scene from an opera.
Yet so it is. What the arts of the scene-painter and the
musician strive to suggest, is here realised in fact ; the
mood of the soul created by music and by passion is
natural here, spontaneous, prepared by the divine artists
of earth, air, and sea.
Was there ever such another theatre as this of Taor-
mina ? Turned to the south, hollowed from the crest
of a promontory iooo feet above the sea, it faces
Etna with its crown of snow : below, the coast sweeps
onward to Catania and the distant headland of
Syracuse. From the back the shore of Sicily curves
with delicately indented bays toward Messina : then
come the straits, and the blunt mass of the Calabrian
mountains terminating Italy at Spartivento. Every
spot on which the eye can rest is rife with reminis-
cences. It was there, we say, looking northward
to the straits, that Ulysses tossed between Scylla and
Charybdis ; there, turning toward the flank of Etna, that
he met with Polyphemus and defied the giant from his
galley. From yonder snow-capped eyrie, Afova? aKoiria,
the rocks were hurled on Acis. And all along that
shore, after Persephone was lost, went Demeter, torch in
ETNA. 205
hand, wailing for the daughter she could no more find
among Sicilian villages. Then, leaving myths for
history, we remember how the ships of Nikias set sail
from Reggio, and coasted the forelands at our feet, past
Naxos, on their way to Catania and Syracuse. Gylippus
afterwards in his swift galley took the same course : and
Dion, when he came to destroy his nephew's empire.
Here too Timoleon landed, resolute in his firm will to
purge the isle of tyrants.
What scenes, more spirit - shaking than any tragic
shows — pageants of fire and smoke, and mountains in
commotion — are witnessed from these grassy benches,
when the earth rocks, and the sea is troubled, and the
side of Etna flows with flame, and night grows horrible
with bellowings that forebode changes in empires ! —
" Quoties Cyclopum effervere in agros
Vidimus undantem ruptis fornacibus -(Etnam,
Flammarumque globos liquefactaque volvere saxa."
The stage of these tremendous pomps is very calm
and peaceful now. Lying among acanthus-leaves and
asphodels, bound together by wreaths of white and
pink convolvulus, we only feel that this is the loveliest
landscape on which our eyes have ever rested or can
rest. The whole scene is a symphony of blues —
gemlike lapis lazuli in the sea, aerial azure in the
distant headlands, light-irradiated sapphire in the sky,
and impalpable vapour-mantled purple upon Etna.
The grey tones of the neighbouring cliffs, and the
glowing brickwork of the ruined theatre, through the
arches of which shine sea and hillside, enhance by
contrast these modulations of the one prevailing hue.
Etna is the dominant feature of the landscape — Acrva
fxdrep i[id — TroXvhevZpeos AX-rva — than which no other
206 ETNA.
mountain is more sublimely solitary, more worthy of
Pindar's praise, " The pillar of heaven, the nurse of sharp
eternal snow." It is Etna that gives its unique char-
acter of elevated beauty to this coast scenery, raising it
to a grander and more tragic level than the landscape
of the Cornice and the Bay of Naples.
ATHENS.
ATHENS, by virtue of scenery and situation, was predes-
tined to be the mother-land of the free reason of
mankind, long before the Athenians had won by their
great deeds the right to name their city the ornament
and the eye of Hellas. Nothing is more obvious to one
who has seen many lands and tried to distinguish their
essential characters, than the fact that no one country
exactly resembles another, but that, however similar in
climate and locality, each presents a peculiar and well-
marked property belonging to itself alone. The specific
quality of Athenian landscape is light — not richness or
sublimity or romantic loveliness or grandeur of mountain
outline, but luminous beauty, serene exposure to the
airs of heaven. The harmony and balance of the
scenery, so varied in its details and yet so comprehen-
sible, are sympathetic to the temperance of Greek moral-
ity, the moderation of Greek art. The radiance with
which it is illuminated has all the clearness and distinction
of the Attic intellect. From whatever point the plain of
Athens with its semicircle of greater and lesser hills may
be surveyed, it always presents a picture of dignified and
lustrous beauty. The Acropolis is the centre of this
landscape, splendid as a work of art with its crown of
temples ; and the sea, surmounted by the long low hills
of the Morea, is the boundary to which the eye is irresist-
ibly led. Mountains and islands and plain alike are
2oS A TflENS.
made of limestone, hardening here and there into marble,
broken into delicate and varied forms, and sprinkled
with a vegetation of low shrubs and brushwood so sparse
and slight that the naked rock in every direction meets
the light. This rock is grey and colourless : viewed in
the twilight of a misty day, it shows the dull, tame
uniformity of bone. Without the sun it is asleep and
sorrowful. But by reason of this very deadness, the
limestone of Athenian landscape is always ready to take
the colours of the air and sun. In noonday it smiles
with silvery lustre, fold upon fold of the indented hills
and islands melting from the brightness of the sea into
the untempered brilliance of the sky. At dawn and sun-
set the same rocks array themselves with a celestial robe
of rainbow-woven hues : islands, sea, and mountains, far
and near, burn with saffron, violet, and rose, with the
tints of beryl and topaz, sapphire and almandine and
amethyst, each in due order and at proper distances.
The fabled dolphin in its death could not have showed
a more brilliant succession of splendours waning into
splendours through the whole chord of prismatic colours.
This sensitiveness of the Attic limestone to every modi-
fication of the sky's light gives a peculiar spirituality to
the landscape. The hills remain in form and outline
unchanged ; but the beauty breathed upon them lives
or dies with the emotions of the air from whence it
emanates : the spirit of light abides with them and quits
them by alternations that seem to be the pulses of an
ethereally communicated life. No country, therefore,
could be better fitted for the home of a race gifted with
exquisite sensibilities, in whom humanity should first
attain the freedom of self-consciousness in art and
thought. 'Ael 8ia XafurpoTaTov ftai'vovTes a/3pa><; aiOepos —
ever delicately moving through most translucent air —
A THENS. 209
said Euripides of the Athenians : and truly the bright
air of Attica was made to be breathed by men in whom
the light of culture should begin to shine. 'Io&te<$>civo<; is
an epithet of Aristophanes for his city ; and if not
crowned with other violets, Athens wears for her garland
the air-empurpled hills — Hymettus, Lycabettus, Pen-
telicus, and Parnes.* Consequently, while still the
Greeks of Plomer's age were Achaians, while Argos was
the titular seat of Hellenic empire, and the mythic deeds
of the heroes were being enacted in Thebes or Mycenae,
Athens did but bide her time, waiting to manifest her-
self as the true god-child of Pallas, who sprang perfect
from the brain of Zeus, Pallas, who is the light of cloud-
less heaven emerging after storms. And Pallas, when
she planted her chosen people in Attica, knew well what
she was doing. To the far-seeing eyes of the goddess,
although the first-fruits of song and science and phil-
osophy might be reaped upon the shores of the ALgezn
and the islands, yet the days were clearly descried
when Athens should stretch forth her hand to hold the
lamp of all her founder loved for Europe. As the priest
of Egypt told Solon : " She chose the spot of earth in
which you were born, because she saw that the happy
temperament of the seasons in that land would produce
the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess who was a
lover both of war and wisdom, selected and first of all
settled that spot which was the most likely to produce
men likest herself." This sentence from the "Timaeus" of
* This interpretation of the epithet loaTi<$>a.vo<s is not, I think, merely
fanciful. It seems to occur naturally to those who visit Athens with the
language of Greek poets in their memory. I was glad to find, on reading
a paper by the Dean of Westminster on the topography of Greece, that
the same thought had struck him. Ovid, too, gives the adjective purpureas
to Hymettus.
O
2io ATHENS.
Plato* reveals the consciousness possessed by the Greeks
of that intimate connection which subsists between a
country and the temper of its race. To us the name
Athenai — the fact that Athens by its title even in the
prehistoric age was marked out as the appanage of her
who was the patroness of culture — seems a fortunate
accident, an undesigned coincidence of the most striking
sort. To the Greeks, steeped in mythologic faith,
accustomed to regard their lineage as autochthonous
and their polity as the fabric of a god, nothing seemed
more natural than that Pallas should have selected for
her own exactly that portion of Hellas where the arts
and sciences might flourish best. Let the Boeotians
grow fat and stagnant upon their rich marsh-lands : let
the Spartans form themselves into a race of soldiers in
their mountain fortress : let Corinth reign, the queen of
commerce, between her double seas : let the Arcadians
in their oak woods worship pastoral Pan : let the plains
of Elis be the meeting-place of Hellenes at their sacred
games : let Delphi boast the seat of sooth oracular from
Phoebus. Meanwhile the sunny but barren hills of
Attica, open to the magic of the sky, and beautiful by
reason of their nakedness, must be the home of a people
powerful by might of intelligence rather than strength
of limb, wealthy not so much by natural resources as by
enterprise. Here, and here only, could stand the city
sung by Milton : —
" Built nobly, pure the air, and light the soil,
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence, native to famous wits
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess,
City or suburban, studious walks and shades."
We who believe in no authentic Pallas, child of Zeus,
* Jowett's translation, vol. ii. p. 520.
A THENS. 21 1
may yet pause awhile, when we contemplate Athens, to
ponder whether those old mythologic systems, which
ascribed to godhead the foundation of states and the
patronage of peoples, had not some glimpse of truth
beyond a mere blind guess. Is not, in fact, this Athen-
ian land the promised and predestined home of a peculiar
people, in the same sense as that in which Palestine was
the heritage by faith of a tribe set apart by Jehovah for
his own ?
Unlike Rome, Athens leaves upon the memory one
simple and ineffaceable impression. There is here no
conflict between Paganism and Christianity, no statues of
Hellas baptized by popes into the company of saints, no
blending of the classical and mediaeval and Renaissance
influences in a bewilderment of vast antiquity. Rome,
true to her historical vocation, embraces in her ruins all
ages, all creeds, all nations. Her life has never stood
still, but has submitted to many transformations, of
which the traces are still visible. Athens, like the
Greeks of history, is isolated in a sort of self-completion :
she is a thing of the past, which still exists, because the
spirit never dies, because beauty is a joy for ever.
What is truly remarkable about the city is just this,
that while the modern town is an insignificant mush-
room of the present century, the monuments of Greek
art in the best period — the masterpieces of Ictinus and
Mnesicles, and the theatre on which the plays of the
tragedians were produced — survive in comparative per-
fection, and are so far unencumbered with subsequent
edifices that the actual Athens of Pericles absorbs our
attention. There is nothing of any consequence inter-
mediate between us and the fourth century B.C. Seen
from a distance, the Acropolis presents nearly the same
appearance as it offered to Spartan guardsmen when
212 ATHENS.
they paced the ramparts of Deceleia. Nature around is
all unaltered. Except that more villages, enclosed with
olive-groves and vineyards, were sprinkled over those bare
hills in classic days, no essential change in the landscape
has taken place, no transformation, for example, of equal
magnitude with that which converted the Campagna of
Rome from a plain of cities to a poisonous solitude.
All through the centuries which divide us from the age
of Hadrian — centuries unfilled, as far as Athens is con-
cerned, with memorable deeds or national activity — the
Acropolis has stood uncovered to the sun. The tones
of the marble of Pentelicus have daily grown more
golden ; decay has here and there invaded frieze and
capital ; war too has done its work, shattering the
Parthenon in 1687 by the explosion of a powder-maga-
zine, and the Propylaea in 1656 by a similar accident,
and seaming the colonnades that still remain with
cannon-balls in 1S27. Yet in spite of time and violence
the Acropolis survives, a miracle of beauty : like an
everlasting flower, through all that lapse of years it has
spread its coronal of marbles to the air, unheeded. And
now, more than ever, its temples seem to be incorporate
with the rock they crown. The slabs of column and
basement have grown together by long pressure or
molecular adhesion into a coherent whole. Nor have
weeds or creeping ivy invaded the glittering fragments
that strew the sacred hill The sun's kiss alone has
caused a change from white to amber-hued or russet.
Meanwhile, the exquisite adaptation of Greek building
to Greek landscape has been enhanced rather than
impaired by that " unimaginable touch of time," which
has broken the regularity of outline, softened the chisel-
work of the sculptor, and confounded the painter's
fretwork in one tint of glowing gold. The Parthenon,
ATHENS. 213
the Erechtheum, and the Propylaea have become one
with the hill on which they cluster, as needful to the
scenery around them as the everlasting mountains, as
sympathetic as the rest of nature to the successions of
morning and evening, which waken them to passionate
life by the magic touch of colour.
Thus there is no intrusive element in Athens to dis-
tract the mind from memories of its most glorious past.
Walk into the theatre of Dionysus. The sculptures that
support the stage — sileni bending beneath the weight of
cornices, and lines of graceful youths and maidens — are
still in their ancient station.* The pavement of the
orchestra, once trodden by Athenian choruses, presents
its tessellated marbles to our feet ; and we may choose
the seat of priest or archon or herald or thesmothetes,
when we wish to summon before our mind's eye the
pomp of the "Agamemnon" or the dances of the " Birds
and Clouds." Each seat still bears some carven name —
IEPEJ2Z TflN MOTXflN or lEPEftX AXKAB.UIOT
— and that of the priest of Dionysus is beautifully
wrought with Bacchic bas-reliefs. One of them, in-
scribed IEPEflZ ANTINOOT, proves indeed that the
extant chairs were placed here in the age of Hadrian,
who completed the vast temple of Zeus Olympius, and
filled its precincts with statues of his favourite slave,
and named a new Athens after his own name. Yet we
need not doubt that their position round the orchestra
is traditional, and that even in their form' they do not
differ from those which the priests and officers of Athens
used from the time of ^Eschylus downward. Probably
* It is true, however, that these sculptures belong to a comparatively
late period, and that the theatre underwent some alterations in Roman
days, so that the stage is now probably a few yards further from the seats
than in the time of Sophocles.
214 ATHENS.
a slave brought cushion and footstool to complete the
comfort of these stately armchairs. Nothing else is
wanted to render them fit now for their august occu-
pants ; and we may imagine the long-stoled greybearded
men throned in state, each with his wand and with
appropriate fillets on his head. As we rest here in the
light of the full moon, which simplifies all outlines and
heals with tender touch the wounds of ages, it is easy
enough to dream ourselves into the belief that the ghosts
of dead actors may once more glide across the stage.
Fiery-hearted Medea, statuesque Antigone, Prometheus
silent beneath the hammer-strokes of Force and Strength,
Orestes hounded by his mother's Furies, Cassandra aghast
before the palace of Mycenae, pure-souled Hippolytus,
ruthful Alcestis, the divine youth of Helen, and Clytem-
nestra in her queenliness, emerge like faint grey films
against the bluish background of Hymettus. The
night air seems vocal with echoes of old Greek, more
felt than heard, like voices wafted to our sense in sleep,
the sound whereof we do not seize, though the burden
lingers in our memory.
In like manner, when moonlight, falling aslant upon
the Propylsea, restores the marble masonry to its original
whiteness, and the shattered heaps of ruined colonnades
are veiled in shadow, and every form seems larger,
grander, and more perfect than by day, it is well to sit
upon the lowest steps, and looking upwards, to remember
what processions passed along this way bearing the
sacred peplus to Athene. The Panathenaic pomp,
which Pheidias and his pupils carved upon the friezes
of the Parthenon, took place once in five years, on
one of the last days of July.* All the citizens joined in
* My purpose being merely picturesque, I have ignored the grave anti-
quarian difficulties which beset the interpretation of this frieze.
ATHENS. 215
the honour paid to their patroness. Old men bearing
olive-branches, young men clothed in bronze, chapleted
youths singing the praise of Pallas in prosodial hymns,
maidens carrying holy vessels, aliens bending beneath
the weight of urns, servants of the temple leading oxen
crowned with fillets, troops of horsemen reining in im-
petuous steeds : all these pass before us in the frieze of
Pheidias. But to our imagination must be left what he
has refrained from sculpturing, the chariot formed like a
ship, in which the most illustrious nobles of Athens sat,
splendidly arrayed, beneath the crocus-coloured curtain
or peplus outspread upon a mast. Some concealed
machinery caused this car to move ; but whether it
passed through the Propylsea, and entered the Acropolis,
admits of doubt. It is, however, certain that the pro-
cession which ascended those steep slabs, and before
whom the vast gates of the Propylasa swang open with
the clangour of resounding bronze, included not only
the citizens of Athens and their attendant aliens, but also
troops of cavalry and chariots ; for the mark of chariot-
wheels can still be traced upon the rock. The ascent is
so abrupt that this multitude moved but slowly. Splen-
did indeed, beyond any pomp of modern ceremonial,
must have been the spectacle of the well-ordered pro-
cession, advancing through those giant colonnades to the
sound of flutes and solemn chants — the shrill clear
voices of boys in antiphonal chorus rising above the
confused murmurs of such a crowd, the chafing of
horses' hoofs upon the stone, and the lowing of bewil-
dered oxen. To realise by fancy the many-coloured
radiance of the temples, and the rich dresses of the
votaries illuminated by that sharp light of a Greek sun,
which defines outline and shadow and gives value to the
faintest hue, would be impossible. All we can know for
216 ATHENS.
positive about the chromatic decoration of the Greeks
is, that whiteness artificially subdued to the tone of ivory
prevailed throughout the stonework of the buildings,
while blue and red and green in distinct, yet interwoven
patterns, added richness to the fretwork and the sculp-
ture of pediment and frieze. The sacramental robes of
the worshippers accorded doubtless with this harmony,
wherein colour was subordinate to light, and light was
toned to softness.
Musing thus upon the staircase of the Propylaea, we
may say with truth that all our modern art is but child's
play to that of the Greeks. Very soul-subduing is the
gloom of a cathedral like the Milanese Duomo, when
the incense rises in blue clouds athwart the bands
of sunlight falling from the dome, and the crying of
choirs upborne upon the wings of organ music fills the
whole vast space with a mystery of melody. Yet
such ceremonial pomps as this are but as dreams and
the shapes of visions, when compared with the clearly
defined splendours of a Greek procession through marble
peristyles in open air beneath the sun and sky. That
spectacle combined the harmonies of perfect human forms
in movement with the divine shapes of statues, the radi-
ance of carefully selected vestments with hues inwrought
upon pure marble. The rhythms and the melodies of the
Doric mood were sympathetic to the proportions of the
Doric colonnades. The grove of pillars through which the
pageant passed grew from the living rock into shapes
of beauty, fulfilling by the inbreathed spirit of man
Nature's blind yearning after absolute completion
The sun himself — not thwarted by artificial gloom, or
tricked with alien colours of stained glass — was
made to minister in all his strength to a pomp,
the pride of which was the display of form in mani-
ATHENS. 217
fold magnificence. The ritual of the Greeks was the
ritual of a race at one with Nature, glorying in its affili-
ation to the mighty mother of all life, and striving to
add by human art the coping-stone and final touch to her
achievement. The ritual of the Catholic Church is the
ritual of a race shut out from Nature, holding no com-
munion with the powers of earth and air, but turning the
spirit inwards and aiming at the concentration of the
whole soul upon an unseen God. The temple of the
Greeks was the house of a present deity ; its cell his
chamber ; its statue his reality. The Christian cathedral
is the fane where God who is a spirit is worshipped ; no
statue fills the choir from wall to wall and lifts its fore-
head to the roof ; but the vacant aisles, with their con-
vergent arches soaring upwards to the dome, are made to
suggest the brooding of infinite and omnipresent God-
head. It was the object of the Greek artist to preserve
a just proportion between the god's statue and his house,
in order that the worshipper might approach him as a
subject draws near to his monarch's throne. The Chris-
tian architect seeks to affect the emotions of the votary
with a sense of vastness filled with unseen power. Our
cathedrals are symbols of the universe where God is
everywhere pavilioned and invisible. The Greek temple
was a practical, utilitarian dwelling-house, made beautiful
enough to suit divinity. The modern church is an idea
expressed in stone, an aspiration of the spirit, shooting up
from arch and pinnacle and spire into illimitable fields of
air. It follows from these differences between the religi-
ous aims of Pagan and Christian architecture, that the
former was far more favourable to the plastic arts. No
beautiful or simple incident of human life was an inappro-
priate subject for the sculptor, in adorning the houses of
gods who were themselves but human on a higher level ;
218 A TIIENS.
and the ritual whereby the gods were honoured, was
merely an exhibition, in its strength and joyfulness, of
mortal beauty. Therefore the Panathenaic procession
furnished Pheidias with a series of sculptural motives,
which he had only to express according to the principles
of his art. The frieze, three feet and four inches
in height, raised forty feet above the pavement of the
peristyle, ran for five hundred and twenty-four con-
tinuous feet round the outside wall of the cella
of the Parthenon. The whole of this long line was
wrought with carving of exquisite delicacy and supreme
vigour, in such low relief as its peculiar position, far above
the heads of the spectators, and only illuminated by
light reflected from below, required. Every figure,
every attitude, and every fold of drapery in its count-
less groups are a study ; yet the whole was a transcript
from actual contemporary Athenian life. Truly in
matters of art we are but infants to the Greeks.
The topographical certainty which invests the ruins
of the Acropolis with such peculiar interest, belongs
in a less degree to the whole of Athens. Although
the most recent researches have thrown fresh doubt
upon the exact site of the Pnyx, and though no traces
of the agora remain, yet we may be sure that the
Bema from which Pericles sustained the courage of
the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, was
placed upon the northern slope looking towards the
Propylsea, while the wide irregular space between this
hill, the Acropolis, the Areopagus, and the Theseum,
must have formed the meeting-ground for amusement
and discussion of the citizens at leisure. About the
Areopagus, with its tribunal hollowed in the native
rock, and the deep cleft beneath, where the shrine of
the Eumenides was built, there is no question. The
ATHENS. 219
extreme insignificance of this little mound may at first
indeed excite incredulity" and wonder; but a few hours
in Athens accustom the traveller to a smallness of scale
which at first sight seemed ridiculous. Colonus, for
example, the Colonus which every student of Sophocles
has pictured to himself in the solitude of unshorn
meadows, where groves of cypresses and olives bent
unpruned above wild tangles of narcissus-flowers and
crocuses, and where the nightingale sang undisturbed
by city noise or labour of the husbandman, turns out
to be a scarcely appreciable mound, gently swelling
from the cultivated land of the Cephissus. The
Cephissus even in a rainy season may be crossed
dry shod by an active jumper ; and the Ilissus, where
it flows beneath the walls of the Olympieion, is now
dedicated to washerwomen instead of water-nymphs.
Nature herself remains, on the whole, unaltered. Most
notable are still the white poplars dedicated of old to
Herakles, and the spreading planes which whisper
to the limes in spring. In the midst of so arid and
bare a landscape, these umbrageous trees are singularly
grateful to the eye and to the sense oppressed with
heat and splendour. Nightingales have not ceased
to crowd the gardens in such numbers as to justify
the tradition of their Attic origin, nor have the bees
of Hymettus forgotten their labours : the honey of
Athens can still boast a quality superior to that of
Hybla or any other famous haunt of hives.
Tradition points out one spot which commands a
beautiful distant view of Athens and the hills, as the
garden of the Academy. The place is not unworthy
of Plato and his companions. Very old olives grow in
abundance, to remind us of those sacred trees beneath
which the boys of Aristophanes ran races; and reeds with
220 A THENS.
which they might crown their foreheads, are thickly scat-
tered through the grass. Abeles interlace their mur-
murous branches overhead, and the planes are as leafy as
that which invited Socrates and Phaedrus on the morning
when they talked of love. In such a place we compre-
hend how philosophy went hand in hand at Athens
with gymnastics, and why the poplar and the plane
were dedicated to athletic gods. For the wrestling-
grounds were built in groves like these, and their cool
peristyles, the meeting-places of young men and boys,
supplied the sages not only with an eager audience,
but also with the leisure and the shade that learning
loves. It was very characteristic of Greek life that
speculative philosophy should not have chosen " to
walk the studious cloister pale," but should rather
have sought out places where "the busy hum of men"
was loudest, and where youthful voices echoed. The
Athenian transacted no business, and pursued but few
pleasures, under a private roof. He conversed and
bargained in the agora, debated on the open rocks of
the Pnyx, and enjoyed, discussion in the courts of the
gymnasium. It is also far from difficult to understand
beneath this over-vaulted and grateful gloom of bee-
laden branches, what part love played in the haunts of
runners and of wrestlers, why near the statue of Hermes
stood that of Erds, and wherefore Socrates surnamed
his philosophy the Science of Love. ^iXooocfrovfAev upev
fiaXa/cia? is the boast of Pericles in his description of
the Athenian spirit. $t,\o<ro<f>ia fiera irathepaaria^ is
Plato's formula for the virtues of the most distinguished
soul. These two mottoes, apparently so contradictory,
found their point of meeting and their harmony in
the gymnasium. The mere contemplation of these
luxuriant groves, set in the luminous Attic landscape,
ATHENS. 221
and within sight of Athens, explains a hundred passages
of poets and philosophers. Turn to the opening scenes
of the " Lysis " and the " Charmides." The action of
the latter dialogue is laid in the palaestra of Taureas.
Socrates has just returned from the camp at Potidaea,
and after answering the questions of his friends, has
begun to satisfy his own curiosity : * —
When there had been enough of this, I, in my turn, began to make
inquiries about matters at home — about the present state of philo-
sophy, and about the youth. I asked whether any of them were
remarkable for beauty or sense— or both. Critias glancing at the
door, invited my attention to some youths who were coming in,
and talking noisily to one another, followed by a crowd. " Of the
beauties, Socrates," he said, " I fancy that you will soon be able
to form a judgment. For those who are just entering are the
advanced guard of the great beauty of the day — and he is likely
not to be far off himself."
" Who is he ?" I said ; "and who is his father? "
" Charmides,'' he replied, " is his name ; he is my cousin, and
the son of my uncle Glaucon: I rather think that you know him,
although he was not grown up at the time of your departure."
" Certainly I know him," I said ; "for he was remarkable even
then when he was still a child, and now I should imagine that he
must be almost a young man."
" You will see," he said, " in a moment what progress he has
made, and what he is like." He had scarcely saidjbe word, when
Charmides entered.
Now you know, my friend, that I cannot measure anything,
and of the beautiful, I am simply such a measure as a white line is
of chalk ; for almost all young persons are alike beautiful in my eyes.
But at that moment, when I saw him coming in, I must admit that I
was quite astonished at his beauty and stature ; all the world seemed
to be enamoured of him ; amazement and confusion reigned when
he entered; and a troop of lovers followed him. That grown-up
men like ourselves should have been affected in this way was not
surprising, but I observed that there was the same feeling among
the boys ; all of them, down to the very least child, turned and
looked at him as if he had been a statue.
* I quote from Professor Jowett's unique translation.
222 A THENS.
Chaerephon called me and said : " What do you think of him,
Socrates ? Has he not a beautiful face ?"
"That he has indeed," I said.
" But you would think nothing of his face," he replied, " if you
could see his naked form : he is absolutely perfect."
This Charmides is a true Greek of the perfect type.
Not only is he the most beautiful of Athenian youths ;
he is also temperate, modest, and subject to the laws of
moral health. His very beauty is a harmony of well-
developed faculties in which the mind and body are
at one. How a young Greek managed to preserve this
balance in the midst of the admiring crowds described
by Socrates is a marvel. Modern conventions unfit our
minds for realising the conditions under which he had to
live. Yet it is indisputable that Plato has strained no
point in the animated picture he presents of the palsestra.
Aristophanes and Xenophon bear him out in all the
details of the scene. We have to imagine a totally dif-
ferent system of social morality from ours, with virtues
and vices, temptations and triumphs, unknown to our
young men. The next scene from the " Lysis" intro-
duces us to another wrestling-ground in the neighbour-
hood of Athens. Here Socrates meets with Hippothales,
who is a devoted lover but a bad poet. Hippothales
asks the philosopher's advice as to the best method of
pleasing the boy Lysis : —
"Will you tell me by what words or actions I may become
endeared to my love ?"
" That is not easy to determine," I said ; "but if you will bring
your love to me, and will let me talk with him, I may perhaps be
able to show you how to converse with him, instead of singing
and reciting in the fashion of which you are accused."
" There will be no difficulty in bringing him," he replied ; " if you
will only go into the house with Ctesippus, and sit down and talk,
he will come of himself ; for he is fond of listening, Socrates. And
as this is the festival of the Hernruea, there is no separation of young
A THENS. 223
men and boys, but they are all mixed up together. He will be
sure to come. But if he does not come, Ctesippus, with whom
he is familiar, and whose relation Menexenus is, his great friend,
shall call him."
" That will be the way," I said. Thereupon I and Ctesippus went
towards the Palaestra, and the rest followed.
Upon entering we found that the boys had just been sacrificing ;
and this part of the festival was nearly come to an end. They were
all in white array, and games at dice were going on among them.
Most of them were in the outer court amusing themselves ; but
some were in a corner of the Apodyterium playing at odd-and-even
with a number of dice, which they took out of little wicker baskets.
There was also a circle of lookers-on, one of whom was Lysis. He
was standing among the other boys and youths, having a crown
upon his head, like a fair vision, and not less worthy of praise for
his goodness than for his beauty. We left them, and went over to
the opposite side of the room, where we found a quiet place, and sat
down ; and then we began to talk. This attracted Lysis, who was
constantly turning round to look at us — he was evidently wanting to
come to us. For a time he hesitated and had not the courage to
come alone ; but first of all, his friend Menexenus came in out of the
court in the interval of his play, and when he saw Ctesippus and
myself, came and sat by us ; and then Lysis, seeing him,
followed and sat down with him ; and the other boys joined. I
should observe that Hippothales, when he saw the crowd, got
behind them, where he thought that he would be out of sight of
Lysis, lest he should anger him ; and there he stood and listened. ■
Enough has been quoted to show that beneath the
porches of a Greek palaestra, among the youths of Athens,
who wrote no exercises in dead languages, and thought
chiefly of attaining to perfect manhood by the har-
monious exercise of mind and body in temperate leisure,
divine philosophy must indeed have been charming both
to teachers and to learners : —
" Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets
Where no crude surfeit reigns."
There are no remains above ground of the buildings
224 A THENS.
which made the Attic gymnasia splendid. Nor are
there in Athens itself many statues of the noble human
beings who paced their porches and reclined beneath
their shade. The galleries of Italy and the verses of
the poets can alone help us to repeople the Academy
with its mixed multitude of athletes and of sages-
The language of Simsetha, in Theocritus, brings the
younger men before us : their cheeks are yellower than
helichrysus with the down of youth, and their breasts
shine brighter far than the moon, as though they had but
lately left the " fair toils of the wrestling-ground." Upon
some of the monumental tablets exposed in the burying-
ground of Cerameicus and in the Theseum may be seen
portraits of Athenian citizens. A young man holding
a bird, with a boy beside him who carries a lamp or
strigil ; a youth, naked, and scraping himself after the
games ; a boy taking leave with clasped hands of his
mother, while a dog leaps up to fawn upon his knee ; a
wine-party ; a soul in Charon's boat ; a husband parting
from his wife : such are the simple subjects of these
monuments ; and under each is written XPH2TE
XAIPE — Friend, farewell! The tombs of the women
are equally plain in character : a nurse brings a baby to
its mother, or a slave helps her mistress at the toilette-
table. There is nothing to suggest either the gloom
of the grave or the hope of heaven in any of these
sculptures. Their symbolism, if it at all exist, is of the
least mysterious kind. Our attention is rather fixed
upon the commonest affairs of life than on the secrets
of death.
As we wander through the ruins of Athens, among
temples which are all but perfect, and gardens which
still keep their ancient greenery, we must perforce
reflect how all true knowledge of Greek life has passed
A THENS. 225
away. To picture to ourselves its details, so as to become
quite familiar with the way in which an Athenian thought
and felt and occupied his time, is impossible. Such books
as the " Charicles " of Becker or Wieland's "Agathon"
only increase our sense of hopelessness, by showing that
neither a scholar's learning nor a poet's fancy can pierce
the mists of antiquity. We know that it was a strange
and fascinating life, passed for the most part beneath
the public eye, at leisure, without the society of free
women, without what we call a home, in constant
exercise of body and mind, in the duties of the law-
courts and the assembly, in the toils of the camp and the
perils of the sea, in the amusements of the wrestling-
ground and the theatre, in sportful study and strenuous
play. We also know that the citizens of Athens, bred
up under the peculiar conditions of this artificial life,
became impassioned lovers of their city ; * that the
greatest generals, statesmen, poets, orators, artists,
historians, and philosophers that the world can boast,
were produced in the short space of a century and a
half by a city numbering about 20,000 burghers. It is
scarcely an exaggeration to say with the author of
" Hereditary Genius," that the population of Athens,
taken as a whole, was as superior to us as we are to the
Australian savages. Long and earnest, therefore, should
be our hesitation before we condemn as pernicious or
unprofitable the instincts and the customs of such a
race.
The permanence of strongly marked features in the
landscape of Greece, and the small scale of the whole
country, add a vivid charm to the scenery of its great
events. In the harbour of Peiraeus we can scarcely fail
* Tyv TTJs 7r6Xews Svvafuv Kad' qjxipav Zpyy Oeu/x^vovs teal ipaarai
yiypofitvovs avTrjs. — Thuc. ii. 43.
P
226 A THENS.
to picture to ourselves the pomp which went forth to
Sicily that solemn morning, when the whole host prayed
together and made libations at the signal of the herald's
trumpet. The nation of athletes and artists and *philo-
sophers were embarked on what seemed to some a holi-
day excursion, and for others bid fair to realise unbounded
dreams of ambition or avarice. Only a few were heavy-
hearted ; but the heaviest of all was the general who had
vainly dissuaded his countrymen from the endeavour,
and fruitlessly refused the command thrust upon him.
That was "the morning of a mighty day, a day of crisis "
for the destinies of Athens. Of all that multitude,
how few would come again ; of the empire which they
made so manifest in its pride of men and arms, how little
but a shadow would be left, when war and fever and the
quarries of Syracuse had done their fore-appointed work !
Yet no commotion of the elements, no eclipse or
authentic oracle from heaven, was interposed between
the arrogance of Athens and sure-coming Nemesis. The
sun shone, and the waves laughed, smitten by the oars
of galleys racing to ^Egina. Meanwhile Zeus from the
watchtower of the world held up the scales of fate, and
the balance of Athens was wavering to its fall.
A few strokes of the oar carry us away from Pei-
raeus to a scene fraught with far more thrilling memo-
ries. That little point of rock emergent from the water
between Salamis and the mainland, bare, insignifi-
cant, and void of honour among islands to the natural
eye, is Psyttaleia. A strange tightening at the heart
assails us when we approach the centre-point of the
most memorable battle-field of history. It was again
" the morning of a mighty day, a day of crisis " for the
destinies, not of Athens alone, but of humanity, when
the Persian fleet, after rowing all night up and down
ATHENS. 227
the channel between Salamis and the shore, beheld the
face of Phoebus flash from behind Pentelicus and flood
the Acropolis of Athens with fire. The Peiraeus
recalls a crisis in the world's drama whereof the
great actors were unconscious : fair winds and sunny
waves bore light hearts to Sicily. But Psyttaleia brings
before us the heroism of a handful of men, who knew
that the supreme hour of ruin or of victory for their
nation and themselves had come. Terrible therefore
was the energy with which they prayed and joined their
paean to the trumpet-blast of dawn that blazed upon
them from the Attic hills. And this time Zeus, when he
heard their cry, saw the scale of Hellas mount to the
stars. Let /Eschylus tell the tale ; for he was there. A
Persian is giving an account of the defeat at Salamis to
Atossa : —
" The whole disaster, O my queen, began
With some fell fiend or devil, — I know not whence :
For thus it was ; from the Athenian host
A man of Hellas came to thy son, Xerxes,
Saying that when black night shall fall in gloom,
The Hellenes would no longer stay but leap
Each on the benches of his bark, and save
Hither and thither by stolen flight their lives.
He, when he heard thereof, discerning not
The Hellene's craft, no, nor the spite of heaven,
To all his captains gives this edict forth ;
When as the sun doth cease to light the world,
And darkness holds the precincts of the sky,
They should dispose the fleet in three close ranks,
To guard the outlets and the water-ways ;
Others should compass Ajax' isle around :
Seeing that if the Hellenes 'scaped grim death
By finding for their ships some privy exit,
It was ordained that all should lose their heads.
So spake he, led by a mad mind astray,
Nor knew what should be by the will of heaven.
223 A THENS.
They, like well-ordered vassals, with assent
Straightway prepared their food, and every sailor
Fitted his oar-blade to the steady rowlock.
But when the sunlight waned and night apace
Descended, every man who swayed an oar
Went to the boats with him who wielded armour.
Then through the ship's length rank cheered rank in concert,
Sailing as each was set in order due :
And all night long the tyrants of the ships
Kept the whole navy cruising to and fro.
Night passed: yet never did the host of Hellenes
At any point attempt their stolen sally ;
Until at length, when day with her white steeds
Forth shining, held the whole world under sway,
First from the Hellenes with a loud clear cry
Song-like, a shout made music, and therewith
The echo of the rocky isle rang back
Shrill triumph : but the vast barbarian host
Shorn of their hope trembled; for not for flight
The Hellenes hymned their solemn paean then —
Nay, rather as for battle with stout heart.
Then too the trumpet speaking fired our foes,
And with a sudden rush of oars in time
They smote the deep sea at that clarion cry;
And in a moment you might see them all.
The right wing in due order well arrayed
First took the lead; then came the serried squadron
Swelling against us, and from many voices
One cry arose : Ho ! sons of Hellenes, up !
Now free your fatherland, now free your sons,
Your wives, the fanes of your ancestral gods,
Your fathers' tombs ! Now fight you for your all.
Yea, and from our side brake an answering hum
Of Persian voices. Then, no more delay,
Ship upon ship her beak of biting brass
Struck stoutly. ; Twas a bark, I ween, of Hellas
First charged, dashing from a Tyrrhenian galleon
Her prow-gear ; then ran hull on hull pell-mell.
At first the torrent of the Persian navy
Bore up : but when the multitude of ships
Were straitly jammed, and none could help another,
Huddling with brazen-mouthed beaks they clashed
ATHENS. 229
And brake their serried banks of oars together ;
Nor were the Hellenes slow or slack to muster
And pound them in a circle. Then ships' hulks
Floated keel upwards, and the sea was covered
With shipwreck multitudinous and with slaughter.
The shores and jutting reefs were full of corpses.
In indiscriminate rout, with straining oar,
The whole barbarian navy turned and fled.
Our foes, like men 'mid tunnies, draughts of fishes,
With splintered oars and spokes of shattered spars
Kept striking, grinding, smashing us : shrill shrieks
With groanings mingled held the hollow deep,
Till night's dark eye set limit to the slaughter.
But for our mass of miseries, could I speak
Straight on for ten days, I should never sum it :
For know this well, never in one day died
Of men so many multitudes before."
After a pause he resumes his narrative by describing
Psyttaleia : —
"There lies an island before Salamis,
Small, with scant harbour, which dance-loving Pan
Is wont to tread, haunting the salt sea-beaches.
There Xerxes placed his chiefs, that when the foes
Chased from their ships should seek the sheltering isle,
They might with ease destroy the host of Hellas,
Saving their own friends from the briny straits.
Ill had he learned what was to hap ; for when
God gave the glory to the Greeks at sea,
That same day, having fenced their flesh with brass,
They leaped from out their ships; and in a circle
Enclosed the whole girth of the isle, that so
None knew where he should turn ; but many fell
Crushed with sharp stones in conflict, and swift arrows
Flew from the quivering bowstrings winged with murder.
At last in one fierce onset with one shout
They strike, hack, hew the wretches' limbs asunder,
Till every man alive had fallen beneath them.
Then Xerxes groaned, seeing the gulf unclose
Of grief below him; for his throne was raised
High in the sight of all by the sea-shore.
25o A THENS.
Rending his robes, and shrieking a shrill shriek,
He hurriedly gave orders to his host;
Then headlong rushed in rout and heedless ruin."
Atossa makes appropriate exclamations of despair and
horror. Then the messenger proceeds : —
"The captains of the ships that were not shattered,
Set speedy sail in flight as the winds blew.
The remnant of the host died miserably,
Some in Boeotia round the glimmering springs
Tired out with thirst ; some of us scant of breath
Escaped with bare life to the Phocian bounds,
And land of Doris, and the Melian Gulf,
Where with kind draughts Spercheius soaks the soil.
Thence in our flight Achaia's ancient plain
And Thessaly's stronghold received us worn
For want of food. Most died in that fell place
Of thirst and famine ; for both deaths were there.
Yet to Magnesia came we and the coast
Of Macedonia, to the ford of Axius,
And Bolbdi's canebrakes and the Pangsean range,
Edonian borders. Then in that grim night
God sent unseasonable frost, and froze
The stream of holy Strymon. He who erst
Recked nought of gods, now prayed with supplication,
Bowing before the powers of earth and sky.
But when the host from lengthy orisons
Surceased, it crossed the ice-incrusted ford.
And he among us who set forth before
The sun-god's rays were scattered, now was saved.
For blazing with sharp beams the sun's bright circle
Pierced the mid-stream, dissolving it with fire.
There were they huddled. Happy then was he
Who soonest cut the breath of life asunder.
Such as survived and had the luck of living,
Crossed Thrace with pain and peril manifold,
'Scaping mischance, a miserable remnant,
Into the dear land of their homes. Wherefore
Persia may wail, wanting in vain her darlings.
This is the truth. Much I omit to tell
Of woes by God wrought on the Persian race."
ATHENS. 231
Upon this triumphal note it were well, perhaps, to pause.
Yet since the sojourner in Athens must needs depart by-
sea, let us advance a little way further beyond Salamis-
The low shore of the isthmus soon appears; and there
is the hill of Corinth and the site of the city, as desolate
now as when Antipater of Sidon made the sea-waves
utter a threnos over her ruins. " The deathless Nereids,
daughters of Oceanus," still lament by the shore, and the
Isthmian pines are as green as when their boughs were
plucked to bind a victor's forehead. Feathering the grey
rock now as then, they bear witness to the wisdom and
the moderation of the Greeks, who gave to the conquerors
in sacred games no wreath of gold, or title of nobility, or
land, or jewels, but the honour of an illustrious name, the
guerdon of a mighty deed, and branches taken from the
wild pine of Corinth, or the olive of Olympia, or the bay
that flourished like a weed at Delphi. What was indigenous
and characteristic of his native soil, not rare and costly
things from foreign lands, was precious to the Greek. This
piety, after the lapse of centuries and the passing away
of mighty cities, still bears fruit. Oblivion cannot wholly
efface the memory of those great games while the fir-trees
rustle to the sea- wind as of old. Down the gulf we pass,
between mountain range and mountain. On one hand,
two-peaked Parnassus rears his cope of snow aloft over
Delphi ; on the other, Erymanthus and Hermes' home,
Cyllene, bar the pastoral glades of Arcady. Greece is the
land of mountains, not of rivers or of plains. The titles
of the hills of Hellas smite our ears with echoes of ancient
music — Olympus and Cithaeron, Taygetus, Othrys,
Helicon, and Ida. The headlands of the mainland are
mountains, and the islands are mountain summits of a
submerged continent Austerely beautiful, not wild with
an Italian luxuriance, nor mournful with Sicilian mono-
232 A THENS.
tony of outline, nor yet again overwhelming with the
sublimity of Alps, they seem the proper home of a race
which sought its ideal of beauty in distinction of shape
and not in multiplicity of detail, in light and not in
richness of colouring, in form and not in size.
At length the open sea is reached. Past Zante and
Cephalonia we glide " under a roof of blue Ionian
weather ; " or, if the sky has been troubled with storm,
we watch the moulding of long glittering cloud-lines,
processions and pomps of silvery vapour, fretwork and
frieze of alabaster piled above the islands, pearled pro-
montories and domes of rounded snow. Soon Santa
Maura comes in sight : —
" Leucatas nimbosa cacumina montis,
Et formidatus nautis aperitur Apollo."
Here Sappho leapt into the waves to cure love-longing,
•according to the ancient story ; and he who sees the
white cliffs chafed with breakers and burning with fierce
light, as it was once my luck to see them, may well with
Childe Harold "feel or deem he feels no common glow."
All through the afternoon it had been raining, and the
sea was running high beneath a petulant west wind. But
just before evening, while yet there remained a hand's
breadth between the sea and the sinking sun, the clouds
were rent and blown in masses about the sky. Rain
still fell fretfully in scuds and fleeces; but where for
hours there had been nothing but a monotone of greyness,
suddenly fire broke and radiance and storm-clouds in
commotion. Then, as if built up by music, a rainbow
rose and grew above Leucadia, planting one foot on
Actium and the other on Ithaca, and spanning with a
horseshoe arch that touched the zenith, the long line of
roseate cliffs. The clouds upon which this bow was
A THENS. 233
woven, were steel-blue beneath and crimson above; and
the bow itself was bathed in fire — its violets and greens
and yellows visibly ignited by the liquid flame on which
it rested. The sea beneath, stormily dancing, flashed
back from all its crests the same red glow, shining like a
ridged lava-torrent in its first combustion. Then as the
sun sank, the crags burned deeper with scarlet blushes
as of blood, and with passionate bloom as of pomegranate
or oleander flowers. Could Turner rise from the grave
to paint a picture that should bear the name of " Sappho's
Leap," he would paint it thus : and the world would com-
plain that he had dreamed the poetry of his picture.
But who could dream anything so wild and yet so
definite ? Only the passion of orchestras, the fire-flight
of the last movement of the C minor symphony, can in
the realms of art give utterance to the spirit of scenes
like this.
RIMINI.
SIGISMONDO PANDOLFO MALATESTA AND
LEO BATTISTA ALBERT!.
Rimini is a city of about 18,000 souls, famous for its
Stabilmento de' Bagni and its antiquities, seated upon
the coast of the Adriatic, a little to the south-east 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 honour of Augus-
tus, is a notable monument of Roman architecture.
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 favourably 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 insignificance beside the one
great wonder of Rimini, the cathedral built for
RIMINI. 235
Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta by Leo Battista Alberti
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 establish-
ment under Otho III. as lieutenants for the Empire in the
Marches of Ancona, down to their final subjugation by the
Papacy in the age of the Renaissance, is made up of all
the vicissitudes which could befall a mediaeval Italian
despotism. Acquiring an unlawful 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, wranglingamong
236 RIMINI.
themselves, transmitting the succession of their dynasty
through bastards and by deeds of force, quarrelling with
their neighbours the Counts of Urbino, alternately de-
fying and submitting to the Papal legates in Romagna,
serving 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, perhaps, 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 success-
ful 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 and dismemberment, was pro-
RIMINI. 237
bably one reason why the Malatesti stood their ground
so firmly as they did.
As far as Rimini is concerned, the house of Malatesta
culminated in Sigismondo Pandolfo, son of GianGaleazzo
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, commanding a fair
view of Apennine tossed hill-tops and broad Lombard
plain, and who remodelled the Cathedral of Saint
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 out-
rages 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 fantastic 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
* His first wife was a daughter of the great general of the Venetians
against Francesco Sforza. Whether Sigismondo murdered her, as San-
sovino 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 question 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.
238 RIMINI.
mistress. But like most of the Malatesti, he left no
legitimate offspring. Throughout his life he was distin-
guished 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 acknowledged 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 impeached at Rome for heresy,
parricide, incest, adultery, rape, and sacrilege, burned
in effigy by Pope Pius II., 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 removed 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 splendour.
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 six-
teenth century to dictate to him in matters of taste,
and sat with exemplary humility at the feet of Latinists
RIMINI. 239
like Porcellio, Basinio, and Trebanio. Valturio, the
erfgineer, and Alberti, the architect, were his familiar
friends ; and the best hours of his life were spent in
conversation with these men. Now that he found him-
self upon the sacred soil of Greece, he was determined
not to return to Italy empty-handed. Should he bring
manuscripts 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 philosophor sua temp principis reliquum Sig.
Pan. Mai. Pan. F. belli Pelop adversus Turcor regem Imp
ob ingentem eruditorum quo flagrat amorem hue affer-
endum introque mittendum curavit MCCCCLXVI." 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 the great love with which he burns for all
learned men, brought and placed here the remains of
Gemisthus of Byzantium, the prince of the philosophers
of his day."
Sigismondo's portrait, engraved on medals, and sculp-
tured upon every frieze and point of vantage in the
Cathedral of Rimini, well denotes the man. His face
240 RIMINI.
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, curving like a vulture's over
a petulant mouth, with lips deliberately pressed together,
as though it were necessary to control 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 contracted with quivering spasms, and the
lips writhed in sympathy with knit forehead and wrinkled
eyelids.
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 Isottae 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. Nothing
but the fact that the church is duly dedicated to 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 —
* The account of this church given by .(Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pii
Secundi, Comment., ii. 92) deserves quotation : " ^Edificavit tamen nobile
templum Arimini in honorem divi Francisci, verum ita gentilibus operibus
implevit, ut non tarn Christianorum quam infidelium dremones adorantium
templum esse videatur."
RIMINI. t 241
" Sigismundus Pandulphus Malatesta Pan. F. Fecit Anno
Gratiae MCCCL" — 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 sculp-
tured 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 pene-
trate 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
received 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 apti-
tudes, 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 unfamiliar, and who,
gifted with a kind of divination, penetrated the secrets
of the world by sympathy. To Pico della Mirandola,
Leonardo da Vinci, and Michel Agnolo Buonarotti
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 circum-
stances. He came half a century 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,
Q
242 KIM INI.
mathematics, classical and modern literature, physical
science as then comprehended, and all the bodily exer-
cises 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
excelled. The language in which this alternation of
passion 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 arrows. So
sure was his aim and so skilful his cast, 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 together and bounded
over the shoulders of men standing erect upon the
ground. On horseback he maintained perfect equi-
librium, 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,
Alberti was before his age. To care for the beauties of
RIMINI. 243
landscape unadorned by art, and to sympathise with
sublime or rugged scenery, was not in the spirit of the
Renaissance. 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 Pelvoux, to meditate, with an
exaltation of the soul he scarcely understood, upon
the scene spread at his feet and above his head.
iEneas Sylvius Piccolomini 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 celebrated hymn : and of Dante's
acute observation, every canto of the "Divine Comedy "
is witness. Leo Alberti was touched in spirit by 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 century has
244 RIMINI.
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 inter-
preted 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 stirrings of the secular
breasts that gave him suck, and on which he even now
must hang, have potent influences over his emotions.
Of Alberti's extraordinary sensitiveness 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 (naturae delitias)." Beasts and birds and all
living creatures moved him to admiration for the grace
with which they had been gifted, each in his own kind.
RIMINI. 245
It is even said that he composed 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 specu-
lation, 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 apophthegms by friends, and some
are recorded by his anonymous biographer.* Their
finer 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 produc-
tion, has evanesced. Here, however, is one which seems
still to bear the impress of Alberti's genius : " Gold is
the soul of labour, and labour the slave of pleasure."
Of women he used to say that their inconstancy 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 sen-
tences 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 dis-
tinction which his talents gained for him, and a dark
story is told of a secret attempt made by them to as-
sassinate him through his servants. Alberti met these
ignoble jealousies with a stately calm and a sweet
* Almost all the facts of Alberti's life are to be found in the Latin
biography included in Muratori.
246 RIMINI.
dignity of demeanour, never condescending to accuse
his relatives, never seeking to retaliate, but acting
always for the honour of his illustrious house. In the
same spirit of generosity he refused 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 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 service 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 con-
stantly 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
RIMINI. 247
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 succeeded, 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 care to the execution of finished pictures, than to
drawings 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 estima-
tion 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 in-
stincts of Alberti, so that he became in the end neither
a great artist like Raphael, nor a great discoverer 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 Battista
Alberti devoted his great faculties and all his wealth of
genius to the study of the law — then, as now, the quick-
sand of the noblest natures. The industry with which
248 RIMINI.
he applied himself to the civil and ecclesiastical codes
broke his health. For recreation he composed a Latin
comedy called " Philodoxeos," 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, 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 describes in the confessions of his
youth. In vain, however, 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 in-
vaded. 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" maybe 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, interludes,
orations, dialogues, and poems flowed with abundance
RIMINI. 249
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 appar-
ently his constitution never wholly recovered, that
Alberti's genius was directed to architecture.
Through his friendship with Flavio Biondo, the famous
Roman antiquary, Alberti received an introduction to
Nicholas V. at the time when this, the first great Pope
of the Renaissance, was engaged in rebuilding 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 deathbed, to boast that he had restored
the Holy See to its due dignity, and the Eternal City to
the splendour 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 instance 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 San Petronio
of Bologna. He left it a strange medley of mediaeval
and Renaissance 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
250 RIMINI.
startling in San Francesco ought not to be laid to the
charge of Alberti, who had to execute the task of turn-
ing a Gothic into a classic building. All that he could
do was to alter the whole exterior of the church, by affix-
ing 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 windows and doors
especially, in statu quo. With the interior he dealt
upon the same general principle, by not disturbing its
structure, while he covered every available square inch
of surface with decorations alien to the Gothic manner.
Externally, San Francesco is perhaps the most original
and graceful of the many attempts made by Italian
builders to fuse the mediaeval and the classic styles.
For Alberti attempted nothing less. A century elapsed
before Palladio, approaching the problem from a differ-
ent 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, dra-
peries that Burne Jones might copy, troops of sing-
ing 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 which fill the spaces of the chapel walls, and
climb the pilasters, and fret the arches, in such abund-
ance that had the whole church been finished as it was
RIMINI. 251
designed, it would have presented one splendid though
bizarre 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 interesting
moments in the history of modern art. Gothic inspira-
tion had failed ; the early Tuscan style of the Pisani
had been worked out ; Michael Angelo was yet far dis-
tant, and the abundance of classic models had not over-
whelmed 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 artist's own mind
252 RIMINI.
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 mo-
ment, 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 repetition of old models,
or for the invention of the strange and startling. " Deli-
cate, sweet, and captivating/' are good adjectives to
express the effect produced upon the mind by the con-
templation 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 Saint Sigismund in the Cathedral
of Rimini, to follow the undulations of their drapery
that seems to float, to feel the dignified 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 vigour has produced. There is indeed
something infinitely charming in the crepuscularmoments
of the human mind. Whether it be the rath loveliness
of an art still immature, or the wan 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 splendour is lacking. In the Church of San
Francesco at Rimini the tempered clearness of the dawn
is just about to broaden into day.
RAVENNA.
THE Emperor Augustus chose Ravenna for one of his
two naval stations, and in course of time a new city arose
by the sea-shore, which received the name of Portus
Classis. Between this harbour and the mother city a
third town sprang up, and was called Caesarea. Time
and neglect, the ravages of war, and the encroaching
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 lagune, 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
ahvays 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 with' constant moisture, and fostered by a mild
sea-wind and liberal sunshine, yielded crops that for
luxuriance and quality surpassed the harvests of any
orchards on the mainland. All the conditions of life
in old Ravenna seem to have resembled those of
254 RA VENN A.
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
neighbouring 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 lagune, like that on which the trains now glide into
Venice. Strange to say, the air of Ravenna was remark-
ably salubrious : this fact, and the ease of life that pre-
vailed there, and the security afforded by the situation
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
lagunes for safety ; Odoacer, who dethroned the last
Caesar of the West, succeeded him ; and was in turn sup-
planted by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. 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 survived the sieges of Belisarius and
Astolphus, the conquest 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
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
* 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.
RA VENN A.
255
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 Causeway. Their
tops are evergreen and laden with the heavy cones, from
which Ravenna draws considerable wealth. Scores of
peasants are quartered on the outskirts 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 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 flavour. 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
256 RA VENN A.
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 honey-
suckles which throw fragrant arms from bough to bough
of ash or maple, join to make one most delicious per-
fume. And though the air upon the neighbouring
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 brightness, among
dewy branches ; the moon walks silver-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
RAVENNA. 257
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 — grey 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 waggons on the Lombard plain. Others are
yearling calves, intractable and ignorant of labour. 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 glacfes,
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 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 terres-
trial 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 l'aure prime,
Cantando, ricevano intra le foglie,
Che tenevan bordone alle sue rime
258 RA VENNA.
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 Bene-
dictus 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 which it is diffi-
cult 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
the foam and spray and vapour of the flood, saw
thousands 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
RA VENNA. 259
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 coiling 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 con-
ception.
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 pur-
sued 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 labouring winds. Then
runs the sudden flash of lightning like a rapier through
the boughs, the rain 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
neighbourhood of Ravenna : " Impaziente di visitare 1*
antica selva, che inspiro gia il Divino e Giovanni
Boccaccio." We know, however, that a more powerful
attraction, in the person of the Countess Guiccioli, main-
260 RA VENN A.
tained 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 dis-
tance of about three miles. It is a plain intersected by
dykes and ditches, and mapped out into innumerable
rice-fields. For more than half a year it lies under water,
and during the other months exhales a pestilential
vapour, 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 gblden 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 mari-
golds; 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
your grasp, and flourish in security beyond the reach of
arm or stick.
Such is the site 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 St
Apollinare in Classe. Of all desolate buildings this is
the most desolate. Not even the deserted grandeur of
San 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. Ravenna lies low to
west, the pine-wood stretches away in long monotony to
east. There is nothing else to be seen except the spread-
ing marsh, bounded by dim snowy Alps and purple Apen-
RAVENNA. 261
nines, so very far away that the level rack of summer
clouds seem more attainable 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 vapour 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 mutter-
ing their prayers, from the fever-stricken spot, reserving
their domestic pieties and customary devotions for the
brighter and newer chapels of the fashionable 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 converva covers everything except the mosaics
upon tribune, roof, and clerestory, which defy the course
of age. Christ on his throne sedet aternumque sedcbit :
the saints around him glitter with their pitiless uncom-
promising 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
262 RA VENN A.
guardian told us it was a weary life. He has had the
fever three times, and does not hope to survive 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 visit.
It is the so-called Colonna dei Francesi, a cinquecento
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 neighbouring
farmyard 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 filling up and covering ;
man destroys the silent places of the past which he
appropriates.
In Ravenna itself, perhaps what strikes us most is the
RA VENNA. 263
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 insignifi-
cant frippery of the last century. The churches of
Ravenna — San Vitale, St 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 cus-
toms 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 imagin-
ation 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 concave 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 colours. Tall date-palms spring from the
floor with fruit and birds among their branches, and be-
tween 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
264 RA VENN A.
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 harmonise the brilliant hues and make a gor-
geous gloom.
Besides these more general and decorative subjects,
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 St 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 coloured
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 procession of saints and martyrs
carry us to Christ surrounded 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
remembered 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
RA VENNA. 265
with the letters A and SI. Moses and Elijah frequently
stand on either side to symbolise the transfiguration,
while the saints and bishops specially connected 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 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 har-
mony of hue displayed in their composition 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 ecclesi-
astical tradition are established by these ancient monu-
ments. We find Mariolatry already imminent, the names
of the three kings, Kaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, the
four evangelists as we now recognise them, and many of
the rites and vestments which Ritualists of all denomin-
ations regard v/ith 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 semi-sphere
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
266 RA VENNA.
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 bas-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
solemn," of which Lord Byron speaks, will continue to
be the goal of many a pilgrimage. For myself — though
I remember Chateaubriand's bareheaded genuflection
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 is perhaps the brightest Residensstadt 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 cheerful 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 sun-flower 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
Tintoret, 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 San Giovanni, where Correggio's frescoes cover cupola
and chapel wall, we could scarcely comprehend his
greatness now — so cruelly have time and neglect dealt
268 PARMA.
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 splendours
of the domes of Parma, or even seeking, how to find the
object of our search. Toschi's labour 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 scrupulousness,
adding not a line or tone or touch of colour to the fad-
ing frescoes ; but he lived among them, aloft on scaffold-
ings, and face to face with the originals which he designed
to reproduce. By long and close familiarity, by obstinate
and patient interrogation, he divined Correggio'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 colours, 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 Correggio's most charming
compositions — for example, the dispute of St Augustine
and St John — have been resuscitated from the grave by
Toschi's skill. The original offers nothing but a moulder-
ing surface from which the painter's work has dropped
in scales. The engraving presents a design which we
doubt not was Correggio's, 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
PARMA. 269
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 approaches the ordinary standard of pretti-
ness and graceful beauty. The Diana of the Camera di
San Paolo, for instance, has the strong calm splendour 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 communi-
cate information. Yet a bare outline of Toschi's bio-
graphy 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 friend-
ship with the painter Gerard. But after ten years he
returned to Parma, where he established a company
and school of engravers 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 recognised his merit,
and appointed him Director of the Ducal Academy.
270 PARMA.
He then formed the project of engraving a series of the
whole of Correggio's frescoes. The undertaking was a
vast one. Both the cupolas of St John and the cathedral,
together with the vault of the apse of San Giovanni *
and various portions of the side aisles, and the so-called
Camera di San Paolo, are covered by frescoes of
Correggio and his pupil Parmegiano. These frescoes
have suffered so much from neglect and time, and from
unintelligent 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-colour drawings which are exhibited in
the Gallery of Parma prove to what extent the achieve-
ment fell short of his design. Enough, however, was
accomplished to place the chief masterpieces of Cor-
reggio beyond the possibility of utter oblivion.
To the piety of his pupil Carlo Raimondi, the bearer
of a name illustrious in the annals of engraving, 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-
* The fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin upon the semi-dome of San
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 pre-
servation at the end of the long gallery of the library.
PARMA. 271
glass with which he scrutinises the details of distant
groups. The upturned face, with its expression of con-
templative 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 observation of a world not ours.
In truth the world created by Correggio and interpreted
by Toschi is very far removed from that of actual exist-
ence. No painter has infused a more distinct individu-
ality into his work, realising by imaginative force and
powerful projection an order of beauty peculiar to him-
self, before which it is impossible to remain quite indif-
ferent. 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, proceeding
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 process 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 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
272 PARMA.
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 endeavour 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 Bac-
chantes. 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 Cor-
reggio might be termed the Rossini of painting. The
melodies of the Stabat Mater — Fac 7it portent or Quis
est homo — are the exact analogues in music of Cor-
reggio's voluptuous 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 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 to 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
PARMA. 273
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 loveliness
which cannot be disjoined from goodness. But Cor-
reggio is contented with bodies " delicate and desir-
able." His angels are genii disimprisoned from the
perfumed chalices of flowers, houris of an erotic
paradise, elemental spirits of nature wantoning in Eden
in her prime. To accuse the painter of conscious immor-
ality or of what is stigmatised 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 combine a
certain savage wildness, a dithyrambic ecstasy of inspi-
ration, 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 child-
like, 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 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 San Giovanni, and the two wild-eyed open-mouthed
St Johns stationed 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 sul-
tan, though stocked with the flowers of Bithynian and
S
2J4 PARMA.
Circassian youth, have seen their like. Mozart's Cheru-
bino 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 foreshortened,
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 conception of this scene. To express the
spiritual meaning, the emotion of Madonna's transit,
with all the pomp which colour and splendid composi-
tion can convey, is Titian's sole care ; whereas Correggio
appears to have been satisfied with realising the tumult
of heaven rushing to meet earth, and earth straining
upwards to ascend to heaven in violent commo-
tion — a very orgasm of frenetic rapture. The essence
of the event is forgotten : its external manifestation
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 move-
ment. More dignified, because designed with more
repose, is the Apocalypse of St John painted upon the
cupola of San 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 contemplation or deep thought, but
PARMA. 275
of wild half-savage joy, as if these saints also had become
the elemental genii of cloud and air, spirits emergent
from ether, the salamanders of an empyrean intolerable
to mortal sense. The point on which their eyes converge,
the culmination of their vision, is th,e figure of Christ.
Here all the weakness of Correggio's method is revealed.
He had undertaken to realise 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 foreshortening,
things which in their very essence admit of only a figur-
ative 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 of vapour, 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 cloudland, because he could not sustain a grave
and solemn strain of music, but was forced by his tem-
perament to overlay the melody with roulades. Gazing
at these frescoes, 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
276 PARMA.
form beneath his pencil. But the light airs returned,
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 tenderness we find in his pictures of Leda
and Danae and Io. 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 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 colour was exactly
on a par with his feeling for form. He belongs to the
poets of chiaroscuro and the poets of colouring ; 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
PARMA. 277
smiles be mimicked. Correggio is content with fixing
on his canvas the avrjpiOfiov <ye\aafj,a, 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
splendour sharply defined on blackness, no mysteries
of half-felt and pervasive twilight, no studied accuracies
of noonday clearness in his work. Light and shadow
are woven together on his figures like an impalpable
Coan gauze, aerial and transparent, enhancing the pal-
pitations of voluptuous movement which he loved.
His colouring, in like manner, has none of the superb
and mundane pomp which the Venetians affected ; it
does not glow 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 nothing 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 no-
where in the world that he has painted. But that chord
of jocund colour 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 marvellous pearl-shell on his pictures. Both
chiaroscuro and colouring 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 moment to be the subject of strong passion, or
fierce lust, or heroic resolve, or profound contemplation,
or pensive melancholy, is impossible. Wantonness,
278 PARMA.
innocent because 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 Mahommedan 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 masters of
sublime thought or earnest passion, he proves his weak-
ness. But within his own magic circle he reigns
supreme, no other artist having blended the witcheries
of colouring, chiaroscuro, and faunlike loveliness 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 meaning, feeble-
ness of composition, exaggerated and melodramatic
attitudes. There is what Goethe called a demonic
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 sur-
passing all conception, there is always something
demonic." It is not to be wondered that Correggio,
possessed of this demonic 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 analyse, which had nothing in common with the
reason or the understanding, but was like a glamour
PARMA. 279
cast upon the soul in its most secret sensibilities, threw
themselves blindly into the imitation of Correggio's
faults. His affectation, his vacuity, his neglect of
composition, his sensuous realism, his all-pervading
sweetness, his infantine prettiness, his substitution
of thaumaturgical effects for conscientious labour,
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 attitudinising of Anselmi's
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
Correggio, 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
colour tremble in harmony with the movement of joyous
living creatures. Another demonic 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
vigour of their predecessors. While painting was in
280 PARMA.
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 exaggerations of Michael Angelo to ab-
surdity. 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 dramatists, Shirley and Crowne and
Killigrew, 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 moralised 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 him-
self with single-hearted devotion 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
PARMA. 28 r
apt to feel that the pleasure he has given is of an ener-
vating 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 moralised, 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 Shakspere, or with a sublime
temperance like Sophocles ; instinct with prophetic
intuition like Michael Angelo, or with passionate ex-
perience 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 percolates 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 moralised in neither way — neither as a
good nor 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
282 PARMA.
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 organised art — that
which absorbs the most numerous human qualities and
effects a harmony between 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 loveli-
ness. Correggio, 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 consum-
mate art of Michael Angelo with reverent awe. It is
necessary in aesthetics as elsewhere to recognise a hier-
archy 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 account. What is
unique has, for that reason alone, a claim on our con-
sideration. Judged in this way, Correggio 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 Eckermann, " 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."
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 Lombardy. 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 sunlight lay all day asleep upon the shining
waters, and no breeze came to stir their surface or to
lift the tepid 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
284 MONTE GENEROSO.
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 command-
ing 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
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 colour, in picturesque-
ness of suggestion, in sublimity and breadth of prospect,
its advantages are incontestable. The reasons for this
superiority are obvious. On the Italian side the
transition 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
MONTE GENEROSO. 285
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, winding
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 chestnuts
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 reminded 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
splendour of spring-colour, mingling 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 everywhere beneath the trees ;
and in the meadows purple columbines, white aspho-
dels, the Alpine spiraea, tall, with feathery leaves, blue
scabius, golden hawkweeds, turkscap lilies, and, better
than all, the exquisite narcissus poeticus, with its
crimson-tipped cup, and the pure pale lilies of San
Bruno, are crowded in a maze of dazzling bright-
ness. Higher up the laburnums disappear, and flaunt-
ing crimson peonies gleam here and there upon the
rocks, until at length the gentians and white ranuncu-
2S6 MONTE GENEROSO.
luses 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 barrack, with scanty
furniture and snowy wooden floors, guiltless of carpets.
It is big enough to hold about a hundred guests; and
Doctor Pasta, who built it, a native of Mendrisio, was
gifted either with much faith or with a real prophetic
instinct. Anyhow he deserves commendation 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' villegiatitra in the summer heats. When
we were there in May the season had scarcely begun,
and the only inmates 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 departed amid jokes and shouting and
half-childish play, very unlike the doings of a similar
party in sober England. After that the stillness of
death descended on the mountain, and the sun shone
day after day upon that great view which seemed
created only for ourselves. 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 fretwork, and Napoleon's
arch of triumph surmounted by the four tiny horses, as
in a fairy's dream. Far off, long silver lines marked
MONTE GENEROSO. 287
the lazy course of Po and Ticino, while little lakes like
Varese and the lower end of Maggiore spread them-
selves 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, coloured with the
tints of fluor-spar, or with the changeful green and
azure of a peacock's breast. The depth appeared
immeasurable. San Salvadore had receded into insig-
nificance : the houses and churches and villas of Lugano
bordered the lake-shore with an uneven line of whiteness.
And over all there rested a blue mist of twilight 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 moment
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
288 MONTE GENEROSO.
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
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 beechwood to
the precipice above the lake. Like an ink-blot it lay,
unruffled, slumbering sadly. Broad sheets of vapour
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
MONTE GENEROSO. 2S9
a strange unshriven look, as if waiting to be blessed.
Above them, in the cold grey 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 leapt
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 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 image 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 burn-
ing 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,"
290 MONTE GENEROSO.
do but add a calm and beauty to the radiant scene
that lies before us. And the thoughts which it sug-
gests, 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 splendour is always ready to revisit
us on dark and dreary days at home with an unspeak-
able refreshment. Even as I write, I seem to see the
golden glow sweeping in broad waves over the 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 Salvadore
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, surg-
ing up into the valleys with the movement of a billowy
tide, attacking the lower heights like the advance-guard
of a besieging army, but daring not as yet to invade the
MONTE GENEROSO. 291
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
vapour.
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 where a roll would end in death. 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, soldanellas at the
edge of lingering patches of the winter snow, blue gen-
tians, and the frail, rosy-tipped ranunculus, 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
mountain 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 exclusively 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
mountain at a distance look woolly, like a sheep's back.
292 MONTE GENEROSO.
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.
It was on the crest of Monte Generoso, late one after-
noon 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, except 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 vapour
gliding upward from the hollows of the mountain, very
thin and pale, yet dense enough to blot the landscape
to the south and east from sight. It rose with an im-
perceptible 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 outspread sheet before
us there appeared two forms, larger than life, yet not
gigantic, surrounded with haloes of such tempered irides-
cence as the moon half hidden by a summer cloud is
wont to make. They were the glorified figures of our-
selves ; and what we did, the phantoms mocked, rising
or bowing, or spreading wide their arms. Some scarce-
felt breeze prevented the vapour from passing across the
ridge to westward, though it still rose from beneath, and
kept fading away into thin air above our heads. There-
fore 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-
MONTE GENEROSO. 293
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 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 ex-
ternalise their image, existed outside them, independent
of their thought. Nor does the trite epigram touch the
surface 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 vapoury
spectre ? The God in whom we live and move and have
our being must be far more all-pervasive, more incognis-
able 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 : —
294 MONTE GENEROSO.
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 'It 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 wondrous 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.
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS*
Of all the joys in life, none is greater than the joy of
arriving on the outskirts of Switzerland at the end of a
long dusty day's journey from Paris. The true epicure
in refined pleasures will never travel to Basle by night.
He courts the heat of the sun and the monotony of
French plains, — their sluggish streams and never-ending
poplar-trees, — for the sake of the evening coolness and
the gradual approach to the great Alps, which await
him at the close of day. It is about Mulhausen that
he begins to feel a change in the landscape. The fields
broaden into rolling downs, watered by clear and
running streams ; the green Swiss thistle grows by
river-side and cowshed ; pines begin to tuft the slopes
of gently rising hills ; and now the sun has set, the stars
come out, first Hesper, then the troop of lesser lights ;
and he feels — yes, indeed, there is now no mistake —
the well-known, well-loved, magical fresh air, that never
fails to blow from snowy mountains and meadows
watered by perennial streams. The last hour is one of
exquisite enjoyment, and when he reaches Basle, he
scarcely sleeps all night for hearing the swift Rhine
beneath the balconies, and knowing that the moon is
shining on its waters, through the town, beneath the
bridges, between pasture-lands and copses, up the still
mountain-girdled valleys to the ice-caves where the
water springs. There is nothing in all experience of
* This Essay was written in 1866, and published in 1867.
296 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
travelling like this. We may greet the Mediterranean
at Marseilles with enthusiasm ; on entering Rome by
the Porta del Popolo, we may reflect with pride that we
have reached the goal of our pilgrimage, and are at last
among world-shaking memories. But neither Rome nor
the Riviera wins our hearts like Switzerland. We do
not lie awake in London thinking of them ; we do not
long so intensely, as the year comes round, to revisit
them. Our affection is less a passion than that which
we cherish for Switzerland.
Why, then, is this ? W r hat, after all, is the love of the
Alps, and when and where did it begin ? It is easier to
ask these questions than to answer them. The classic
nations hated mountains. Greek and Roman poets talk
of them with disgust and dread. Nothing could have
been more depressing to a courtier of Augustus than
residence at Aosta, even though he found his theatres
and triumphal arches there. Wherever classical feeling
has predominated, this has been the case. Cellini's
Memoirs, written in the height of pagan Renaissance,
well express the aversion which a Florentine or Roman
felt for the inhospitable wildernesses of Switzerland.*
Dryden, in his dedication to " The Indian Emperor," says,
" High objects, it is true, attract the sight ; but it looks
up with pain on craggy rocks and barren mountains, and
continues not intent on any object which is wanting in
shades and green to entertain it." Addison and Grey
had no better epithets than "rugged," "horrid," and the
like for Alpine landscape. The classic spirit was adverse
to enthusiasm for mere nature. Humanity was too
prominent, and city life absorbed all interests, — not to
speak of what perhaps is the weightiest reason — that
solitude, indifferent accommodation, and imperfect means
* See, however, what is said about Leo Battista Alberti on p. 243.
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 297
of travelling, rendered mountainous countries peculiarly
disagreeable. It is impossible to enjoy art or nature
while suffering from fatigue and cold, dreading the
attacks of robbers, and wondering whether you will
find food and shelter at the end of your day's journey.
Nor was it different in the middle ages. Then in-
dividuals had either no leisure from war or strife with the
elements, or else they devoted themselves to the
salvation of their souls. But when the ideas of the
middle ages had decayed, when improved arts of life had
freed men from servile subjection to daily needs, when
the bondage of religious tyranny had been thrown off and
political liberty allowed the full development of tastes
and instincts, when, moreover, the classical traditions
had lost their power, and courts and coteries became too
narrow for the activity of man, — then suddenly it was
discovered that Nature in herself possessed transcendant
charms. It may seem absurd to class them altogether ;
yet there is no doubt that the French Revolution, the
criticism of the Bible, Pantheistic forms of religious feel-
ing, landscape-painting, Alpine travelling, and the poetry
of Nature, are all signs of the same movement — of a new
Renaissance. Limitations of every sort have been shaken
off during the last century; all forms have been destroyed,
all questions asked. The classical spirit loved to arrange,
model, preserve traditions, obey laws. We are intoler-
ant of everything that is not simple, unbiassed by
prescription, liberal as the wind, and natural as the
mountain crags. We go to feed this spirit of freedom
among the Alps. What the virgin forests of America
are to the Americans, the Alps are to us. What there
is in these huge blocks and walls of granite crowned
with ice that fascinates us, it is hard to'analyse. Why,
seeing that we find them so attractive, they should have
298 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
repelled our ancestors of the fourth generation and all
the world before them, is another mystery. We cannot
explain what rapport there is between our human souls
and these inequalities in the surface of the earth which
we call Alps. Tennyson speaks of
" Some vague emotion of delight
In gazing up an Alpine height,"
and its vagueness eludes definition. The interest which
physical science has created for natural objects has
something to do with it. Curiosity and the charm of
novelty increase this interest. No towns, no cultivated
tracts of Europe, however beautiful, form such a contrast
to our London life as Switzerland. Then there is the
health and joy that comes from exercise in open air;
the senses freshened by good sleep ; the blood quickened
by a lighter and rarer atmosphere. Our modes of life,
the breaking down of class privileges, the extension
of education, which contribute to make the individual
greater and society less, render the solitude of mountains
refreshing. Facilities of travelling and improved accom-
modation leave us free to enjoy the natural beauty which
we seek. Our minds, too, are prepared to sympathise with
the inanimate world ; we have learned to look on the
universe as a whole, and ourselves as a part of it, re-
lated by close ties of friendship to all its other members.
Shelley's, Wordsworth's, Goethe's poetry has taught us
this ; we are all more or less Pantheists, worshippers of
" God in Nature," convinced of the omnipresence of the
informing mind.
Thus, when we admire the Alps, we are after all but
children of the century. We follow its inspiration
blindly ; and while we think ourselves spontaneous in
our ecstasy, perform the part for which we have been
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 299
trained from childhood by the atmosphere in which we
live. It is this very unconsciousness and universality of
the impulse we obey which makes it hard to analyse.
Contemporary history is difficult to write ; to define the
spirit of the age in which we live is still more difficult ;
to account for " impressions which owe all their force to
their identity with themselves " is most difficult of all.
We must be content to feel, and not to analyse.
Rousseau has the credit of having invented the love
of Nature. Perhaps he first expressed, in literature, the
pleasures of open life among the mountains, of walking
tours, of the " ecole buissonniere" away from courts, and
schools, and cities, which it is the fashion now to love.
His bourgeois birth and tastes, his peculiar religious
and social views, his intense self-engrossment, — all
favoured the development of Nature-worship. But
Rousseau was not alone, nor yet creative, in this instance.
He was but one of the earliest to seize and express a
new idea of growing humanity. For those who seem to
be the most original in their inauguration of periods are
only such as have been favourably placed by birth and
education to imbibe the floating creeds of the whole race.
They resemble the first cases of an epidemic, which
become the centres of infection and propagate disease.
At the time of Rousseau's greatness the French people
were initiative. In politics, in literature, in fashions, and
in philosophy, they had for some time led the taste of
Europe. But the sentiment which first received a clear
and powerful expression in the works of Rousseau, soon
declared itself in the arts and literature of other nations.
Goethe, Wordsworth, and the earlier landscape-painters,
proved that Germany and England were not far behind
the French. In England this love of Nature for its own
sake is indigenous, and has at all times been peculiarly
300 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
characteristic of our genius. Therefore it is not surpris-
ing that our life and literature and art have been
foremost in developing the sentiment of which we are
speaking. Our poets, painters, and prose writers gave the
tone to European thought in this respect. Our travellers
in search of the adventurous and picturesque, our Alpine
Club, have made of Switzerland an English playground.
The greatest period in our history was but a fore-
shadowing of this. To return to Nature- worship was but
to reassume the habits of the Elizabethan age, altered
indeed by all the changes of religion, politics, society, and
science which the last three centuries have wrought, yet
still, in its original love of free open life among the fields
and woods, and on the sea, the same. Now the French
national genius is classical. It reverts to the age of
Louis XIV., and Rousseauism in their literature is as
true an innovation and parenthesis as Pope-and-
Drydenism was in ours. As in the age of the Reforma-
tion, so in this, the German element of the modern
character predominates. During the two centuries from
which we have emerged, the Latin element had the
upper hand. Our love of the Alps is a Gothic, a
Teutonic, instinct ; sympathetic with all that is vague,
infinite, and insubordinate to rules, at war with all that
is defined and systematic in our genius. This we may
perceive in individuals as well as in the broader aspects
of arts and literatures. The classically-minded man,
the reader of Latin poets, the lover of brilliant conver-
sation, the frequenter of clubs and drawing-rooms, nice
in his personal requirements, scrupulous in his choice of
words, averse to unnecessary physical exertion, preferring
town to country life, cannot deeply feel the charm of the
Alps. Such a man will dislike German art, and however
much he may strive to be Catholic in his tastes, will find
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 301
as he grows older that his liking for Gothic architecture
and modern painting diminish almost to aversion before
an increasing admiration for Greek peristyles and the
Medicean Venus. If in respect of speculation all men
are either Platonists or Aristotelians, in respect of taste
all men are either Greek or German.
At present the German, the indefinite, the natural,
commands; the Greek, the finite, the cultivated, is in
abeyance. We who talk so much about the feeling of
the Alps, are creatures, not creators of our cultus, — a
strange reflection, proving how much greater man is
than men, the common reason of the age in which we
live than our own reasons, its constituents and subjects.
Perhaps it is our modern tendency to "individualism"
which makes the Alps so much to us. Society is there
reduced to a vanishing point — no claims are made on
human sympathies — there is no need to toil in yoke-
service with our fellows. We may be alone, dream our
own dreams, and sound the depths of personality with-
out the reproach of selfishness, without a restless wish
to join in action or money-making or the pursuit of
fame. To habitual residents among the Alps this
absence of social duties and advantages may be bar-
barising, even brutalising. But to men wearied with
too much civilisation, and deafened by the noise of great
cities, it is beyond measure refreshing. Then, again,
among the mountains history finds no place. The
Alps have no past nor present nor future. The human
beings who live upon their sides are at odds with nature,
clinging on for bare existence to the soil, sheltering
themselves beneath protecting rocks from avalanches,
damming up destructive streams, all but annihilated
every spring. Man, who is paramount in the plain, is
nothing here. His arts and sciences, and dynasties, and
302 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
modes of life, and mighty works, and conquests and
decays, demand our whole attention in Italy or Egypt.
But here the mountains, immemorially the same, which
were, which are, and which are to be, present a theatre
on which the soul breathes freely and feels herself alone.
Around her on all sides is God, and Nature, who is here
the face of God and not the slave of man. The spirit
of the world hath here not yet grown old. She is as
young as on the first day ; and the Alps are a symbol
of the self-creating, self-sufficing, self-enjoying universe
which lives for its own ends. For why do the slopes
gleam with flowers, and the hillsides deck themselves
with grass, and the inaccessible ledges of black rock
bear their tufts of crimson primroses and flaunting
tiger-lilies ? Why, morning after morning, does the red
dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud
and mist unheeded ? Why does the torrent shout, the
avalanche reply in thunder to the music of the sun, the
trees and rocks and meadows cry their " Holy, Holy,
Holy " ? Surely not for us. We are an accident here,
and even the few men whose eyes are fixed habitually
upon these things are dead to them — the peasants do
not even know the names of their own flowers, and sigh
with envy when you tell them of the plains of Lincoln-
shire or Russian steppes.
But indeed there is something awful in the Alpine
elevation above human things. We do not love Switzer-
land merely because we associate its thought with recol-
lections of holidays and health and joy fulness. Some
of the most solemn moments of life are spent high up
above among the mountains, on the barren tops of
rocky passes, where the soul has seemed to hear in
solitude a low controlling voice. It is almost necessary
for the development of our deepest affections that some
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 303
sad and sombre moments should be interchanged with
hours of merriment and elasticity. It is this variety in
the woof of daily life which endears our home to us ;
and perhaps none have fully loved the Alps who have
not spent some days of meditation, or if may be of
sorrow, among their solitudes. Splendid scenery, like
music, has the power to make "of grief itself a fiery
chariot for mounting above the sources of grief," to
ennoble and refine our passions, and to teach us that
our lives are merely moments in the years of the eternal
Being. There are many, perhaps, who, within sight of
some great scene among the Alps, upon the height of
the Stelvio or the slopes of MUrren, or at night in the
valley of.Cormayeur, have felt themselves raised above
cares and doubts and miseries by the mere recognition
of unchangeable magnificence ; have found a deep peace
in the sense of their own nothingness. It is not granted
to us every day to stand upon these pinnacles of rest
and faith above the world. But having once stood
there, how can we forget the station ? How can we fail,
amid the tumult of our common cares, to feel at times
the hush of that far-off tranquillity ? When our life is
most commonplace, when we are ill or weary in city
streets, we can remember the clouds upon the mountains
we have seen, the sound of innumerable waterfalls,
and the scent of countless flowers. A photograph of
Bisson's or of Braun's, the name of some well-known
valley, the picture of some Alpine plant, rouses the
sacred hunger in our souls, and stirs again the faith in
beauty and in rest beyond ourselves which no man can
take from us. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to every-
thing which enables us to rise above depressing and
enslaving circumstances, which brings us nearer in some
way or other to what is eternal in the universe, and
304 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
which makes us know that, whether we live or die, suffer
or enjoy, life and gladness are still strong in the world.
On this account, the proper attitude of the soul among
the Alps is one of silence. It is almost impossible
without a kind of impiety to frame in words the feel-
ings they inspire. Yet there are some sayings, hal-
lowed by long usage, which throng the mind through
a whole summer's day, and seem in harmony with
its emotions — some portions of the Psalms or lines of
greatest poets, inarticulate hymns of Beethoven and
Mendelssohn, waifs and strays not always apposite, but
linked by strong and subtle chains of feeling with the
grandeur of the mountains. This reverential feeling for
the Alps is connected with the Pantheistic form of our
religious sentiments to which I have before alluded. It
is a trite remark, that even devout men of the present gen-
eration prefer temples not made with hands to churches,
and worship God in the fields more contentedly than in
their pews. What Mr Ruskin calls " the instinctive
sense of the divine presence not formed into distinct
belief" lies at the root of our profound veneration for
the nobler aspects of mountain scenery. This instinctive
sense has been very variously expressed by Goethe in
Faust's celebrated confession of faith, by Shelley in the
stanzas of " Adonais" which begin, " He is made one with
nature," by Wordsworth in the lines on Tintern Abbey,
and lately by Mr Roden Noel in his noble poems of
Pantheism. It is more or less strongly felt by all who
have recognised the indubitable fact that religious
belief is undergoing a sure process of change from the
dogmatic distinctness of the past to some at present
dimly descried creed of the future. Such periods of
transition are of necessity full of discomfort, doubt, and
anxiety, vague, variable, and unsatisfying. The men in
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 305
whose spirits the fermentation of the change is felt, who
have abandoned their old moorings, and have not yet
reached the haven for which they are steering, cannot
but be indistinct and undecided in their faith. The
universe of which they form a part becomes important
to them in its infinite immensity. The principles of
beauty, goodness, order, and law, no longer connected
in their minds with definite articles of faith, find symbols
in the outer world. They are glad to fly at certain
moments from mankind and its oppressive problems,
for which religion no longer provides a satisfactory
solution, to Nature, where they vaguely localise the
spirit that broods over us controlling all our being. For
such men Goethe's hymn, already quoted,* is a form
of faith, and born of such a mood are the following far
humbler verses : —
At Miirren let the morning lead thee out
To walk upon the cold and cloven hills,
To hear the congregated mountains shout
Their paean of a thousand foaming rills.
Raimented with intolerable light
The snow-peaks stand above thee, row on row
Arising, each a seraph in his might ;
An organ each of varied stop doth blow.
Heaven's azure dome trembles through all her spheres,
Feeling that music vibrate ; and the sun
Raises his tenor as he upward steers,
And all the glory-coated mists that run
Below him in the valley, hear his voice,
And cry unto the dewy fields, Rejoice !
There is a profound sympathy between music and
fine scenery : they both affect us in the same way
F. 294.
U
3o5 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
stirring strong but undefined emotions, which express
themselves in " idle tears," or evoking thoughts " which
lie," as Wordsworth says, "too deep for tears," beyond
the reach of any words. How little we know what
multitudes of mingling reminiscences, held in solu-
tion by the mind, and colouring its fancy with the
iridescence of variable hues, go to make up the senti-
ments which music or which mountains stir. It is the
very vagueness, changefulness, and dreamlike indistinct-
ness of these feelings which cause their charm ; they
harmonise with the haziness of our beliefs and seem to
make our very doubts melodious. For this reason it is
obvious that unrestrained indulgence in the pleasures of
music or of scenery may tend to destroy habits of clear
thinking, sentimentalise the mind, and render it more
apt to entertain embryonic fancies than to bring ideas
to definite perfection.
If some hours of thoughtfulness and seclusion are
necessary to the development of a true love for the Alps,
it is no less essential to a right understanding of their
beauty that we should pass some wet and gloomy days
among the mountains. The unclouded sunsets and sun-
rises which often follow one another in September in the
Alps, have something terrible. They produce a satiety
of splendour, and oppress the mind with a sense of
perpetuity. I remember spending such a season in one
of the Oberland valleys, high up above the pine-trees, in
a little chalet. Morning after morning I awoke to see
the sunbeams glittering on the Eiger and the Jungfrau ;
noon after noon the snow-fields blazed beneath a steady
fire ; evening after evening they shone like beacons in
the red light of the setting sun. Then peak by peak they
lost the glow ; the soul passed from them, and they stood
pale yet weirdly garish against the darkened sky. The
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 307
stars came out, the moon shone, but not a cloud sailed
over the untroubled heavens. Thus day after day for
several weeks there was no change, till I was seized with
an overpowering horror of unbroken calm. I left the
valley for a time ; and when I returned to it in wind and
rain, I found that the partial veiling of the mountain
heights restored the charm which I had lost and made
me feel once more at home. The landscape takes a
graver tone beneath the mist that hides the higher peaks,
and comes drifting, creeping, feeling, through the pines
upon their slopes — white, silent, blinding vapour wreaths
around the sable spires. Sometimes the cloud descends
and blots out everything. Again it lifts a little, show-
ing cottages and distant Alps beneath its skirts. Then
it sweeps over the whole valley like a veil, just broken
here and there above a lonely chalet or a thread of
distant dangling torrent foam. Sounds, too, beneath the
mist are more strange. The torrent seems to have a
hoarser voice and grinds the stones more passion-
ately against its boulders. The cry of shepherds
through the fog suggests the loneliness and danger
of the hills. The bleating of penned sheep or goats,
and the tinkling of the cow-bells, are mysteriously
distant and yet distinct in the dull dead air. Then,
again, how immeasurably high above our heads ap-
pear the domes and peaks of snow revealed through
chasms in the drifting cloud ; how desolate the glaciers
and the avalanches in gleams of light that struggle
through the mist ! There is a leaden glare pecu-
liar to clouds, which makes the snow and ice more
lurid. Not far from the house where I am writing, the
avalanche that swept away the bridge last winter is
lying now, dripping away, dank and dirty, like a rotting
whale. I can see it from my window, green beech-
3oS THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
boughs nodding over it, forlorn larches bending their
tattered branches by its side, splinters of broken pine
protruding from its muddy caves, the boulders on its
flank, and the hoarse hungry torrent tossing up its
tongues to lick the ragged edge of snow. Close by, the
meadows, spangled with yellow flowers and red and blue,
look even more brilliant than if the sun were shining on
them. Every cup and blade of grass is drinking. But
the scene changes ; the mist has turned into rain-clouds,
and the steady rain drips down, incessant, blotting out
the view. Then, too, what a joy it is if the clouds break
towards evening with a north wind, and a rainbow in the
valley gives promise of a bright to-morrow. We look up
to the cliffs above our heads, and see that they have just
been powdered with the snow that is a sign of better
weather.
Such rainy days ought to be spent in places like
Seelisberg and Miirren, at the edge of precipices, in
front of mountains, or above a lake. The cloud-masses
crawl and tumble about the valleys like a brood of
dragons ; now creeping along the ledges of the rock
with sinuous self-adjustment to its turns and twists ; now
launching out into the deep, repelled by battling winds,
or driven onward in a coil of twisted and contorted
serpent curls. In the midst of summer these wet seasons
oiten end in a heavy fall of snow. You wake some
morning to see the meadows which last night were gay
with July flowers huddled up in snow a foot in depth.
But fair weather does not tarry long to reappear. You
put on your thickest boots and sally forth to find the
great cups of the gentians full of snow, and to watch the
rising of the cloud-wreaths under the hot sun. Bad
dreams or sickly thoughts, dissipated by returning day-
light or a friend's face, do not fly away more rapidly and
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 309
pleasantly than those swift glory-coated mists that lose
themselves we know not where in the blue depths of the
sky.
In contrast with these rainy days nothing can be more
perfect than clear moonlight nights. There is a terrace
upon the roof of the inn at Cormayeur where one may
spend hours in the silent watches, when all the world has
gone to sleep beneath. The Mont Chetif and the Mont
de la Saxe form a gigantic portal not unworthy of the
pile that lies beyond. For Mont Blanc resembles a vast
cathedral ; its countless spires are scattered over a mass
like that of the Duomo at Milan, rising into one tower at
the end. By night the glaciers glitter in the steady moon ;
domes, pinnacles, and buttresses stand clear of clouds.
Needles of every height and most fantastic shapes rise
from the central ridge, some solitary like sharp arrows shot
against the sky, some clustering into sheaves. On every
horn of snow and bank of grassy hill stars sparkle, rising,
setting, rolling round through the long silent night.
Moonlight simplifies and softens the landscape. Colours
become scarcely distinguishable, and forms, deprived
of half their detail, gain in majesty and size. The
mountains seem greater far by night than day — higher
heights and deeper depths, more snowy pyramids, more
beetling crags, softer meadows, and darker pines. The
whole valley is hushed, but for the torrent and the chirp-
ing grasshopper and the striking of the village clocks.
The black tower and the houses of Cormayeur in the
foreground gleam beneath the moon until she reaches
the edge of the Cramont, and then sinks quietly
away, once more to reappear among the pines, then
finally to leave the valley dark beneath the shadow
of the mountain's bulk. Meanwhile the heights of
snow still glitter in the steady light : they, too, will
3io THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
soon be dark, until the dawn breaks, tinging them with
rose.
But it is not fair to dwell exclusively upon the more
sombre aspect of Swiss beauty when there are so many
lively scenes of which to speak. The sunlight and the
freshness and the flowers of Alpine meadows form more
than half the charm of Switzerland. The other day we
walked to a pasture called the Col de Checruit, high up
the valley of Cormayeur, where the spring was still in its
first freshness. Gradually we climbed, by dusty roads
and through hot fields where the grass had just been
mown, beneath the fierce light of the morning sun. Not
a breath of air was stirring, and the heavy pines hung
overhead upon their crags, as if to fence the gorge from
every wandering breeze. There is nothing more op-
pressive than these scorching sides of narrow rifts, shut
in by woods and precipices. But suddenly the valley
broadened, the pines and larches disappeared, and Ave
found ourselves upon a wide green semicircle of the
softest meadows. Little rills of water went rushing
through them, rippling over pebbles, rustling under dock-
leaves, and eddying against their wooden barriers. Far
and wide " you scarce could see the grass for flowers,"
while on every side the tinkling of cow-bells, and the
voices of shepherds calling to one another from the Alps,
or singing at their work, were borne across the fields.
As we climbed we came into still fresher pastures where
the snow had scarcely melted. There the goats and
cattle were collected, and the shepherds sat among
them, fondling the kids and calling them by name.
When they called, the creatures came, expecting salt
and bread. It was pretty to see them lying near their
masters, playing and butting at them with their horns,
or bleating for the sweet rye-bread. The women
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 311
knitted stockings, laughing among themselves, and
singing all the while. As soon as we reached them, they
gathered round to talk. An old herdsman, who was
clearly the patriarch of this Arcadia, asked us many
questions in a slow deliberate voice. We told him who
we were, and tried to interest him in the cattle-plague,
which he appeared to regard as an evil very unreal and
far away — like the murrain upon Pharaoh's herds which
one reads about in Exodus. But he was courteous and
polite, doing the honours of his pasture with simplicity
and ease. He took us to his chalet and gave us bowls
of pure cold milk. It was a funny little wooden house,
clean and dark. The sky peeped through its tiles, and if
shepherds were not in the habit of sleeping soundly all
night long, they might count the setting and rising stars
without lifting their heads from the pillow. He told us
how far pleasanter they found the summer season than
the long cold winter which they have to spend in gloomy
houses in Cormayeur. This, indeed, is the true pastoral
life which poets have described — a happy summer holi-
day among the flowers, well occupied with simple cares,
and harassed by " no enemy but winter and rough
weather."
Very much of the charm of Switzerland belongs to
simple things — to greetings from the herdsmen, the
" Guten Morgen" and " Guten Abend," that are invari-
ably given and taken upon mountain paths ; to the
tame creatures, with their large dark eyes, who raise
their heads one moment from the pasture while you
pass ; and to the plants that grow beneath your feet.
The latter end of May is the time when spring begins in
the high Alps. Wherever sunlight smiles away a patch
of snow, the brown turf soon becomes green velvet, and
the velvet stars itself with red and white and £old and
312 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
blue. You almost see the grass and lilies grow. First
come pale crocuses and lilac soldanellas. These break
the last dissolving clods of snow, and stand upon an
island, with the cold wall they have thawed all round
them. It is the fate of these poor flowers to spring and
flourish on the very skirts of retreating winter ; they soon
wither — the frilled chalice of the soldanella shrivels up
and the crocus fades away before the grass has grown :
the sun, which is bringing all the other plants to life,
scorches their tender petals. Often when summer has
fairly come, you still may see their pearly cups and lilac
bells by the side of avalanches, between the chill snow and
the fiery sun, blooming and fading hour by hour. They
have as it were but a Pisgah view of the promised land,
of the spring which they are foremost to proclaim. Next
come the clumsy gentians and yellow anemones, covered
with soft down like fledgling birds. These are among
the earliest and hardiest blossoms that embroider the high
meadows with a diaper of blue and gold. About the
same time primroses and auriculas begin to tuft the
dripping rocks, while frail white fleurs-de-lis, like flakes
of snow forgotten by the sun, and golden-balled ranun-
culuses join with forget-me-nots and cranesbill in a
never-ending dance upon the grassy floor. Happy, too,
is he who finds the lilies-of-the-valley clustering about the
chestnut boles upon the Colma, or in the beechwood by
the stream at Macugnaga, mixed with garnet-coloured
columbines and fragrant white narcissus, which the
people of the villages call " Angiolini." There, too, is
Solomon's seal, with waxen bells and leaves expanded
like the wings of hovering butterflies. But these lists
of flowers are tiresome and cold ; it would be better to
draw the portrait of one which is particularly fascinat-
ing. I think that botanists have called it Saxifraga
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 313
cotyledon ; yet, in spite of its long name, it is beautiful
and poetic. London pride is the commonest of all the
saxifrages ; but the one of which I speak is as different
from London pride as a Plantagenet upon his throne
from that last Plantagenet who died obscure and penni-
less some years ago. It is a great majestic flower, which
plumes the granite rocks of Monte Rosa in the spring.
At other times of the year you see a little tuft of fleshy
leaves set like a cushion on cold ledges and dark places
of dripping cliffs. You take it for a stonecrop — one of
those weeds doomed to obscurity, and safe from being
picked because they are so uninviting — and you pass it
by incuriously. But about June it puts forth its power,
and from the cushion of pale leaves there springs a
strong pink stem, which rises upward for awhile, and
then curves down and breaks into a shower of snow-
white blossoms. Far away the splendour gleams, hang-
ing like a plume of ostrich-feathers from the roof of
rock, waving to the wind, or stooping down to touch the
water of the mountain stream that dashes it with dew.
The snow at evening, glowing with a sunset flush, is not
more rosy-pure than this cascade of pendent blossoms.
It loves to be alone — inaccessible ledges, chasms where
winds combat, or moist caverns overarched near thunder-
ing falls, are the places that it seeks. I will not compare
it to a spirit of the mountains or to a proud lonely soul,
for such comparisons desecrate the simplicity of nature,
and no simile can add a glory to the flower. It seems
to have a conscious life of its own, so large and glorious
it is, so sensitive to every breath of air, so nobly placed
upon its bending stem, so royal in its solitude. I first
saw it years ago on the Simplon, feathering the drizzling
crags above Isella. Then we found it near Baveno, in a
crack of sombre cliff beneath the mines. The other day
314 THE LOVE OF THE ALPS.
we cut an armful opposite Varallo, by the Sesia, and then
felt like murderers ; it was so sad to hold in our hands
the triumph of those many patient months, the full
expansive life of the flower, the splendour visible from
valleys and hillsides, the defenceless creature which had
done its best to make the gloomy places of the Alps
most beautiful.
After passing many weeks among the high Alps it is
a pleasure to descend into the plains. The sunset, and
sunrise, and the stars of Lombardy, its level horizons and
vague misty distances, are a source of absolute relief
after the narrow skies and embarrassed prospects of a
mountain valley. Nor are the Alps themselves ever
more imposing than when seen from Milan or the church
tower of Chivasso or the terrace of Novara, with a fore-
ground of Italian corn-fields and old city towers and
rice-grounds golden-green beneath a Lombard sun.
Half veiled by clouds the mountains rise like visionary
fortress walls of a celestial city — unapproachable, beyond
the range of mortal feet. But those who know by old
experience what friendly chalets, and cool meadows, and
clear streams are hidden in their folds and valleys, send
forth fond thoughts and messages, like carrier-pigeons,
from the marble parapets of Milan, crying, " Before
another sun has set, I too shall rest beneath the shadow
of their pines ! " It is in truth not more than a day's
journey from Milan to the brink of snow at Macugnaga.
But very sad it is to leave the Alps, to stand upon the
terraces of Berne and waft ineffectual farewells. The
unsympathising Aar rushes beneath ; and the snow-
peaks, whom we love like friends, abide untroubled by
the coming and the going of the world. The clouds
drift over them — the sunset warms them with a fiery
kiss. Night comes, and we are hurried far away to
THE LOVE OF THE ALPS. 315
wake beside the Seine, remembering, with a pang of
jealous passion, that the flowers on Alpine meadows
are still blooming, and the rivulets still flowing with a
ceaseless song, while Paris shops are all we see, and
all we hear is the dull clatter of a Paris crowd.
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE.
Travellers journeying southward from Paris first
meet with olive-trees near Montdragon or Montelimart
— little towns, with old historic names, upon the road
to Orange. It is here that we begin to feel ourselves
within the land of Provence, where the Romans found
a second Italy, and where the autumn of their antique
civilisation was followed, almost without an intermediate
winter of barbarism, by the light and delicate spring-
time of romance. Orange itself is full of Rome. Indeed,
the ghost of the dead Empire seems there to be more
real and living than the actual flesh and blood of modern
time, as represented by narrow dirty streets and mean
churches. It is the shell of the huge theatre, hollowed
from the solid hill, and fronted with a wall that seems
made rather to protect a city than to form a sounding-
board for a stage, which first tells us that we have
reached the old Arausio. Of all theatres this is the
most impressive, stupendous, indestructible, the Colos-
seum hardly excepted ; for in Rome herself we are
prepared for something gigantic, while in the insignifi-
cant Arausio — a sort of antique Tewkesbury — to find
such magnificence, durability, and vastness, impresses
one with a nightmare sense that the old lioness of
Empire can scarcely yet be dead. Standing before the
colossal, towering, amorphous precipice which formed the
background of the scena, we feel as if once more the
"heart-shaking sound of Consul Romanus " might be
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE. 317
heard ; as if Roman knights and deputies, arisen from
the dead, with faces hard and stern as those of the war-
riors carved on Trajan's frieze, might take their seats
beneath us in the orchestra, and, after proclamation
made, the mortmain of imperial Rome be laid upon
the comforts, liberties, and little gracefulnesses of our
modern life. Nor is it unpleasant to be startled from
such reverie by the voice of the old guardian upon the
stage beneath, sonorously devolving the vacuous
Alexandrines with which he once welcomed his
ephemeral French emperor from Algiers. The little
man is dim with distance, eclipsed and swallowed up by
the shadows and grotesque fragments of the ruin in the
midst of which he stands. But his voice — thanks to
the inimitable constructive art of the ancient architect,
which, even in the desolation of at least thirteen
centuries, has not lost its cunning — emerges from the
pigmy throat, and fills the whole vast hollow with its
clear, if tiny, sound. Thank heaven, there is no danger
of Roman resurrection here ! The illusion is completely
broken, and we turn to gather the first violets of
February, and to wonder at the quaint postures of a
praying mantis on the grass-grown tiers and porches
fringed with fern.
The sense of Roman greatness which is so oppressive
in Orange and in many other parts of Provence, is
not felt at Avignon. Here we exchange the ghost of
Imperial for the phantom of Ecclesiastical Rome. The
fixed epithet of Avignon is Papal ; and as the express
train rushes over its bleak and wind-tormented plain,
the heavy dungeon walls and battlemented towers of its
palace fortress seem to warn us off, and bid us quickly
leave the Babylon of exiled impious Antichrist.
Avignon presents the bleakest, barest, greyest scene
3i 8 OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE.
upon a February morning', when the incessant mistral
is blowing-, and far and near, upon desolate hillside and
sandy plain, the scanty trees are bent sideways, the
crumbling castle turrets shivering like bleached skeletons
in the dry ungenial air. Yet inside the town, all is not
so dreary. The Papal palace, with its terrible Glaciere,
its chapel painted by Simone Memmi, its endless cor-
ridors and staircases, its torture-chamber, funnel-shaped
to drown and suffocate — so runs tradition — the shrieks
of wretches on the rack, is now a barrack, filled with
lively little French soldiers, whose politeness, though
sorely taxed, is never ruffled by the introduction of
inquisitive visitors into their dormitories, eating-places,
and drill-grounds. And strange, indeed, it is to see
the lines of neat narrow barrack beds, between which
the red - legged little men are shaving, polishing their
guns, or mending their trousers, in those vaulted halls
of popes and cardinals, those vast presence - chambers
and audience -galleries, where Urban entertained St
Catherine, where Rienzi came, a prisoner, to be stared
at. Pass by the Glaciere with a shudder, for it has still
the reek of blood about it ; and do not long delay in
the cheerless dungeon of Rienzi. Time and regimental
whitewash have swept these lurking-places of old crime
very bare ; but the parable of the seven devils is true
in more senses than one, and the ghosts that return to
haunt a deodorised, disinfected, garnished sepulchre are
almost more ghastly than those which have never been
disturbed from their old habitations.
Little by little the eye becomes accustomed to
the bareness and greyness of this Provencal land-
scape ; and then we find that the scenery round
Avignon is eminently picturesque. The view from
Les Doms — which is a hill above the Pope's palace,
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE, 319
the Acropolis, as it were, of Avignon — embraces a
wide stretch of undulating champaign, bordered by
low hills, and intersected by the flashing waters of
the majestic Rhone. Across the stream stands
Villeneuve, like a castle of romance, with its round
stone towers fronting the gates and battlemented
walls of the Papal city. A bridge used to connect
the two towns, but it is now broken. The remaining
fragment is of solid build, resting on great buttresses,
one of which rises fantastically above the bridge into
a little chapel. Such, one might fancy, was the bridge
which Ariosto's Rodomonte kept on horse against
the Paladins of Charlemagne, when angered by the
loss of his love. Nor is it difficult to imagine Bra-
damante spurring up the slope against him with
her magic lance in rest, and tilting him into the tawny
waves beneath. On a clear October morning, when
the vineyards are taking their last tints of gold and
crimson, and the yellow foliage of the poplars by the
river mingles with the sober greys of olive-trees and
willows, every square inch of this landscape, glittering
as it does with light and with colour, the more beautiful
for its subtlety and rarity, would make a picture. Out
of many such vignettes let us choose one. We are on
the shore close by the ruined bridge, the rolling muddy
Rhone in front ; beyond it, by the towing-path, a tall
strong cypress-tree rises beside a little house, and next
to it a crucifix twelve feet or more in height, the Christ
visible afar, stretched upon his red cross ; arundo donax
is waving all around, and willows near ; behind, far off,
soar the peaked hills, blue and pearled with clouds ;
past the cypress, on the Rhone, comes floating a long
raft, swift through the stream, its rudder guided by a
score of men : one standing erect upon the prow bends
320
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE.
forward to salute the cross ; on flies the raft, the tall
reeds rustle, and the cypress sleeps.
For those who have time to spare in going to or from
the south it is worth while to spend a day or two in the
most comfortable and characteristic of old French inns,
the Hotel de l'Europe, at Avignon. Should it rain, the
museum of the town is worth a visit. It contains
Horace Vernet's not uncelebrated picture of Mazeppa,
and another, less famous, but perhaps more interesting,
by swollen-cheeked David, the "genius in convulsion,"
as Carlyle has christened him. His canvas is unfin-
ished. Who knows what cry of the Convention made
the painter fling his palette down and leave the master-
piece he might have spoiled ? For in its way the
picture is a masterpiece. There lies Jean Barrad,
drummer, aged fourteen, slain in La Vendee, a true
patriot, who, while his life-blood flowed away, pressed
the tricolor cockade to his heart, and murmured
" Liberty ! " David has treated his subject classically.
The little drummer-boy, though French enough in
feature, and in feeling, lies, Greek-like, naked on the
sand — a very Hyacinth of the Republic, La Vendee's
Ilioneus. The tricolor cockade and the sentiment of
upturned patriotic eyes are the only indications of his
beino- a hero in his teens, a citizen who thought it
sweet to die for France.
In fine weather a visit to Vaucluse should by
no means be omitted, not so much, perhaps, for
Petrarch's sake as for the interest of the drive, and
for the marvel of the fountain of the Sorgues. For
some time after leaving Avignon you jog along the
level country between avenues of plane-trees ; then
comes a hilly ridge, on which the olives, mulberries,
and vineyards join their colours and melt subtly into
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE. 321
distant purple. After crossing this, we reach L'Isle,
an island village girdled by the gliding Sorgues,
overshadowed with gigantic plane-boughs, and echoing
to the plash of water dripped from mossy fern-tufted
millwheels. Those who expect Petrarch's Sorgues to
be some trickling poet's rill emerging from a damp
grotto, may well be astounded at the rush and roar
of this azure river so close upon its fountain-head. It
has a volume and an arrow-like rapidity that communi-
cate the feeling of exuberance and life. In passing
let it not be forgotten that it was somewhere or
other in this "chiaro fondo di Sorga," as Carlyle
describes, that Jourdain, the hangman-hero of the
Glaciere, stuck fast upon his pony when flying from
his foes, and had his accursed life, by some diabolical
providence, spared for future butcheries. On we go across
the austere plain, between fields of madder, the red
roots of the "garance" lying in swathes along the
furrows. In front rise ash-grey hills of barren rock, here
and there crimsoned with the leaves of the dwarf
sumach. A huge cliff stands up and seems to bar all
passage. Yet the river foams in torrents at our side.
Whence can it issue ? What pass or cranny in that
precipice is cloven for its escape ? These questions
grow in interest as we enter the narrow defile of lime-
stone rocks which lead to the cliff-barrier, and find our-
selves among the figs and olives of Vaucluse. Here
is the village, the little church, the ugly column to
Petrarch's memory, the inn, with its caricatures of
Laura, and its excellent trout, the bridge and the many-
flashing, eddying Sorgues, lashed by millwheels, broken
by weirs, divided in its course, channeled and dyked,
yet flowing irresistibly and undefiled. Blue, purple,
greened by moss and water-weeds, silvered by snow-
X
322 OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE.
white pebbles, on its pure smooth bed the river runs like
elemental diamond, so clear and fresh. The rocks on
either side are grey or yellow, terraced into oliveyards,
with here and there a cypress, fig, or mulberry tree.
Soon the gardens cease, and lentisk, rosemary, box, and
ilex — shrubs of Provence — with here and there a sumach
out of reach, cling to the hard stone. And so at last
we are brought face to face with the sheer impassable
precipice. At its basement sleeps a pool, perfectly
untroubled ; a lakelet in which the sheltering rocks and
nestling wild figs are glassed as in a mirror — a mirror of
blue-black water, like amethyst or fluor-spar — so pure,
so still, that where it laps the pebbles you can scarcely
say where air begins and water ends. This, then, is
Petrarch's "grotto;" this is the fountain of Vaucluse.
Up from its deep reservoirs, from the mysterious base-
ments of the mountain, wells the silent stream ; pause-
less and motionless it fills its urn ; rises unruffled ; glides
until the brink is reached ; then overflows, and foams,
and dashes noisily, a cataract, among the boulders of the
hills. Nothing at Vaucluse is more impressive than the
contrast between the tranquil silence of the fountain and
the roar of the released impetuous river. Here we can
realise the calm clear eyes of sculptured water-gods,
their brimming urns, their gushing streams, the magic
of the mountain-born and darkness-cradled flood. Or,
again, looking up at the sheer steep cliff, 800 feet in
height and arching slightly roofwise, so that no rain
falls upon the cavern of the pool, we seem to see the
stroke of Neptune's trident, the hoof of Pegasus, the
force of Moses' rod, which cleft rocks and made waters
gush forth in the desert. There is a strange fascination
in the spot. As our eyes follow the white pebble which
cleaves the surface and falls visibly, until the veil of
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE. 323
azure is too thick for sight to pierce, we feel as if some
glamour were drawing us, like Hylas, to the hidden
caves. At least we long to yield a prized and pre-
cious offering to the spring, to grace the nymph of
Valchiusa with a pearl of price as token of our re-
verence and love.
Meanwhile nothing has been said about Petrarch, who
himself said much about the spring, and complained
against these very nymphs to whom we have in wish, at
least, been scattering jewels, that they broke his banks
and swallowed up his gardens every winter. At Vaucluse
Petrarch loved, and lived, and sang. He has made
Vaucluse famous, and will never be forgotten there.
But for the present the fountain is even more attractive
than the memory of the poet*
The change from Avignon to Nismes is very trying
to the latter place ; for Nismes is not picturesquely or
historically interesting. It is a prosperous modern
French town with two almost perfect Roman monu-
ments — Les Arenes and the Maison Carree. The
amphitheatre is a complete oval, visible at one glance.
Its smooth white stone, even where it has not been
restored, seems unimpaired by age; and Charles Martel's
conflagration, when he burned the Saracen hornet's nest
inside it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches
venerably. Utility and perfect adaptation of means
to ends form the beauty of Roman buildings. The
science of construction and large intelligence displayed
in'them, their strength, simplicity, solidity, and purpose,
are their glory. Perhaps there is only one modern
edifice — Palladio's Palazzo della Ragione at Vicenza
— which approaches the dignity and loftiness of Roman
* I have translated and printed at the end of this Essay some sonnets of
Petrarch as a kind of palinode for this impertinence.
324 OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE.
architecture ; and this it does because of its absolute
freedom from ornament, the vastness of its design, and
the durability of its material. The temple, called the
Maison Carree, at Nismes, is also very perfect, and
comprehended at one glance. Light, graceful, airy, but
rather thin and narrow, it reminds one of the temple of
Fortuna Virilis at Rome.
But if Nismes itself is not picturesque, its environs
contain the wonderful Pont du Gard. A two or three
hours' drive leads through a desolate country to the
valley of the Gardon, where, suddenly, at a turn of
the road, one comes upon the aqueduct. It is not within
the scope of words to describe the impression produced
by those vast arches, row above row, cutting the deep
blue sky. The domed summer clouds sailing across
them are comprehended in the gigantic span of their
perfect semicircles, which seem rather to have been
described by Miltonic compasses of Deity than by
merely human mathematics. Yet, standing beneath one
of the vaults and looking upward, you may read Roman
numerals in order from I. to X., which prove their human
origin well enough. Next to their strength, regularity,
and magnitude, the most astonishing point about this
triple tier of arches, piled one above the other to a height
of 1 80 feet above a brawling stream between two barren
hills, is their lightness. The arches are not thick ; the
causeway on the top is only just broad enough for three
men to walk abreast. So smooth and perpendicular are
the supporting walls that scarcely a shrub or tuft of
grass has grown upon the aqueduct in all these years.
And yet the huge fabric is strengthened by no buttress,
has needed no repair. This lightness of structure,
combined with such prodigious durability, produces the
strongest sense of science and self-reliant power in the
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE. 325
men who designed it. None but Romans could have
built such a monument, and have set it in such a place
— a wilderness of rock and rolling hill, scantily covered
with low brushwood, and browsed over by a few sheep —
for such a purpose, too, in order to supply Nemausus with
pure water. The modern town does pretty well without
its water ; but here subsists the civilisation of eighteen
centuries past intact : the human labour yet remains,
the measuring, contriving mind of man, shrinking from
no obstacles, spanning the air, and in one edifice com-
bining gigantic strength and perfect beauty. It is
impossible not to echo Rousseau's words in such a place,
and to say with him : " Le retentissement de mes pas
dans ces immenses voutes me faisait croire entendre la
forte voix de ceux qui les avaient baties. Je me perdais
comme un insecte dans cette immensite. Je sentais,
tout en me faisant petit, je ne sais quoi qui m'elevait
Fame ; et je me disais en soupirant, Que ne suis-je ne
Romain ! "
There is nothing at Aries which produces the same
deep and indelible impression. Yet Aries is a far more
interesting town than Nismes, partly because of the
Rhone delta which begins there, partly because of its
ruinous antiquity, and partly also because of the
strong local character of its population. The amphi-
theatre of Aries is vaster and more sublime in its desola-
tion than the tidy theatre at Nismes ; the crypts, and
dens, and subterranean passages suggest all manner of
speculation as to the uses to which they may have been
appropriated ; while the broken galleries outside, intricate
and black, and cavernous, like Piranesi's etchings of the
" Carceri," present the wildest pictures of greatness in
decay, fantastic dilapidation. The ruins of the smaller
theatre, again, with their picturesquely grouped fragments
326 OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE.
and their standing columns, might be sketched for a
frontispiece to some dilettante work on classical
antiquities. For the rest, perhaps the Aliscamps, or
ancient Roman burial-ground, is the most interesting
thing at Aries, not only because of Dante's celebrated
lines in the canto of " Farinata : " —
" Si come ad Arli ove '1 Rodano stagna,
Fanno i sepolcri tutto '1 loco varo ; "
but also because of the intrinsic picturesqueness of this
avenue of sepulchres beneath green trees upon a long
soft grassy field.
But as at Avignon and Nismes, so also at Aries, one
of the chief attractions of the place lies at a distance,
and requires a special expedition. The road to Les
Baux crosses a true Provencal desert, where one realises
the phrase, "Vieux comme les rochers de Provence," —
a wilderness of grey stone, here and there worn into
cart-tracks, and tufted with rosemary, box, lavender, and
lentisk. On the way it passes the Abbaye de Mont
Majeur, a ruin of gigantic size, embracing all periods of
architecture ; where nothing seems to flourish now but
henbane and the wild cucumber, or to breathe but a
mumble-toothed and terrible old hag. The ruin stands
above a desolate marsh, its vast Italian buildings of
Palladian splendour looking more forlorn in their decay
than the older and austerer mediaeval towers, which rise
up proud and patient and defiantly erect beneath the
curse of time. When at length what used to be the
castle town of Les Baux is reached, you find a naked
mountain of yellow sandstone, worn away by nature
into bastions and buttresses and coigns of vantage,
sculptured by ancient art into palaces and chapels,
battlements and dungeons. Now art and nature are
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE. 327
confounded in one ruin. Blocks of masonry lie cheek
by jowl with masses of the rough-hewn rock : fallen
cavern vaults are heaped round fragments of fan-shaped
spandrel and clustered column-shaft ; the doors and
windows of old pleasure-rooms are hung with ivy and
wild fig for tapestry ; winding staircases start midway
upon the cliff, and lead to vacancy. High overhead
suspended in mid-air hang chambers — lady's bower
or poet's singing-room — now inaccessible, the haunt of
hawks and swajlows. Within this rocky honeycomb —
" cette ville en monolithe," as it has been aptly called,
for it is literally scooped out of one mountain block —
live about two hundred poor people, foddering their
wretched goats at carved piscina and stately sideboards,
erecting mud-beplastered hovels in the halls of feudal
princes. Murray is wrong in calling the place a
mediaeval town in its original state, for anything more
purely ruinous, more like a decayed old cheese, cannot
possibly be conceived. The living only inhabit the
tombs of the dead. At the end of the last century, when
revolutionary effervescence was beginning to ferment,
the people of Aries swept all its feudality away, defacing
the very arms upon the town gate, and trampling the
palace towers to dust.
The castle looks out across a vast extent of plain
over Aries, the stagnant Rhone, the Camargue, and
the salt pools of the lingering sea. In old days it was
the eyrie of an eagle race called Seigneurs of Les Baux;
and whether they took their title from the rock, or
whether, as genealogists would have it, they gave
the name of Oriental Balthazar — their reputed ances-
tor, one of the Magi — to the rock itself, remains a
mystery not greatly worth the solving.
Anyhow, here they lived and flourished, these feudal
328 OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE.
princes, bearing for their ensign a silver comet of
sixteen rays upon a field of gules — themselves a comet
race, baleful to the neighbouring lowlands, blazing
with lurid splendour over wide tracts of country, a
burning, raging, fiery-souled, swift-handed tribe, in
whom a flame unquenchable glowed from son to sire
through twice five hundred years until in the sixteenth
century they were burned out, and nothing remained
but cinders — these broken ruins of their eyrie, and some
outworn and dusty titles. Very strange are the fate
and history of these same titles : King of Aries, for
instance, savouring of troubadour and high romance;
Prince of Tarentum, smacking of old plays and Italian
novels ; Prince of Orange, which the Nassaus, through
the Chalons, seized in all its emptiness long after the real
principality had passed away, and came therewith to sit
on England's throne.
The Les Baux in their heyday were patterns of
feudal nobility. They warred incessantly with Counts
of Provence, archbishops and burghers of Aries, Queens
of Naples, Kings of Aragon. Crusading, pillaging,
betraying, spending their substance on the sword, and
buying it again by deeds of valour or imperial acts
of favour, tuning troubadour harps, presiding at courts
of love, — they filled a large page in the history of
Southern France. The Les Baux were very super-
stitious. In the fulness of their prosperity they
restricted the number of their dependent towns, or
places baussenques, to seventy- nine, because these
numbers in combination were thought to be of good
omen to their house. Beral des Baux, Seigneur of
Marseilles, was one day starting on a journey with
his whole force to Avignon. He met an old woman
herb-gathering at daybreak, and said, "Mother, hast
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE. 329
thou seen a crow or other bird ? " " Yea," answered
the crone, "on the trunk of a dead willow." Beral
counted upon his fingers the day of the year, and
turned bridle. With troubadours of name and note
they had dealings, but not always to their own advan-
tage, as the following story testifies. When the Baux
and Berengers were struggling for the countship of
Provence, Raymond Berenger, by his wife's counsel,
went, attended by troubadours, to meet the Emperor
Frederick at Milan. There he sued for the investiture
and ratification of Provence. His troubadours sang
and charmed Frederick ; and the Emperor, for the joy
he had in them, wrote his celebrated lines beginning —
" Plas mi cavalier Francez."
And when Berenger made his request he met with no
refusal. Hearing thereof, the lords of Baux came down
in wrath with a clangour of armed men. But music
had already gained the day; and where the Phcebus
of Provence had shone, the iEolus of storm-shaken
Les Baux was powerless. Again, when Blacas, a
knight of Provence, died, the great Sordello chanted
one of his most fiery hymns, bidding the princes of
Christendom flock round and eat the heart of the
dead lord. " Let Rambaude des Baux," cries the
bard, with a sarcasm that is clearly meant, but at
this distance almost unintelligible, "take also a good
piece, for she is fair and good and truly virtuous ; let
her keep it well who knows so well to husband her own
weal." But the poets were not always adverse to
the house of Baux. Fouquet, the beautiful and gentle
melodist whom Dante placed in paradise, served
Adelaisie, wife of Berald, with long service of un-
happy love, and wrote upon her death "The Com-
33° OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE.
plaint of Berald des Baux for Adelaisie." Guillaume
de Cabestan loved Berangere des Baux, and was so
loved by her that she gave him a philtre to drink,
whereof he sickened and grew mad. Many more
troubadours are cited as having frequented the castle
of Les Baux, and among the members of the princely
house were several poets.
Some of them were renowned for beauty. We hear
of a Cecile, called Passe Rose, because of her exceed-
ing loveliness ; also of an unhappy Francois who, after
passing eighteen years in prison, yet won the grace
and love of Joan of Naples by his charms. But the
real temper of this fierce tribe was not shown among
troubadours, or in the courts of love and beauty. The
stern and barren rock from which they sprang, and
the comet of their scutcheon, are the true symbols of
their nature. History records no end of their ravages
and slaughters. It is a tedious catalogue of blood —
how one prince put to fire and sword the whole town
of Courthezon ; how another was stabbed in prison by
his wife; how a third besieged the castle of his niece,
and sought to undermine her chamber, knowing her
the while to be in childbed ; how a fourth was flayed
alive outside the walls of Avignon. There is nothing
terrible, splendid, and savage, belonging to feudal
history, of which an example may not be found in
the annals of Les Baux, as narrated by their chronicler,
Jules Canonge.
However abrupt may seem the transition from these
memories of the ancient nobles of Les Baux to mere
matters of travel and picturesqueness, it would be im-
possible to take leave of the old towns of Provence
without glancing at the cathedrals of St Trophime
at Aries, and of St Gilles — a village on the border
OLD TOWNS OF PROVENCE. 331
of the dreary flamingo-haunted Camargue. Both of
these buildings have porches splendidly incrusted with
sculptures, half-classical, half-mediaeval, marking the
transition from ancient to modern art. But that of
St Gilles is by far the richer and more elaborate. The
whole facade of this church is one mass of intricate
decoration ; Norman arches and carved lions, like those
of Lombard architecture, mingling fantastically with
Greek scrolls of fruit and flowers, with elegant Cor-
inthian columns jutting out upon the church steps,
and with the old conventional wave -border that is
called Etruscan in our modern jargon. From the
midst of florid fret and foliage lean mild faces of saints
and Madonnas. Symbols of evangelists with half-
human, half-animal eyes and wings, are interwoven
with the leafy bowers of Cupids. Grave apostles stand
erect beneath acanthus wreaths that ought to crisp
the forehead of a laughing Faun or Bacchus. And
yet so full, exuberant, and deftly-chosen are these
various elements, that there remains no sense of incon-
gruity or discord. The mediaeval spirit had much
trouble to disentangle itself from classic reminiscences ;
and, fortunately for the picturesqueness of St Gilles,
it did not succeed. How strangely different is the
result of this transition in the south from those severe
and rigid forms which we call Romanesque in Germany
and Normandy and England.
EIGHT SONNETS OF PETRARCH.
ON THE PAPAL COURT AT AVIGNON.
FOUNTAIN of woe ! Harbour of endless ire !
Thou school of errors, haunt of heresies !
•Once Rome, now Babylon, the world's disease,
That maddenest men with fears and fell desire !
O forge of fraud I O prison dark and dire,
Where dies the good, where evil breeds increase !
Thou living Hell I Wonders will never cease
If Christ rise not to purge thy sins with fire.
Founded in chaste and humble poverty,
Against thy founders thou dost raise thy horn,
Thou shameless harlot ! And whence flows this
pride ?
Even from foul and loathed adultery,
The wage of lewdness. Constantine, return !
Not so : the felon world its fate must bide.
SONNETS OF PETRARCH. 333
TO STEFANO COLONNA.
WRITTEN FROM VAUCLUSE.
GLORIOUS Colonna, thou on whose high head
Rest all our hopes and the great Latin name,
Whom from the narrow path of truth and fame
The wrath of Jove turned not with stormful dread :
Here are no palace-courts, no stage to tread;
But pines and oaks the shadowy valleys fill
Between the green fields and the neighbouring hill,
Where musing oft I climb by fancy led.
These lift from earth to heaven our soaring soul,
While the sweet nightingale, that in thick bowers
Through darkness pours her wail of tuneful woe,
Doth bend our charmed breast to love's control;
But thou alone hast marred this bliss of ours,
Since from our side, dear lord, thou needs must go.
3 34 SONNE TS OF PE 7RA R CH.
IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. XI.
ON LEAVING AVIGNON.
Backward at every weary step and slow
These limbs I turn which with great pain I bear ;
Then take I comfort from the fragrant air
That breathes from thee, and sighing onward go.
But when I think how joy is turned to woe,
Remembering my short life and whence I fare,
I stay my feet for anguish and despair,
And cast my tearful eyes on earth below.
At times amid the storm of misery
This doubt assails me : how frail limbs and poor
Can severed from their spirit hope to live.
Then answers Love : Hast thou no memory
How I to lovers this great guerdon give,
Free from all human bondage to endure ?
SONNETS OF PETRARCH. 335
IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. XII.
THOUGHTS IN ABSENCE.
THE wrinkled sire with hair like winter snow
Leaves the loved spot where he hath passed his
years,
Leaves wife and children, dumb with bitter tears,
To see their father's tottering steps and slow.
Dragging his aged limbs with weary woe,
In these last days of life he nothing fears,
But with stout heart his fainting spirit cheers,
And spent and wayworn forward still doth go ;
Then comes to Rome, following his heart's desire,
To gaze upon the portraiture of Him
Whom yet he hopes in heaven above to see :
Thus I, alas ! my seeking spirit tire,
Lady, to find in other features dim
The longed for, loved, true lineaments of thee.
336 SONNETS OF PETRARCH.
IN VITA DI MADONNA LAURA. LII.
OH THAT I HAD WINGS LIKE A DOVE !
I AM so tired beneath the ancient load
Of my misdeeds and custom's tyranny,
That much I fear to fail upon the road
And yield my soul unto mine enemy.
'Tis true a friend from whom all splendour flowed,
To save me came with matchless courtesy;
Then flew far up from sight to heaven's abode,
So that I strive in vain his face to see.
Yet still his voice reverberates here below :
O ye who labour, lo ! the path is here ;
Come unto me if none your going stay!
What grace, what love, what fate surpassing fear
Shall give me wings like dove's wings soft as snow,
That I may rest and raise me from the clay ?
SONNE TS OF PE TRA R CI/ 337
IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. XXIV.
THE eyes whereof I sang my fervid song,
The arms, the hands, the feet, the face benign,
Which severed me from what was rightly mine
And made me sole and strange amid the throng,
The crisped curls of pure gold beautiful,
And those angelic smiles which once did shine
Imparadising earth with joy divine,
Are now a little dust — dumb, deaf, and dull.
And yet I live ! wherefore I weep and wail,
Left lone without the light I loved so long,
Storm-tossed upon a bark that hath no sail.
Then let me here give o'er my amorous song ;
The fountains of old inspiration fail,
And nought but woe my dolorous chords prolong.
338 SONNETS OF PETRARCH.
IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. XXXIV.
In thought I raised me to the place where she
Whom still on earth I seek and find not, shines ;
There 'mid the souls whom the third sphere con-
fines,
More fair I found her and less proud to me.
She took my hand and said : Here shalt thou be
With me ensphered, unless desires mislead;
Lo ! I am she who made thy bosom bleed,
Whose day ere eve was ended utterly :
My bliss no mortal heart can understand ;
Thee only do I lack, and that which thou
So loved, now left on earth, my beauteous veil.
Ah ! wherefore did she cease and loose my hand ?
For at the sound of that celestial tale
I all but stayed in paradise till now.
SONNETS OF PETRARCH. 339
IN MORTE DI MADONNA LAURA. LXXIV.
The flower of angels and the spirits blest,
Burghers of heaven, on that first day when she
Who is my lady died, around her pressed
Fulfilled with wonder and with piety.
What light is this ? what beauty manifest ?
Marvelling they cried : for such supremacy
Of splendour in this age to our high rest
Hath never soared from earth's obscurity.
She, glad to have exchanged her spirit's place,
Consorts with those whose virtues most exceed ;
At times the while she backward turns her face
To see me follow — seems to wait and plead :
Therefore toward heaven my will and soul I raise,
Because I hear her praying me to speed.
THE END.
PKINTKD BY BALLANTYNB, AND COMI'ANY
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
§g % same Juiijrar.
Crown 8vo, ios. 6d.
STUDIES OF THE GREEK POETS.
By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, M.A.
A SELECTION OF NOTICES BY THE PRESS.
"The poetry of Greece in these pages is well presented in its main
characteristics to the general reader. . . . We cannot part from this
delightful work without again expressing our entire satisfaction with its
great and varied merits." — Standard.
"We have seen nothing so well suited to English readers who wish to
acquire some knowledge of Greek poetry as this book." — Athenaum.
"These essays popularize the results of scholarship with great ability-
They hit the right level of pleasurable reading; and while they demand
an educated mind for their full appreciation, they yet yield much which
will inform and interest those who know merely the broader facts of
ancient history, and a few of the greater literary names. The great
number who, without becoming scholars, have had their minds coloured
with the tints and warmed with the radiance of scholarship, will be able
to refresh the colouring, and rekindle the glow by means of these essays ;
and all who wish to know and to own what a great debt the modern world
of thought owes to the ancient, as they find the poets the best interpreters of
that ancient world, exceeding far in the hermeneutics of feeling all that we
find in philosophers, historians, and orators together, so they will find in
Mr Symonds an excellent interpreter of the ancient poets in a very
moderate compass. " — Saturday Review.
" We know few books that are more delightful reading from beginning
to end. It has been eminently a labour of love to the author ; he writes at
times as if intoxicated with the beauty of his subject ; and he writes with
sufficient power to make all ordinarily susceptible readers share his
enthusiasm. " — Examiner.
" He has given us an excellent contribution to the knowledge of the Greek
poets, whose works will always retain an inexhaustible charm. He has
written in such a manner as to secure success of two kinds. Students of
the same literature will read his pages with pleasure, even where they
take us over well-known ground. Ordinary readers, on the other hand,
of the class for whom the series of ' Ancient Classics for English Readers '
is designed, will find these 'studies' both enjoyable and useful." — North
British Daily Mail.
LONDON : SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE.
% same Jlutljor.
Crown Svo, Js. 6d.
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF DANTE.
By JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, M.A.
A SELECTION OF NOTICES BY THE PRESS.
" We cannot part with Mr Symonds's charming work without acknow-
ledging the 'abounding pleasure' with which we have read it, and the
rare information we have gleaned from its treasures of learning." — Graphic.
" Though we cannot agree with all that the writer has here said in his
criticisms, yet there is much which a lover of Dante will appreciate and
approve." — Athenesum.
" Few could read his book without having their ideas of the great
Florentine enlarged. The frontispiece to the volume is a striking photo-
graph from a cast said to have been taken from the head of Dante after
death. It confirms in a most remarkable degree the celebrated portrait
by Giotto." — Daily News.
" The power of conveying judgments which are compendious and lumin-
ous at once, and which imply at once extensiveness of knowledge and
subtlety in comparing the parts of knowledge together, is a power proper
only to organs of criticism that are mature and highly developed ; and
Mr Symonds shows it in a remarkable degree." — Fortnightly Review.
" This is an extremely able essay on the study of Dante." — Liverpool
Albion. •
" This introduction to the study of Dante is, in our estimation, a master-
piece of popular expository criticism. Not only does Mr Symonds display
an intimate acquaintance with the history and culture of Dante's own
time, and of the period that preceded it, but he brings to bear on the
interpretation of the great epic of the middle ages a comprehensive
knowledge and philosophical grasp of the whole subsequent course of
civilisation down to the present day. He understands and sympathises
as thoroughly with the audience he addresses as he does with the poet
he expounds, and he thus possesses a double qualification for the
exceedingly difficult task that he has undertaken." — Examiner.
" Mr Symonds's thoughtful and interesting volume is a vaulable contri-
bution to English Dantesque literature." — John Bull.
"Mr Symonds knows his subject thoroughly. He has a refined and
sensitive appreciation of literary and poetic art, and he combines his
knowledge and taste with an intellectual grasp, without which knowledge
is apt to be dry, and taste mawkish and sentimental." — Spectator.
" Our author's style is so delightful, his criticisms for the most part
so excellent, the points he discusses so numerous and so varied, and the
interest with which he invests the subject so sustained, that we should be
hard to please if we required more. We can unhesitatingly recommend
his book to students of Dante, for the interesting and tasteful criticism
which it contains.'' — Academy.
LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE.
p
University of California
SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY
305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388
Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.
REC'D YRL
APR
29 2003