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