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 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
WORKS BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. 
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ITALIAN BYWAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 STUDIES OF GREEK POETS," "RENAISSANCE IN ITALY," "SKETCHES IN ITALY 
 AND GREECE," ETC. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE. 
 
 1883. 
 
 [All rights reserved. 1 
 
These Sketches are in part reprinted from the " Conihtll 
 Magazine^' '' Eraser's Magazine^' and the ''Fortnightly 
 Review^ 
 
 Davos Platz, Jamiary 1883. 
 
s«7 
 
 TO 
 
 CHRISTIAN BUOL AND CHRISTIAN PALMY 
 
 MY FRIENDS AND FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK. 
 
 M5^^8tl 
 
?lfe^C CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 ^UTUMN WANDERINGS I 
 
 MONTE OLIVETO . ^7 ■^. ' 21 
 
 MONTEPULCIANO 4 1 
 
 FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO 64 
 
 SPRING WANDERINGS .v^^.v 83 
 
 < MAY IN UMBRIA . 102 
 
 THE PALACE OF URBINO 1 29 
 
 VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI 1 56 
 
 A VENETIAN MEDLEY 1 94 
 
 THE gondolier's WEDDING 23 1 
 
 A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS 253 
 
 CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE . , . . 282 
 
 BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN 312 
 
 WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS . . . . , -332 
 
 1^ ■^ 
 
ITALIAN BYWAYS, 
 
 AUTUMN WANDERINGS. 
 I. — Italiam Petimus. 
 
 Italiam petimus! We left our upland home before day-' 
 break on a clear October morning. There had been a hard 
 frost, spangling the meadows with rime-crystals, which twinkled 
 where the sun's rays touched them. Men and women were 
 mowing the frozen grass with thin short Alpine scythes ; and 
 as the swathes fell, they gave a crisp, an almost tinkhng 
 sound. Down into the gorge, surnamed of Avalanche, our 
 horses plunged ; and there we lost the sunshine till we 
 reached the Bear's Walk, opening upon the vales of Albula, 
 and Julier, and Schyn. But up above, shone morning light 
 upon fresh snow, and steep torrent-cloven slopes reddening 
 with a hundred fading plants; now and then it caught the 
 grey-green icicles that hung from cliffs where summer streams 
 had dripped. There is no colour lovelier than the blue of 
 an autumn sky in the high Alps, defining ridges powdered 
 with light snow, and melting imperceptibly downward into 
 the warm yellow of the larches and the crimson of the 
 bilberry. Wiesen was radiantly beautiful : those aerial ranges 
 of the hills that separate Albula from Julier soared crystal- 
 clear above their forests ; and for a foreground, on the green 
 
2 ITALIAN BYWAYS, 
 
 fields starred with lilac crocuses, careered a group of children 
 on their sledges. Then came the row of giant peaks — Pitz 
 d'Aela, Tinzenhorn, and Michelhorn, above the deep ravine 
 of Albula — all seen across wide undulating golden swards, 
 close-shaven and awaiting winter. Carnations hung from 
 cottage windows in full bloom, casting sharp angular black 
 shadows on white walls. 
 
 Italia7n petimiis ! We have climbed the valley of the 
 Julier, following its green, transparent torrent. A night has 
 come and gone at Miihlen. The stream still leads us up, 
 diminishing in volume as we rise, up through the fleecy 
 mists that roll asunder for the sun, disclosing far-off snowy 
 ridges and blocks of granite mountains. The lifeless, sound- 
 less waste of rock, where only thin winds whistle out of 
 silence and fade suddenly into still air, is passed. Then 
 comes the descent, with its forests of larch and cembra, 
 golden and dark green upon a ground of grey, and in front 
 the serried shafts of the Bernina, and here and there a 
 glimpse of emerald lake at turnings of the road. Autumn 
 is the season for this landscape. Through the fading of 
 innumerable leaflets, the yellowing of larches, and something 
 vaporous in the low sun, it gains a colour not unlike that 
 of the lands we seek. By the side of the lake at Silvaplana 
 the light was strong and warm, but mellow. Pearly clouds 
 hung over the Maloja, and floating overhead cast shadows 
 on the opaque water, which may literally be compared to 
 chrysoprase. The breadth of golden, brown, and russet 
 tints upon the valley at this moment adds softness to its 
 lines of level strength. Devotees of the Engadine contend 
 that it possesses an austere charm beyond the common 
 beauty of Swiss landscape ; but this charm is only perfected 
 in autumn. The fresh snow on the heights that guard it 
 helps. And then there are the forests of dark pines upon 
 those many knolls and undulating mountain-flanks beside 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS. 3 
 
 the lakes. Sitting and dreaming there in noonday sun, I 
 kept repeating to myself I/aliam pe^imus / 
 
 A hurricane blew upward from the pass as we left Silva- 
 plana, ruffling the lake with gusts of the Italian wind. By 
 Silz Maria we came in sight of a dozen Italian workmen, arm 
 linked in arm in two rows, tramping in rhythmic stride, and 
 singing as they went. Two of them were such nobly-built 
 young men, that for a moment the beauty of the landscape 
 faded from my sight, and I was saddened. They moved to 
 their singing, like some of Mason's or Frederick Walker's 
 figures, with the free grace of living statues, and laughed as 
 we drove by. And yet, with all their beauty, industry, 
 sobriety, intelligence, these Italians of the northern valleys 
 serve the sterner people of the Grisons like negroes, doing 
 their roughest work at scanty wages. 
 
 So we came to the vast Alpine wall, and stood on a bare 
 granite slab, and looked over into Italy, as men might lean 
 from the battlements of a fortress. Behind lies the Alpine 
 valley, grim, declining slowly northward, with wind-lashed 
 lakes and glaciers sprawling from storm-broken pyramids of 
 gneiss. Below spread the unfathomable depths that lead to 
 Lombardy, flooded with sunlight, filled with swirling vapour, 
 but never wholly hidden from our sight. For the blast kept 
 shifting the cloud-masses, and the sun streamed through in 
 spears and bands of sheeny rays. Over the parapet our 
 horses dropped, down through sable spruce and amber larch, 
 down between tangles of rowan and autumnal underwood. 
 Ever as we sank, the mountains rose — those sharp embattled 
 precipices, toppling spires, impendent chasms blurred with 
 mist, that make the entrance into Italy sublime. Nowhere 
 do the Alps exhibit their full stature, their commanding 
 puissance, with such majesty as in the gates of Italy; and 
 of all those gates I think there is none to compare with 
 Maloja, none certainly to rival it in abruptness of initia- 
 
4 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 tion into the Italian secret. Below Vico Soprano we pass 
 already into the violets and blues of Titian's landscape. 
 Then come the purple boulders among chestnut trees ; then 
 the double dolomite-like peak of Pitz Badin and Promon- 
 togno. 
 
 It is sad that words can do even less than painting could 
 to bring this window-scene at Promontogno before another 
 eye. The casement just frames it. In the foreground are 
 meadow slopes, thinly, capriciously planted with chestnut 
 trees and walnuts, each standing with its shadow cast upon 
 the sward. A little farther falls the torrent, foaming down 
 between black jaws of rain-stained granite, with the wooden 
 buildings of a rustic mill set on a ledge of rock. Suddenly 
 above this landscape soars the valley, clothing its steep 
 sides on either hand with pines ; and there are emerald 
 isles of pasture on the wooded flanks ; and then cliffs, where 
 the red-stemmed larches glow ; and at the summit, shooting 
 into ether with a swathe of mist around their basement, 
 soar the double peaks, the one a pyramid, the other a bold 
 broken crystal not unlike the Finsteraarhorn seen from 
 Furka. These are connected by a snowy saddle, and snow 
 is lying on their inaccessible crags in powdery drifts. Sun- 
 light pours between them into the ravine. The green and 
 golden forests now join from either side, and now recede, 
 according as the sinuous valley brings their lines together 
 or disparts them. There is a sound of cow-bells on the 
 meadows ; and the roar of the stream is dulled or quickened 
 as the gusts of this October wind sweep by or slacken. 
 Jtaliam pethnus ! 
 
 TangifJius Jtaliam ! Chiavenna is a worthy key to this 
 great gate Italian. We walked at night in the open galleries 
 of the cathedral -cloister — white, smoothly curving, well- 
 proportioned loggie, enclosing a green space, whence soars 
 the campanile to the stars. The moon had sunk, but her 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS. 5 
 
 light still silvered the mountains that stand at watch round 
 Chiavenna; and the castle rock was flat and black against 
 that dreamy background. Jupiter, who walked so lately 
 for us on the long ridge of the Jacobshorn above our pines, 
 had now an ample space of sky over Lombardy to light his 
 lamp in. Why is it, we asked each other, as we smoked 
 our pipes and strolled, my friend and I ; — why is it that 
 Italian beauty does not leave the spirit so untroubled as an 
 Alpine scene? Why do we here desire the flower of some 
 emergent feeling to grow from the air, or from the soil, or 
 from humanity to greet us ? This sense of want evoked by 
 Southern beauty is perhaps the antique mythopoeic yearning. 
 But in our perplexed life it takes another form, and seems 
 the longing for emotion, ever fleeting, ever new, unrealised, 
 unreal, insatiable. 
 
 11. — Over the Apennines. 
 
 At Parma we slept in the Albergo della Croce Bianca, 
 which is more a bric-a-brac shop than an inn; and slept 
 but badly, for the good folk of Parma twanged guitars and 
 exercised their hoarse male voices all night in the street 
 below. We were glad when Christian called us, at 5 a.m., 
 for an early start across the Apennines. This was the day 
 of a right Roman journey. In thirteen and a half hours, 
 leaving Parma at 6, and arriving in Sarzana at 7.30, we flung 
 ourselves across the spine of Italy, from the plains of Eridanus 
 to the seashore of Etruscan Luna. I had secured a carriage 
 and extra post-horses the night before ; therefore we found 
 no obstacles upon the road, but eager drivers, quick relays, 
 obsequious postmasters, change, speed, perpetual movement. 
 The road itself is a noble one, and nobly entertained in all 
 things but accommodation for travellers. At Berceto, near 
 the summit of the pass, we stopped just half an hour, to 
 
6 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 lunch off a mouldy hen and six eggs ; but that was all the 
 halt we made. 
 
 As we drove out of Parma, striking across the plain to the 
 gh'ara of the Taro, the sun rose over the austere autumnal 
 landscape, with its withered vines and crimson haws. Chris- 
 tian, the mountaineer, who at home had never seen the sun 
 rise from a flat horizon, stooped from the box to call atten- 
 tion to this daily recurring miracle, which on the plain of 
 Lombardy is no less wonderful than on a rolling sea. From 
 the village of Fornovo, where the Italian League was camped 
 awaiting Charles VIII. upon that memorable July morn in 
 1495, the road strikes suddenly aside, gains a spur of the 
 descending Apennines, and keeps this vantage till the pass 
 of La Cisa is reached. Many windings are occasioned by 
 thus adhering to aretes, but the total result is a gradual 
 ascent with free prospect over plain and mountain. The 
 Apennines, built up upon a smaller scale than the Alps, 
 perplexed in detail and entangled with cross sections and 
 convergent systems, lend themselves to this plan of carrying 
 highroads along their ridges instead of following the valley. 
 
 What is beautiful in the landscape of that northern water- 
 shed is the subtlety, delicacy, variety, and intricacy of the 
 mountain outlines. There is drawing wherever the eye falls. 
 Each section of the vast expanse is a picture of tossed crests 
 and complicated undulations. And over the whole sea of 
 stationary billows, light is shed like an ethereal raiment, with 
 spare colour — blue and grey, and parsimonious green — in 
 the near foreground. The detail is somewhat dry and mono- 
 tonous; for these so finely moulded hills are made up of 
 washed earth, the immemorial wrecks of earlier mountain 
 ranges. Brown villages, not unlike those of Midland Eng- 
 land, low houses built of stone and tiled with stone, and 
 square-towered churches, occur at rare intervals in cultivated 
 hollows, where there are fields and fruit trees. Water is 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS. 7 
 
 nowhere visible except in the wasteful river-beds. As we 
 rise, we break into a wilder country, forested with oak, where 
 oxen and goats are browsing. The turf is starred with lilac 
 gentian and crocus bells, but sparely. Then comes the 
 highest village, Berceto, with keen Alpine air. After that, 
 broad rolling downs of yellowing grass and russet beech-scrub 
 lead onward to the pass La Cisa. The sense of breadth in 
 composition is continually satisfied through this ascent by 
 the fine-drawn lines, faint tints, and immense air-spaces of 
 Italian landscape. Each little piece reminds one of England ; 
 but the geographical scale is enormously more grandiose, 
 and the effect of majesty proportionately greater. 
 
 From La Cisa the road descends suddenly; for the southern 
 escarpment of the Apennine, as of the Alpine, barrier is 
 pitched at a far steeper angle than the northern. Yet there 
 is no view of the sea. That is excluded by the lower hills 
 which hem the Magra. The upper valley is beautiful, with 
 verdant lawns and purple hillsides breaking down into thick 
 chestnut woods, through which we wound at a rapid pace for 
 nearly an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to 
 golden ; but the fruit was ripe and heavy, ready at all points 
 to fall. In the still October air the husks above our heads 
 would loosen, and the brown nuts rustle through the foliage, 
 and with a dull short thud, like drops of thunder-rain, break 
 down upon the sod. At the foot of this rich forest, wedged 
 in between huge buttresses, we found Pontremoli, and 
 changed our horses here for the last time. It was Sunday, 
 and the little town was alive with country-folk; tall stalwart 
 fellows wearing peacock's feathers in their black slouched 
 hats, and nut-brown maids. 
 
 From this point the valley of the Magra is exceeding rich 
 with fruit trees, vines, and olives. The tendrils of the vine 
 are yellow now, and in some places hued like generous wine ; 
 through their thick leaves the sun shot crimson. In one cool 
 
8 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 garden, as the day grew dusk, I noticed quince trees laden 
 with pale fruit entangled with pomegranates — green spheres 
 and ruddy amid burnished leaves. By the roadside too were 
 many berries of bright hues ; the glowing red of haws and 
 hips, the amber of the pyracanthus, the rose tints of the 
 spindle- wood. These make autumn even loveher than spring. 
 And then there was a wood of chestnuts carpeted with pale 
 pink ling, a place to dream of in the twilight. But the main 
 motive of this landscape was the indescribable Carrara range, 
 an island of pure form and shooting peaks, solid marble, 
 crystalline in shape and texture, faintly blue against the 
 blue sky, from which they were but scarce divided. These 
 mountains close the valley to south-east, and seem as though 
 they belonged to another and more celestial region. 
 
 Soon the sunlight was gone, and moonrise came to close 
 the day, as we rolled onward to Sarzana, through arundo 
 donax and vine-girdled olive trees and villages, where con- 
 tadini lounged upon the bridges. There was a stream of 
 sound in our ears, and in my brain a rhythmic dance of 
 beauties caught through the long-drawn glorious golden 
 autumn-day. 
 
 III. — FOSDINOVO. 
 
 The hamlet and the castle of Fosdinovo stand upon a 
 mountain-spur above Sarzana, commanding the valley of the 
 Magra and the plains of Luni. This is an ancient fief of the 
 Malaspina House, and is still in the possession of the Marquis 
 of that name. 
 
 The road to Fosdinovo strikes across the level through an 
 avenue of plane trees, shedding their discoloured leaves. It 
 then takes to the open fields, bordered with tall reeds waving 
 from the foss on either hand, where grapes are hanging to the 
 vines. The country-folk allow their vines to climb into the 
 olives, and these golden festoons are a great ornament to the 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS. 9 
 
 grey branches. The berries on the trees are still quite green, 
 and it is a good olive season. Leaving the main road, we 
 pass a villa of the Malaspini, shrouded in immense thickets of 
 sweet bay and ilex, forming a grove for the Nymphs or Pan. 
 Here may you see just such clean stems and lucid foliage 
 as Gian Bellini painted, inch by inch, in his Peter Martyr 
 picture. The place is neglected now ; the semicircular seats 
 of white Carrara marble are stained with green mosses, the 
 altars chipped, the fountains choked with bay leaves ; and the 
 rose trees, escaped from what were once trim garden alleys, 
 have gone wandering a-riot into country hedges. There is no 
 demarcation between the great man's villa and the neighbour- 
 ing farms. From this point the path rises, and the barren 
 hillside is a-bloom with late-flowering myrtles. Why did the 
 Greeks consecrate these myrtle-rods to Death as well as Love ? 
 Electra complained that her father's tomb had not received 
 the honour of the myrtle branch ; and the Athenians wreathed 
 their swords with myrtle in memory of Harmodius. Think- 
 ing of these matters, I cannot but remember lines of Greek, 
 which have themselves the rectitude and elasticity of myrtle 
 wands : 
 
 Kal TTpoaTreawv l/cXavor' eprjfjiias tvx<ji}v 
 (TTrovdds re XiJaas olckov 8v (pipu ^evon 
 iaireia-a rvfi^Ci) 5' d/xcpedrjKa /xvpalvas. 
 
 As we approach Fosdinovo, the hills above us gain sub- 
 limity ; the prospect over plain and sea — the fields where 
 Luna was, the widening bay of Spezzia — grows ever grander. 
 The castle is a ruin, still capable of partial habitation, and 
 now undergoing repair — the state in which a ruin looks most 
 sordid and forlorn. How strange it is, too, that, to enforce 
 this sense of desolation, sad dishevelled weeds cling ever to 
 such antique masonry ! Here are the henbane, the sow- 
 thistle, the wild cucumber. At Avignon, at Orvieto, at Dolce 
 Acqua, at Les Baux, we never missed them. And they have 
 
lo ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 the dusty courtyards, the massive portals, where portculUses 
 still threaten, of Fosdinovo to themselves. Over the gate, 
 and here and there on corbels, are carved the arms of Mala- 
 spina — a barren thorn-tree, gnarled with the geometrical pre- 
 cision of heraldic irony. 
 
 Leaning from the'narrow windows of this castle, with the 
 spacious view to westward, I thought of Dante. For Dante 
 in this castle was the guest of Moroello Malaspina, what time 
 he was yet finishing the "Inferno." There is a little old 
 neglected garden, full to south, enclosed upon a rampart 
 which commands the Borgo, where we found frail canker- 
 roses and yellow amaryllis. Here, perhaps, he may have sat 
 with ladies — for this was the Marchesa's pleasaunce ; or may 
 have watched through a short summer's night, until he saw 
 that tremolar delta 7narina^ portending dawn, which afterwards 
 he painted in the "Purgatory." 
 
 From Fosdinovo one can trace the Magra work its way out 
 seaward, not into the plain where once the candentia mosnia 
 Lunce flashed sunrise from their battlements, but close beside 
 the little hills which back the southern arrn of the Spezzian 
 gulf. At the extreme end of that promontory, called Del 
 Corvo, stood the Benedictine convent of S. Croce ; and it 
 was here in 1309, if we may trust to tradition, that Dante, 
 before his projected journey into France, appeared and left 
 the first part of his poem with the Prior. Fra Ilario, such was 
 the good father's name, received commission to transmit the 
 " Inferno " to Uguccione della Faggiuola ; and he subsequently 
 recorded the fact of Dante's visit in a letter which, though its 
 genuineness has been called in question, is far too interesting 
 to be left without allusion. The writer says that on occasion 
 of a journey into lands beyond the Riviera, Dante visited this 
 convent, appearing silent and unknown among the monks. 
 To the Prior's question what he wanted, he gazed upon the 
 brotherhood, and only answered, " Peace ! " Afterwards, in 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS. ii 
 
 private conversation, he communicated his name and spoke 
 about his poem. A portion of the "Divine Comedy" composed 
 in the ItaUan tongue aroused Ilario's wonder, and led him to 
 inquire why his guest had not followed the usual course of 
 learned poets by committing his thoughts to Latin. Dante re- 
 plied that he had first intended to write in that language, and 
 that he had gone so far as to begin the poem in Virgilian hexa- 
 meters. Reflection upon the altered conditions of society in 
 that age led him, however, to reconsider the matter ; and he 
 was resolved to tune another lyre, "suited to the sense of 
 modern men." "For," said he, "it is idle to set solid food 
 before the lips of sucklings." 
 
 If we can trust Fra Ilario's letter as a genuine record, which 
 is unhappily a matter of some doubt, we have in this narra- 
 tion not only a picturesque, almost a melodramatically pic- 
 turesque glimpse of the poet's apparition to those quiet monks 
 in their seagirt house of peace, but also an interesting record 
 of the destiny which presided over the first great work of 
 literary art in a distinctly modern language. 
 
 IV. La Spezzia. 
 
 While w^e were at Fosdinovo the sky filmed over, and there 
 came a halo round the sun. This portended change ; and by 
 evening, after we had reached La Spezzia, earth, sea, and air 
 were conscious of a coming tempest. At night I went down 
 to the shore, and paced the sea-wall they have lately built 
 along the Rada. The moon was up, but overdriven with dry 
 smoky clouds, now thickening to blackness over the whole 
 bay, now leaving intervals through which the light poured 
 fitfully and fretfully upon the wrinkled waves ; and ever and 
 anon they shuddered with electric gleams which were not 
 actual lightning. Heaven seemed to be descending on the 
 sea ; one might have fancied that some powerful charms were 
 
12 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 drawing down the moon with influence malign upon those 
 still resisting billows. For not as yet the gulf was troubled to 
 its depth, and not as yet the breakers dashed in foam against 
 the moonlight-smitten promontories. There was but an un- 
 easy murmuring of wave to wave ; a whispering of wind, 
 that stooped its wing and hissed along the surface, and with- 
 drew into the mystery of clouds again ; a momentary chafing 
 of churned water round the harbour piers, subsiding into 
 silence petulant and sullen. I leaned against an iron stan- 
 chion and longed for the sea's message. But nothing came 
 to me, and the drowned secret of Shelley's death those waves 
 which were his grave revealed not. 
 
 " Howler and scooper of storms ! capricious and dainty sea ! " 
 
 Meanwhile the incantation swelled in shrillness, the electric 
 shudders deepened. Alone in this elemental overture to tem- 
 pest I took no note of time, but felt, through self-abandonment 
 to the symphonic influence, how sea and air, and clouds akin 
 to both, were dealing with each other complainingly, and in 
 compliance to some maker of unrest within them. A touch 
 upon my shoulder broke this trance ; I turned and saw a boy 
 beside me in a coastguard's uniform. Francesco was on patrol 
 that night ; but my English accent soon assured him that I 
 was no contrabbandiere, and he too leaned against the stanchion 
 and told me his short story. He was in his nineteenth year, 
 and came from Florence, where his people live in the Borgo 
 Ognissanti. He had all the brightness of the Tuscan folk, a 
 sort of innocent malice mixed with espieglerie. It was divert- 
 ing to see the airs he gave himself on the strength of his new 
 military dignity, his gun, and uniform, and night duty on the 
 shore. I could not help humming to myself Non pin andrai ; 
 for Francesco was a sort of Tuscan Cherubino. We talked 
 about picture galleries and libraries in Florence, and I had to 
 hear his favourite passages from the Italian poets. And then 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS. 13 
 
 there came the plots of Jules Verne's stories and marvellous 
 narrations about Viwmo cavallo^ Viiomo volante^ rii07tio pesce. 
 The last of these personages turned out to be Paolo Boynton 
 (so pronounced), who had swam the Arno in his diving dress, 
 passing the several bridges, and when he came to the great 
 weir " allora tutti stare con bocca aperta." Meanwhile the 
 storm grew serious, and our conversation changed. Francesco 
 told me about the terrible sun-stricken sand shores of the 
 Riviera, burning in summer noon, over which the coastguard 
 has to tramp, their perils from falling stones in storm, and the 
 trains that come rushing from those narrow tunnels on the 
 midnight line of march. It is a hard life ; and the thirst for 
 adventure which drove this boy — il piu matto di tutta la 
 famiglia — to adopt it, seems well-nigh quenched. And still, 
 with a return to Giulio Verne, he talked enthusiastically of 
 deserting, of getting on board a merchant ship, and working 
 his way to southern islands where wonders are. 
 
 A furious blast swept the whole sky for a moment almost 
 clear. The moonlight fell, with racing cloud-shadows, upon 
 sea and hills, the lights of Lerici, the great fanali at the 
 entrance of the gulf, and Francesco's upturned handsome face. 
 Then all again was whirled in mist and foam ; one breaker 
 smote the sea-wall in a surge of froth, another plunged upon 
 its heels ; with inconceivable swiftness came rain ; lightning 
 deluged the expanse of surf, and showed the windy trees bent 
 landward by the squall. It was long past midnight now, and 
 the storm was on us for the space of three days. 
 
 V. — Porto Venere. 
 
 For the next three days the wind went worrying on, and a 
 line of surf leapt on the sea-wall always to the same height. 
 The hills all around were inky black and weary. 
 
 At night the wild libeccio still rose, with floods of rain and 
 
14 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 lightning poured upon the waste. I thought of the Florentine 
 patrol. Is he out in it, and where ? 
 
 At last there came a lull. When we rose on the fourth 
 morning, the sky was sulky, spent and sleepy after storm — the 
 air as soft and tepid as boiled milk or steaming flannel. We 
 drove along the shore to Porto Venere, passing the arsenals 
 and dockyards, which have changed the face of Spezzia since 
 Shelley knew it. This side of the gulf is not so rich in vegeta- 
 tion as the other, probably because it lies open to the winds 
 from the Carrara mountains. The chestnuts come down to 
 the shore in many places, bringing with them the wild moun- 
 tain-side. To make up for this lack of luxuriance, the coast 
 is furrowed with a succession of tiny harbours, where the fish- 
 ing-boats rest at anchor. There are many villages upon the 
 spurs of hills, and on the headlands naval stations, hospitals, 
 lazzaretti, and prisons. A prickly bindweed (the Smilax sarsa- 
 parilla) forms a feature in the near landscape, .with its creamy 
 odoriferous blossoms, coral berries, and glossy thorned leaves. 
 
 A turn of the road brought Porto Venere in sight, and on 
 its grey walls flashed a gleam of watery sunlight. The viUage 
 consists of one long narrow street, the houses on the left side 
 hanging sheer above the sea. Their doors at the back open 
 on to cliffs which drop about fifty feet upon the water. A 
 line of ancient walls, with medieval battlements and shells of 
 chambers suspended midway between earth and sky, runs up 
 the rock behind the town ; and this wall is pierced with a deep 
 gateway above which the inn is piled. We had our lunch in 
 a room opening upon the town-gate, adorned with a deep-cut 
 Pisan arch enclosing images and frescoes — a curious episode 
 in a place devoted to the jollity of smugglers and seafaring 
 folk. The whole house was such as Tintoretto loved to 
 paint — huge wooden rafters ; open chimneys with pent-house 
 canopies of stone, where the cauldrons hung above logs of 
 chestnut ; rude low tables spread with coarse linen embroidered 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS. 15 
 
 at the edges, and laden with plates of fishes, fruit, quaint glass, 
 big-bellied jugs of earthenware, and flasks of yellow wine. 
 The people of the place were lounging round in lazy attitudes. 
 There were odd nooks and corners everywhere ; unexpected 
 staircases with windows slanting through the thickness of the 
 town-wall ; pictures of saints ; high-zoned serving women, on 
 whose broad shoulders lay big coral beads ; smoke-blackened 
 roofs, and balconies that opened on the sea. The house was 
 inexhaustible in motives for pictures. 
 
 We walked up the street, attended by a rabble rout of boys 
 — diavoli scatenati — clean, grinning, white-teethed, who kept 
 incessantly shouting, " Soldo, soldo ! " I do not know why 
 these sea-urchins are so far more irrepressible than their land 
 brethren. But it is always thus in Italy. They take an imper- 
 turbable delight in noise and mere annoyance. I shall never 
 forget the sea-roar of Porto Venere, with that shrill obligate, 
 " Soldo, soldo, soldo ! " rattling like a dropping fire from lungs 
 of brass. 
 
 At the end of Porto Venere is a withered and abandoned 
 city, climbing the cliffs of S. Pietro ; and on the headland 
 stands the ruined church, built by Pisans with alternate rows 
 of white and black marble, upon the site of an old temple of 
 Venus. This is a modest and pure piece of Gothic architec- 
 ture, fair in desolation, refined and dignified, and not unworthy 
 in its grace of the dead Cyprian goddess. Through its broken 
 lancets the sea-wind whistles and the vast reaches of the 
 . Tyrrhene gulf are seen. Samphire sprouts between the blocks 
 of marble, and in sheltered nooks the caper hangs her beautiful 
 purpureal snowy bloom. 
 
 The headland is a bold block of white limestone stainea 
 with red. It has the pitch of Exmoor stooping to the sea 
 near Lynton. To north, as one looks along the coast, the 
 line is broken by Porto Fino's amethystine promontory; and 
 in the vaporous distance we could trace the Riviera moun- 
 
i6 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 tains, shadowy and blue. The sea came roaring, rolling in 
 with tawny breakers ; but, far out, it sparkled in pure azure, 
 and the cloud-shadows over it were violet. Where Corsica 
 should have been seen, soared banks of fleecy, broad-domed 
 alabaster clouds. 
 
 This point, once dedicate to Venus, now to Peter — both, 
 be it remembered, fishers of men — is one of the most singular 
 in Europe. The island of Palmaria, rich in veined marbles, 
 shelters the port ; so that outside the sea rages, while under- 
 neath the town, reached by a narrow strait, there is a windless 
 calm. It was not without reason that our Lady of Beauty 
 took this fair gulf to herself; and now that she has long been 
 dispossessed, her memory lingers yet in names. For Porto 
 Venere remembers her, and Lerici is only Eryx. There is a 
 grotto here, where an inscription tells us that Byron once 
 "tempted the Ligurian waves." It is just such a natural sea- 
 cave as might have inspired Euripides when he described the 
 refuge of Orestes in " Iphigenia." 
 
 VI. — Lerici. 
 
 Libeccio at last had swept the sky clear. The gulf was 
 ridged with foam-fleeced breakers, and the water churned into 
 green, tawny wastes. But overhead there flew the softest 
 clouds, all silvery, dispersed in flocks. It is the day for pil- 
 grimage to what was Shelley's home. • 
 
 After following the shore a Httle way, the road to Lerici 
 breaks into the low hills which part La Spezzia from Sarzana. 
 The soil is red, and overgrown with arbutus and pinaster, like 
 t^e country around Cannes. Through the scattered trees it 
 winds gently upwards, with frequent views across the gulf, 
 and then descends into a land rich with olives — a genuine 
 Riviera landscape, where the mountain-slopes are hoary, and 
 spikelets of innumerable light-flashing leaves twinkle against a 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS, 17 
 
 blue sea, misty-deep. The walls here are not unfrequently 
 adorned with has - reliefs of Carrara marble — saints and 
 madonnas very delicately wrought, as though they were love- 
 labours of sculptors who had passed a summer on this shore. 
 San Terenzio is soon discovered low upon the sands to the 
 right, nesthng under little cliffs; and then the high-built 
 castle of Lerici comes in sight, looking across the bay to 
 Porto Venere — one Aphrodite caUing to the other, with the 
 foam between. The village is piled around its cove with tall 
 and picturesquely-coloured houses ; the molo and the fishing- 
 boats lie just beneath the castle. There is one point of the 
 descending carriage road where all this gracefulness is seen, 
 framed by the boughs of olive branches, swaying, wind- 
 ruffled, laughing the many-twinkling smiles of ocean back 
 from their grey leaves. Here Erycina ridens is at home. 
 And, as we stayed to dwell upon the beauty of the scene, 
 came women from the bay below — barefooted, straight as 
 willow wands, with burnished copper bowls upon their heads. 
 These women have the port of goddesses, deep-bosomed, 
 with the length of thigh and springing ankles that betoken 
 strength no less than elasticity and grace. The hair of some 
 of them was golden, rippling in little curls around brown 
 brows and glowing eyes. Pale lilac blent with orange on their 
 dress, and coral beads hung from their ears. 
 
 At Lerici we took a boat and pushed into the rolling 
 breakers. Christian now felt the movement of the sea for the 
 first time. This was rather a rude trial, for the grey-maned 
 monsters played, as it seemed, at will with our cockle-shell, 
 tumbling in dolphin curves to reach the shore. Our boatmen 
 knew all about Shelley and the Casa Magni. It is not at 
 Lerici, but close to San Terenzio, upon the south side of the 
 village. Looking across the bay from the molo, one could 
 clearly see its square white mass, tiled roof, and terrace built 
 on rude arcades with a broad orange awning. Trelawny's 
 
1 8 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 description hardly prepares one for so considerable a place. 
 I think the English exiles of that period must have been 
 exacting if the Casa Magni seemed to them no better than a 
 bathing-house. 
 
 We left our boat at the jetty, and walked through some 
 gardens to the villa. There we were kindly entertained by 
 the present occupiers, who, when I asked them whether such 
 visits as ours were not a great annoyance, gently but feelingly 
 replied: ''It is not so bad now as it used to be." The 
 English gentleman who rents the Casa Magni has known it 
 uninterruptedly since Shelley's death, and has used it for 
 villeggiatura during the last thirty years. We found him in 
 the central sitting-room, which readers of Trelawny's Recollec- 
 tions have so often pictured to themselves. The large oval 
 table, the settees round the walls, and some of the pictures 
 are still unchanged. As we sat talking, I laughed to think of 
 that luncheon party, when Shelley lost his clothes, and came 
 naked, dripping with sea-water, into the room, protected by 
 the skirts of the sympathising waiting-maid. And then I 
 wondered where they found him on the night when he stood 
 screaming in his sleep, after the vision of his veiled self, with 
 its question, " Siete soddisfatto ? " 
 
 There were great ilexes behind the house in Shelley's time, 
 which have been cut down, and near these he is said to have 
 sat and written the Triumph of Life. Some new houses, too, 
 have been built between the villa and the town ; otherwise 
 the place is unaltered. Only an awning has been added to 
 protect the terrace from the sun. I walked out on this 
 terrace, where Shelley used to listen to Jane's singing. The 
 sea was fretting at its base, just as Mrs. Shelley says it did 
 when the I)on Juan disappeared. 
 
 From San Terenzio we walked back to Lerici through olive 
 woods, attended by a memory which toned the almost over- 
 powering beauty of the place to sadness. 
 
AUTUMN WANDERINGS. 19 
 
 VI I. — VlAREGGIO. 
 
 The same memory drew us, a few days later, to the spot 
 where Shelley's body was burned. Viareggio is fast becoming 
 a fashionable watering-place for the people of Florence and 
 Lucca, who seek fresher air and simpler living than Livorno 
 offers. It has the usual new inns and improvised lodging- 
 houses of such places, built on the outskirts of a little fishing 
 village, with a boundless stretch of noble sands. There is a 
 wooden pier on which we walked, watching the long roll of 
 waves, foam-flaked, and quivering with moonlight. The 
 Apennines faded into the grey sky beyond, and the sea-wind 
 was good to breathe. There is a feeling of ''immensity, 
 liberty, action " here, which is not common in Italy. It 
 reminds us of England ; and to-night the Mediterranean had 
 the rough force of a tidal sea. 
 
 Morning revealed beauty enough in Viareggio to surprise 
 even one who expects from Italy all forms of loveliness. The 
 sand-dunes stretch for miles between the sea and a low wood 
 of stone pines, with the Carrara hills descending from their 
 glittering pinnacles by long lines to the headlands of the 
 Spezzian Gulf. The immeasurable distance was all painted in 
 sky-blue and amethyst ; then came the golden green of the 
 dwarf firs ; and then dry yellow in the grasses of the dunes ; 
 and then the many-tinted sea, with surf tossed up against the 
 furthest cUffs. It is a wonderful and tragic view, to which no 
 painter but the Roman Costa has done justice ; and he, it 
 may be said, has made this landscape of the Carrarese his 
 own. The space between sand and pine-wood was covered 
 with faint, yellow, evening primroses. They flickered like 
 little harmless flames in sun and shadow, and the spires of the 
 Carrara range were giant flames transformed to marble. The 
 memory of that day described by Trelawny in a passage of 
 
20 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 immortal English prose, when he and Byron and Leigh Hunt 
 stood beside the funeral pyre, and libations were poured, and 
 the Cor Cordium was found inviolate among the ashes, turned 
 all my thoughts to flame beneath the gentle autumn sky. 
 
 Still haunted by these memories, we took the carriage road 
 to Pisa, over which Shelley's friends had hurried to and fro 
 through those last days. It passes an immense forest of stone- 
 pines — aisles and avenues ; undergrowth of ilex, laurustinus, 
 gorse, and myrtle ; the crowded cyclamens, the solemn silence 
 of the trees; the winds hushed in their velvet roof and 
 stationary domes of verdure. 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 
 
 I. 
 
 In former days the traveller had choice of two old hostelries 
 in the chief street of Siena. Here, if he was fortunate, he 
 might secure a prophet's chamber, with a view across tiled 
 houseroofs to the distant Tuscan champaign — glimpses of 
 russet field and olive-garden framed by jutting city walls, 
 which in some measure compensated for much discomfort. 
 He now betakes himself to the more modern Albergo di 
 Siena, overlooking the public promenade La Lizza. Horse- 
 chestnuts and acacias make a pleasant foreground to a 
 prospect of considerable extent. The front of the house is 
 turned toward Belcaro and the mountains between Grosseto 
 and Volterra. Sideways its windows command the brown 
 bulk of San Domenico, and the Duomo, set like a marble 
 coronet upon the forehead of the town. When we arrived 
 there one October afternoon the sun was setting amid flying 
 clouds and watery yellow spaces of pure sky, with a wind 
 blowing soft and humid from the sea. Long after he had 
 sunk below the hills, a fading chord of golden and rose- 
 coloured tints burned on the city. The cathedral bell-tower 
 was glistening with recent rain, and we could see right 
 through its lancet windows to the clear blue heavens beyond. 
 Then, as the day descended into evening, the autumn trees 
 assumed that wonderful effect of luminousness self- evolved, 
 and the red brick walls that crimson after-glow, which Tuscan 
 twilight takes from singular transparency of atmosphere. 
 
22 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 It is hardly possible to define the specific character of 
 each Italian city, assigning its proper share to natural 
 'circumstances, to the temper of the population, and to the 
 monuments of art in which these elements of nature and of 
 human qualities are blended. The fusion is too delicate and 
 subtle for complete analysis; and the total effect in each 
 particular case may best be compared to that impressed on 
 us by a strong personality, making itself felt in the minutest 
 details. Climate, situation, ethnological conditions, the poli- 
 tical vicissitudes of past ages, the bias of the people to certain 
 industries and occupations, the emergence of distinguished 
 men at critical epochs, have all contributed their quota to the 
 composition of an individuality which abides long after the 
 locality has lost its ancient vigour. 
 
 Since the year 1557, when Gian Giacomo de' Medici laid 
 the country of Siena waste, levelled her luxurious suburbs, 
 and delivered her famine-stricken citizens to the tyranny of 
 the Grand Duke Cosimo, this town has gone on dreaming in 
 suspended decadence. Yet the epithet which was given to 
 her in her days of glory, the title of "Fair Soft Siena," still 
 describes the city. She claims it by right of the gentle 
 manners, joyous but sedate, of her inhabitants, by the grace 
 of their pure Tuscan speech, and by the unique delicacy of 
 her architecture. Those palaces of brick, with finely-moulded 
 lancet windows, and the lovely use of sculptured marbles in 
 pilastered colonnades, are fit abodes for the nobles who reared 
 them five centuries ago, of whose refined and costly living we 
 read in the pages of Dante or of Folgore da San Gemignano. 
 And though the necessities of modern life, the decay of 
 wealth, the dwindling of old aristocracy, and the absorption 
 of what was once an independent state in the Italian nation, 
 have obliterated that large signorial splendour of the Middle 
 Ages, we feel that the modern Sienese are not unworthy of 
 their courteous ancestry. 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 23 
 
 Superficially, much of the present charm of Siena consists 
 in the soft opening valleys, the glimpses of long blue hills and 
 fertile country-side, framed by irregular brown houses stretch- 
 ing along the slopes on which the town is built, and losing 
 themselves abruptly in oHve fields and orchards. This 
 element of beauty, which brings the city into immediate rela- 
 tion with the country, is indeed not pecuhar to Siena. We 
 find it in Perugia, in Assisi, in Montepulciano, in nearly all 
 the hill towns of Umbria and Tuscany. But their landscape 
 is often tragic and austere, while this is always suave. City 
 and country blend here in delightful amity. Neither yields 
 that sense of aloofness which stirs melancholy. 
 
 The most charming district in the immediate neighbour- 
 hood of Siena lies westward, near Belcaro, a villa high up on 
 a hill. It is a region of deep lanes and golden-green oak- 
 woods, with cypresses and stone-pines, and little streams in 
 all directions flowing over the brown sandstone. The 
 country is like some parts of rural England — Devonshire or 
 Sussex. Not only is the sandstone here, as there, broken into 
 deep gullies; but the vegetation is much the same. Tufted 
 spleenwort, primroses, and broom tangle the hedges under 
 boughs of hornbeam and sweet-chestnut. This is the land- 
 scape which the two sixteenth century novelists of Siena, 
 Fortini and Sermini, so lovingly depicted in their tales. Of 
 literature absorbing in itself the specific character of a 
 country, and conveying it to the reader less by description 
 than by sustained quality of style, I know none to surpass 
 Fortini's sketches. The prospect from Belcaro is one of the 
 finest to be seen in Tuscany. The villa stands at a consider- 
 able elevation, and commands an immense extent of hill and 
 dale. Nowhere, except Maremma- wards, a level plain. The 
 Tuscan mountains, from Monte Amiata westward to Volterra, 
 round Valdelsa, down to Montepulciano and Radicofani, with 
 their innumerable windings and intricacies of descending 
 
24 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 valleys, are dappled with light and shade from flying storm- 
 clouds, sunshine here and there cloud-shadows. GirdHng the 
 villa stands a grove of ilex-trees, cut so as to embrace its 
 high-built walls with dark continuous green. In the courtyard 
 are lemon-trees and pomegranates laden with fruit. From a 
 terrace on the roof the whole wide view is seen; and here 
 upon a parapet, from which we leaned one autumn afternoon, 
 my friend discovered this graffito : " £ vidi e piansi il fato 
 aitvarof^ — "I gazed, and gazing, wept the bitterness of fate." 
 
 II. 
 
 The prevailing note of Siena and the Sienese seems, as I 
 have said, to be a soft and tranquil grace; yet this people 
 had one of the stormiest and maddest of ItaUan histories. 
 They were passionate in love and hate, vehement in their 
 popular amusements, almost frantic in their political conduct 
 of affairs. The luxury, for which Dante blamed them, the 
 levity De Comines noticed in their government, found 
 counterpoise in more than usual piety and fervour. S. Ber- 
 nardino, the great preacher and peace-maker of the Middle 
 Ages ; S. Catherine, the worthiest of all women to be canon- 
 ised; the blessed Colombini, who founded the Order of the 
 Gesuati or Brothers of the Poor in Christ; the blessed Ber- 
 nardo, who founded that of Monte Oliveto ; were all Sienese. 
 Few cities have given four such saints to modern Christendom. 
 The biography of one of these may serve as prelude to an 
 account of the Sienese monastery of Oliveto Maggiore. 
 
 The family of Tolomei was among the noblest of the Sienese 
 aristocracy. On May lo, 1272, Mino Tolomei and his wife 
 Fulvia, of the Tancredi, had a son whom they christened 
 Giovanni, but who, when he entered the religious life, assumed 
 the name of Bernard, in memory of the great Abbot of 
 Clairvaux. Of this child, Fulvia is said to have dreamed, 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 25 
 
 long before his birth, that he assumed the form of a white 
 swan, and sang melodiously, and settled in the boughs of an 
 olive-tree, whence afterwards he winged his way to heaven 
 amid a flock of swans as dazzling white as he. The boy was 
 educated in the Dominican Cloister at Siena, under the care 
 of his uncle Cristoforo Tolomei. There, and afterwards in 
 the fraternity of S. Ansano, he felt that impulse towards a life 
 of piety, which after a short but briUiant episode of secular 
 ambition, was destined to return with overwhelming force 
 upon his nature. He was a youth of promise, and at the age 
 of sixteen he obtained the doctorate in philosophy and both 
 laws, civil and canonical. The Tolomei upon this occasion 
 adorned their palaces and threw them open to the people 
 of Siena. The Republic hailed with acclamation the early 
 honours of a noble, born to be one of their chief leaders. 
 Soon after this event Mino obtained for his son from the 
 Emperor the title of Caesarian Knight ; and when the diploma 
 arrived, new festivities proclaimed the fortunate youth to his 
 fellow-citizens. Bernardo cased his limbs in steel, and rode in 
 procession with ladies and young nobles through the streets. 
 The ceremonies of a knight's reception in Siena at that period 
 were magnificent. From contemporary chronicles and from 
 the sonnets written by Folgore da San Gemignano for a simi- 
 lar occasion, we gather that the whole resources of a wealthy 
 family and all their friends were strained to the utmost to 
 do honour to the order of chivalr)'. Open house was held 
 for several days. Rich presents of jewels, armour, dresses, 
 chargers were freely distributed. Tournaments alternated 
 with dances. But the climax of the pageant was the novice's 
 investiture with sword and spurs and belt in the cathedral. 
 This, as it appears from a record of the year 1326, actually 
 took place in the great marble pulpit carved by the Pisani ; 
 and the most illustrious knights of his acquaintance w^ere 
 summoned by the squire to act as sponsors for his fealty. 
 
26 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 It is said that young Bernardo Tolomei's head was turned 
 to vanity by these honours showered upon him in his earliest 
 manhood. Yet, after a short period of aberration, he rejoined 
 his confraternity and mortified his flesh by discipline and strict 
 attendance on the poor. The time had come, however, when 
 he should choose a career suitable to his high rank. He 
 devoted himself to jurisprudence, and began to lecture 
 publicly on law. Already at the age of twenty-five his fellow- 
 citizens admitted him to the highest political offices, and in 
 the legend of his life it is written, not without exaggeration 
 doubtless, that he ruled the State. There is, however, no 
 reason to suppose that he did not play an important part in 
 its government. Though a just and virtuous statesman, Ber- 
 nardo now forgot the special service of God, and gave himself 
 with heart and soul to mundane interests. At the age of 
 forty, supported by the wealth, alliances, and reputation of his 
 semi-princely house, he had become one of the most consider- 
 able party-leaders in that age of faction. If we may trust his 
 monastic biographer, he was aiming at nothing less than the 
 tyranny of Siena. But in that year, when he was forty, a 
 change, which can only be described as conversion, came over 
 him. He had advertised a public disputation, in which he 
 proposed before all comers to solve the most arduous pro- 
 blems of scholastic science. The concourse was great, the 
 assembly brilliant ; but the hero of the day, who had designed 
 it for his glory, was stricken with sudden blindness. In one 
 moment he comprehended the internal void he had created 
 for his soul, and the blindness of the body was illumination to 
 the spirit. The pride, power, and splendour of this world 
 seemed to him a smoke that passes. God, penitence, eternity 
 appeared in all the awful clarity of an authentic vision. He 
 fell upon his knees and prayed to Mary that he might receive 
 his sight again. This boon was granted ; but the revelation 
 which had come to him in blindness was not withdrawn. 
 
MONTE O LI VETO. 27 
 
 Meanwhile the hall of disputation was crowded with an expec- 
 tant audience. Bernardo rose from his knees, made his entry, 
 and ascended the chair ; but instead of the scholastic subtleties 
 he had designed to treat, he pronounced the old text, " Vanity 
 of vanities, all is vanity." 
 
 Afterwards, attended by two noble comrades, Patrizio 
 Patrizzi and Ambrogio Piccolomini, he went forth into the 
 wilderness. For the human soul, at strife with strange experi- 
 ence, betakes itself instinctively to soHtude. Not only pro- 
 phets of Israel, saints of the Thebaid, and founders of religions 
 in the mystic East have done so ; even the Greek Menander 
 recognised, although he sneered at, the phenomenon. " The 
 desert, they say, is the place for discoveries." For the medi- 
 aeval mind it had peculiar attractions. The wilderness these 
 comrades chose was Accona, a doleful place, hemmed in with 
 earthen precipices, some fifteen miles to the south of Siena. 
 Of his vast possessions Bernardo retained but this — 
 
 The lonesome lodge, 
 That stood so low in a lonely glen. 
 
 The rest of his substance he abandoned to the poor. This 
 was in 13 13, the very year of the Emperor Henry VII.'s 
 death at Buonconvento, which is a little walled town between 
 Siena and the desert of Accona. Whether Bernardo's retire- 
 ment was in any way due to the extinction of immediate hope 
 for the Ghibelline party by this event, we do not gather from 
 his legend. That, as is natural, refers his action wholly to 
 the operation of divine grace. Yet we may remember how 
 a more illustrious refugee, the singer of the Divine Comedy, 
 betook himself upon the same occasion to the lonely convent 
 of Fonte Avellana on the Alps of Catria, and meditated there 
 the cantos of his Purgatory. While Bernardo Tolomei was 
 founding the Order of Monte Oliveto, Dante penned his 
 
28 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 letter to the cardinals of Italy : Qiiomodo sola sedet civitas 
 plena populo : facta est quasi vidua dcmmia gentium. 
 
 Bernardo and his friends hollowed with their own hands 
 grottos in the rock, and strewed their stone beds with 
 withered chestnut-leaves. For S. Scolastica, the sister of S. 
 Benedict, they built a little chapel. Their food was wild 
 fruit, and their drink the water of the brook. Through the 
 day they delved, for it was in their mind to turn the wilder- 
 ness into a land of plenty. By night they meditated on 
 eternal truth. The contrast between their rude life and 
 the delicate nurture of Sienese nobles., in an age when Siena 
 had become a by-word for luxury, must have been cruel. 
 But it fascinated the mediaeval imagination, and the three 
 anchorites were speedily joined by recruits of a like temper. 
 As yet the new-born order had no rules; for Bernardo, 
 when he renounced the world, embraced humility. The 
 brethren were bound together only by the ties of charity. 
 They lived in common ; and under their sustained efforts 
 Accona soon became a garden. 
 
 The society could not, however, hold together without 
 further organisation. It began to be ill spoken of, inasmuch 
 as vulgar minds can recognise no good except in what is 
 formed upon a pattern they are familiar with. Then Bernardo 
 had a vision. In his sleep he saw a ladder of light ascending 
 to the heavens. Above sat Jesus with Our Lady in white 
 raiment, and the celestial hierarchies around them were 
 attired in white. Up the ladder, led by angels, climbed men 
 in vesture of dazzling white; and among these Bernardo 
 recognised his own companions. Soon after this dream, he 
 called Ambrogio Piccolomini, and bade him get ready for a 
 journey to the Pope at Avignon. 
 
 John XXII. received the pilgrims graciously, and gave 
 them letters to the Bishop of Arezzo, commanding him to 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 29 
 
 furnish the new brotherhood with one of the rules authorised 
 by Holy Church for governance of a monastic order. Guido 
 Tarlati, of the great Pietra-mala house, was Bishop and despot 
 of Arezzo at this epoch. A man less in harmony with 
 coenobitical enthusiasm than this warrior prelate, could 
 scarcely have been found. Yet attendance to such matters 
 formed part of his business, and the legend even credits him 
 with an inspired dream ; for Our Lady appeared to him, and 
 said : '' I love the valley of Accona and its pious solitaries. 
 Give them the rule of Benedict. But thou shalt strip them 
 of their mourning weeds, and clothe them in white raiment, 
 the symbol of my virgin purity. Their hermitage shall change 
 its name, and henceforth shall be called Mount Olivet, in 
 memory of the ascension of my divine Son, the which took 
 place upon the Mount of Olives. I take this family beneath 
 my own protection ; and therefore it is my will it should be 
 called henceforth the congregation of S. Mary of Mount 
 Olivet." After this, the Blessed Virgin took forethought 
 for the heraldic designs of her monks, dictating to Guido 
 Tarlati the blazon they still bear; it is of three hills or, 
 whereof the third and highest is surmounted with a cross 
 gules, and from the meeting-point of the three hillocks upon 
 either hand a branch of olive vert. This was in 13 19. In 
 1324, John XXII. confirmed the order, and in 1344 it was 
 further approved by Clement VI. Affiliated societies sprang 
 up in several Tuscan cities; and in 1347, Bernardo Tolomei, 
 at that time General of the Order, held a chapter of its 
 several houses. The next year was the year of the great 
 plague or Black Death. Bernardo bade his brethren leave 
 their seclusion, and go forth on works of mercy among the 
 sick. Some went to Florence, some to Siena, others to the 
 smaller hill-set towns of Tuscany. All were bidden to 
 assemble on the Feast of the Assumption at Siena. Here 
 the founder addressed his spiritual children for the last time. 
 
30 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Soon afterwards he died himself, at the age of seventy-seven, 
 and the place of his grave is not known. He w^as beatified 
 by the Church for his great virtues. 
 
 III. 
 
 At noon we started, four of us, in an open waggonette with 
 a pair of horses, for Monte Oliveto, the luggage heaped 
 mountain-high and tied in a top-heavy mass above us. After 
 leaving the gateway, with its massive fortifications and frescoed 
 arches, the road passes into a dull earthy country, very much 
 like some parts — and not the best parts — of England. The 
 beauty of the Sienese contado is clearly on the sandstone, 
 not upon the clay. Hedges, haystacks, isolated farms — all 
 were English in their details. Only the vines, and mulberries, 
 and wattled waggons drawn by oxen, most Roman in aspect, 
 reminded us we were in Tuscany. In such carpenia may 
 the vestal virgins have ascended the Capitol. It is the 
 primitive war-chariot also, capable of holding four with ease ; 
 and Romulus may have mounted with the images of Roman 
 gods in even such a vehicle to Latiarian Jove upon the Alban 
 hill. Nothing changes in Italy. The wooden ploughs are 
 those which Virgil knew. The sight of one of them would 
 save an intelligent lad much trouble in mastering a certain 
 passage of the Georgics. 
 
 Siena is visible behind us nearly the whole way to Buon- 
 convento, a little town where the Emperor Henry VI I. died, 
 as it was supposed, of poison, in 1313. It is still circled 
 with the wall and gates built by the Sienese in 1366, and 
 is a fair specimen of an intact mediaeval stronghold. Here 
 we leave the main road, and break into a country-track across 
 a bed of sandstone, with the delicate volcanic lines of Monte 
 Amiata in front, and the aerial pile of Montalcino to our 
 right. The pyracanthus bushes in the hedge yield their 
 
MONTE LI VETO. 31 
 
 clusters of bright yellow berries, mingled with more glowing 
 hues of red from haws and glossy hips. On the pale grey 
 earthen slopes men and women are plying the long Sabellian 
 hoes of their forefathers, and ploughmen are driving furrows 
 down steep hills. The labour of the husbandmen in Tuscany 
 is very graceful, partly, I think, because it is so primitive, 
 but also because the people have an eminently noble carriage, 
 and are fashioned on the lines of antique statues. I noticed 
 two young contadini in one field, whom Frederick Walker 
 might have painted with the dignity of Pheidian form. They 
 were guiding their ploughs along a hedge of olive-trees, 
 slanting upwards, the white-horned oxen moving slowly 
 through the marl, and the lads bending to press the plough- 
 shares home. It was a delicate piece of colour — the grey 
 mist of olive branches, the warm smoking earth, the creamy 
 flanks of the oxen, the brown limbs and dark eyes of the men, 
 who paused awhile to gaze at us, with shadows cast upon 
 the furrows from their tall straight figures. Then they turned 
 to their work again, and rhythmic movement was added to 
 the picture. I wonder when an Italian artist will condescend 
 to pluck these flowers of beauty, so abundantly offered by 
 the simplest things in his own native land. Each city has 
 an Accademia delle Belle Arti, and there is no lack of 
 students. But the painters, having learned their trade, make 
 copies ten times distant from the truth of famous masterpieces 
 for the American market. Few seem to look beyond their 
 picture galleries. Thus the democratic art, the art of Millet, 
 the art of life and nature and the people, waits. 
 
 As we mount, the soil grows of a richer brown; and there 
 are w^oods of oak where herds of swine are feeding on the 
 acorns. Monte Oliveto comes in sight — a mass of red brick, 
 backed up with cypresses, among dishevelled earthy preci- 
 pices, l>alze as they are called — upon the hill below the 
 village of Chiusure. This Chiusure was once a promising 
 
32 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 town; but the life was crushed out of it in the throes of 
 mediaeval civil wars, and since the thirteenth century it has 
 been dwindling to a hamlet. The struggle for existence, 
 from which the larger communes of this district, Siena and 
 Montepulciano, emerged at the expense of their neighbours, 
 must have been tragical. The da/ze now grow sterner, drier, 
 more dreadful. We see how deluges outpoured from thunder- 
 storms bring down their viscous streams of loam, destroying 
 in an hour the terraces it took a year to build, and spreading 
 wasteful mud upon the scanty corn-fields. The people call 
 this soil creta ; but it seems to be less Uke a chalk than a 
 marl, or mama. It is always washing away into ravines and 
 gullies, exposing the foots of trees, and rendering the tillage 
 of the land a thankless labour. One marvels how any vege- 
 tation has the faith to settle on its dreary waste, or how men 
 have the patience, generation after generation, to renew the 
 industry, still beginning, never ending, which reclaims such 
 wildernesses. Comparing Monte Oliveto with similar dis- 
 tricts of cretaceous soil — with the country, for example, 
 between Pienza and San Quirico — we perceive how much is 
 owed to the perseverance of the monks whom Bernard 
 Tolomei planted here. So far as it is clothed at all with 
 crop and wood, this is their service. 
 
 At last we climb the crowning hill, emerge from a copse of 
 oak, glide along a terraced pathway through the broom, and 
 find ourselves in front of the convent gateway. A substantial 
 tower of red brick, machicolated at the top and pierced with 
 small square windows, guards this portal, reminding us that 
 at some time or other the monks found it needful to arm 
 their solitude against a force descending from Chiusure. 
 There is an avenue of slender cypresses ; and over the gate, 
 protected by a jutting roof, shines a fresco of Madonna 
 and Child. Passing rapidly downwards, we are in the court- 
 yard of the monastery, among its stables, barns, and out- 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 33 
 
 houses, with the forlorn bulk of the huge red building, 
 spreading wide, and towering up above us. As good luck 
 ruled our arrival, we came face to face with the Abbate de 
 Negro, who administers the domain of Monte Oliveto for the 
 Government of Italy, and exercises a kindly hospitality to 
 chance-comers. He was standing near the church, which, 
 with its tall square campanile, breaks the long stern outline 
 of the convent. The whole edifice, it may be said, is com- 
 posed of a red brick inclining to purple in tone, which 
 contrasts not unpleasantly with the lustrous green of the 
 cypresses, and the glaucous sheen of olives. Advantage has 
 been taken of a steep crest; and the monastery, enlarged 
 from time to time through the last five centuries, has here 
 and there been reared upon gigantic buttresses, which jut 
 upon the l^a/ze at a sometimes giddy height. 
 
 The Abbate received us with true courtesy, and gave us 
 spacious rooms, three cells apiece, facing Siena and the 
 western mountains. There is accommodation, he told us, 
 for three hundred monks ; but only three are left in it. As 
 this order was confined to members of the nobility, each of 
 the religious had his own apartment — not a cubicle such as 
 the uninstructed dream of when they read of monks, but 
 separate chambers for sleep and study and recreation. 
 
 In the middle of the vast sad landscape, the place is still, 
 with a silence that can be almost heard. The deserted state 
 of those innumerable cells, those echoing corridors and 
 shadowy cloisters, exercises over-powering tyranny over the 
 imagination. Siena is so far away, and Montalcino is so 
 faintly outlined on its airy parapet, that these cities only 
 deepen our sense of desolation. It is a relief to mark at no 
 great distance on the hill-side a contadino guiding his oxen, 
 and from a lonely farm yon column of ascending smoke. At 
 least the world goes on, and life is somewhere resonant with 
 song. But here there rests a pall of silence among the oak- 
 
34 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 groves and the cypresses and dalze. As I leaned and mused, 
 while Christian (my good friend and fellow-traveller from the 
 Grisons) made our beds, a melancholy sunset flamed up from 
 a rampart of cloud, built like a city of the air above the 
 mountains of Volterra — fire issuing from its battlements, and 
 smiting the fretted roof of heaven above. It was a conflagra- 
 tion of celestial rose upon the saddest purples and cavernous 
 recesses of intensest azure. 
 
 We had an excellent supper in the visitors' refectory — soup, 
 good bread and country wine, ham, a roast chicken with 
 potatoes, a nice white cheese made of sheep's milk, and 
 grapes for dessert. The kind Abbate sat by, and watched 
 his four guests eat, tapping his tortoise-shell snuff-box, and 
 telling us many interesting things about the past and present 
 state of the convent. Our company was completed with 
 Lupo, the pet cat, and Pirro, a woolly Corsican dog, very good 
 friends, and both enormously voracious. Lupo in particular 
 engraved himself upon the memory of Christian, into whose 
 large legs he thrust his claws, when the cheese-parings and 
 scraps were not supplied him with sufficient promptitude. I 
 never saw a hungrier and bolder cat. It made one fancy 
 that even the mice had been exiled from this solitude. And 
 truly the rule of the monastic order, no less than the habit of 
 Italian gentlemen, is frugal in the matter of the table, beyond 
 the conception of northern folk. 
 
 , Monte Oliveto, the Superior told us, owned thirty-two /^^^r/, 
 or large farms, of which five have recently been sold. They 
 are worked on the mezzeria system; whereby peasants and 
 proprietors divide the produce of the soil; and which he thinks 
 inferior for developing its resources to that of affiito, or lease- 
 holding. 
 
 The contadini live in scattered houses ; and he says the 
 estate would be greatly improved by doubling the number of 
 these dwellings, and letting the subdivided farms to more 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 35 
 
 energetic people. The village of Chiusure is inhabited by 
 labourers. The contadini are poor : a dower, for instance, of 
 fifty /ire is thought something : whereas near Genoa, upon the 
 leasehold system, a farmer may sometimes provide a dower of 
 twenty thousand lire. The country produces grain of different 
 sorts, excellent oil, and timber. It also yields a tolerable red 
 wine. The Government makes from eight to nine per cent 
 upon the value of the land, employing him and his two reli- 
 gious brethren as agents. 
 
 In such conversation the evening passed. We rested well 
 in large hard beds with dry rough sheets. But there was a 
 fretful wind abroad, which went wailing round the convent 
 walls and rattlinsf the doors in its deserted corridors. One of 
 
 o 
 
 our party had been placed by himself at the end of a long 
 suite of apartments, with balconies commanding the wide 
 sweep of hills that Monte Amiata crowns. He confessed in 
 the morning to having passed a restless night, tormented by 
 the ghostly noises of the wind, a wanderer, " like the world's 
 rejected guest," through those untenanted chambers. The 
 olives tossed their filmy boughs in twilight underneath his 
 windows, sighing and shuddering, with a sheen in them as 
 eery as that of willows by some haunted mere. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The great attraction to students of Italian art in the convent 
 of Monte Oliveto is a large square cloister, covered with wall- 
 paintings by Luca Signorelli and Giovannantonio Bazzi, sur- 
 named II Sodoma. These represent various episodes in the 
 life of S. Benedict ; while one picture, in some respects the 
 best of the whole series, is devoted to the founder of the 
 Olivetan Order, Bernardo Tolomei, dispensing the rule of his 
 institution to a consistory of white-robed monks. Signorelli, 
 that great master of Cortona, may be studied to better advan- 
 
36 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 tage elsewhere, especially at Orvieto and in his native city. 
 His work in this cloister, consisting of eight frescoes, has been 
 much spoiled by time and restoration. Yet it can be referred 
 to a good period of his artistic activity (the year 1497) and 
 displays much which is specially characteristic of his manner. 
 In Totila's barbaric train, he painted a crowd of fierce empha- 
 tic figures, combining all ages and the most varied attitudes, 
 and reproducing with singular vividness the Italian soldiers 
 ^ of adventure of his day. We see before us the long-haired 
 followers of Braccio and the Baglioni ; their handsome savage 
 faces ; their brawny limbs clad in the particoloured hose and 
 jackets of that period ; feathered caps stuck sideways on their 
 heads ; a splendid swagger in their straddling legs. Female 
 beauty lay outside the sphere of Signorelli's sympathy ; and 
 in the Monte Oliveto cloister he was not called upon to paint 
 it. But none of the Italian masters felt more keenly, or more 
 powerfully represented in their work, the muscular vigour of 
 young manhood. Two of the remaining frescoes, different 
 from these in motive, might be selected as no less character- 
 istic of Signorelli's manner. One represents three sturdy 
 monks, clad in brown, working with all their strength to stir a 
 boulder, which has been bewitched, and needs a miracle to 
 move it from its place. The square and powerfully outlined 
 drawing of these figures is beyond all praise for its effect of 
 massive solidity. The other shows us the interior of a fifteenth 
 century tavern, where two monks are regaling themselves upon 
 the sly. A country girl, with shapely arms and shoulders, her 
 upper skirts tucked round the ample waist to which broad 
 sweeping lines of back and breasts descend, is serving wine. 
 The exuberance of animal life, the freedom or attitude 
 expressed in this, the mainly interesting figure of the composi- 
 tion, show that Signorelli might have been a great master of 
 realistic painting. Nor are the accessories less effective. A 
 wide-roofed kitchen chimney, a page-boy leaving the room by 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 37 
 
 a flight of steps, which leads to the house door, and the table 
 at which the truant monks are seated, complete a picture of 
 homely Italian life. It may still be matched out of many an 
 inn in this hill district. 
 
 Called to graver work at Orvieto, where he painted his 
 gigantic series of frescoes illustrating the coming of Antichrist, 
 the Destruction of the World, the Resurrection, the Last Judg- 
 ment, and the final state of souls in Paradise and Hell, Signo- 
 relli left his work at Monte Oliveto unaccomplished. Seven 
 years later it was taken up by a painter of very different genius. 
 Sodoma was a native of Vercelli, and had received his first 
 training in the Lombard schools, which owed so much to 
 Lionardo da Vinci's influence. He was about thirty years of 
 age when chance brought him to Siena. Here he made 
 acquaintance with Pandolfo Petrucci, who had recently estab- 
 lished himself in a species of tyranny over the Republic. The 
 work he did for this patron and other nobles of Siena, brought 
 him into notice. Vasari observes that his hot Lombard colour- 
 ing, a something florid and attractive in his style, which con- 
 trasted with the severity of the Tuscan school, rendered him 
 no less agreeable as an artist than his free manners made him 
 acceptable as a house-friend. Fra Domenico da Leccio, also 
 a Lombard, was at that time General of the monks of Monte 
 Oliveto. On a visit to this compatriot in 1505, Sodoma 
 received a commission to complete the cloister ; and during 
 the next two years he worked there, producing in all twenty- 
 five frescoes. For his pains he seemed to have received 
 but little pay — Vasari says, only the expenses of some colour- 
 grinders who assisted him ; but from the books of the convent 
 it appears that 241 ducats, or something over 60/. of our 
 money, were disbursed to hirn. 
 
 Sodoma was so singular a fellow, even in that age of 
 piquant personalities, that it may be worth while to translate 
 a fragment of Vasari's gossip about him. We must, however, 
 
/ 
 
 38 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 bear in mind that, for some unknown reason, the Aretine 
 historian bore a rancorous grudge against this Lombard, 
 whose splendid gifts and great achievements he did all he 
 could by writing to depreciate. *' He was fond," says Vasari, 
 " of keeping in his house all sorts of strange animals : badgers, 
 squirrels, monkeys, cat-a-mountains, dwarf-donkeys, horses, 
 racers, little Elba ponies, jackdaws, bantams, doves of India, 
 and other creatures of this kind, as many as he could lay his 
 hands on. Over and above these beasts, he had a raven, 
 which had learned so well from him to talk, that it could 
 imitate its master's voice, especially in answering the door 
 when some one knocked, and this it did so cleverly that 
 people took it for Giovannantonio himself, as all the folk of 
 Siena know quite well. In like manner, his other pets were so 
 much at home with him that they never left his house, but 
 played the strangest tricks and maddest pranks imaginable, 
 so that his house was like nothing more than a Noah's Ark." 
 He was a bold rider, it seems; for with one of his racers, 
 ridden by himself, he bore away the prize in that wild horse- 
 race they run upon the Piazza at Siena. For the rest, " he 
 attired himself in pompous clothes, wearing doublets of 
 brocade, cloaks trimmed with gold lace, gorgeous caps, neck- 
 chains, and other vanities of a like description, fit for buffoons 
 and mountebanks." In one of the frescoes of Monte Oliveto, 
 Sodoma painted his own portrait, with some of his curious 
 pets around him. He there appears as a young man with 
 large and decidedly handsome features, a great shock of dark 
 curled hair escaping from a yellow cap, and flowing down 
 over a rich mantle which drapes his shoulders. If we may 
 trust Vasari, he showed his curious humours freely to the 
 monks. "Nobody could describe the amusement he furnished 
 to those good fathers, who christened him Mattaccio (the big 
 madman), or the insane tricks he played there." 
 
 In spite of Vasari's malevolence, the portrait he has given 
 
MONTE OLIVETO. 39 
 
 US of Bazzi has so far nothing unpleasant about it. The man 
 seems to have been a madcap artist, combining with his love 
 for his profession a taste for fine clothes, and what was then 
 perhaps rarer in people of his sort, a great partiality for 
 living creatures of all kinds. The darker shades of Vasari's 
 ' picture have been purposely omitted from these pages. We 
 only know for certain, about Bazzi's private life, that he was 
 married in 15 10 to a certain Beatrice, who bore him two 
 children, and who was still living with him in 1541. The 
 further suggestion that he painted at Monte Oliveto subjects 
 unworthy of a religious house, is wholly disproved by the 
 frescoes which still exist in a state of very tolerable preserva- 
 tion. They represent various episodes in the legend of S. 
 Benedict ; all marked by that spirit of simple, almost childish 
 piety which is a special characteristic of Italian religious 
 history. The series forms, in fact, a painted novella of 
 monastic life ; its petty jealousies, its petty trials, its tribula- 
 tions and temptations, and its indescribably petty miracles. 
 Bazzi w^as well fitted for the execution of this task. He had a 
 swift and facile brush, considerable versatility in the treat- 
 ment of monotonous subjects, and a never-failing sense of 
 humour. His white-cowled monks, some of them with the 
 rosy freshness of boys, some with the handsome brown faces 
 of middle life, others astute and crafty, others again wrinkled 
 with old age, have clearly been copied from real models. He 
 puts them into action without the slightest effort, and sur- 
 rounds them with landscapes, architecture, and furniture, 
 appropriate to each successive situation. The whole is done 
 with so much grace, such simplicity of composition, and 
 transparency of style, corresponding to the naif and super- 
 ficial legend, that we feel a perfect harmony between the 
 artist's mind and the motives he was made to handle. In 
 this respect Bazzi's portion of the legend of S. Benedict is 
 more successful than Signorelli's. It was fortunate, perhaps, 
 
40 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 that the conditions of his task confined him to uncomplicated 
 groupings, and a scale of colour in which white predominates. 
 For Bazzi, as is shown by subsequent work in the Farnesina 
 Villa at Rome, and in the church of S. Domenico at Siena, 
 was no master of composition ; and the tone, even of his 
 masterpieces, inclines to heat. Unlike Signorelli, Bazzi felt a 
 deep artistic sympathy with female beauty; and the most 
 attractive fresco in the whole series is that in which the 
 evil monk Florentius brings a bevy of fair damsels to the 
 convent. There is one group, in particular, of six women, so 
 delicately varied in carriage of the head and suggested 
 movement of the body, as to be comparable only to a strain of 
 concerted music. This is perhaps the painter's master- 
 piece in the rendering of pure beauty, if we except his S. 
 Sebastian of the Uffizzi. 
 
 We tire of studying pictures, hardly less than of reading 
 about them ! I was glad enough, after three hours spent 
 among the frescoes of this cloister, to wander forth into the 
 copses which surround the convent. Sunlight was streaming 
 treacherously from flying clouds ; and though it was high 
 noon, the oak-leaves were still a-tremble with dew. Pink 
 cyclamens and yellow amaryllis starred the moist brown 
 earth ; and under the cypress-trees, where alleys had been 
 cut in former time for pious feet, the short firm turf was soft 
 and mossy. Before bidding the hospitable Padre farewell, 
 and starting in our waggonette for Asciano, it was pleasant 
 to meditate awhile in these green solitudes. Generations of 
 white-stoled monks who had sat or knelt upon the now 
 deserted terraces, or had slowly paced the winding paths to 
 Calvaries aloft and points of vantage high above the wood, 
 rose up before me. My mind, still full of Bazzi's frescoes, 
 peopled the wilderness with grave monastic forms, and 
 gracious, young-eyed faces of boyish novices. 
 
MONTEPUL CIANO. 
 
 I. 
 
 For the sake of intending travellers to this, the lordliest of 
 Tuscan hill-towns, it will be well to state at once and without 
 circumlocution what does not appear upon the time-tables of 
 the line from Empoli to Rome. Montepulciano has a station ; 
 but this railway station is at the distance of at least an hour 
 and a half's drive from the mountain upon which the city 
 stands. 
 
 The lumbering train which brought us one October evening 
 from Asciano crawled into this station after dark, at the very 
 moment when a storm, which had been gathering from the 
 south-west, burst in deluges of rain and lightning. There 
 was, however, a covered carriage going to the town. Into this 
 we packed ourselves, together with a polite Italian gentleman 
 who, in answer to our questions, consulted his watch, and 
 smilingly replied that a little half-hour would bring us easily 
 to Montepulciano. He was a native of the place. He knew 
 perfectly well that he would be shut up with us in that car- 
 riage for two mortal hours of darkness and down-pour. And 
 yet, such is the irresistible impulse in Italians to say something 
 immediately agreeable, he fed us with false hopes and had no 
 fear of consequences. What did it matter to him if we were 
 pulling out our watches and chattering in well-contented 
 undertone about vino nobile, biftek, and possibly a polio arrosto, 
 or a dish of tordil At the end of the half-hour, as he was 
 well aware, self-congratulations and visions of a hearty supper 
 
42 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 would turn to discontented wailings, and the querulous com- 
 plaining of defrauded appetites. But the end of half an hour 
 was still half an hour off; and we meanwhile were comfort- 
 able. 
 
 The night was pitchy dark, and blazing flashes of lightning 
 showed a white ascending road at intervals. Rain rushed in 
 torrents, splashing against the carriage wheels, which moved 
 uneasily, as though they could but scarcely stem the river 
 that swept down upon them. Far away above us to the 
 left, was one light on a hill, which never seemed to get any 
 nearer. We could see nothing but a chasm of blackness be- 
 low us on one side, edged with ghostly olive-trees, and a high 
 bank on the othen Sometimes a star swam out of the 
 drifting clouds ; but then the rain hissed down again, and the 
 flashes came in floods of livid light, illuminating the eternal 
 olives and the cypresses which looked like huge black spectres. 
 It seemed almost impossible for the horses to keep their feet, 
 as the mountain road grew ever steeper and the torrent 
 swelled around them. Still they struggled on. The promised 
 half hour had been doubled, trebled, quadrupled, when at 
 last we saw the great brown sombre walls of a city tower above 
 us. Then we entered one of those narrow lofty Tuscan gates, 
 and rolled upon the pavement of a street. 
 
 The inn at Montepulciano is called Marzocco, after the 
 Florentine lion which stands upon its column in a little square 
 before the house. The people there are hospitable, and more 
 than once on subsequent occasions have they extended to us 
 kindly welcome. But on this, our first appearance, they had 
 scanty room at their disposal. Seeing us arrive so late, and 
 march into their dining-room, laden with sealskins, water- 
 proofs, and ulsters, one of the party hugging a complete 
 Euripides in Didot's huge edition, they were confounded. At 
 last they conducted the whole company of four into a narrow 
 back bedroom, where they pointed to one fair-sized and one 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 43 
 
 very little bed. This was the only room at liberty, they said ; 
 and could we not arrange to sleep here? Saccomodi, Signore! 
 S'accomodi Signora ! These encouraging words, uttered in 
 various tones of cheerful and insinuating politeness to each 
 member of the party in succession, failed to make us compre- 
 hend how a gentleman and his wife, with a lean but rather 
 lengthy English friend, and a bulky native of the Grisons, 
 could "accommodate themselves " collectively and undividedly 
 with what was barely sufficient for their just moiety, however 
 much it might afford a night's rest to their worse half. 
 Christian was sent out into the storm to look for supple- 
 mentary rooms in Montepulciano, which he failed to get. 
 Meanwhile we ordered supper, and had the satisfaction of 
 seeing set upon the board a huge red flask of vino nobile. In 
 copious draughts of this the King of Tuscan wines, we 
 drowned our cares ; and when the cloth was drawn, our friend 
 and Christian passed their night upon the supper table. The 
 good folk of the inn had recovered from their surprise, and 
 from the inner recesses of their house had brought forth 
 mattresses and blankets. So the better and larger half of the 
 company enjoyed sound sleep. 
 
 It rained itself out at night, and the morning was clear, 
 with the transparent atmosphere of storm-clouds hurrying in 
 broken squadrons from the bad sea quarter. Yet this is just 
 the weather in which Tuscan landscape looks its loveliest. 
 Those immense expanses of grey undulating uplands need the 
 luminousness of watery sunshine, the colour added by cloud- 
 shadows, and the pearly softness of rising vapours, to rob 
 them of a certain awful grimness. The main street of 
 Montepulciano goes straight uphill for a considerable distance 
 between brown palaces ; then mounts by a staircase-zigzag 
 under huge impending masses of masonry ; until it ends in a 
 piazza. On the ascent, at intervals, the eye is fascinated by 
 prospects to the north and east over Val di Chiana, Cortona, 
 
44 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Thrasymene, Chiusi ; to south and west over Monte Cetona, 
 Radicofani, Monte Amiata, the Val d' Ombrone, and the 
 Sienese Contado. Grey walls overgrown with ivy, arcades of 
 time-toned brick, and the forbidding bulk of houses hewn 
 from solid travertine, frame these glimpses of aerial space. 
 The piazza is the top of all things. Here are the Duomo ; 
 the Palazzo del Comune, closely resembling that of Florence, 
 with the Marzocco on its front; the fountain, between two 
 quaintly sculptured columns ; and the vast palace Del Monte, 
 of heavy Renaissance architecture, said to be the work of 
 Antonio di San Gallo. 
 
 We climbed the tower of the Palazzo del Comune, and 
 stood at the altitude of 2000 feet above the sea. The view 
 is finer in its kind than I have elsewhere seen, even in 
 Tuscany, that land of panoramic prospects over memorable 
 tracts of world-historic country. Such landscape cannot be 
 described in words. But the worst is that, even while we 
 gaze, we know that nothing but the faintest memory of our 
 enjoyment will be carried home with us. The atmospheric 
 conditions were perfect that morning. The sun was still 
 young ; the sky sparkled after the night's thunderstorm ; the 
 whole immensity of earth around lay lucid, smiling, newly 
 washed in baths of moisture. Masses of storm-cloud kept 
 rolling from the west, where we seemed to feel the sea behind 
 those intervening hills. But they did not form in heavy 
 blocks or hang upon the mountain summits. They hurried 
 and dispersed and changed and flung their shadows on the 
 world below. 
 
 11. 
 
 The charm of this view is composed of so many different 
 elements, so subtly blent, appealing to so many separate sen- 
 sibilities ; the sense of grandeur, the sense of space, the sense 
 of natural beauty, and the sense of human pathos; that deep 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 45 
 
 internal faculty we call historic sense; that it cannot be 
 defined. First comes the immense surrounding space — a 
 space measured in each arc of the circumference by sections 
 of at least fifty miles, limited by points of exquisitely pictur- 
 esque beauty, including distant cloud-like mountain ranges 
 and crystals of sky-blue Apennines, circumscribing landscapes 
 of refined loveliness in detail, always varied, always marked 
 by objects of peculiar interest where the eye or memory may 
 linger. Next in importance to this immensity of space, so 
 powerfully affecting the imagination by its mere extent, and 
 by the breadth of atmosphere attuning all varieties of form 
 and colour to one harmony beneath illimitable heaven, may 
 be reckoned the episodes of rivers, lakes, hills, cities, with 
 old historic names. For there spreads the lordly length of 
 Thrasymene, islanded and citadelled, in hazy morning mist, 
 still dreaming of the shock of Roman hosts with Carthaginian 
 legions. There is the lake of Chiusi, set Hke a jewel under- 
 neath the copse-clad hills which hide the dust of a dead 
 Tuscan nation. The streams of Arno start far far away, 
 where Arezzo lies enfolded in bare uplands. And there at 
 our feet rolls Tiber's largest affiuent, the Chiana. And there 
 is the canal which joins their fountains in the marsh that 
 Lionardo would have drained. Monte Cetona is yonder 
 height which rears its bristling ridge defiantly from neighbour- 
 ing Chiusi. And there springs Radicofani, the eagle's eyrie 
 of a brigand brood. Next, Monte Amiata stretches the long 
 lines of her antique volcano; the swelling mountain flanks, 
 descending gently from her cloud-capped top, are russet with 
 autumnal oak and chestnut woods. On them our eyes rest 
 lovingly ; imagination wanders for a moment through those 
 mossy glades, where cyclamens are growing now, and prim- 
 roses in spring will peep amid anemones from rustling foliage 
 strewn by winter's winds. The heights of Casentino, the 
 Perugian highlands, Volterra, far withdrawn amid a wilderness 
 
46 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 of rolling hills, and solemn snow-touched ranges of the 
 Spolentino, Sibyl-haunted fastnesses of Norcia, form the 
 most distant horizon-lines of this unending panorama. And 
 then there are the cities, placed each upon a point of van- 
 tage : Siena ; olive-mantled Chiusi ; Cortona, white upon her 
 spreading throne ; poetic Montalcino, lifted aloft against the 
 vaporous sky; San Quirico, nestling in pastoral tranquillity; 
 Pienza, where ^neas Sylvius built palaces and called his 
 birthplace after his own Papal name. Still closer to the town 
 itself of Montepulciano, stretching along the irregular ridge 
 which gave it building ground, and trending out on spurs 
 above deep orchards, come the lovely details of oak-copses, 
 blending with grey tilth and fields rich with olive and vine. 
 The gaze, exhausted with immensity, pierces those deeply 
 cloven valleys, sheltered from wind and open to the sun — 
 undulating folds of brown earth, where Bacchus, when he 
 visited Tuscany, found the grape-juice that pleased him best, 
 and crowned the wine of Montepulciano king. Here from 
 our eyrie we can trace white oxen on the furrows, guided by 
 brown-limbed, white-shirted contadini. 
 
 The morning glory of this view from Montepulciano, though 
 irrecoverable by words, abides in the memory, and draws one 
 back by its unique attractiveness. On a subsequent visit 
 to the town in spring time, my wife and I took a twiHght 
 walk, just after our arrival, through its gloomy fortress streets, 
 up to the piazza, where the impendent houses lowered like 
 bastions, and all the masses of their mighty architecture stood 
 revealed in shadow and dim lamplight. Far and wide, the 
 country round us gleamed with bonfires ; for it was the eve of 
 the Ascension, when every contadino lights a beacon of chest- 
 nut logs and straw and piled-up leaves. Each castello on the 
 plain, each village on the hills, each lonely farmhouse at the 
 skirt of forest or the edge of lake, smouldered like a red 
 Cyclopean eye beneath the vault of stars. The flames waxed 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 47 
 
 and waned, leapt into tongues, or disappeared. As they 
 passed from gloom to brilliancy and died away again, they 
 seemed almost to move. The twilight scene was like that of 
 a vast city, filling the plain and climbing the heights in 
 terraces. Is this custom, I thought, a relic of old Pales- 
 worship ? 
 
 III. 
 
 The early history of Montepulciano is buried in impene- 
 trable mists of fable. No one can assign a date to the foun- 
 dation of these high-hill cities. The eminence on which it 
 stands belongs to the volcanic system of Monte Amiata, and 
 must at some time have formed a portion of the crater which 
 threw that mighty mass aloft. But aeons have passed since 
 the gran sasso di Mareitwia was a fire-vomiting monster, 
 glaring like Etna in eruption on the Tyrrhene sea; and 
 through those centuries how many races may have camped 
 upon the summit we call Montepulciano ! Tradition assigns 
 the first quasi-historical settlement to Lars Porsena, who is 
 said to have made it his summer residence, when the lower 
 and more marshy air of Clusium became oppressive. Cer- 
 tainly it must have been a considerable town in the Etruscan 
 period. Embedded in the walls of palaces may still be seen 
 numerous fragments of sculptured bas-reliefs, the works of 
 that mysterious people. Apropos of Montepulciano's impor- 
 tance in the early years of Roman history, I lighted on a 
 quaint story related by its very jejune annalist, Spinello Benci. 
 It will be remembered that Livy attributes the invasion of 
 the Gauls, who, after besieging Clusium, advanced on 
 Rome, to the persuasions of a certain Aruns, He was an 
 exile from Clusium ; and wishing to revenge himself upon his 
 country-people, he allured the Senonian Gauls into his service 
 by the promise of excellent wine, samples of which he had 
 taken with him into Lombardy. Spinello Benci accepts the 
 
48 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 legend literally, and continues: "These wines were so pleas- 
 ing to the palate of the barbarians, that they were induced to 
 quit the rich and teeming valley of the Po, to cross the Apen- 
 nines, and move in battle array against Chiusi. And it is 
 clear that the wine which Aruns selected for the purpose was 
 the same as that which is produced to this day at Montepul- 
 ciano. For nowhere else in the Etruscan district can wines of 
 equally generous quality and fiery spirit be found, so adapted 
 for export and capable of such long preservation." 
 
 We may smile at the historian's naivete. Yet the fact 
 remains that good wine of Montepulciano can still allure 
 barbarians of this epoch to the spot where it is grown. Of all 
 Italian vintages, with the exception of some rare qualities of 
 Sicily and the Valtellina, it is, in my humble opinion, the 
 best. And when the time comes for Italy to develop the 
 resources of her vineyards upon scientific principles, Monte- 
 pulciano will drive Brolio from the field and take the same 
 place by the side of Chianti which Volnay occupies by com- 
 mon Macon. It will then be quoted upon wine-lists through- 
 out Europe, and find its place upon the tables of rich epicures 
 in Hyperborean regions, and add its generous warmth to 
 Transatlantic banquets. Even as it is now made, with very 
 little care bestowed on cultivation and none to speak of on 
 selection of the grape, the wine is rich and noble, slightly 
 rough to a sophisticated palate, but clean in quality and 
 powerful and racy. It deserves the enthusiasm attributed by 
 Redi to Bacchus : ^ — 
 
 Fill, fill, let us all have our will ! 
 
 But with what^ with what^ boys, shall we fill ? 
 
 Sweet Ariadne — no, not that one — ah no ; 
 
 Fill me the manna of Montepulciano : 
 
 Fill me a magnum and reach it me. — Gods ! 
 
 How it glides to my heart by the sweetest of roads I 
 
 ^ From Leigh Hunt's Translation. 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 49 
 
 Oh, how it kisses me, tickles me, bites me ! 
 
 Oh, how my eyes loosen sweetly in tears ! 
 
 I'm ravished ! I'm rapt ! Heaven finds me admissible ! 
 
 Lost in an ecstasy ! blinded ! invisible ! — 
 
 Hearken all earth ! 
 
 We, Bacchus, in the might of our great mirth, 
 
 To all who reverence us, are right thinkers ; 
 
 Hear, all ye drinkers I 
 
 Give ear and give faith to the edict divine ; 
 
 Montepulciano's the King of all wine. 
 
 It is necessary, however, that our modern barbarian should 
 travel to Montepulciano itself, and there obtain a flask of 
 manna or vino nobile from some trusty cellar-master. He will 
 not find it bottled in the inns or restaurants upon his road. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The landscape and the wine of Montepulciano are both 
 well worth the trouble of a visit to this somewhat inaccessible 
 city. Yet more remains to be said about the attractions of 
 the town itself. In the Duomo, which was spoiled by unin- 
 telligent rebuilding at a dismal epoch of barren art, are frag- 
 ments of one of the rarest monuments of Tuscan sculpture. 
 This is the tomb of Bartolommeo Aragazzi. He was a native 
 of Montepulciano, and secretary to Pope Martin V., that Papa 
 Martino non vale un quattrino^ on whom, during his long 
 residence in Florence, the street-boys made their rhymes. 
 Twelve years before his death he commissioned Donatello 
 and Michelozzo Michelozzi, who about that period were work- 
 ing together upon the monuments of Pope John XXIII. and 
 Cardinal Brancacci, to erect his own tomb at the enormous 
 cost of twenty-four thousand scudi. That thirst for immorta- 
 lity of fame, which inspired the humanists of the Renaissance, 
 prompted Aragazzi to this princely expenditure. Yet, having 
 somehow won the hatred of his fellow-students, he was imme- 
 
50 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 diately censured for excessive vanity. Lionardo Bruni makes 
 his monument the theme of a ferocious onslaught. Writing 
 to Poggio Bracciolini, Bruni tells a story how, while travelling 
 through the country of Arezzo, he met a train of oxen dragging 
 heavy waggons piled with marble columns, statues, and all 
 the necessary details of a sumptuous sepulchre. He stopped, 
 and asked what it all meant. Then one of the contractors 
 for this transport, wiping the sweat from his forehead, in utter 
 weariness of the vexatious labour, at the last end of his 
 temper, answered: "May the gods destroy all poets, past, 
 present, and future." I inquired what he had to do with 
 poets, and how they had annoyed him. "Just this," he 
 replied, " that this poet, lately deceased, a fool and windy- 
 pated fellow, has ordered a monument for himself; and with 
 a view to erecting it, these marbles are being dragged to 
 Montepulciano ; but I doubt whether we shall contrive to get 
 them up there. The roads are too bad." " But," cried I, " do 
 you believe ^/laf man was a poet — that dunce who had no 
 science, nay, nor knowledge either ? who only rose above the 
 heads of men by vanity and doltishness ? " "I don't know," he 
 answered, " nor did I ever hear tell, while he was alive, about 
 his being called a poet ; but his fellow-townsmen now decide 
 he was one ; nay, if he had but left a few more money-bags, 
 they'd swear he was a god. Anyhow, but for his having been 
 a poet, I would not have cursed poets in general." Where- 
 upon, the malevolent Bruni withdrew, and composed a 
 scorpion-tailed oration, addressed to his friend Poggio, on the 
 suggested theme of "diuturnity in monuments," and false 
 ambition. Our old friends of humanistic learning — Cyrus, 
 Alexander, Caesar — meet us in these frothy paragraphs. 
 Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Darius, are thrown in to make 
 the gruel of rhetoric " thick and slab." The whole epistle ends 
 in along-drawn peroration of invective against "that excre- 
 ment in human shape," who had had the ill-luck, by pretence 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 51 
 
 to scholarship, by big gains from the Papal treasury, by some- 
 thing in his manners alien from the easy-going customs of the 
 Roman Court, to rouse the rancour of his fellow-humanists. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this episode, partly because it illustrates 
 the peculiar thirst for glory in the students of that time, 
 but more especially because it casts a thin clear thread of 
 actual light upon the masterpiece which, having been tran- 
 sported with this difficulty from Donatello's workshop, is now 
 to be seen by all lovers of fine art, in part at least, at Monte- 
 pulciano. In part at least ; the phrase is pathetic. Poor 
 Aragazzi, who thirsted so for " diuturnity in monuments," who 
 had been so cruelly assaulted in the grave by humanistic 
 jealousy, expressing its malevolence with humanistic crudity 
 of satire, was destined after all to be defrauded of his well- 
 paid tomb. The monument, a master work of Donatello and 
 his collaborator, was duly erected. The oxen and the con- 
 tractors, it appears, had floundered through the mud of 
 Valdichiana, and struggled up the mountain-slopes of Monte- 
 pulciano. But when the church, which this triumph of art 
 adorned, came to be repaired, the miracle of beauty was 
 dismembered. The sculpture for which Aragazzi spent his 
 thousands of crowns, which Donatello touched with his 
 immortalising chisel, over which the contractors vented their 
 curses and Bruni eased his bile; these marbles are now 
 visible as mere disjecta membra in a church which, lacking 
 them, has little to detain a traveller's haste. 
 
 On the left hand of the central door, as you enter, Aragazzi 
 lies, in senatorial robes, asleep; his head turned slightly to 
 the right upon the pillow, his hands folded over his breast. 
 Very noble are the draperies, and dignified the deep tran- 
 quillity of slumber. Here, we say, is a good man fallen upon 
 sleep, awaiting resurrection. The one commanding theme 
 of Christian sculpture, in an age of Pagan feeling, has been 
 adequately rendered. Bartolommeo Aragazzi, hke Ilaria led 
 
52 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Carretto at Lucca, like the canopied doges in S. Zanipolo at 
 Venice, like the Acciauoli in the Florentine Certosa, like the 
 Cardinal di Portogallo in Samminiato, is carved for us as he 
 had been in life, but with that life suspended, its fever all 
 smoothed out, its agitations over, its pettinesses dignified by- 
 death. This marmoreal repose of the once active man 
 symbolises for our imagination the state into which he passed 
 four centuries ago, but in which, according to the creed, he 
 still abides, reserved for judgment and re-incarnation. The 
 flesh, clad with which he walked our earth, may moulder in 
 the vaults beneath. But it will one day rise again ; and art 
 has here presented it imperishable to our gaze. This is how 
 the Christian sculptors, inspired by the majestic calm of 
 classic art, dedicated a Christian to the genius of repose. 
 Among the nations of antiquity this repose of death was 
 eternal; and being unable to conceive of a man's body 
 otherwise than for ever obliterated by the flames of funeral, 
 they were perforce led back to actual life when they would 
 carve his portrait on a tomb. But for Christianity the rest of 
 the grave has ceased to be eternal. Centuries may pass, but 
 in the end it must be broken. Therefore art is justified in 
 showing us the man himself in an imagined state of sleep. 
 Yet this imagined state of sleep is so incalculably long, and 
 by the will of God withdrawn from human prophecy, that 
 the ages sweeping over the dead man before the trumpets of 
 archangels wake him, shall sooner wear away memorial stone 
 than stir his slumber. It is a slumber, too, unterrified, 
 unentertained by dreams. Suspended animation finds no 
 fuller symbolism than the sculptor here presents to us in 
 abstract form. 
 
 The boys of Montepulciano have scratched Messer Ara- 
 gazzi's sleeping figure with graffiti at their own free will. Yet 
 they have had no power to erase the poetry of Donatello's 
 mighty style. That, in spite of Bruni's envy, in spite of 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 53 
 
 injurious time, in spite of the still worse insult of the 
 modernised cathedral and the desecrated monument, embalms 
 him in our memory and secures for him the diuturnity for 
 which he paid his twenty thousand crowns. Money, methinks, 
 beholding him, was rarely better expended on a similar 
 ambition. And ambition of this sort, relying on the genius 
 of such a master to give it wings for perpetuity of time, is, 
 J^ace Lionardo Bruni, not ignoble. 
 
 Opposite the figure of Messer Aragazzi are two square bas- 
 reliefs from the same monument, fixed against piers of the 
 nave. One represents Madonna enthroned among worship- 
 pers; members, it may be supposed, of Aragazzi's house- 
 hold. Three angelic children, supporting the child Christ upon 
 her lap, complete that pyramidal form of composition which Fra 
 Bartolommeo was afterwards to use with such effect in paint- 
 ing. The other bas-relief shows a group of grave men and ^ 
 youths, clasping hands with loveliest interlacement ; the placid 
 sentiment of human fellowship translated into harmonies of 
 sculptured form. Children below run up to touch their 
 knees, and reach out boyish arms to welcome them. Two 
 young men, with half-draped busts and waving hair blown off 
 their foreheads, anticipate the type of adolescence which 
 Andrea del Sarto perfected in his S. John. We might 
 imagine that this masterly panel was intended to represent 
 the arrival of Messer Aragazzi in his home. It is a scene 
 from the domestic life of the dead man, duly subordinated to 
 the recumbent figure, which, when the monument was perfect, 
 would have dominated the whole composition. 
 
 Nothing in the range of Donatello's work surpasses these 
 two bas-reliefs for harmonies of line and grouping, for choice 
 of form, for beauty of expression, and for smoothness of 
 surface-working. The marble is of great delicacy, and is 
 wrought to a wax-like surface. At the high altar are three 
 more fragments from the mutilated tomb. One is a long low 
 
54 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 frieze of children bearing garlands, which probably formed 
 the base of Aragazzi's monument, and now serves for a pre- 
 della. The remaining pieces are detached statues of Fortitude 
 and Faith. The former reminds us of Donatello's S. George; 
 the latter is twisted into a strained attitude, full of character, 
 but lacking grace. What the effect of these emblematic 
 figures would have been when harmonised by the architectural 
 proportions of the sepulchre, the repose of Aragazzi on his 
 sarcophagus, the suavity of the two square panels and the 
 rhythmic beauty of the frieze, it is not easy to conjecture. 
 But rudely severed from their surroundings, and exposed in 
 isolation, one at each side of the altar, they leave an impres- 
 sion of awkward discomfort on the memory. A certain hard- 
 ness, peculiar to the Florentine manner, is felt in them. But 
 this quality may have been intended by the sculptors for the 
 sake of contrast with what is eminently graceful, peaceful, and 
 melodious in the other fragments of the ruined masterpiece. 
 
 V. 
 
 At a certain point in the main street, rather more than 
 half way from the Albergo del Marzocco to the piazza, a tablet 
 has been let into the wall upon the left-hand side. This 
 records the fact that here in 1454 was born Angelo Ambrogini, 
 the special glory of Montepulciano, the greatest classical 
 scholar and the greatest Italian poet of the fifteenth century. 
 He is better known in the history of literature as Poliziano, 
 or Politianus, a name he took from his native city, when he 
 came, a marvellous boy, at the age of ten, to Florence, and 
 joined the household of Lorenzo de' Medici. He had already 
 claims upon Lorenzo's hospitality. For his father, Benedetto, 
 by adopting the cause of Piero de' Medici in Montepulciano, 
 had exposed himself to bitter feuds and hatred of his fellow- 
 citizens. To this animosity of party warfare he fell a victim a 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 55 
 
 few years previously. We only know that he was murdered, 
 and that he left a helpless widow with five children, of whom 
 Angelo was the eldest. The Ambrogini or Cini were a family 
 of some importance in Montepulciano ; and their dwelling- 
 house is a palace of considerable size. From its eastern 
 windows the eye can sweep that vast expanse of country, 
 embracing the lakes of Thrasymene and Chiusi, which has 
 been already described. What would have happened, we 
 wonder, if Messer Benedetto, the learned jurist, had not 
 espoused the Medicean cause and embroiled himself with 
 murderous antagonists ? Would the little Angelo have grown 
 up in this quiet town, and practised law, and lived and died a 
 citizen of Montepulciano ? In that case the lecture-rooms of 
 Florence would never have echoed to the sonorous hexameters 
 of the *' Rusticus " and ''Ambra." Italian literature would have 
 lacked the "Stanze" and "Orfeo." European scholarship 
 would have been defrauded of the impulse given to it by the 
 " Miscellanea." The study of Roman law would have missed 
 those labours on the Pandects, with which the name of 
 Politian is honourably associated. From the Florentine 
 society of the fifteenth century would have disappeared the 
 commanding central figure of humanism, which now con- 
 trasts dramatically with the stern monastic Prior of S. 
 Mark. Benedetto's tragic death gave Poliziano to Italy and 
 to posterity. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Those who have a day to spare at Montepulciano can 
 scarcely spend it better than in an excursion to Pienza and r_ f 
 San Quirico. Leaving the city by the road which takes a 
 westerly direction, the first object of interest is the Church of 
 San Biagio, placed on a fertile plateau immediately beneath 
 the ancient acropolis. It was erected by Antonio di San 
 Gallo in 15 18, and is one of the most perfect specimens 
 
56 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 existing of the sober classical style. The Church consists of 
 a Greek square, continued at the east end into a semicircular 
 tribune, surmounted by a central cupola, and flanked by a 
 detached bell-tower, ending in a pyramidal spire. The whole 
 is built of solid yellow travertine, a material which, by its 
 warmth of colour, is pleasing to the eye, and mitigates the 
 mathematical severity of the design. Upon entering, we feel 
 at once what Alberti called the music of this style ; its large 
 and simple harmonies, depending for effect upon sincerity of 
 plan and justice of balance. The square masses of the main 
 building, the projecting cornices and rounded tribune, meet 
 together and soar up into the cupola ; while the grand but 
 austere proportions of the arches and the piers compose a 
 symphony of perfectly concordant lines. The music is grave 
 and solemn, architecturally expressed in terms of measured 
 space and outlined symmetry. The whole effect is that of 
 one thing pleasant to look upon, agreeably appealing to our 
 sense of unity, charming us by grace and repose ; not stimula- 
 tive nor suggestive, not multiform nor mysterious. We are 
 reminded of the temples imagined by Francesco Colonna, 
 and figured in his Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. One of these 
 shrines has, we feel, come into actual existence here; and 
 the religious ceremonies for which it is adapted are not 
 those of the Christian worship. Some more primitive, less 
 spiritual rites, involving less of tragic awe and deep-wrought 
 symbolism, should be here performed. It is better suited for 
 Polifilo's lustration by Venus Physizoe than for the mass on 
 Easter morning. And in this respect, the sentiment of the 
 architecture is exactly faithful to that mood of religious feel- 
 ing which appeared in Italy under the influences of the 
 classical revival — when the essential doctrines of Christianity 
 were blurred with Pantheism ; when Jehovah became Jupiter 
 Optimus Maximus ; and Jesus was the Heros of Calvary, and 
 nuns were Virgines Vestales. In literature this mood often 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 57 
 
 Strikes us as insincere and artificial. But it admitted of realisa- 
 tion and showed itself to be profoundly felt in architecture. 
 
 After leaving Madonna di San Biagio, the road strikes at 
 once into an open country, expanding on the right towards 
 the woody ridge of Monte Fallonica, on the left toward 
 Cetona and Radicofani, with Monte Amiata full in front — 
 its double crest and long volcanic slope recalling Etna ; the 
 belt of embrowned forest on its flank, made luminous by 
 sunlight. Far away stretches the Sienese Maremma ; Siena 
 dimly visible upon her gentle hill; and still beyond, the 
 pyramid of Volterra, huge and cloud-like, piled against the 
 sky. The road, as is almost invariable in this district, keeps 
 to the highest line of ridges, winding much, and following 
 the dimplings of the earthy hills. Here and there a solitary 
 castello, rusty with old age, and turned into a farm, juts into 
 picturesqueness from some point of vantage on a mound 
 surrounded with green tillage. But soon the dull and 
 intolerable cre^a, ash-grey earth, without a vestige of vegeta- 
 tion, furrowed by rain, and desolately breaking into gullies, 
 swallows up variety and charm. It is difficult to believe 
 that this crefa of Southern Tuscany, which has all the appear- 
 ance of barrenness, and is a positive deformity in the land- 
 scape, can be really fruitful. Yet we are frequently being 
 told that it only needs assiduous labour to render it enor- 
 mously productive. 
 
 When we reached Pienza we were already in the middle 
 of a country without cultivation, abandoned to the marl. It 
 is a little place, perched upon the ledge of a long sliding hill, 
 which commands the vale of Orcia ; Monte Amiata soaring 
 in aerial majesty beyond. Its old name was Cosignano. 
 But it had the honour of giving birth to ^neas Sylvius 
 Piccolomini, who, when he was elected to the Papacy and 
 had assumed the title of Pius II., determined to transform 
 and dignify his native village, and to call it after his own 
 
58 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 name. From that time forward Cosignano has been known as 
 Pienza. 
 
 Pius II. succeeded effectually in leaving his mark upon 
 the town. And this forms its main interest at the present 
 time. We see in Pienza how the most active-minded and 
 intelligent man of his epoch, the representative genius of 
 Italy in the middle of the fifteenth century, commanding vast 
 wealth and the Pontifical prestige, worked out his whim of 
 city-building. The experiment had to be made upon a small 
 scale ; for Pienza was then and was destined to remain a 
 village. Yet here, upon this miniature piazza — in modern 
 as in ancient Italy the meeting-point of civic life, the forum — 
 we find a cathedral, a palace of the bishop, a palace of the 
 feudal lord, and a palace of the commune, arranged upon 
 a well-considered plan, and executed after one design in a 
 consistent style. The religious, municipal, signorial, and" 
 ecclesiastical functions of the little town are centralised 
 around the open market-place, on which the common people 
 transacted business and discussed affairs. Pius entrusted 
 the realisation of his scheme to a Florentine architect ; 
 whether Bernardo Rossellino, or a certain Bernardo di 
 Lorenzo, is still uncertain. The same artist, working in the 
 flat manner of Florentine domestic architecture, with rusti- 
 cated basements, rounded windows and bold projecting 
 cornices — the manner which is so nobly illustrated by the 
 Rucellai and Strozzi palaces at Florence — executed also for 
 Pius the monumental Palazzo Piccolomini at Siena. It is a 
 great misfortune for the group of buildings he designed at 
 Pienza, that they are huddled together in close quarters on 
 a square too small for their effect. A w^ant of space is 
 peculiarly injurious to the architecture of this date, 1462, 
 which, itself geometrical and spatial, demands a certain 
 harmony and liberty in its surroundings, a proportion between 
 the room occupied by each building and the masses of the 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 59 
 
 edifice. The style is severe and prosaic. Those charming 
 episodes and accidents of fancy, in which the Gothic style 
 and the style of the earlier Lombard Renaissance abounded, 
 are wholly wanting to the rigid, mathematical, hard-headed 
 genius of the Florentine quattrocento. Pienza, therefore, 
 disappoints us. Its heavy palace frontispieces shut the spirit 
 up in a tight box. We seem unable to breathe, and lack 
 that element of life and picturesqueness which the splendid 
 retinues of nobles in the age of Pinturicchio might have 
 added to the now forlorn Piazza. 
 
 Yet the material is a fine warm travertine, mellowing to 
 dark red, brightening to golden, with some details, especially 
 the tower of the Palazzo Comunale, in red brick. This 
 building, by the way, is imitated in miniature from that of 
 Florence. The cathedral is a small church of three aisles, 
 equally high, ending in what the French would call a chevet. 
 Pius had observed this plan of construction somewhere in 
 Austria, and commanded his architect, Bernardo, to observe 
 it in his plan. He was attracted by the facilities for window- 
 lighting which it offered; and what is very singular, he pro- 
 vided by the Bull of his foundation for keeping the walls of 
 the interior free from frescoes and other coloured decorations. 
 The result is that, though the interior effect is pleasing, the 
 church presents a frigid aspect to eyes familiarised with 
 warmth of tone in other buildings of that period. The 
 details of the columns and friezes are classical ; and the 
 fagade, strictly corresponding to the structure, and very 
 honest in its decorative elements, is also of the earlier 
 Renaissance style. But the vaulting and some of the win- 
 dows are pointed. 
 
 The Palazzo Piccolomini, standing at the right hand of the 
 Duomo, is a vast square edifice. The walls are flat and even, 
 pierced at regular intervals with windows, except upon the 
 south-west side, where the rectangular design is broken by a 
 
6o ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 noble double Loggiata, gallery rising above gallery — serene 
 curves of arches, grandly proportioned columns, massive 
 balustrades, a spacious corridor, a roomy vaulting — opening 
 out upon the palace garden, and offering fair prospect over 
 the wooded heights of Castiglione and Rocca d'Orcia, up to 
 Radicofani and shadowy Amiata. It was in these double 
 tiers of galleries, in the garden beneath and in the open 
 inner square of the palazzo, that the great life of Italian 
 aristocracy displayed itself Four centuries ago these spaces, 
 now so desolate in their immensity, echoed to the tread of 
 serving-men, the songs of pages ; horse-hooves struck upon 
 the pavement of the court ; spurs jingled on the stair-cases ; 
 the brocaded trains of ladies sweeping from their chambers 
 rustled on the marbles of the loggia ; knights let their hawks 
 fly from the garden-parapets; cardinals and abbreviators 
 gathered round the doors from which the Pope would issue, 
 when he rose from his siesta to take the cool of evening in 
 those airy colonnades. How impossible it is to realise that 
 scene amid this solitude ! The palazzo still belongs to the 
 Piccolomini family. But it has fallen into something worse 
 than ruin — the squalor of half-starved existence, shorn of all 
 that justified its grand proportions. Partition-walls have been 
 run up across its halls to meet the requirements of our con- 
 tracted modern customs. Nothing remains of the original 
 decorations except one carved chimney-piece, an emblazoned 
 shield, and a frescoed portrait of the founder. All movable 
 treasures have been made away with. And yet the carved 
 heraldics of the exterior, the coat of Piccolomini, "argent, on 
 a cross azure five crescents or," the Papal ensigns, keys, and 
 tiara, and the monogram of Pius, prove that this country 
 dwelling of a Pope must once have been rich in details be- 
 fitting its magnificence. With the exception of the very 
 small portion reserved for the Signori, when they visit Pienza, 
 the palace has become a granary for country produce in a 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 6i 
 
 Starveling land. There was one redeeming point about it to 
 my mind. That was the handsome young man, with earnest 
 Tuscan eyes and a wonderfully sweet voice, the servant of the 
 Piccolomini family, who lives here with his crippled father, 
 and who showed us over the apartments. 
 
 We left Pienza and drove on to S. Quirico, through the 
 same wrinkled wilderness of marl ; wasteful, uncultivated, , 
 bare to every wind that blows. A cruel blast was sweeping 
 from the sea, and Monte Amiata darkened with rain clouds. 
 Still the pictures, which formed themselves at intervals, as 
 we wound along these barren ridges, were very fair to look 
 upon, especially one, not far from S. Quirico. It had for fore- 
 ground a stretch of tilth— olive-trees, honeysuckle hedges, and 
 cypresses. Beyond soared Amiata in all its breadth and blue 
 air-blackness, bearing on its mighty flanks the broken cliffs 
 and tufted woods of Castiglione and the Rocca d'Orcia ; 
 eagles' nests emerging from a fertile valley-champaign, into 
 which the eye was led for rest. It so chanced that a band 
 of sunlight, escaping from filmy clouds, touched this picture 
 with silvery greys and soft greens — a suffusion of vaporous 
 radiance, which made it for one moment a Claude land-' 
 scape. 
 
 S. Quirico was keeping /esfa. The streets were crowded 
 with healthy handsome men and women from the contado. 
 This village lies on the edge of a great oasis in the Sienese 
 desert — an oasis, formed by the waters of the Orcia and Asso 
 sweeping down to join Ombrone, and stretching on to 
 Montalcino. We put up at the sign of the " Two Hares," 
 where a notable housewife .gave us a dinner of all we could 
 desire ; frittata di cervelle^ good fish, roast lamb stuffed with 
 rosemary, salad and cheese, with excellent wine and black 
 coifee, at the rate of three lire a head. 
 
 The attraction of S. Quirico is its gem-like little collegiata, 
 a Lombard church of the ninth century, with carved portals 
 
62 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 of the thirteenth. It is built of golden travertine ; some 
 details in brown sandstone. The western and southern portals 
 have pillars resting on the backs of lions. On the western side 
 these pillars are four slender columns, linked by snake-like 
 ligatures. On the southern side they consist of two carved 
 figures — possibly S. John and the Archangel Michael. There 
 is great freedom and beauty in these statues, as also in the 
 lions which support them, recalling the early French and 
 German manner. In addition, one finds the usual Lombard 
 grotesques — two sea-monsters, biting each other ; harpy- 
 birds ; a dragon with a twisted tail ; little men grinning and 
 squatting in adaptation to coigns and angles of the windows. 
 The toothed and chevron patterns of the north are quaintly 
 blent with rude acanthus scrolls and classical egg-mouldings. 
 Over the western porch is a Gothic rose window. Altogether 
 this church must be reckoned one of the most curious speci- 
 mens of that hybrid architecture, fusing and appropriating 
 different manners, which perplexes the student in Central 
 Italy. It seems strangely out of place in Tuscany. Yet, if 
 what one reads of Toscanella, a village between Viterbo and 
 Orbetello, be true, there exist examples of a similar fantastic 
 Lombard style even lower down. 
 
 The interior was most disastrously gutted and " restored " in 
 1731 : its open wooden roof masked by a false stucco vaulting. 
 A few relics, spared by the eighteenth century Vandals, show 
 that the church was once rich in antique curiosities. A 
 marble knight in armour lies on his back, half hidden by the 
 pulpit stairs. And in the choir are half a dozen rarely beauti- 
 ful panels of tarsia, executed in a bold style and on a large 
 scale. One design — a man throwing his face back, and sing- 
 ing, while he plays a mandoline ; with long thick hair and 
 fanciful beretta ; behind him a fine line of cypress and other 
 trees — struck me as singularly lovely. In another I noticed a 
 branch of peach, broad leaves and ripe fruit, not only drawn 
 
MONTEPULCIANO. 63 
 
 • with remarkable grace and power, but so modelled as to stand 
 out with the roundness of reality. 
 
 The whole drive of three hours back to Montepulciano was 
 one long banquet of inimitable distant views. Next morning, 
 having to take farewell of the place, we climbed to the Castello, 
 or arx of the old city! It is a ruined spot, outside the present 
 walls, upon the southern slope, where there is now a farm, and 
 a fair space of short sheep-cropped turf, very green and grassy, 
 and gemmed with little pink geraniums as in England in such 
 places. The walls of the old castle, overgrown with ivy, are 
 broken down to their foundations. This may possibly have 
 been done when Montepulciano was dismantled by the 
 Sienese in 1232. At that date the Commune succumbed to 
 its more powerful neighbours. The half of its inhabitants 
 were murdered, and its fortifications were destroyed. Such 
 episodes are common enough in the history of that internecine 
 struggle for existence between the Italian municipalities, which 
 preceded the more famous strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines. 
 Stretched upon the smooth turf of the Castello, we bade adieu 
 to the divine landscape bathed in light and mountain air — to 
 Thrasymene and Chiusi and Cetona; to Amiata, Pienza, and 
 S. Quirico ; to Montalcino and the mountains of Volterra ; to 
 Siena and Cortona ; and, closer, to Monte Fallonica, Madonna 
 di Biagio, the house-roofs and the Palazzo tower of Monte- 
 pulciano. 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 
 
 Students of Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translations from 
 the early Italian poets {Dante and his Circle: Ellis and 
 White, 1874) will not fail to have noticed the striking figure 
 made among those jejune imitators of Provencal mannerism 
 by two rhymesters, Cecco Angiolieri and Folgore da San 
 Gemignano. Both belong to the school of Siena, and both de- 
 tach themselves from the metaphysical fashion of their epoch 
 by clearness of intention and directness of style. The sonnets 
 of both are remarkable for what in the critical jargon of to-day 
 might be termed realism. Cecco is even savage and brutal. 
 He anticipates Villon from afar, and is happily described by 
 Mr. Rossetti as the prodigal or "scamp" of the Dantesque 
 circle. The case is different with Folgore. There is no poet 
 who breathes a fresher air of gentleness. He writes in images, 
 dealing but little with ideas. Every line presents a picture, 
 and each picture has the charm of a miniature fancifully drawn 
 and brightly coloured on a missal-margin. Cecco and Folgore 
 alike have abandoned the mediaeval mysticism which sounds 
 unreal on almost all Italian lips but Dante's. True Italians, 
 they are content to live for life's sake, and to take the world 
 as it presents itself to natural senses. But Cecco is perverse 
 and impious. His Ipve has nothing delicate ; his hatred is a 
 morbid passion. At his worst or best (for his best writing is 
 his worst feeling) we find him all but rabid. If Caligula, for 
 instance, had written poetry, he might have piqued himself 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 65 
 
 upon the following sonnet ; only we must do Cecco the justice 
 of remembering that his rage is more than half ironical and 
 humorous : — 
 
 An I were fire, I would burn up the world ; 
 
 An I were wind, with tempest I'd it break ; 
 
 An I were sea, I'd drown it in a lake ; 
 
 An I were God, to hell I'd have it hurled ; 
 An I were Pope, I'd see disaster whirled 
 
 O'er Christendom, deep joy thereof to take j 
 
 An I were Emperor, I'd quickly make 
 
 All heads of all folk from their necks be twirled ; 
 An I were death, I'd to my father go ; 
 
 An I were life, forthwith from him I'd fly ; 
 
 And with my mother I'd deal even so ; 
 An I were Cecco, as I am but I, 
 
 Young girls and pretty for myself I'd hold, 
 
 But let my neighbours take the plain and old. 
 
 Of all this there is no trace in Folgore. The worst a moralist 
 could say of him, is that he sought out for himself a life of pure 
 enjoyment. The famous Sonnets on the Months give particu- 
 lar directions for pastime in a round of pleasure suited to each 
 season. The Sonnets on the Days are conceived in a like 
 hedonistic spirit. But these series are specially addressed to 
 members of the Glad Brigades and Spending Companies, 
 which were common in the great mercantile cities of medieval 
 Italy. Their tone is doubtless due to the occasion of their 
 composition, as compliments to Messer Nicholo di Nisi and 
 Messer Guerra Cavicciuoli. 
 
 The mention of these names reminds me that a word need 
 be said about the date of Folgore. Mr. Rossetti does not 
 dispute the commonly assigned date of 1260, and takes for 
 granted that the Messer Nicolo of the Sonnets on the Months 
 was the Sienese gentleman referred to by Dante in a certain 
 passage of the Inferno : — ^ 
 
 ^ In/erno, xxix. 121. — Longfellow. 
 
66 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 And to the Poet said I : "Now was ever 
 
 So vain a people as the Sienese ? 
 
 Not for a certainty the French by far. " 
 Whereat the other leper, who had heard me, 
 
 Replied unto my speech : " Taking out Stricca, 
 
 "Who knew the art of moderate expenses, 
 And Nicolo, who the luxurious use 
 
 Of cloves discovered earliest of all 
 
 Within that garden where such seed takes root. 
 And taking out the band, among whom squandered 
 
 Caccia d' Ascian his vineyards and vast woods, 
 
 And where his wit the Abbagliato proffered." 
 
 Now Folgore refers in his political sonnets to events of the 
 years 13 14 and 1315 ; and the correct reading of a line in his 
 last sonnet on the Months gives the name of Nicholo di Nisi 
 to the leader of Folgore's "blithe and lordly Fellowship." 
 The first of these facts leads us to the conclusion that Folgore 
 flourished in the first quarter of the fourteenth, instead of in 
 the third quarter of the thirteenth century. The second pre- 
 vents our identifying Nicholo di Nisi with the Niccolb de' 
 Salimbeni, who is thought to have been the founder of the 
 Fellowship of the Carnation. Furthermore, documents have 
 recently been brought to light which mention at San Gemig- 
 nano, in the years 1305 and 1306, a certain Folgore. There 
 is no sufficient reason to identify this Folgore with the poet ; 
 but the name, to say the least, is so peculiar that its occur- 
 rence in the records of so small a town as San Gemignano 
 gives some confirmation to the hypothesis of the poet's later 
 date. Taking these several considerations together, I think 
 we must abandon the old view that Folgore was one of the 
 earliest Tuscan poets, a view which is, moreover, contradicted 
 by his style. Those critics, at any rate, who still believe 
 him to have been a predecessor of Dante's, are forced to 
 reject as spurious the political sonnets referring to Monte 
 Catini and the plunder of Lucca by Uguccione della Fag- 
 giuola. Yet these sonnets rest on the same MS. authority 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 67 
 
 as the Months and Days, and are distinguished by the same 
 qualities.^ 
 
 Whatever may be the date of Folgore, whether we assign his 
 period to the middle of the thirteenth or the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century, there is no doubt but that he presents us 
 with a very lively picture of Italian manners, drawn from the 
 point of view of the high bourgeoisie. It is on this account 
 that I have thought it worth while to translate five of his 
 Sonnets on Knighthood, which form the fragment that remains 
 to us from a series of seventeen. Few poems better illustrate 
 the temper of Italian aristocracy when the civil wars of two 
 centuries had forced the nobles to enroll themselves among 
 the burghers, and when what little chivalry had taken root in 
 Italy was fast decaying in a gorgeous overbloom of luxury. " 
 The institutions of feudal knighthood had lost their sterner 
 meaning for our poet. He uses them for the suggestion of 
 delicate allegories fancifully painted. Their mysterious signi- 
 ficance is turned to gaiety, their piety to amorous delight, 
 their grimness to refined enjoyment. Still these changes are 
 effected with perfect good taste and in perfect good faith. 
 Something of the perfume of true chivalry still lingered in a 
 society which was fast becoming mercantile and diplomatic. 
 And this perfume is exhaled by the petals of Folgore's song- 
 blossom. He has no conception that to readers of Mort 
 Arthur, or to Founders of the Garter, to Sir Miles Stapleton, 
 Sir Richard Fitz-Simon, or Sir James Audley, his ideal knight 
 would have seemed but little better than a scented civet-cat. 
 Such knights as his were all that Italy possessed, and the 
 poet-painter was justly proud of them, since they served for 
 finished pictures of the beautiful in life. 
 
 1 The above points are fully discussed by Signor Giulio Navone, in his 
 recent edition of Le Rime di Folgore da San Gemignano e di Cent da la 
 Chitarra d^ Arezzo. Bologna, Romagnoli, 1880. I may further mention 
 that in the sonnet on the Pisans, translated below, which belongs to the 
 political series, Folgore uses his own name. 
 
68 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 The Italians were not a feudal race. During the successive 
 reigns of Lombard, Frankish, and German masters, they had 
 passively accepted, stubbornly resisted feudalism, remaining 
 true to the conviction that they themselves were Roman. In 
 Roman memories they sought the traditions which give con- 
 sistency to national consciousness. And when the Italian 
 communes triumphed finally over Empire, counts, bishops, 
 and rural aristocracy ; then Roman law was speedily substi- 
 tuted for the '* asinine code " of the barbarians, and Roman 
 civility gave its tone to social customs in the place of Teutonic 
 chivalry. Yet just as the Italians borrowed, modified, and 
 misconceived Gothic architecture, so they took a feudal 
 tincture from the nations of the North with whom they 
 came in contact. Their noble famiUes, those especially who 
 followed the Imperial party, sought the honour of knighthood; 
 and even the free cities arrogated to themselves the right of 
 conferring this distinction by diploma on their burghers. The 
 chivalry thus formed in Italy was a decorative institution. It 
 might be compared to the ornamental frontispiece which 
 masks the structural poverty of such Gothic buildings as the 
 Cathedral of Orvieto. 
 
 On the descent of the German Emperor into Lombardy, 
 the great vassals who acknowledged him, made knighthood, 
 among titles of more solid import, the price of their allegi- 
 ance.^ Thus the chronicle of the Cortusi for the year 1354 
 tells us that when Charles IV. " was advancing through the 
 March, and had crossed the Oglio, and was at the borders of 
 Cremona, in his camp upon the snow, he, sitting upon his 
 horse, did knight the doughty and noble man, Francesco 
 da Carrara, who had constantly attended him with a great 
 train, and smiting him upon the neck with his palm, said : 
 * Be thou a good knight, and loyal to the Empire.' There- 
 
 1 The passages used in the text are chiefly drawn from Muratori's fifty- 
 third Dissertation. 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 69 
 
 upon the noble German peers dismounted, and forthwith 
 buckled on Francesco's spurs. To them the Lord Francesco 
 gave chargers and horses of the best he had." Immediately 
 afterwards Francesco dubbed several of his own retainers 
 knights. And this was the customary fashion of these 
 Lombard lords. For we read how in the year 1328 Can 
 Grande della Scala, after the capture of Padua, "returned to 
 Verona, and for the further celebration of his victory upon the 
 last day of October held a court, and made thirty-eight knights 
 with his own hand of the divers districts of Lombardy." 
 And in 1294 Azzo d'Este "was knighted by Gerardo da Camino, 
 who then was Lord of Treviso, upon the piazza of Ferrara, 
 before the gate of the Bishop's palace. And on the same day at 
 the same hour the said Lord Marquis Azzo made fifty-two 
 knights with his own hand, namely, the Lord Francesco, his 
 brother, and others of Ferrara, Modena, Bologna, Florence, 
 Padua, and Lombardy; and on this occasion was a great 
 court held in Ferrara." Another chronicle, referring to the 
 same event, says that the whole expenses of the ceremony, 
 including the rich dresses of the new knights, were at the 
 charge of the Marquis. It was customary, when a noble 
 house had risen to great wealth and had abundance of fight- 
 ing men, to increase its prestige and spread abroad its glory 
 by a wholesale creation of knights. Thus the Chronicle of 
 Rimini records a high court held by Pandolfo Malatesta in 
 the May of 1324, when he and his two sons, with two of his 
 near relatives and certain strangers from Florence, Bologna, 
 and Perugia, received this honour. At Siena, in like manner, 
 in the year 1284, "thirteen of the house of Salimbeni were 
 knighted with great pomp." 
 
 It was not on the battle-field that the Italians sought this 
 honour. They regarded knighthood as a part of their sig- 
 norial parade. Therefore Republics, in whom perhaps, accord- 
 ing to strict feudal notions, there was no fount of honour, 
 
70 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 presumed to appoint procurators for the special purpose of 
 making knights. Florence, Siena, and Arezzo, after this 
 fashion gave the golden spurs to men who were enrolled in 
 the arts of trade or commerce. The usage was severely criti- 
 cised by Germans who visited Italy in the Imperial train. 
 Otto Frisingensis, writing the deeds of Frederick Barbarossaj 
 speaks with bitterness thereof: "To the end that they may 
 not lack means of subduing their neighbours, they think it no 
 shame to gird as knights young men of low birth, or even 
 handicraftsmen in despised mechanic arts, the which folk 
 other nations banish like the plague from honourable and 
 liberal pursuits." Such knights, amid the chivalry of Europe, 
 were not held in much esteem ; nor is it easy to see what the 
 cities, who had formally excluded nobles from their govern- 
 ment, thought to gain by aping institutions which had their 
 true value only in a feudal society. We must suppose that 
 the Italians were not firmly set enough in their own type to 
 resist an enthusiasm which inflamed all Christendom. At the 
 same time they were too Italian to comprehend the spirit of 
 the thing they borrowed. The knights thus made already 
 contained within themselves the germ of those Condottieri, 
 ■who reduced the service of arms to a commercial speculation. 
 But they lent splendour to the Commonwealth, as may be 
 seen in the grave line of mounted warriors, steel-clad, with 
 open visors, who guard the commune of Siena in Ambrogio 
 Lorenzetti's fresco. Giovanni Villani, in a passage of his 
 Chronicle which deals with the fair state of Florence just 
 before the outbreak of the Black and White parties, says the 
 city at that epoch numbered "three hundred Cavalieri di 
 Corredo, with many clubs of knights and squires, who morning 
 and evening went to meat with many men of the court, and 
 gave away on high festivals many robes of vair." It is clear 
 that these citizen knights were leaders of society, and did their 
 duty to the commonwealth by adding to its joyous cheer. 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 
 
 71 
 
 Upon the battle-fields of the civil wars, moreover, they sus- 
 tained at their expense the charges of the cavalry. 
 
 Siena was a city much given to parade and devoted to the 
 Imperial cause, in which the institution of chivalry flourished. 
 Not only did the burghers take knighthood from their procura- 
 tors, but the more influential sought it by a special dispensation 
 from the Emperor. Thus we hear how Nino Tolomei obtained 
 a Caesarean diploma of knighthood for his son Giovanni, and 
 published it with great pomp to the people in his palace. 
 This Giovanni, when he afterwards entered religion, took the 
 name of Bernard, and founded the Order of Monte Oliveto. 
 
 Owing to the special conditions of Italian chivalry, it 
 followed that the new knight, having won his spurs by no feat 
 of arms upon the battle-field, was bounden to display peculiar 
 magnificence in the ceremonies of his investiture. His honour 
 was held to be less the reward of courage than of liberality. 
 And this feeling is strongly expressed in a curious passage of 
 Matteo Villani's Chronicle. "When the Emperor Charles 
 had received the crown in Rome, as we have said, he turned 
 towards Siena, and on the 19th day of April arrived at that 
 city ; and before he entered the same, there met him people 
 of the commonwealth with great festivity upon the hour of 
 vespers; in the which reception eight burghers, given to 
 display but miserly, to the end they might avoid the charges 
 due to knighthood, did cause themselves then and there to 
 be made knights by him. And no sooner had he passed the 
 gates than many ran to meet him without order in their going 
 or provision for the ceremony, and he, being aware of the vain 
 and light impulse of that folk, enjoined upon the Patriarch to 
 knight them in his name. The Patriarch could not withstay 
 from knighting as many as offered themselves ; and seeing 
 the thing so cheap, very many took the honour, who before 
 that hour had never thought of being knighted, nor had made 
 provision of what is required from him who seeketh knight- 
 
72 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 hood, but with light impulse did cause themselves to be borne 
 upon the arms of those who were around the Patriarch ; and 
 when they were in the path before him, these raised such an one 
 on high, and took his customary cap off, and after he had had 
 the cheek-blow which is used in knighting, put a gold-fringed 
 cap upon his head, and drew him from the press, and so he 
 was a knight. And after this wise were made four-and-thirty 
 on that evening, of the noble and lesser folk. And when the 
 Emperor had been attended to his lodging, night fell, and all 
 returned home ; and the new knights without preparation or 
 expense celebrated their reception into chivalry with their 
 families forthwith. He who reflects with a mind not subject 
 to base avarice upon the coming of a new-crowned Emperor 
 into so famous a city, and bethinks him how so many noble 
 and rich burghers were promoted to the honour of knighthood 
 in their native land, men too by nature fond of pomp, without 
 having made any solemn festival in common or in private to 
 the fame of chivalry, may judge this people little worthy of 
 the distinction they received." 
 
 This passage is interesting partly as an instance of Floren- 
 tine spite against Siena, partly as showing that in Italy great 
 munificence was expected from the carpet-knights who had 
 not won their spurs with toil, and partly as proving how the 
 German Emperors, on their parade expeditions through Italy, 
 debased the institutions they were bound to hold in respect. 
 Enfeebled by the extirpation of the last great German house 
 which really reigned in Italy, the Empire was now no better 
 than a cause of corruption and demoralisation to Italian society. 
 The conduct of a man like Charles disgusted even the most 
 fervent Ghibellines ; and we find Fazio degli Uberti flinging 
 scorn upon his avarice and baseness in such lines as these : — 
 
 Sappi ch' i*^ son Italia che ti parlo, 
 Di Lusimburgo ignojninioso Carlo . . , 
 Veggendo te aver tese tue arti 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 73 
 
 A tor danari e gir con essi a casa . . . 
 Tu dunque, Giove, perche '1 Santo uccello 
 Da questo Carlo quarto 
 Imperador non togli e dalle mani 
 Degli altri^ lurchi moderni Germani 
 Che d' aquila un allocco «' ha7tno fatto ? 
 
 From a passage in a Sienese chronicle we learn what 
 ceremonies of bravery were usual in that city when the new 
 knights understood their duty. It was the year 1326. 
 Messer Francesco Bandinelli was about to be knighted on 
 the morning of Christmas-day. The friends of his house 
 sent peacocks and pheasants by the dozen, and huge pies of 
 marchpane, and game in quantities. Wine, meat, and bread 
 were distributed to the Franciscan and other convents, and a 
 fair and noble court was opened to all comers. Messer 
 Sozzo, father of the novice, went, attended by his guests, to 
 hear high mass in the cathedral ; and there upon the marble 
 pulpit, which the Pisans carved, the ceremony was completed. 
 Tommaso di Nello bore his sword and cap and spurs before 
 him upon horseback. Messer Sozzo girded the sword upon 
 the loins of Messer Francesco, his son aforesaid. Messer 
 Pietro Ridolfi, of Rome, who was the first vicar that came to 
 Siena, and the Duke of Calabria buckled on his right spur. 
 The Captain of the People buckled on his left. The Count 
 Simone da Battifolle then undid his sword and placed it in 
 the hands of Messer Giovanni di Messer Bartolo de' Fibenzi 
 da Rodi, who handed it to Messer Sozzo, the which sword 
 had previously been girded by the father on his son. After 
 this follows a list of the illustrious guests, and an inventory of 
 the presents made to them by Messer Francesco. We find 
 among these " a robe of silken cloth and gold, skirt, and fur, 
 and cap lined with vair, with a silken cord." The descrip- 
 tion of the many costly dresses is minute; but I find no 
 mention of armour. The singers received golden florins, and 
 the players upon instruments "good store of money." A 
 
74 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 certain Salamone was presented with the clothes which the 
 novice doffed before he took the ceremonial bath. The 
 whole catalogue concludes with Messer Francesco's furniture 
 and outfit. This, besides a large wardrobe of rich clothes 
 and furs, contains armour and the trappings for charger and 
 palfrey. The Cor/e Bandita^ or open house held upon this 
 occasion, lasted for eight days, and the charges on the 
 Bandinelli estates must have been considerable. 
 
 Knights so made were called in Italy Cavalieri Addobbati, 
 or di Corredo, probably because the expense of costly furniture 
 was borne by them — addobbo having become a name for 
 decorative trappings, and Corredo for equipment. The latter 
 is still in use for a bride's trousseau. The former has the 
 same Teutonic root as our verb "to dub." But the Italians 
 recognised three other kinds of knights, the Cavalieri B agnatic 
 Cavalieri di Scudo, and Cavalieri d^ Ari?ie. Of the four sorts 
 Sacchetti writes in one of his novels : — " Knights of the Bath 
 are made with the greatest ceremonies, and it behoves them 
 to be bathed and washed of all impurity. Knights of Equip- 
 ment are those who take the order with a mantle of dark 
 green and the gilded garland. Knights of the Shield are such 
 as are made knights by commonwealths or princes, or go to 
 investiture armed, and with the casque upon their head. 
 Knights of Arms are those who in the opening of a battle, or 
 upon a foughten field, are dubbed knights." These distinc- 
 tions, however, though concordant with feudal chivalry, were 
 not scrupulously maintained in Italy. Messer Francesco 
 Bandinelli, for example, was certainly a Cavaliere di Corredo. 
 Yet he took the bath, as we have seen. Of a truth, the 
 Italians selected those picturesque elements of chivalry which 
 lent themselves to pageant and parade. The sterner inten- 
 tion of the institution, and the symbolic meaning of its various 
 ceremonies, were neglected by them. 
 
 In the foregoing passages, which serve as a lengthy preamble 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 75 
 
 to Folgore's five sonnets, I have endeavoured to draw illustra- 
 tions from the history of Siena, because Folgore represents 
 Sienese society at the height of medieval culture. In the 
 first of the series he describes the preparation made by the 
 aspirant after knighthood. The noble youth is so bent on 
 doing honour to the order of chivalry, that he raises money by 
 mortgage to furnish forth the banquets and the presents due 
 upon the occasion of his institution. He has made provision 
 also of equipment for himself and all his train. It will be 
 noticed that Folgore dwells only on the fair and joyous aspect 
 of the ceremony. The religious enthusiasm of knighthood 
 has disappeared, and already, in the first decade of the four- 
 teenth century, we find the spirit of Jehan de Saintre prevalent 
 in Italy. The word donzello^ derived from the Latin domtcellus, 
 I have translated squire^ because the donzel was a youth of 
 gentle birth awaiting knighthood. 
 
 This morn a young squire shall be made a knight ; 
 Whereof he fain would be right worthy found, 
 And therefore pledgeth lands and castles round 
 To furnish all that fits a man of might. 
 
 Meat, bread and wine he gives to many a wight ; 
 Capons and pheasants on his board abound, 
 Where serving men and pages march around ; 
 Choice chambers, torches, and wax candle light. 
 
 Barbed steeds, a multitude, are in his thought. 
 Mailed men at arms and noble company. 
 Spears, pennants, housing cloths, bells richly wrought. 
 
 Musicians following with great barony 
 
 And jesters through the land his state have brought, 
 With dames and damsels whereso rideth he. 
 
 The subject having thus been introduced, Folgore treats 
 the ceremonies of investiture by an allegorical method, which 
 is quite consistent with his own preference of images to ideas. 
 Each of the four following sonnets presents a picture to the 
 mind, admirably fitted for artistic handling. We may imagine 
 them to ourselves wrought in arras for a sumptuous chamber. 
 
^6 ITALIAN BYWAYS, 
 
 The first treats of the bath, in which as we have seen already 
 from Sacchetti's note, the aspirant after knighthood puts aside 
 all vice, and consecrates himself anew. Prodezza, or Prowess, 
 must behold him nude from head to foot, in order to assure 
 herself that the neophyte bears no blemish ; and this inspec- 
 tion is an allegory of internal wholeness. 
 
 Lo Prowess, who despoileth him straightway, 
 
 And saith : " Friend, now beseems it thee to strip ; 
 For I will see men naked, thigh and hip, 
 And thou my will must know and eke obey ; 
 
 And leave what was thy wont until this day, 
 
 And for new toil, new sweat, thy strength equip ; 
 This do, and thou shalt join my fellowship, 
 If of fair deeds thou tire not nor cry nay." 
 
 And when she sees his comely body bare, 
 
 Forthwith within her arms she him doth take. 
 
 And saith : *' These limbs thou yieldest to my prayer ; 
 
 I do accept thee, and this gift thee make, 
 
 So that thy deeds may shine for ever fair ; 
 My lips shall never more thy praise forsake." 
 
 After courage, the next virtue of the knightly character is 
 gentleness or modesty, called by the Italians humility. It is 
 this quality which makes a strong man pleasing to the world, 
 and wins him favour. Folgore's sonnet enables us to under- 
 stand the motto of the great Borromeo family — Humilitas^ in 
 Gothic letters underneath the coronet upon their princely 
 palace fronts. 
 
 Humility to him doth gently go, 
 
 And saith : " I would in no wise weary thee ; 
 
 Yet must I cleanse and wash thee thoroughly, 
 
 And I will make thee whiter than the snow. 
 Hear what I tell thee in fevir words, for so 
 
 Fain am I of thy heart to hold the key ; 
 
 Now must thou sail henceforward after me ; 
 
 And I will guide thee as myself do go. 
 But one thing would I have thee straightway leave ; 
 
 Well knowest thou mine enemy is pride ; 
 
 Let her no more unto thy spirit cleave : 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 77 
 
 So leal a friend with thee will I abide 
 
 That favour from all folk thou shalt receive ; 
 This grace hath he who keepeth on my side." 
 
 The novice has now bathed, approved himself to the search- 
 ing eyes of Prowess, and been accepted by Humility. After 
 the bath, it was customary for him to spend a night in vigil ; 
 and this among the Teutons should have taken place in 
 church, alone before the altar. But the Italian poet, after 
 his custom, gives a suave turn to the severe discipline. His 
 donzel passes the night in bed, attended by Discretion, or the 
 virtue of reflection. She provides fair entertainment for the 
 hours of vigil, and leaves him at the morning with good 
 counsel. It is not for nothing that he seeks knighthood, and 
 it behoves him to be careful of his goings. The three last 
 lines of the sonnet are the gravest of the series, showing that 
 something of true chivalrous feeling survived even among the 
 Cavalieri di Corredo of Tuscany. 
 
 Then did Discretion to the squire draw near, 
 And drieth him with a fair cloth and clean, 
 And straightway putteth him the sheets between, 
 Silk, linen, counterpane, and minevere. 
 
 Think now of this ! Until the day was clear, 
 
 With songs and music and delight the queen, 
 And with new knights, fair fellows well-beseen. 
 To make him perfect, gave him goodly cheer. 
 
 Then 'saith she : " Rise forthwith, for now 'tis due, 
 Thou shouldst be born into the world again ; 
 Keep well the order thou dost take in view." 
 
 Unfathomable thoughts with him remain 
 
 Of that great bond he may no more eschew, 
 Nor can he say, "I'll hide me from this chain." 
 
 The vigil is over. The mind of the novice is prepared for his 
 new duties. The morning of his reception into chivalry has 
 arrived. It is therefore fitting that grave thoughts should be 
 abandoned ; and seeing that not only prowess, humility, and 
 discretion are the virtues of a knight, but that he should also 
 
78 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 be blithe and debonnair, Gladness comes to raise him from 
 his bed and equip him for the ceremony of institution. 
 
 Comes Blithesomeness with mirth and merriment, 
 All decked in flowers she seemeth a rose-tree ; 
 Of linen, silk, cloth, fur, now beareth she 
 To the new knight a rich habiliment ; 
 
 Head-gear and cap and garland flower-besprent, 
 
 So brave they were May-bloom he seemed to be ; 
 
 With such a rout, so many and such glee. 
 
 That the floor shook. Then to her work she went ; 
 
 And stood him on his feet in hose and shoon ; 
 And purse and gilded girdle neath the fur 
 That drapes his goodly limbs, she buckles on ; 
 
 Then bids the singers and sweet music stir, 
 And showeth him to ladies for a boon 
 And all who in that following went with her. 
 
 At this point the poem is abruptly broken. The MS. from 
 which these sonnets are taken states they are a fragment. 
 Had the remaining twelve been preserved to us, we should 
 probably have possessed a series of pictures in which the pro- 
 cession to church would have been portrayed, the investiture 
 with the sword, the accolade, the buckling on of the spurs, 
 and the concluding sports and banquets. It is very much to 
 be regretted that so interesting, so beautiful, and so unique a 
 monument of Italian chivalry survives thus mutilated. But 
 students of art have to arm themselves continually with 
 patience, repressing the sad thoughts engendered in them by 
 the spectacle of time's unconscious injuries. 
 
 It is certain that Folgore would have written at least one 
 sonnet on the quality of courtesy, which in that age, as we 
 have learned from Matteo Villani, identified itself in the 
 Italian mind with liberality. This identification marks a 
 certain degradation of the chivalrous ideal, which is character- 
 istic of Italian manners. One of Folgore's miscellaneous 
 sonnets shows how sorely he felt the disappearance of this 
 quality from the midst of a society bent daily more and more 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 79 
 
 upon material aims. It reminds us of the lamentable out- 
 cries uttered by the later poets of the fourteenth century, 
 Sacchetti, Boccaccio, Uberti, and others of less fame, over 
 the decline of their age. 
 
 Courtesy ! Courtesy ! Courtesy ! I call : 
 
 But from no quarter comes there a reply. 
 
 They who should show her, hide her ; wherefore I 
 
 And whoso needs her, ill must us befall. 
 Greed with his hook hath ta'en men one and all, 
 
 And murdered every grace that dumb doth lie : 
 
 Whence, if I grieve, I know the reason why ; 
 
 From you, great men, to God I make my call : 
 For you my mother Courtesy have cast 
 
 So low beneath your feet she there must bleed ; 
 
 Your gold remains, but you're not made to last : 
 Of Eve and Adam we are all the seed : 
 
 Able to give and spend, you hold wealth fast : 
 
 111 is the nature that rears such a breed ! 
 
 Folgore was not only a poet of occasion and compliment, 
 but a political writer, who fully entertained the bitter feeling 
 of the Guelphs against their Ghibelline opponents. 
 
 Two of his sonnets addressed to the Guelphs have been 
 translated by Mr. Rossetti. In order to complete the list I 
 have made free versions of two others in which he criticised 
 the weakness of his own friends. The first is addressed, in 
 the insolent impiety of rage, to God : — 
 
 I praise thee not, O God, nor give thee glory, 
 
 Nor yield thee any thanks, nor bow the knee, 
 Nor pay thee service ; for this irketh me 
 More than the souls to stand in purgatory ; 
 
 Since thou hast made us Guelphs a jest and story 
 Unto the Ghibellines for all to see : 
 And if Uguccion claimed tax of thee, 
 Thou'dst pay it without interrogatory. 
 
 Ah, well I wot they know thee ! and have stolen 
 St. Martin from thee, Altopascio, 
 St. Michael, and the treasure thou hast lost ; 
 
8o ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 And thou that rotten rabble so hast swollen 
 
 That pride now counts for tribute ; even so 
 
 Thou'st made their heart stone-hard to thine own cost. 
 
 About the meaning of some Imes m this sonnet I am not 
 clear. But thfe feeling and the general drift of it are manifest. 
 The second is a satire on the feebleness and effeminacy of the 
 Pisans. 
 
 are more silky- sleek than ermines are, 
 Ye Pisan counts, knights, damozels, and squires, 
 Who think by combing out your hair like wires 
 To drive the men of Florence from their car. 
 
 Ye make the Ghibellines free near and far, 
 
 Here, there, in cities, castles, buts, and byres, 
 Seeing how gallant in your brave attires, 
 How bold you look, true paladins of war. 
 
 Stout-hearted are ye as a hare in chase, 
 
 To meet the sails of Genoa on the sea ; 
 And men of Lucca never saw your face. 
 
 Dogs with a bone for courtesy are ye : 
 
 Could Folgore but gain a special grace. 
 He'd have you banded 'gainst all men that be. 
 
 Among the sonnets not translated by Mr. Rossetti two by 
 Folgore remain, which may be classified with the not least 
 considerable contributions to Italian gnomic poetry in an age 
 when literature easily assumed a didactic tone. The first has 
 for its subject the importance of discernment and discrimina- 
 tion. It is written on the wisdom of what the ancient Greeks 
 called Kaioog, or the right occasion in all human conduct. 
 
 D^ar friend, not every herb puts forth a flower ; 
 
 Nor every flower that blossoms fruit doth bear ; 
 
 Nor hath each spoken word a virtue rare ; 
 
 Nor every stone in earth its healing power : 
 This thing is good when mellow, that when sour ; 
 
 One seems to grieve, within doth rest from care ; 
 
 Not every torch is brave that flaunts in air ; 
 
 There is what dead doth seem, yet flame doth shower. 
 
FOLGORE DA SAN GEMIGNANO. 8i 
 
 Wherefore it ill behoveth a wise man 
 
 His truss of every grass that grows to bind, 
 Or pile his back with every stone he can, 
 
 Or counsel from each word to seek to find, 
 
 Or take his walks abroad with Dick and Dan : 
 Not without cause I'm moved to speak my mind. 
 
 .% 
 
 The second condemns those men of Hght impulse who, as 
 Dante put it, discoursing on the same theme, " subject reason 
 to inclination."^ * 
 
 What time desire hath o'er the soul such sway 
 
 That reason finds nor place nor puissance here, 
 Men oft do laugh at what should claim a tear, 
 And over grievous dole are seeming gay. 
 
 He sure would travel far from sense astray 
 
 Who should take frigid ice for fire ; and near 
 Unto this plight are those who make glad cheer 
 For what should rather cause their soul dismay. 
 
 But more at heart might he feel heavy pain 
 Who made his reason subject to mere will, 
 And followed wandering impulse without rein ; 
 
 Seeing no lordship is so rich as still 
 
 One's upright self unswerving to sustain. 
 To follow worth, to flee things vain and ill. 
 
 The sonnets translated by me in this essay, taken together 
 with those already published by Mr. Rossetti, put the English 
 reader in possession of all that passes for the work of Folgore 
 da San Gemignano. 
 
 Since these words were written, England has lost the poet- 
 painter, to complete whose work upon the sonnet-writer of 
 
 (i) The line in Dante runs : 
 
 " Che la ragion sommettono al talento." 
 
 In Folgore's sonnet we read : 
 
 " Chi sommette rason a volontade." 
 
 On the supposition that Folgore wrote in the second decade of the four- 
 teenth century, it is not impossible that he may have had knowledge of 
 this line from the fifth canto of the Inferno. 
 
 F 
 
82 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 mediaeval Siena I attempted the translations in this essay. 
 One who has trodden the same path as Rossetti, at however a 
 noticeable interval, and has attempted to present in English 
 verse the works of great Italian singers, doing inadequately 
 for Michel Angelo and Campanella what he did supremely 
 well for Dante, may here perhaps be allowed to lay the 
 tribute of reverent recognition at his tomb. 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS. 
 Ana-Capri. 
 
 The storm-clouds at this season, though it is the bloom of 
 May, are daily piled in sulky or menacing masses over Vesu- 
 vius and the Abruzzi, frothing out their curls of moulded mist 
 across the bay, and climbing the heavens with toppling castle 
 towers and domes of alabaster. 
 
 We made the most of a tranquil afternoon, where there was 
 an armistice of storm, to climb the bluff of Mount Solaro. 
 A ruined fort caps that limestone bulwark ; and there we lay 
 together, drinking the influences of sea, sun, and wind. Im- 
 measurably deep beneath us plunged the precipices, deep, 
 deep descending to a bay where fisher boats were rocking, 
 diminished to a scale that made the fishermen in them 
 invisible. Low down above the waters wheeled white gulls, 
 and higher up the hawks and ospreys of the cliff sailed out of 
 sunlight into shadow. Immitigable strength is in the mould- 
 ing of this limestone, and sharp, clear definiteness marks yon 
 clothing of scant brushwood where the fearless goats are 
 browsing. The sublime of sculpturesque in crag structure is 
 here, refined and modulated by the sweetness of sea distances. 
 For the air came pure and yielding to us over the unfooted 
 sea ; and at the basement of those fortress-cliffs the sea was 
 dreaming in its caves ; and far away, to east and south and 
 west, soft light was blent with mist upon the surface of the 
 shimmering waters. 
 
 The distinction between prospects viewed from a mountain 
 
84 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 overlooking a great plain, or viewed from heights that, like 
 this, dominate the sea, principally lies in this : that while the 
 former only offer cloud shadows cast upon the fields below 
 our feet, in the latter these shadows are diversified with cloud 
 reflections. This gives superiority in qualities of colour, 
 variety of tone, and luminous effect to the sea, compensating 
 in some measure for the lack of those associations w^hich 
 render the outlook over a wide extent of populated land so 
 thrilling. The emergence of towered cities into sunlight at 
 the skirts of moving shadows, the liquid lapse of rivers half 
 disclosed by windings among woods, the upturned mirrors of 
 unruffled lakes, are wanting to the sea. For such episodes 
 the white sails of vessels, with all their wistfulness of going 
 to and fro on the mysterious deep, are but a poor exchange. 
 Yet the sea-lover may justify his preference by appealing to 
 the beauty of empurpled shadows, toned by amethyst or opal, 
 or shining with violet light, reflected from the clouds that 
 cross and find in those dark shields a mirror. There are sug- 
 gestions, too, of immensity, of liberty, of action, presented by 
 the boundless horizons and the changeful changeless tracts of 
 ocean which no plain possesses. 
 
 It was nigh upon sunset when we descended to Ana-Capri. 
 That evening the clouds assembled suddenly. The armistice 
 of storm was broken. They were terribly blue, and the sea 
 grew dark as steel beneath them, till the moment when the 
 sun's lip reached the last edge of the waters. Then a courier 
 of rosy flame sent forth from him passed swift across the gulf, 
 touching, where it trod, the waves with accidental fire. The 
 messenger reached Naples; and in a moment, as by some 
 diabolical illumination, the sinful city kindled into light like 
 glowing charcoal. From Posilippo on the left, along the 
 palaces of the Chiaja, up to S. Elmo on the hill, past Santa 
 Lucia, down on the Marinella, beyond Portici, beyond Torre 
 del Greco, where Vesuvius towered up aloof, an angry mount 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS. 85 
 
 of amethystine gloom, the conflagration spread and reached 
 Pompeii, and dwelt on Torre dell' Annunziata. Stationary, 
 lurid, it smouldered while the day died slowly. The long, 
 densely populated sea-line from Pozzuoli to Castellammare 
 burned and smoked with intensest incandescence, sending a 
 glare of fiery mist against the threatening blue behind, and 
 fringing with pomegranate-coloured blots the water where no 
 light now lingered. It is difficult to bend words to the use 
 required. The scene, in spite of natural suavity and grace, 
 had become like Dante's first glimpse of the City of Dis — like 
 Sodom and Gomorrah when fire from heaven descended on ^ 
 their towers before they crumbled into dust. 
 
 From Capri to Ischia. 
 
 After this, for several days, Libeccio blew harder. No 
 boats could leave or come to Capri. From the piazza parapet 
 we saw the wind scooping the surface of the waves, and fling- 
 ing spray-fleeces in sheets upon the churning water. As they 
 broke on Cape Campanella, the rollers climbed in foam — how 
 many feet ? — and blotted out the olive trees above the head- 
 land. The sky was always dark with hanging clouds and 
 masses of low-lying vapour, very moist, but scarcely raining — 
 lightning without thunder in the night. 
 
 Such weather is unexpected in the middle month of May, 
 especially when the olives are blackened by December storms, 
 and the orange-trees despoiled of foliage, and the tendrils of the 
 vines yellow with cold. The walnut-trees have shown no sign 
 of making leaves. Only the figs seem to have suffered little. 
 
 It had been settled that we should start upon the first sea- 
 faring dawn for Ischia or Sorrento, according as the wind 
 might set; and I was glad when, early one morning, the 
 captain of the Serena announced a moderate sirocco. When 
 we reached the little quay we found the surf of the Libeccio 
 
86 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Still rolling heavily into the gulf. A gusty south-easter 
 crossed it, tearing spray-crests from the swell as it went 
 plunging onward. The sea was rough enough ; but we made 
 fast sailing, our captain steering with a skill which it was 
 beautiful to watch, his five oarsmen picturesquely grouped 
 beneath the straining sail. The sea slapped and broke from 
 time to time on our windward quarter, drenching the boat 
 with brine ; and now and then her gunwale scooped into the 
 shoulder of a wave as she shot sidling up it. Meanwhile 
 enormous masses of leaden-coloured clouds formed above 
 our heads and on the sea-line ; but these were always shifting 
 in the strife of winds, and the sun shone through them 
 petulantly. As we climbed the rollers, or sank into their 
 trough, the outline of the bay appeared in glimpses, shyly 
 revealed, suddenly withdrawn from sight ; the immobility and 
 majesty of mountains contrasted with the weltering waste of 
 water round us — now blue and garish where the sunlight fell, 
 now shrouded in squally rain-storms, and then again sullen 
 beneath a vaporous canopy. Each of these vignettes was 
 photographed for one brief second on the brain, and 
 swallowed by the hurling drift of billows. The painter's art 
 could but ill have rendered that changeful colour in the sea, 
 passing from tawny cloud-reflections and surfaces of glowing 
 violet to bright blue or impenetrable purple flecked with boiling 
 foam, according as a light-illuminated or a shadowed facet of 
 the moving mass was turned to sight. 
 
 Half-way across the gulf the sirocco lulled; the sail was 
 lowered, and we had to make the rest of the passage by row- 
 ing. Under the lee of Ischia we got into comparatively quiet 
 water ; though here the beautiful Italian sea was yellowish green 
 with churned-up sand, like an unripe orange. We passed the 
 castle on its rocky island, with the domed church which has 
 been so often painted in gouache pictures through the last two 
 centuries, and soon after noon we came to Casamicciola. 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS. S; 
 
 La Picolla Sentinella. 
 
 Casamicciola is a village on the north side of the island, in 
 its centre, where the visitors to the mineral baths of Ischia 
 chiefly congregate. One of its old-established inns is called 
 La Piccola Sentinella. The first sight on entrance is an open 
 gallery, with a pink wall on which bloom magnificent cactuses, 
 sprays of thick-clustering scarlet and magenta flowers. This 
 is a rambling house, built in successive stages against a hill, 
 with terraces and verandahs opening on unexpected gardens 
 to the back and front. Beneath its long irregular fagade there 
 spreads a wilderness of orange-trees and honeysuckles and 
 roses, verbenas, geraniums and mignonette, snapdragons, 
 gazenias and stocks, exceeding bright and fragrant, with the 
 green slopes of Monte Epomeo for a background and Vesu- 
 vius for far distance. There are wonderful bits of detail in 
 this garden. One dark, thick-foliaged olive, I remember, 
 leaning from the tufa over a lizard-haunted wall, feathered 
 waist-high in huge acanthus-leaves. The whole rich orchard 
 ground of Casamicciola is dominated by Monte Epomeo, the 
 extinct volcano which may be called the raison d''etre of 
 Ischia \ for this island is nothing but a mountain lifted by the 
 energy of fire from the sea-basement. Its fantastic peaks and 
 ridges, sulphur-coloured, dusty grey, and tawny, with brush- 
 wood in young leaf upon the cloven flanks, form a singular 
 pendant to the austere but more artistically modelled lime- 
 stone crags of Capri. No two islands that I know, within so 
 short a space of sea, offer two pictures so different in style and 
 quality of loveliness. The inhabitants are equally distinct in 
 type. Here, in spite of what De Musset wrote somewhat 
 affectedly about the peasant girls — 
 
/ 
 
 88 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Ischia ! c'est la qu'on a des yeux, 
 C'est la qu'un corsage amoureux 
 
 Serre la hanche. 
 Sur un bas rouge bien tire 
 Brille, sous le jupon dore, 
 
 La mule blanche — 
 
 in spite of these lines I did not find the Ischian women 
 eminent, as those of Capri are, for beauty. But the young 
 men have fine, loose, faun-like figures, and faces that would 
 be strikingly handsome but for too long and prominent noses. 
 They are a singular race, graceful in movement. 
 
 Evening is divine in Ischia. From the topmost garden 
 terrace of the inn one looks across the sea toward Terracina, 
 Gaeta, and those descending mountain buttresses, the Phleg- 
 rsean plains, and the distant snows of the Abruzzi. Rain- 
 washed and luminous, the sunset sky held Hesper trembling 
 in a solid green of beryl. Fireflies flashed among the orange 
 blossoms. Far away in the obscurity of eastern twilight glared 
 the . smouldering cone of Vesuvius — a crimson blot upon the 
 darkness — a Cyclops' eye, bloodshot and menacing. 
 
 The company in the Piccola Sentinella, young and old, 
 were decrepit, with an odd, rheumatic, shrivelled look upon 
 them. The dining-room reminded me, as certain rooms are 
 apt to do, of a ship's saloon. I felt as though I had got into 
 the cabin of the Flying Dutchman^ and that all these people 
 had been sitting there at meat a hundred years, through storm 
 and shine, for ever driving onward over immense waves in 
 an enchanted calm. 
 
 Ischia and Forio. 
 
 One morning we drove along the shore, up hill, and down, 
 by the Porto d'Ischia to the town and castle. This country 
 curiously combines the qualities of Corfu and Catania. The 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS. 89 
 
 near distance, so richly cultivated, with the large volcanic 
 slopes of Monte Epomeo rising from the sea, is like Catania. 
 Then, across the gulf, are the bold outlines and snowy peaks 
 of the Abruzzi, recalling Albanian ranges. Here, as in Sicily, 
 the old lava is overgrown with prickly pear and red valerian. 
 Mesembrianthemums — I must be pardoned this word ; for I 
 cannot omit those fleshy-leaved creepers, with their wealth of 
 gaudy blossoms, shaped like sea anemones, coloured like straw- 
 berry and pine-apple cream-ices — mesembrianthemums, then, 
 tumble in torrents from the walls, and large-cupped white convol- 
 vuluses curl about the hedges. The Castle Rock, with Capri's 
 refined sky-coloured outline relieving its hard profile on the 
 horizon, is one of those exceedingly picturesque objects just 
 too theatrical to be artistic. It seems ready-made for a back 
 scene in Masaniello, and cries out to the chromo-lithographer, 
 " Come and make the most of me 1 " Yet this morning all 
 things, in sea, earth, and sky, were so delicately tinted and 
 bathed in pearly light that it was difficult to be critical. 
 
 In the afternoon we took the other side of the island, driv- 
 ing through Lacca to Forio. One gets right round the bulk 
 of Epomeo, and looks up into a weird region called Le 
 Falange, where white lava streams have poured in two broad 
 irregular torrents among broken precipices. Forio itself is 
 placed at the end of a flat headland, boldly thrust into the 
 sea ; and its furthest promontory bears a pilgrimage church, 
 intensely white and glaring. 
 
 There is something arbitrary in the memories we make of 
 places casually visited, dependent as they are upon our mood 
 at the moment, or on an accidental interweaving of impres- 
 sions which the genius loci blends for us. Of Forio two 
 memories abide with me. The one is of a young woman, 
 with very fair hair, in a light blue dress, standing beside an 
 older woman in a garden. There was a flourishing pome- 
 granate-tree above them. The whiteness and the dreamy 
 
90 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 smile of the young woman seemed strangely out of tune with 
 her strong-toned southern surroundings. I could have fancied 
 her a daughter of some moist north-western isle of Scandi- 
 y navian seas. My other memory is of a lad, brown, handsome, 
 powerfully-featured, thoughtful, lying curled up in the sun 
 upon a sort of ladder in his house-court, profoundly meditat- 
 ing. He had a book in his hand, and his finger still marked 
 the place where he had read. He looked as though a Colum- 
 bus or a Campanella might emerge from his earnest, fervent, 
 steadfast adolescence. Driving rapidly along, and leaving 
 Forio in all probability for ever, I kept w^ondering whether 
 those two lives, discerned as though in vision, would meet — 
 whether she was destined to be his evil genius, whether pos- 
 terity would hear of him and journey to his birthplace in this 
 v/orld-neglected Forio. Such reveries are futile. Yet who 
 entirely resists them ? 
 
 Monte Epomeo. 
 
 About three on the morning which divides the month of 
 May into two equal parts I woke and saw the waning moon 
 right opposite my window, stayed in her descent upon the 
 slope of Epomeo. Soon afterwards Christian called me, and 
 we settled to ascend the mountain. Three horses and a stout 
 black donkey, with their inevitable grooms, were ordered ; 
 and we took for guide a lovely faun-like boy, goat-faced, goat- 
 footed, with gentle manners and pliant limbs swaying beneath 
 the breath of impulse. He was called Giuseppe. 
 
 The way leads past the mineral baths and then strikes 
 uphill, at first through lanes cut deep in the black lava. The 
 trees meet almost overhead. It is like Devonshire, except 
 that one half hopes to see tropical foxgloves with violet bells 
 and downy leaves sprouting among the lush grasses and sweet- 
 scented ferns upon those gloomy, damp, warm walls. After 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS. 91 
 
 this we skirted a thicket of arbutus, and came upon the long 
 volcanic ridge, with divinest outlook over Procida and Miseno 
 toward Vesuvius. Then once more we had to dive into brown 
 sandstone gullies, extremely steep, where the horses almost 
 burst their girths in scrambling, and the grooms screamed, 
 exasperating their confusion with encouragements and curses. 
 Straight or bending as a willow wand, Giuseppe kept in front. 
 I could have imagined he had stepped to life from one of 
 Lionardo's fancy-sprighted studies. 
 
 After this fashion we gained the spine of mountain which 
 composes Ischia — the smooth ascending ridge that grows up 
 from those eastern waves to what was once the apex of fire- 
 vomiting Inarime, and breaks in precipices westward, a ruin 
 of gulfed lava, tortured by the violence of pent Typhceus. 
 Under a vast umbrella pine we dismounted, rested, and saw 
 Capri. Now the road skirts slanting-wise along the further 
 flank of Epomeo, rising by muddy earth-heaps and sandstone 
 hollows to the quaint pinnacles which build the summit. 
 There is no inconsiderable peril in riding over this broken 
 ground ; for the soil crumbles away, and the ravines open 
 downward, treacherously masked with brushwood. 
 
 On Epomeo's topmost cone a chapel dedicated to S. Niccolo 
 da Bari, the Italian patron of seamen, has been hollowed from 
 the rock. Attached to it is the dwelling of two hermits, sub- 
 terranean, with long dark corridors and windows opening on 
 the western seas. Church and hermitage alike are scooped, 
 with slight expenditure of mason's skill, from solid mountain. 
 The windows are but loopholes, leaning from which the town 
 of Forio is seen, 2500 feet below; and the jagged precipices 
 of the menacing Falange toss their contorted horror forth to 
 sea and sky. Through gallery and grotto we wound in twilight 
 under a monk's guidance, and came at length upon the face 
 of the crags above Casamicciola. A few steps upward, cut 
 like a ladder in the stone, brought us to the topmost peak — a 
 
92 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 slender spire of soft, yellowish tufa. It reminded me (with 
 differences) of the way one climbs the spire at Strasburg, and 
 stands upon that temple's final crocket, with nothing but a 
 lightning conductor to steady swimming senses. Different 
 indeed are the views unrolled beneath the peak of Epomeo 
 and the pinnacle of Strasburg ! Vesuvius, with the broken 
 lines of Procida, Miseno, and Lago Fusaro for foreground; 
 the sculpturesque beauty of Capri, buttressed in everlasting 
 calm upon the waves ; the Phlegraean plains and champaign 
 of Volturno, stretching between smooth seas and shadowy 
 hills ; the mighty sweep of Naples' bay ; all merged in blue ; 
 aerial, translucent, exquisitely frail. In this ethereal fabric of 
 azure the most real of realities, the most solid of substances, 
 seem films upon a crystal sphere. 
 
 The hermit produced some flasks of amber-coloured wine 
 from his stores in the grotto. These we drank, lying full- 
 length upon the tufa in the morning sunlight. The panorama 
 of sea, sky, and long-drawn lines of coast, breathless, without 
 a ripple or a taint of cloud, spread far and wide around us. 
 Our horses and donkey cropped what little grass, blent with 
 bitter herbage, grew on that barren summit. Their grooms 
 helped us out with the hermit's wine, and turned to sleep face 
 downward. The whole scene was very quiet, islanded in im- 
 measurable air. Then we asked the boy, Giuseppe, whether 
 he could guide us on foot down the cliffs of Monte Epomeo 
 to Casamicciola. This he was willing and able to do ; for he 
 told me that he had spent many months each year upon the 
 hill-side, tending goats. When rough weather came, he 
 wrapped himself in a blanket from the snow that falls and 
 melts upon the ledges. In summer time he basked the whole 
 day long, and slept the calm ambrosial nights away. Some- 
 thing of this free life was in the burning eyes, long clustering 
 dark hair, and smooth brown bosom of the faun-like creature. 
 His graceful body had the brusque, unerring movement of the 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS. 93 
 
 goats he shepherded. Human thought and emotion seemed 
 a-slumber in this youth who had grown one with nature. As 
 I watched his careless incarnate loveliness I remembered lines 
 from an old Italian poem of romance, describing a dweller of 
 the forest, who 
 
 Haunteth the woodland aye 'neath verdurous sliade, 
 
 Eateth wild fruit, drinketh of running stream ; 
 
 And such-like is his nature, as 'tis said, 
 
 That ever weepeth he when clear skies gleam, 
 
 Seeing of storms and rain lie then hath dread, 
 
 And feareth lest the sun's heat fail for him ; 
 
 But when on high hurl winds and clouds together, 
 
 Full glad is he and waiteth for fair weathei. 
 
 Giuseppe led us down those curious volcanic da/ze, where the 
 soil is soft as marl, with tints splashed on it of pale green and 
 rose and orange, and a faint scent in it of sulphur. They 
 break away into wild chasms, where rivulets begin ; and here 
 the narrow watercourses made for us plain going. The turf 
 beneath our feet was starred with cyclamens and wavering 
 anemones. At last we reached the chestnut woods, and so by 
 winding paths descended on the village. Giuseppe told me, 
 as we walked, that in a short time he would be obliged to join 
 the arm}^ He contemplated this duty with a dim and unde- 
 fined dislike. Nor could I, too, help dreading and misliking 
 it for him. The untamed, gentle creature, who knew so Httle 
 but his goats as yet, whose nights had been passed from 
 childhood a la belle eloile, whose limbs had never been 
 cumbered with broadcloth or belt — for him to be shut up in 
 the barrack of some Lombard city, packed in white conscript's 
 sacking, drilled, taught to read and write, and weighted with 
 the knapsack and the musket ! There was something lament- 
 able in the prospect. But such is the burden of man's life, of 
 modern life especially. United Italy demands of her children 
 that by this discipline they should be brought into that har- 
 mony which builds a nation out of diverse elements. 
 
94 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 From Ischia to Naples. 
 
 Ischia showed a new aspect on the morning of our departure. 
 A sea-mist passed along the skirts of the island, and rolled in 
 heavy masses round the peaks of Monte Epomeo, slowly con- 
 densing into summer clouds, and softening each outline with 
 a pearly haze, through which shone emerald glimpses of young 
 vines and fig-trees. 
 
 We left in a boat with four oarsmen for Pozzuoli. For 
 about an hour the breeze carried us well, while Ischia behind 
 grew ever lovelier, soft as velvet, shaped like a gem. The 
 mist had become a great white luminous cloud — not dense 
 and alabastrine, like the clouds of thunder ; but filmy, tender, 
 comparable to the atmosphere of Dante's moon. Porpoises 
 and sea-gulls played and fished about our bows, dividing the 
 dark brine in spray. The mountain distances were drowned 
 in bluish vapour — Vesuvius quite invisible. About noon the 
 air grew clearer, and Capri reared her fortalice of sculptured 
 rock, aerially azure, into liquid ether. I know not what effect 
 of atmosphere or light it is that lifts an island from the sea by 
 interposing that thin edge of lustrous white between it and 
 the water. But this phenomenon to-day was perfectly exhi- 
 bited. Like a mirage on the wilderness, like Fata Morgaila's 
 palace ascending from the deep, the pure and noble vision 
 stayed suspense 'twixt heaven and ocean. At the same time 
 the breeze failed, and we rowed slowly between Procida and 
 Capo Miseno — a space in old-world history athrong with 
 Caesar's navies. When we turned the point, and came in 
 sight of Baise, the wind freshened and took us flying into 
 Pozzuoli. The w^hole of this coast has been spoiled by the 
 recent upheaval of Monte Nuovo with its lava floods and 
 cindery deluges. Nothing remains to justify its fame among 
 the ancient Romans and the NeapoUtans of Boccaccio's and 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS. 95 
 
 Pontano's age. It is quite wrecked, beyond the power even 
 of hendecasyllables to bring again its breath of beauty : 
 
 Mecum si sapies, Gravina, mecum 
 Baias, et placidos coles recessus, 
 Quos ipsoe et veneres colunt, et ilia 
 Quae mentes hominum regit volupta?. 
 Hie vina et chorese jocique regnant, 
 Regnant et charites facetizeque. 
 Has sedes amor, has colit cupido. 
 His passim juvenes puellulaeque 
 Ludunt, et tepidis aquis lavantur, 
 Coenantque et dapibus leporibusque 
 Miscent delitias venustiores : 
 Miscent gaudia et osculationes, 
 Atque una sociis toris foventur, 
 Has te ad delitias vocant camoenae ; 
 Invitat mare, myrteumque littus ; 
 Invitant volucres canoros, et ipse 
 Gaurus pampineas parat corollas.* 
 
 At Pozzuoli we dined in the Albergo del Ponte di Cali^yola 
 (Heaven save the mark !), and drank Falernian wine of modern 
 and indifferent vintage. Then Christian hired two open 
 carriages for Naples. He and I sat in the second. In the 
 first we placed the two ladies of our party. They had a laro-e, 
 
 * These verses are extracted from the second book of Pontano's Hendeca- 
 syllabi (Aldus, 15 13, p. 208). They so vividly paint the amusements of a 
 watering-place in the fifteenth century that I have translated them : 
 
 With me, let but the mind be wise, Gravina, 
 
 With me haste to the tranquil haunts of Baise, 
 
 Haunts that pleasure hath made her home, and she who 
 
 Sways all hearts, the voluptuous Aphrodite. 
 
 Here wine rules, and the dance, and games and laughter; ; 
 
 Graces reign in a round of mirthful madness ; 
 
 Love hath built, and desire, a palace here too, 
 
 Where glad youths and enamoured girls on all sides 
 
 Play and bathe in the waves in sunny weather. 
 
 Dine and sup, and the merry mirth of banquets 
 
 Blend with dearer delights and love's embraces. 
 
 Blend with pleasures of youth and honeyed kisses. 
 
 Till, sport-tired, in the couch inarmed they slumber. 
 
 Thee our Muses invite to these enjoyments ; 
 
 Thee those billows allure, the myrtled seashore, 
 
 Birds allure with a song, and mighty Gaurus 
 
 Twines his redclent wreath of vines and ivy. 
 
96 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 fat driver. Just after we had all passed the gate a big fellow 
 rushed up, dragged the corpulent coachman from his box, 
 pulled out a knife, and made a savage thrust at the man's 
 stomach. At the same moment a guardia-porta^ with drawn 
 cutlass, interposed and struck between the combatants. They 
 were separated. Their respective friends assembled in two 
 jabbering crowds, and the whole party, uttering vociferous 
 objurgations, marched off, as I imagined, to the watch-house. 
 A very shabby lazzarone, without more ado, sprang on the 
 empty box, and we made haste for Naples. Being only 
 anxious to get there, and not at all curious about the squabble 
 which had deprived us of our fat driver, I relapsed into 
 indifference when I found that neither of the men to whose 
 lot we had fallen was desirous of explaining the affair. It 
 was sufficient cause for self-congratulation that no blood had 
 been shed, and that the Procuratore del Re would not require 
 our evidence. 
 
 The Grotta di Posilippo was a sight of wonder, with the 
 afternoon sun slanting on its festoons of creeping plants above 
 the western entrance — the gas lamps, dust, huge carts, oxen, 
 and contadiiii in its subterranean darkness — and then the 
 sudden revelation of the bay and city as we jingled out into 
 the summery air again by Virgil's tomb. 
 
 Night at Pompeii. 
 
 On to Pompeii in the clear sunset, falling very lightly upon 
 mountains, islands, little ports, and indentations of the bay. 
 
 From the railway station we walked above half a mile to 
 the Albergo del Sole under a lucid heaven of aqua-marine 
 colour, with Venus large in it upon the border line between 
 the tints of green and blue. 
 
 The Albergo del Sole is worth commemorating. We 
 stepped, without the intervention of courtyard or entrance 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS. 
 
 97 
 
 hall, straight from the little inn garden into an open, vaulted 
 room. This was divided into two compartments by a stout 
 column supporting round arches. Wooden gates furnished 
 a kind of fence between the atrium and what an old Pompeian 
 would have styled the triclinium. For in the further part a 
 table was laid for supper and lighted with suspended lamps. 
 And here a party of artists and students drank and talked and 
 smoked. A great live peacock, half asleep and winking his 
 eyes, sat perched upon a heavy wardrobe watching them. The 
 outer chamber, where we waited in arm-chairs of ample girth, 
 had its loggia windows and doors open to the air. There were 
 singing-birds in cages; and plants of rosemary, iris, and 
 arundo sprang carelessly from holes in the floor. A huge 
 vase filled to overflowing with oranges and lemons, the very 
 symbol of generous prodigality, stood in the midst, and several 
 dogs were lounging round. The outer twilight, blending with 
 the dim sheen of the lamps, softened this pretty scene to 
 picturesqueness. Altogether it was a strange and unex- 
 pected place. Much experienced as the nineteenth-century 
 nomad may be in inns, he will rarely receive a more power- 
 ful and refreshing impression, entering one at evenfall, than 
 here. 
 
 There was no room for us in the inn. We were sent, 
 attended by a boy with a lantern, through fields of dew- 
 drenched barley and folded poppies, to a farmhouse over- 
 shadowed by four spreading pines. Exceedingly soft and grey, 
 with rose-tinted weft of steam upon its summit, stood Vesuvius 
 above us in the twilight. Something in the recent impression 
 of the dimly-lighted supper-room, and in the idylHc simplicity 
 of this lantern-litten journey through the barley, suggested, by 
 one of those inexplicable stirrings of association which affect 
 tired senses, a dim, dreamy thought of Palestine and Bible 
 stories. The feeHng of the cenacolo blent here with feelings of 
 Ruth's cornfields, and the white square houses with their flat 
 
98 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 roofs enforced the illusion. Here we slept in the middle of a 
 contadino colony. Some of the folk had made way for us ; and 
 by the wheezing, coughing, and snoring of several sorts and 
 ages in the chamber next me, I imagine they must have 
 endured considerable crowding. My bed was large enough 
 to have contained a family. Over its head there was 
 a little shrine, hollowed in the thickness of the wall, with 
 several sacred emblems and a shallow vase of holy water. On 
 dressers at each end of the room stood glass shrines, occupied 
 by finely-dressed Madonna dolls and pots of artificial flowers. 
 Above the doors S. Michael and S. Francis, roughly embossed 
 in low relief and boldly painted, gave dignity and grandeur to 
 the walls. These showed some sense for art in the first 
 builders of the house. But the taste of the inhabitants could 
 not be praised. There were countless gaudy prints of saints, 
 and exactly five pictures of the Bambino, very big, and sprawl- 
 ing in a field alone. A crucifix, some old bottles, a gun, old 
 clothes suspended from pegs, pieces of peasant pottery and 
 china, completed the furniture of the apartment. 
 
 But what a view it showed when Christian next morning 
 opened the door ! From my bed I looked across the red-tiled 
 terrace to the stone pines with their velvet roofage and the 
 blue-peaked hills of Stabiae. 
 
 San Germano. 
 
 No one need doubt about his quarters in this country 
 town. The Albergo di Pompeii is a truly sumptuous place. 
 Sofas, tables, and chairs in our sitting-room are made of 
 buffalo horns, very cleverly pieced together, but torturing the 
 senses with suggestions of impalement. Sitting or stand- 
 ing, one felt insecure. When would the points run into us ? 
 when should we begin to break these incrustations off? and 
 
SPRING WANDERINGS, 99 
 
 would the whole fabric crumble at a touch into chaotic heaps 
 of horns ? 
 
 It is market day, and the costumes in the streets are bril- 
 liant. The women wear a white petticoat, a blue skirt made 
 straight and tightly bound above it, a white richly-worked 
 bodice, and the white square-folded napkin of the Abruzzi on 
 their heads. Their jacket is of red or green — pure colour. A 
 rug of striped red, blue, yellow, and black protects the whole 
 dress from the rain. There is a very noble quality of green — 
 sappy and gemmy — like some of Titian's or Giorgione's — in 
 the stuffs they use. Their build and carriage are worthy of 
 goddesses. 
 
 Rain falls heavily, persistently. We must ride on donkeys, 
 in waterproofs, to Monte Cassino. Mountain and valley, oak 
 wood and ilex grove, lentisk thicket and winding river-bed, are 
 drowned alike in soft-descending, soaking rain. Far and near 
 the landscape swims in rain, and the hillsides send down 
 torrents through their watercourses. 
 
 The monastery is a square, dignified building, of vast 
 extent and princely solidity. It has a fine inner court, with 
 sumptuous staircases of slabbed stone leading to the church. 
 This public portion of the edifice is both impressive and 
 magnificent, without sacrifice of religious severity to parade. 
 We acknowledge a successful compromise between the 
 austerity of the order and the grandeur befitting the fame, 
 wealth, prestige, and power of its parent foundation. The 
 church itself is a tolerable structure of the Renaissance — 
 costly marble incrustations and mosaics, meaningless Nea- 
 politan frescoes. One singular episode in the mediocrity 
 of art adorning it, is the tomb of Pietro dei Medici. Ex- 
 pelled from Florence in 1494, he never returned, but was 
 drowned in the Garigliano. Clement VII. ordered, and 
 Duke Cosimo I. erected, this marble monument — the handi- 
 craft, in part at least, of Francesco di San Gallo — to their 
 
loo ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 relative. It is singularly stiff, ugly, out of place — at once 
 I obtrusive and insignificant. 
 
 - A gentle old German monk conducted Christian and me 
 
 over the convent — boy's school, refectory, printing press, litho- 
 graphic workshop, library, archives. We then returned to the 
 church, from which we passed to visit the most venerable and 
 sacred portion of the monastery. The cell of S. Benedict is 
 being restored and painted in fresco by the Austrian Benedic- 
 tines; a pious but somewhat frigid process of re-edification. 
 This so-called cell is a many-chambered and very ancient build- 
 ing, with a tower which is now embedded in the massive super- 
 structure of the modern monastery. The German artists 
 adorning it contrive to blend the styles of Giotto, Fra Angelico, 
 Egypt, and Byzance, not without force and a kind of intense 
 frozen pietism. S. Mauro's vision of his master's translation 
 to heaven — the ladder of light issuing between two cypresses, 
 and the angels watching on the tower walls — might even be 
 styled poetical. But the decorative angels on the roof and 
 other places, being adapted from Egyptian art, have a strange, 
 incongruous appearance. 
 
 ■fyj Monasteries are almost invariably disappointing to one who 
 
 goes in search of what gives virtue and solidity to human life ; 
 and even Monte Cassino was no exception. This ought not 
 to be otherwise, seeing what a peculiar sympathy with the 
 monastic institution is required to make these cloisteis com- 
 prehensible. The atmosphere of operose indolence, prolonged 
 through centuries and centuries, stifles ; nor can antiquity and 
 influence impose upon a mind which resents monkery itself as 
 an essential evil. That Monte Cassino supplied the Church 
 with several potentates is incontestable. That mediaeval learn- 
 ing and morality would have suffered more without this brother- 
 hood cannot be doubted. Yet it is difficult to name men of 
 very eminent genius whom the Cassinesi claim as their alumni ; 
 nor, with Boccaccio's testimony to their carelessness, and with 
 
J 
 
 SPRING WANDERINGS. loi 
 
 the evidence of their library before our eyes, can we rate their 
 services to civilised erudition very highly. I longed to possess 
 the spirit, for one moment, of Montalembert. I longed for J 
 what is called historical imagination, for the indiscriminate 
 voracity of those men to whom world-famous sites are in them- 
 selves soul-stirring. 
 
{ I02 ) 
 
 MA V IN UMBRIA. 
 
 From Rome to Terni. 
 
 We left Rome in clear sunset light. The Alban Hills defined 
 themselves like a cameo of amethyst upon a pale blue dis- 
 tance ; and over the Sabine Mountains soared immeasurable 
 moulded domes of alabaster thunderclouds, casting deep 
 shadows, purple and violet, across the slopes of Tivoli. To 
 westward the whole sky was lucid, like some half-transparent 
 topaz, flooded with slowly yellowing sunbeams. The Cam- 
 pagna has often been called a garden of wild-flowers. Just now 
 poppy and aster, gladiolus and thistle, embroider it with 
 patterns infinite and intricate beyond the power of art. They 
 have already mown the hay in part ; and the billowy tracts of 
 greyish green, where no flowers are now in bloom, supply a 
 restful groundwork to those brilliant patches of diapered 
 fioriture. These are like praying-carpets spread for devotees 
 upon the pavement of a mosque whose roof is heaven. In the 
 level light the scythes of the mowers flash as we move past. 
 From their bronzed foreheads the men toss masses of dark 
 curls. Their muscular flanks and shoulders sway sideways 
 from firm yet pliant reins. On one hill, fronting the sunset, 
 there stands a herd of some thirty huge grey oxen, feeding and 
 raising their heads to look at us, with just a flush of crimson 
 on their horns and dewlaps. This is the scale of Mason's and 
 of Costa's colouring. This is the breadth and magnitude of 
 Rome. 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 103 
 
 Thus, through dells of ilex and oak, yielding now a glimpse 
 of Tiber and S. Peter's, now opening on a purple section of 
 the distant Sabine Hills, we came to Monte Rotondo. The 
 sun sank ; and from the flames where he had perished, 
 Hesper and the thin moon, very white and keen, grew slowly 
 into sight. Now we follow the Tiber, a swollen, hurrying, 
 turbid river, in which the mellowing Western sky reflects 
 itself This changeful mirror of swift waters spreads a dazzling 
 foreground to valley, hill, and lustrous heaven. There is 
 orange on the far horizon, and a green ocean above, in which 
 sea-monsters fashioned from the clouds are floating. Yonder 
 swims an elf with luminous hair astride upon a sea-horse, and 
 followed by a dolphin plunging through the fiery waves. The 
 orange deepens into dying red. The green divides into daffodil 
 and beryl. The blue above grows fainter, and the moon and 
 stars shine stronger. 
 
 Through these celestial changes we glide into a landscape 
 fit for Francia and the early Umbrian painters. Low hills to 
 right and left ; suavely modelled heights in the far distance ; 
 a very quiet width of plain, with slender trees ascending into 
 the pellucid air ; and down in the mystery of the middle dis- 
 tance a glimpse of heaven-reflecting water. The magic of the 
 moon and stars lends enchantment to this scene. No painting 
 could convey their influences. Sometimes both luminaries 
 tremble, all dispersed and broken, on the swirling river. Some- 
 times they sleep above the calm cool reaches of a rush-grown 
 mere. And here and there a ruined turret, with a broken 
 window and a tuft of shrubs upon the rifted battlement, gives 
 value to the fading pallor of the West. The last phase in the 
 sunset is a change to blue-grey monochrome, faintly silvered 
 with starlight; hills, Tiber, fields and woods all floating in 
 aerial twilight. There is no definition of outline now. The 
 daff'odil of the horizon has faded into scarcely perceptible pale 
 greenish yellow. 
 
I04 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 We have passed vStimigliano. Through the mystery of dark- 
 ness we hurry past the bridges of Augustus and the Hghts of 
 Narni. 
 
 The Cascades of Terni. 
 
 The Velino is a river of considerable volume which rises in 
 the highest region of the Abruzzi, threads the upland valley 
 of Rieti, and precipitates itself by an artificial channel over 
 cliffs about seven hundred feet in height into the Nera. The 
 water is densely charged with particles of lime. This calcare- 
 ous matter not only tends continually to choke its bed, but 
 clothes the precipices over which the torrent thunders with 
 fantastic drapery of stalactite ; and, carried on the wind in foam, 
 incrusts the forests that surround the falls with fine white 
 dust. These famous cascades are undoubtedly the most sub- 
 lime and beautiful which Europe boasts ; and their situation 
 is worthy of so great a natural wonder. We reach them 
 through a noble mid-Italian landscape, where the mountain 
 forms are austere and boldly modelled, but the vegetation, 
 both wild and cultivated, has something of the South-Italian 
 richness. The hill-sides are a labyrinth of box and arbutus, 
 with coronilla in golden bloom. The turf is starred with 
 cyclamens and orchises. Climbing the staircase paths beside 
 the falls in morning sunlight, or stationed on the points of 
 vantage that command their successive cataracts, we enjoyed 
 a spectacle which might be compared in its effect upon the 
 mind to the impression left by a symphony or a tumultuous 
 lyric. The turbulence and splendour, the swiftness and 
 resonance, the veiHng of the scene in smoke of shattered 
 water-masses, the withdrawal of these veils according as the 
 volume of the river slightly shifted in its fall, the rainbows 
 shimmering on the silver spray, the shivering of poplars hung 
 above impendent precipices, the stationary grandeur of the 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 105 
 
 mountains keeping watch around, the hurry and the inco- 
 herence of the cataracts, the immobility of force and changeful 
 changelessness in nature, were all for me the elements of one 
 stupendous poem. It was like an ode of Shelley translated 
 into symbolism, more vivid through inarticulate appeal to 
 primitive emotion than any words could be. 
 
 MONTEFALCO. 
 
 The rich land of the Clitumnus is divided into meadows 
 by transparent watercourses, gliding with a glassy current over 
 swaying reeds. Through this we pass, and leave Bevagna to 
 the right, and ascend one of those long gradual roads which 
 climb the hills where all the cities of the Umbrians perch. The 
 view expands, revealing Spello, Assisi, Perugia on its mountain 
 buttress, and the far reaches northward of the Tiber valley. 
 Then Trevi and Spoleto came into sight, and the severe hill- 
 country above Gubbio in part disclosed itself. Over Spoleto 
 the fierce witch-haunted heights of Norcia rose forbidding. 
 This is the kind of panorama that dilates the soul. Itjs so 
 large, so dignified, so beautiful in tranquil form. The opulent 
 abundance of the plain contrasts with the severity of mountain 
 ranges desolately grand; and the name of each of all those 
 cities thrills the heart with memories. 
 
 The main object of a visit to Montefalco is to inspect its 
 many excellent frescoes ; painted histories of S. Francis and 
 S. Jerome, by Benozzo Gozzoli ; saints, angels, and Scripture 
 episodes by the gentle Tiberio d' Assisi. Full justice had been 
 done to these, when a little boy, seeing us lingering outside 
 the church of S. Chiara, asked whether we should not like to 
 view the body of the saint. This privilege could be purchased 
 at the price of a small fee. It was only necessary to call the 
 guardian of her shrine at the high altar. Indolent, and in 
 compliant mood, with languid curiosity and half-an-hour to 
 
lo6 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 spare, we assented. A handsome young man appeared, who 
 conducted us with decent gravity into a little darkened chamber 
 behind the altar. There he lighted wax tapers, opened sliding 
 doors in what looked like a long coffin, and drew curtains. 
 Before us in the dim light there lay a woman covered with a 
 black nun's dress. Only her hands, and the exquisitely 
 beautiful pale contour of her face (forehead, nose, mouth, and 
 chin, modelled in purest outline, as though the injury of death 
 had never touched her) were visible. Her closed eyes seemed 
 to sleep. She had the perfect peace of Luini's S. Catherine 
 borne by the angels to her grave on Sinai. I have rarely seen 
 anything which surprised and touched me more. The religious 
 earnestness of the young custode, the hushed adoration of the 
 country-folk who had silently assembled round us, intensified 
 the sympathy-inspiring beauty of the slumbering girl. Could 
 Julia, daughter of Claudius, have been fairer than this maiden, 
 when the Lombard workmen found her in her Latin tomb, and 
 brought her to be worshipped on the Capitol? S. Chiara's 
 shrine was hung round with her relics ; and among these the 
 heart extracted from her body was suspended. Upon it, 
 apparently wrought into the very substance of the mummied 
 flesh, were impressed a figure of the crucified Christ, the 
 scourge, and the five stigmata. The guardian's faith in this 
 miraculous witness to her sainthood, the gentle piety of the 
 men and women who knelt before it, checked all expressions 
 of incredulity. We abandoned ourselves to the genius of the 
 place j forgot even to ask what Santa Chiara was sleeping here ; 
 and withdrew, toned to a not unpleasing melancholy. The 
 world-famous Saint Clair, the spiritual sister of S. Francis, lies 
 in Assisi. I have often asked myself. Who, then, was this nun ? 
 What history had she ? And I think now of this girl as of a 
 damsel of romance, a Sleeping Beauty in the wood of time, 
 secluded from intrusive elements of fact, and folded in the love 
 and faith of her own simple worshippers. Among the hollows of 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 107 
 
 Arcadia, how many rustic shrines in ancient days held saints 
 of Hellas, apocryphal, perhaps, like this, but hallowed by tradi- 
 tion and enduring homage ! * 
 
 FOLTGNO. 
 
 In the landscape of Raphael's votive picture, known as the 
 Madonna di Foligno, there is a town with a few towers, placed 
 upon a broad plain at the edge of some blue hills. Allowing 
 for that license as to details which imaginative masters permitted 
 themselves in matters of subordinate importance, Raphael's 
 sketch is still true to Foligno. The place has not materially 
 changed since the beginning of the sixteenth century. Indeed, 
 relatively to the state of Italy at large, it is still the same as in 
 the days of ancient Rome. Foligno forms a station of com- 
 manding interest between Rome and the Adriatic upon the 
 great Flaminian Way. At Foligno the passes of the Apennines 
 debouch into the Umbrian plain, which slopes gradually toward 
 the valley of the Tiber, and from it the valley of the Nera is 
 reached by an easy ascent beneath the walls of Spoleto. An 
 army advancing from the north by the Metaurus and the Furlo 
 Pass must find itself at Foligno; and the level champaign round 
 the city is well adapted to the maintenance and exercises 
 of a garrison. In the days of the Republic and the Empire, 
 the value of this position was well understood ; but Foligno's 
 importance, as the key to the Flaminian Way, was eclipsed 
 by two flourishing cities in its immediate vicinity, Hispellum 
 and Mevania, the modern Spello and Bevagna. We might 
 hazard a conjecture that the Lombards, when they ruled the 
 
 * There is in reality no doubt or problem about this Saint Clair. She 
 was born in 1275, and joined the Augustinian Sisterhood, dying young, in 
 1308, as Abbess of her convent. Continual and impassioned meditation on 
 the Passion of our Lord impressed her heart with the signs of His suffering 
 which have been described above. I owe this note to the kindness of an 
 anonymous correspondent, whom I here thank. 
 
lo8 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Duchy of Spoleto, following their usual policy of opposing new 
 military centres to the ancient Roman municipia, encouraged 
 Fulginium at the expense of her two neighbours. But of this 
 there is no certainty to build upon. All that can be affirmed 
 with accuracy is that in the Middle Ages, while Spello and 
 Bevagna declined into the inferiority of dependent burghs, 
 Foligno grew in power and became the chief commune of this 
 part of Umbria. It was famous during the last centuries of 
 struggle between the Italian burghers and their native despots, 
 for peculiar ferocity in civil strife. Some of the bloodiest pages 
 in mediaeval Italian history are those which relate the vicissitudes 
 of the Trinci family, the exhaustion of Foligno by internal dis- 
 cord, and its final submission to the Papal power. Since rail- 
 ways have been carried from Rome through Narni and Spoleto to 
 Ancona and Perugia, Foligno has gained considerably in commer- 
 cial and military status. It is the point of intersection for three 
 lines ; the Italian government has made it a great cavalry depot, 
 and there are signs of reviving traffic in its decayed streets. 
 Whether the presence of a large garrison has already modified 
 the population, or whether we may ascribe something to the 
 absence of Roman municipal institutions in the far past, and 
 to the savagery of the mediaeval period, it is difficult to say. 
 Yet the impression left by FoHgno upon the mind is different 
 from that of Assisi, Spello, and Montefalco, which are dis- 
 tinguished for a certain grace and gentleness in their inhabi- 
 tants. 
 
 My window in the city wall looks southward across the plain 
 to Spoleto, with Montefalco perched aloft upon the right, and 
 Trevi on its mountain-bracket to the left. From the topmost 
 peaks of the Sabine Apennines, gradual tender sloping lines 
 descend to find their quiet in the valley of Chtumnus. The 
 space between me and that distance is infinitely rich with every 
 sort of greenery, dotted here and there with towers and relics 
 of baronial houses. The little town is in commotion ; for the 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 109 
 
 working-men of Foligno and its neighbourhood have resolved 
 to spend their earnings on a splendid festa — horse-races, and 
 two nights of fireworks. The acacias and pawlonias on the 
 ramparts are in full bloom of creamy white and lilac. In the 
 glare of Bengal lights these trees, with all their pendulous 
 blossoms, surpassed the most fantastic of artificial decorations. 
 The rockets sent aloft into the sky amid that solemn Umbrian 
 landscape were nowise out of harmony with nature. I never 
 sympathised with critics who resent the intrusion of fireworks 
 upon scenes of natural beauty. The Giessbach, lighted up 
 at so much per head on stated evenings, with a band playing 
 and a crowd of cockneys staring, presents perhaps an incon- 
 gruous spectacle. But where, as here at Foligno, a w^hole city 
 has made itself a festival, where there are multitudes of citizens 
 and soldiers and country-people slowly moving and gravely 
 admiring, with the decency and order characteristic of an 
 Italian crowd, I have nothing but a sense of satisfaction. 
 
 It is sometimes the traveller's good fortune in some remote 1>^ 
 place to meet with an inhabitant who incarnates and interprets 
 for him the genius loci as he has conceived it. Though 
 his own subjectivity will assuredly play a considerable part in 
 such an encounter, transferring to his chance acquaintance 
 qualities he may not possess, and connecting this personality 
 in some purely imaginative manner with thoughts derived 
 from study, or impressions made by nature ; yet the stranger 
 will henceforth become the meeting-point of many memories, 
 the central figure in a composition which derives from him its I 
 vividness. Unconsciously and innocently he has lent himself 1 
 to the creation of a picture, and round him, as around the 
 hero of a myth, have gathered thoughts and sentiments of \ 
 which he had himself no knowledge. On one of these nights 
 I had been threading the aisles of acacia-trees, now glaring 
 red, now azure, as the Bengal lights kept changing. My mind 
 instinctively w^ent back to scenes of treachery and bloodshed 
 
no ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 in the olden time, when Corrado Trinci paraded the mangled 
 remnants of three hundred of his victims, heaped on mule- 
 back, through Foligno, for a warning to the citizens. As the 
 procession moved along the ramparts, I found myself in con- 
 tact with a young man, who readily fell into conversation. He 
 was very tall, with enormous breadth of shoulders, and long 
 sinewy arms, like Michelangelo's favourite models. His head 
 was small, curled over with crisp black hair. Low forehead, 
 and thick level eyebrows absolutely meeting over intensely 
 bright fierce eyes. The nose descending straight from the 
 brows, as in a statue of Hadrian's age. The mouth full-lipped, 
 petulant, and passionate above a firm round chin. He was 
 dressed in the shirt, white trousers, and loose white jacket of 
 a contadino ; but he did not move with a peasant's slouch, 
 rather with the elasticity and alertness of an untamed panther. 
 He told me that he was just about to join a cavalry regiment ; 
 and I could well imagine, when military dignity was added 
 to that gait, how grandly he would go. This young man, of 
 whom I heard nothing more after our half-hour's conversation 
 among the crackling fireworks and roaring cannon, left upon 
 my mind an indescribable impression of dangerousness — of 
 "something fierce and terrible, eligible to burst forth." Of 
 men like this, then, were formed the Companies of Adventure 
 who flooded Italy with villany, ambition, and lawlessness in 
 the fifteenth century. Gattamelata, who began life as a 
 baker's boy at Narni and ended it with a bronze statue by 
 Donatello on the public square in Padua, was of this breed, 
 like this were the Trinci and their bands of murderers. 
 Like this were the bravi who hunted Lorenzaccio to 
 death at Venice. Like this was Pietro Paolo Baglioni, 
 whose fault, in the eyes of Machiavelli, was that he could 
 not succeed in being " perfettamente tristo." Beautiful, but 
 inhuman; passionate, but cold; powerful, but rendered im- 
 potent for firm and lofty deeds by immorality and treason ; 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. in 
 
 how many centuries of men like this once wasted Italy and 
 plunged her into servitude ! Yet what material is here, under 
 sterner discipline, and with a nobler national ideal, for the 
 formation of heroic armies. Of such stuff, doubtless, were 
 the Roman legionaries. When will the Italians learn to use 
 these men as Fabius or as Caesar, not as the Vitelli and the 
 Trinci used them? In such meditations, deeply stirred by 
 the meeting of my own reflections with one who seemed to 
 represent for me in life and blood the spirit of the place 
 which had provoked them, I said farewell to Cavallucci, 
 and returned to my bed-room on the city-wall. The last 
 rockets had whizzed and the last cannons had thundered ere 
 I fell asleep. 
 
 Spello. 
 
 Spello contains some not inconsiderable antiquities — the 
 remains of a Roman theatre, a Roman gate with the heads of 
 two men and a woman leaning over it, and some fragments 
 of Roman sculpture scattered through its buildings. The 
 churches, especially those of S. M. Maggiore and S. Fran- 
 cesco, are worth a visit for the sake of Pinturicchio. Nowhere, 
 except in the Piccolomini Library at Siena, can that master's 
 work in fresco be better studied than here. The satisfaction 
 with which he executed the wall paintings in S. Maria 
 Maggiore is testified by his own portrait introduced upon a 
 panel in the decoration of the Virgin's chamber. The 
 scrupulously rendered details of books, chairs, window seats, 
 &c., which he here has copied, remind one of Carpaccio's 
 study of S. Benedict at Venice. It is all sweet, tender, 
 deUcate, and carefully finished ; but without depth, not even 
 the depth of Perugino's feeling. In S. Francesco, Pinturicchio, 
 with the same meticulous refinement, painted a letter addressed 
 to him by Gentile Baglioni. It lies on a stool before Madonna 
 
112 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 and her court of saints. Nicety of execution, technical 
 mastery of fresco as a medium for Dutch detail-painting, 
 prettiness of composition, and cheerfulness of colouring, are 
 noticeable throughout his work here rather than either thought 
 or sentiment. S. Maria Maggiore can boast a fresco of 
 Madonna between a young episcopal saint and Catherine of 
 Alexandria from the hand of Perugino. The rich yellow 
 harmony of its tones, and the graceful dignity of its emotion, 
 conveyed no less by a certain Raphaelesque pose and outline 
 than by suavity of facial expression, enable us to measure the 
 distance between this painter and his quasi-pupil Pinturicchio. 
 We did not, however, drive to Spello to inspect either 
 Roman antiquities or frescoes, but to see an inscription on the 
 city walls about Orlando. It is a rude Latin elegiac couplet, 
 saying that, " from the sign below, men may conjecture the 
 mighty members of Roland, nephew of Charles ; his deeds are 
 written in history." Three agreeable old gentlemen of Spello, 
 who attended us with much politeness, and were greatly inte- 
 rested in my researches, pointed out a mark waist-high upon 
 the wall, where Orlando's knee is reported to have reached. 
 But I could not learn anything about a phallic monoHth, which 
 is said by Guerin or Panizzi to have been identified with the 
 Roland myth at Spello. Such a column either never existed 
 here, or had been removed before the memory of the present 
 generation. 
 
 Easter Morning at Assisi. 
 
 We are in the lower church of S. Francesco. High mass is 
 being sung, with orchestra and organ and a choir of many 
 voices. Candles are lighted on the altar, over-canopied with 
 Giotto's allegories. From the low southern windows slants 
 the sun, in narrow bands, upon the many-coloured gloom and 
 embrowned glory of these painted aisles. Women in bright 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 113 
 
 kerchiefs kneel upon the stones, and shaggy men from the 
 mountains stand or lean against the wooden benches. There 
 is no moving from point to point. Where we have taken 
 our station, at the north-western angle of the transept, there 
 we stay till mass be over. The whole low-vaulted building 
 glows duskily ; the frescoed roof, the stained windows, the 
 figure-crowded pavements blending their rich but subdued 
 colours, like hues upon some marvellous moth's wings, or like 
 a deep-toned rainbow mist discerned in twilight dreams, or 
 like such tapestry as Eastern queens, in ancient days, wrought 
 for the pavilion of an empress. Forth from this maze of 
 mingling tints, indefinite in shade and sunbeams, lean ear- 
 nest, saintly faces — ineffably pure — adoring, pitying, pleading ; 
 raising their eyes in ecstasy to heaven, or turning them in ruth 
 toward earth. Men and women of whom the world was not 
 worthy — at the hands of those old painters they have received 
 the divine grace, the dove-like simplicity, whereof Italians 
 in the fourteenth century possessed the irrecoverable secret. 
 Each face is a poem ; the counterpart in painting to a chapter 
 from the Fioretti di San Francesco. Over the whole scene — 
 in the architecture, in the frescoes, in the coloured windows, 
 in the gloom, on the people, in the incense, from the chiming 
 bells, through the music — broods one spirit : the spirit of him 
 who was " the co-espoused, co-transforate with Christ ; " the 
 ardent, the radiant, the beautiful in soul; the suffering, the 
 strong, the sinfple, the victorious over self and sin j the celes- 
 tial who trampled upon earth and rose on wings of ecstasy to 
 heaven; the Christ-inebriated saint of visions super-sensual 
 and life beyond the grave. Far down below the feet of those 
 who worship God through him, S. Francis sleeps; but his 
 soul, the incorruptible part of him, the message he gave the 
 world, is in the spaces round us. This is his temple. He 
 fills it like an unseen god. Not as Phoebus or Athene, from 
 their marble pedestals; but as an abiding spirit, felt every- 
 
114 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 where, nowhere seized, absorbing in itself all mysteries, all 
 myths, all burning exaltations, all abasements, all love, self- 
 sacrifice, pain, yearning, which the thought of Christ, sweeping 
 the centuries, hath wrought for men. Let, therefore, choir 
 and congregation raise their voices on the tide of prayers and 
 praises ; for this is Easter morning — Christ is risen ! Our 
 sister. Death of the Body, for whom S. Francis thanked God 
 in his hymn, is reconciled to us this day, and takes us by the 
 hand, and leads us to the gate whence floods of heavenly 
 glory issue from the faces of a multitude of saints. Pray, ye 
 poor people; chant and pray. If all be but a dream, to 
 wake from this were loss for you indeed ! 
 
 Perusia Augusta. 
 
 The piazza in front of the Prefettura is my favourite resort 
 on these nights of full moon. The evenipg twilight is made 
 up partly of sunset fading over Thrasymene and Tuscany; 
 partly of moonrise from the mountains of Gubbio and the 
 passes toward Ancona. The hills are capped with snow, 
 although the season is so forward. Below our parapets the 
 bulk of S. Domenico, with its gaunt, perforated tower, and the 
 finer group of S. Pietro, flaunting the arrowy " Pennacchio di 
 Perugia," jut out upon the spine of hill which dominates the 
 valley of the Tiber. As the night gloom deepens, and the 
 moon ascends the sky, these buildings seem to form the sombre 
 foreground to some French etching. Beyond them spreads 
 the misty moon-irradiated plain of Umbria. Over all rise 
 shadowy Apennines, with dim suggestions of Assisi, Spello, 
 Foligno, Montefalco, and Spoleto on their basements. Little 
 thin whiffs of breezes, very slight and searching, flit across, and 
 shiver as they pass from Apennine to plain. The slowly 
 moving population — women in veils, men winter-mantled — 
 pass to and fro between the buildings and the grey immensity 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 115 
 
 of sky. Bells ring. The bugles of the soldiers blow retreat 
 in convents turned to barracks. Young men roam the streets 
 beneath, singing May songs. Far, far away upon the plain, 
 red through the vitreous moonlight ringed with thundery gauze, 
 fires of unnamed castelli smoulder. As we lean from ledges 
 eighty feet in height, gas vies with moon in chequering 
 illuminatipns on the ancient walls; Etruscan mouldings, 
 Roman letters, high-piled hovels, suburban world-old dwellings 
 plastered like martins' nests against the masonry. 
 
 Sunlight adds more of detail to this scene. To the right of 
 Subasio, where the passes go from Foligno towards Urbino and 
 Ancona, heavy masses of thunder-cloud hang every day ; but 
 the plain and hill-buttresses are clear in transparent blue- 
 ness. First comes Assisi, with S. M. degli Angeli below ; then 
 Spello; then Foligno; then Trevi; and, far away, Spoleto ; 
 with, reared against those misty battlements, the village height 
 of Montefalco — the " ringhiera dell' Umbria," as they call it in 
 this country. By daylight, the snow on yonder peaks is clearly 
 visible, where the Monti della Sibilla tower up above the 
 sources of the Nera and Velino from frigid wastes of Norcia. 
 The lower ranges seem as though painted, in films of airiest 
 and palest azure, upon china; and then comes the broad, 
 green champaign, flecked with villages and farms. Just at the 
 basement of Perugia winds Tiber, through sallows and grey 
 poplar-trees, spanned by ancient arches of red brick, and 
 guarded here and there by castellated towers. The mills 
 beneath their dams and weirs are just as Raphael drew them ; 
 and the feeling of air and space reminds one. On each coign 
 of vantage, of some Umbrian picture. Every hedgerow is hoary 
 with May-bloom and honeysuckle. The oaks hang out their 
 golden-dusted tassels. Wayside shrines are decked with labur- 
 num boughs and iris blossoms plucked from the copse-woods, 
 where spires of purple and pink orchis variegate the thin, fine 
 grass. The land waves far and wide with young corn, emerald 
 
ii6 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 green beneath the oHve-trees, which take upon their under- 
 fohage tints reflected from this verdure or red tones from the 
 naked earth. A fine race of contadini^ with large, heroically- 
 graceful forms, and beautiful dark eyes and noble faces, move 
 about this garden, intent on ancient, easy tillage of the kind 
 Saturnian soil. 
 
 La Magione. 
 
 On the road from Perugia to Cortona, the first stage ends at 
 La Magione, a high hill-village commanding the passage from 
 the Umbrian champaign to the lake of Thrasymene. It has 
 a grim square fortalice above it, now in ruins, and a stately 
 castle to the south-east, built about the time of Braccio. Here 
 took place that famous diet of Cesare Borgia's enemies, when 
 the son of Alexander VI. was threatening Bologna with his 
 arms, and bidding fair to make himself supreme tyrant of Italy 
 in 1502. It was the policy of Cesare to fortify himself by 
 reducing the fiefs of the Church to submission, and by rooting 
 out the dynasties which had acquired a sort of tyranny in 
 Papal cities. The Varani of Camerino and the Manfredi of 
 Faenza had been already extirpated. There was only too good 
 reason to believe that the turn of the Vitelli at Cittk di Castello, 
 of the Baglioni at Perugia, and of the Bentivogli at Bologna 
 would come next. Pandolfo Petrucci at Siena, surrounded on 
 all sides by Cesare's conquests, and specially menaced by the 
 fortification of Piombino, felt himself in danger. The great 
 house of the Orsini, who swayed a large part of the Patrimony 
 of S. Peter's, and were closely allied to the Vitelli, had even 
 graver cause for anxiety. But such was the system of Italian 
 warfare, that nearly all these noble families lived by the profes- 
 sion of arms, and most of them were in the pay of Cesare. 
 When, therefore, the conspirators met at La Magione, they 
 were plotting against, a man whose money they had taken, and 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 117 
 
 whom they had hitherto aided in his career of fraud and 
 spoliation. 
 
 The diet consisted of the Cardinal Orsini, an avowed 
 antagonist of Alexander VI. ; his brother Paolo, the chieftain 
 of the clan ; Vitellozzo Vitelli, lord of Cittk di Castello ; Gian- 
 Paolo Baglioni, made undisputed master of Perugia by the 
 recent failure of his cousin Grifonetto's treason; Oliverotto, 
 who had just acquired the March of Fermo by the murder of 
 his uncle Giovanni da Fogliani ; Ermes Bentivoglio, the heir 
 of Bologna ; and Antonio da Venafro, the secretary of Pan- 
 dolfo Petrucci. These men vowed hostility on the basis of 
 common injuries and common fear against the Borgia. But 
 they were for the most part stained themselves with crime, 
 and dared not trust each other, and could not gain the con- 
 fidence of any respectable power in Italy except the exiled 
 Duke of Urbino. Procrastination was the first weapon used 
 by the wily Cesare, who trusted that time would sow among 
 his rebel captains suspicion and dissension. He next made 
 overtures to the leaders separately, and so far succeeded in 
 his perfidious policy as to draw Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da 
 Fermo, Paolo Orsini, and Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, 
 into his nets at Sinigaglia. Under pretext of fair conference 
 and equitable settlement of disputed claims, he possessed 
 himself of their persons, and had them strangled — two upon 
 December 31, and two upon January 18, 1503. Of all 
 Cesare's actions, this was the most splendid for its successful 
 combination of sagacity and policy in the hour of peril, of 
 persuasive diplomacy, and of ruthless decision when the time 
 to strike his blow arrived. 
 
 CORTONA. 
 
 After leaving La Magione, the road descends upon the 
 Lake of Thrasymene through oak-woods full of nightingales. 
 
iiS ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 The Lake lay basking, leaden-coloured, smooth and waveless, 
 under a misiy, rain-charged, sun-irradiated sky. At Passig- 
 nano, close beside its shore, we stopped for mid- day. This is 
 a little fishing village of very poor people, who live entirely by 
 labour on the waters. They showed us huge eels coiled in 
 tanks, and some fine specimens of the silver carp — Reina del 
 Lago. It was off one of the eels that we made our lunch ; 
 and taken, as he was, alive from his cool lodging, he furnished 
 a series of dishes fit for a king. 
 
 Climbing the hill of Cortona seemed a quite interminable 
 business. It poured a deluge. Our horses were tired, and 
 one lean donkey, who, after much trouble, was produced from 
 a farmhouse and yoked in front of them, rendered but little 
 assistance. 
 
 Next day we duly saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, 
 the Fra Angelicos, and all the Signorellis. One cannot help 
 thinking that too much fuss is made nowadays about works 
 of art — running after them for their own sakes, exaggerating 
 their importance, and detaching them as objects of study, 
 instead of taking them with sympathy and carelessness as 
 pleasant or instructive adjuncts to our actual life. Artists, 
 historians of art, and critics are forced to isolate pictures ; and 
 it is of profit to their souls to do so. But simple folk, who 
 have no aesthetic vocation, whether creative or critical, suffer 
 more than is good for them by compliance with mere fashion. 
 Sooner or later we shall return to the spirit of the ages which 
 produced these pictures, and which regarded them with less of 
 an industrious bewilderment than they evoke at present. 
 
 I am far indeed from wishing to decry art, the study of art, 
 or the benefits to be derived from its intelligent enjoyment. 
 I only mean to suggest that we go the wrong way to work 
 at present in this, matter. Picture and sculpture galleries 
 accustom us to the separation of art from life. Our methods 
 of studying art, making a beginning of art-study while travel- 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 119 
 
 ling, tend to perpetuate this separation. It is only on reflec- 
 tion, after long experience, that we come to perceive that the 
 most fruitful moments in our art education have been casual 
 and unsought, in quaint nooks and unexpected places, where 
 nature, art, and life are happily blent. 
 
 The Palace of the Commune at Cortojoa is interesting be- 
 cause of (the shields of Florentine governors, sculptured on 
 blocks of grey stone, and inserted in its outer walls — Peruzzi, 
 Albizzi, Strozzi, Salviati, among the more ancient — de' Medici 
 at a later epoch. The revolutions in the Republic of Florence 
 may be read by a herald from these coats of arms and the 
 dates beneath them. 
 
 TEe landscape of this Tuscan highland satisfies me more 
 and more with sense of breadth and beauty. From S. Mar- 
 gherita above the town the prospect is immense and wonderful 
 and wild — up into those brown, forbidding mountains ; down 
 to the vast plain ; and over to the cities of Chiusi, Montepul- 
 ciano, and Foiano. The jewel of the view is Trasimeno, 
 a silvery shield encased with serried hills, and set upon one 
 corner of the scene, like a precious thing apart and meant for 
 separate contemplation. There is something in the singularity 
 and circumscribed completeness of the mountain-girded lake, 
 diminished by distance, which would have attracted Lionardo 
 da Vinci's pencil, had he seen it. 
 
 Cortona seems desperately poor, and the beggars are intol- 
 erable. One little blind boy, led by his brother, both fright- 
 fully ugly and ragged urchins, pursued us all over the city, 
 incessantly whining "Signorej Padrone!" It was only on 
 the threshold of the inn that I ventured to give them a few 
 coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence would 
 raise the whole swarm of the begging population round us. 
 Sitting later in the day upon the piazza of S. Domenico, I 
 saw the same blind boy taken by his brother to play. The 
 game consisted in the little creature throwing his arms about 
 
 s^ 
 
120 ITALIAN BYWAYS, 
 
 the trunk of a big tree, and running round and round it, clasp- 
 ing it. This seemed to make him quite inexpressibly happy. 
 His face lit up and beamed with that inner beatitude blind 
 people show — a kind of rapture shining over it, as though 
 nothing could be more altogether delightful. This little boy 
 had the small pox at eight months, and has never been able 
 to see since. He looks sturdy, and may live to be of any 
 age — doomed always, is that possible, to beg ? 
 
 Chiusi. 
 
 What more enjoyable dinner can be imagined than a flask 
 of excellent Montepulciano, a well-cooked steak, and a little 
 goat's cheese in the inn of the Leone d'Oro at Chiusi ? The 
 windows are open, and the sun is setting. Monte Cetona 
 bounds the view to the right, and the wooded hills of Citta 
 della Pieve to the left. The deep green dimpled valley goes 
 stretching away toward Orvieto ; and at its end a purple 
 mountain mass, distinct and solitary, which may peradventure 
 be Soracte ! The near country is broken into undulating hills, 
 forested with fine olives and oaks ; and the composition of the 
 landscape, with its crowning villages, is worthy of a background 
 to an Umbrian picture. The breadth and depth and quiet 
 which those painters loved, the space of lucid sky, the sugges- 
 tion of winding waters in verdant fields, all are here. The 
 evening is beautiful — golden light streaming softly from behind 
 us on this prospect, and gradually mellowing to violet and 
 blue with stars above. 
 
 At Chiusi we visited several Etruscan tombs, and saw their 
 red and black scrawled pictures. One of the sepulchres was 
 a well-jointed vault of stone with no wall-paintings. The rest 
 had been scooped out of the living tufa. This was the excuse 
 for some pleasant hours spent in walking and driving through 
 the country. Chiusi means for me the mingling of grey olives 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 121 
 
 and green oaks in limpid sunlight ; deep leafy lanes ; warm 
 sand-stone banks ; copses with nightingales and cyclamens 
 and cuckoos ; glimpses of a silvery lake ; blue shadowy dis- 
 tances ; the bristling ridge of Monte Cetona ; the conical 
 towers, Becca di Questo and Becca di Quello, over against each 
 other on the borders ; ways winding among hedgerows like 
 some bit of England in June, but not so full of flowers. It 
 means all this, I fear, for me far more than theories about 
 Lars Porsenna and Etruscan ethnology. 
 
 GUBBIO. 
 
 Gubbio ranks among the most ancient of Italian hill-towns. 
 With its back set firm against the spine of central Apennines, 
 and piled, house over house, upon the rising slope, it com- 
 mands a rich tract of upland champaign, bounded southward 
 toward Perugia and Foligno by peaked and rolling ridges. 
 This amphitheatre, which forms its source of wealth and 
 independence, is admirably protected by a chain of natural 
 defences ; and Gubbio wears a singularly old-world aspect of 
 antiquity and isolation. Houses climb right to the crests of 
 gaunt bare peaks ; and the brown mediaeval walls with square 
 towers which protected them upon the mountain side, follow- 
 ing the inequalities of the ground, are still a marked feature 
 in the landscape. It is a town of steep streets and staircases, 
 with quaintly framed prospects, and solemn vistas opening at 
 every turn across the lowland. One of these views might be 
 selected for especial notice. In front, irregular buildings 
 losing themselves in country as they straggle by the roadside ; 
 then the open post-road with a cypress to the right ; after- 
 wards, the rich green fields, and on a bit of rising ground an 
 ancient farmhouse with its brown dependencies; lastly, the 
 blue hills above Fossato, and far away a wrack of tumbling 
 clouds. All this enclosed by the heavy archway of the Porta 
 
122 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Romana, where sunlight and shadow chequer the mellow 
 tones of a dim fresco, indistinct with age, but beautiful. 
 
 Gubbio has not greatly altered since the middle ages. But 
 poor people are now living in the palaces of noblemen and 
 merchants. These new inhabitants have walled up the fair 
 arched windows and slender portals of the ancient dwellers, 
 spoiling the beauty of the streets without materially changing 
 the architectural masses. In that witching hour when the 
 Italian sunset has faded, and a solemn grey replaces the glow- 
 ing tones of daffodil and rose, it is not difficult, here dream- 
 ing by oneself alone, to picture the old noble life — the ladies 
 moving along those open loggias, the young men in plumed 
 caps and curling hair with one foot on those doorsteps, the 
 knights in armour and the sumpter mules and red-robed 
 Cardinals defiling through those gates into the courts within. 
 The modern bricks and mortar with which that picturesque 
 scene has been overlaid, the ugly oblong windows and bright 
 green shutters which now interrupt the flowing lines of arch 
 and gallery; these disappear beneath the fine remembered 
 touch of a sonnet sung by Folgore, when still the Parties had 
 their day, and this deserted city was the centre of great aims 
 and throbbing aspirations. 
 
 The names of the chief buildings in Gubbio are strongly 
 suggestive of the middle ages. They abut upon a Piazza da' 
 Signori. One of them, the Palazzo del Municipio, is a shape- 
 less unfinished block of masonry. It is here that the Eugubine 
 tables, plates of brass with Umbrian and Roman incised 
 characters, are shown. The Palazzo de' Consoli has higher 
 architectural qualities, and is indeed unique among Italian 
 palaces for the combination of massiveness with lightness in a 
 situation of unprecedented boldness. Rising from enormous 
 substructures morticed into the solid hill-side, it rears its vast 
 rectangular bulk to a giddy height above the town; airy 
 loggias imposed on great forbidding masses of brown stone, 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 123 
 
 shooting aloft into a light aerial tower. The empty halls 
 inside are of fair proportions and a noble size, and the views 
 from the open colonnades in all directions fascinate. But 
 the final impression made by the building is one of square, 
 tranquil, massive strength — perpetuity embodied in masonry 
 — force suggesting facility by daring and successful addition 
 of elegance to hugeness. Vast as it is, this pile is not forbid- 
 ding, as a similarly weighty structure in the North w^ould be. 
 The fine quality of the stone and the delicate though simple 
 mouldings of the windows give it an Italian grace. 
 
 These public palaces belong to the age of the Communes, 
 when Gubbio was a free town, with a policy of its own, and 
 an important part to play in the internecine struggles of Pope 
 and Empire, Guelf and Ghibelline. The ruined, deserted, 
 degraded Palazzo Ducale reminds us of the advent of the 
 despots. It has been stripped of all its tarsia- work and sculp- 
 ture. Only here and there a Fe. D., with the cupping-glass 
 of Federigo di Montefeltro, remains to show that Gubbio once 
 became the fairest fief of the Urbino duchy. S. Ubaldo, who 
 gave his name to this duke's son, was the patron of Gubbio, 
 and to him the cathedral is dedicated — one low enormous 
 vault, like a cellar or feudal banqueting hall, roofed with a 
 succession of solid Gothic arches. This strange old church, 
 and the House of Canons, buttressed on the hill beside it, 
 have suffered less from modernisation than most buildings in 
 Gubbio. The latter, in particular, helps one to understand 
 what this city of grave palazzi must have been, and how the 
 mere opening of old doors and windows would restore it to 
 its primitive appearance. The House of the Canons has, in 
 fact, not yet been given over to the use of middle-class and 
 proletariate. 
 
 At the end of a day in Gubbio, it is pleasant to take our 
 ease in the primitive hostelry, at the back of which foams a 
 mountain-torrent, rushing downward from the Apennines. 
 
124 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 The Gubbio wine is very fragrant, and of a rich ruby colour. 
 Those to whom the tints of wine and jewels give a pleasure 
 not entirely childish, will take delight in its specific blending 
 of tawny hues with rose. They serve the table still, at Gubbio, 
 after the antique Italian fashion, covering it with a cream- 
 coloured linen cloth bordered with coarse lace — the creases of 
 the press, the scent of old herbs from the wardrobe, are still 
 upon it — and the board is set with shallow dishes of warm, 
 white earthenware, basket-worked in open lattice at the edge, 
 which contain little separate messes of meat, vegetables, cheese, 
 and comfits. The wine stands in strange, slender phials of 
 smooth glass, with stoppers; and the amber-coloured bread 
 lies in fair round loaves upon the cloth. Dining thus is like 
 sitting down to the supper at Emmaus, in some picture of 
 Gian Bellini or of Masolino. The very bareness of the room 
 — its open rafters, plastered walls, primitive settees, and red- 
 brick floor, on which a dog sits waiting for a bone — enhances 
 the impression of artistic delicacy in the table. 
 
 From Gubbio to Fang. 
 
 The road from Gubbio, immediately after leaving the city, 
 enters a narrow Alpine ravine, where a thin stream dashes 
 over dark, red rocks, and pendent saxifrages wave to the winds. 
 The carriage in which we travelled at the end of May, one 
 morning, had two horses, which our driver soon supplemented 
 with a couple of white oxen. Slowly and toilsomely we 
 ascended between the flanks of barren hills — gaunt masses of 
 crimson and grey crag, clothed at their summits with short turf 
 and scanty pasture. The pass leads first to the little town of 
 Scheggia, and is called the Monte Calvo, or bald mountain. 
 At Scheggia, it joins the great Flaminian Way, or North road 
 of the Roman armies. At the top there is a fine view over 
 the conical hills that dominate Gubbio, and, far away, to 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 125 
 
 noble mountains above the Furlo and the Foligno line of 
 railway to Ancona. Range rises over range, crossing at un- 
 expected angles, breaking into sudden precipices, and stretch- 
 ing out long, exquisitely-modelled outlines, as only Apennines 
 can do, in silvery sobriety of colours toned by clearest air. 
 Every square piece of this austere, wild landscape forms a 
 varied picture, whereof the composition is due to subtle 
 arrangements of lines always delicate ; and these lines seem 
 somehow to have been determined in their beauty by the vast 
 antiquity of the mountain system, as though they all had taken 
 time to choose their place and wear down into harmony. The 
 effect !of tempered sadness was heightened for us by stormy 
 lights and dun clouds, high in air, rolling vapours and flying 
 shadows, over all the prospect, tinted in ethereal grisaille. 
 
 After Scheggia, one enters a land of meadow and oak-trees. 
 This is the sacred central tract of Jupiter Apenninus, whose 
 fane — 
 
 Delubra Jovis saxoque minantes 
 Apenninigenis cultae pastoribus arae ' 
 
 — once rose behind us on the bald Iguvian summits. A 
 second little pass leads from this region to the Adriatic side of 
 the Italian watershed, and the road now follows the Barano 
 downward toward the sea. The valley is fairly green with 
 woods, where misletoe may here and there be seen on boughs 
 of oak, and rich with cornfields. Cagli is the chief town 
 of the district, and here they show one of the best pictures left 
 to us by Raphael's father, Giovanni Santi. It is a Madonna, 
 attended by S. Peter, S. Francis, S. Dominic, S. John, and two 
 angels. One of the angels is traditionally supposed to have 
 been painted from the boy Raphael, and the face has something 
 which reminds us of his portraits. The whole composition, 
 excellent in modelling, harmonious in grouping, soberly but 
 strongly coloured, with a peculiar blending of dignity and sweet- 
 
126 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 ness, grace and vigour, makes one wonder why Santi thought 
 it necessary to send his son from his own workshop to study 
 under Perugino. He was himself a master of his art, and this, 
 perhaps the most agreeable of his paintings, has a masculine 
 sincerity which is absent from at least the later works of 
 Perugino. 
 
 Some miles beyond Cagli, the real pass of the Furlo begins. 
 It owes its name to a narrow tunnel bored by Vespasian in 
 the solid rock, where limestone crags descend on the Barano. 
 The Romans called this gallery Petra Pertusa, or Intercisa, 
 or more familiarly Forulus, whence comes the modern name. 
 Indeed, the stations on the old Flaminian Way are still well 
 marked by Latin designations ; for Cagli is the ancient Calles, 
 and Fossombrone is Forum Sempronii, and Fano the Fanum 
 Fortunse. Vespasian commemorated this early achievement in 
 engineering by an inscription carved on the living stone, which 
 still remains ; and Claudian, when he sang the journey of his 
 Emperor Honorius from Rimini to JRome, speaks thus of what 
 was even then an object of astonishment to travellers : — 
 
 Laetior hinc fano recipit fortuna vetusto, 
 Despiciturque vagus praerupta valle Metaurus, 
 Qua mons arte patens vivo se perforat arcu 
 Admittitque viam sectae per viscera rupis. 
 
 The Forulus itself may now be matched, on any Alpine 
 pass, by several tunnels of far mightier dimensions ; for it is 
 narrow, and does not extend more than 126 feet in length. 
 But it occupies a fine position at the end of a really imposing 
 ravine. The whole Furlo Pass might, without too much 
 exaggeration, be described as a kind of Cheddar on the scale 
 of the Via Mala. The limestone rocks, which rise on either 
 hand above the gorge to an enormous height, are noble in 
 form and solemn, like a succession of gigantic portals, with 
 stupendous flanking obelisks and pyramids. Some of these 
 
MAY IN UMBRIA. 127 
 
 crag-masses rival the fantastic cliffs of Capri, and all consist 
 of that southern mountain limestone which changes from pale 
 yellow to blue grey and dusky orange. A river roars precipi- 
 tately through the pass, and the road-sides wave with many 
 sorts of campanulas — a profusion of azure and purple bells 
 upon the hard white stone. Of Roman remains there is still 
 enough (in the way of Roman bridges and bits of broken 
 masonry) to please an antiquary's eye. But the lover of 
 nature will dwell chiefly on the picturesque qualities of this 
 historic gorge, so alien to the general character of Italian 
 scenery, and yet so remote from anything to which Swiss 
 travelling accustoms one. 
 
 The Furlo breaks out into a richer land of mighty oaks and 
 waving cornfields, a fat pastoral country, not unlike Devonshire 
 in detail, with green uplands, and wild-rose tangled hedgerows, 
 and much running water, and abundance of summer flowers. 
 At a point above Fossombrone, the Barano joins the Metauro, 
 and here one has a glimpse of far-away Urbino, high upon its 
 mountain eyrie. It is so rare, in spite of immemorial belief, to 
 find in Italy a wilderness of wild flowers, that I feel inclined 
 to make a list of those I saw from our carriage windows as we 
 rolled down lazily along the road to Fossombrone. Broom, 
 and cytisus, and hawthorn mingled with roses, gladiolus, and 
 saintfoil. There were orchises, and clematis, and privet, and 
 wild-vine, vetches of all hues, red poppies, sky-blue cornflowers, 
 and lilac pimpernel. In the rougher hedges, dogwood, honey- 
 suckle, pyracanth, and acacia made a network of white bloom 
 and blushes. Milkworts of all bright and tender tints com- 
 bined with borage, iris, hawkweeds, harebells, crimson clover, 
 thyme, red snapdragon, golden asters, and dreamy love-in-a- 
 mist, to weave a marvellous carpet such as the looms of Shiraz 
 or of Cashmere never spread. Rarely have I gazed on Flora 
 in such riot, such luxuriance, such self-abandonment to joy. 
 The air was filled with fragrances. Songs of cuckoos and 
 
128 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 nightingales echoed from the copses on the hill-sides. The 
 sun was out, and dancing over all the landscape. 
 
 After all this, Fano was very restful in the quiet sunset. It 
 has a sandy stretch of shore, on which the long, green-yellow 
 rollers of the Adriatic broke into creamy foam, beneath the 
 waning saffron light over Pesaro and the rosy rising of a full 
 moon. This Adriatic sea carries an English mind home to 
 many a little watering-place upon our coast. In colour and 
 the shape of waves it resembles our Channel. 
 
 The sea-shore is Fano's great attraction ; but the town has 
 many churches, and some creditable pictures, as well as 
 Roman antiquities. Giovanni Santi may here be seen almost 
 as well as at Cagli ; and of Perugino there is one truly magni- 
 ficent altar-piece — lunette, great centre panel, and predella — 
 dusty in its present condition, but splendidly painted, and 
 happily not yet restored or cleaned. It is worth journeying 
 to Fano to see this. Still better would the journey be worth 
 the traveller's while if he could be sure to witness such a 
 game of Pallo7ie as we chanced upon in the Via dell' Arco di 
 Augusto — lads and grown-men, tightly girt, in shirt sleeves, 
 driving the great ball aloft into the air with cunning bias and 
 calculation of projecting house-eaves. I do not understand 
 the game ; but it was clearly played something after the 
 manner of our football, that is to say, with sides, and front 
 and back players so arranged as to cover the greatest number 
 of angles of incidence on either wall. 
 
 Fano still remembers that it is the Fane of Fortune. On 
 the fountain in the market-place stands a bronze Fortuna, 
 slim and airy, offering her veil to catch the wind. May she 
 long shower health and prosperity upon the modern watering- 
 place of which she is the patron saint ! 
 
THE PALACE OF U RBI NO. 
 
 I. 
 
 At Rimini, one spring, the impulse came upon my wife and me 
 to make our way across San Marino to Urbino. In ttie Piazza, 
 called apocryphally after Julius Caesar, I found a proper vettu- 
 rino, with a good carriage and two indefatigable horses. He 
 was a splendid fellow, and bore a great historic name, as I dis- 
 covered when our bargain was completed " What are you 
 called?" I asked him. '•^Filippo Visco?iti^ per servirla.f^ was the 
 prompt reply. Brimming over with the darkest memories of 
 the Italian Renaissance, I hesitated when I heard this answer. 
 The associations seemed too ominous. And yet the man 
 himself was so attractive — tall, stalwart, and well-looking — no 
 feature of his face or limb of his athletic form recalling the 
 gross tyrant who concealed worse than Caligula's ugliness from 
 sight in secret chambers — that I shook this preconception from 
 my mind. As it turned out, Filippo Visconti had nothing in 
 common with his infamous namesake but the name. On a 
 long and trying journey, he showed neither sullen nor yet 
 ferocious tempers; nor, at the end of it, did he attempt by 
 any master-stroke of craft to wheedle from me more than his 
 fair pay ; but took the meerschaum pipe I gave him for a 
 keepsake, with the frank good-will of an accomplished gentle- 
 man. The only exhibition of his hot Italian blood which I 
 remember did his humanity credit. While we were ascending 
 a steep hillside, he jumped from his box to thrash a ruffian 
 by the roadside for brutal treatment to a little boy. He broke 
 
s/ 
 
 130 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 his whip, it is true, in this encounter ; risked a dangerous 
 quarrel ; and left his carriage, with myself and wife inside it, 
 to the mercy of his horses in a somewhat perilous position. 
 But when he came back, hot and glowing, from this deed of 
 justice, I could only applaud his zeal. 
 
 An Italian of this type, handsome as an antique statue, with 
 the refinement of a modern gentleman and that intelligence 
 which is innate in a race of immemorial culture, is a fascinat- 
 ing being. He may be absolutely ignorant in all book-learning. 
 He may be as ignorant as a Bersagliere from Montalcino with 
 whom I once conversed at Rimini, who gravely said that he 
 could walk in three months to North America, and thought 
 of doing it when his term of service was accomplished. But 
 he will display, as this young soldier did, a grace and ease of 
 address which are rare in London drawing-rooms ; and by his 
 shrewd remarks upon the cities he has visited, will show that 
 he possesses a fine natural taste for things of beauty. The 
 speech of such men, drawn from the common stock of the 
 Italian people, is seasoned with proverbial sayings, the wisdom 
 of centuries condensed in a few nervous words. When emo- 
 tion fires their brain, they break into spontaneous eloquence, 
 or suggest the motive of a poem by phrases pregnant with 
 imagery. 
 
 For the first stage of the journey out of Rimini, Filippo's 
 two horses sufficed. The road led almost straight across the 
 level between quickset hedges in white bloom. But when we 
 reached the long steep hill which ascends to San Marino, the 
 inevitable oxen were called out, and we toiled upwards 
 leisurely through cornfields bright with red anemones and 
 sweet narcissus. At this point pomegranate hedges replaced 
 the May-thorns of the plain. In course of time our ^om 
 brought us to the Borgo, or lower town, whence there is a 
 further ascent of seven hundred feet to the topmost hawk's- 
 nest or acropolis of the republic. These we climbed on foot, 
 
THE PALACE OF URBINO. 131 
 
 watching the view expand around us and beneath. Crags of 
 limestone here break down abruptly to the rolling hills, which 
 go to lose themselves in field and shore. Misty reaches of the 
 Adriatic close the world to eastward. Cesena, Rimini, Veruc- 
 chio, and countless hill-set villages, each isolated on its tract 
 of verdure conquered from the stern grey soil, define the points 
 where Montefeltri wrestled with Malatestas in long bygone 
 years. Around are marly mountain-flanks in wrinkles and 
 gnarled convolutions like some giant's brain, furrowed by rivers 
 crawling through dry wasteful beds of shingle. Interminable 
 ranges of gaunt Apennines stretch, tier by tier, beyond ; and 
 over all this landscape, a grey-green mist of rising crops and 
 new-fledged oak-trees lies like a veil upon the nakedness of 
 Nature's ruins. 
 
 Nothing in Europe conveys a more striking sense of geo- 
 logical antiquity than such a prospect. The denudation and 
 abrasion of innumerable ages, wrought by slow persistent action 
 of weather and water on an upheaved mountain mass, are here 
 made visible. Every wave in that vast sea of hills, every 
 furrow in their worn flanks, tells its tale of a continuous corro- 
 sion still in progress. The dominant impression is one of 
 melancholy. We forget how Romans, countermarching Cartha- 
 ginians, trod the land beneath us. The marvel of San Marino, 
 retaining independence through the drums and tramplings of 
 the last seven centuries, is swallowed in a deeper sense of 
 wonder. We turn instinctively in thought to Leopardi's 
 musings on man's destiny at war with unknown nature-forces 
 and malignant rulers of the universe. 
 
 Omai disprezza 
 Te, la natura, il brutto 
 Poter che, ascoso, a comnn danno impera, 
 E r infinita vanita del tutto. 
 
 And then, straining our eyes southward, we sweep the dim blue 
 distance for Recanati, and remember that the poet of modern 
 
132 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 despair and discouragement was reared in even such a scene 
 as this. 
 
 The town of San Marino is grey, narrow-streeted, simple ; 
 with a great, new, decent, Greek-porticoed cathedral, dedi- 
 cated to the eponymous saint. A certain austerity defines it 
 from more picturesque hill-cities with a less uniform history. 
 There is a marble statue of S. Marino in the choir of his 
 church ; and in his cell is shown the stone bed and pillow on 
 which he took austere repose. One narrow window near the 
 saint's abode commands a proud but melancholy landscape 
 of distant hills and seaboard. To this, the great absorbing 
 charm of San Marino, our eyes instinctively, recurrently, take 
 flight. It is a landscape which by variety and beauty thralls 
 attention, but which by its interminable sameness might grow 
 almost overpowering. There is no relief. The gladness shed 
 upon far humbler Northern lands in May is ever absent here. 
 The German word Gemilthlichkcit^ the English phrase "a 
 home of ancient peace," are here alike by art and nature un- 
 translated into visibilities. And yet (as we who gaze upon it 
 thus are fain to think) if peradventure the intolerable ennici of 
 this panorama should drive a citizen of San Marino into out- 
 lands, the same view would haunt him whithersoever he went 
 — the swallows of his native eyrie would shrill through his 
 sleep — he would yearn to breathe its fine keen air in winter, 
 and to watch its iris-hedges deck themselves with blue in 
 spring; — like Virgil's hero, dying, he would think of San 
 Marino : Aspicit, et dulces moriens reuiiniscitur Argos. Even 
 a passing stranger may feel the mingled fascination and oppres- 
 sion of this prospect — the monotony which maddens, the 
 charm which at a distance grows upon the mind, environing 
 it with memories. 
 
 Descending to the Borgo, we found that Filippo Visconti 
 had ordered a luncheon of excellent white bread, pigeons, and 
 omelette, with the best red muscat wine I ever drank, unless 
 
THE PALACE OF URBINO. 133 
 
 the sharp air of the hills deceived my appetite. An Italian 
 history of San Marino, including its statutes, in three volumes, 
 furnished intellectual food. But I confess to having learned 
 from these pages little else than this : first, that the survival 
 of the Commonwealth through all phases of European politics 
 had been semi-miraculous; secondly, that the most eminent 
 San Marinesi had been lawyers. It is possible on a hasty 
 deduction from these two propositions (to which, however, I 
 am far from wishing to commit myself), that the latter is a 
 sufficient explanation of the former. 
 
 From San Marino the road plunges at a break-neck pace. 
 We are now in the true Feltrian highlands, whence the Counts 
 of Montefeltro issued in the twelfth century. Yonder eyrie is 
 San Leo, which formed the key of entrance to the duchy 
 of Urbino in campaigns fought many hundred years ago. 
 Perched on the crest of a precipitous rock, this fortress looks 
 as though it might defy all enemies but famine. And yet 
 San Leo was taken and re-taken by strategy and fraud, 
 when Montefeltro, Borgia, Malatesta, Rovere, contended for 
 dominion in these valleys. Yonder is Sta. Agata, the village 
 to which Guidobaldo fled by night when Valentino drove him 
 from his dukedom. A little farther towers Carpegna, where 
 one branch of the Montefeltro house maintained a countship 
 through seven centuries, and only sold their fief to Rome in 
 18 15. Monte Coppiolo lies behind, Pietra Rubia in front: 
 two other eagle's-nests of the same brood. What a road it is ! 
 It beats the tracks on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of 
 Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and 
 zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, 
 and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in 
 England — knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone 
 cropping up at dangerous turnings — that only Dante's words 
 describe the journey : — 
 
134 • ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Vassi in Sanleo, e discendesi in Noli, 
 
 Montasi su Bismaniova in cacume 
 
 Con esso i pie ; ma qui convien ch' uom voli. 
 
 Of a truth, our horses seemed rather to fly than scramble 
 up and down these rugged precipices ; Visconti cheerily 
 animating them with the brave spirit that was in him, and 
 lending them his wary driver's help of hand and voice at 
 need. 
 
 We were soon upon a cornice-road between the mountains 
 and the Adriatic : following the curves of gulch and cleft 
 ravine ; winding round ruined castles set on points of vantage ; 
 the sea-line high above their grass-grown battlements, the 
 shadow-dappled champaign girdling their bastions mordsed 
 on the naked rock. Except for the blue lights across the 
 distance, and the ever-present sea, these earthy Apennines 
 would be too grim. Infinite air and this spare veil of spring- 
 tide greenery on field and forest soothe their sternness. Two 
 rivers, swollen by late rains, had to be forded. Through one 
 of these, the Foglia, bare-legged peasants led the way The 
 horses waded to their beUies in the tawny water. Then more 
 hills and vales; green nooks with rippling corn-crops; secular 
 oaks attired in golden leafage. The clear afternoon air rang 
 with the voices of a thousand larks overhead. The whole 
 world seemed quivering with light and delicate ethereal 
 sound. And yet my mind turned irresistibly to thoughts of 
 war, violence, and pillage. How often has this intermediate 
 land been fought over by Montefeltro and Brancaleoni, by 
 Borgia and Malatesta, by Medici and Delia Rovere ! Its 
 C07itadini are robust men, almost statuesque in build, and 
 beautiful of feature. No wonder that the Princes of Urbino, 
 with such materials to draw from, sold their service and their 
 troops to Florence, Rome, S. Mark, and Milan. The bear- 
 ing of these peasants is still soldierly and proud. Yet they 
 are not sullen or forbidding like the Sicilians, whose habits of 
 
THE PALACE OF URBINO. 135 
 
 life, for the rest, much resemble theirs. The villages, there 
 as here, are few and far between, perched high on rocks, 
 from which the folk descend to till the ground and reap the 
 harvest. But the southern brusquerie and brutality are absent 
 from this district. The men have something of the dignity 
 and slow-eyed mildness of their own huge oxen. As evening 
 fell, more solemn Apennines upreared themselves to southward. 
 The Monte d'Asdrubale, Monte Nerone, and Monte Catria 
 hove into sight. At last, when light was dim, a tower rose 
 above the neighbouring ridge, a broken outline of some city 
 barred the sky-line. Urbino stood before us. Our long day's 
 march was at an end. 
 
 The sunset was almost spent, and a four days' moon hung 
 above the western Apennines, when we took our first view 
 of the palace. It is a fancy-thralling work of wonder seen in 
 that dim twilight ; like some castle reared by Atlante's magic 
 for imprisonment of Ruggiero, or palace sought in fairyland 
 by Astolf winding his enchanted horn. Where shall we find 
 its like, combining, as it does, the buttressed battlemented 
 bulk of mediaeval strongholds with the airy balconies, sus- 
 pended gardens, and fantastic turrets of Italian pleasure- 
 houses? This unique blending of the feudal past with the 
 Renaissance spirit of the time when it was built, connects it 
 with the art of Ariosto — or more exactly with Boiardo's epic. 
 Duke Federigo planned his palace at Urbino just at the 
 moment when the Count of Scandiano had began to chaunt 
 his lays of Roland in the Castle of Ferrara. Chivalry, trans- 
 muted by the Italian genius into something fanciful and 
 quaint, survived as a frail work of art. The men-at-arms of 
 the Condottieri still glittered in gilded hauberks. Their 
 helmets waved with plumes and bizarre crests. Their sar- 
 coats blazed with heraldries ; their velvet caps with medals 
 bearing legendary emblems. The pomp and circumstance of 
 feudal war had not yet yielded to the cannon of the Gascon 
 
136 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 or the Switzer's pike. The fatal age of foreign invasions had 
 not begun for Italy. Within a few years Charles VIII. 's 
 holiday excursion would reveal the internal rottenness and 
 weakness of her rival states, and the peninsula for half a 
 century to come would be drenched in the blood of French- 
 men, Germans, Spaniards, fighting for her cities as their prey. 
 But now Lorenzo de' Medici was still alive. The famous 
 policy which bears his name held Italy suspended for a 
 golden time in false tranquillity and independence. The 
 princes who shared his culture and his love of art were 
 gradually passing into modern noblemen, abandoning the 
 savage feuds and passions of more virile centuries, yielding to 
 luxury and scholarly enjoyments. The castles were becoming 
 courts, and despotisms won by force were settling into 
 dynasties. 
 
 It was just at this epoch that Duke Federigo built his castle 
 at Urbino. One of the ablest and wealthiest Condottieri of 
 his time, one of the best instructed and humanest of Italian 
 princes, he combined in himself the qualities which mark 
 that period of transition. And these he impressed upon his 
 dwelling-house, which looks backward to the mediaeval fort- 
 alice and forward to the modern palace. This makes it the 
 just embodiment in architecture of Italian romance, the perfect 
 analogue of the Orlando hinaniorato. By comparing it with 
 the castle of the Estes at Ferrara and the Palazzo del Te of 
 the Gonzagas at Mantua, we place it in its right position 
 between mediaeval and Renaissance Italy, between the age 
 when principalities arose upon the ruins of commercial 
 independence and the age when they became dynastic under 
 Spain. 
 
 The exigencies of the ground at his disposal forced Federigo 
 to give the building an irregular outline. The fine facade, 
 with its embayed loggie and flanking turrets, is placed too close 
 upon the city ramparts for its due effect. We are obliged to 
 
THE PALACE OF URBINO. 137 
 
 cross the deep ravine which separates it from a lower quarter of 
 the town, and take our station near the Oratory of S. Giovanni 
 Battista, before we can appreciate the beauty of its design, or 
 the boldness of the group it forms with the cathedral dome 
 and tower and the square masses of numerous out-buildings. 
 Yet this peculiar position of the palace, though baffling to a 
 close observer of its details, is one of singular advantage to the 
 inhabitants. Set on the verge of Urbino's towering eminence, 
 it fronts a wave-tossed sea of vales and mountain summits 
 toward the rising and the setting sun. There is nothing 
 but illimitable air between the terraces and loggias of the 
 Duchess's apartments and the spreading pyramid of Monte 
 Catria. 
 
 A nobler scene is nowhere swept from palace windows than 
 this, which Castiglione touched in a memorable passage at the 
 end of his Cortegiano. To one who in our day visits Urbino, 
 it is singular how the slight indications of this sketch, as in 
 some silhouette, bring back the antique life, and link the 
 present with the past — a hint, perhaps, for reticence in our 
 descriptions. The gentlemen and ladies of the court had 
 spent a summer night in long debate on love, rising to the 
 height of mystical Platonic rapture on the lips of Bembo, when 
 one of them exclaimed, " The day has broken ! " " He pointed 
 to the light which was beginning to enter by the fissures of the 
 windows. Whereupon we flung the casements wide upon that 
 side of the palace which looks toward the high peak of Monte 
 Catria, and saw that a fair dawn of rosy hue was born already 
 in the eastern skies, and all the stars had vanished except the 
 sweet regent of the heaven of Venus, who holds the border- 
 lands of day and night ; and from her sphere it seemed as 
 though a gentle wind were breathing, filling the air with eager 
 freshness, and waking among the numerous woods upon the 
 neighbouring hills the sweet-toned symphonies of joyous 
 birds." 
 
138 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 II. 
 
 The House of Montefeltro rose into importance early in the 
 twelfth century. Frederick Barbarossa erected their fief into 
 a county in ii 60. Supported by imperial favour, they began 
 to exercise an undefined authority over the district, which they 
 afterwards converted into a duchy. But, though Ghibelline 
 for several generations, the Montefeltri were too near neighbours 
 of the Papal power to free themselves from ecclesiastical 
 vassalage. Therefore in 12 16 they sought and obtained the 
 title of Vicars of the Church. Urbino acknowledged them as 
 semi-despots in their double capacity of Imperial and Papal 
 deputies. Cagli and Gubbio followed in the fourteenth 
 century. In the fifteenth, Castel Durante was acquired 
 from the Brancaleoni by warfare, and Fossombrone from 
 the Malatestas by purchase. Numerous fiefs and villages 
 fell into their hands upon the borders of Rimini in the course 
 of a continued struggle with the House of Malatesta : and 
 when Fano and Pesaro were added at the opening of the six- 
 teenth century, the domain over which they ruled was a 
 compact territory, some forty miles square, between the Adri- 
 atic and the Apennines. From the close of the thirteenth 
 century they bore the title of Counts of Urbino. The famous 
 Conte Guido, whom Dante placed among the fraudulent in 
 hell, supported the honours of the house and increased its 
 power by his political action, at this epoch. But it was not 
 until the year 1443 that the Montefeltri acquired their ducal 
 title. This was conferred by Eugenius IV. upon Oddantonio, 
 over whose alleged crimes and indubitable assassination 
 a viel of mystery still hangs. He was the son of Count 
 Guidantonio, and at his death the Montefeltri of Urbino 
 were extinct in the legitimate line. A natural son of 
 Guidantonio had been, however, recognised in his father's 
 
THE PALACE OF UREINO. 139 
 
 lifetime, and maitied to Gentile, heiress of Mercatello. This 
 was Federigo, a youth of great promise, who succeeded his 
 half-brother in 1444 as Count of Urbino. It was not until 
 1474 that the ducal title was revived for him. 
 
 Duke Frederick was a prince remarkable among Italian 
 despots for private virtues and sober use of his hereditary power. 
 He spent his youth at Mantua, in that famous school of 
 Vittorino da Feltre, where the sons and daughters of the first 
 Italian nobility received a model education in humanities, good 
 manners, and gentle physical accompHshments. More than 
 any of his fellow-students Frederick profited by this rare 
 scholar's discipline. On leaving school he adopted the pro- 
 fession of arms, as it was then practised, and joined the troop 
 of the Condottiere Niccolo Piccinino. Young men of his own 
 rank, especially the younger sons and bastards of ruHng 
 families, sought mihtary service under captains of adventure. 
 If they succeeded they were sure to make money. The coffers 
 of the Church and the republics lay open to their not too 
 scrupulous hands ; the wealth of Milan and Naples was squan- 
 dered on them in retaining-fees and salaries for active service. 
 There was always the further possibility of placing a coronet 
 upon their brows before they died, if haply they should wrest a 
 town from their employers, or obtain the cession of a province 
 from a needy Pope. The neighbours of the Montefeltri in 
 Umbria, Romagna, and the Marches of Ancona were all of 
 them Condottieri. Malatestas of Rimini and Pesaro, Vitelli of 
 Citta di Castello, Varani of Camerino, Baglioni of Perugia, to 
 mention only a few of the most eminent nobles, enrolled 
 themselves under the banners of plebeian adventurers like 
 Piccinino and Sforza Attendolo. Though their family con- 
 nections gave them a certain advantage, the system was 
 essentially democratic. Gattamelata and Carmagnola sprang 
 from obscurity by personal address and courage to the com- 
 mand of armies. Colleoni fought his way up from the grooms 
 
I40 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 to princely station and the M^on of S. Mark. Francesco 
 Sforza, whose father had begun Hfe as a tiller of the soil, seized 
 the ducal crown of Milan, and founded a house which ranked 
 among the first in Europe. 
 
 It is not needful to follow Duke Frederick in his military 
 career. We may briefly remark that when he succeeded to 
 Urbino by his brother's death in 1444, he undertook general- 
 ship on a grand scale. His own dominions supplied him with 
 some of the best troops in Italy. He was careful to secure the 
 good-will of his subjects by attending personally to their 
 interests, relieving them of imposts, and executing equal jus- 
 tice. He gained the then unique reputation of an honest 
 prince, paternally disposed toward his dependants. Men 
 flocked to his standards willingly, and he was able to bring 
 an important contingent into any army. These advantages 
 secured for him alliances with Francesco Sforza, and brought 
 him successively into connection with Milan, Venice, Florence, 
 the Church of Naples. As a tactician in the field he held 
 high rank among the generals of the age, and so considerable 
 were his engagements that he acquired great wealth in the 
 exercise of his profession. We find him at one time receiving 
 8000 ducats a month as war-pay from Naples, with a peace 
 pension of 6000. While Captain-General of the League, he 
 drew for his own use in war 45,000 ducats of annual pay. 
 Retaining-fees and pensions in the name of past services 
 swelled his income, the exact extent of which has not, so far 
 as I am aware, been estimated, but which must have made 
 him one of the richest of Italian princes. All this wealth he 
 spent upon his duchy, fortifying and beautifying its cities, 
 drawing youths of promise to his court, maintaining a great 
 train of life, and keeping his vassals in good-humour by the 
 lightness of a rule which contrasted favourably with the exac- 
 tions of needier despots. 
 
 While fighting for the masters who ofi"ered him condotia in 
 
THE PALACE OF URBINO. 141 
 
 the complicated wars of Italy, Duke Frederick used his arms, 
 when occasion served, in his own quarrels. Many years of his 
 life were spent in a prolonged struggle with his neighbour 
 Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the bizarre and brilliant tyrant 
 of Rimini, who committed the fatal error of embroiling him- 
 self beyond all hope of pardon with the Church, and who died 
 discomfited in the duel with his warier antagonist. Urbino 
 profited by each mistake of Sigismondo, and the history 
 of this long desultory strife with Rimini is a history of 
 gradual aggrandisement and consolidation for the Montefel- 
 trian duchy. 
 
 In 1459, Duke Frederick married his second wife, Battista, 
 daughter of Alessandro Sforza, Lord of Pesaro. Their por- 
 traits, painted by Piero della Francesca, are to be seen in the 
 Uffizzi at Florence. Some years earlier, Frederick lost his 
 right eye and had the bridge of his nose broken in a jousting 
 match outside the town-gate of Urbino. After this accident, 
 he preferred to be represented in profile — the profile so well 
 known to students of Italian art on medals and bas-reliefs. It 
 was not without medical aid and vows fulfilled by a mother's 
 self-sacrifice to death, if we may trust the diarists of Urbino, 
 that the ducal couple got an heir. In 1472, however a son 
 was born to them, whom they christened Guido Paolo Ubaldo. 
 He proved a youth of excellent parts and noble nature — apt 
 at study, perfect in all chivalrous accomplishments. But he 
 inherited some fatal physical debility, and his Hfe was marred 
 with a constitutional disease, which then received the name of 
 gout, and which deprived him of the free use of his limbs. 
 After his father's death in 1482, Naples, Florence, and Milan 
 continued Frederick's war engagements to Guidobaldo. The 
 prince was but a boy of ten. Therefore these important condotte 
 must be regarded as compliments and pledges for the future. 
 They prove to what a pitch Duke Frederick had raised the 
 credit of his state and war establishment. Seven years later, 
 
142 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Guidobaldo married Elisabetta, daughter of Francesco Gonzaga, 
 Marquis of Mantua. This union, though a happy one, was 
 never blessed with children ; and in the certainty of barren- 
 ness, the young Duke thought it prudent to adopt a nephew 
 as heir to his dominions. He had several sisters, one of 
 whom, Giovanna, had been married to a nephew of Sixtus 
 IV., Giovanni della Rovere, Lord of Sinigaglia and Prefect of 
 Rome. They had a son, Francesco Maria, who, after his 
 adoption by Guidobaldo, spent his boyhood at Urbino. 
 
 The last years of the fifteenth century were marked by the 
 sudden rise of Cesare Borgia to a power which threatened 
 the liberties of Italy. Acting as General for the Church, he 
 carried his arms against the petty tyrants of Romagna, whom 
 he dispossessed and extirpated. His next move was upon 
 Camerino and Urbino. He first acquired Camerino, having 
 lulled Guidobaldo into false security by treacherous professions 
 of good-will. Suddenly the Duke received intelligence that 
 the Borgia was marching on him over Cagli. This was in the 
 middle of June 1502. It is difficult to comprehend the state 
 of weakness in which Guidobaldo was surprised, or the panic 
 which then seized him. He made no efforts to rouse his sub- 
 jects to resistance, but fled by night with his nephew through 
 rough mountain roads, leaving his capital and palace to the 
 marauder. Cesare Borgia took possession without striking a 
 blow, and removed the treasures of Urbino to the Vatican. 
 His occupation of the duchy was not undisturbed, however; 
 for the people rose in several places against him, proving that 
 Guidobaldo had yielded top hastily to alatm. By this time 
 the fugitive was safe in Mantua, whence he returned, and for 
 a short time succeeded in establishing himself again at Urbino. 
 But he could not hold his own against the Borgias, and in 
 December, by a treaty, he resigned his claims and retired to 
 Venice, where he lived upon the bounty of S. Mark. It must 
 be said, in justice to the Duke, that his constitutional debility 
 
THE PALACE OF U RBI NO. 143 
 
 rendered him unfit for active operations in the field. Perhaps 
 he could not have done better than thus to bend beneath the 
 storm. 
 
 The sudden death of Alexander VI. and the election of a 
 Delia Rovere to the Papacy in 1503 changed Guidobaldo's 
 prospects. Julius II. was the sworn foe of the Borgias and 
 the close kinsman of Urbino's heir. It was therefore easy for 
 the Duke to walk into his empty palace on the hill, and to 
 reinstate himself in the domains from which he had so 
 recently been ousted. The rest of his life was spent in the 
 retirement of his court, surrounded with the finest scholars 
 and the noblest gentlemen of Italy. The ill-health which 
 debarred him from the active pleasures and employments of 
 his station, was borne with uniform sweetness of temper and 
 philosophy. 
 
 When he died, in 1508, his nephew, Francesco Maria della 
 Rovere, succeeded to the duchy, and once more made the 
 palace of Urbino the resort of men-at-arms and captains. He 
 was a prince of very violent temper : of its extravagance history 
 has recorded three remarkable examples. He murdered the 
 Cardinal of Pavia with his own hand in the streets of Ravenna ; 
 stabbed a lover of his sister to death at Urbino ; and in a 
 council of war knocked Francesco Guicciardini down with a 
 blow of his fist. When the history of Italy came to be written, 
 Guicciardini was probably mindful of that insult, for he painted 
 Francesco Maria's character and conduct in dark colours. At 
 the same time this Duke of Urbino passed for one of the 
 first generals of the age. The greatest stain upon his 
 memory is his behaviour in the year 1527, when, by dila- 
 tory conduct of the campaign in Lombardy, he suffered the 
 passage of Frundsberg's army unopposed, and afterwards hesi- 
 tated to relieve Rome from the horrors of the sack. He was 
 the last Italian Condottiere of the antique type ; and the vices 
 which Machiavelli exposed in that bad system of mercenary 
 
144 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 warfare were illustrated on these occasions. During his life- 
 time, the conditions of Italy were so changed by Charles V.'s 
 imperial settlement in 1530, that the occupation of Condottiere 
 ceased to have any meaning. Strozzi and Farnesi, who after- 
 wards followed this profession, enlisted in the ranks of France 
 or Spain, and won their laurels in Northern Europe. 
 
 While Leo X. held the Papal chair, the duchy of Urbino 
 was for a while wrested from the house of Delia Rovere, and 
 conferred upon Lorenzo de' Medici. Francesco Maria made 
 a better fight for his heritage than Guidobaldo had done. 
 Yet he could not successfully resist the power of Rome. The 
 Pope was ready to spend enormous sums of money on this 
 petty war; the Duke's purse was shorter, and the mercenary 
 troops he was obliged to use, proved worthless in the field. 
 Spaniards, for the most part, pitted against Spaniards, they 
 suffered the campaigns to degenerate into a guerilla warfare 
 of pillage and reprisals. In 15 17 the duchy was formally 
 ceded to Lorenzo. But this Medici did not live long to enjoy 
 it, and his only child Catherine, the future Queen of France, 
 never exercised the rights which had devolved upon her by 
 inheritance. The shifting scene of Italy beheld Francesco 
 Maria reinstated in Urbino after Leo's death in 1522. 
 
 This Duke married Leonora Gonzaga, a princess of the house 
 of Mantua. Their portraits, painted by Titian, adorn the 
 Venetian room of the Ufiizzi. Of their son, Guidobaldo II., 
 little need be said. He was twice married, first to Giulia 
 Varano, Duchess by inheritance of Camerino ; secondly, to 
 Vittoria Farnese, daughter of the Duke of Parma. Guidobaldo 
 spent a lifetime in petty quarrels with his subjects, whom he 
 treated badly, attempting to draw from their pockets the wealth 
 which his father and the Montefeltri had won in military service. 
 He intervened at an awkward period of Italian politics. The 
 old Italy of despots, commonwealths, and Condottieri, in which 
 his predecessors played substantial parts, was at an end. The 
 
THE PALACE OF URBINO. 145 
 
 new Italy of Popes and Austro-Spanish dynasties had hardly 
 settled into shape. Between these epochs, Guidobaldo II., 
 of whom we have a dim and hazy presentation on the page 
 of history, seems somehow to have fallen flat. As a sign of 
 altered circumstances, he removed his court to Pesaro, and 
 built the great palace of the Delia Roveres upon the public 
 square. 
 
 Guidobaldaccio, as he was called, died in 1574, leaving an 
 only son, Francesco Maria II., whose life and character illus- 
 trate the new age which had begun for Italy. He was edu- 
 cated in Spain at the court of Philip II., where he spent more 
 than two years. When he returned, his Spanish haughtiness, 
 punctilious attention to etiquette, and superstitious piety at- 
 tracted observation. The violent temper of the Delia Roveres, 
 which Francesco Maria I. displayed in acts of homicide, and 
 which had helped to win his bad name for Guidobaldaccio, 
 took the form of suUenness in the last Duke. The finest 
 episode in his life was the part he played in the battle of 
 Lepanto, under his old comrade, Don John of Austria. His 
 father forced him to an uncongenial marriage with Lucrezia 
 d'Este, Princess of Ferrara. She left him, and took refuge in 
 her native city, then honoured by the presence of Tasso and 
 Guarini. He bore her departure with philosophical com- 
 posure, recording the event in his diary as something to be 
 dryly grateful for. Left alone, the Duke abandoned himself 
 to solitude, religious exercises, hunting, and the economy of 
 his impoverished dominions. He became that curious creature, 
 a man of narrow nature and mediocre capacity, who, dedicated 
 to the cult of self, is fain to pass for saint and sage in easy cir- 
 cumstances. He married, for the second time, a lady, Livia 
 della Rovere, who belonged to his own family, but had been 
 born in private station. She brought him one son, the Prince 
 Federigo-Ubaldo. This youth might have sustained the ducal 
 honours of Urbino, but for his sage-saint father's want of 
 
146 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 wisdom. The boy was a spoiled child in infancy. Inflated 
 with Spanish vanity from the cradle, taught to regard his 
 subjects as dependants on a despot's will, abandoned to the 
 caprices of his own ungovernable temper, without substantial 
 aid from the paternal piety or stoicism, he rapidly became a 
 most intolerable princeling. His father married him, while 
 yet a boy, to Claudia de' Medici, and virtually abdicated in 
 his favour. Left to his own devices, Federigo chose com- 
 panions from the troupes of players whom he drew from 
 Venice. He filled his palaces with harlots, and degraded him- 
 self upon the stage in parts of mean buffoonery. The resources 
 of the duchy were racked to support these parasites. Spanish 
 rules of etiquette and ceremony were outraged by their orgies. 
 His bride brought him one daughter, Vittoria, who afterwards 
 became the wife of Ferdinand, Grand Duke of Tuscany. 
 Then in the midst of his low dissipation and offences against 
 ducal dignity, he died of apoplexy at the early age of eighteen 
 — the victim, in the severe judgment of history, of his father's 
 selfishness and want of practical ability. 
 
 This happened in 1623. Francesco Maria was stunned by 
 the blow. His withdrawal from the duties of the sovereignty 
 in favour of such a son had proved a constitutional unfitness 
 for the duties of his station. The life he loved was one of 
 seclusion in a round of pious exercises, petty studies, peddling 
 economies, and mechanical amusements. A powerful and 
 grasping Pope was on the throne of Rome. Urban at this 
 juncture pressed Francesco Maria hard; and in 1624 the last 
 Duke of Urbino devolved his lordships to the Holy See. He 
 survived the formal act of abdication seven years; when he 
 died, the Pontiff added his duchy to the Papal States, which 
 thenceforth stretched from Naples to the bounds of Venice on 
 the Po. 
 
THE PALACE OF U RBI NO. 147 
 
 III. 
 
 Duke Frederick began the palace at Urbino in 1454, when he 
 was still only Count. The architect was Luziano of Lauranna, 
 a Dalmatian; and the beautiful white Hmestone, hard as 
 marble, used in the construction, was brought from the Dal- 
 matian coast. This stone, like the Istrian stone of Venetian 
 buildings, takes and retains the chisel mark with wonderful 
 precision. It looks as though, when fresh, it must have had 
 the pliancy of clay, so delicately are the finest curves in scroll 
 or foliage scooped from its substance. And yet it preserves 
 each cusp and angle of the most elaborate pattern with the 
 crispness and the sharpness of a crystal. When wrought by a 
 clever craftsman, its surface has neither the waxiness of Parian, 
 nor the brittle edge of Carrara marble ; and it resists weather 
 better than marble of the choicest quality. This may be 
 observed in many, monuments of Venice, where the stone has 
 been long exposed to sea-air. These qualities of the Dalmatian 
 limestone, no less than its agreeable creamy hue and smooth 
 dull polish, adapt it to decoration in low relief. The most 
 attractive details in the palace at Urbino are friezes carved of 
 this material in choice designs of early Renaissance dignity and 
 grace. One chimney-piece in the Sala degli Angeli deserves 
 especial comment. A frieze of dancing Cupids, with gilt hair 
 and wings, their naked bodies left white on a ground of ultra- 
 marine, is supported by broad flat pilasters. These are en- 
 graved with children holding pots of flowers; roses on one 
 side, carnations on the other. Above the frieze another pair 
 of angels, one at each end, hold lighted torches ; and the 
 pyramidal cap of the chimney is carved with two more, flying, 
 and supporting the eagle of the Montefeltri on a raised medal- 
 lion. Throughout the palace we notice emblems appropriate 
 to the Houses of Montefeltro and Delia Rovere : their arms, 
 
148 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 three golden bends upon a field of azure : the Imperial eagle, 
 granted when Montefeltro was made a fief of the Empire : the 
 Garter of England, worn by the Dukes Federigo and Guido- 
 baldo : the ermine of Naples : the ventosa^ or cupping-glass, 
 adopted for a private badge by Frederick : the golden oak-tree 
 on an azure field of Delia Rovere : the palm-tree, bent beneath 
 a block of stone, with its accompanying motto, Inclinaia 
 Resurgam : the cypher, FE DX. Profile medallions of Federigo 
 and Guidobaldo, wrought in the lowest possible relief, adorn 
 the staircases. Round the great courtyard runs a frieze of 
 military engines and ensigns, trophies, machines, and imple- 
 ments of war, alluding to Duke Frederick's profession of 
 Condottiere. The doorways are enriched with scrolls of heavy- 
 headed flowers, acanthus foliage, honeysuckles, ivy-berries, 
 birds and boys and sphinxes, in all the riot of Renaissance 
 fancy. 
 
 This profusion of sculptured rilievo is nearly all that remains 
 to show how rich the palace was in things of beauty. Castig- 
 lione, writing in the reign of Guidobaldo, says that " in the 
 opinion of many it is the fairest to be found in Italy; and 
 the Duke filled it so well with all things fitting its magni- 
 ficence, that it seemed less like a palace than a city. Not 
 only did he collect articles of common use, vessels of silver, 
 and trappings for chambers of rare cloths of gold and silk, 
 and such like furniture, but he added multitudes of bronze 
 and marble statues, exquisite pictures, and instruments of 
 music of all sorts. There was nothing but was of the finest 
 and most excellent quality to be seen there. Moreover, he 
 gathered together at a vast cost a large number of the best and 
 rarest books in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, all of which he 
 adorned with gold and silver, esteeming them the chiefest 
 treasure of his spacious palace." When Cesare Borgia entered 
 Urbino as conqueror in 1502, he is said to have carried oif 
 loot to the value of 150,000 ducats, or perhaps about a quarter 
 
THE PALACE OF URBINO. 149 
 
 of a million sterling. Vespasiano, the Florentine bookseller, 
 has left us a minute account of the formation of the famous 
 library of MSS., which he valued at considerably over 30,000 
 ducats. Yet wandering now through these deserted halls, we 
 seek in vain for furniture or tapestry or works of art. The 
 books have been removed to Rome. The pictures are gone, 
 no man knows whither. The plate has long been melted 
 down. The instruments of music are broken. If frescoes 
 adorned the corridors, they have been whitewashed; the 
 ladies' chambers have been stripped of their rich arras. Only 
 here and there we find a raftered ceiling, painted in fading 
 colours, which, taken with the stonework of the chimney, and 
 some fragments of inlaid panel-work on door or window, 
 enables us to reconstruct the former richness of these princely 
 rooms. 
 
 Exception must be made in favour of two apartments be- 
 tween the towers upon the southern facade. These were 
 apparently the private rooms of the Duke and Duchess, and 
 they are still approached by a great winding staircase in 
 one of the torricini. Adorned in indestructible or irremovable 
 materials, they retain some traces of their ancient splendour. 
 On the first floor, opening on the vaulted loggia, we find a 
 little chapel encrusted with lovely work in stucco and marble ; 
 friezes of bulls, sphinxes, sea-horses, and foliage ; with a low 
 relief of Madonna and Child in the manner of Mino da 
 Fiesole. Close by is a small study with inscriptions to the 
 Muses and Apollo. The cabinet connecting these two cells 
 has a Latin legend, to say that Religion here dwells near 
 the temple of the liberal arts : 
 
 Bina vides parvo discrimine juncta sacella, 
 Altera pars Musis altera sacra Deo est. 
 
 On the floor above, corresponding in position to this apart- 
 ment, is a second, of even greater interest, since it was 
 
ISO ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 arranged by the Duke Frederick for his own retreat. The 
 study is panelled in tarsia of beautiful design and execution. 
 Three of the larger compartments show Faith, Hope, and 
 Charity; figures not unworthy of a Botticelli or a Filippino 
 Lippi. The occupations of the Duke are represented on a 
 smaller scale by armour, batons of command, scientific instru- 
 ments, lutes, viols, and books, some open and some shut. 
 The Bible, Homer, Virgil, Seneca, Tacitus, and Cicero, are 
 lettered ; apparently to indicate his favourite authors. The 
 Duke himself, arrayed in his state robes, occupies a fourth 
 great panel; and the whole of this elaborate composition is 
 harmonised by emblems, badges, and occasional devices of 
 birds, articles of furniture, and so forth. The tarsia, or inlaid 
 wood of different kinds and colours, is among the best in this 
 kind of art to be found in Italy, though perhaps it hardly 
 deserves to rank with the celebrated choir-stalls of Bergamo 
 and Monte Oliveto. Hard by is a chapel, adorned, like the 
 lower one, with excellent reliefs. The Loggia to which these 
 rooms have access looks across the Apennines, and down on 
 what was once a private garden. It is now enclosed and 
 paved for the exercise of prisoners who are confined in one 
 part of the desecrated palace ! 
 
 A portion of the pile is devoted to more worthy purposes ; 
 for the Academy of Raphael here holds its sittings, and pre- 
 serves a collection of curiosities and books illustrative of the 
 great painter's life and w^orks. They have recently placed in 
 a tiny oratory, scooped by Guidobaldo H. from the thickness 
 of the wall, a cast of Raphael's skull, which will be studied 
 with interest and veneration. It has the fineness of modelling 
 combined with shapeliness of form and smallness of scale 
 which is said to have characterised Mozart and Shelley. 
 
 The impression left upon the mind after traversing this 
 palace in its length and breadth is one of weariness and dis- 
 appointment. How shall we reconstruct the long-past life 
 
THE PALACE OF U RBI NO. 151 
 
 which filled its rooms with sound, the splendour of its 
 pageants, the thrill of tragedies enacted here ? It is not diffi- 
 cult to crowd its doors and vacant spaces with liveried servants, 
 slim pages in tight hose, whose well-combed hair escapes from 
 tiny caps upon their silken shoulders. We may even replace 
 the tapestries of Troy which hung one hall, and build again 
 the sideboards with their embossed gilded plate. But are 
 these chambers really those where Emilia Pia held debate on 
 love with Bembo and Castiglione ; where Bibbiena's witticisms 
 and Fra Serafino's pranks raised smiles on courtly lips ; where 
 Bernardo Accolti, " the Unique," declaimed his verses to ap- 
 plauding crowds? Is it possible that into yonder hall, where 
 now the lion of S. Mark looks down alone on staring desola- 
 tion, strode the Borgia in all his panoply of war, a gilded 
 glittering dragon, and from the dais tore the Montefeltri's 
 throne, and from the arras stripped their ensigns, replacing 
 these with his own Bull and Valentinus Dux? Here Tasso 
 tuned his lyre for Francesco Maria's wedding-feast, and read 
 "Aminta" to Lucrezia d'Este. Here Guidobaldo listened to 
 the jests and whispered scandals of the Aretine. Here Titian 
 set his easel up to paint ; here the boy Raphael, cap in hand, 
 took signed and sealed credentials from his Duchess to the 
 Gonfalonier of Florence. Somewhere in these huge chambers, 
 the courtiers sat before a torch-lit stage, when Bibbiena's 
 " Calandria " and Castiglione's " Tirsi," with their miracles of 
 masques and mummers, whiled the night away. Somewhere, 
 we know not where, Giuliano de' Medici made love in these 
 bare rooms to that mysterious mother of ill-fated Cardinal 
 Ippolito ; somewhere, in some darker nook, the bastard Ales- 
 sandro sprang to his strange-fortuned life of tyranny and 
 license, which Brutus-Lorenzino cut short with a traitor's 
 poignard-thrust in Via Larga. How many men, illustrious for 
 arts and letters, memorable by their virtues or their crimes, 
 have trod these silent corridors, from the great Pope Julius 
 
152 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 down to James II L, self-titled King of England, who tarried 
 here with Clementina Sobieski through some twelve months 
 of his ex-royal exile ! The memories of all this folk, flown 
 guests and masters of the still-abiding palace-chambers, haunt 
 us as we hurry through. They are but filmy shadows. We 
 cannot grasp them, localise them, people surrounding empti- 
 ness with more than withering cobweb forms. 
 
 Death takes a stronger hold on us than bygone life. There- 
 fore, returning to the vast Throne-room, we animate it with 
 one scene it witnessed on an April night in 1508. Duke 
 Guidobaldo had died at Fossombrone, repeating to his friends 
 around his bed these lines of Virgil : 
 
 Me circum limus niger et deformis arundo 
 Cocyti tardaque palus inamabilis unda 
 Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coercet. 
 
 His body had been carried on the shoulders of servants 
 through those mountain ways at night, amid the lamentations 
 of gathering multitudes and the baying of dogs from hill-set 
 farms alarmed by flaring flambeaux. Now it is laid in state 
 in the great hall. The dais and the throne are draped in 
 black. The arms and batons of his father hang about the 
 doorways. His own ensigns are displayed in groups and 
 trophies, with the banners of S. Mark, the Montefeltrian 
 eagle, and the cross keys of S. Peter. The hall itself is 
 vacant, save for the high-reared catafalque of sable velvet and 
 gold damask, surrounded with wax-candles burning steadily. 
 Round it passes a ceaseless stream of people, coming and 
 going, gazing at their Duke. He is attired in crimson hose 
 and doublet of black damask. Black velvet slippers are on 
 his feet, and his ducal cap is of black velvet. The mantle of 
 the Garter, made of dark-blue Alexandrine velvet, hooded with 
 crimson, lined with white silk damask, and embroidered with 
 the badge, drapes the stifl" sleeping form. 
 
THE PALACE OF U RBI NO. 153 
 
 It is easier to conjure up the past of this great palace, stroll- 
 ing round it in free air and twilight ; perhaps because the 
 landscape and the life still moving on the city streets bring its 
 exterior into harmony with real existence. The southern 
 faQade, with its vaulted balconies and flanking towers, takes 
 the fancy, fascinates the eye, and lends itself as a fit stage for 
 puppets of the musing mind. Once more imagination plants 
 trim orange-trees in giant jars of Gubbio ware upon the pave- 
 ment where the garden of the Duchess lay — the pavement 
 paced in these bad days by convicts in grey canvas jackets — 
 that pavement where Monsignor Bembo courted " dear dead 
 women " with Platonic phrase, smothering the Menta of his 
 natural man in lettuce culled from Academe and thyme of 
 Mount Hymettus. In yonder loggia^ hfted above the garden 
 and the court, two lovers are in earnest converse. They lean 
 beneath the coffered arch, against the marble of the balustrade, 
 he fingering his dagger under the dark velvet doublet, she 
 playing with a clove carnation, deep as her own shame. The 
 man is Giannandrea, broad-shouldered bravo of Verona, Duke 
 Guidobaldo's favourite and carpet-count. The lady is Ma- 
 donna Maria, daughter of Rome's Prefect, widow of Venanzio 
 Varano, whom the Borgia strangled. On their discourse a 
 tale will hang of woman's frailty and man's boldness — Camer- 
 ino's Duchess yielding to a low-born suitor's stalwart charms. 
 And more will follow, when that lady's brother, furious Fran- 
 cesco Maria della Rovere, shall stab the bravo in torch-litten 
 palace rooms with twenty poignard strokes twixt waist and 
 throat, and their Pandarus shall be sent down to his account 
 by a varlet's coltellata through the midriff. Imagination shifts 
 the scene, and shows in that same loggia Rome's warlike Pope, 
 attended by his cardinals and all Urbino's chivalry. The 
 snowy beard of Julius flows down upon his breast, where jewels 
 clasp the crimson mantle, as in Raphael's picture. His eyes 
 are bright with wine ; for he has come to gaze on sunset from 
 
154 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 the banquet-chamber, and to watch the hne of lamps which 
 soon will leap along that palace cornice in his honour. 
 Behind him lies Bologna humbled. The Pope returns, a 
 conqueror, to Rome. Yet once again imagination is at work. 
 A gaunt, bald man, close-habited in Spanish black, his spare, 
 fine features carved in purest ivory, leans from that balcony. 
 Gazing with hollow eyes, he tracks the swallows in their flight, 
 and notes that winter is at hand. This is the last Duke of 
 Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young wife deserted 
 him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round of 
 petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. 
 He drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up 
 seed unto his line by forethought, but beheld his princeling 
 fade untimely in the bloom of boyhood. Nothing is left but 
 sohtude. To the mortmain of the Church reverts Urbino's 
 lordship, and even now he meditates the terms of devolution. 
 Jesuits cluster in the rooms behind, with comfort for the ducal 
 soul and calculations for the interests of Holy See. 
 
 A farewell to these memories of Urbino's dukedom should 
 be taken in the crypt of the cathedral, where Francesco Maria 
 XL, the last Duke, buried his only son and all his temporal 
 hopes. The place is scarcely solemn. Its dreary barocco 
 emblems mar the dignity of death. A bulky Pieta by Gian 
 Bologna, with Madonna's face unfinished, towers up and 
 crowds the narrow cell. Religion has evanished from this late 
 Renaissance art, nor has the after-glow of Guido Reni's hectic 
 piety yet overflushed it. Chilled by the stifling humid sense 
 of an extinct race here entombed in its last representative, we 
 gladly emerge from the sepulchral vault into the air of day. 
 
 Filippo Visconti, with a smile on his handsome face, is 
 waiting for us at the inn. His horses, sleek, well-fed, and 
 rested, toss their heads impatiently. We take our seats in the 
 carriage, open wide beneath a sparkling sky, whirl past the 
 palace and its ghost-like recollections, and are half way on the 
 
THE PALACE OF URBINO. 155 
 
 road to Fossombrone in a cloud of dust and whirr of wheels 
 before we think of looking back to greet Urbino. There is 
 just time. The last decisive turning lies in front. We stand 
 bare-headed to salute the grey mass of buildings ridged along 
 the sky. Then the open road invites us with its varied scenery 
 and movement. From the shadowy past we drive into the 
 world of human things, for ever changefully unchanged, un- 
 restfully the same. This interchange between dead memories 
 and present life is the delight of travel. 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI, 
 
 AND THE TRAGEDY OF WEBSTER. 
 
 During the pontificate of Gregory XIII. (1572-85), Papal 
 authority in Rome reached its lowest point of weakness, and 
 the ancient splendour of the Papal court was well-nigh eclipsed. 
 Art and learning had died out. The traditions of the days 
 of Leo, Julius, and Paul III. were forgotten. It seemed as 
 though the genius of the Renaissance had migrated across the 
 Alps. All the powers of the Papacy were directed to the sup- 
 pression of heresies and to the re-establishment of spiritual 
 supremacy over the intellect of Europe. Meanwhile society 
 in Rome returned to mediaeval barbarism. The veneer of 
 classical refinement and humanistic urbanity, which for a time 
 had hidden the natural savagery of the Roman nobles, wore 
 away. The Holy City became a den of bandits ; the territory 
 of the Church supplied a battle-ground for senseless party strife, 
 which the weak old man who wore the triple crown was quite 
 unable to control. It is related how a robber chieftain, 
 Marianazzo, refused the offer of a general pardon from the 
 Pope, alleging that the profession of brigand was far more 
 lucrative, and offered greater security of life, than any trade 
 within the walls of Rome. The Campagna, the ruined citadels 
 about the basements of the Sabine and Ciminian hills, the 
 quarters of the aristocracy within the city, swarmed with 
 bravos, who were protected by great nobles and fed by decent 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 157 
 
 citizens for the advantages to be derived from the assistance 
 of abandoned and courageous ruffians. Life, indeed, had 
 become impossible without fixed compact with the powers 
 of lawlessness. There was hardly a family in Rome which 
 did not number some notorious criminal among the outlaws. 
 Murder, sacrilege, the love of adventure, thirst for plunder, 
 poverty, hostility to the ascendant faction of the moment, 
 were common causes of voluntary or involuntary outlawry ; 
 nor did public opinion regard a bandit's calling as other than 
 honourable. 
 
 It may readily be imagined that in such a state of society 
 the grisUest tragedies were common enough in Rome. The 
 history of some of these has been preserved to us in documents 
 digested from public trials and personal observation by con- 
 temporary writers. That of the Cenci, in which a notorious 
 act of parricide furnished the plot of a popular novella, is well 
 known. And such a tragedy, even more rife in characteristic 
 incidents, and more distinguished by the quality of its dramatis 
 personce^ is that of Vittoria Accoramboni. 
 
 Vittoria was born in 1557, of a noble but impoverished family, 
 at Gubbio, among the hills of Umbria. Her biographers are 
 rapturous in their praises of her beauty, grace, and exceeding 
 charm of manner. Not only was her person most lovely, but 
 her mind shone at first with all the amiable lustre of a modest, 
 innocent, and winning youth. Her father, Claudio Accoram- 
 boni, removed to Rome, where his numerous children were 
 brought up under the care of their mother, Tarquinia, an 
 ambitious and unscrupulous woman, bent on rehabilitating the 
 decayed honours of their house. Here Vittoria in early girl- 
 hood soon became the fashion. She exercised an irresistible 
 influence over all who saw her, and many were the offers of 
 marriage she refused. At length a suitor appeared whose 
 condition and connection with the Roman ecclesiastical nobility 
 rendered him acceptable Jn the eyes of the Accoramboni. 
 
158 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Francesco Peretti was welcomed as the successful candidate 
 for Vittoria's hand. His mother, Camilla, was sister to Felice, 
 Cardinal of Montalto ; and her son, Francesco Mignucci, had 
 changed his surname in compliment to this illustrious relative. 
 The Peretti were of humble origin. The Cardinal himself had 
 tended swine in his native village ; but, supported by an invin- 
 cible belief in his own destinies, and gifted with a powerful in- 
 tellect and determined character, he. passed through all grades of 
 the Franciscan Order to its generalship, received the bishoprics 
 of Fermo and S. Agata, and lastly, in the year 1570, assumed 
 the scarlet with the title of Cardinal Montalto. He was now 
 upon the high way to the Papacy, amassing money by in- 
 cessant care, studying the humours of surrounding factions, 
 effacing his own personality, and by mixing but little in the 
 intrigues of the court, winning the reputation of a prudent, 
 inoffensive old man. These were his tactics for securing the 
 Papal throne; nor were his expectations frustrated; for in 
 1585 he was chosen Pope, the parties of the Medici and the 
 Farnesi agreeing to accept him as a compromise. When 
 Sixtus V. was once firmly seated on S. Peter's chair, he 
 showed himself in his true colours. An implacable adminis- 
 trator of severest justice, a rigorous economist, an iconoclastic 
 foe to paganism, the first act of his reign was to declare a 
 war of extirpation against the bandits who had reduced Rome 
 in his predecessor's rule to anarchy. 
 
 It was the nephew, then, of this man, whom historians 
 have judged the greatest personage of his own times, that 
 Vittoria Accoramboni married on the 28th of June 1573. For 
 a short while the young couple lived happily together. 
 According to some accounts of their married life, the bride 
 secured the favour of her powerful uncle-in-law, who indulged 
 her costly fancies to the full. It is, however, more probable 
 that the Cardinal Montalto treated her follies with a grudging 
 parsimony ; for we soon find the Peretti household hopelessly 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 159 
 
 involved in • debt. Discord, too, arose between Vittoria and 
 her husband on the score of a certain levity in her behaviour ; 
 and it was rumoured that even during the brief space of their 
 union she had proved a faithless wife. Yet she contrived to 
 keep Francesco's confidence, and it is certain that her family 
 profited by their connection with the Peretti. Of her six 
 brothers, Mario, the eldest, was a favourite courtier of the great 
 Cardinal d'Este. Ottavio was in orders, and through Mon- 
 talto's influence obtained the See of Fossombrone. The 
 same eminent protector placed Scipione in the service of the 
 Cardinal Sforza. Camillo, famous for his beauty and his 
 courage, followed the fortunes of Filibert of Savoy, and died 
 in France. Flaminio was still a boy, dependent, as the sequel 
 of this story shows, upon his sister's destiny. Of Marcell o, 
 the second in age and most important in the action of this 
 tragedy, it is needful to speak with more particularity. He 
 was young, and, like the rest of his breed, singularly handsome 
 — so handsome, indeed, that he is said to have gained an 
 infamous ascendancy over the great Duke of Bracciano, 
 whose privy chamberlain he had become. Marcello was an 
 outlaw for the murder of Matteo Pallavicino, the brother of 
 the Cardinal of that name. This did not, however, prevent 
 the chief of the Orsini house from making him his favourite 
 and confidential friend. Marcello, who seems to have realised 
 in actual life the worst vices of those Roman courtiers de- 
 scribed for us by Aretino, very soon conceived the plan 
 of exalting his own fortunes by trading on his sister's beauty. 
 He worked upon the Duke of Bracciano's mind so cleverly, 
 that he brought this haughty prince to the point of an 
 insane passion for Peretti's young wife; and meanwhile 
 socontrived^ to inJame__the^,.^im.hitiQri of YJUfin'n p"^-^^^ 
 motherj Tarquinia, that both were prepared to dare„..tlje 
 worst of crimes in expectation of a dukedom^ The game 
 "Was^'a 3ifficult one to play. Not only had Francesco 
 
i6o ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Peretti first to be murdered, but the inequality of birth and 
 wealth and station between Vittoria and the Duke of Brac- 
 ciano rendered a marriage almost impossible. It was also an 
 affair of delicacy to stimulate without satisfying the Duke's 
 passion. Yet Marcello did not despair. The stakes were 
 high enough to justify great risks ; and all he put in peril was 
 his sister's honour, the fame of the Accoramboni, and the favour 
 of Montalto. Vittoria, for her part, trusted in her power to 
 ensnare and secure the noble prey both had in view. 
 
 Paolo Giordano Orsini, born about the year 1537, was 
 reigning Duke of Bracciano. Among ItaHan princes he 
 ranked at least upon a par with the Dukes of Urbino, and 
 his family, by its alliances, was more illustrious than any of 
 that time in Italy. He was a man of gigantic stature, pro- 
 digious corpulence, and marked personal daring ; agreeable in 
 manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and 
 incapable of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. 
 Upon the habit of his body it is needful to insist, in order 
 that the part he played in this tragedy of intrigue, crime, and 
 passion may be well defined. He found it difficult to procure 
 a charger equal to his weight, and he was so fat that a special 
 dispensation relieved him from the duty of genuflexion in 
 the Papal presence. Though lord of a large territory, yield- 
 ing princely revenues, he laboured under heavy debts ; for no 
 great noble of the period lived more splendidly, with less 
 regard for his finances. In the politics of that age and 
 country, Paolo Giordano leaned toward France. Yet he was 
 a grandee of Spain, and had played a distinguished part in 
 the battle of Lepanto. Now the Duke of Bracciano was a 
 widower. He had been married in 1553 to Isabella de' 
 Medici, daughter of the Grand Duke Cosimo, sister of 
 Francesco, Bianca Capello's lover, and of the Cardinal 
 Ferdinando. Suspicion of adultery with Troilo Orsini had 
 fallen on Isabella, and her husband, with the full concurrence 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. l6i 
 
 of her brothers, removed her in 1576 from this world.* No 
 one thought the worse of Bracciano for this murder of his 
 wife. In those days of abandoned vice and intricate villany, 
 certain points of honour were maintained with scrupulous 
 fidelity. A wife's adultery was enough to justify the most 
 savage and licentious husband in an act of semi-judicial 
 vengeance; and the shame she brought upon his head was 
 shared by the members of her own house, so that they stood 
 by, consenting to her death. Isabella, it may be said, left one 
 son, Virginio, who became in due time Duke of Bracciano. 
 
 It appears that in the year 15 81, four years after Vittoria's 
 marriage, the Duke of Bracciano had satisfied Marcello of 
 his intention to make her his wife, and of his willingness to 
 countenance Francesco Peretti's murder. Marcello, feeling 
 sure of his game, introduced the Duke in private to his sister, 
 and induced her to overcome any natural repugnance she may 
 have felt for the unwieldy and gross lover. Having reached 
 this point, it was imperative to push matters quickly on toward 
 matrimony. 
 
 But how should the unfortunate Francesco be entrapped? 
 They caught him in a snare of peculiar atrocity, by working 
 on the kindly feelings which his love for Vittoria had caused 
 him to extend to all the Accoramboni. Marcello, the outlaw, 
 was her favourite brother, and Marcello at that time lay in 
 hiding, under the suspicion of more than ordinary crime, 
 beyond the walls of Rome. Late in the evening of the i8th 
 of April, while the Peretti family were retiring to bed, a mes- 
 senger from Marcello arrived, entreating Francesco to repair 
 at once to Monte Cavallo. Marcello had affairs of the utmost 
 importance to communicate, and begged his brother-in-law 
 
 * The balance of probability leans against Isabella in this affair. At 
 the licentious court of the Medici she lived with unpardonable freedom. 
 Troilo Orsini was himself assassinated in Paris by Bracciano's orders a few 
 years afterwards. 
 
 L 
 
i62 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 not to fail him at a grievous pinch. The letter containing 
 this request was borne by one Dominico d'Aquaviva, a/tas 
 II Mancino, a confederate of Vittoria's waiting-maid. This 
 fellow, like Marcello, was an outlaw; but when he ventured 
 into Rome he frequented Peretti's house, and had made him- 
 self familiar with its master as a trusty bravo. Neither in the 
 message, therefore, nor in the messenger was there much to 
 rouse suspicion. The time, indeed, was oddly chosen, and 
 Marcello had never made a similar appeal on any previous 
 occasion. Yet his necessities might surely have obliged him 
 to demand some more than ordinary favour from a brother. 
 Francesco immediately made himself ready to set out, armed 
 only with his sword and attended by a single servant. It was 
 in vain that his wife and his mother reminded him of the 
 dangers of the night, the loneliness of Monte Cavallo, its 
 ruinous palaces and robber-haunted caves. He was resolved 
 to undertake the adventure, and went forth, never to return. 
 As he ascended the hill, he fell to earth, shot with three 
 harquebusses. His body was afterwards found on Monte 
 Cavallo, stabbed through and through, without a trace that 
 could identify the murderers. Only, in the course of subse- 
 quent investigations, II Mancino (on the 24th of February 
 1582) made the following statements: — That Vittoria's 
 mother, assisted by the waiting woman, had planned the trap ; 
 that Marchionne of Gubbio and Paolo Barca of Bracciano, 
 two of the Duke's men, had dispatched the victim. Marcello 
 himself, it seems, had come from Bracciano to conduct the 
 whole affair. Suspicion fell immediately upon Vittoria and 
 her kindred, together with the Duke of Bracciano ; nor was 
 this diminished when the Accoramboni, fearing the pursuit of 
 justice, took refuge in a villa of the Duke's at Magnanapoli a 
 few days after the murder. 
 
 A cardinal's nephew, even in those troublous times, was not 
 killed without some noise being made about the matter. 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 163 
 
 Accordingly, Pope Gregory XIII. began to take measures for 
 discovering the authors of the crime. Strange to say, however, 
 the Cardinal Montalto, notwithstanding the great love he was 
 known to bear his nephew, begged that the investigation might 
 be dropped. The coolness with which he first received the 
 news of Francesco Peretti's death, the dissimulation with which 
 he met the Pope's expression of sympathy in a full consistory, 
 his reserve in greeting friends on ceremonial visits of condo- 
 lence, and, more than all, the self-restraint he showed in the 
 presence of the Duke of Bracciano, impressed the society of 
 Rome w^ith the belief that he was of a singularly moderate and 
 patient temper. It was thought that the man who could so 
 tamely submit to his nephew's murder, and suspend the arm 
 of justice when already raised for vengeance, must prove a 
 mild and indulgent ruler. When, therefore, in the fifth year 
 after this event, Montalto was elected Pope, men ascribed his 
 elevation in no small measure to his conduct at the present 
 crisis. Some, indeed, attributed his extraordinary modera- 
 tion and self-control to the right cause. " Veraftiente costuit 
 un gran frate ! " was Gregory's remark at the close of the 
 consistory when Montalto begged him to let the matter of 
 Peretti's murder rest. " Of a truths that fellow is a consimunate 
 hypocrite ! " How accurate this judgment was, appeared when 
 Sixtus V. assumed the reins of power. The same man who, 
 as monk and cardinal, had smiled on Bracciano, though he 
 knew him to be his nephew's assassin, now, as Pontiff and 
 sovereign, bade the chief of the Orsini purge his palace and 
 dominions of the scoundrels he was wont to harbour, adding 
 significantly, that if Felice Peretti forgave what had been done 
 against him in a private station, he would exact uttermost 
 vengeance for disobedience to the will of Sixtus. The Duke 
 of Bracciano judged it best, after that warning, to withdraw 
 from Rome. 
 
 Francesco Peretti had been murdered on the i6th of April 
 
i64 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 1 58 1. Sixtus V. was proclaimed on the 24th of April 1585. 
 In this interval Vittoria underwent a series of extraordinary 
 perils and adventures. First of all, she had been secretly 
 married to the Duke in his gardens of Magnanapoli at the 
 end of April 1581. That is to say, Marcello and she secured 
 their prize, as well as they were able, the moment after Fran- 
 cesco had been removed by murder. But no sooner had the 
 marriage become known, than the Pope, moved by the scandal 
 it created, no less than by the urgent instance of the Orsini 
 and Medici, declared it void. After some while spent in vain 
 resistance, Bracciano submitted, and sent Vittoria back to her 
 father's house. By an order issued under Gregory's own hand, 
 she was next removed to the prison of Corte Savella, thence 
 to the monastery of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, and finally to the 
 Castle of S. Angelo. Here, at the end of December 1581, 
 she was put on trial for the murder of her first husband. 
 In prison she seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying 
 her beautiful person in delicate attire, entertaining visitors, 
 exacting from her friends the honours due to a duchess, 
 and sustaining the frequent examinations to which she was 
 submitted with a bold, proud front. In the middle of the 
 month of July her constancy was sorely tried by the receipt 
 of a letter in the Duke's own handwriting, formally renounc- 
 ing his marriage. It was only by a lucky accident that 
 she was prevented on this occasion from committing suicide. 
 The Papal court meanwhile kept urging her either to 
 retire to a monastery or to accept another husband. She 
 firmly refused to embrace the religious life, and declared 
 that she was already lawfully united to a living husband, 
 the Duke of Bracciano. It seemed impossible toj deal 
 with her ; and at last, on the 8th of November, she was 
 released from prison under the condition of retirement to 
 Gubbio. The Duke had lulled his enemies to rest by the 
 pretence of yielding to their wishes. But Marcello was con- 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 165 
 
 tinually beside him at Bracciano, where we read of a mysterious 
 Greek enchantress whom he hired to brew love-philters for 
 the furtherance of his ambitious plots. Whether Bracciano was 
 stimulated by the brother's arguments or by the witch's potions 
 need not be too curiously questioned. But it seems in any 
 case certain that absence inflamed his passion instead of 
 cooling it. 
 
 Accordingly, in September 1583, under the excuse of a 
 pilgrimage to Loreto, he contrived to meet Vittoria at Trevi, 
 whence he carried her in triumph to Bracciano. Here he 
 openly acknowledged her as his wife, installing her with 
 all the splendour due to a sovereign duchess. On the loth 
 of October following, he once more performed the marriage 
 ceremony in the principal church of his fief; and in the 
 January of 1584 he brought her openly to Rome. This act 
 of contumacy to the Pope, both as feudal superior and as 
 supreme Pontiff, roused all the former opposition to his 
 marriage. Once more it was declared invalid. Once more 
 the Duke pretended to give way. But at this juncture 
 Gregory died; and while the conclave was sitting for the 
 election of the new Pope, he resolved to take the law into his 
 own hands, and to ratify his union with Vittoria by a third 
 and public marriage in Rome. On the morning of the 24th 
 of April 1585, their nuptials were accordingly once more 
 solemnised in the Orsini palace. Just one hour after the 
 ceremony, as appears from the marriage-register, the news 
 arrived of Cardinal Montalto's election to the Papacy. 
 Vittoria lost no time in paying her respects to Camilla, sister 
 of the new Pope, her former mother-in-law. The Duke 
 visited Sixtus V. in state to compliment him on his elevation. 
 But the reception which both received proved that Rome 
 was no safe place for them to live in. They consequently 
 made up their minds for flight. 
 
 A chronic illness from which Bracciano had lately suffered 
 
i66 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 furnished a sufficient pretext. This seems to have been some- 
 thing of the nature of a cancerous ulcer, which had to be 
 treated by the application of raw meat to open sores. Such 
 details are only excusable in the present narrative on the 
 ground that Bracciano's disease considerably affects our moral 
 judgment of the woman who could marry a man thus physi- 
 cally tainted, and with her husband's blood upon his hands. 
 At any rate, the Duke's lupa justified his trying what change of 
 air, together with the sulphur waters of Abano, would do for 
 him. 
 
 The Duke and Duchess arrived in safety at Venice, where 
 they had engaged the Dandolo palace on the Zuecca. There 
 they only stayed a few days, removing to Padua, where they 
 had hired palaces of the Foscari in the Arena and a house 
 called De' Cavalli. At Salb, also, on the Lake of Garda, they 
 provided themselves with fit dwellings for their princely state 
 and their large retinues, intending to divide their time between 
 the pleasures which the capital of luxury afforded and the 
 simpler enjoyments of the most beautiful of the Italian lakes. 
 But la gioia dei prof ant e un futno passaggier. Paolo Giordano 
 Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, died suddenly at Salb on the loth 
 November 1585, leaving the young and beautiful Vittoria help- 
 less among enemies. What was the cause of his death ? It is 
 not possible to give a clear and certain answer. We have seen 
 that he suffered from a horrible and voracious disease, which 
 after his removal from Rome seems to have made progress. 
 Yet though this malady may well have cut his life short, sus- 
 picion of poison was not, in the circumstances, quite unreason- 
 able. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, and the Orsini 
 family were all interested in his death. Anyhow, he had time 
 to make a will in Vittoria's favour, leaving her large sums of 
 money, jewels, goods and houses — enough, in fact, to support 
 her ducal dignity with splendour. His hereditary fiefs and 
 honours passed by right to his only son, Virginio. 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 167 
 
 Vittoria, accompanied by her brother, Marcello, and the 
 whole court of Bracciano, repaired at once to Padua, where 
 she was soon after joined by Flaminio, and by the Prince 
 Lodovico Orsini. Lodovico Orsini assumed the duty of settUng 
 Vittoria's affairs under her dead husband's will. In life he had 
 been the Duke's ally as well as relative. His family pride was 
 deeply wounded by what seemed to him an ignoble, as it was 
 certainly an unequal, marriage. He now showed himself the 
 relentless enemy of the Duchess. Disputes arose between them 
 as to certain details, which seem to have been legally decided in 
 the widow's favour. On the night of December 22, however, 
 forty men disguised in black and fantastically tricked out to 
 elude detection, surrounded her palace. Through the long 
 galleries and chambers hung with arras, eight of them went, 
 bearing torches, in search of Vittoria and her brothers. 
 Marcello escaped, having fled the house under suspicion of 
 the murder of one of his own followers. Flaminio, the inno- 
 cent and young, was playing on his lute and singing Miserere 
 in the great hall of the palace. The murderers surprised him 
 with a shot from one of their harquebusses. He ran, wounded 
 in the shoulder, to his sister's room. She, it is said, was telling 
 her beads before retiring for the night. When three of the 
 assassins entered, she knelt before the crucifix, and there they 
 stabbed her in the left breast, turning the poignard in the 
 wound, and asking her with savage insults if her heart was 
 pierced. Her last words were, " Jesus, I pardon you." Then 
 they turned to Flaminio, and left him pierced with seventy- 
 four stiletto wounds. 
 
 The authorities of Padua identified the bodies of Vittoria 
 and Flaminio, and sent at once for further instructions to 
 Venice. Meanwhile it appears that both corpses were laid 
 out in one open coffin for the people to contemplate. The 
 palace and the church of the Eremitani, to which they had 
 been removed, were crowded all through the following day 
 
1 68 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 with a vast concourse of the Paduans. Vittoria's wonderful 
 dead body, pale yet sweet to look upon, the golden hair 
 flowing around her marble shoulders, the red wound in her 
 breast uncovered, the stately limbs arrayed in satin as she 
 died, maddened the populace with its surpassing loveliness. 
 '■^ Dentibus fremebant,^^ says the chronicler, when they beheld that 
 gracious lady stiff in death. And of a truth, if her corpse was 
 actually exposed in the chapel of the Eremitani, as we have 
 some right to assume, the spectacle must have been impres- 
 sive. Those grim gaunt frescoes of Mantegna looked down 
 on her as she lay stretched upon her bier, solemn and calm, 
 and, but for pallor, beautiful as though in life. No wonder 
 that the folk forgot her first husband's murder, her less than 
 comely marriage to the second. It was enough for them that 
 this flower of surpassing loveliness had been cropped by villains 
 in its bloom. Gathering in knots around the torches placed 
 beside the corpse, they vowed vengeance against the Orsini ; 
 for suspicion, not unnaturally, fell on Prince Lodovico. 
 
 The Prince was arrested and interrogated before the court 
 of Padua. He entered their hall attended by forty armed 
 men, responded haughtily to their questions, and demanded 
 free passage for his courier to Virginio Orsini, then at Florence. 
 To this demand the court acceded; but the precaution of 
 waylaying the courier and searching his person was very wisely 
 taken. Besides some formal dispatches which announced 
 Vittoria's assassination, they found in this man's boot a com- 
 promising letter, declaring Virginio a party to the crime, and 
 asserting that Lodovico had with his own poignard killed their 
 victim. Padua placed itself in a state of defence, and pre- 
 pared to besiege the palace of Prince Lodovico, who also got 
 himself in readiness for battle. Engines, culverins, and fire- 
 brands were directed against the barricades which he had 
 raised. The militia was called out and the Brenta was 
 strongly guarded. Meanwhile the Senate of S. Mark had 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 169 
 
 dispatched the Avogadore, Aloisio Bragadin, with full power 
 to the scene of action. Lodovico Orsini, it may be mentioned, 
 was in their service ; and had not this affair intervened, he 
 would in a few weeks have entered on his duties as Governor 
 for Venice of Corfu. 
 
 The bombardment of Orsini's palace began on Christmas 
 Day. Three of the Prince's men were killed in the first 
 assault; and since the artillery brought to bear upon him 
 threatened speedy ruin to the house and its inhabitants, he 
 made up his mind to surrender. "The Prince Luigi," writes 
 one chronicler of these events, " walked attired in brown, his 
 poignard at his side, and his cloak slung elegantly under his 
 arm. The weapon being taken from him, he leaned upon a 
 balustrade, and began to trim his nails with a little pair of 
 scissors he happened to find there." On the 27th he was 
 strangled in prison by order of the Venetian Republic. His 
 body was carried to be buried, according to his own will, in 
 the church of S. Maria dell' Orto at Venice. Two of his 
 followers were hung next day. Fifteen were executed on the 
 following Monday ; two of these were quartered alive ; one of 
 them, the Conte Paganello, who confessed to having slain 
 Vittoria, had his left side probed with his own cruel dagger. 
 Eight were condemned to the galleys, six to prison, and eleven 
 were acquitted. Thus ended this terrible affair, which brought, 
 it is said, good credit and renown to the lords of Venice 
 through all nations of the civilised world. It only remains 
 to be added that Marcello Accoramboni was surrendered to 
 the Pope's vengeance and beheaded at Ancona, where also his 
 mysterious accomplice, the Greek sorceress, perished. 
 
I70 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 11. 
 
 This story of Vittoria Accoramboni's life and tragic ending 
 is drawn, in its main details, from a narrative published by 
 Henri Beyle in his Chroniques et Novelles."^ He professes to 
 have translated it literally from a MS. communicated to him 
 by a nobleman of Mantua; and there are strong internal 
 evidences of the truth of this assertion. Such compositions 
 are frequent in Italian libraries, nor is it rare for one of them 
 to pass into the common market — as Mr. Browning's famous 
 purchase of the tale on which he based his Ring and the Book 
 sufficiently proves. These pamphlets were produced, in the 
 first instance, to gratify the curiosity of the educated public in 
 an age which had no newspapers, and also to preserve the 
 memory of famous trials. How far the strict truth was repre- 
 sented, or whether, as in the case of Beatrice Cenci, the 
 pathetic aspect of the tragedy was unduly dwelt on, depended, 
 of course, upon the mental bias of the scribe, upon his oppor- 
 tunities of obtaining exact information, and upon the taste of 
 the audience for whom he wrote. Therefore, in treating such 
 documents as historical data, we must be upon our guard. 
 Professor Gnoli who has recently investigated the whole of 
 Vittoria's eventful story by the light of contemporary docu- 
 ments, informs us that several narratives exist in MS., all deal- 
 ing more or less accurately with the details of the tragedy. 
 One of these was published in Italian at Brescia in 1586. A 
 Frenchman, De Rosset, printed the same story in its main 
 outlines at Lyons in 162 1. Our own dramatist, John 
 Webster, made it the subject of a tragedy, which he gave to 
 the press in 161 2. What were his sources of information we 
 
 * I have amplified and corrected this chronicle by the light of Pro- 
 fessor Gnoli's monograph, Vittoria Accora?fiboni, published by Le Mon- 
 nier at Florence in 1870. 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONL 171 
 
 do not know for certain. But it is clear that he was well 
 acquainted with the history. He has changed some of the 
 names and redistributed some of the chief parts. Vittoria's 
 first husband, for example, becomes Camillo ; her mother, 
 named Cornelia instead of Tarquinia, is so far from abetting 
 Peretti's murder and countenancing her daughter's shame, that 
 she acts the ro/e of a domestic Cassandra. Flaminio and not 
 Marcello is made • the main instrument of Vittoria's crime and 
 elevation. The Cardinal Montalto, is called Monticelso, and 
 his papal title is Paul IV. instead of Sixtus V. These are de- 
 tails of comparative indifference, in which a playwright may 
 fairly use his liberty of art. On the other hand, Webster shows 
 a curious knowledge of the picturesque circumstances of the 
 tale. The garden in which Vittoria meets Bracciano is the 
 villa of Magnanapoli; Zanche, the Moorish slave, combines 
 Vittoria's waiting-woman, Caterina, and the Greek sorceress 
 who so mysteriously dogged Marcello's footsteps to the death. 
 The suspicion of Bracciano's murder is used to introduce a 
 quaint episode of Italian poisoning. 
 
 Webster exercised the dramatist's privilege of connecting 
 various threads of action in one plot, disregarding chronology, 
 and^ hazarding an ethical solution of motives which mere 
 fidelity to fact hardly warrants. He shows us Vittoria married 
 to Camillo, a low-born and witless fool, whose only merit con- 
 sists in being nephew to the Cardinal Monticelso, afterwards 
 Pope Paul IV.* Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, 
 loves Vittoria, and she suggests to him that, for the further- 
 ance of their amours, his wife, the Duchess Isabella, sister to 
 Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke of Florence, should be 
 murdered at the same time as her own husband, Camillo. 
 Brachiano is struck by this plan, and with the help of Vittoria's 
 brother, Flamineo, he puts it at once into execution. Flam- 
 
 * In dealing with Webster's tragedy, I have adhered to his use and 
 spelling of names. 
 
172 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 ineo hires a doctor who poisons Brachiano's portrait, so that 
 Isabella dies after kissing it. He also with his own hands 
 twists Camillo's neck during a vaulting-match, making it 
 appear that he came by his death accidentally. Suspicion of 
 the murder attaches, however, to Vittoria. She is tried for 
 her life before Monticelso and De' Medici; acquitted, and 
 relegated to a house of Convertites or female reformatory. 
 Brachiano, on the accession of Menticelso to the Papal throne, 
 resolves to leave Rome with Vittoria. They escape, together 
 with her mother Cornelia, and her brothers Flamineo and 
 Marcello, to Padua ; and it is here that the last scenes of the 
 tragedy are laid. 
 
 The use Webster made of Lodovico Orsini deserves 
 particular attention. He introduces this personage in the 
 very first scene as a spendthrift, who, having run through his 
 fortune, has been outlawed. Count Lodovico, as he is always 
 called, has no relationship with the Orsini, but is attached to 
 the service of Francesco de' Medici, and is an old lover of the 
 Duchess Isabella. When, therefore, the Grand Duke meditates 
 vengeance on Brachiano, he finds a fitting instrument in the 
 desperate Lodovico. Together, in disguise, they repair to 
 Padua. Lodovico poisons the Duke of Brachiano's helmet, 
 and has the satisfaction of ending his last struggles by the 
 halter. Afterwards, with companions, habited as a masquer, 
 he enters Vittoria's palace and puts her to death together with 
 her brother Flamineo. Just when the deed of vengeance has 
 been completed, young Giovanni Orsini, heir of Brachiano, 
 enters and orders the summary execution of Lodovico for this 
 deed of violence. Webster's invention in this plot is confined 
 to the fantastic incidents attending on the deaths of Isabella, 
 Camillo, and Brachiano, and to the murder of Marcello by 
 his brother Flamineo, with the further consequence of 
 Cornelia's madness and death. He has heightened our in- 
 terest in Isabella, at the expense of Brachiano's character, 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 173 
 
 by making her an innocent and loving wife instead of an 
 adulteress. He has ascribed different motives from the 
 real ones to Lodovico in order to bring this personage into 
 rank with the chief actors, though this has been achieved with 
 only moderate success. Vittoria is abandoned to the darkest 
 interpretation. She is a woman who rises to eminence by 
 crime, as an unfaithful wife, the murderess of her husband, 
 and an impudent defier of justice. Her brother, Flamineo, 
 becomes under Webster's treatment one of those worst human 
 infamies — a court dependant; ruffian, buffoon, pimp, mur- 
 derer by turns. Furthermore, and without any adequate object 
 beyond that of completing this study of a type he loved, 
 Webster makes him murder his own brother Marcello by 
 treason. The part assigned to Marcello, it should be said, is a 
 genial and happy one; and Cornelia, the mother of the 
 Accoramboni, is a dignified character, pathetic in her suffering. 
 Webster, it may be added, treats the Cardinal Monticelso as 
 allied in some special way to the Medici. Yet certain traits in 
 his character, especially his avoidance of bloodshed and the 
 tameness of his temper after Camillo has been murdered, seem 
 to have been studied from the historical Sixtus. 
 
 in. 
 
 The character of the " White Devil, or Vittoria Corombona," 
 is perhaps the most masterly creation of Webster's genius. 
 Though her history is a true one in its leading incidents, the 
 poet, while portraying a real personage, has conceived an 
 original individuality. It is impossible to know for certain 
 how far the actual Vittoria was guilty of her first husband's 
 murder. Her personality fails to detach itself from the 
 romance of her biography by any salient qualities. But 
 Webster, with true playwright's instinct, casts aside historical 
 doubts, and delineates in his heroine a woman of a very 
 
174 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 marked and terrible nature. Hard as adamant, uncom- 
 promising, ruthless, Vittoria follows ambition as the loadstar 
 of her life. ItJs,ihe--AiBthitic«i'^q_reign as Duchess, far more 
 than any passion for a paramour, which "maTes her plot 
 CamilTo's and Isabella's murders, and throws her before 
 marriage into Brachiano's arms. Added to this ambition, she 
 is possessed with the cold demon of her own imperial and 
 victorious beauty. She has the courage of her criminality in 
 the fullest sense ; a^id-Jiluch^pf jhe,..fa§cmAt.ioa-..^^ which 
 Webster has invested her, depends upon her drjM^dftil^^daiing. 
 Her~pbrtrait is drawn with full and firm touches. Although 
 she appears but five times on the scene, she fills it from the 
 first line of the drama to the last. Each appearance adds 
 effectively to the total impression. We see her first during a 
 criminal interview with Brachiano, contrived by her brother 
 Flamineo. The plot of the tragedy is developed in this 
 scene; Vittoria suggesting, under the metaphor of a dream, 
 that her lover should compass the deaths of his duchess and 
 her husband. The dream is told with deadly energy and 
 ghastly picturesqueness. The cruel sneer at its conclusion, 
 murmured by a voluptuous woman in the ears of an impas- 
 sioned paramour, chills us with the sense of concentrated vice. 
 Her next appearance is before the court, on trial for her 
 husband's murder. The scene is celebrated, and has been 
 much disputed by critics. Relying on her own dauntlessness, 
 on her beauty, and on the protection of Brachiano, Vittoria 
 hardly takes the trouble to plead innocence or to rebut 
 charges. She stands defiant, arrogant, vigilant, on guard ; 
 flinging the lie in the teeth of her arraigners ; quick to seize 
 the slightest sign of feebleness in their attack ; protesting her 
 guiltlessness so loudly that she shouts truth down by brazen 
 strength of lung; retiring at the close with taunts; blazing 
 throughout with the intolerable lustre of some baleful planet. 
 When she enters for the third time, it is to quarrel with her 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONL 175 
 
 paramour. He has been stung to jealousy by a feigned love- 
 letter. She knows that she has given him no cause ; it is her 
 game to lure him by fidelity to marriage. Therefore she 
 resolves to make his mistake the instrument of her exalta- 
 tion. Beginning with torrents of abuse, hurling reproaches 
 at him for her own dishonour and the murder of his wife, 
 working herself by studied degrees into a tempest of ungov- 
 ernable rage, she flings herself upon the bed, refuses his 
 caresses, spurns and tramples on him, till she has brought 
 Brachiano, terrified, humbled, fascinated, to her feet. Then 
 she gradually relents beneath his passionate protestations and 
 repeated promises of marriage. At this point she speaks but 
 little. We only feel her melting humour in the air, and long 
 to see the scene played by such an actress as Madame Bern- 
 hardt. When Vittoria next appears, it is as Duchess by the 
 deathbed of the Duke, her husband. Her attendance here 
 is necessary, but it contributes little to the development of 
 her character. We have learned to know her, and expect 
 neither womanish tears nor signs of affection at a crisis 
 which touches her heart less than her r-gglTTo^ Webster, 
 among his other excellent qualities, knew how to support 
 character by reticence. Vittoria's silence in this act is signi- 
 ficant ; and when she retires exclaiming, " O me ! this place 
 is hell ! " we know that it is the outcry, not of a woman who 
 has lost what made life dear, but of one who sees the fruits of 
 crime imperilled by a fatal accident. The last scene of the 
 play is devoted to Vittoria. It begins with a notable alterca- 
 tion between her and Flamineo. She calls him " ruffian " and 
 "villain," refusing him the reward of his vile service. This 
 quarrel emerges in one of Webster's grotesque contrivances to 
 prolong a poignant situation. Flamineo quits the stage and 
 reappears with pistols. He affects a kind of madness; and 
 after threatening Vittoria, who never flinches, he proposes 
 they should end their lives by suicide. She humours him, 
 
176 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 but manages to get the first shot. Flamineo falls, wounded 
 apparently to death. Then Vittoria turns and tramples on 
 him with her feet and tongue, taunting him in his death agony 
 with the enumeration of his crimes. Her malice and her 
 energy are equally infernal. Soon, however, it appears that 
 the whole device was but a trick of Flamineo's to test his 
 sister. The pistol was not loaded. He now produces a pair 
 which are properly charged, and proceeds in good earnest 
 to the assassination of Vittoria. But at this critical moment 
 Lodovico and his masquers appear; brother and sister both 
 die unrepentant, defiant to the end. Vittoria's customary 
 pride and her familiar sneers impress her speech in these last 
 moments with a trenchant truth to nature : 
 
 You my death's-man ! 
 Methinks thou dost not look horrid enough, 
 Thou hast too good a face to be a hangman : 
 If thou be, do thy office in right form ; 
 Fall down upon thy knees, and ask forgiveness ! 
 
 I will be waited on in death ; my servant 
 Shall never go before me. 
 *• • • • • • « 
 
 Yes, I shall welcome death 
 As princes do some great ambassadors : 
 I'll meet thy weapon half-way. 
 
 'Twas a manly blow ! 
 The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant ; 
 And then thou wilt be famous. 
 
 So firmly has Webster wrought the character of this white 
 devil, that we seem to see her before us as in a picture. 
 "Beautiful as the leprosy, dazzHng as the lightning," to use a 
 phrase of her enthusiastic admirer Hazlitt, she takes her 
 station like a lady in some portrait by Paris Bordone, with 
 gleaming golden hair twisted into snakelike braids about her 
 temples, with skin white as cream, bright cheeks, dark daunt- 
 less eyes, and on her bosom, where it has been chafed by 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 177 
 
 jewelled chains, a flush of rose. She is luxurious, but not so 
 abandoned to the pleasures of the sense as to forget the pur- 
 pose of her will and brain. Crime and peril add zest to her 
 enjoyment. When arraigned in open court before the judg- 
 ment-seat of deadly and unscrupulous foes, she conceals the 
 consciousness of guilt, and stands erect, with fierce front, un- 
 abashed, relying on the splendour of her irresistible beauty and 
 the subtlety of her piercing wit. Chafing with rage, the blood 
 mounts and adds a lustre to her cheek. It is no flush of 
 modesty, but of rebellious indignation. The Cardinal, who 
 hates her, brands her emotion with the name of shame. She 
 rebukes him, hurhng a jibe at his own mother. And when 
 they point with spiteful eagerness to the jewels blazing on her 
 breast, to the silks and satins that she rustles in, her husband 
 lying murdered, she retorts : 
 
 Had I foreknown his death, as you suggest, 
 I would have bespoke my mourning. 
 
 She is condemned, but not vanquished, and leaves the court 
 with a stinging sarcasm. They send her to a house of 
 Convertites : 
 
 V. C. A house of Convertites ! what's that ? 
 
 M. A house of penitent whores. 
 
 V. C. Do the noblemen of Rome 
 Erect it for their wives, that I am sent 
 To lodge there ? 
 
 Charles Lamb was certainly in error when he described 
 Vittoria's attitude as one of " innocence-resembhng boldness." 
 In the trial scene, no less than in the scenes of altercation 
 with Brachiano and Flamineo, Webster clearly intended her 
 to pass for a magnificent vixen, a beautiful and queenly 
 termagant. Her boldness is the audacity of impudence, which 
 does not condescend to entertain the thought of guilt. Her 
 egotism is so hard and so profound that the very victims 
 whom she sacrifices to ambition seem in her sight justly 
 
178 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 punished. Of Camillo and Isabella, her husband and his wife, 
 she says to Brachiano : 
 
 And both were struck dead by that sacred yew, 
 In that base shallow grave that was their due. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It is tempting to pass from this analysis of Vittoria's char- 
 acter to a consideration of Webster's drama as a whole, 
 especially in a book dedicated to Italian byways. For that 
 mysterious man of genius had explored the dark and devious 
 paths of Renaissance vice, and had penetrated the secrets of 
 Italian wickedness with truly appalling lucidity. His tragedies, 
 though worthless as historical documents, have singular value 
 as commentaries upon history, as revelations to us of the spirit 
 of the sixteenth century in its deepest gloom. 
 
 Webster's plays, owing to the condensation of their thought 
 and the compression of their style, are not easy to read for the 
 first time. He crowds so many fantastic incidents into one 
 action, and burdens his discourse with so much profoundly 
 studied matter, that we rise from the perusal of his works with 
 a blurred impression of the fables, a deep sense of the poet's 
 power and personality, and an ineffaceable recollection of one 
 or two resplendent scenes. His Roman history-play of Appius 
 and Virginia proves that he understood the value of a simple 
 plot, and that he was able, when he chose, to work one out 
 with conscientious calmness. But the two Italian dramas 
 upon which his fame is justly founded, by right of which he 
 stands alone among the playwrights of all literatures, are 
 marked by a peculiar and wayward mannerism. Each part 
 etched with equal effort after luminous effect upon a back 
 
 IS / 
 
 ground of lurid darkness ; and the whole play is made up of \ 
 these parts, without due concentration on a master-motive, v 
 The characters are definite in outline, but, taken together in 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 179 
 
 the conduct of a single plot, they seem to stand apart, like 
 figures in a tableau vivant ; nor do they act and react each 
 upon the other in the play of interpenetrative passions. That 
 this mannerism was deliberately chosen, we have a right to 
 believe. "Willingly, and not ignorantly, in this kind have I 
 faulted," is the answer Webster gives to such as may object 
 that he has not constructed his plays upon the classic model. 
 He seems to have had a certain sombre richness of tone and 
 intricacy of design in view, combining sensational effect and 
 sententious pregnancy of diction in works of laboured art, 
 which, when adequately represented to the ear and eye upon 
 the stage, might at a touch obtain the animation they now 
 lack for chamber-students. 
 
 When familiarity has brought us acquainted with his style, 
 when we have disentangled the main characters and circum- 
 stances from their adjuncts, we perceive that he treats poig- 
 nant and tremendous situations with a concentrated vigour 
 special to his genius ; that he has studied each word and trait I 
 of character, and that he has prepared by gradual approaches ) 
 and degrees of horror for the culmination of his tragedies. 
 The sentences which seem at first sight copied from a common- 
 place book, are found to be appropriate. Brief lightning flashes 
 of acute perception illuminate the midnight darkness of his 
 all but unimaginably depraved characters. Sharp unexpected 
 touches evoke humanity in the fantoccini of his wayward art. 
 No dramatist has shown more consummate ability in heighten- 
 ing terrific eff"ects, in laying bare the innermost mysteries of 
 crime, remorse, and pain, combined to make men miserable. 
 It has been said of Webster that, feeling himself deficient in 
 the first poetic qualities, he concentrated his powers upon one 
 point, and achieved success by sheer force of self-cultivation. 
 There is perhaps some truth in this. At any rate, his genius 
 was of a narrow and peculiar order, and he knew well how to 
 make the most of its limitations. Yet we must not forget that 
 
i8o ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 he felt a natural bias toward the dreadful stuff with which he 
 deals. The mystery of iniquity had an irresistible attraction 
 for his mind. He was drawn to comprehend and reproduce 
 abnormal elements of spiritual anguish. The materials with 
 which he builds his tragedies are sought for in the ruined 
 places of lost souls, in the agonies of madness and despair, 
 in the sarcasms of criminal and reckless atheism, in slow 
 tortures, griefs beyond endurance, the tempests of remorseful 
 death, the spasms of fratricidal bloodshed. He is often melo- 
 dramatic in the means employed to bring these psychological 
 conditions home to us. He makes too free use of poisoned 
 engines, daggers, pistols, disguised murderers, and so forth. 
 Yet his firm grasp upon the essential qualities of diseased and 
 guilty human nature saves him, even at his wildest, from the 
 unrealities and extravagances into which less potent artists of 
 the drame sanglant — Marston, for example — blundered. 
 
 With Webster, the tendency to brood on horrors was no 
 result of calculation. It belonged to his idiosyncracy. He 
 seems to have been suckled from birth at the breast of 
 that Mater Teiiebrarum^ our Lady of Darkness, whom De 
 Quincey in one of his Suspiria de Profundis describes among 
 the Semnai Theai, the august goddesses, the mysterious foster- 
 nurses of suffering humanity. He cannot say the simplest 
 thing without giving it a ghastly or sinister turn. If one of 
 his characters draws a metaphor from pie-crust, he must needs 
 use language of the churchyard : 
 
 You speak as if a man 
 Should know what fowl is coffined in a baked meat 
 Afore you cut it open. 
 
 Hideous similes are heaped together in illustration of the 
 commonest circumstances : 
 
 Places at court are but like beds in the hospital, where this man's head 
 lies at that man's foot, and so lower and lower. 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. i8i 
 
 When knaves come to preferment, they rise as gallowses are raised in 
 tlie Low Countries, one upon another's shoulders. 
 
 I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the feet of one 
 sick of the plague than kiss one of you fasting. 
 
 A soldier is twitted with serving his master : 
 
 As witches do their serviceable spirits, 
 Even with thy prodigal blood. 
 
 An adulterous couple get this curse : 
 
 Like mistletoe on sear elms spent by weather, 
 Let him cleave to her, and both rot together. 
 
 A bravo is asked : 
 
 Dost thou imagine thou canst slide on blood, 
 And not be tainted with a shameful fall ? 
 Or, like the black and melancholic yew-tree, 
 Dost think to root thyself in dead men's graves. 
 And yet to prosper ? 
 
 It is dangerous to extract philosophy of life from any dramatist. 
 Yet Webster so often returns to dark and doleful meditations, 
 that we may fairly class him among constitutional pessimists. 
 Men, according to the grimness of his melancholy, are : 
 
 Only like dead walls or vaulted graves, 
 That, ruined, yield no echo. 
 
 O this gloomy world ! 
 In what a shadow or deep pit of darkness 
 Doth womanish and fearful mankind live ! 
 
 We are merely the stars' tennis-balls, struck and banded 
 "Which way please them. 
 
 Pleasure of life ! what is't ? only the good hours of an ague. 
 
 A Duchess is "brought to mortification," before her strang- 
 ling by the executioner, in this high fantastical oration : 
 
i82 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory of green mummy. 
 What's this flesh ? A little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste, &c., &c. 
 
 Man's life in its totality is summed up with monastic cynicism 
 in these lyric verses : 
 
 Of what is't fools make such vain keeping ? 
 Sin their conception, their birth weeping, 
 Their life a general mist of error, 
 Their death a hideous storm of terror. 
 
 The greatness of the world passes by with all its glory : 
 
 Vain the ambition of kings, 
 
 "Who seek by trophies and dead things 
 
 To leave a living name behind. 
 
 And weave but nets to catch the wind. 
 
 It would be easy to surfeit criticism with similar examples ; 
 where Webster is writing in sarcastic, meditative, or deliberately 
 terror-stirring moods. The same dark dye of his imagination 
 shows itself even more significantly in circumstances where, 
 in the work of any other artist, it would inevitably mar the 
 harmony of the picture. A lady, to select one instance, 
 encourages her lover to embrace her at the moment of his 
 happiness. She cries : 
 
 Sir, be confident ! 
 What is't distracts you ? This is flesh and blood, sir ; 
 'Tis not the figure cut in alabaster, 
 Kneels at my husband's tomb. 
 
 Yet SO sustained is Webster's symphony of sombre tints, that 
 we do not feel this sepulchral language, this "talk fit for a 
 charnel " (to use one of his own phrases), to be out of keeping. 
 It sounds like a presentiment of coming woes, which, as the 
 drama grows to its conclusion, gather and darken on the 
 wretched victims of his bloody plot. 
 
 It was with profound sagacity, or led by some deep-rooted 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 183 
 
 instinct, that Webster sought the fables of his two great trage- 
 dies, " The White Devil " and " The Duchess of Malfi," in 
 Italian annals. Whether he had visited Italy in his youth, we 
 cannot say ; for next to nothing is known about Webster's life. 
 But that he had gazed long' and earnestly into the mirror held 
 up by that enchantress of the nations in his age, is certain. 
 Aghast and fascinated by the sins he saw there flaunting in 
 the light of day — sins on whose pernicious glamour Ascham, 
 Greene, and Howell have insisted with impressive vehemence — 
 Webster discerned in them the stuff he needed for philosophy 
 and art. Withdrawing from that contemplation, he was like a 
 spirit " loosed out of hell to speak of horrors." Deeper than 
 any poet of the time, deeper than any even of the Italians, he 
 read the riddle of the sphinx of crime. He found there some- 
 thing akin to his own imaginative mood, something which he 
 alone could fully comprehend and interpret. From the super- 
 ficial narratives of writers like Bandello he extracted a spiritual 
 essence which was, if not the literal, at least the ideal, truth 
 involved in them. 
 
 The enormous and unnatural vices, the domestic crimes of 
 cruelty, adultery, and bloodshed, the poHtical scheming and the 
 subtle arts of vengeance, the ecclesiastical tyranny and craft, 
 the cynical scepticism and lustre of luxurious godlessness, 
 which made Italy in the midst of her refinement blaze like 
 " a bright and ominous star " before the nations ; these were 
 the very elements in which the genius of Webster — salamander- 
 like in flame — could live and flourish. Only the incidents of 
 Italian history, or of French history in its Italianated epoch, 
 were capable of supplying him with the proper type of plot. 
 It was in Italy alone, or in an Italianated country, such as 
 England for a brief space in the reign of the first Stuart 
 threatened to become, that the well-nigh diabolical wickedness 
 of his characters might have been realised. An audience 
 familiar with Italian novels through Belleforest and Painter, 
 
i84 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 inflamed by the long struggle of the Reformation against the 
 scarlet abominations of the Papal See, outraged in their moral 
 sense by the political paradoxes of Machiavelli, horror-stricken 
 at the still recent misdoings of Borgias and Medici and Farnesi, 
 alarmed by that Italian policy which had conceived the mas- 
 sacre of S. Bartholemew in France, and infuriated by that 
 ecclesiastical hypocrisy which triumphed in the same ; such an 
 audience were at the right point of sympathy with a poet who 
 undertook to lay the springs of Southern villany before them 
 bare in a dramatic action. But, as the old proverb puts it, 
 " Inglese Italianato e un diavolo incarnato." " An Englishman 
 assuming the Italian habit is a devil in the flesh." The Italians 
 were depraved, but spiritually feeble. The English playwright, 
 when he brought them on the stage, arrayed with intellectual 
 power and gleaming with the lurid splendour of a Northern 
 fancy, made them tenfold darker and more terrible. To the 
 subtlety and vices of the South he added the melancholy, medi- 
 tation, and sinister insanity of his own climate. He deepened 
 the complexion of crime and intensified lawlessness by rob- 
 bing the Italian character of levity. Sin, in his conception 
 of that character, was complicated with the sense of sin, as 
 it never had been in a Florentine or a Neapolitan. He had 
 not grasped the meaning of the Machiavellian conscience, in 
 its cold serenity and disengagement from the dread of moral 
 consequence. Not only are his villains stealthy, frigid, quick 
 to evil, merciless, and void of honour; but they brood upon 
 their crimes and analyse their motives. In the midst of their 
 audacity they are dogged by dread of coming retribution. At 
 the crisis of their destiny they look back upon their better 
 days with intellectual remorse. In the execution of their 
 bloodiest schemes they groan beneath the chains of guilt they 
 wear, and quake before the phantoms of their haunted brains. 
 Thus passion and reflection, superstition and profanity, deli- 
 berate atrocity and fear of judgment, are united in the same 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 185 
 
 nature ; and to make the complex still more strange, the play- 
 wright has gifted these tremendous personalities with his own 
 wild humour and imaginative irony. The result is almost 
 monstrous, such an ideal of character as makes earth hell. 
 And yet it is not without justification. To the Italian text 
 has been added the Teutonic commentary, and both are fused 
 by a dramatic genius into one living whole. 
 
 One of these men is JE.lamineo, the brother of Vittoria 
 Corombona, upon whose part the action of the " White Devil " 
 depends. He has been bred m arts and letters at the univer- 
 sity of Padua ; but being poor and of luxurious appetites, he 
 chooses the path of crime in courts for his advancement. A 
 duke adopts him for his minion, and Flamineo acts the pan- 
 der to this great man's lust. He contrives the death of his 
 brother-in-law, suborns a doctor to poison the Duke's wife, 
 and arranges secret meetings between his sister and the 
 paramour who is to make her fortune and his own. His 
 mother appears like a w^arning Ate to prevent her daughter's 
 crime. In his rage he cries : 
 
 What fury raised //lee up ? Away, away ! 
 
 And when she pleads the honour of their house he answers : 
 
 Shall I, 
 Having a path so open and so free 
 To my preferment, still retain your milk 
 In my pale forehead ? 
 
 Later on, when it is necessary to remove another victim, he 
 runs his own brother through the body and drives his mother 
 to madness. Yet, in the midst of these crimes, we are unable 
 to regard him as a simple cut-throat. His irony and reckless 
 courting of damnation open-eyed to get his gust of life in this 
 world, make him no common villain. He can be brave as 
 well as fierce. When the Duke insults him he bandies taunt 
 for taunt : 
 
1 86 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Brack. No, you pander? 
 
 Flam. What, me, my lord ? Am I your dog ? 
 
 B. A bloodhound : do you brave, do you stand me ? 
 
 F. Stand you ! let those that have diseases run ; 
 I need no plasters. 
 
 B. Would you be kicked ? 
 
 F, Would you have your neck broke ? 
 I tell you, duke, I am not in Russia ; 
 My shins must be kept whole. 
 
 B. Do you know me ? 
 
 F. Oh, my lord, methodically : 
 As in this world there are degrees of evils, 
 So in this world there are degrees of devils. 
 You're a great duke, I your poor secretary. 
 
 When the Duke dies and his prey escapes him, the rage of dis- 
 appointment breaks into this fierce apostrophe : 
 
 I cannot conjure ; but if prayers or oaths 
 Will get the speech of him, though forty devils 
 Wait on him in his livery of flames, 
 I'll speak to him and shake him by the hand, 
 Though I be blasted. 
 
 As crimes thicken round him, and he still despairs of the reward 
 for which he sold himself, conscience awakes : 
 
 I have lived 
 Riotously ill, like some that live in court, 
 And sometimes when my face was full of smiles 
 Have felt the maze of conscience in my breast. 
 
 The scholar's scepticism, which lies at the root of his perversity, 
 finds utterance in this meditation upon death : 
 
 Whither shall I go now ? O Lucian, thy ridiculous purgatory ! to find 
 Alexander the Great cobbling shoes, Pompey tagging points, and Julius 
 Caesar making hair-buttons ! 
 
 Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, or all the elements by scruples 
 I know not, nor greatly care. 
 
 At the last moment he yet can say : 
 
 We cease to grieve, cease to be Fortune's slaves, 
 Nay, cease to die, by dying. 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 187 
 
 And again, with the very yielding of his spirit : 
 My life was a black charnel. 
 
 It will be seen that in no sense does Flamineo resemble lago. 
 He is not a traitor working by craft and calculating ability to 
 well-considered ends. He is the desperado frantically clutch- 
 ing at an uncertain and impossible satisfaction. Webster con- 
 ceives him as a self-abandoned atheist, who, maddened by 
 poverty and tainted by vicious living, takes a fury to his heart, 
 and, because the goodness of the world has been for ever lost 
 to him, recklessly seeks the bad. 
 
 Bosola, in the " Duchess of Malfi," is of the same stamp7 
 He too has been a scholar. He is sent to the galleys "for a 
 notorious murder," and on his release he enters the service of 
 two brothers, the Duke of Calabria and the Cardinal of Aragon, 
 who place him as their intelligencer at the court of their 
 sister. 
 
 Bos. It seems you would create me 
 One of your familiars. 
 
 Ferd. Familiar ! what's that ? 
 
 Bos. Why, a very quaint invisible devil in flesh, 
 An intelligencer. 
 
 Ferd. Such a kind of thriving thing 
 I would wish thee ; and ere long thou may'st arrive 
 At a higher place by it. 
 
 Lured by hope of preferment, Bosola undertakes the office of 
 spy, tormentor, and at last of executioner. For : 
 
 Discontent and want 
 Is the best clay to mould a villain of. 
 
 But his true self, though subdued to be what he quaintly styles 
 "the devil's quilted anvil," on which "all sins are fashioned 
 and the blows never heard," continually rebels against this 
 destiny. Compared with Flamineo, he is less unnaturally 
 criminal. His melancholy is more fantastic, his despair more 
 noble. Throughout the course of craft and cruelty on which 
 
i88 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 he is goaded by a relentless taskmaster, his nature, hardened 
 as it is, revolts. 
 
 At the end, when Bosola presents the body of the murdered 
 Duchess to her brother, Webster has wrought a scene of tragic 
 savagery that surpasses almost any other that the English stage 
 can show. The sight of his dead sister maddens Ferdinand, 
 who, feeling the eclipse of reason gradually absorb his faculties, 
 turns round with frenzied hatred on the accomplice of his 
 fratricide. Bosola demands the price of guilt. Ferdinand 
 spurns him with the concentrated eloquence of despair and 
 the extravagance of approaching insanity. The murderer taunts 
 his master coldly and laconically, like a man whose life is 
 wrecked, who has waded through blood to his reward, and 
 who at the last moment discovers the sacrifice of his con- 
 science and masculine freedom to be fruitless. Remorse, 
 frustrated hopes, and thirst for vengeance convert Bosola from 
 this hour forward into an instrument of retribution. The 
 Duke and his brother the Cardinal are both brought to bloody 
 deaths by the hand which they had used to assassinate their 
 sister. 
 
 It is fitting that something should be said about Webster's 
 conception of the Italian despot. Brachiano and Ferdinand, 
 the employers of Flamineo and Bosola, are tyrants such as 
 Savonarola described, and as we read of in the chronicles of 
 petty Southern cities. Nothing is suffered to stand between 
 their lust and its accomplishment. They override the law by 
 violence, or pervert its action to their own advantage : 
 
 The law to him 
 Is like a foul black cobweb to a spider ; 
 He makes it his dwelling and a prison 
 To entangle those shall feed him. 
 
 They are eaten up with parasites, accomplices, and all the 
 creatures of their crimes : 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 189 
 
 He and his brother are like plum-trees that grow crooked over standing 
 pools ; they are rich and over-laden with fruit, but none but crows, pies, 
 and caterpillars feed on them. 
 
 In their lives they are without a friend ; for society in guilt 
 brings nought of comfort, and honours are but emptiness : 
 
 Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright ; 
 But looked to near, have neither heat nor light. 
 
 Their plots and counterplots drive repose far from them : 
 
 There's but three furies found in spacious hell ; 
 But in a great man's breast three thousand dwell. 
 
 Fearful shapes afflict their fancy ; shadows of ancestral crime 
 or ghosts of their own raising : 
 
 For these many years 
 None of our family dies, but there is seen 
 The shape of an old woman ; which is given 
 By tradition to us to have been murdered 
 By her nephews for her riches. 
 
 Apparitions haunt them : 
 
 How tedious is a guilty conscience ! 
 When I look into the fish-ponds in my garden, 
 Methinks I see a thing armed with a rake 
 That seems to strike at me. 
 
 Continually scheming against the objects of their avarice 
 and hatred, preparing poisons or suborning bravoes, they know 
 that these same arts will be employed against them. The 
 wine-cup hides arsenic ; the head-piece is smeared with 
 antimony; there is a dagger behind every arras, and each 
 shadow is a murderer's. When death comes, they meet it 
 trembling. What irony Webster has condensed in Brachiano's 
 outcry : 
 
 On pain of death, let no man name death to me • 
 It is a word infinitely horrible. 
 
190 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 And how solemn are the following reflections on the death 
 of princes : 
 
 O thou soft natural death, that art joint-twin 
 To sweetest slumber ! no rough-bearded comet 
 Stares on thy mild departure ; the dull owl 
 Beats not against thy casement ; the hoarse wolf 
 Scents not thy carrion : pity winds thy corse, 
 Whilst horror waits on princes. 
 
 After their death, this is their epitaph : 
 
 These wretched eminent things 
 Leave no more fame behind 'em than should one 
 Fall in a frost and leave his print in snow. 
 
 Of Webster's despots, the finest in conception and the firmest 
 in execution is Ferdinand of Aragon. Jealousy of his sister 
 and avarice take possession of him and torment him like 
 furies. The flash of repentance over her strangled body is 
 also the first flash of insanity. He survives to present the 
 spectacle of a crazed lunatic, and to be run through the body 
 by his paid assassin. In the Cardinal of Aragon, Webster 
 paints a profligate Churchman, no less voluptuous, blood- 
 guilty, and the rest of it, than his brother the Duke of 
 Calabria. It seems to have been the poet's purpose in each 
 of his Italian tragedies to unmask Rome as the Papal city 
 really was. In the lawless desperado, the intemperate tyrant, 
 and the godless ecclesiastic, he portrayed the three curses 
 from which Italian society was actually suffering. 
 
 It has been needful to dwell upon the gloomy and fantastic 
 side of Webster's genius. But it must not be thought that he 
 could touch no finer chord. Indeed, it might be said that in 
 the domain of pathos he is even more powerful than in that 
 of horror. His mastery in this region is displayed in the 
 creation of that dignified and beautiful woman, the Duchess 
 of Malfi, who, with nothing in her nature, had she but lived 
 prosperously, to divide her from the sisterhood of gentle ladies, 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 191 
 
 walks, shrined in love and purity and conscious rectitude, 
 amid the snares and pitfalls of her persecutors, to die at last 
 the victim of a brother's fevered avarice and a desperado's 
 egotistical ambition. The apparatus of infernal cruelty, the 
 dead man's hand, the semblances of murdered sons and 
 husband, the masque of madmen, the dirge and doleful 
 emblems of the tomb with which she is environed in her 
 prison by the torturers who seek to goad her into lunacy, are 
 insufficient to disturb the tranquillity and tenderness of her 
 nature. When the rope is being fastened to her throat, she 
 does not spend her breath in recriminations, but turns to the 
 waiting-woman and says : 
 
 Farewell, Cariola ! 
 I pray thee look thou givest my little boy 
 Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl 
 Say her prayers ere she sleep. 
 
 In the preceding scenes we have had enough, nay, overmuch, 
 of madness, despair, and wrestling with doom. This is the 
 calm that comes when death is present, when the tortured 
 soul lays down its burden of the flesh with gladness. But 
 Webster has not spared another touch of thrilling pathos. 
 The death-struggle is over; the fratricide has rushed away, 
 a maddened man ; the murderer is gazing with remorse upon 
 the beautiful dead body of his lady, wishing he had the world 
 wherewith to buy her back to life again ; when suddenly she 
 murmurs " Mercy ! " Our interest, already overstrained, re- 
 vives with momentary hope. But the guardians of the grave 
 will not be exorcised ; and " Mercy ! " is the last groan of the 
 injured Duchess. 
 
 Webster showed great skill in his delineation of the Duchess. 
 He had to paint a woman in a hazardous situation : a sovereign 
 stooping in her widowhood to wed a servant; a lady living 
 with the mystery of this unequal marriage round her like a 
 
192 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 veil He dowered her with no salient qualities of intellect 
 or heart or will; but he sustained our sympathy with her, 
 and made us comprehend her. To the last she is a Duchess ; 
 and when she has divested state and bowed her head to enter 
 the low gate of heaven — too low for coronets — her poet shows 
 us, in the lines already quoted, that the woman still survives. 
 ^ The same pathos surrounds the melancholy portrait of 
 I Isabella in " Vittoria Corombona." ButJsabella,-iaJ:lia.t.j)lay, 
 I serves^hiefly to enhance ihe tyranny ofjier triumphant rival. 
 The main difficulty under which these scenes of rarest pathos 
 would labour, were they brought upon the stage, is their 
 simplicity in contrast with the ghastly and contorted horrors 
 that envelope them. A dialogue abounding in the passages 
 I have already quoted — a dialogue which bandies "O you 
 screech-owl ! " and " Thou foul black cloud ! " — in which a 
 sister's admonition to her brother to think twice of suicide 
 assumes a form so weird as this : 
 
 I prithee, yet remember, 
 Millions are now in graves, which at last day 
 Like mandrakes shall rise shrieking, — 
 
 such a dialogue could not be rendered save by actors strung 
 up to a pitch of almost frenzied tension. To do full justice to 
 what in Webster's style would be spasmodic were it not so 
 weighty, and at the same time to maintain the purity of 
 outline and melodious rhythm of such characters as Isabella, 
 demands no common histrionic power. 
 
 In attempting to define Webster's touch upon Italian tragic 
 story, I have been led perforce to concentrate attention on 
 what is painful and shocking to our sense of harmony in art. 
 He was a vigorous and profoundly imaginative playwright. 
 But his most enthusiastic admirers will hardly contend that 
 good taste or moderation determined the movement of his 
 genius. Nor, though his insight into the essential dreadfulness 
 
VITTORIA ACCORAMBONI. 193 
 
 of Italian tragedy was so deep, is it possible to maintain that 
 his portraiture of Italian life was true to its more superficial 
 aspects. What place would there be for a Correggio or a 
 Raphael in such a world as Webster's? Yet we know that 
 the art of Raphael and Correggio is in exact harmony with 
 the Italian temperament of the same epoch which gave birth 
 to Cesare Borgia and Bianca Capello. The comparatively 
 slighter sketch of lachimo in Cymbeline represents the Italian 
 as he felt and lived, better than the laboured portrait of 
 Flamineo. Webster's Italian tragedies are consequently true, 
 not so much to the actual conditions of Italy, as to the moral 
 impression made by those conditions on a Northern imagi- 
 nation. 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 
 
 I. — First Impressions and Familiarity. 
 
 It is easy to feel and to say something obvious about Venice. 
 The influence of this sea-city is unique, immediate, and 
 unmistakable. But to express the sober truth of those im- 
 pressions which remain when the first astonishment of the 
 Venetian revelation has subsided, when the spirit of the place 
 has been harmonised through familiarity with our habitual 
 mood, is difficult. 
 
 Venice inspires at first an almost Corybantic rapture. From 
 our earliest visits, if these have been measured by days rather 
 than weeks, we carry away with us the memory of sunsets 
 emblazoned in gold and crimson upon cloud and water ; 
 of violet domes and bell-towers etched against the orange of 
 a western sky ; of moonlight silvering breeze-rippled breadths 
 of liquid blue ; of distant islands shimmering in sunlitten haze ; 
 of music and black gliding boats; of labyrinthine darkness 
 made for mysteries of love and crime; of statue-fretted 
 palace fronts ; of brazen clangour and a moving crowd ; of 
 pictures by earth's proudest painters, cased in gold on walls of 
 council chambers where Venice sat enthroned a queen, where 
 nobles swept the floors with robes of Tyrian brocade. These 
 reminiscences will be attended by an ever-present sense of 
 loneliness and silence in the world around ; the sadness of a 
 limitless horizon, the solemnity of an unbroken arch of heaven, 
 the calm and greyness of evening on the lagoons, the pathos 
 of a marble city crumbling to its grave in mud and brine. 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 195 
 
 These first impressions of Venice are true. Indeed they are 
 inevitable. They abide, and form a glowing background for 
 all subsequent pictures, toned more austerely, and painted in 
 more lasting hues of truth upon the brain. Those have never 
 felt Venice at all who have not known this primal rapture, or 
 who perhaps expected more of colour, more of melodrama, 
 from a scene which nature and the art of man have made the 
 richest in these qualities. Yet the mood engendered by this 
 first experience is not destined to be permanent. It contains 
 an element of unrest and unreality which vanishes upon 
 familiarity. From the blare of that triumphal bourdon of brass 
 instruments emerge the delicate voices of violin and clarinette. 
 To the contrasted passions of our earliest love succeed a multi- 
 tude of sweet and fanciful emotions. It is my present purpose 
 to recapture some of the impressions made by Venice in more 
 tranquil moods. Memory might be compared to a kaleido- 
 scope. Far away from Venice I raise the wonder-working tube, 
 allow the glittering fragments to settle as they please, and with 
 words attempt to render something of the patterns I behold. 
 
 II. — A Lodging in San Vio. 
 
 I have escaped from the hotels with their bustle of tourists 
 and crowded tables-d'hote. My garden stretches down to 
 the Grand Canal, closed at the end with a pavilion, where I 
 lounge and smoke and watch the cornice of the Prefettura 
 fretted with gold in sunset light. My sitting-room and bed- 
 room face the southern sun. There is a canal below, crowded 
 with gondolas, and across its bridge the good folk of San Vio 
 come and go the whole day long — men in blue shirts with 
 enormous hats, and jackets slung on their left shoulder; 
 women in kerchiefs of orange and crimson. Barelegged boys 
 sit upon the parapet, dangling their feet above the rising tide. 
 A hawker passes, balancing a basket full of live and crawl- 
 
 v^ 
 
196 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 ing crabs. Barges filled with Brenta water or Mirano wine 
 take up their station at the neighbouring steps, and then 
 ensues a mighty splashing and hurrying to and fro of men 
 with tubs upon their heads. The brawny fellows in the wine- 
 barge are red from brows to breast with drippings of the 
 vat. And now there is a bustle in the quarter. A l?arca has 
 arrived from S. Erasmo, the island of the market-gardens. It 
 is piled with gourds and pumpkins, cabbages and tomatoes, 
 pomegranates and pears — a pyramid of gold and green and 
 scarlet. Brown men lift the fruit aloft, and women bending 
 from the pathway bargain for it. A clatter of chaffering 
 tongues, a ring of coppers, a Babel of hoarse sea-voices, proclaim 
 the sharpness of the struggle. When the quarter has been 
 served, the boat sheers off diminished in its burden. Boys and 
 girls are left seasoning their polenta with a sHce of zi/cca, while 
 the mothers of a score of families go pattering up yonder court- 
 yard with the material for their husbands' supper in their hand- 
 kerchiefs. Across the canal, or more correctly the jRio, opens 
 a wide grass-grown court. It is lined on the right hand by a 
 row of poor dwellings, swarming with gondoliers' children. A 
 garden wall runs along the other side, over which I can see 
 pomegranate-trees in fruit and pergolas of vines. Far beyond 
 are more low houses, and then the sky, swept with sea-breezes, 
 and the masts of an ocean-going ship against the dome and 
 turrets of Palladio's Redentore. 
 
 This is my home. By day it is as lively as a scene in 
 Masaniello. By night, after nine o'clock, the whole stir of the 
 quarter has subsided. Far away I hear the bell of some church 
 tell the hours. But no noise disturbs my rest, unless perhaps 
 a belated gondolier moors his boat beneath the window. My 
 one maid, Catina, sings at her work the whole day through. 
 My gondoUer, Francesco, acts as valet. He wakes me in the 
 morning, opens the shutters, brings sea-water for my bath, and 
 takes his orders for the day. " Will it do for Chioggia, Fran- 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 197 
 
 cesco ? " " Sissignore ! The Signorino has set off in his 
 sandolo already with Antonio. The Signora is to go with us 
 in the gondola." " Then get three more men, Francesco, and 
 see that all of them can sing." 
 
 III. — To Chioggia with Oar and Sail. 
 
 The sandolo is a boat shaped like the gondola, but smaller 
 and lighter, without benches, and without the high steel prow 
 or ferro which distinguishes the gondola. The gunwale is 
 only just raised above the water, over which the little craft 
 skims with a rapid bounding motion, affording an agreeable 
 variation from the stately swan-like movement of the gondola. 
 In one of these boats — called by him the Ftsolo or Seamew — 
 my friend Eustace had started with Antonio, intending to row 
 the whole way to Chioggia, or, if the breeze favoured, to hoist 
 a sail and help himself along. After breakfast, when the crew 
 for my gondola had been assembled, Francesco and I followed 
 with the Signora. It was one of those perfect mornings 
 which occur as a respite from broken weather, when the air 
 is windless and the light falls soft through haze on the 
 horizon. As we broke into the lagoon behind the Redentore, 
 the islands in front of us, S. Spirito, Poveglia, Malamocco, 
 seemed as though they were just lifted from the sea-line. 
 The Euganeans, far away to westward, were bathed in mist, 
 and almost blent with the blue sky. Our four rowers put 
 their backs into their work ; and soon we reached the port of 
 Malamocco, where a breeze from the Adriatic caught us side- 
 ways for a while. This is the largest of the breaches in the 
 Lidi, or raised sand-reefs, which protect Venice from the sea: it 
 affords an entrance to vessels of draught like the steamers of 
 the Peninsular and Oriental Company. We crossed the danc- 
 ing wavelets of the port ; but when we passed under the lee of 
 Pelestrina, the breeze failed, and the lagoon was once again a 
 
iqS ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 sheet of undulating glass. At S. Pietro on this island a halt 
 was made to give the oarsmen wine, and here we saw the 
 women at their cottage doorways making lace. The old lace 
 industry of Venice has recently been revived. From Burano 
 and Pelestrina cargoes of hand-made imitations of the ancient 
 fabrics are sent at intervals to Jesurun's magazine at S. Marco. 
 He is the chief impresario of the trade, employing hundreds of 
 hands, and speculating for a handsome profit in the foreign 
 market on the price he gives his workwomen. 
 
 Now we are well lost in the lagoons — Venice no longer 
 visible behind ; the Alps and Euganeans shrouded in a noon- 
 day haze; the lowlands at the mouth of Brenta marked by 
 clumps of trees ephemerally faint in silver silhouette against 
 the filmy, shimmering horizon. Form and colour have disap- 
 peared in light-irradiated vapour of an opal hue. And yet 
 instinctively we know that we are not at sea; the different 
 quality of the water, the piles emerging here and there above 
 the surface, the suggestion of coast-lines scarcely felt in 
 this infinity of lustre, all remind us that our voyage is con- 
 fined to the charmed limits of an inland lake. At length 
 the jutting headland of Pelestrina was reached. We broke 
 across the Porto di Chioggia, and saw Chioggia itself ahead — 
 a huddled mass of houses low upon the water. One by one, 
 as we rowed steadily, the fishing-boats passed by, emerging 
 from their harbour for a twelve hours' cruise upon the open 
 sea. In a long line they came, with variegated sails of orange, 
 red, and saffron, curiously chequered at the corners, and 
 cantled with devices in contrasted tints. A little land-breeze 
 carried them forward. The lagoon reflected their deep colours 
 till they reached the port. Then, slightly swerving eastward 
 on their course, but still in single file, they took the sea and 
 scattered, like beautiful bright-plumaged birds, who from a 
 streamlet float into a lake, and find their way at large according 
 as each wills. 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 199 
 
 The Signorino and Antonio, though want of wind obliged 
 them to row the whole way from Venice, had reached Chioggia 
 an hour before, and stood waiting to receive us on the quay. It 
 is a quaint town this Chioggia, which has always lived a separate 
 life from that of Venice. Language and race and customs 
 have held the two populations apart from those distant years 
 when Genoa and the Republic of S. Mark fought their duel 
 to the death out in the Chioggian harbours, down to these 
 days, when your Venetian gondolier will tell you that the 
 Chioggoto loves his pipe more than his donna or his wife. 
 The main canal is lined with substantial palaces, attesting to 
 old wealth and comfort. But from Chioggia, even more than 
 from Venice, the tide of modern luxury and traffic has re- 
 treated. The place is left to fishing folk and builders of the 
 fishing crafty whose wharves still form the liveliest quarter. 
 Wandering about its wide deserted courts and calli^ we feel 
 the spirit of the decadent Venetian nobility. Passages from 
 Goldoni's and Casanova's Memoirs occur to our memory. It 
 seems easy to realise what they wrote about the dishevelled 
 gaiety and lawless license of Chioggia in the days of powder, 
 sword-knot, and soprani. Baffo walks beside us in hypocritical 
 composure of bag-wig and senatorial dignity, whispering un- 
 mentionable sonnets in his dialect of Xc and Ga. Somehow 
 or another that last dotage of S. Mark's decrepitude is more 
 recoverable by our fancy than the heroism of Pisani in the 
 fourteenth century. 
 
 From his prison in blockaded Venice the great admiral 
 was sent forth on a forlorn hope, and blocked victorious 
 Doria here with boats on which the nobles of the Golden 
 Book had spent their fortunes. Pietro Doria boasted that 
 with his own hands he would bridle the bronze horses ot 
 S. Mark. But now he found himself between the navy Oi 
 Carlo Zeno in the Adriatic and the flotilla led by Vittore 
 Pisani across the lagoon. It was in vain that the Republic 
 
200 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 of S. George strained every nerve to send him succour from 
 the Ligurian sea ; in vain that the lords of Padua kept opening 
 communications with him from the mainland. From the 
 ist of January 1380 till the 21st of June the Venetians pressed 
 the blockade ever closer, grappling their foemen in a grip 
 that if relaxed one moment would have hurled him at their 
 throats. The long and breathless struggle ended in the 
 capitulation at Chioggia of what remained of Doria's forty- 
 eight galleys and fourteen thousand men. 
 
 These great deeds are far away and hazy. The brief 
 sentences of mediaeval annalists bring them less near to us 
 than the chroniques scandaleuses of good-for-nothing scoundrels, 
 whose vulgar adventures might be revived at the present hour 
 with scarce a change of setting. Such is the force of intimite 
 in literature. And yet Baffo and Casanova are as much of the 
 past as Doria and Pisani. It is only perhaps that the survival 
 of decadence in all we see around us, forms a fitting framework 
 for our recollections of their vividly described corruption. 
 
 Not far from the landing-place a balustraded bridge of ample 
 breadth and large bravura manner spans the main canal. Like 
 everything at Chioggia, it is dirty and has fallen from its first 
 estate. Yet neither time nor injury can obUterate style or 
 wholly degrade marble. Hard by the bridge there are two 
 rival inns. At one of these we ordered a sea-dinner — crabs, 
 cuttlefishes, soles, and turbots — which we ate at a table in the 
 open air. Nothing divided us from the street except a row of 
 Japanese privet-bushes in hooped tubs. Our banquet soon 
 assumed a somewhat unpleasant similitude to that of Dives ; 
 for the Chioggoti, in all stages of decrepitude and squalor, 
 crowded round to beg for scraps — indescribable old women, 
 enveloped in their own petticoats thrown over their heads; 
 girls hooded with sombre black mantles; old men wrinkled 
 beyond recognition by their nearest relatives ; jabbering, half- 
 naked boys ; slow, slouching fishermen with clay pipes in 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 201 
 
 their mouths and philosophical acceptance on their sober 
 foreheads. 
 
 That afternoon the gondola and sandolo were lashed together 
 side by side. Two sails were raised, and in this lazy fashion 
 we stole homewards, faster or slower according as the breeze 
 freshened or slackened, landing now and then on islands, 
 sauntering along the sea-walls which bulwark Venice from the 
 Adriatic, and singing — those at least of us who had the power 
 to sing. Four of our Venetians had trained voices and memo- 
 ries of inexhaustible music. Over the level water, with the 
 ripple plashing at our keel, their songs went abroad, and 
 mingled with the failing day. The barcaroles and serenades 
 peculiar to Venice were, of course, in harmony with the 
 occasion. But some transcripts from classical operas were 
 even more attractive, through the dignity with which these 
 men invested them. By the peculiarity of their treatment the 
 recitativo of the stage assumed a solemn movement, marked in 
 rhythm, which removed it from the commonplace into antiquity, 
 and made me understand how cultivated music may pass back 
 by natural, unconscious transition into the realm of popular 
 melody. 
 
 The sun sank, not splendidly, but quietly in banks of clouds 
 above the Alps. Stars came out, uncertainly at first, and then 
 in strength, reflected on the sea. The men of the Dogana 
 watch-boat challenged us and let us pass. Madonna's lamp 
 was twinkling from her shrine upon the harbour-pile. The 
 city grew before us. Stealing into Venice in that calm — stealing 
 silently and shadowlike, with scarce a rufile of the water, the 
 masses of the town emerging out of darkness into twilight, 
 till San Giorgio's gun boomed with a flash athwart our stern, 
 and the gas-lamps of the Piazzetta swam into sight ; all this 
 was like a long enchanted chapter of romance. And now the 
 music of our men had sunk to one faint whistling from Eustace 
 of tunes in harmony with whispers at the prow. 
 
202 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Then came the steps of the Palazzo Venier and the deep- 
 scented darkness of the garden. As we passed through to 
 supper, I plucked a spray of yellow Banksia rose, and put it in 
 my button-hole. The dew was on its burnished leaves, and 
 evening had drawn forth its perfume. 
 
 IV. — Morning Rambles. 
 
 A story is told of Poussin, the French painter, that when 
 he was asked why he would not stay in Venice, he repHed, " If 
 I stay here, I shall become a colourist ! " A somewhat similar 
 tale is reported of a fashionable English decorator. While on 
 a visit to friends in Venice, he avoided every building which 
 contains a Tintoretto, averring that the sight of Tintoretto's 
 pictures would injure his carefully trained taste. It is probable 
 that neither anecdote is strictly true. Yet there is a certain 
 epigrammatic point in both ; and I have often speculated 
 whether even Venice could have so warped the genius of 
 Poussin as to shed one ray of splendour on his canvases, or 
 whether even Tintoretto could have so sublimed the prophet 
 of Queen Anne as to make him add dramatic passion to a 
 London drawing-room. Anyhow, it is exceedingly difficult to 
 escape from colour in the air of Venice, or from Tintoretto in 
 her buildings. Long, dehghtful mornings may be spent in the 
 enjoyment of the one and the pursuit of the other by folk 
 who have no classical or pseudo-mediaeval theories to oppress 
 them. 
 
 Tintoretto's house, though changed, can still be visited. It 
 formed part of the Fondamenta dei Mori, so called from having 
 been the quarter assigned to Moorish traders in Venice. A 
 spirited carving of a turbaned Moor leading a camel charged 
 with merchandise, remains above the water-line of a neighbour- 
 ing building ; and all about the crumbling walls sprout flowering 
 weeds — samphire and snapdragon and the spiked campanula, 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 203 
 
 which shoots a spire of sea-blue stars from chinks of Istrian 
 stone. 
 
 The house stands opposite the Church of Santa Maria dell' 
 Orto, where Tintoretto was buried, and where four of his chief 
 masterpieces are to be seen. This church, swept and garnished, 
 is a triumph of modern Italian restoration. They have con- 
 trived to make it as commonplace as human ingenuity could 
 manage. Yet no malice of ignorant industry can obscure the 
 treasures it contains — the pictures of Cima, Gian Bellini, 
 Palma, and the four Tintorettos, which form its crowning 
 glory. Here the master may be studied in four of his chief 
 moods : as the painter of tragic passion and movement, in the 
 huge Last Judgment; as the painter of impossibihties, in the 
 Vision of Moses upon Sinai ; as the painter of purity and 
 tranquil pathos, in the Miracle of S. Agnes; as the painter of 
 Biblical history brought home to daily life, in the Presentation 
 of the Virgin. Without leaving the Madonna dell' Orto, a 
 student can explore his genius in all its depth and breadth ; 
 comprehend the enthusiasm he excites in those who seek, 
 as the essentials of art, imaginative boldness and sincerity ; 
 understand what is meant by adversaries who maintain that, 
 after all, Tintoretto was but an inspired Gustave Dore. 
 Between that quiet canvas of the Presentation, so modest in 
 its cool greys and subdued gold, and the tumult of flying, ruin- 
 ing, ascending figures in the Judgment, what an interval there 
 is ! How strangely the white lamb-like maiden, kneeling beside 
 her lamb in the picture of S. Agnes, contrasts with the dusky 
 gorgeousness of the Hebrew women despoiling themselves of 
 jewels for the golden calf! Comparing these several mani- 
 festations of creative power, we feel ourselves in the grasp of 
 a painter who was essentially a poet, one for whom his art was 
 the medium for expressing before all things thought and pas- 
 sion. Each picture is executed in the manner suited to its 
 tone of feeling, the key of its conception. 
 
204 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Elsewhere than in the Madonna dell' Orto there are more 
 distinguished single examples of Tintoretto's realising faculty. 
 The Last Supper in San Giorgio, for instance, and the 
 Adoration of the Shepherds in the Scuola di San Rocco 
 illustrate his unique power of presenting sacred history in a 
 novel, romantic framework of familiar things. The common- 
 place circumstances of ordinary life have been employed to 
 portray in the one case a lyric of mysterious splendour; in 
 the other, an idyll of infinite sweetness. Divinity shines 
 through the rafters of that upper chamber, where round a low 
 large table the Apostles are assembled in a group translated 
 from the social customs of the painter's days. Divinity is 
 shed upon the straw-spread manger, where Christ lies sleep- 
 ing in the loft, with shepherds crowding through the room 
 beneath. 
 
 A studied contrast between the simplicity and repose of the 
 central figure and the tumult of passions in the multitude 
 around, may be observed in the Miracle of S. Agnes. It 
 is this which gives dramatic vigour to the composition. But 
 the same effect is carried to its highest fulfilment, w^ith even 
 a loftier beauty, in the episode of Christ before the judgment- 
 seat of Pilate, at San Rocco. Of all Tintoretto's religious 
 pictures, that is the most profoundly felt, the most majestic. 
 No other artist succeeded as he has here succeeded in present- 
 ing to us God incarnate. For this Christ is not merely the just 
 man, innocent, silent before his accusers. The stationary, 
 white-draped figure, raised high above the agitated crowd, w^ith 
 tranquil forehead slightly bent, facing his perplexed and fussy 
 judge, is more than man. We cannot say perhaps precisely 
 why he is divine. But Tintoretto has made us feel that he is. 
 In other words, his treatment of the high theme chosen by 
 him has been adequate. 
 
 We must seek the Scuola di San Rocco for examples of 
 Tintoretto's liveliest imagination. Without ceasing to be 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 205 
 
 Italian in his attention to harmony and grace, he far exceeded 
 the masters of his nation in the power of suggesting what is 
 weird, mysterious, upon the border-land of the grotesque. 
 And of this quality there are three remarkable instances in the 
 Scuola. No one but Tintoretto could have evoked the fiend 
 in his Temptation of Christ. It is an indescribable herma- 
 phroditic genius, the genius of carnal fascination, with out- 
 spread downy rose-plumed wings, and flaming bracelets on the 
 full but sinewy arms, who kneels and lifts aloft great stones, 
 smiling entreatingly to the sad, grey Christ seated beneath 
 a rugged pent-house of the desert. No one again but Tinto- 
 retto could have dashed the hot lights of that fiery sunset in 
 such quivering flakes upon the golden flesh of Eve, half- 
 hidden among laurels, as she stretches forth the fruit of 
 the Fall to shrinking Adam. No one but Tintoretto, till we 
 come to Blake, could have imagined yonder Jonah, summoned 
 by the beck of God from the whale's belly. The monstrous 
 fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour from 
 his trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon 
 his naked breast in hoary ringlets to the girdle. He has for- 
 gotten the past peril of the deep, although the whale's jaws 
 yawn around him. Between him and the outstretched finger 
 of Jehovah calling him again to life, there runs a spark of 
 unseen spiritual electricity. 
 
 To comprehend Tintoretto's touch upon the pastoral idyll 
 we must turn our steps to San Giorgio again, and pace those 
 meadows by the running river in company with his Manna- 
 Gatherers. Or we may seek the Accademia, and notice how 
 he here has varied the Temptation of Adam by Eve, choos- 
 ing a less tragic motive of seduction than the one so power- 
 fully rendered at San Rocco. Or in the Ducal Palace w^e may 
 take our station, hour by hour, before the Marriage of 
 Bacchus and Ariadne. It is well to leave the very highest 
 achievements of art untouched by criticism, undescribed. 
 
2o6 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 And in this picture we have the most perfect of all modern 
 attempts to realise an antique myth — more perfect than 
 Raphael's Galatea, or Titian's Meeting of Bacchus with 
 Ariadne, or Botticelli's Birth of Venus from the Sea. It 
 may suffice to marvel at the slight effect which melodies so 
 powerful and so direct as these produce upon the ordinary 
 public. Sitting, as is my wont, one Sunday morning, oppo- 
 site the Bacchus, four Germans with a cicerone sauntered by. 
 The subject was explained to them. They waited an appreci- 
 able space of time. Then the youngest opened his lips and 
 spake : " Bacchus war der Wein-Gott." And they all moved 
 heavily away. Bos lociitus est. "Bacchus was the wine- 
 god ! " This, apparently, is what a picture tells to one man. 
 To another it presents divine harmonies, perceptible indeed 
 in nature, but here by the painter-poet for the first time 
 brought together and cadenced in a work of art. For another 
 it is" perhaps the hieroglyph of pent-up passions and desired 
 impossibilities. For yet another it may only mean the un- 
 approachable inimitable triumph of consummate craft. 
 
 Tintoretto, to be rightly understood, must be sought all 
 over Venice — in the church as well as the Scuola di San 
 Rocco ; in the Temptation of S. Anthony at S. Trovaso no 
 less than in the Temptations of Eve and Christ ; in the deco- 
 rative pornp of the Sala del Senato, and in the Paradisal 
 vision of the Sala del Gran Consiglio. Yet, after all, there 
 is one of his most characteristic moods, to appreciate which 
 fully we return to the Madonna dell' Orto. I have called 
 him "the painter of impossibilities." At rare moments he 
 rendered them possible by sheer imaginative force. If we 
 , wish to realise this phase of his creative power, and to measure 
 our own subordination to his genius in its most hazardous 
 enterprise, we must spend much time in the choir of this 
 church. Lovers of art who mistrust this play of the audacious 
 fancy — aiming at sublimity in supersensual regions, sometimes 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 207 
 
 attaining to it by stupendous effort or authentic revelation, not 
 seldom sinking to the verge of bathos, and demanding the 
 assistance of interpretative sympathy in the spectator — such 
 men will not take the point of view required of them by 
 Tintoretto in his boldest flights, in the Worship of the 
 Golden Calf and in the Destruction of the World by Water. 
 It is for them to ponder well the flying archangel with the 
 scales of judgment in his hand, and the seraph-charioted 
 Jehovah enveloping Moses upon Sinai in lightnings. 
 
 The gondola has had a long rest. Were Francesco but 
 a little more impatient, he might be wondering what had 
 become of the padrone. I bid him turn, and we are soon 
 gliding into the Sacca della Misericordia. This is a protected 
 float, where the wood which comes from Cadore and the hills 
 of the Ampezzo is stored in spring. Yonder square white 
 house, standing out to sea, fronting Murano and the Alps, 
 they call the Casa degli Spiriti. No one cares to inhabit it ; 
 for here, in old days, it was the wont of the Venetians to lay 
 their dead for a night's rest before their final journey to the 
 graveyard of S. Michele. So many generations of dead folk 
 had made that house their inn, that it is now no fitting home 
 for living men. San Michele is the island close before 
 Murano, where the Lombardi built one of their most romanti- 
 cally graceful churches of pale Istrian stone, and where the 
 Campo Santo has for centuries received the dead into its oozy 
 clay. The cemetery is at present undergoing restoration. 
 Its state of squalor and abandonment to cynical disorder 
 makes one feel how fitting for Italians would be the custom 
 of cremation. An island in the lagoons devoted to funeral 
 pyres is a solemn and ennobling conception. This graveyard, 
 with its ruinous walls, its mangy riot of unwholesome weeds, 
 its corpses festering in slime beneath neglected slabs in hollow 
 chambers, and the mephitic wash of poisoned waters that 
 surround it, inspires the horror of disgust. 
 
2o8 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 The morning has not lost its freshness. Antelao and 
 Tofana, guarding the vale above Cortina, show faint streaks of 
 snow upon their amethyst. Little clouds hang in the still 
 autumn sky. There are men dredging for shrimps and crabs 
 through shoals uncovered by the ebb. Nothing can be 
 lovelier, more resting to eyes tired with pictures than this 
 tranquil, sunny expanse of the lagoon. As we round the 
 point of the Bersaglio, new landscapes of island and Alp 
 and low-lying mainland move into sight at every slow stroke 
 of the oar. A luggage-train comes lumbfering along the rail- 
 way bridge, puffing white smoke into the placid blue. Then 
 we strike down Cannaregio, and I muse upon processions of 
 kings and generals and noble strangers, entering Venice by 
 this water-path from Mestre, before the Austrians built their 
 causeway for the trains. Some of the rare scraps of fresco 
 upon house fronts, still to be seen in Venice, are left in 
 Cannaregio. They are chiaroscuro allegories in a bold bravura 
 manner of the sixteenth century. From these and from a few 
 rosy fragments on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, the Fabbriche 
 Nuove, and precious fading figures in a certain courtyard near 
 San Stefano, we form some notion how Venice looked when 
 all her palaces were painted. Pictures by Gentile Bellini, 
 Mansueti, and Carpaccio help the fancy in this work of 
 restoration. And here and there, in back canals, we come 
 across coloured sections of old buildings, capped by true 
 Venetian chimneys, which for a moment seem to realise our 
 dream. 
 
 A morning with Tintoretto might well be followed by a morn- 
 ing with Carpaccio or Bellini. But space is wanting in these 
 pages. Nor would it suit the manner of this medley to hunt 
 the Lombardi through palaces and churches, pointing out their 
 singularities of violet and yellow panellings in marble, the 
 dignity of their wide-opened arches, or the delicacy of their 
 shallow chiselled traceries in cream-white Istrian stone. It is 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 209 
 
 enough to indicate the goal of many a pleasant pilgrimage : 
 warrior angels of Vivarini and Basaiti hidden in a dark chapel 
 of the Frari ; Fra Francesco's fantastic orchard of fruits and 
 flowers in distant S. Francesco della Vigna ; the golden Gian 
 BeUini in S. Zaccaria; Palma's majestic S. Barbara in S. 
 Maria Formosa ; San Giobbe's wealth of sculptured frieze and 
 floral scroll ; the Ponte di Paradiso, with its Gothic arch ; the 
 painted plates in the Museo Civico ; and palace after palace, 
 loved for some quaint piece of tracery, some moulding full of 
 mediaeval symboHsm, some fierce impossible Renaissance freak 
 of fancy. 
 
 Rather than prolong this list, I will tell a story which drew 
 me one day past the Public Gardens to the metropolitan 
 Church of Venice, San Pietro di Castello. The novella is 
 related by Bandello. It has, as will be noticed, points of 
 similarity to that of " Romeo and Juliet." 
 
 V. — A Venetian Novella. 
 
 At the time when Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini were painting 
 those handsome youths in tight jackets, parti-coloured hose, and 
 little round caps placed awry upon their shocks of well-combed 
 hair, there lived in Venice two noblemen, Messer Pietro and 
 Messer Paolo, whose palaces fronted each other on the Grand 
 Canal. Messer Paolo was a widower, with one married 
 daughter, and an only son of twenty years or thereabouts, 
 named Gerardo. Messer Pietro's wife was still living ; and this 
 couple had but one child, a daughter, called Elena, of exceed 
 ing beauty, aged fourteen. Gerardo, as is the wont of gallants, 
 was paying his addresses to a certain lady ; and nearly every 
 day he had to cross the Grand Canal in his gondola, and 
 to pass beneath the house of Elena on his way to visit his 
 Dulcinea ; for this lady lived some distance up a little canal 
 on which the western side of Messer Pietro's palace looked. 
 
 ^^ 
 
2IO ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Now it SO happened that at the very time when the story 
 opens, Messer Pietro's wife fell ill and died, and Elena was 
 left alone at home with her father and her old nurse. Across 
 the little canal of which I spoke there dwelt another noble- 
 man, with four daughters, between the years of seventeen and 
 twenty-one. Messer Pietro, desiring to provide amusement 
 for poor little Elena, besought this gendeman that his 
 daughters might come on feast-days to play with her. For 
 you must know that, except on festivals of the Church, the 
 custom of Venice required that gentlewomen should remain 
 closely shut within the private apartments of their dwellings. 
 His request was readily granted; and on the next feast-day 
 the five girls began to play at ball together for forfeits in the 
 great saloon, which opened with its row of Gothic arches and 
 balustraded balcony upon the Grand Canal. The four sisters, 
 meanwhile, had other thoughts than for the game. One or 
 other of them, and sometimes three together, would let the 
 ball drop, and run to the balcony to gaze upon their gallants, 
 passing up and down in gondolas below; and then they 
 would drop flowers or ribbands for tokens. Which negligence 
 of theirs annoyed Elena much; for she thought only of the 
 game. Wherefore she scolded them in childish wise, and one 
 of them made answer, " Elena, if you only knew how pleasant 
 it is to play as we are playing on this balcony, you would not 
 care so much for ball and forfeits ! " 
 
 On one of those feast-days the four sisters were prevented 
 from keeping their little friend company. Elena, with nothing 
 to do, and feeling melancholy, leaned upon the window-sill 
 which overlooked the narrow canal. And it chanced that just 
 ' then Gerardo, on his way to Dulcinea, went by ; and Elena 
 looked down at him, as she had seen those sisters look at 
 passers-by. Gerardo caught her eye, and glances passed be- 
 tween them, and Gerardo's gondoHer, bending from, the poop, 
 said to his master, " O master ! methinks that gentle maiden 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 211 
 
 is better worth your wooing than Dulcinea." Gerardo pre- 
 tended to pay no heed to these words; but after rowing a 
 little way, he bade the man turn, and they went slowly back 
 beneath the window. This time Elena, thinking to play the 
 game which her four friends had played, took from her hair a 
 clove carnation and let it fall close to Gerardo on the cushion 
 of the gondola. He raised the flower and put it to his lips, 
 acknowledging the courtesy with a grave bow. But the per- 
 fume of the clove and the beauty of Elena in that moment 
 took possession of his heart together, and straightway he 
 forgot Dulcinea. 
 
 As yet he knew not who Elena was. Nor is this wonderful ; 
 for the daughters of Venetian nobles were but rarely seen or 
 spoken of. But the thought of her haunted him awake and 
 sleeping; and every feast-day, when there was the chance of 
 seeing her, he rowed his gondola beneath her windows. And 
 there she appeared to him in company with her four friends ; 
 the five girls clustering together like sister roses beneath the 
 pointed windows of the Gothic balcony. Elena, on her side, 
 had no thought of love ; for of love she had heard no one 
 speak. But she took pleasure in the game those friends had 
 taught her, of leaning from the balcony to watch Gerardo. 
 He meanwhile grew love-sick and impatient, wondering how 
 he might declare his passion. Until one day it happened that, 
 walking through a lane or ca//e which skirted Messer Pietro's 
 palace, he caught sight of Elena's nurse, who was knocking 
 at the door, returning from some shopping she had made. 
 This nurse had been his own nurse in childhood; therefore 
 he remembered her, and cried aloud, " Nurse, Nurse ! " But 
 the old woman did not hear him, and passed into the house 
 and shut the door behind her. Whereupon Gerardo, greatly 
 moved, still called to her, and when he reached the door, 
 began to. knock upon it violently. And whether it was the 
 agitation of finding himself at last so near the wish of his heart. 
 
212 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 or whether the pains of waiting for his love had weakened him, 
 I know not ; but, while he knocked, his senses left him, and 
 he fell fainting in the doorway. Then the nurse recognised 
 the youth to whom she had given suck, and brought him into 
 the courtyard by the help of handmaidens, and Elena came 
 down and gazed upon him. The house was now full of 
 bustle, and Messer Pietro heard the noise, and seeing the son 
 of his neighbour in so piteous a plight, he caused Gerardo 
 to be laid upon a bed. But for all they could do with him, 
 he recovered not from his swoon. And after a while force 
 was that they should place him in a gondola and ferry him 
 across to his father's house. The nurse went with him, and 
 informed Messer Paolo of what had happened. Doctors 
 were sent for, and the whole family gathered round Gerardo's 
 bed. After a while he revived a Httle ; and thinking himself 
 still upon the doorstep of Pietro's palace, called again, " Nurse, 
 Nurse ! " She was near at hand, and would have spoken to 
 him. But while he summoned his senses to his aid, he 
 became gradually aware of his own kinsfolk and dissembled 
 the secret of his grief. They beholding him in better cheer, 
 departed on their several ways, and the nurse still sat alone 
 beside him. Then he explained to her what he had at heart, 
 and how he was in love with a maiden whom he had seen on 
 feast-days in the house of Messer Pietro. But still he knew 
 not Elena's name ; and she, thinking it impossible that such a 
 child had inspired this passion, began to marvel which of the 
 four sisters it was Gerardo loved. Then they appointed the 
 next Sunday, when all the five girls should be together, for 
 Gerardo by some sign, as he passed beneath the window, to 
 make known to the old nurse his lady. 
 
 Elena, meanwhile, who had watched Gerardo lying still and 
 pale in swoon beneath her on the pavement of the palace, felt the 
 stirring of a new unknown emotion in her soul. When Sunday 
 came, she devised excuses for keeping her four friends away. 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 213 
 
 bethinking her that she might see him once again alone, and 
 not betray the agitation which she dreaded. This ill suited 
 the schemes of the nurse, who nevertheless was forced to be 
 content. But after dinner, seeing how restless was the girl, 
 and how she came and went, and ran a thousand times to the 
 balcony, the nurse began to wonder whether Elena herself 
 were not in love with some one. So she feigned to sleep, but 
 placed herself within sight of the window. And soon Gerardo 
 came by in his gondola ; and Elena, who was prepared, threw 
 to him her nosegay. The watchful nurse had risen, and 
 peeping behind the girl's shoulder, saw at a glance how 
 matters stood. Thereupon she began to scold her charge, 
 and say, "Is this a fair and comely thing, to stand all 
 day at balconies and throw flowers at passers-by? Woe 
 to you if your father should come to know of this ! He 
 would make you wish yourself among the dead ! " Elena, 
 sore troubled at her nurse's rebuke, turned and threw her arms 
 about her neck, and called her " Nanna ! " as the wont is of 
 Venetian children. Then she told the old woman how she had 
 learned that game from the four sisters, and how she thought 
 it was not different, but far more pleasant, than the game of 
 forfeits ; whereupon her nurse spoke gravely, explaining what 
 love is, and how that love should lead to marriage, and bidding 
 her search her own heart if haply she could choose Gerardo 
 for her husband. There was no reason, as she knew, why 
 Messer Paolo's son should not mate with Messer Pietro's 
 daughter. But being a romantic creature, as many women are, 
 she resolved to bring the match about in secret. 
 
 Elena took little time to reflect, but told her nurse that she 
 was willing, if Gerardo willed it too, to have him for her 
 husband. Then went the nurse and made the young man 
 know how matters stood, and arranged with him a day, when 
 Messer Pietro should be in the Council of the Pregadi, and the 
 servants of the palace otherwise employed, for him to come 
 
214 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 and meet his Elena. A glad man was Gerardo, nor did he 
 wait to think how better it would be to ask the hand of Elena 
 in marriage from her father. But when the day arrived, he 
 sought the nurse, and she took him to a chamber in the palace, 
 where there stood an image of the Blessed Virgin. Elena was 
 there, pale and timid ; and when the lovers clasped hands, 
 neither found many words to say. But the nurse bade them 
 take heart, and leading them before Our Lady, joined their 
 hands, and made Gerardo place his ring on his bride's finger. 
 After this fashion were Gerardo and Elena wedded. And for 
 some while, by the assistance of the nurse, they dwelt together 
 in much love and solace, meeting often as occasion offered. 
 
 Messer Paolo, who knew nothing of these things, took 
 thought meanwhile for his son's career. It was the season 
 when the Signiory of Venice sends a fleet of g*alleys to Beirut 
 with merchandise ; and the noblemen may bid for the hiring 
 of a ship, and charge it with wares, and send whomsoever they 
 list as factor in their interest. One of these galleys, then, 
 Messer Paolo engaged, and told his son that he had appointed 
 him to journey with it and increase their wealth. " On thy 
 return, my son," he said, " we will bethink us of a wife for 
 thee." Gerardo, when he heard these words, was sore troubled, 
 and first he told his father roundly that he would not go, and 
 flew off in the twilight to pour out his perplexities to Elena. 
 But she, who was prudent and of gentle soul, besought him to 
 obey his father in this thing, to the end, moreover, that, having 
 done his will and increased his wealth, he might afterwards 
 unfold the story of their secret marriage. To these good 
 counsels, though loth, Gerardo consented. His father was 
 overjoyed at his son's repentance. The galley was straight- 
 way laden with merchandise, and Gerardo set forth on his 
 voyage. 
 
 The trip to Beirut and back lasted usually six months or 
 at the most seven. Now when Gerardo had been some six 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 215 
 
 months away, Messer Pietro, noticing how fair his daughter 
 was, and how she had grown into womanhood, looked about 
 him for a husband for her. When he had found a youth 
 suitable in birth and wealth and years, he called for Elena, and 
 told her that the day had been appointed for her marriage. 
 She, alas ! knew not what to answer. She feared to tell her 
 father that she was already married, for she knew not whether 
 this would please Gerardo. For the same reason she dreaded 
 to throw herself upon the kindness of Messer Paolo. Nor was 
 her nurse of any help in counsel ; for the old woman repented 
 her of what she had done, and had good cause to believe that, 
 even if the marriage with Gerardo were accepted by the two 
 fathers, they would punish her for her own part in the affair. 
 Therefore she bade Elena wait on fortune, and hinted to her 
 that, if the worst came to the worst, no one need know she 
 had been wedded with the ring to Gerardo. Such weddings, 
 you must know, were binding ; but till they had been blessed 
 by the Church, they had not taken the force of a religious 
 sacrament. And this is still the case in Italy among the com- 
 mon folk, who will say of a man, "Si, e ammogliato ; ma il 
 matrimonio non e stato benedetto." "Yes, he has taken a 
 wife, but the marriage has not yet been blessed." 
 
 So the days flew by in doubt and sore distress for Elena. 
 Then on the night before her wedding, she felt that she could 
 bear this life no longer. But having no poison, and being 
 afraid to pierce her bosom with a knife, she lay down on her 
 bed alone, and tried to die by holding in her breath. A 
 mortal swoon came over her; her senses fled; the life in 
 her remained suspended. And when her nurse came next 
 morning to call her, she found poor Elena cold as a corpse. 
 Messer Pietro and all the household rushed, at the nurse's 
 cries, into the room, and they all saw Elena stretched dead 
 upon her bed undressed. Physicians were called, who made 
 theories to explain the cause of death. But all believed that 
 
21 6 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 she was really dead, beyond all help of art or medicine. 
 Nothing remained but to carry her to church for burial instead 
 of marriage. Therefore, that very evening, a funeral procession 
 was formed, which moved by torchlight up the Grand Canal, 
 along the Riva, past the blank walls of the Arsenal, to the Campo 
 before San Pietro in Castello. Elena lay beneath the black 
 felze in one gondola, with a priest beside her praying, and 
 other boats followed bearing mourners. Then they laid her 
 in a marble chest outside the church, and all departed, still 
 with torches burning, to their homes. 
 
 Now it so fell out that upon that very evening Gerardo's 
 galley had returned from Syria, and was anchoring within the 
 port of Lido, which looks across to the island of Castello. 
 It was the gentle custom of Venice at that time that, when 
 a ship arrived from sea, the friends of those on board at once 
 came out to welcome them, and take and give the news. 
 Therefore many noble youths and other citizens were on the 
 deck of Gerardo's galley, making merry with him over the safe 
 conduct of his voyage. Of one of these he asked, "Whose 
 is yonder funeral procession returning from San Pietro?" 
 The young man made answer, "Alas for poor Elena, Messer 
 Pietro's daughter! She should have been married this day. 
 But death took her, and to-night they buried her in the marble 
 monument outside the church." A woeful man was Gerardo, 
 hearing suddenly this news, and knowing what his dear wufe 
 must have suffered ere she died. Yet he restrained himself, 
 daring not to disclose his anguish, and waited till his friends 
 had left the galley. Then he called to him the captain of 
 the oarsmen, who was his friend, and unfolded to him all the 
 story of his love and sorrow, and said that he must go that 
 night and see his wife once more, if even he should have to 
 break her tomb. The captain tried to dissuade him, but in 
 vain. Seeing him so obstinate, he resolved not to desert 
 Gerardo. The two men took one of the galley's boats, and 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 217 
 
 rowed together toward San Pietro. It was past midnight when 
 they reached the Campo and broke the marble sepulchre 
 asunder. Pushing back its lid, Gerardo descended into the 
 grave and abandoned himself upon the body of his Elena. 
 One who had seen them at that moment could not well have 
 said which of the two was dead and which was living — Elena 
 or her husband. Meantime the captain of the oarsmen, 
 fearing lest the watch (set by the Masters of the Night to 
 keep the peace of Venice) might arrive, was calling on Gerardo 
 to come back. Gerardo heeded him no whit. But at the 
 last, compelled by his entreaties, and as it were astonied, he 
 arose, bearing his wife's corpse in his arms, and carried her 
 clasped against his bosom to the boat, and laid her therein, 
 and sat down by her side and kissed her frequently, and 
 suffered not his friend's remonstrances. Force was for the 
 captain, having brought himself into this scrape, that he 
 should now seek refuge by the nearest way from justice. 
 Therefore he hoved gently from the bank, and plied his oar, 
 and brought the gondola apace into the open waters. Gerardo 
 still elapsed Elena, dying husband by dead wife. But the 
 sea-breeze freshened towards daybreak ; and the Captain, 
 looking down upon that pair, and bringing to their faces the 
 light of his boat's lantern, judged their case not desperate at 
 all. On Elena's cheek there was a flush of life less deadly 
 even than the pallor of Gerardo's forehead. Thereupon the 
 good man called aloud, and Gerardo started from his grief; 
 and both together they chafed the hands and feet of Elena ; 
 and, the sea-breeze aiding with its saltness, they awoke in her 
 the spark of life. 
 
 Dimly burned the spark. But Gerardo, being aware of it, 
 became a man again. Then, having taken counsel with the 
 captain, both resolved to bear her to that brave man's mother's 
 house. A bed was soon made ready, and food was brought ; 
 and after due time, she lifted up her face and knew Gerardo. 
 
2i8 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 The peril of the grave was past, but thought had now to be 
 taken for the future. Therefore Gerardo, leaving his wife 
 to the captain's mother, rowed back to the galley and pre- 
 pared to meet his father. With good store of merchandise 
 and with great gains from his traffic, he arrived in that old 
 palace on the Grand Canal. Then having opened to Messer 
 Paolo the matters of his journey, and shown him how he 
 had fared, and set before him tables of disbursements and 
 receipts, he seized the moment of his father's gladness. 
 " Father," he said, and as he spoke he knelt upon his knees, 
 " Father, I bring you not good store of merchandise and bags 
 of gold alone ; I bring you also a wedded wife, whom I have 
 saved this night from death." And when the old man's 
 surprise was quieted, he told him the whole story. Now 
 Messer Paolo, desiring no better than that his son should 
 wed the heiress of his neighbour, and knowing well that 
 Messer Pietro would make great joy receiving back his 
 daughter from the grave, bade Gerardo in haste take rich 
 apparel and clothe Elena therewith, and fetch her home. 
 These things were swiftly done ; and after evenfall Messer 
 Pietro was bidden to grave business in his neighbour's palace. 
 With heavy heart he came, from a house of mourning to a 
 house of gladness. But there, at the banquet-table's head he 
 saw his dead child Elena alive, and at her side a husband. 
 And when the whole truth had been declared, he not only 
 kissed and embraced the pair who knelt before him, but 
 of his goodness forgave the nurse, who in her turn came 
 trembling to his feet. Then fell there joy and bliss in over- 
 measure that night upon both palaces of the Canal Grande. 
 And with the morrow the Church blessed the spousals which 
 long since had been on both sides vowed and consummated. 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 219 
 
 VI. — On the Lagoons. 
 
 The mornings are spent in study, sometimes among pictures, 
 sometimes in the Marcian Library, or again in those vast 
 convent chambers of the Frari, where the archives oi Venice 
 load innumerable shelves. The afternoons invite us to a 
 further flight upon the water. Both sandolo and gondola 
 await our choice, and we may sail or row, according as the 
 wind and inclination tempt us. 
 
 Yonder lies San Lazzaro, with the neat red buildings of the 
 Armenian convent. The last oleander blossoms shine rosy 
 pink above its walls against the pure blue sky as we glide into 
 the little harbour. Boats piled with coal-black grapes block 
 the landing-place, for the Padri are gathering their vintage 
 from the Lido, and their presses run with new wine. Eustace 
 and I have not come to revive memories of Byron — that 
 curious patron saint of the Armenian colony— or to inspect the 
 printing-press, which issues books of little value for our studies. 
 It is enough to pace the terrace, and linger half an hour 
 beneath the low broad arches of the alleys pleached with vines, 
 through which the domes and towers of Venice rise more 
 beautiful by distance. 
 
 Malamocco lies considerably farther, and needs a full hour 
 of stout rowing to reach it. Alighting there, we cross the narrow 
 strip of land, and find ourselves upon the huge sea-wall — block 
 piled on block — of Istrian stone in tiers and ranks, with cun- 
 ning breathing-places for the waves to wreak their fury on and 
 foam their force away in fretful waste. The very existence of 
 Venice may be said to depend sometimes on these murazzi, 
 which were finished at an immense cost by the Republic in the 
 days of its decadence. The enormous monoliths which compose 
 them had to be brought across the Adriatic in sailing vessels. 
 Of all the Lidi, that of Malamocco is the weakest ; and here, 
 
220 ITALIAN BYWAYS, 
 
 if anywhere, the sea might effect an entrance into the lagoon. 
 Our gondoliers told us of some places where the murazzi were 
 broken in a gale, or sciroccale^ not very long ago. Lying awake 
 in Venice, when the wind blows hard, one hears the sea 
 thundering upon its sandy barrier, and blesses God for the 
 murazzi. On such a night it happened once to me to dream 
 a dream of Venice overwhelmed by water. I saw the billows 
 roll across the smooth lagoon like a gigantic Eager. The 
 Ducal Palace crumbled, and San Marco's domes went down. 
 The Campanile rocked and shivered like a reed. And all 
 along the Grand Canal the palaces swayed helpless, tottering 
 to their fall, while boats piled high with men and women 
 strove to stem the tide, and save themselves from those 
 impending ruins. It was a mad dream, born of the sea's 
 roar and Tintoretto's painting. But this afternoon no such 
 visions are suggested. The sea sleeps, and in the moist 
 autumn air we break tall branches of the seeded yellowing 
 samphire from hollows of the rorks, and bear them homeward 
 in a wayward bouquet mixed with cobs of Indian-corn. 
 
 Fusina is another point for these excursions. It lies at the 
 mouth of the Canal di Brenta, where the mainland ends in 
 marsh and meadows, intersected by broad renes. In spring 
 the ditches bloom with fleurs-de-lys ; in autumn they take 
 sober colouring from lilac daisies and the delicate sea-lavender. 
 Scores of tiny plants are turning scarlet on the brown moist 
 earth; and when the sun goes down behind the Euganean 
 hills, his crimson canopy of cloud, reflected on these shallows, 
 muddy shoals, and wilderness of matted weeds, converts the 
 common earth into a fairyland of fabulous dyes. Purple, 
 violet, and rose are spread around us. In front stretches the 
 lagoon, tinted with a pale light from the east, and beyond this 
 pallid mirror shines Venice — a long low broken line, touched 
 with the softest roseate flush. Ere we reach the Giudecca on 
 our homeward way, sunset has faded. The western skies have 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 221 
 
 clad themselves in green, barred with dark fire-rimmed clouds. 
 The Euganean hills stand like stupendous pyramids, Egyptian, 
 solemn, against a lemon space on the horizon. The far 
 reaches of the lagoons, the Alps, and islands assume those 
 tones of glowing lilac which are the supreme beauty of Vene- 
 tian evening. Then, at last, we see the first lamps glitter on 
 the Zattere. The quiet of the night has come. 
 
 Words cannot be formed to express the endless varieties of 
 Venetian sunset. The most magnificent follow after wet 
 stormy days, when the west breaks suddenly into a labyrinth 
 of fire, when chasms of clear turquoise heavens emerge, and 
 horns of flame are flashed to the zenith, and unexpected 
 splendours scale the fretted clouds, step over step, stealing 
 along the purple caverns till the whole dome throbs. Or, 
 again, after a fair day, a change of weather approaches, and 
 high, infinitely high, the skies are woven over with a web of 
 half-transparent cirrus-clouds. These in the afterglow blush 
 crimson, and through their rifts the depth of heaven is of a 
 hard and gem-like blue, and all the water turns to rose 
 beneath them. I remember one such evening on the way 
 back from Torcello. We wqyq well out at sea between 
 Mazzorbo and Murano. The ruddy arches overhead were 
 reflected without interruption in the waveless ruddy lake 
 below. Our black boat was the only dark spot in this sphere 
 of splendour. We seemed to hang suspended; and such as 
 this, I fancied, must be the feeling of an insect caught in the 
 heart of a fiery-petalled rose. Yet not these melodramatic 
 sunsets alone are beautiful. Even more exquisite, perhaps, 
 are the lagoons, painted in monochrome of greys, with just 
 one touch of pink upon a western cloud, scattered in ripples 
 here and there on the waves below, reminding' us that day has 
 passed and evening come. And beautiful again are the calm 
 settings of fair weather, when sea and sky alike are cheerful, 
 and the topmost blades of the lagoon grass, peeping from the 
 
222 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 shallows, glance like emeralds upon the surface- There is no 
 deep stirring of the spirit in a symphony of light and colour ; 
 but purity, peace, and freshness make their way into our 
 hearts. 
 
 VII. — At the Lido. 
 
 Of all these afternoon excursions, that to the Lido is most 
 frequent. It has two points for approach. The more distant 
 is the little station of San Nicoletto, at the mouth of the Porto. 
 With an ebb-tide, the water of the lagoon runs past the mul- 
 berry gardens of this hamlet like a river. There is here a 
 grove of acacia-trees, shadowy and dreamy, above deep grass, 
 which even an Italian summer does not wither. The Riva is 
 fairly broad, forming a promenade, where one may conjure up 
 the personages of a century ago. For San Nicoletto used to 
 be a fashionable resort before the other points of Lido had 
 been occupied by pleasure-seekers. An artist even now will 
 select its old-world quiet, leafy shade, and prospect through 
 the islands of Vignole and Sant' Erasmo to snow-touched 
 peaks of Antelao and Tofana, rather than the glare and 
 bustle and extended view of Venice which its rival Sant' 
 Elisabetta offers. 
 
 But when we want a plunge into the Adriatic, or a stroll 
 along smooth sands, or a breath of genuine sea-breeze, or a 
 handful of horned poppies from the dunes, or a lazy half-hour's 
 contemplation of a limitless horizon flecked with russet sails, 
 then we seek Sant' Elisabetta. Our boat is left at the landing- 
 place. We saunter across the island and back again. Antonio 
 and Francesco wait and order wine, which we drink with them 
 in the shade of the little osteria's wall. 
 
 A certain afternoon in May I well remember, for this visit to 
 the Lido was marked by one of those apparitions which are as 
 rare as they are welcome to the artist's soul. I have always 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 223 
 
 held that in our modern life the only real equivalent for the 
 antique mythopoeic sense — that sense which enabled the \_^. 
 Hellenic race to figure for themselves the powers of earth and 
 air, streams and forests, and the presiding genii of places, 
 under the forms of living human beings, is supplied by the 
 appearance at some felicitous moment of a man or woman who 
 impersonates for our imagination the essence of the beauty 
 that environs us. It seems, at such a fortunate moment, as 
 though we had been waiting for this revelation, although per- 
 chance the want of it had not been previously felt. Our sensa- 
 tions and perceptions test themselves at the touchstone of this 
 living individuality. The keynote of the whole music dimly 
 sounding in our ears is struck. A melody emerges, clear in 
 form and excellent in rhythm. The landscapes we have 
 painted on our brain, no longer lack their central figure. The 
 life proper to the complex conditions we have studied is dis- 
 covered, and every detail, judged by this standard of vitality, 
 falls into its right relations. 
 
 I had been musing long that day and earnestly upon the 
 mystery of the lagoons, their opaline transparencies of air and 
 water, their fretful risings and sudden subsidence into calm, the 
 treacherousness of their shoals, the sparkle and the splendour 
 of their sunlight. I had asked myself how would a Greek 
 sculptor have personified the elemental deity of these salt- 
 water lakes, so different in quality from the ^gean or Ionian 
 sea? What would he find distinctive of their spirit? The 
 Tritons of these shallows must be of other form and lineage 
 than the fierce-eyed youth who blows his conch upon the 
 curled crest of a wave, crying aloud to his comrades, as he 
 bears the nymph away to caverns where the billows plunge in 
 tideless instability. 
 
 We had picked up shells and looked for sea-horses on the 
 Adriatic shore. Then we returned to give our boatmen wine 
 beneath the vine-clad pergola. Four other men were there, 
 
224 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 drinking, and eating from a dish of fried fish set upon the 
 coarse white Unen cloth. Two of them soon rose and went 
 away. Of the two who stayed, one was a large, middle-aged 
 man ; the other was still young. He was tall and sinewy, but 
 slender, for these Venetians are rarely massive in their strength. 
 Each limb is equally developed by the exercise of rowing 
 upright, bending all the muscles to their stroke. Their bodies 
 are elastically supple, with free sway from the hips and a 
 mercurial poise upon the ankle. Stefano showed these quali- 
 ties almost in exaggeration. The type in him was refined to 
 its artistic perfection. Moreover, he was rarely in repose, 
 but moved with a singular brusque grace. A black broad- 
 brimmed hat was thrown back upon his matted zazzera of 
 dark hair tipped with dusky brown. This shock of hair, 
 cut in flakes, and falling wilfully, reminded me of the lagoon 
 grass when it darkens in autumn upon uncovered shoals, and 
 sunset gilds its sombre edges. Fiery grey eyes beneath it 
 gazed intensely, with compulsive effluence of electricity. It 
 was the wild glance of a Triton. Short blonde moustache, 
 dazzling teeth, skin bronzed, but showing white and healthful 
 through open front and sleeves of lilac shirt. The dashing 
 sparkle of this animate splendour, who looked to me as though 
 the sea-waves and the sun had made him in some hour of 
 secret and unquiet rapture, was somehow emphasised by a 
 curious dint dividing his square chin — a cleft that harmonised 
 with smile on lip and steady flame in eyes. I hardly know 
 what effect it would have upon a reader to compare eyes to 
 opals. Yet Stefano's eyes, as they met mine, had the vitreous 
 intensity of opals, as though the colour of Venetian waters 
 were vitalised in them. This noticeable being had a rough, 
 hoarse voice, w^hich, to* develop the parallel with a sea-god, 
 might have screamed in storm or whispered raucous messages 
 from crests of tossing biflows. 
 
 I felt, as I looked, that here, for me at least, the mythopoem 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 225 
 
 of the lagoons was humanised ; the spirit of the salt-water lakes 
 had appeared to me; the final touch of life emergent from 
 nature had been given. I was satisfied ; for I had seen a 
 poem. 
 
 Then we rose, and wandered through the Jews' cemetery. 
 It is a quiet place, where the flat grave-stones, inscribed in 
 Hebrew and Italian, lie deep in Lido sand, waved over with 
 wild grass and poppies. I would fain believe that no neglect, 
 but rather the fashion of this folk, had left the monuments of 
 generations to be thus resumed by nature. Yet, knowing 
 nothing of the history of this burial-ground, I dare not affirm 
 so much. There is one outlying piece of the cemetery which 
 seems to contradict my charitable interpretation. It is not 
 far from San Nicoletto. No enclosure marks it from the 
 unconsecrated dunes. Acacia-trees sprout amid the monu- 
 ments, and break the tablets with their thorny shoots upthrust- 
 ing from the soil. Where patriarchs and rabbis sleep for 
 centuries, the fishers of the sea now wander, and defile these 
 habitations of the dead : 
 
 Corruption most abhorred 
 Mingling itself with their renowned ashes. 
 
 Some of the grave-stones have been used to fence the towing- 
 path ; and one I saw, well carved with letters legible of Hebrew 
 on fair Istrian marble, which roofed an open drain leading 
 from the stable of a Christian dog. 
 
 VIII. — A Venetian Restaurant. 
 
 At the end of a long glorious day, unhappy is that mortal 
 whom the Hermes of a cosmopolitan hotel, white-chokered 
 and white-waistcoated, marshals to the Hades of the ^ad/e- 
 (t'hbte. The world has often been compared to an inn ; but 
 on my way down to this common meal I have, not unfre- 
 
226 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 quently, felt fain to reverse the simile. From their separate 
 stations, at the appointed hour, the guests like ghosts flit to 
 a gloomy gas-lit chamber. They are of various speech and 
 race, preoccupied with divers interests and cares. Necessity 
 and the waiter drive them all to a sepulchral syssition, whereof 
 the cook too frequently deserves that old Greek comic epithet 
 — adov /Muynpog—cook of the Inferno. And just as we are told 
 that in Charon's boat we shall not be allowed to pick our 
 society, so here we must accept what fellowship the fates pro- 
 vide. An English spinster retailing paradoxes culled to-day 
 from Ruskin's handbooks ; an American citizen describing his 
 jaunt in a gondola from the railway station ; a German shop- 
 keeper descanting in one breath on Baur's Bock and the 
 beauties of the Marcusplatz ; an intelligent aesthete bent on 
 working into clearness his own views of Carpaccio's genius : 
 all these in turn, or all together, must be suffered gladly 
 through well-nigh two long hours. Uncomforted in soul we 
 rise from the expensive banquet; and how often rise from 
 it unfed ! 
 
 Far other be the doom of my own friends — of pious bards 
 and genial companions, lovers of natural and lovely things ! 
 Nor for these do I desire a seat at Florian's marble tables, 
 or a perch in Quadri's window, though the former supply 
 dainty food, and the latter command a bird's-eye view of the 
 Piazza. Rather would I lead them to a certain humble tavern 
 on the Zattere. It is a quaint, low-built, unpretending little 
 place, near a bridge, with a garden hard by which sends a 
 cataract of honeysuckles sunward over a too-jealous wall. In 
 front lies a Mediterranean steamer, which all day long has 
 been discharging cargo. Gazing westward up Giudecca, masts 
 and funnels bar the sunset and the Paduan hills ; and from 
 a little front room of the trattoria the view is so marine that 
 one keeps fancying oneself in some ship's cabin. Sea-captains 
 sit and smoke beside their glass of grog in the pavilion and 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 227 
 
 the cafe. But we do not seek their company at dinner-time. 
 Our way lies under yonder arch, and up the narrow alley into 
 a paved court. Here are oleanders in pots, and plants of 
 Japanese spindle-wood in tubs ; and from the walls beneath the 
 window hang cages of all sorts of birds — a talking parrot, a 
 whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the 
 fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his 
 master, snuffs around. "Where are Porthos and Aramis, my 
 friend?" Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his 
 stump of tail and pokes his nose into my hand. What a 
 Tartufe's nose it is ! Its bridge displays the full parade of 
 leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath, this muzzle 
 is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close 
 on Athos' jaw, and the wise dog wears it like a decoration. 
 A little farther we meet that ancient grey cat, who has no 
 discoverable name, but is famous for the sprightliness and 
 grace with which she bears her eighteen years. Not far from 
 the cat one is sure to find Carlo — the bird-like, bright-faced, 
 close-cropped Venetian urchin, whose duty it is to trot back- 
 wards and forwards between the cellar and the dining-tables. 
 At the end of the court we walk into the kitchen, where the 
 black-capped little padrone and the gigantic white-capped 
 chef mo. in close consultation. Here we have the privilege of 
 inspecting the larder — fish of various sorts, meat, vegetables, 
 several kinds of birds, pigeons, tordi, beccafichi, geese, wild 
 ducks, chickens, woodcock, &c., according to the season. We 
 select our dinner, and retire to eat it either in the court among 
 the birds beneath the vines, or in the low dark room which 
 occupies one side of it. Artists of many nationalities and 
 divers ages frequent this house ; and the talk arising from the 
 several little tables, turns upon points of interest and beauty in 
 the life and landscape of Venice. There can be no difference 
 of opinion about the excellence of the cuisi?te, or about the 
 reasonable charges of this trattoria. A soup of lentils, fol- 
 
228 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 lowed by boiled turbot or fried soles, beefsteak or mutton 
 cutlets, tordi or beccafichi, with a salad, the whole enlivened 
 with good red wine or Florio's Sicilian Marsala from the cask, 
 costs about four francs. Gas is unknown in the establishment. 
 There is no noise, no bustle, no brutality of waiters, no ahuris- 
 sejnent of tourists. And when dinner is done, we can sit awhile 
 over our cigarette and coffee, talking until the night invites us 
 to a stroll along the Zattere or a giro in the gondola. 
 
 IX. — Night in Venice. 
 
 Night in Venice ! Night is nowhere else so wonderful, 
 unless it be in winter among the high Alps. But the nights 
 of Venice and the nights of the mountains are too different in 
 kind to be compared. 
 
 There is the ever-recurring miracle of the full moon rising, 
 before day is dead, behind San Giorgio, spreading a path of 
 gold on the lagoon which black boats traverse with the glow- 
 worm lamp upon their prow ; ascending the cloudless sky and 
 silvering the domes of the Salute; pouring vitreous sheen 
 upon the red lights of the Piazzetta; flooding the Grand Canal, 
 and lifting the Rialto higher in ethereal whiteness ; piercing 
 but penetrating not the murky labyrinth of rio linked with rio, 
 through which we wind in light and shadow, to reach once 
 more the level glories and the luminous expanse of heaven 
 beyond the Misericordia. 
 
 This is the melodrama of Venetian moonlight; and if a 
 single impression of the night has to be retained from one visit 
 to Venice, those are fortunate who chance upon a full moon 
 of fair weather. Yet I know not whether some quieter and 
 soberer effects are not more thrilling. To-night, for example, 
 the waning moon will rise late through veils of scirocco. Over 
 the bridges of San Cristoforo and San Gregorio, through the 
 deserted Calle di Mezzo, my friend and I walk in darkness, 
 
A VENETIAN MEDLEY. 229 
 
 pass the marble basements of the Salute, and push our way 
 along its Riva to the point of the Dogana. We are out at sea 
 alone, between the Canalozzo and the Giudecca. A moist 
 wind ruffles the water and cools our forehead. It is so dark 
 that we can only see San Giorgio by the light reflected on it 
 from the Piazzetta. The same light climbs the Campanile of 
 S. Mark, and shows the golden angel in a mystery of gloom. 
 The only noise that reaches us is a confused hum from the 
 Piazza. Sitting and musing there, the blackness of the water 
 whispers in our ears a tale of death. And now we hear a 
 plash of oars, and gliding through the darkness comes a single 
 boat. One man leaps upon the landing-place without a word 
 and disappears. There is another wrapped in a military cloak 
 asleep. I see his face beneath me, pale and quiet. The 
 barcaruolo turns the point in silence. From the darkness they 
 came ; into the darkness they have gone. It is only an ordi- 
 nary incident of coastguard service. But the spirit of the night 
 has made a poem of it. 
 
 Even tempestuous and rainy weather, though melancholy 
 enough, is never sordid here. There is no noise from carriage 
 traffic in Venice, and the sea-wind preserves the purity and 
 transparency of the atmosphere. It had been raining all day, 
 but at evening came a partial clearing. I went down to the 
 Molo, where the large reach of the lagoon was all moon-silvered, 
 and San Giorgio Maggiore dark against the blueish sky, and 
 Santa Maria della Salute domed with moon-irradiated pearl, 
 and the wet slabs of the Riva shimmering in moonlight, the 
 whole misty sky, with its clouds and stellar spaces, drenched in 
 moonlight, nothing but moonlight sensible except the tawny 
 flare of gas-lamps and the orange lights of gondolas afloat upon 
 the waters. On such a night the very spirit of Venice is 
 abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the Sea. 
 
 Take yet another night. There had been a representation 
 of Verdi's "Forza del Destino" at the Teatro Malibran. 
 
230 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, 
 crossed the Piazza, and dived into the narrow cal/e which 
 leads to the traghetto of the Salute. It was a warm moist 
 starless night, and there seemed no air to breathe in those 
 narrow alleys. The gondolier was half asleep. Eustace 
 called him as we jumped into his boat, and rang our soldi on 
 the gunwale. Then he arose and turned the ferro round, and 
 stood across towards the Salute. Silently, insensibly, from the 
 oppression of confinement in the airless streets to the liberty 
 and immensity of the water and the night we passed. It was 
 but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said good- 
 night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that 
 brief passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things — 
 the freshness, and the darkness, and the kindness of the brood- 
 ing, all-enfolding night above the sea. 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 
 
 The night before the wedding we had a supper-party in my 
 rooms. We were twelve in all. My friend Eustace brought 
 his gondolier Antonio with fair-haired, dark-eyed wife, and little 
 Attilio, their eldest child. My own gondolier, Francesco, came 
 with his wife and two children. Then there was the hand- \^ 
 some, languid Luigi, who, in his best clothes, or out of them, is 
 fit for any drawing-room. Two gondoliers, in dark blue shirts, 
 completed the list of guests, if we exclude the maid Catina, 
 who came and went about the table, laughing and joining in 
 the songs, and sitting down at intervals to take her share of 
 wine. The big room looking across the garden to the Grand 
 Canal had been prepared for supper ; and the company were 
 to be received in the smaller, which has a fine open space 
 in front of it to southwards. But as the guests arrived, they 
 seemed to find the kitchen and the cooking that was going 
 on quite irresistible. Catina, it seems, had lost her head with 
 so many cuttlefishes, orai^ cakes, and fowls, and cutlets to 
 reduce to order. There was, therefore, a great bustle below 
 stairs ; and I could hear plainly that all my guests were lend- 
 ing their making, or their marring, hands to the preparation of 
 the supper. That the company should cook their own food 
 on the w^ay to the dining-room, seemed a quite novel arrange- 
 ment, but one that promised well for their contentment with 
 the banquet. Nobody could be dissatisfied with what was 
 everybody's affair. 
 
 When seven o'clock struck, Eustace and I, who had been 
 
232 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 entertaining the children in their mothers' absence, heard the 
 sound of steps upon the stairs. The guests arrived, bringing 
 their own risotto with them. Welcome was short, if hearty. 
 We sat down in carefully appointed order, and fell into such 
 conversation as the quarter of San Vio and our several 
 interests supplied. From time to time one of the matrons 
 left the table and descended to the kitchen, when a finishing 
 stroke was needed for roast pullet or stewed veal. The 
 excuses they made their host for supposed failure in the 
 dishes, lent a certain grace and comic charm to the common- 
 place of festivity. The entertainment was theirs as much 
 as mine ; and they all seemed to enjoy what took the form 
 by degrees of curiously complicated hospitality. I do not 
 think a well-ordered supper at any trattoria, such as at first 
 suggested itself to my imagination, would have given any of 
 us an equal pleasure or an equal sense of freedom. The three 
 children had become the guests of the whole party. Little 
 Attilio, propped upon an air-cushion, which puzzled him 
 exceedingly, ate through his supper and drank his wine with 
 solid satisfaction, opening the large brown eyes beneath those 
 tufts of clustering fair hair which promise much beauty for him 
 in his manhood. P>ancesco's boy, who is older and begins to 
 know the world, sat with a semi-suppressed grin upon his face, 
 as though the humour of the situation was not wholly hidden 
 from him. Little Teresa too was happy, except when her 
 mother, a severe Pomona, with enormous earrings and splendid 
 fazzoletto of crimson and orange dyes, pounced down upon 
 her for some supposed infraction of good manners — creanza, 
 as they vividly express it here. Only Luigi looked a trifle 
 bored. But Luigi has been a soldier, and has now attained 
 the supercilious superiority of young-manhood, which smokes 
 its cigar of an evening in the piazza and knows the merits of 
 the different cafes. 
 
 The great business of the evening began when the eating 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 233 
 
 was over, and the decanters filled with new wine of Mirano 
 circulated ft-eely. The four best singers of the party drew 
 together ; and the rest prepared themselves to make sugges- 
 tions, hum tunes, and join with fitful effect in choruses. 
 Antonio, who is a powerful young fellow, with bronzed cheeks 
 and a perfect tempest of coal-black hair in flakes upon his fore- 
 head, has a most extraordinary soprano — sound as a bell, 
 strong as a trumpet, well-trained, and true to the least shade 
 in intonation. Piero, whose rugged Neptunian features, sea- 
 wrinkled, tell of a rough water-life, boasts a bass of resonant, 
 almost pathetic quality. Francesco has a mezza voce^ which 
 might, by a stretch of politeness, be called baritone. Piero's 
 comrade, whose name concerns us not, has another of these 
 nondescript voices. They sat together with their glasses and 
 cigars before them, sketching part-songs in outline, striking the 
 keynote — now higher and now lower — till they saw their 
 subject well in view. Then they burst into full singing, 
 Antonio leading with a metal note that thrilled one's ears, but 
 still was musical. Complicated contrapuntal pieces, such as 
 we should call madrigals, with ever-recurring refrains of " Ven- 
 ezia, gemma Triatica, sposa del mar," descending probably 
 from ancient days, followed each other in quick succession. 
 Barcaroles, serenades, love-songs, and invitations to the water 
 were interwoven for relief. One of these romantic pieces had 
 a beautiful burden, "Dormi, o bella, o fingi di dormir," of 
 which the melody was fully worthy. But the most successful 
 of all the tunes were two with a sad motive. The one repeated 
 incessantly " Ohimd ! mia madre mori ; " the other was a girl's 
 love lament : " Perche tradirmi, perche lasciarmi ! prima d' 
 amarmi non eri cos\!" Even the children joined in these; and 
 Catina, who took the solo part in the second, was inspired to 
 a great dramatic effort. All these were purely popular songs. 
 The people of Venice, however, are passionate for operas. 
 Therefore we had duets and solos from " Ernani," the " Ballo 
 
234 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 in Maschera," and the "Forza del Destine," and one comic 
 chorus from " Boccaccio," which seemed to make them wild 
 with pleasure. To my mind, the best of these more formal 
 pieces was a duet between Attila and Italia from some opera 
 unknown to me, which Antonio and Piero performed with in- 
 comparable spirit. It was noticeable how, descending to the 
 people, sung by them for love at sea, or on excursions to the 
 villages round Mestre, these operatic reminiscences had lost 
 something of their theatrical formality, and assumed instead the 
 serious gravity, the quaint movement, and marked emphasis 
 which belong to popular music in Northern and Central Italy. 
 An antique character was communicated even to the recitative 
 of Verdi by slight, almost indefinable, changes of rhythm and 
 accent. There was no end to the singing. " Siamo appas- 
 sionati per il canto," frequently repeated, was proved true by 
 the profusion and variety of songs produced from inexhaustible 
 memories, lightly tried over, brilliantly performed, rapidly suc- 
 ceeding each other. Nor were gestures wanting — lifted arms, 
 hands stretched to hands, flashing eyes, hair tossed from the 
 forehead — unconscious and appropriate action — which showed 
 how the spirit of the music and words alike possessed the men. 
 One by one the children fell asleep. Little Attilio and Teresa 
 were tucked up beneath my Scotch shawl at two ends of a 
 great sofa ; and not even his father's clarion voice, in the char- 
 acter of Italia defying Attila to harm " le mie superbe citta," 
 could wake the little boy up. The night wore on. It was past 
 one. Eustace and I had promised to be in the church of the 
 Gesuati at six next morning. We, therefore, gave the guests 
 a gentle hint, which they as gently took. With exquisite, 
 because perfectly unaffected, breeding they sank for a few 
 moments into common conversation, then wrapped the children 
 up, and took their leave. It was an uncomfortable, warm, 
 wet night of sullen scirocco. 
 
 The next day, which was Sunday, Francesco called me at 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 235 
 
 five. There was no visible sunrise that cheerless damp 
 October morning. Grey dawn stole somehow imperceptibly 
 between the veil of clouds and leaden waters, as my friend and 
 I, well sheltered by our fe/ze, passed into the Giudecca, and 
 took our station before the church of the Gesuati. • A few 
 women from the neighbouring streets and courts crossed the 
 bridges in draggled petticoats on their way to first mass. A 
 few men, shouldering their jackets, lounged along the Zattere, 
 opened the great green doors, and entered. Then suddenly 
 Antonio cried out that the bridal party was on its way, not as 
 we had expected, in boats, but on foot. We left our gondola, 
 and fell into the ranks, after shaking hands with Francesco, 
 who is the elder brother of the bride. There was nothing very 
 noticeable in her appearance, except her large dark eyes. 
 Otherwise both face and figure were of a common type ; and 
 her bridal dress of sprigged grey silk, large veil and orange 
 blossoms, reduced her to the level of a bourgeoise. It was 
 much the same with the bridegroom. His features, indeed, 
 proved him a true Venetian gondolier; for the skin was 
 strained over the cheekbones, and the muscles of the throat 
 beneath the jaws stood out like cords, and the bright blue eyes 
 were deep-set beneath a spare brown forehead. But he had 
 provided a complete suit of black for the occasion, and 
 wore a shirt of worked cambric, which disguised what is 
 really splendid in the physique of these oarsmen, at once 
 slender and sinewy. Both bride and bridegroom looked 
 uncomfortable in their clothes. The light that fell upon them 
 in the church was dull and leaden. The ceremony, which was 
 very hurriedly performed by an unctuous priest, did not 
 appear to impress either of them. Nobody in the bridal party, 
 crowding together on both sides of the altar, looked as though 
 the service was of the slightest interest and moment. Indeed, 
 this was hardly to be wondered at ; for the priest, so far as I 
 could understand his gabble, took the larger portion for read. 
 
236 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 after muttering the first words of the rubric. A little carven 
 image of an acolyte — a weird boy who seemed to move by 
 springs, whose hair had all the semblance of painted wood, 
 and whose complexion was white and red like a clown's — did 
 not make matters more intelligible by spasmodically clattering 
 responses. 
 
 After the ceremony we heard mass and contributed to three 
 distinct offertories. Considering how much account even two 
 so/di are to these poor people, I was really angry when I heard 
 the copper shower. Every member of the party had his or 
 her pennies ready, and dropped them into the boxes. Whether 
 it was the effect of the bad morning, or the ugliness of a very 
 ill-designed barocco building, or the fault of the fat oily priest, 
 I know not. But the sposalizio struck me as tame and cheer- 
 less, the mass as irreverent and vulgarly conducted. At the 
 same time there is something too impressive in the mass for 
 any perfunctory performance to divest its symbolism of sub- 
 limity. A Protestant Communion Service lends itself more 
 easily to degradation by unworthiness in the minister. 
 
 We walked down the church in double file, led by the bride 
 and bridegroom, who had knelt during the ceremony with 
 the best man — compare^ as he is called — at a narrow /rzV-///Vz/ 
 before the altar. The cojnpare is a person of distinction at 
 these weddings. He has to present the bride with a great 
 pyramid of artificial flowers, which is placed before her at the 
 marriage-feast, a packet of candles, and a box of bonbons. 
 The comfits, when the box is opened, are found to include 
 two magnificent sugar babies lying in their cradles. I was 
 told that a compare, who does the thing handsomely, must be 
 prepared to spend about a hundred francs upon these presents, 
 in addition to the wine and cigars with which he treats his 
 friends. On this occasion the women were agreed that he had 
 done his duty well. He was a fat, wealthy little man, who 
 lived by letting market-boats for hire on the Rialto. 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 237 
 
 From the church to the bride's house was a walk of some 
 three minutes. On the way we were introduced to the father 
 of the bride — a very magnificent personage, with points of 
 strong resemblance to Vittorio Emmanuele. He wore an 
 enormous broad-brimmed hat and emerald-green earrings, and 
 looked considerably younger than his eldest son, Francesco. 
 Throughout the nozze he took the lead in a grand imperious 
 fashion of his own. Wherever he went, he seemed to fill 
 the place, and was fully aware of his own importance. In 
 Florence I think he would have got the nickname of Tacchin^ 
 or turkey-cock. Here at Venice the sons and daughters call 
 their parent briefly Vecchio. I heard him so addressed with 
 a certain amount of awe, expecting an explosion of bubbly- 
 jock displeasure. But he took it, as though it was natural, 
 without disturbance. The other Vecchio^ father of the bride- 
 groom, struck me as more sympathetic. He was a gentle old 
 man, proud of his many prosperous, laborious sons. They, 
 like the rest of the gentlemen, were gondoliers. Both the 
 Vccchiy indeed, continue to ply their trade, day and night, at 
 the traghetio. 
 
 Traghetti are stations for gondolas at different points of 
 the canals. As their name implies, it is the first duty of the 
 gondoliers upon them to ferry people across. This they do 
 for the fixed fee of five centimes. The traghetti are in fact 
 Venetian cab-stands. And, of course, like London cabs, the 
 gondolas may be taken off them for trips. The municipality, 
 however, makes it a condition, under penalty of fine to the 
 traghetto, that each station should always be provided with 
 two boats for the service of the ferry. When vacancies occur 
 on the traghetti, a gondolier who owns or hires a boat makes 
 application to the municipality, receives a number, and is 
 inscribed as plying at a certain station. He has now entered 
 a sort of guild, which is presided over by a Capo-traghetto, 
 elected by the rest for the protection of their interests, the 
 
238 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 settlement of disputes, and the management of their common 
 funds. In the old acts of Venice this functionary is styled 
 Gastaldo di iraghetto. The members have to contribute some- 
 thing yearly to the guild. This payment varies upon different 
 stations, according to the greater or less amount of the tax 
 levied by the municipality on the iraghetto. The highest sub- 
 scription I have heard of is twenty-five francs ; the lowest, 
 seven. There is one iraghetto., known by the name of Ma- 
 donna del Giglio or Zobenigo, which possesses near its pergola 
 of vines a nice old brown Venetian picture. Some stranger 
 offered a considerable sum for this. But the guild refused to 
 part with it. 
 
 As may be imagined, the iraghetti vary greatly in the 
 amount and quality of their custom. By far the best are those 
 in the neighbourhood of the hotels upon the Grand Canal. 
 At any one of these a gondolier during the season is sure of 
 picking up some foreigner or other who will pay him hand- 
 somely for comparatively light service. A iraghetto on the 
 Giudecca, on the contrary, depends upon Venetian traffic. 
 The work is more monotonous, and the pay is reduced to its 
 tarriffed minimum. So far as I can gather, an industrious 
 gondolier, with a good boat, belonging to a good iraghetto., may 
 make as much as ttn or fifteen francs in a single day. But 
 this cannot be relied on. They therefore prefer a fixed 
 appointment with a private family, for which they receive by 
 tariff five francs a day, or by arrangement for long periods 
 perhaps four francs a day, with certain perquisites and small 
 advantages. It is great luck to get such an engagement for 
 the winter. The heaviest anxieties which beset a gondolier 
 are then disposed of. Having entered private service, they 
 are not allowed to ply their trade on the iraghetto, except by 
 stipulation with their masters. Then they may take their 
 place one night out of every six in the rank and file. The 
 gondoliers have two proverbs, which show how desirable it is, 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 239 
 
 while taking a fixed engagement, to keep their hold on the 
 traghetto. One is to this effect : // traghetio e un buo7t padrone. 
 The other satirises the meanness of the poverty-stricken 
 Venetian nobility : poinpa di servitu, misera insegfia. When 
 they combine the traghetto with private service, the munici- 
 pality insists on their retaining the number painted on their 
 gondola; and against this their employers frequently object. 
 It is, therefore, a great point for a gondolier to make such an 
 arrangement with his master as will leave him free to show 
 his number. The reason for this regulation is obvious. 
 Gondoliers are known more by their numbers and their 
 tragheiti than their names. They tell me that though there 
 are upwards of a thousand registered in Venice, each man of 
 the trade knows the whole confraternity by face and number. 
 Taking all things into consideration, I think four francs a day 
 the whole year round are very good earnings for a gondolier. 
 On this he will marry and rear a family, and put a little 
 money by. A young unmarried man, working at two and a 
 half or three francs a day, is proportionately well-to-do. If he 
 is economical, he ought upon these wages to save enough in 
 two or three years to buy himself a gondola. A boy from fifteen 
 to nineteen is called a mezz^ uomo, and gets about one franc a 
 day. A new gondola with all its fittings is worth about a 
 thousand francs. It does not last in good condition more than 
 six or seven years. At the end of that time the hull will 
 fetch eighty francs. A new hull can be had for three 
 hundred francs. The old fittings — brass sea-horses or caval/t, 
 steel prow or ferro, covered cabin or felze, cushions and 
 leather-covered back-board or stramazetio^ may be transferred 
 to it. When a man wants to start a gondola, he will begin by 
 buying one already half past service — a gondola da traghetto or 
 di mezza eta. This should cost him something over two 
 hundred francs. Little by Httle, he accumulates the needful 
 fittings ; and when his first purchase is worn out, he hopes to 
 
240 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 set up with a well-appointed equipage. He thus gradually 
 works his way from the rough trade which involves hard work 
 and poor earnings to that more profitable industry which 
 cannot be carried on without a smart boat. The gondola is a 
 source of continual expense for repairs. Its oars have to be 
 replaced. It has to be w^ashed with sponges, blacked, and 
 varnished. Its bottom needs frequent cleaning. Weeds 
 adhere to it in the warm brackish water, growing rapidly 
 through the summer months, and demanding to be scrubbed 
 off once in every four weeks. The gondolier has no place 
 where he can do this for himself. He therefore takes his boat 
 to a wharf, or squero^ as the place is called. At these squeri 
 gondolas are built as well as cleaned. The fee for a thorough 
 setting to rights. of the boat is five francs. It must be done 
 upon a fine day. Thus in addition to the cost, the owner loses 
 a good day's work. 
 
 These details will serve to give some notion of the sort of 
 people with whom Eustace and I spent our day. The bride's 
 house is in an excellent position on an open canal leading 
 from the Canalozzo to the Giudecca. She had arrived before 
 us, and received her friends in the middle of the room. Each 
 of us in turn kissed her cheek and murmured our congratula- 
 tions. We found the large living-room of the house arranged 
 with chairs all round the walls, and the company were mar- 
 shalled in some order of precedence, my friend and I taking 
 place near the bride. On either hand airy bedrooms opened 
 out, and two large doors, wide open, gave a view from where 
 we sat of a good-sized kitchen. This arrangement of the 
 house was not only comfortable, but pretty; for the bright 
 copper pans and pipkins ranged on shelves along the kitchen 
 walls had a very cheerful effect. The walls were whitewashed, 
 but literally covered with all sorts of pictures. A great plaster 
 cast from some antique, an Atys, Adonis, or Paris, looked 
 down from a bracket placed between the windows. There 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 241 
 
 was enough furniture, solid and well kept, in all the rooms. 
 Among the pictures were full-length portraits in oils of two 
 celebrated gondoliers— one in antique costume, the other 
 painted a few years since. The original of the latter soon 
 came and stood before it. He had won regatta prizes ; and 
 the flags of four discordant colours were painted round him by 
 the artist, who had evidently cared more to commemorate the 
 triumphs of his sitter and to strike a likeness than to secure 
 the tone of his own picture. This champion turned out a 
 fine fellow — Corradini — with one of the brightest little gon- 
 dohers of thirteen for his son. 
 
 After the company were seated, lemonade and cakes were 
 handed round amid a hubbub of chattering women. Then 
 followed cups of black coffee and more cakes. Then a glass of 
 Cyprus and more cakes. Then a glass of curagoa and more 
 cakes. Finally, a glass of noyau and still more cakes. It 
 was only a little after seven in the morning. Yet politeness 
 compelled us to consume these delicacies. I tried to shirk 
 my duty; but this discretion was taken by my hosts for 
 well-bred modesty ; and instead of being let off, I had the 
 richest piece of pastry and the largest maccaroon available 
 pressed so kindly on me, that, had they been poisoned, I 
 would not have refused to eat them. The conversation grew 
 more and more animated, the "women gathering together in 
 their dresses of bright blue and scarlet, the men lighting cigars 
 and puffing out a few quiet words. It struck me as a drawback 
 that these picturesque people had put on Sunday-clothes to 
 look as much like shopkeepers as possible. But they did not 
 all of them succeed. Two handsome women, who handed the 
 cups round — one a brunette, the other a blonde — wore skirts 
 of brilliant blue, with a sort of white jacket, and white kerchief 
 folded heavily about their shoulders. The brunette had a great 
 string of coral, the blonde of amber, round her throat. Gold 
 earrings and the long gold chains Venetian women wear, of all 
 
 Q 
 
242 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 patterns and degrees of value, abounded. Nobody appeared 
 without them ; but I could not see any of an antique make. 
 The men seemed to be contented with rings — huge, heavy 
 rings of solid gold, worked with a rough flower pattern. One 
 young fellow had three upon his fingers. This circumstance 
 led me to speculate whether a certain portion at least of this 
 display of jewellery around me had not been borrowed for the 
 occasion. 
 
 Eustace and I were treated quite like friends. They called 
 us / Signori. But this was only, I think, because our English 
 names are quite unmanageable. The women fluttered about 
 us and kept asking whether we really liked it all ? whether we 
 should come to the pranzo ? whether it was true we danced ? It 
 seemed to give them unafl"ected pleasure to be kind to us ] and 
 when we rose to go away, the whole company crowded round, 
 shaking hands and saying : " Si divertird bene stasera ! " No- 
 body resented our presence ; what was better, no one put him- 
 self out for us. " Vogliono veder il nostro costume,^^ I heard one 
 woman say. 
 
 We got home soon after eight, and, as our ancestors 
 would have said, settled our stomachs with a dish of tea. 
 It makes me shudder now to think of the mixed liquids and 
 miscellaneous cakes we had consumed at that unwonted 
 hour. 
 
 At half-past three, Eustace and I again prepared ourselves 
 for action. His gondola was in attendance, covered with the 
 felze, to take us to the house of the sposa. We found the canal 
 crowded with poor people of the quarter — men, women, and 
 children lining the walls along its side, and clustering like bees 
 upon the bridges. The water itself was almost choked with 
 gondolas. Evidently the folk of San Vio thought our wedding 
 procession would be a most exciting pageant. We entered the 
 house, and were again greeted by the bride and bridegroom, 
 who consigned each of us to the control of a fair tyrant. This 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 343 
 
 is the most fitting way of describing our introduction to our 
 partners of the evening ; for we were no sooner presented, than 
 the ladies swooped upon us Hke their prey, placing their shawls 
 upon our left arms, while they seized and clung to what was 
 left available of us for locomotion. There was considerable 
 giggling and tittering throughout the company when Signora 
 Fenzo, the young and comely wife of a gondolier, thus took 
 possession of Eustace, and Signora dell' Acqua, the widow of 
 another gondolier, appropriated me. The affair had been 
 arranged beforehand, and their friends had probably chaffed 
 them with the difficulty of managing two mad Englishmen. 
 However, they proved equal to the occasion, and the difficulties 
 were entirely on our side. Signora Fenzo was a handsome 
 brunette, quiet in her manners, who meant business. I envied 
 Eustace his subjection to such a reasonable being. Signora 
 deir Acqua, though a widow, was by no means disconsolate ; 
 and I soon perceived that it would require all the address and 
 diplomacy I possessed, to make anything out of her society. 
 She laughed incessantly; darted in the most diverse direc- 
 tions, dragging me along with her; exhibited me in triumph 
 to her cronies; made eyes at me over a fan; repeated my 
 clumsiest remarks, as though they gave her indescribable 
 amusement; and all the while jabbered Venetian at express 
 rate, without the slightest regard for my incapacity to follow 
 her vagaries. The Vecchio marshalled us in order. First went 
 the sposa and comare with the mothers of bride and bride- 
 groom. Then followed the sposo and the bridesmaid. After 
 them I was made to lead my fair tormentor. As we descended 
 the staircase there arose a hubbub of excitement from the 
 crowd on the canals. The gondolas moved turbidly upon the 
 face of the waters. The bridegroom kept muttering to him- 
 self, " How we shall be criticised ! They will tell each other 
 who was decently dressed, and who stepped awkwardly into 
 the boats, and what the price of my boots was ! " Such 
 
244 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 exclamations, murmured at intervals, and followed by chest- 
 drawn sighs, expressed a deep preoccupation. With regard 
 to his boots, he need have had no anxiety. They were of the 
 shiniest patent leather, much too tight, and without a speck of 
 dust upon them. But his nervousness infected me with a 
 cruel dread. All those eyes were going to watch how we com- 
 ported ourselves in jumping from the landing-steps into the 
 boat ! If this operation, upon a ceremonious occasion, has 
 terrors even for a gondolier, how formidable it ought to be to 
 me ! And here is the Signora dell' Acqua's white cachemire 
 shawl dangling on one arm, and the Signora herself languish- 
 ingly clinging to the other ; and the gondolas are fretting in a 
 fury of excitement, like corks, upon the churned green water ! 
 The moment was terrible. The s/>osa and her three com- 
 panions had been safely stowed away beneath their fe/ze. The 
 sjfoso had successfully handed the bridesmaid into the second 
 gondola. I had to perform the same office for my partner. 
 Off she went, like a bird, from the bank. I seized a happy 
 moment, followed, bowed, and found myself to my content- 
 ment gracefully ensconced in a corner opposite the widow. 
 Seven more gondolas were packed. The procession moved. 
 We glided dow^n the little channel, broke away into the Grand 
 Canal, crossed it, and dived into a labyrinth from which we 
 finally emerged before our destination, the Trattoria di San 
 Gallo. The perils of the landing were soon over; and, with 
 the rest of the guests, my mercurial companion and I slowly 
 ascended a long flight of stairs leading to a vast upper chamber. 
 Here we were to dine. 
 
 It had been the gallery of some palazzo in old days, was 
 above one hundred feet in length, fairly broad, with a roof of 
 wooden rafters and large windows opening on a courtyard 
 garden. I could see the tops of three cypress-trees cutting 
 the grey sky upon a level with us. A long table occupied the 
 centre of this room. It had been laid for upwards of forty 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 245 
 
 persons, and we filled it. There was plenty of light from great 
 glass lustres blazing with gas. When the ladies had arranged 
 their dresses, and the gentlemen had exchanged a few polite 
 remarks, we all sat down to dinner — I next my inexorable 
 widow, Eustace beside his calm and comely partner. The 
 first impression was one of disappointment. It looked so like 
 a public dinner of middle-class people. There was no local 
 character in costume or customs. Men and women sat 
 politely bored, expectant, trifling with their napkins, yawning, 
 muttering nothings about the weather or their neighbours. 
 The frozen commonplaceness of the scene was made for me 
 still more oppressive by Signora dell' Acqua. She was evi- 
 dently satirical, and could not be happy unless continually 
 laughing at or with somebody. "What a stick the woman 
 will think me ! " I kept saying to myself. "How shall I ever 
 invent jokes in this strange land? I cannot even flirt with 
 her in Venetian ! And here I have condemned myself — and 
 her too, poor thing — to sit through at least three hours of 
 mortal dulness ! " Yet the widow was by no means unattrac- 
 tive. Dressed in black, she had contrived by an artful arrange- 
 ment of lace and jewellery to give an air of lightness to her 
 costume. She had a pretty little pale face, a ininois chiffonne^ 
 with slightly turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a 
 dazzling set of teeth, . and a tempestuously frizzled mop of 
 powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her 
 quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unin- 
 telligible incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck 
 me that, if we once found a common term of communication 
 we should become good friends. But for the moment that 
 modus Vivendi seemed unattainable. She had not recovered 
 from the first excitement of her capture of me. She was still 
 showing me off and trying to stir me up. The arrival of the 
 soup gave me a momentary relief; and soon the serious 
 business of the afternoon began. I may add that before 
 
246 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 dinner was ov^er, the Signora dell' Acqua and I were fast 
 friends. I had discovered the way of making jokes, and she 
 had become intelligible. I found her a very nice, though 
 flighty, little woman; and I believe she thought me gifted 
 with the faculty of uttering eccentric epigrams in a grotesque 
 tongue. Some of my remarks were flung about the table, and 
 had the same success as uncouth Lombard carvings have with 
 connoisseurs in naivetes of art. By that time we had come to 
 be compare and coinare to each other — the sequel of some 
 clumsy piece of jocularity. 
 
 It was a heavy entertainment, copious in quantity, excellent 
 in quality, plainly but well cooked. I remarked there was no 
 fish. The widow replied that everybody present ate fish to 
 satiety at home. They did not join a marriage feast at the 
 San Gallo, and pay their nine francs, for that ! It should be 
 observed that each guest paid for his own entertainment. 
 This appears to be the custom. Therefore attendance is 
 complimentary, and the married couple are not at ruinous 
 charges for the banquet. A curious feature in the whole pro- 
 ceeding had its origin in this custom. I noticed that before 
 each cover lay an empty plate, and that my partner began with 
 the first course to heap upon it what she had not eaten. She 
 also took large helpings, and kept advising me to do the same. 
 I said : " No ; I only take what I want to eat ; if I fill that 
 plate in front of me as you are doing, it will be great waste." 
 This remark elicited shrieks of laughter from all who heard it ; 
 and when the hubbub had subsided, I perceived an apparently 
 official personage bearing down upon Eustace, who was in the 
 same perplexity. It was then circumstantially explained to us 
 that the empty plates were put there in order that we might lay 
 aside what we could not conveniently eat, and take it home 
 with us. At the end of the dinner the widow (whom I must 
 now call my comare) had accumulated two whole chickens 
 half a turkey, and a large assortment of mixed eatables, I, 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 247 
 
 performed my duty and won her regard by placing delicacies 
 at her disposition. 
 
 Crudely stated, this proceeding moves disgust. But that is 
 only because one has not thought the matter out. In the 
 performance there was nothing coarse or nasty. These good 
 folk had made a contract at so much a head — so many fowls, 
 so many pounds of beef, &c., to be supplied ; and what they 
 had fairly bought, they clearly had a right to. No one, so far 
 as I could notice, tried to take more than his proper share ; 
 except, indeed, Eustace and myself. In our first eagerness to 
 conform to custom, we both overshot the mark, and grabbed 
 at disproportionate helpings. The waiters politely observed 
 that we were taking what was meant for two ; and as the 
 courses followed in interminable sequence, we soon acquired 
 the tact of what was due to us. 
 
 Meanwhile the room grew warm. The gentlemen threw off 
 their coats — a pleasant liberty of which I availed myself, and 
 was immediately more at ease. The ladies divested themselves 
 of their shoes (strange to relate !) and sat in comfort with their 
 stockinged feet upon the scagliola pavement I observed that 
 some cavaliers by special permission were allowed to remove 
 their partners' slippers. This was not my lucky fate. My 
 comare had not advanced to that point of intimacy. Healths 
 began to be drunk. The conversation took a lively turn ; and 
 women went fluttering round the table, visiting their friends, 
 to sip out of their glass, and ask each other how they were 
 getting on. It was not long before the stiff veneer of bour- 
 geoisie which bored me had worn off. The people emerged in 
 their true selves : natural, gentle, sparkling with enjoyment, 
 playful. Playful is, I think, the best word to describe them. 
 They played with infinite grace and innocence, like kittens, 
 from the old men of sixty to the little boys of thirteen. Very 
 little wine was drunk. Each guest had a litre placed before 
 him. Many did not finish theirs ; and for very few was it 
 
248 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 replenished. When at last the dessert arrived, and the bride's 
 comfits had been handed round, they began to sing. It was 
 very pretty to see a party of three or four friends gathering 
 round some popular beauty, and paying her compliments in 
 verse — they grouped behind her chair, she sitting back in it 
 and laughing up to them, and joining in the chorus. The 
 words, " Brunetta mia simpatica, ti amo sempre piii," sung 
 after this fashion to Eustace's handsome partner, who puffed 
 delicate whiffs from a Russian cigarette, and smiled her thanks, 
 had a peculiar appropriateness. All the ladies, it may be 
 observed in passing, had by this time lit their cigarettes. The 
 men were smoking Toscani, Sellas, or Cavours, and the little 
 boys were dancing round the table breathing smoke from their 
 pert nostrils. 
 
 The dinner, in fact, was over. Other relatives of the guests 
 arrived, and then we saw how some of the reserved dishes were 
 to be bestowed. A side-table was spread at the end of the 
 gallery, and these late-comers were regaled with plenty by their 
 friends. Meanwhile, the big table at which we had dined was 
 taken to pieces and removed. The scagliola floor was swept 
 by the waiters. Musicians came streaming in and took their 
 places. The ladies resumed their shoes. Every one prepared 
 to dance. 
 
 My friend and I were now at liberty to chat with the men. 
 He knew some of them by sight, and claimed acquaintance 
 with others. There was plenty of talk about different boats, 
 gondolas, and sandolos and topos, remarks upon the past 
 season, and inquiries as to chances of engagements in the 
 future. One young fellow told us how he had been drawn 
 for the army, and should be obliged to give up his trade just 
 when he had begun to make it answer. He had got a new 
 gondola, and this would have to be hung up during the years 
 of his service. The warehousing of a boat in these circum- 
 stances costs nearly one hundred francs a year, which is a 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 249 
 
 serious tax upon the pockets of a private in the line. Many 
 questions were put in turn to us, but all of the same tenor. 
 " Had we really enjoyed the pranzo ? Now, really, were we 
 amusing ourselves? And did we think the custom of the 
 wedding u?i bel costtcme ? " We could give an unequivocally 
 hearty response to all these interrogations. The men seemed 
 pleased. Their interest in our enjoyment was unaffected. It 
 is noticeable how often the word divertimento is heard upon 
 the lips of the Italians. They have a notion that it is the 
 function in Hfe of the Signori to amuse themselves. 
 
 The ball opened, and now we were much besought by the 
 ladies. I had to deny myself with a whole series of comical 
 excuses. Eustace performed his duty after a stiff English 
 fashion — once with his pretty partner of the pranzo^ and once 
 again with a fat gondolier. The band played waltzes and 
 polkas, chiefly upon patriotic airs — the Marcia Reale, Gari- 
 baldi's Hymn, &c. Men danced with men, women with 
 women, little boys and girls together. The gallery whirled 
 with a laughing crowd. There was plenty of excitement and 
 enjoyment — not an unseemly or extravagant word or gesture. 
 My comare careered about with a light msenadic impetuosity, 
 which made me regret my inability to accept her pressing 
 invitations. She pursued me into every corner of the room, 
 but when at last I dropped excuses and told her that my real 
 reason for not dancing was that it would hurt my health, she 
 waived her claims at once with an Ah^ poverino ! 
 
 Some time after midnight we felt that we had had enough 
 of divertimento. Francesco helped us to slip out unobserved. 
 With many silent good wishes we left the innocent, playful 
 people who had been so kind to us. The stars were shining 
 from a watery sky as we passed into the piazza beneath the 
 Campanile and the pinnacles of S. Mark. The Riva was 
 almost empty, and the little waves fretted the boats moored 
 to the piazzetta, as a warm moist breeze went fluttering by. 
 
250 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 We smoked a last cigar, crossed our traghetto, and were soon 
 sound asleep at the end of a long, pleasant day. The ball, 
 we heard next morning, finished about four. 
 
 Since that evening I have had plenty of opportunities for 
 seeing my friends the gondoliers, both in their own homes and 
 in my apartment. Several have entertained me at their mid- 
 day meal of fried fish and amber-coloured polenta. These 
 repasts were always cooked with scrupulous cleanliness, and 
 served upon a table covered with coarse linen. The polenta 
 is turned out upon a wooden platter, and cut with a string 
 called lassa. You take a large slice of it on the palm of the 
 left hand, and break it with the fingers of the right. Whole- 
 some red wine of the Paduan district and good white bread 
 were never wanting. The rooms in which we met to eat 
 looked out on narrow lanes or over pergolas of yellowing 
 vines. Their whitewashed walls wxre hung with photographs 
 of friends and foreigners, many of them souvenirs from English 
 or American employers. The men, in broad black hats and 
 lilac shirts, sat round the table, girt with the red waist-wrapper, 
 or fascia., which marks the ancient faction of the Castellani. 
 The other faction, called Nicolotti, are distinguished by a 
 black assisa. The quarters of the town are divided unequally 
 and irregularly into these two parties. What was once a 
 formidable rivalry between two sections of the Venetian popu- 
 lace, still survives in challenges to trials of strength and skill 
 upon the water. The women, in their many-coloured ker- 
 chiefs, stirred polenta at the smoke-blackened chimney, whose 
 huge pent-house roof projects two feet or more across the 
 hearth. When they had served the table they took their seat 
 on low stools, knitted stockings, or drank out of glasses handed 
 across the shoulder to them by their lords. Some of these 
 women were clearly notable housewives, and I have no reason 
 to suppose that they do not take their full share of the house- 
 work. Boys and girls came in and out, and got a portion of 
 
THE GONDOLIER'S WEDDING. 251 
 
 the dinner to consume where they thought best. Children 
 went tottering about upon the red-brick floor, the playthings 
 of those hulking fellows, who handled them very gently and 
 spoke kindly in a sort of confidential whisper to their ears. 
 These little ears were mostly pierced for earrings, and the 
 light blue eyes of the urchins peeped maliciously beneath 
 shocks of yellow hair. A dog was often of the party. He 
 ate fish hke his masters, and was made to beg for it by sitting 
 up and rowing with his paws. Voga^ Azzb, iwga ! The 
 Anzolo who talked thus to his little brown Spitz-dog has the 
 hoarse voice of a Triton and the movement of an animated 
 sea-wave. Azzo performed his trick, swallowed his fish-bones, 
 and the fiery Anzolo looked round approvingly. 
 
 On all these occasions I have found these gondoliers the 
 same sympathetic, industrious, cheery affectionate folk. They 
 live in many respects a hard and precarious life. The winter 
 in particular is a time of anxiety, and sometimes of privation, 
 even to the well-to-do among them. Work then is scarce, 
 and what there is, is rendered disagreaable to them by the cold. 
 Yet they take their chance with facile temper, and are not 
 soured by hardships. The amenities of the Venetian sea and 
 air, the healthiness of the lagoons, the cheerful bustle of the 
 poorer quarters, the brilliancy of this Southern sunlight, and 
 the beauty which is everywhere apparent, must be reckoned as 
 important factors in the formation of their character. And of 
 that character, as I have said, the final note is playfulness. In 
 spite of difficulties, their life has never been stern enough to 
 sadden them. Bare necessities are marvellously cheap, and 
 the pinch of real bad weather — such frost as locked the lagoons 
 in ice two years ago, or such south-western gales as flooded 
 the basement floors of all the houses on the Zattere — is rare 
 and does not last long. On the other hand, their life has 
 never been so lazy as to reduce them to the savagery of the 
 traditional Neapolitan lazzaroni. They have had to work 
 
252 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 daily for small earnings, but under favourable conditions, and 
 their labour has been lightened by much good-fellowship 
 among themselves, by the amusements of their fes/e and their 
 singing clubs. 
 
 Of course it is not easy for a stranger in a very different 
 social position to feel that he has been admitted to their con- 
 fidence. Italians have an ineradicable habit of making them- 
 selves externally agreeable, of bending in all indifferent matters 
 to the whims and wishes of superiors, and of saying what they 
 think Signori like. This habit, while it smoothes the surface 
 of existence, raises up a barrier of compliment and partial 
 insincerity, against which the more downright natures of us 
 Northern folk break in vain efforts. Our advances are met 
 with an imperceptible but impermeable resistance by the very 
 people who are bent on making the world pleasant to us. It 
 is the very reverse of that dour opposition which a Lowland 
 Scot or a North English peasant offers to familiarity; but it 
 is hardly less insurmountable. The treatment, again, which 
 Venetians of the lower class have received through centuries 
 from their own nobility, makes attempts at fraternisation on the 
 part of gentlemen unintelligible to them. The best way, here 
 and elsewhere, of overcoming these obstacles is to have some 
 bond of work or interest in common — of service on the one 
 side rendered, and goodwill on the other honestly displayed. 
 The men of whom I have been speaking will, I am convinced, 
 not shirk their share of duty or make unreasonable claims 
 upon the generosity of their employers. 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 
 
 I. — The Sestiere di San Polo. 
 
 There is a quarter of Venice not much visited by tourists, 
 lying as it does outside their beat, away from the Rialto, 
 at a considerable distance from the Frari and San Rocco, in 
 what might almost pass for a city separated by a hundred 
 miles from the Piazza. This is the quarter of San Polo, one 
 corner of which, somewhere between the back of the Palazzo 
 Foscari and the Campo di San Polo, was the scene of a 
 memorable act of vengeance in the year 1546. Here Loren- 
 zino dei Medici, the murderer of his cousin Alessandro, was at 
 last tracked down and put to death by paid cut-throats. How 
 they succeeded in their purpose, we know in every detail from 
 the narrative dictated by the chief assassin. His story so 
 curiously illustrates the conditions of life in Italy three cen- 
 turies ago, that I have thought it worthy of abridgment. 
 But, in order to make it intelligible, and to paint the manners 
 of the times more fully, I must first relate the series of events 
 which led to Lorenzino's murder of his cousin Alessandro, 
 and from that to his own subsequent assassination. Lorenzino 
 dei Medici, the Florentine Brutus of the sixteenth century, is 
 the hero of the tragedy. Some of his relatives, however, must 
 first appear upon the scene before he enters with a patriot's 
 knife concealed beneath a court-fool's bauble. 
 
 II. — The Murder of Ippolito dei Medici. 
 
 After the final extinction of the Florentine Republic, the 
 hopes of the Medici, who now aspired to the dukedom of 
 
254 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Tuscany, rested on three bastards — Alessandro, the reputed 
 child of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino ; Ippolito, the natural son 
 of Giuliano, Duke of Nemours ; and Giulio, the offspring of an 
 elder Giuliano, who was at this time Pope, with the title of 
 Clement VII. Clement had seen Rome sacked in 1527 by a 
 horde of freebooters fighting under the Imperial standard, 
 and had used the remnant of these troops, commanded by 
 the Prince of Orange, to crush his native city in the memor- 
 able siege of 1529-30. He now determined to rule Florence 
 from the Papal chair by the help of the two bastard cousins 
 I have named. Alessandro was created Duke of Civitk di 
 Penna, and sent to take the first place in the city. Ippolito 
 ^^■as made a cardinal ; since the Medici had learned that Rome 
 was the real basis of their power, and it was undoubtedly in 
 Clement's policy to advance this scion of his house to the 
 Papacy. The sole surviving representative of the great 
 Lorenzo de' Medici's legitimate blood was Catherine, daughter 
 of the Duke of Urbino by Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne. 
 She was pledged in marriage to the Duke of Orleans, who 
 was afterwards Henry II. of France. A natural daughter of 
 the Emperor Charles V. was provided for her putative half- 
 brother Alessandro. By means of these alliances the succes- 
 sion of Ippolito to the Papal chair would have been secured, 
 and the strength of the Medici would have been confirmed in 
 Tuscany, but for the disasters which have now to be related. 
 
 Between the cousins Alessandro and Ippolito there was no 
 love lost. As boys, they had both played the part of princes 
 in Florence under the guardianship of the Cardinal Passerini 
 da Cortona. The higher rank had then been given to Ippolito, 
 who bore the title of Magnifico, and seemed thus designated 
 for the lordship of the city. Ippolito, though only half a 
 Medici, was of more authentic lineage than Alessandro; for 
 no proof positive could be adduced that the latter was even 
 a spurious child of the Duke of Urbino. He bore obvious 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 255 
 
 witness to his mother's blood upon his mulatto's face ; but this 
 mother was the wife of a groom, and it was certain that in the 
 court of Urbino she had not been chary of her favours. The 
 old magnificence of taste, the patronage of art and letters, and 
 the preference for Hberal studies which distinguished Casa 
 Medici, survived in Ippolito; whereas Alessandro manifested 
 only the brutal lusts of a debauched tyrant. It was therefore 
 with great reluctance that, moved by reasons of state and 
 domestic policy, Ippolito saw himself compelled to accept the 
 scarlet hat. Alessandro having been recognised as a son of 
 the Duke of Urbino, had become half-brother to the future 
 Queen of France To treat him as the head of the family was 
 a necessity thrust, in the extremity of the Medicean fortunes, 
 upon Clement. Ippolito, who more entirely represented the 
 spirit of the house, was driven to assume the position of a 
 cadet, with all the uncertainties of an ecclesiastical career. 
 
 In these circumstances Ippolito had not strength of char- 
 acter to sacrifice himself for the consolidation of the Medi- 
 cean power, which could only have been effected by main- 
 taining a close bond of union between its members. The 
 death of Clement in 1534 obscured his prospects in the 
 Church. He was still too young to intrigue for the tiara. 
 The new Pope, Alessandro Farnese, soon after his election, dis- 
 played a vigour which was unexpected from his age, together 
 with a nepotism which his previous character had scarcely 
 warranted. The Cardinal de' Medici felt himself excluded 
 and oppressed. He joined the party of those numerous 
 Florentine exiles, headed by Filippo Strozzi, and the Cardi- 
 nals Salviati and Ridolfi, all of whom were connected by 
 marriage with the legitimate Medici, and who unanimously 
 hated and were jealous of the Duke of Civita di Penna. On 
 the score of policy it is difficult to condemn this step. Ales- 
 sandro's hold upon Florence was still precarious, nor had he 
 yet married Margaret of Austria. Perhaps Ippolito was right 
 
256 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 in thinking he had less to gain from his cousin than from the 
 anti-Medicean faction and the princes of the Church who 
 favoured it. But he did not play his cards well. He quarrelled 
 with the new Pope, Paul III., and by his vacillations led the 
 Florentine exiles to suspect he might betray them. 
 
 In the summer of 1535 IppoUto was at Itri, a little town 
 not far from Gaeta and Terracina, within easy reach of Fondi, 
 where dwelt the beautiful Giulia Gonzaga. To this lady the 
 Cardinal paid assiduous court, passing his time with her in 
 the romantic scenery of that world-famous Capuan coast. On 
 the 5 th of August his seneschal, Giovann' Andrea, of Borgo 
 San Sepolcro, brought him a bowl of chicken-broth, after 
 drinking which he exclaimed to one of his attendants, "I 
 have been poisoned, and the man who did it is Giovann' 
 Andrea." The seneschal was taken and tortured, and con- 
 fessed that he had mixed a poison with the broth. Four days 
 afterwards the Cardinal died, and a post-mortem examination 
 showed that the omentum had been eaten by some corrosive 
 substance. Giovann' Andrea was sent in chains to Rome; 
 but in spite of his confession, more than once repeated, the 
 court released him. He immediately took refuge with Ales- 
 sandro de' Medici in Florence, whence he repaired to Borgo 
 San Sepolcro, and was, at the close of a few months, there 
 murdered by the people of the place. From these circum- 
 stances it was conjectured, not without good reason, that 
 Alessandro had procured his cousin's death; and a certain 
 Captain Pignatta, of low birth in Florence, a bravo and a 
 coward, was believed to have brought the poison to Itri from 
 the Duke. The Medicean courtiers at Florence did not dis- 
 guise their satisfaction ; and one of them exclaimed, with 
 reference to the event, "We know how to brush flies from 
 our noses ! " 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 257 
 
 III. — The Murder of Alessandro de' Medici. 
 
 Having removed his cousin and rival from the scene, Ales- 
 sandro de' Medici plunged with even greater effrontery into the 
 cruelties and debaucheries which made him odious in Florence. 
 It seemed as though fortune meant to smile on him ; for in 
 this same year (1535) Charles V. decided at Naples in his 
 favour against the Florentine exiles, who were pleading their 
 own cause and that of the city injured by his tyrannies ; and 
 in February of the following year he married Margaret of 
 Austria, the Emperor's natural daughter. Francesco Guicciar- 
 dini, the first statesman and historian of his age, had under- 
 taken his defence, and was ready to support him by advice 
 and countenance in the conduct of his government. Within 
 the lute of this prosperity, however, there was one little rift. 
 For some months past he had closely attached to his person 
 a certain kinsman, Lorenzo dei Medici, who was descended 
 in the fourth generation from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo 
 Pater Patriae. This Lorenzo, or Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio, 
 as his most intimate acquaintances called him, was destined to 
 murder Alessandro ; and it is worthy of notice that the Duke 
 had received frequent warnings of his fate. A Perugian page, 
 for instance, who suffered from some infirmity, saw in a dream 
 that Lorenzino would kill his master. Astrologers predicted 
 that the Duke must die by having his throat cut. One of 
 them is said to have named Lorenzo dei Medici as the 
 assassin; and another described him so accurately that 
 there was no mistaking the man. Moreover, Madonna 
 Lucrezia Salviati wrote to the Duke from Rome that he 
 should beware of a certain person, indicating Lorenzino; 
 and her daughter. Madonna Maria, told him to his face 
 she hated the young man, "because I know he means to 
 murder you, and murder you he will." Nor was this all. 
 
258 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 The Duke's favourite body-servants mistrusted Lorenzino. 
 On one occasion, when Alessandro and Lorenzino, attended 
 by a certain Giomo, were escalading a wall at night, as was 
 their wont upon illicit love-adventures, Giomo whispered to 
 his master : " Ah, my lord, do let me cut the rope, and rid 
 ourselves of him ! " To which the Duke replied : " No, I do 
 not want this; but if he could, I know he'd twist it round 
 my neck." 
 
 In spite, then, of these warnings and the want of confidence 
 he felt, the Duke continually Hved with Lorenzino, employing 
 him as pander in his intrigues, and preferring his society to 
 that of simpler men. When he rode abroad, he took this 
 evil friend upon his crupper; although he knew for certain 
 that Lorenzino had stolen a tight-fitting vest of mail he used 
 to wear, and, while his arms were round his waist, was always 
 meditating how to stick a poignard in his body. He trusted, 
 so it seems, to his own great strength and to the other's 
 physical weakness. 
 
 At this point, since Lorenzino is the principal actor in the 
 two-act drama which follows, it will be well to introduce him 
 to the reader in the words of Varchi, who was personally 
 acquainted with him. Born at Florence in 15 14, he was left 
 early by his father's death to the sole care of his mother, 
 Maria Soderini, " a lady of rare prudence and goodness, who 
 attended with the utmost pains and diligence to his educa- 
 tion. No, sooner, however, had he acquired the rudiments of 
 humane learning, which, being of very quick parts, he imbibed 
 with incredible facility, than he began to display a restless 
 mind, insatiable and appetitive of vice. Soon afterwards, under 
 the rule and discipline of Filippo Strozzi, he made open sport 
 of all things human and divine ; and preferring the society of 
 low persons, who not only flattered him but were congenial to 
 his tastes, he gave free rein to his desires, especially in affairs 
 of love, without regard for sex or age or quality, and in his 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 259 
 
 secret soul, while he lavished feigned caresses upon every one 
 he saw, felt no esteem for any living being. He thirsted 
 strangely for glory, and omitted no point of deed or word that 
 might, he thought, procure him the reputation of a man of 
 spirit or of wit. He was lean of person, somewhat slightly 
 built, and on this account people called him Lorenzino. He 
 never laughed, but had a sneering smile; and although he 
 was rather distinguished by grace than beauty, his countenance 
 being dark and melancholy, still in the flower of his age he 
 was beloved beyond all measure by Pope Clement ; in spite 
 of which he had it in his mind (according to what he said 
 himself after kiUing the Duke Alessandro) to have murdered 
 him. He brought Francesco di Raffaello del Medici, the 
 Pope's rival, who was a young man of excellent attainments 
 and the highest hope, to such extremity that he lost his wits, 
 and became the sport of the whole court at Rome, and 
 was sent back, as a lesser evil, as a confirmed madman to 
 Florence." Varchi proceeds to relate how Lorenzino fell into 
 disfavour with the Pope and the Romans by chopping the 
 heads off statues from the arch of Constantine and other 
 monuments ; for which act of vandalism Molsa impeached 
 him in the Roman Academy, and a price was set upon his 
 head. Having returned to Florence, he proceeded to court 
 Duke Alessandro, into whose confidence he wormed himself, 
 pretending to play the spy upon the exiles, and affecting a 
 personal timidity which put the Prince off his guard. Ales- 
 sandro called him " the philosopher," because he conversed in 
 solitude with his own thoughts and seemed indifferent to 
 wealth and office. But all this while Lorenzino was plotting 
 how to murder him. 
 
 Giovio's account of this strange intimacy may be added, 
 since it completes the picture I have drawn from Varchi : —   
 "Lorenzo made himself the accomplice and instrument of 
 those amorous amusements for which the Duke had an 
 
26o ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 insatiable appetite, with the object of deceiving him. He was 
 singularly well furnished with all the scoundrelly arts and 
 trained devices of the pander's trade; composed fine verses 
 to incite to lust ; wrote and represented comedies in Italian ; 
 and pretended to take pleasure only in such tricks and studies. 
 Therefore he never carried arms like other courtiers, and 
 feigned to be afraid of blood, a man who sought tranquilHty 
 at any price. Besides, he bore a pallid countenance and 
 melancholy brow^, walking alone, talking very little and with 
 few persons. He haunted solitary places apart from the city, 
 and showed such plain signs of hypochondria that some began 
 covertly to pass jokes on him. Certain others, who were 
 more acute, suspected that he was harbouring and devising 
 in his mind some terrible enterprise." The Prologue to 
 Lorenzino's own comedy of Aridosiso brings the sardonic, 
 sneering, ironical man vividly before us. He calls himself 
 " un certo omiciatto, che non e nessun di voi che veggendolo 
 non I'avesse a noia, pensando che egli abbia fatto una com- 
 media ; " and begs the audience to damn his play to save him 
 the tedium of wTiting another. Criticised by the light of his 
 subsequent actions, this prologue may even be understood to 
 contain a covert promise of the murder he was meditating. 
 
 "In this way," writes Varchi, "the Duke had taken such 
 familiarity with Lorenzo, that, not content with making use 
 of him as a ruffian in his dealings with women, whether 
 religious or secular, maidens or wives or widows, noble or 
 plebeian, young or elderly, as it might happen, he applied to 
 him to procure for his pleasure a half-sister of Lorenzo's own 
 mother, a young lady of marvellous beauty, but not less chaste 
 than beautiful, who was the wife of Lionardo Ginori, and lived 
 not far from the back entrance to the palace of the Medici." 
 Lorenzino undertook this odious commission, seeing an oppor- 
 tunity to work his designs against the Duke. But first he had 
 to form an accomplice, since he could not hope to carry out 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 261 
 
 the murder without help. A bravo, called Michele del Tavo- 
 laccino, but better known by the nickname of Scoroconcolo, 
 struck him as a fitting instrument. He had procured this 
 man's pardon for a homicide, and it appears that the fellow 
 retained a certain sense of gratitude. Lorenzino began by 
 telling the man there was a courtier who put insults upon 
 him, and Scoroconcolo professed his readiness to kill the 
 knave. " Sia chi si voglia ; io I'ammazzero, se fosse Cristo." 
 Up to the last minute the name of Alessandro was not men- 
 tioned. Having thus secured his assistant, Lorenzino chose 
 a night when he knew that Alessandro Vitelli, captain of the 
 Duke's guard, would be from home. Then, after supper, he 
 whispered in Alessandro's ear that at last he had seduced his 
 aunt with an offer of money, and that she would come to his, 
 Lorenzo's chamber at the service of the Duke that night. 
 Only the Duke must appear at the rendezvous alone, and 
 when he had arrived, the lady should be fetched. "Certain 
 it is," says Varchi, "that the Duke, having donned a cloak 
 of satin in the Neapolitan style, lined with sable, when he 
 went to take his gloves, and there were some of mail and 
 some of perfumed leather, hesitated awhile and said : ' Which 
 shall I choose, those of war, or those of love-making ? ' " He 
 took the latter and went out with only four attendants, three 
 of whom he dismissed upon the Piazza di San Marco, while 
 one was stationed just opposite Lorenzo's house, with strict 
 orders not to stir if he should see folk enter or issue thence. 
 But this fellow, called the Hungarian, after waiting a great 
 while, returned to the Duke's chamber, and there went to 
 sleep. 
 
 Meanwhile Lorenzino received Alessandro in his bedroom, 
 where there was a good fire. The Duke unbuckled his sword, 
 which Lorenzino took, and having entangled the belt with the 
 hilt, so that it should not readily be drawn, laid it on the 
 pillow. The Duke had flung himself already on the bed, and 
 
262 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 hid himself among the curtains — doing this, it is supposed, 
 to save himself from the trouble of paying compliments to 
 the lady when, she should arrive. For Caterina Ginori had 
 the fame of a fair speaker, and Alessandro was aware of his 
 own incapacity to play the part of a respectful lover. Nothing 
 could more strongly point the man's brutality than this act, 
 which contributed in no small measure to his ruin. 
 
 Lorenzino left the Duke upon the bed, and went at once 
 for Scoronconcolo. He told him that the enemy was caught, 
 and bade him only mind the work he had to do. "That 
 will I do," the bravo answered, "even though it were the 
 Duke himself." "You've hit the mark," said Lorenzino with 
 a face of joy ; " he cannot slip through our fingers. Come ! " 
 So they mounted to the bedroom, and Lorenzino, knowing 
 where the Duke was laid, cried : " Sir, are you asleep ? " and 
 therewith ran him through the back. Alessandro was sleeping, 
 or pretending to sleep, face downwards, and the sword passed 
 through his kidneys and diaphragm. But it did not kill him. 
 He slipped from the bed, and seized a stool to parry the next 
 blow. Scoronconcolo now stabbed him in the face, while 
 Lorenzino forced him back upon the bed; and then began 
 a hideous struggle. In order to prevent his cries, Lorenzino 
 doubled his fist into the Duke's mouth. Alessandro seized 
 the thumb between his teeth, and held it in a vice until he 
 died. This disabled Lorenzino, who still lay upon his victim's 
 body, and Scoronconcolo could not strike for fear of wounding 
 his master. Between the writhing couple he made, however, 
 several passes with his sword, which only pierced the mattress. 
 Then he drew a knife and drove it into the Duke's throat, and 
 bored about till he had severed veins and windpipe. 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 263 
 
 IV. — The Flight of Lorenzino dei Medici. 
 
 Alessandro was dead. His body fell to earth. The two 
 murderers, drenched with blood, lifted it up, and placed it on 
 the bed, wrapped in the curtains, as they had found him first. 
 Then Lorenzino went to the window, which looked out upon 
 the Via Larga, and opened it to rest and breathe a little air. 
 After this he called for Scoronconcolo's boy, II Freccia, and 
 bade him look upon the dead man. II Freccia recognised the 
 Duke. But why Lorenzino did this, no one knew. It seemed, 
 as Varchi says, that, having planned the murder with great 
 ability, and executed it with daring, his good sense and good 
 luck forsook him. He made no use of the crime he had 
 committed ; and from that day forward till his own assassina- 
 tion, nothing prospered with him. Indeed, the murder of 
 Alessandro appears to have been almost motiveless, considered 
 from the point of view of practical politics. Varchi assumes 
 that Lorenzino's burning desire of glory prompted the deed ; 
 and when he had acquired the notoriety he sought, there was 
 an end to his ambition. This view is confirmed by the 
 Apology he wrote and published for his act. It remains one 
 of the most pregnant, bold, and brilliant pieces of writing which 
 we possess in favour of tyrannicide from that epoch of insolent 
 crime and audacious rhetoric So energetic is the style, and 
 so biting the invective of this masterpiece, in which the author 
 stabs a second time his victim, that both Giordani and 
 Leopardi affirmed it to be the only true monument of 
 eloquence in the Italian language. If thirst for glory] was 
 Lorenzino's principal incentive, immediate glory was his 
 guerdon. He escaped that same night with Scoronconcolo 
 and Freccia to Bologna, where he stayed to dress his thumb, 
 and then passed forward to Venice. Filippo Strozzi there 
 welcomed him as the new Brutus, gave him money, and 
 
264 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 promised to marry his two sons to the two sisters of the tyrant- 
 killer. Poems were written and published by the most famous 
 men of letters, including Benedetto Varchi and Francesco 
 Maria Molsa, in praise of the Tuscan Brutus, the liberator of 
 his country from a tyrant. A bronze medal was struck bearing 
 his name, with a profile copied from Michelangelo's bust of 
 Brutus. On the obverse are two daggers and a cup, and the 
 date viii. id. Jan. 
 
 The immediate consequence of Alessandro's murder was 
 the elevation of Cosimo, son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, 
 and second cousin of Lorenzino, to the duchy. At the 
 ceremony of his investiture with the ducal honours, Cosimo 
 solemnly undertook to revenge Alessandro's murder. In the 
 following March he buried his predecessor with pomp in San 
 Lorenzo. The body was placed beside the bones of the 
 Duke of Urbino in the marble chest of Michelangelo, and 
 here not many years ago it was discovered. Soon afterwards 
 Lorenzino was declared a rebel. His portrait was painted 
 according to old Tuscan precedent, head downwards, and 
 suspended by one foot, upon the wall of the fort built by 
 Alessandro. His house was cut in twain from roof to pave- 
 ment, and a narrow lane was driven through it, which received 
 the title of Traitor's Alley, Chiasso del Traditore. The price 
 of four thousand golden florins was put upon his head, 
 together with the further sum of one hundred florins per 
 annum in perpetuity to be paid to the murderer and his direct 
 heirs in succession, by the Otto di Balia. Moreover, the man 
 who killed Lorenzino was to enjoy all civic privileges ; exemp- 
 tion from all taxes, ordinary and extraordinary ; the right of 
 carrying arms, together with two attendants, in the city and 
 the whole domain of Florence; and the further prerogative 
 of restoring ten outlaws at his choice. If Lorenzino could be 
 captured and brought alive to Florence, the whole of this 
 reward would be doubled. 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 265 
 
 This decree was promulgated in April 1537, and thence- 
 forward Lorenzino de' Medici lived a doomed man. The 
 assassin, who had been proclaimed a Brutus by Tuscan exiles 
 and humanistic enthusiasts, was regarded as a Judas by the 
 common people. Ballads were written on him with the title 
 of the "Piteous and sore lament made unto himself by 
 Lorenzino de' Medici, who murdered the most illustrious 
 Duke Alessandro." He had become a wild beast, whom it 
 was honourable to hunt down, a pest which it was righteous 
 to extirpate. Yet fate delayed nine years to overtake him. 
 What remains to be told about his story must be extracted 
 from the narrative of the bravo who succeeded, with the aid 
 of an accomplice, in dispatching him at Venice.''^ So far as 
 possible, I shall use the man's own words, translating them 
 literally, and omitting only unimportant details. The narra- 
 tive throws brilliant light upon the manners and movements 
 of professional cut-throats at that period in Italy. It seems 
 to have been taken down from the hero Francesco, or Cecco, 
 Bibboni's lips ; and there is no doubt that we possess in it a 
 valuable historical document for the illustration of contem- 
 porary customs. It offers in all points a curious parallel to 
 Cellini's account of his own homicides and hair-breadth 
 escapes. Moreover, it is confirmed in its minutest circum- 
 stances by the records of the criminal courts of Venice in the 
 sixteenth century. This I can attest from recent examination 
 of MSS. relating to the Signori di Noite and the Esecutori 
 Contro la Bestemmia^ which are preserved among the Archives 
 at the Frari. 
 
 * Those who are interested in such matters may profitably compare 
 this description of a planned murder in the sixteenth century with the 
 account written by Ambrogio Tremazzi of the way in which he tracked 
 and slew Troilo Orsini in Paris in the year 1577. It is given by Gnoli 
 in his Vittoria Accoramboni, pp. 404-414. 
 
266 ITALIAN BYWAYS, 
 
 V. — The Murder of Lorenzino dei Medici. 
 
 " When I returned from Germany," begins Bibboni, " where 
 I had been in the pay of the Emperor, I found at Vicenza 
 Bebo da Volterra, who was staying in the house of M. 
 Antonio da Roma, a nobleman of that city. This gentleman 
 employed him because of a great feud he had ; and he was 
 mighty pleased, moreover, at my coming, and desired that I 
 too should take up my quarters in his palace." 
 
 This paragraph strikes the keynote of the whole narrative, 
 and introduces us to the company we are about to keep. 
 The noblemen of that epoch, if 'they had private enemies, 
 took into their service soldiers of adventure, partly to protect 
 their persons, but also to make war, when occasion offered, 
 on their foes. The dram, as they were styled, had quarters 
 assigned them in the basement of the palace, where they 
 might be seen swaggering about the door or flaunting their 
 gay clothes behind the massive iron bars of the windows 
 which opened on the streets. When their master went abroad 
 at night they followed him, and were always at hand to per- 
 form secret services in love affairs, assassination, and espial. 
 For the rest, they haunted taverns, and kept up correspon- 
 dence with prostitutes. An Italian city had a whole popula- 
 tion of such fellows, the offscourings of armies, drawn from 
 all nations, divided by their allegiance of the time being 
 into hostile camps, but united by community of interest and 
 occupation, and ready to combine against the upper class, 
 upon whose vices, enmities, and cowardice they throve. 
 
 Bibboni proceeds to say how another gentleman of Vicenza, 
 M. Francesco Manente, had at this time a feud with certain 
 of the Guazzi and the I,aschi, which had lasted several years, 
 and cost the lives of many members of both parties and their 
 following. M. Francesco being a friend of M. Antonio, 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 267 
 
 besought that gentleman to lend him Bibboni and Bebo for 
 a season ; and the two dravi went together with their new 
 master to Celsano, a village in the neighbourhood. " There 
 both parties had estates, and all of them kept armed men in 
 their houses, so that not a day passed without feats of arms, 
 and always there was some one killed or wounded. One 
 day, soon afterwards, the leaders of our party resolved to 
 attack the foe in their house, where we killed two, and the 
 rest, numbering five men, entrenched themselves in a ground- 
 floor apartment ; whereupon we took possession of their 
 harquebusses and other arms, which forced them to abandon 
 the villa and retire to Vicenza ; and within a short space of 
 time this great feud was terminated by an ample peace." 
 After this Bebo took service with the Rector of the Univer- 
 sity in Padua, and was transferred by his new patron to Milan. 
 Bibboni remained at Vicenza with M. Galeazzo della Seta, 
 who stood in great fear of his life, notwithstanding the peace 
 which had been concluded between the two factions. At 
 the end of ten months he returned to M. Antonio da Roma 
 and his six brothers, " all of whom being very much attached 
 to me, they proposed that I should live my life with them, 
 for good or ill, and be treated as one of the family ; upon the 
 understanding that if war broke out and I wanted to take 
 part in it, I should always have twenty-five crowns and arms 
 and horse, with welcome home, so long as I lived ; and in 
 case I did not care to join the troops, the same provision for 
 my maintenance." 
 
 From these details we comprehend the sort of calling which 
 a bravo of Bibboni's species followed. Meanwhile Bebo was 
 at Milan. " There it happened that M. Francesco Vinta, of 
 Volterra, was on embassy from the Duke of Florence. He 
 saw Bebo, and asked him what he was doing in Milan, and 
 Bebo answered that he was a knight errant." This phrase, 
 derived no doubt from the romantic epics then in vogue, was 
 
268 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 a pretty euphemism for a rogue of Bebo's quality. The 
 ambassador now began cautiously to sound his man, who 
 seems to have been outlawed from the Tuscan duchy, telling 
 him he knew a way by which he might return with favour to 
 his home, and at last disclosing the affair of Lorenzo. Bebo 
 was puzzled at first, but when he understood the matter, he 
 professed his willingness, took letters from the envoy to the 
 Duke of Florence, and, in a private audience with Cosimo, 
 informed him that he was ready to attempt Lorenzino's assassi- 
 nation. He added that " he had a comrade fit for such a job, 
 whose fellow for the business could not easily be found." 
 
 Bebo now travelled to Vicenza, and opened the whole 
 matter to Bibboni, who weighed it well, and at last, being 
 convinced that the Duke's commission to his comrade was 
 dojid fide^ determined to take his share in the undertaking. 
 The two agreed to have no accomplices. They went to 
 Venice, and " I," says Bibboni, " being most intimately 
 acquainted with all that city, and provided there with many 
 friends, soon quietly contrived to know where Lorenzino 
 lodged, and took a room in the neighbourhood, and spent 
 some days in seeing how we best might rule our conduct." 
 Bibboni soon discovered that Lorenzino never left his palace ; 
 and he therefore remained in much perplexity, until, by good 
 luck, Ruberto Strozzi arrived from France in Venice, bringing 
 in his train a Navarrese servant, who had the nickname of 
 Spagnoletto. This fellow was a great friend of the bravo. 
 They met, and Bibboni told him that he should like to go 
 and kiss the hands of Messer Ruberto, whom he had known 
 in Rome. Strozzi inhabited the same palace as Lorenzino. 
 " When we arrived there, both Messer Ruberto and Lorenzo 
 were leaving the house, and there were around them so many 
 gentlemen and other persons, that I could not present my- 
 self, and both straightway stepped into the gondola. Then 
 I, not having seen Lorenzo for a long while past, and because 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 269 
 
 he was very quietly attired, could not recognise the man 
 exactly, but only as it were between certainty and doubt. 
 Wherefore I said to Spagnoletto, ' I think I know that gentle- 
 man, but don't remember where I saw him.' And Messer 
 Ruberto was giving him his right hand. Then Spagnoletto 
 answered, ' You know him well enough ; he is Messer Lor- 
 enzo. But see you tell this to nobody. He goes by the 
 name of Messer Dario, because he lives in great fear for his 
 safety, and people don't know that he is now in Venice.' I 
 answered that I marvelled much, and if I could have helped 
 him, would have done so willingly. Then I asked where they 
 were going, and he said, to dine with Messer Giovanni della 
 Casa, who was the Pope's Legate. I did not leave the man 
 till I had drawn from him all I required." 
 
 Thus spoke the Italian Judas. The appearance of La Casa 
 on the scene is interesting. He was the celebrated author 
 of the scandalous Capitolo del Fomo, the author of many 
 sublime and melancholy sonnets, who was now at Venice 
 prosecuting a charge of heresy against Pier Paolo Vergerio, 
 and paying his addresses to a noble lady of the Quirini family. 
 It seems that on the territory of San Marco he made common 
 cause with the exiles from Florence, for he was himself by 
 birth a Florentine, and he had no objection to take Brutus- 
 Lorenzino by the hand. 
 
 After the noblemen had rowed off in their gondola to dine 
 with the Legate, Bibboni and his friend entered their palace, 
 where he found another old acquaintance, the house-steward, 
 or spenditore of Lorenzo. From him he gathered much use- 
 ful information. Pietro Strozzi, it seems, had allowed the 
 tyrannicide one thousand five hundred crowns a year, with 
 the keep of three brave and daring companions {ire compagni 
 bravi e facinorosi), and a palace worth fifty crowns on lease. 
 But Lorenzo had just taken another on the Campo di San 
 Polo at three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger 
 
270 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 ialturd) Pletro Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his 
 allowance. Bibboni also learned that he was keeping house 
 with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini, another Florentine out- 
 law, and that he was ardently in love with a certain beauti- 
 ful Barozza. This woman was apparently one of the grand 
 courtesans of Venice. He further ascertained the date when 
 he was going to move into the palace at San Polo, and, " to 
 put it briefly, knew everything he did, and, as it were, how 
 many times a day he spit." Such were the intelligences of 
 the servants' hall, and of such value were they to men of 
 Bibboni's calling. 
 
 In the Carnival of 1546 Lorenzo meant to go masqued in 
 the habit of a gipsy woman to the square of San Spirito, 
 where there was to be a joust. Great crowds of people 
 would assemble, and Bibboni hoped to do his business there. 
 The assassination, however, failed on this occasion, and 
 Lorenzo took up his abode in the palace he had hired upon 
 the Campo di San Polo. This Campo is one of the largest 
 open places in Venice, shaped irregularly, with a finely 
 curving line upon the western side, where two of the noblest 
 private houses in the city are still standing. Nearly opposite 
 these, in the south-western angle, stands, detached, the little 
 old church of San Polo. One of its side entrances opens 
 upon the square ; the other on a lane, which leads eventually 
 to the Frari. There is nothing in Bibboni's narrative to make 
 it clear where Lorenzo hired his dwelling. But it would 
 seem from certain things which he says later on, that in 
 order to enter the church his victim had to cross the square. 
 Meanwhile Bibboni took the precaution of making friends 
 with a shoemaker, whose shop commanded the whole Campo, 
 including Lorenzo's palace. In this shop he began to spend 
 much of his time ; " and oftentimes I feigned to be asleep ; 
 but God knows whether I was sleeping, for my mind, at any 
 rate, was wide-awake." 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 271 
 
 A second convenient occasion for murdering Lorenzo soon 
 seemed to offer. He was bidden to dine with Monsignor 
 della Casa ; and Bibboni, putting a bold face on, entered the 
 Legate's palace, having left Bebo below in the loggia, fully 
 resolved to do the business. " But we found," he says, "that 
 they had gone to dine at Murano, so that we remained with 
 our tabors in their bag. " The island of Murano at that period 
 was a favourite resort of the Venetian nobles, especially of 
 the more literary and artistic, who kept country-houses there, 
 where they enjoyed the fresh air of the lagoons and the quiet 
 of their gardens. 
 
 The third occasion, after all these weeks of watching, 
 brought success to Bibboni's schemes. He had observed 
 how Lorenzo occasionally so far broke his rules of caution as 
 to go on foot, past the church of San Polo, to visit the 
 beautiful Barozza ; and he resolved, if possible, to catch him 
 on one of these journeys. " It so chanced on the 28th of 
 February, which was the second Sunday of Lent, that having 
 gone, as was my wont, to pry out whether Lorenzo would give 
 orders for going abroad that day, I entered the shoemaker's 
 shop, and stayed awhile, until Lorenzo came to the window 
 with a napkin round his neck — for he was combing his hair — 
 and at the same moment I saw a certain Giovan Battista 
 Martelli, who kept his sword for the defence of Lorenzo's 
 person, enter and come forth again. Concluding that they 
 would probably go abroad, I went home to get ready and 
 procure the necessary weapons, and there I found Bebo asleep 
 in bed, and made him get up at once, and we came to our 
 accustomed post of observation, by the church of San Polo, 
 where our men would have to pass." Bibboni now retired to 
 his friend the shoemaker's, and Bebo took up his station at 
 one of the side-doors of San Polo ; " and, as good luck would 
 have it, Giovan Battista Martelli came forth, and walked a 
 piece in front, and then Lorenzo came, and then Alessandro 
 
272 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Soderini, going the one behind the other, like storks, and 
 Lorenzo, on entering the church, and lifting up the curtain of 
 the door, was seen from the opposite door by Bebo, who at 
 the same time noticed how I had left the shop, and so we 
 met upon the street as we had agreed, and he told me that 
 Lorenzo was inside the church." 
 
 To any one who knows the Campo di San Polo, it will be 
 apparent that Lorenzo had crossed from the western side of 
 the piazza and entered the church by what is technically 
 called its northern door. Bebo, stationed at the southern 
 door, could see him when he pushed the heavy sfoia or leather 
 curtain aside, and at the same time could observe Bibboni's 
 movements in the cobbler's shop. Meanwhile Lorenzo 
 walked across the church and came to the same door where 
 Bebo had been standing. " I saw him issue from the church 
 and take the main street ; then came Alessandro Soderini, 
 and I walked last of all ; and when we reached the point we 
 had determined on, I jumped in front of Alessandro with the 
 poignard in my hand, crying, * Hold hard, Alessandro, and 
 get along with you in God's name, for we are not here for 
 you ! ' He then threw himself around my waist, and grasped 
 my arms, and kept on calling out Seeing how wTong I had 
 been to try to spare his life, I wrenched myself as well as I 
 could from his grip, and with my lifted poignard struck him, 
 as God willed, above the eyebrow, and a little blood trickled 
 from the wound. He, in high fury, gave me such a thrust 
 that I fell backward, and the ground besides was slippery 
 from having rained a little. Then Alessandro drew his sword, 
 which he carried in its scabbard, and thrust at me in front, 
 and struck me on the corslet, which for my good fortune was 
 of double mail. Before I could get ready I received three 
 passes, which, had I worn a doublet instead of that mailed 
 corslet, would certainly have run me through. At the fourth 
 pass I had regained my strength and spirit, and closed with 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 273 
 
 him, and stabbed him four times in the head, and being so 
 close he could not use his sword, but tried to parry with his 
 hand and hilt, and I, as God willed, struck him at the wrist 
 below the sleeve of mail, and cut his hand off clean, and gave 
 him then one last stroke on his head. Thereupon he begged 
 for God's sake spare. his life, and I, in trouble about Bebo, 
 left him in the arms of a Venetian nobleman, who held him 
 back from jumping into the canal." 
 
 Who this Venetian nobleman, found unexpectedly upon the 
 scene, was, does not appear. Nor, what is still more curious, 
 do we hear anything of that Martelli, the bravo, " who kept 
 his sword for the defence of Lorenzo's person." The one had 
 arrived accidentally, it seems. The other must have been a 
 coward and escaped from the scuffle. 
 
 " When I turned," proceeds Bibboni, " I found Lorenzo on 
 his knees. He raised himself, and I, in anger, gave him a 
 great cut across the head, which split it in two pieces, and 
 laid him at my feet, and he never rose again." 
 
 VL — The Escape of the Bravi. 
 
 Bebo, meanwhile, had made off from the scene of action. 
 And Bibboni, taking to his heels, came up with him in the 
 little square of San Marcello. They now ran for their lives 
 till they reached the traghetto di San Spirito, where they threw 
 their poignards into the water, remembering that no man 
 might carry these in Venice under penalty of the galleys. 
 Bibboni's white hose were drenched with blood. He there- 
 fore agreed to separate from Bebo, having named a rendez- 
 vous. Left alone, his ill luck brought him face to face with 
 tw^enty constables {sbirri). " In a moment I conceived that 
 they knew everything, and were come to capture me, and of 
 a truth I saw that it was over wuth me. As swiftly as I could 
 I quickened pace and got into a church, near to which was 
 
274 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 the house of a Compagnia, and the one opened into the other, 
 and knelt down and prayed, commending myself with fervour 
 to God for my deliverance and safety. Yet while I prayed, I 
 kept my eyes well open and saw the whole band pass the 
 church, except one man who entered, and I strained my sight 
 so that I seemed to see behind as well as in front, and then it 
 was I longed for my poignard, for I should not have heeded 
 being in a church." But the constable, it soon appeared, 
 was not looking for Bibboni. So he gathered up his courage, 
 and ran for the Church of San Spirito, where the Padre 
 Andrea Volterrano was preaching to a great congregation. 
 He hoped to go in by one door and out by the other, but the 
 crowd prevented him, and he had to turn back and face the 
 sl^irrL One of them followed him, having probably caught 
 sight of the blood upon his hose. Then Bibboni resolved to 
 have done with the fellow, and rushed at him, and flung him 
 down with his head upon the pavement, and ran like mad, 
 and came at last, all out of breath, to San Marco. 
 
 It seems clear that before Bibboni separated from Bebo 
 they had crossed the water, for the Sestiere di San Polo is 
 separated from the Sestiere di San Marco by the Grand 
 Canal. And this they must have done at the traghetto di 
 San Spirito. Neither the church nor the traghetto are now in 
 existence, and this part of the story is therefore obscure.* 
 Having reached San Marco, he took a gondola at the Ponte 
 della Paglia, where tourists are now wont to stand and con- 
 template the Ducal Palace and the Bridge of Sighs. First, he 
 
 * So far as I can discover, the only church of San Spirito in Venice 
 was a building on the island of San Spirito, erected by Sansavino, which 
 belonged to the Sestiere di S. Croce, and which was suppressed in 1 656. 
 Its plate and the fine pictures which Titian painted there were transferred 
 at that date to S. M. della Salute. I cannot help inferring that either 
 Bibboni's memory failedhim, or that his words were wrongly understood 
 by printer or amanuensis. If for S. Spirito we substitute S. Stefano, the 
 account would be intelligible. 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 275 
 
 sought the house of a woman of the town who was his friend ; 
 then changed purpose, and rowed to the palace of the Count 
 Salici da Collalto. " He was a great friend and intimate of 
 ours, because Bebo and I had done him many and great ser- 
 vices in times passed. There I knocked ; and Bebo opened 
 the door, and when he saw me dabbled with blood, he marvelled 
 that I had not come to grief and fallen into the hands of 
 justice, and, indeed, had feared as much because I had re- 
 mained so long away." It appears, therefore, that the 
 Palazzo Collalto was their rendezvous. '' The Count was 
 from home ; but being known to all his people, I played the 
 master and went into the kitchen to the fire, and with soap 
 and water turned my hose, which had been white, to a grey 
 colour." This is a very delicate way of saying that he washed 
 out the blood of Alessandro and Lorenzo ! 
 
 Soon after the Count returned, and "lavished caresses" 
 upon Bebo and his precious comrade. They did not tell 
 him what they had achieved that morning, but put him off 
 with a story of having settled a sbirro in a quarrel about a 
 girl. Then the Count invited them to dinner; and being 
 himself bound to entertain the first physician of Venice, 
 requested them to take it in an upper chamber. He and his 
 secretary served them with their own hands at table. When 
 the physician arrived, the Count went down-stairs ; and at 
 this moment a messenger came from Lorenzo's mother, 
 begging the doctor to go at once to San Polo, for that her 
 son had been murdered and Soderini wounded to the death. 
 It was now no longer possible to conceal their doings from 
 the Count, who told them to pluck up courage and abide in 
 patience. He had himself to dine and take his siesta, and 
 then to attend a meeting of the Council. 
 
 About the hour of vespers, Bibboni determined to seek 
 better refuge. Followed at a discreet distance by Bebo, he 
 first called at their lodgings and ordered supper. Two priests 
 
276 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 came in and fell into conversation with them. But something 
 in the behaviour of one of these good men roused his sus- 
 picions. So they left the house, took a gondola, and told 
 the man to row hard to S. Maria Zobenigo. On the way he 
 bade him put them on shore, paid him well, and ordered him 
 to wait for them. They landed near the palace of the Spanish 
 embassy; and here Bibboni meant to seek sanctuary. For 
 it must be remembered that the houses of ambassadors, no 
 less than of princes of the Church, were inviolable. They 
 offered the most convenient harbouring-places to rascals. 
 Charles V., moreover, was deeply interested in the vengeance 
 taken on Alessandro de' Medici's murderer, for his own natural 
 daughter was Alessandro's widow and Duchess of Florence. 
 In the palace they were met with much courtesy by about 
 forty Spaniards, who showed considerable curiosity, and told 
 them that Lorenzo and Alessandro Soderini had been murdered 
 that morning by two men whose description answered to their 
 appearance. Bibboni put their questions by and asked to see 
 the ambassador. He was not at home. In that case, said 
 Bibboni, take us to the secretary. Attended by some thirty 
 Spaniards, "with great joy and gladness," they were shown 
 into the secretary's chamber. He sent the rest of the folk 
 away, " and locked the door well, and then embraced and 
 kissed us before we had said a word, and afterwards bade us 
 talk freely without any fear." When Bibboni had told the 
 whole story, he was again embraced and kissed by the secre- 
 tary, who thereupon left them and went to the private apart- 
 ment of the ambassador. Shortly after he returned and led 
 them by a winding staircase into the presence of his master. 
 The ambassador greeted them with great honour, told them he 
 would strain all the power of the empire to hand them in 
 safety over to Duke Cosimo, and that he had already sent a 
 courier to the Emperor with the good news. 
 
 So they remained in hiding in the Spanish embassy ; and 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 277 
 
 in ten days' time commands were received from Charles him- 
 self that everything should be done to convey them safely to 
 Florence. The difficulty was how to smuggle them out of 
 Venice, where the police of the Republic were on watch, and 
 Florentine outlaws were mounting guard on sea and shore to 
 catch them. The ambassador began by spreading reports on 
 the Rialto every morning of their having been seen at Padua, 
 at Verona, in Friuli. He then hired a palace at Malghera, 
 near Mestre, and went out daily with fifty Spaniards, and took 
 carriage or amused himself with horse exercise and shooting. 
 The Florentines, who were on watch, could only discover 
 from his people that he did this for amusement. When he 
 thought that he had put them sufficiently off their guard, the 
 ambassador one day took Bibboni and Bebo out by Canaregio 
 and Mestre to Malghera, concealed in his own gondola, with 
 the whole train of Spaniards in attendance. And though, on 
 landing, the Florentines challenged them, they durst not inter- 
 fere with an ambassador or come to battle with his men. So 
 Bebo and Bibboni were hustled into a coach, and afterwards 
 provided with two comrades and four horses. They rode 
 for ninety miles without stopping to sleep, and on the day 
 following this long journey reached Trento, having probably 
 threaded the mountain valleys above Bassano, for Bibboni 
 speaks of a certain village where the people talked half 
 German. The Imperial Ambassador at Trento forwarded 
 them next day to Mantua; from Mantua they came to 
 Piacenza; thence, passing through the valley of the Taro, 
 crossing the Apennines at Cisa, descending on Pontremoli, 
 and reaching Pisa at night, the fourteenth day after their 
 escape from Venice. 
 
 When they arrived at Pisa, Duke Cosimo was supping. So 
 they went to an inn, and next morning presented themselves 
 to his Grace. Cosimo received them kindly, assured them 
 of his gratitude, confirmed them in the enjoyment of their 
 
278 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 rewards and privileges, and swore that they might rest secure 
 of his protection in all parts of his dominion. We may 
 imagine how the men caroused together after this reception. 
 As Bibboni adds, " We were now able for the whole time of 
 life left us to live splendidly, without a thought or care." 
 The last words of his narrative are these : " Bebo from Pisa, 
 at what date I know not, went home to Volterra, his native 
 town, and there finished his days ; while I abode in Florence, 
 where I have had no further wish to hear of wars, but to live 
 my life in holy peace." 
 
 So ends the story of the two l^rai'i. We have reason to 
 believe, from some contemporary documents which Cantu 
 has brought to light, that Bibboni exaggerated his own part 
 in the affair. Luca Martelli, writing to Varchi, says that it 
 was Bebo who clove Lorenzo's skull with a cutlass. He adds 
 this curious detail, that the weapons of both men were 
 poisoned, and that the wound inflicted by Bibboni on 
 Soderini's hand was a slight one. Yet, the poignard being 
 poisoned, Soderini died of it. In other respects Martelli's 
 brief account agrees with that given by Bibboni, who probably 
 did no more, his comrade being dead, than claim for himself, at 
 some expense of truth, the lion's share of their heroic action. 
 
 VII. — LoRENZiNo Brutus. 
 
 It remains to ask ourselves. What opinion can be justly 
 formed of Lorenzino's character and motives? When he 
 murdered his cousin, was he really actuated by the patriotic 
 desire to rid his country of a monster ? Did he imitate the 
 Roman Brutus in the noble spirit of his predecessors, Olgiati 
 and Boscoli, marr.yrs to the creed of tyrannicide? Or must 
 this crowning action of a fretful life be explained, like his 
 previous mutilation of the statues on the Arch of Constantine, 
 by a wild thirst for notoriety ? Did he hope that the exiles 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 279 
 
 would return to Florence, and that he would enjoy an honour- 
 able life, an immortality of glorious renown? Did envy for 
 his cousin's greatness and resentment of his undisguised 
 contempt — the passions of one who had been used for vile 
 ends — conscious of self-degradation and the loss of honour, 
 yet mindful of his intellectual superiority — did these emotions 
 take fire in him and mingle with a scholar's reminiscences 
 of antique heroism, prompting him to plan a deed which 
 should at least assume the show of patriotic zeal, and prove 
 indubitable courage in its perpetrator? Did he, again, 
 perhaps imagine, being next in blood to Alessandro and 
 direct heir to the ducal crown by the Imperial Settlement of 
 1530, that the city would elect her liberator for her ruler? 
 
 Alfieri and Niccolini, having taken, as it were, a brief in 
 favour of tyrannicide, praised Lorenzino as a hero. De 
 Musset, who wrote a considerable drama on his story, painted 
 him as a fvi^e corrupted by society, enfeebled by circumstance, 
 soured by commerce with an uncongenial world, who hides 
 at the bottom of his mixed nature enough of real nobility 
 to make him the leader of a forlorn hope for the liberties of 
 Florence. This is the most favourable construction we can 
 put upon Lorenzo's conduct. Yet some facts of the case 
 warn us to suspend our judgment. He seems to have formed 
 no plan for the liberation of his fellow-citizens. He gave no 
 pledge of self-devotion by avowing his deed and abiding by 
 its issues. He showed none of the qualities of a leader, 
 whether in the cause of freedom or of his own dynastic 
 interests, after the murder. He escaped as soon as he was 
 able, as secretly as he could manage, leaving the city in con- 
 fusion, and exposing himself to the obvious charge of abomin- 
 able treason. So far as the Florentines knew, his assassina- 
 tion of their Duke was but a piece of private spite, executed 
 with infernal craft. It is true that when he seized the pen 
 in exile, he did his best to claim the guerdon of a patriot, and 
 
28o ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 to throw the blame of failure on the Florentines. In his 
 Apology, and in a letter written to Francesco de' Medici, he 
 taunts them with lacking the spirit to extinguish tyranny 
 when he had slain the tyrant. He summons plausible 
 excuses to his aid — the impossibility of taking persons of 
 importance into his confidence, the loss of blood he suffered 
 from his wound, the uselessness of rousing citizens whom 
 events proved over-indolent for action. He declares that he 
 has nothing to regret. Having proved by deeds his will to 
 serve his country, he has saved his life in order to spend it 
 for her when occasion offered. But these arguments, invented 
 after the catastrophe, these words, so bravely penned when 
 action ought to have confirmed his resolution, do not meet 
 the case. It was no deed of a true hero to assassinate a 
 despot, knowing or half-knowing that the despot's subjects 
 would immediately elect another. Their languor could not, 
 except rhetorically, be advanced in defence of his own flight. 
 
 The historian is driven to seek both the explanation and 
 palliation of Lorenzo's failure in the temper of his times. 
 There was enough daring left in Florence to carry through a 
 plan of brilliant treason, modelled on an antique Roman 
 tragedy. But there was not moral force in the protagonist 
 to render that act salutary, not public energy sufficient in 
 his fellow-citizens to accomplish his drama of deliverance. 
 Lorenzo was corrupt. Florence was flaccid. Evil manners 
 had emasculated the hero. In the state the last spark of 
 independence had expired with Ferrucci. 
 
 Still I have not without forethought dubbed this man a 
 Cinque Cento Brutus. Like much of the art and literature 
 of his century, his action may be regarded as a bizarre imita- 
 tion of the antique manner. Without the force and purpose 
 of a Roman, Lorenzo set himself to copy Plutarch's men — 
 just as sculptors carved Neptunes and Apollos without the 
 dignity and serenity of the classic style. The antique faith 
 
A CINQUE CENTO BRUTUS. 281 
 
 •was wanting to both murderer and craftsman in those days. 
 Even as Renaissance work in art is too often aimless, decora- 
 tive, vacant of intention, so Lorenzino's Brutus tragedy seems 
 but the snapping of a pistol in void air. He had the audacity 
 but not the ethical consistency of his crime. He played the 
 part of Brutus like a Roscius, perfect in its histrionic details. 
 And it doubtless gave to this skilful actor a supreme satis- 
 faction — salving over many wounds of vanity, quenching the 
 poignant thirst for things impossible and draughts of fame — 
 that he could play it on no mimic stage, but on the theatre 
 of Europe. The weakness of his conduct was the central 
 weakness of his age and country. Italy herself lacked moral 
 purpose, sense of righteous necessity, that consecration of self 
 to a noble cause, which could alone have justified Lorenzo's 
 perfidy. Confused memories of Judith, Jael, Brutus, and 
 other classical tyrannicides, exalted his imagination. Long- 
 ing for violent emotions, jaded with pleasure which had 
 palled, discontented with his wasted life, jealous of his brutal 
 cousin, appetitive to the last of glory, he conceived his 
 scheme. Having conceived, he executed it with that which 
 never failed in Cinque Cento Italy — the artistic spirit of per- 
 fection. When it was over, he shrugged his shoulders, wrote 
 his magnificent Apology with a style of adamant upon a plate 
 of steel, and left it for the outlaws of Filippo Strozzi's faction 
 to deal with the crisis he had brought about. For some years 
 he dragged out an ignoble life in obscurity, and died at last, 
 as Varchi puts it, more by his own carelessness than by the 
 watchful animosity of others. Over the wild, turbid, clever, 
 incomprehensible, inconstant hero-artist's grave we write our 
 RequUscat. Clio, as she takes the pen in hand to record this 
 prayer, smiles disdainfully and turns to graver business. 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 
 
 I. 
 
 It was a gala night. The opera-house of Milan was one 
 blaze of light and colour. Royalty in field-marshal's uniform 
 and diamonds, attended by decorated generals and radiant 
 ladies of the court, occupied the great box opposite the stage. 
 The tiers from pit to gallery were filled with brilliantly dressed 
 women. From the third row, where we were fortunately 
 placed, the curves of that most beautiful of theatres presented 
 to my gaze a series of retreating and approaching lines, com- 
 posed of noble faces, waving feathers, sparkHng jewels, 
 sculptured shoulders, uniforms, robes of costly stuffs and 
 every conceivable bright colour. Light poured from the huge 
 lustre in the centre of the roof, ran along the crimson velvet 
 cushions of the boxes, and flashed upon the gilded frame of 
 the proscenium — satyrs and acanthus scrolls carved in the 
 manner of a century ago. Pit and orchestra scarcely con- 
 tained the crowd of men who stood in lively conversation, 
 their backs turned to the stage, their lorgnettes raised from 
 time to time to sweep the boxes. This surging sea of faces 
 and sober costumes enhanced by contrast the glitter, variety, 
 and luminous tranquillity of the theatre above it. 
 
 No one took much thought of the coming spectacle, till 
 the conductor's rap was heard upon his desk, and the 
 orchestra broke into the overture to Mozart's Nozze. Before 
 they were half through, it was clear that we should not enjoy 
 that evening the delight of perfect music added to the 
 
CHERUB INO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 283 
 
 enchantment of so brilliant a scene. The execution of the 
 overture was not exactly bad. But it lacked absolute pre- 
 cision, the complete subordination of all details to the whole. 
 In rendering German music Italians often fail through want 
 of discipline, or through imperfect sympathy with a style they 
 will not take the pains to master. Nor, when the curtain 
 lifted and the play began, was the vocalisation found in all 
 parts satisfactory. The Contessa had a meagre 7nezza voce. 
 Susanna, though she did not sing false, hovered on the verge 
 of discords, owing to the weakness of an organ which had to 
 be strained in order to make any effect on that enormous 
 stage. On the other hand, the part of Almaviva was played 
 with dramatic fire, and Figaro showed a truly Southern 
 sense of comic fun. The scenes were splendidly mounted, 
 and something of a princely grandeur — the largeness of a 
 noble train of life — was added to the drama by the vast 
 proportions of the theatre. It was a performance which, in 
 spite of drawbacks, yielded pleasure. 
 
 And yet it might have left me frigid but for the artist who 
 played Cherubino. This was no other than Pauline Lucca, 
 in the prime of youth and petulance. From her first appear- 
 ance to the last note she sang, she occupied the stage. The 
 opera seemed to have been written for her. The mediocrity of 
 the troupe threw her commanding merits — the richness of her 
 voice, the purity of her intonation, her vivid conception of char- 
 acter, her indescribable brusquerie of movement and emotion — 
 into that relief which a sapphire gains from a setting of pearls. 
 I can see her now, after the lapse of nearly twenty years, as 
 she stood there singing in blue doublet and white mantle, with 
 the slouched Spanish hat and plume of ostrich feathers, a tiny 
 rapier at her side, and blue rosettes upon her white silk shoes ! 
 
 The Nozze di Figaro was followed by a Ballo. This had 
 for its theme the favourite legend of a female devil sent from 
 the infernal regions to ruin a young man. Instead of per- 
 
284 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 forming the part assigned her, Satanella falls in love with the 
 hero, sacrifices herself, and is claimed at last by the powers 
 of goodness. Quia multum afnavif, her lost soul is saved. 
 If the opera left much to be desired, the Ballo was perfection. 
 That vast stage of the Scala Theatre had almost overwhelmed 
 the actors of the play. Now, thrown open to its inmost 
 depths, crowded with glittering moving figures, it became a 
 fairyland of fantastic loveliness. Italians possess the art of 
 interpreting a serious dramatic action by pantomime. A 
 Ballo with them is no mere afTair of dancing — fine dresses, 
 evolutions performed by brigades of pink-legged women with 
 a fixed smile on their faces. It takes the rank of high ex- 
 pressive art. And the motive of this Ballo was consistently 
 worked out in an intelligible sequence of well-ordered scenes. 
 To moralise upon its meaning would be out of place. It had 
 a conflict of passions, a rhythmical progression of emotions, 
 a tragic climax in the triumph of good over evil. 
 
 II. 
 
 At the end of the performance there were five persons in 
 our box — the beautiful Miranda, and her husband, a cele- 
 brated English man of letters ; a German professor of biology; 
 a young Milanese gentleman, whom we called Edoardo ; and 
 myself. Edoardo and the professor had joined us just before 
 the ballet. I had occupied a seat behind Miranda and my 
 friend the critic from the commencement. We had indeed 
 dined together first at their hotel, the Rebecchino ; and they 
 now proposed that we should all adjourn together there on 
 foot for supper. From the Scala Theatre to the Rebecchino 
 is a walk of some three minutes. 
 
 When we were seated at the supper-table and had talked 
 some while upon indifferent topics, the enthusiasm roused 
 in me by Pauline Lucca burst out. I broke a moment's 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 285 
 
 silence by exclaiming, " What a wonder-world music creates ! 
 I have lived this evening in a sphere of intellectual enjoyment 
 raised to rapture. I never lived so fast before ! " ''Do you 
 really think so ? " said Miranda. She had just finished a becca- 
 fico, and seemed disposed for conversation. " Do you really 
 think so ? For my part, music is in a wholly different region 
 from experience, thought, or feeling. What does it communicate 
 to you ? " And she hummed to herself the mo/i/ of Cherubino's 
 "iV^;^ so piu cosa so?t cosa faccio.'" — "What does it teach me?" 
 I broke in upon the melody. "Why, to-night, when I heard 
 the music, and saw her there, and felt the movement of the 
 play, it seemed to me that a new existence was revealed. 
 For the first time I understood what love might be in one 
 most richly gifted for emotion." Miranda bent her eyes on 
 the table-cloth and played with her wine-glass. "I don't 
 follow you at all. I enjoyed myself to-night. The opera, in- 
 deed, might have been better rendered. The ballet, I admit, 
 was splendid. But when I remember the music — even the best 
 of it — even Pauline Lucca's part " — here she looked up, and 
 shot me a quick glance across the table — " I have mere music 
 in my ears. Nothing more. Mere music ! " The professor 
 of biology, who was gifted with a sense of music and had 
 studied it scientifically, had now crunched his last leaf of 
 salad. Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our tete-a- 
 tete. "Gracious madam, I agree with you. He who seeks 
 from music more than music gives, is on the quest — how 
 shall I put it ?— of the Holy Grail." " And what," I struck in, 
 " is this minimum or maximum that music gives ? " " Dear 
 young friend," replied the professor, "music gives melodies, 
 harmonies, the many beautiful forms to which sound shall be 
 fashioned. Just as in the case of shells and fossils, lovely in 
 themselves, interesting for their history and classification, so 
 is it with music. You must not seek an intellectual meaning. 
 No ; there is no Inhali in music." And he hummed con- 
 
286 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 tentedly the air of " Voi die sapeie.''^ While he was humming, 
 Miranda whispered to me across the table, "separate the 
 Lucca from the music." " But," I answered rather hotly, 
 for I was nettled by Miranda's argument ad hominem., " But 
 it is not possible in an opera to divide the music from the 
 words, the scenery, the play, the actor. Mozart, when he 
 wrote the score to Da Ponte's libretto, was excited to produc- 
 tion by the situations. He did not conceive his melodies 
 out of connection with a certain cast of characters, a given 
 ethical environment." "I do not know, my dear young 
 friend," responded the professor, "whether you have read 
 Mozart's Life and letters. It is clearly shown in them how 
 he composed airs at times and seasons when he had no words 
 to deal with. These he afterwards used as occasion served. 
 Whence I conclude that music was for him a free and lovely 
 play of tone. The words of our excellent Da Ponte were a 
 scaffolding to introduce his musical creations to the public. 
 But without that carpenter's work, the melodies of Cherubino 
 are Selbst- standi g^ sufficient in themselves to vindicate their 
 place in art. Do I interpret your meaning, gracious lady ? " 
 This he said bending to Miranda. " Yes," she replied. But 
 she still played with her wine-glass, and did not look as 
 though she were quite satisfied. I meanwhile continued : 
 " Of course I have read Mozart's Life, and know how he went 
 to work. But Mozart was a man of feeling, of experience, of 
 ardent passions. How can you prove to me that the melo- 
 dies he gave to Cherubino had not been evolved from situa- 
 tions similar to those in which Cherubino finds himself? 
 How can you prove he did not feel a natural appropriateness 
 in the motifs he selected from his memory for Cherubino? 
 How can you be certain that the part itself did not stimulate 
 his musical faculty to fresh and still more appropriate creative- 
 ness? And if we must fall back on documents, do you 
 remember what he said himself about the love-music in 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 287 
 
 Die Entfiihrurigl I think he tells us that he meant it to 
 express his own feeling for the woman who had just become 
 his wife." Miranda looked up as though she were almost 
 half-persuaded. Yet she hummed again '''' Non so piu^^^ then 
 said to herself, " Yes, it is wiser to believe with the professor 
 that these are sequences of sounds, and nothing more." 
 Then she sighed. In the pause which followed, her husband, 
 the famous critic, filled his glass, stretched his legs out, and 
 began: "You have embarked, I see, upon the ocean of 
 aesthetics. For my part, to-night I was thinking how much 
 better fitted for the stage Beaumarchais' play was than this 
 musical mongrel — this operatic adaptation. The wit, observe, 
 is lost. And Cherubino — that sparkling little ettfant terrible — 
 becomes a sentimental fellow — a something I don't know 
 what — between a girl and a boy — a medley of romance and 
 impudence — anyhow a being quite unlike the sharply outlined 
 playwright's page. I confess I am not a musician ; the drama 
 is my business, and I judge things by their fitness for the 
 stage. My wife agrees with me to differ. She likes music, 
 I like plays. To-night she was better pleased than I was ; 
 for she got good music tolerably well rendered while I got 
 nothing but a mangled comedy." 
 
 We bore the critic's monologue with patience. But once 
 again the spirit, seeking after something which neither 
 Miranda, nor her husband, nor the professor could be got 
 to recognise, moved within me. I cried out at a venture, 
 ** People who go to an opera must forget music pure and 
 simple, must forget the drama pure and simple. You must 
 welcome a third species of art, in which the play, the music, 
 the singers with their voices, the orchestra with its instruments 
 — Pauline Lucca, if you like, with her fascination " (and here 
 I shot a side-glance at Miranda), " are so blent as to create a 
 world beyond the scope of poetry or music or acting taken 
 by themselves. I give Mozart credit for having had insight 
 
288 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 into this new world, for having brought it near to us. And 
 I hold that every fresh representation of his work is a fresh 
 revelation of its possibilities." 
 
 To this the critic answered, " You now seem to me to be 
 confounding the limits of the several arts." *' What ! " I con- 
 tinued, " is the drama but emotion presented in its most 
 external forms as action ? And what is music but emotion, 
 in its most genuine essence, expressed by sound ? Where 
 then can a more complete artistic harmony be found than in 
 the opera?" 
 
 " The opera," replied our host, " is a hybrid. You will pro- 
 bably learn to dislike artistic hybrids, if you have the taste 
 and sense I give you credit for. My own opinion has been 
 already expressed. In the JVozze, Beaumarchais' Mariage de 
 Figaro is simply spoiled. My friend the professor declares 
 Mozart's music to be sufficient by itself, and the libretto to be 
 a sort of machinery for its display. Miranda, I think, agrees 
 with him. You plead eloquently for the hybrid. You have 
 a right to your own view. These things are matters, in the 
 final resort, of individual taste rather than of demonstrable 
 principles. But I repeat that you are very young." The 
 critic drained his Lambrusco, and smiled at me. 
 
 " Yes, he is young," added Miranda. " He must learn to 
 distinguish between music, his own imagination, and a pretty 
 woman. At present he mixes them all up together. It is a 
 sort of transcendental omelette. But I think the pretty woman 
 has more to do with it than metaphysics ! " 
 
 AU this while Edoardo had bestowed devout attention on 
 his supper. But it appeared that the drift of our discourse 
 had not been lost by him. " Well," he said, " you finely fibred 
 people dissect and analyse. I am content with the spetiacolo. 
 That pleases. What does a man want more ? The Nozze is 
 a comedy of life and manners. The music is adorable. 
 To-night the women were not bad to look at — the Lucca was 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 289 
 
 divine ; the scenes — ingenious. I thought but little. I 
 came away delighted. You could have a better play, Caro 
 Signore ! " (with a bow to our host). *'That is granted. 
 You might have better music, Cara Signora ! " (with a bow to 
 Miranda). " That too is granted. But when the play and the 
 music come together — how shall I say ? — the music helps the 
 play, and the play helps the music ; and we — well we, I sup- 
 pose, must help both ! " 
 
 Edoardo's little speech was so ingenuous, and, what is more, 
 so true to his Italian temperament, that it made us all laugh 
 and leave the argument just where we found it. The bottles 
 of Lambrusco supplied us each with one more glass ; and 
 while we were drinking them, Miranda, woman-like, taking the 
 last word, but contradicting herself, softly hummed *^JVon so 
 piii cosa son,'^ and " Ah ! " she said, " I shall dream of love to- 
 night ! " 
 
 We rose and said good-night. But when I had reached 
 my bedroom in the Hotel de la Villa, I sat down, obstinate 
 and unconvinced, and penned this rhapsody, which I have 
 lately found among papers of nearly twenty years ago. I 
 give it as it stands. 
 
 IIL 
 
 Mozart has written the two melodramas of love — the one a 
 melo-tragedy, the other a melo-comedy. But in really noble 
 art. Comedy and Tragedy have faces of equal serenity and 
 beauty. In the Vatican there are marble busts of the two 
 Muses, differing chiefly in their head-dresses: that of 
 Tragedy is an elaborately built-up structure of fillets and 
 flowing hair, piled high above the forehead and descending 
 in long curls upon the shoulders; while Comedy wears a 
 similar adornment, with the addition of a wreath of vine-leaves 
 and grape-bunches. The expression of the sister goddesses is 
 
290 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 no less finely discriminated. Over the mouth of Comedy 
 plays a subtle smile, and her eyes are relaxed in a half-merri- 
 ment. A shadow rests upon the slightly heavier brows of 
 Tragedy, and her lips, though not compressed, are graver. 
 So delicately did the Greek artist indicate the division between 
 two branches of one dramatic art. And since all great art is 
 classical, Mozart's two melodramas, Z)on Giovanni and the 
 Nozze di Figaro^ though the one is tragic and the other comic, 
 are twin-sisters, similar in form and feature. 
 
 The central figure of the melo-tragedy is Don Juan, the 
 hero of unlimited desire, pursuing the unattainable through 
 tortuous interminable labyrinths, eager in appetite yet never 
 satisfied, " for ever following and for ever foiled." He is the 
 incarnation of lust that has become a habit of the soul — 
 rebellious, licentious, selfish, even cruel. His nature, originally 
 noble and brave, has assumed the quahties pecuHar to lust — 
 rebelHon, license, cruelty, defiant egotism. Yet, such as he 
 is, doomed to punishment and execration, Don Juan remains 
 a fit subject for poetry and music, because he is complete, 
 because he is impelled by some demonic influence, spurred on 
 by yearnings after an unsearchable delight. In his death, the 
 spirit of chivalry survives, metamorphosed, it is true, into 
 the spirit of revolt, yet still tragic, such as might animate the 
 desperate sinner of a haughty breed. 
 
 The central figure of the melo-comedy is Cherubino, the 
 genius of love, no less insatiable, but undetermined to virtue 
 or to vice. This is the point of Cherubino, that the ethical 
 capacities in him are still potential. His passion still hovers 
 on the border-land of good and bad. And this undetermined 
 passion is beautiful because of extreme freshness ; of infinite, 
 immeasurable expansibility. Cherubino is the epitome of 
 all that belongs to the amorous temperament in a state of still 
 ascendant adolescence. He is about sixteen years of age — a 
 boy yesterday, a man to-morrow — to-day both and neither — 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 291 
 
 something beyond boyhood, but not yet limited by man's 
 responsibility and man's absorbing passions. He partakes of 
 both ages in the primal awakening to self-consciousness. 
 Desire, which in Don Juan has become a fiend, hovers before 
 him like a fairy. His are the sixteen years, not of a Northern 
 climate, but of Spain or Italy, where manhood appears in a 
 flash, and overtakes the child with sudden sunrise of new 
 faculties. No7idum amabam, sed a7nare amabam, qiiaerebam 
 giiod amarem, amans amare — " I loved not yet, but was in 
 love with loving ; I sought what I should love, being in love 
 with loving." That sentence, penned by S. Augustine and 
 consecrated by Shelley, describes the mood of Cherubino. He 
 loves at every moment of his life, with every pulse of his being. 
 His object is not a beloved being, but love itself— the satis- 
 faction of an irresistible desire, the paradise of bliss which 
 merely loving has become for him. What love means he hardly 
 knows. He only knows that he must love. And women 
 love him — half as a plaything to be trifled with, half as a 
 young god to be wounded by. This rising of the star of love 
 as it ascends into the heaven of youthful fancy, is revealed in 
 the melodies Mozart has written for him. How shall we 
 describe their potency ? Who shall translate those curiously 
 perfect words to which tone and rhythm have been indissolubly 
 wedded ? E pur mi place languir cosi. . . . E se non ho chi 
 vC oda^ parlo d* amor con me. 
 
 But if this be so, it may be asked, Who shall be found 
 worthy to act Cherubino on the stage ? You cannot have 
 seen and hear^ Pauline Lucca, or you would not ask this 
 question. 
 
 Cherubino is by no means the most important person in 
 the plot of the Nozze. But he strikes the keynote of the 
 opera. His love is the standard by which we measure the 
 sad, retrospective, stately love of the Countess, who tries to 
 win back an alienated husband. By Cherubino we measure 
 
292 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 the libertine love of the Count, who is a kind of Don Juan 
 without cruelty, and the humorous love of Figaro and his 
 sprightly bride Susanna. Each of these characters typifies 
 one of the many species of love. But Cherubino anticipates 
 and harmonises all. They are conscious, experienced, world- 
 worn, disillusioned, trivial. He is all love, foreseen, fore- 
 shadowed in a dream of life to be ; all love, diffused through 
 brain and heart and nerves like electricity ; all love, merging 
 the moods of ecstasy, melancholy, triumph, regret, jealousy, 
 joy, expectation, in a hazy sheen, as of some Venetian sunrise. 
 What will Cherubino be after three years? A Romeo, ^ 
 Lovelace, a Lothario, a Juan? a disillusioned rake, a senti- 
 mentalist, an effete fop, a romantic lover ? He may become 
 any one of these, for he contains the possibilities of all. As 
 yet, he is the dear glad angel of the May of love, the 
 nightingale of orient emotion. This moment in the unfold- 
 ing of character Mozart has arrested and eternalised for us 
 in Cherubino's melodies; for it is the privilege of art to 
 render things most fugitive and evanescent fixed imperishably 
 in immortal form. 
 
 IV. 
 
 This is indeed a rhapsodical production. Miranda was 
 probably right. Had it not been for Pauline Lucca, I might 
 not have philosophised the Nozze thus. Yet, in the main, 
 I believe that my instinct was well grounded. Music, espe- 
 cially when wedded to words, more especially when those 
 words are dramatic, cannot separate itself from emotion. 
 It will not do to tell us that a melody is a certain sequence 
 of sounds; that the composer chose it for its beauty of 
 rhythm, form, and tune, and only used the words to get it 
 vocalised. We are forced to go farther back, and ask our- 
 selves, What suggested it in the first place to the composer ? 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 293 
 
 why did he use it precisely in connection with this dramatic 
 situation? How can we answer these questions except by 
 supposing that music was for him the utterance through art 
 of some emotion ? The final fact of human nature is emo- 
 tion, crystallising itself in thought and language, externa- 
 lising itself in action and art. "What," said Novalis, "are 
 thoughts but pale dead feelings?" Admitting this even in 
 part, we cannot deny to music an emotional content of some 
 kind. I would go farther, and assert that, while a merely 
 mechanical musician may set inappropriate melodies to words, 
 and render music inexpressive of character, what constitutes 
 a musical dramatist is the conscious intention of fitting to 
 the words of his libretto such melody as shall interpret char- 
 acter, and the power to do this with effect. 
 
 That the Cherubino of Mozart's Nozze. is quite different 
 from Beaumarchais' Cherubin does not affect this question. 
 He is a new creation, just because Mozart could not, or 
 would not, conceive the character of the page in Beaumar- 
 chais' sprightly superficial spirit. He used the part to utter 
 something unutterable except by music about the soul of 
 the still adolescent lover. The libretto-part and the melo- 
 dies, taken together, constitute a new romantic ideal, con- 
 sistent with experience, but realised with the intensity and 
 universality whereby art is distinguished from life. Don Juan 
 was a myth before Mozart touched him with the magic wand 
 of music. Cherubino became a myth by the same Prospero's 
 spell. Both characters have the universality, the symbolic 
 potency, which belongs to legendary beings. That there 
 remains a discrepancy between the boy-page and the music 
 made for him, can be conceded without danger to my theory • 
 for the music made for Cherubino is meant to interpret his 
 psychical condition, and is independent of his boyishness 
 of conduct. 
 
 This further explains why there may be so many render- 
 
294 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 ings of Cherubino's melodies. Mozart idealised an infinite 
 emotion. The singer is forced to define; the actor also is 
 forced to define. Each introduces his own limit on the 
 feeling. When the actor and the singer meet together in 
 one personality, this definition of emotion becomes of neces- 
 sity doubly specific. The condition of all music is that it 
 depends in a great measure on the temperament of the 
 interpreter for its momentary shade of expression, and 
 this dependence is of course exaggerated when the music 
 is dramatic. Furthermore, the subjectivity of the audience 
 enters into the problem as still another element of defini- 
 tion. It may, therefore, be fairly said that, in estimating 
 any impression produced by Cherubino's music, the original 
 character of the page, transplanted from French comedy to 
 Italian opera, Mozart's conception of that character, Mozart's 
 specific quality of emotion and specific style of musical 
 utterance, together with the contralto's interpretation of the 
 character and rendering of the music, according to her 
 intellectual capacity, artistic skill, and timbre of voice, have 
 collaborated with the individuality of the hearer. Some of 
 the constituents of the ever-varying product — a product which 
 is new each time the part is played — are fixed. Da Ponte's 
 Cherubino and Mozart's melodies remain unalterable. All 
 the rest is undecided : the singer and the listener change 
 on each occasion. 
 
 To assert that the musician Mozart meant nothing by his 
 music, to assert that he only cared about it ^tm music, is the 
 same as to say that the painter Tintoretto, when he put the 
 Crucifixion upon canvas, the sculptor Michelangelo, when 
 he carved Christ upon the lap of Mary, meant nothing, and 
 only cared about the beauty of their forms and colours. 
 Those who take up this position prove, not that the artist 
 has no meaning to convey, but that for them the artist's 
 nature is unintelligible, and his meaning is conveyed in an 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 295 
 
 unknown tongue. It seems superfluous to guard against mis- 
 interpretation by saying that to expect clear definition from 
 music — the definition which belongs to poetry — would be 
 absurd. The sphere of music is in sensuous perception ; the 
 sphere of poetry is in intelligence. Music, dealing with pure 
 sound, must always be vaguer in significance than poetry, 
 dealing with words. Nevertheless its effect upon the sentient 
 subject may be more intense and penetrating for this very 
 reason. We cannot fail to understand what words are in- 
 tended to convey ; we may very easily interpret in a hundred 
 different ways the message of sound. But this is not because 
 words are wider in their reach and more alive ; rather because 
 they are more limited, more stereotyped, more dead. They 
 symbolise something precise and unmistakable ; but this pre- 
 cision is itself attenuation of the something symbolised. The 
 exact value of the counter is better understood when it is a 
 word than when it is a chord, because all that a word con- 
 veys has already become a thought, while all that musical 
 sounds convey remains within the region of emotion which 
 has not been intellectuahsed. Poetry touches emotion through 
 the thinking faculty. If music reaches the thinking faculty 
 at all, it is through fibres of emotion. But emotion, when 
 it has become thought, has already lost a portion of its force, 
 and has taken to itself a something alien to its nature. 
 Therefore the message of music can never rightly be trans- 
 lated into words. It is the very largeness and vividness of the 
 sphere of simple feeling which makes its symbolical counter- 
 part in sound so seeming vague. But in spite of this incon- 
 testable defect of seeming vagueness, emotion expressed by 
 music is nearer to our sentient self, if we have ears to take it 
 in, than the same emotion limited by language. It is intenser, 
 it is more immediate, as compensation for being less intelligible, 
 less unmistakable in meaning. It is an infinite, an indistinct, 
 where each consciousness defines and sets a limitary form. 
 
296 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 A train of thought which begins with the concrete not 
 unfrequently finds itself finishing, almost against its will, in 
 abstractions. This is the point to which the performance of 
 Cherubino's part by Pauline Lucca at the Scala twenty years 
 ago has led me — that I have to settle with myself what I mean 
 by art in general, and what I take to be the proper function 
 of music as one of the fine arts. 
 
 "Art," said Goethe, "is but form-giving," We might vary 
 this definition, and say, "Art is a method of expression or 
 presentation." Then comes the question : If art gives form, 
 if it is a method of expression or presentation, to what does 
 it give form, what does it express or present? The answer 
 certainly must be : Art gives form to human consciousness ; 
 expresses or presents the feeling or the thought of man. 
 Whatever else art may do by the way, in the communica- 
 tion of innocent pleasures, in the adornment of life and the 
 softening of manners, in the creation of beautiful shapes and 
 sounds, this, at all events, is its prime function. 
 
 While investing thought, the spiritual subject-matter of all 
 art, with form, or finding for it proper modes of presentation, 
 each of the arts employs a special medium, obeying the laws of 
 beauty proper to that medium. The vehicles of the arts, 
 roughly speaking, are material substances (like stone, wood, 
 metal), pigments, sounds, and words. The masterly handling of 
 these vehicles and the realisation of their characteristic types of 
 beauty have come to be regarded as the craftsman's paramount 
 concern. And in a certain sense this is a right conclusion; for 
 dexterity in the manipulation of the chosen vehicle and power 
 to create a beautiful object, distinguish the successful artist 
 from the man who may have had like thoughts and feelings. 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 297 
 
 This dexterity, this power, are the properties of the artist ^ud 
 artist. Yet we must not forget that the form created by the 
 artist for the expression of a thought or feeling is not the final 
 end of art itself. That form, after all, is but the mode of 
 presentation through which the spiritual content manifests 
 itself. Beauty, in like manner, is not the final end of art, 
 but is the indispensable condition under which the artistic 
 manifestation of the spiritual content must be made. It is 
 the business of art to create an ideal world, in which percep- 
 tion, emotion, understanding, action, all elements of human 
 life sublimed by thought, shall reappear in concrete forms as 
 beauty. This being so, the logical criticism of art demands 
 that we should not only estimate the technical skill of artists 
 and their faculty for presenting beauty to the aesthetic sense, 
 but that we should also ask ourselves what portion of the 
 human spirit he has chosen to invest with form, and how he 
 has conceived his subject. It is not necessary that the ideas 
 embodied in a work of art should be the artist's own. They 
 may be common to the race and age : as, for instance, the 
 conception of sovereign deity expressed in the Olympian Zeus 
 of Pheidias, or the conception of divine maternity expressed 
 in Raphael's Madonna di San Sisto. Still the personality of 
 the artist, his own intellectual and moral nature, his peculiar 
 way of thinking and feeling, his individual attitude towards the 
 material given to him in ideas of human consciousness, will 
 modify his choice of subject and of form, and will determine 
 his specific type of beauty. To take an example : supposing 
 that an idea, common to his race and age, is given to the 
 artist for treatment ; this will be the final end of the work 
 of art which he produces. But his personal qualities and 
 technical performance determine the degree of success or 
 failure to which he attains in presenting that idea and in 
 expressing it with beauty. Signorelli fails where Perugino 
 excels, in giving adequate and lovely form to the religious 
 
298 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 sentiment. Michelangelo is sure of the sublime, and Raphael 
 of the beautiful. 
 
 Art is thus the presentation of the human spirit by the 
 artist to his fellow-men. The subject-matter of the arts is 
 commensurate with what man thinks and feels and does. It 
 is as deep as religion, as wide as life. But what distinguishes 
 art from religion or from life is, that this subject - matter 
 must assume beautiful form, and must be presented directly 
 or indirectly to the senses. Art is not the school or the 
 cathedral, but the play-ground, the paradise of humanity. It 
 does not teach, it does not preach. Nothing abstract enters 
 into art's domain. Truth and goodness are transmuted into 
 beauty there, just as in science beauty and goodness assume 
 the shape of truth, and in religion truth and beauty become 
 goodness. The rigid definitions, the unmistakable laws of 
 science, are not to be found in art. Whatever art has touched 
 acquires a concrete sensuous embodiment, and thus ideas 
 presented to the mind in art have lost a portion of their pure 
 thought-essence. It is on this account that the religious con- 
 ceptions of the Greeks were so admirably fitted for the art 
 of sculpture, and certain portions of the medieval Christian 
 mythology lent themselves so well to painting. For the 
 same reason the metaphysics of ecclesiastical dogma defy 
 the artist's plastic faculty. Art, in a word, is a middle term 
 between reason and the senses. Its secondary aim, after the 
 prime end of presenting the human spirit in beautiful form 
 has been accomplished, is to give tranquil and innocent 
 enjoyment. 
 
 From what has gone before it will be seen that no human 
 being can make or mould a beautiful form without incorpor- 
 ating in that form some portion of the human mind, however 
 crude, however elementary. In other words, there is no work 
 of art without a theme, without a motive, without a subject. 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 299 
 
 The presentation of that theme, that motive, that subject, is 
 the final end of art. The art is good or bad according as the 
 subject has been well or ill presented, consistently with the 
 laws of beauty special to the art itself. Thus we obtain two 
 standards for aesthetic criticism. We judge a statue, for ex- 
 ample, both by the sculptor's intellectual grasp upon his sub- 
 ject, and also by his technical skill and sense of beauty. In 
 a picture of the Last Judgment by Fra Angelico we say that 
 the bliss of the righteous has been more successfully treated 
 than the torments of the wicked, because the former has been 
 better understood, although the painter's skill in each is equal. 
 In the Perseus of Cellini we admire the sculptor's spirit, finish 
 of execution, and originality of design, while we deplore that 
 want of sympathy with the heroic character which makes his 
 type of physical beauty slightly vulgar and his facial expression 
 vacuous. 
 
 If the phrase "Art for art's sake" has any meaning, this 
 meaning is simply that the artist, having chosen a theme, 
 thinks exclusively in working at it of technical dexterity or 
 the quality of beauty. There are many inducements for the 
 artist thus to narrow his function, and for the critic to assist 
 him by applying the canons of a soulless connoisseurship to 
 his work ; for the conception of the subject is but the start- 
 ing-point in art-production, and the artist's difficulties and 
 triumphs as a craftsman lie in the region of technicalities. 
 He knows, moreover, that, however deep or noble his 
 idea may be, his work of art will be worthless if it fail in 
 skill or be devoid of beauty. What converts a thought 
 into a statue or a picture, is the form found for it; and so 
 the form itself seems all-important The artist, therefore, 
 too easily imagines that he may neglect his theme; that a 
 fine piece of colouring, a well-balanced composition, or, as 
 Cellini put it, " un bel corpo ignudo," is enough. And this 
 is especially easy in an age which reflects much upon the 
 
300 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 arts, and pursues them with enthusiasm, while its deeper 
 thoughts and feelings are not of the kind which translate 
 themselves readily into artistic form. But, after all, a fine 
 piece of colouring, a well-balanced composition, a sonorous 
 stanza, a learned essay in counterpoint, are not enough. 
 They are all excellent good things, yielding delight to the 
 artistic sense and instruction to the student. Yet when we 
 think of the really great statues, pictures, poems, music of 
 the world, we find that these are really great because of some- 
 thing more — and that more is their theme, their presenta- 
 tion of a noble portion of the human soul. Artists and art- 
 students may be satisfied with perfect specimens of a crafts- 
 man's skill, independent of his theme ; but the mass of men 
 will not be satisfied ; and it is as wrong to suppose that art 
 exists for artists and art-students, as to talk of art for art's 
 sake. Art exists for humanity. Art transmutes thought and 
 feeling into terms of beautiful form. Art is great and lasting 
 in proportion as it appeals to the human consciousness at 
 large, presenting to it portions of itself in adequate and 
 lovely form. 
 
 VI. 
 
 It was necessary in the first place firmly to apprehend the 
 truth that the final end of all art is the presentation of a 
 spiritual content ; it is necessary in the next place to remove 
 confusions by considering the special circumstances of the 
 several arts. 
 
 Each art has its own vehicle of presentation. What it can 
 present and how it must present it, depends upon the nature 
 of this vehicle. Thus, though architecture, sculpture, painting, 
 music, poetry, meet upon the common ground of spiritualised 
 experience — though the works of art produced by the archi- 
 tect, sculptor, painter, musician, poet, emanate from the 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 301 
 
 spiritual nature of the race, are coloured by the spiritual 
 nature of the men who make them, and express what is 
 spiritual in humanity under concrete forms invented for them 
 by the artist — yet it is certain that all of these arts do not 
 deal exactly with the same portions of this common material 
 in the same way or with the same results. Each has its own 
 department. Each exhibits qualities of strength and weak- 
 ness special to itself. To define these several departments, 
 to explain the relation of these several vehicles of presenta- 
 tion to the common subject-matter, is the next step in 
 criticism. 
 
 Of the fine arts, architecture alone subserves utility. We 
 build for use. But the geometrical proportions which the 
 architect observes, contain the element of beauty and power- 
 fully influence the soul. Into the language of arch and aisle 
 and colonnade, of cupola and faQade and pediment, of spire 
 and vault, the architect translates emotion, vague perhaps 
 but deep, mute but unmistakable. When we say that a 
 building is sublime or graceful, frivolous or stern, we mean 
 that sublimity or grace, frivolity or sternness, is inherent in 
 it. The emotions connected with these qualities are inspired 
 in us when we contemplate it, and are presented to us by its 
 form. Whether the architect deliberately aimed at the sublime 
 or graceful — whether the dignified serenity of the Athenian 
 genius sought to express itself in the Parthenon, and the 
 mysticism of medieval Christianity in the gloom of Chartres 
 Cathedral — whether it was Renaissance paganism which gave 
 its mundane pomp and glory to S. Peter's, and the refined 
 selfishness of royalty its specious splendour to the palace of 
 Versailles — need not be curiously questioned. The fact that 
 we are impelled to raise these points, that architecture more 
 almost than any art connects itself indissolubly with the life, 
 the character, the moral being of a nation and an epoch, 
 
302 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 proves that we are justified in bringing it beneath our general 
 definition of the arts. In a great measure because it subserves 
 utility, and is therefore dependent upon the necessities of life, 
 does architecture present to us through form the human spirit. 
 Comparing the palace built by Giulio Romano for the Dukes 
 of Mantua with the contemporary castle of a German prince, 
 we cannot fail at once to comprehend the difference of spiri- 
 tual conditions, as these displayed themselves .in daily life, 
 which then separated Italy from the Teutonic nations. But 
 this is not all. Spiritual quality in the architect himself 
 finds clear expression in his work. Coldness combined with 
 violence marks Brunelleschi's churches ; a certain suavity and 
 well-bred taste the work of Bramante ; while Michelangelo 
 exhibits wayward energy in his Library of S. Lorenzo, and 
 Amadeo self-abandonment to fancy in his Lombard chapels. 
 I have chosen examples from one nation and one epoch in 
 order that the point I seek to make, the demonstration of a 
 spiritual quality in buildings, may be fairly stated. 
 
 Sculpture and painting distinguish themselves from the 
 other fine arts by the imitation of concrete existences in 
 nature. They copy the bodies of men and animals, the 
 aspects of the world around us, and the handiwork of men. 
 Yet, in so far as they are rightly arts, they do not make 
 imitation an object in itself. The grapes of Zeuxis at which 
 birds pecked, the painted dog at which a cat's hair bristles — 
 if such grapes or such a dog were ever put on canvas — are 
 but evidences of the artist's skill, not of his faculty as artist. 
 These two plastic, or, as I prefer to call them, figurative arts, 
 use their imitation of the external world for the expression, 
 the presentation of internal, spiritual things. The human 
 form is for them the outward symbol of the inner human 
 spirit, and their power of presenting spirit is limited by the 
 means at their disposal. 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 303 
 
 Sculpture employs stone, wood, clay, the precious metals, 
 to model forms, detached and independent, or raised upon a 
 fiat surface in relief. Its domain is the whole range of human 
 character and consciousness, in so far as these can be indi- 
 cated by fixed facial expression, by physical type, and by 
 attitude. If we dwell for an instant on the greatest historical 
 epoch of sculpture, we shall understand the domain of this 
 art in its range and limitation. At a certain point of Greek 
 development the Hellenic Pantheon began to be translated by 
 the sculptors into statues ; and when the genius of the 
 Greeks expired in Rome, the cycle of their psychological 
 conceptions had been exhaustively presented through this 
 medium. During that long period of time, the most delicate 
 gradations of human personality, divinised, idealised, were 
 presented to the contemplation of the consciousness which 
 gave them being, in appropriate types. Strength and swift- 
 ness, massive force and airy lightness, contemplative repose 
 and active energy, voluptuous softness and refined grace, 
 intellectual sublimity and lascivious seductiveness — the whole 
 rhythm of qualities which can be typified by bodily form 
 — were analysed, selected, combined in various degrees, to 
 incarnate the religious conceptions of Zeus, Aphrodite, 
 Herakles, Dionysus, Pallas, Fauns and Satyrs, Nymphs of 
 woods and waves, Tritons, the genius of Death, heroes and 
 hunters, lawgivers and poets, presiding deities of minor func- 
 tions, man's lustful appetites and sensual needs. All that men 
 think, or do, or are, or wish for, or imagine in this world, had 
 found exact corporeal equivalents. Not physiognomy alone, 
 but all the portions of the body upon which the habits of the 
 animating soul are wont to stamp themselves, were studied 
 and employed as symbolism. Uranian Aphrodite was dis- 
 tinguished from her Pandemic sister by chastened lust- 
 repelling loveliness. The muscles of Herakles were more 
 ponderous than the tense sinews of Achilles. The Hermes 
 
304 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 of the palaestra bore a torso of majestic depth ; the Hermes, 
 who carried messages from heaven, had limbs alert for 
 movement. The brows of Zeus inspired awe; the breasts 
 of Dionysus breathed delight. 
 
 A race accustomed, as the Greeks were, to read this sym- 
 bolism, accustomed, as the Greeks were, to note the indi- 
 viduality of naked form, had no difficulty in interpreting the 
 language of sculpture. Nor is there now much difficulty in 
 the task. Our surest guide to the subject of a basrelief or 
 statue is study of the physical type considered as symbolical 
 of spiritual quality. From the fragment of a torso the true 
 critic can say whether it belongs to the athletic or the erotic 
 species. A limb of Bacchus differs from a limb of Poseidon. 
 The whole psychological conception of Aphrodite Pandemos 
 enters into every muscle, every joint, no less than into her 
 physiognomy, her hair, her attitude. 
 
 There is, however, a limit to the domain of sculpture. This 
 art deals most successfully with personified generalities. It is 
 also strong in the presentation of incarnate character. But 
 when it attempts to tell a story, we often seek in vain its mean- 
 ing. Battles of Amazons or Centaurs upon basreliefs, indeed, 
 are unmistakable. The subject is indicated here by some 
 external sign. The group of Laocoon appeals at once to 
 a reader of Virgil, and the divine vengeance of Leto's chil- 
 dren upon Niobe is manifest in the Uffizzi marbles. But 
 who are the several heroes of the ^ginetan pediment, and 
 what was the subject of the Pheidian statues on the Par- 
 thenon? Do the three graceful figures of a basrelief which 
 exists at Naples and in the Villa Albani, represent Orpheus, 
 Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two sons ? Was 
 the winged and sworded genius upon the Ephesus column 
 meant for a genius of Death or a genius of Love ? 
 
 This dimness of significance indicates the limitation of 
 sculpture, and inclines some of those who feel its charm to 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 305 
 
 assert that the sculptor seeks to convey no intellectual meaning, 
 that he is satisfied with the creation of beautiful form. There 
 is sense in this revolt against the faith which holds that art is 
 nothing but a mode of spiritual presentation. Truly the artist 
 aims at producing beauty, is satisfied if he conveys delight. 
 But it is impossible to escape from the certainty that, while 
 he is creating forms of beauty, he means something ; and that 
 something, that theme for which he finds the form, is part 
 of the world's spiritual heritage. Only the crudest works of 
 plastic art, capricci and arabesques, have no intellectual 
 content ; and even these are good in so far as they convey 
 the playfulness of fancy. 
 
 Painting employs colours upon surfaces — walls, panels, 
 canvas. What has been said about sculpture will apply in a 
 great measure to this art. The human form, the world around 
 us, the works of man's hands, are represented in painting, not 
 for their own sake merely, but with a view to bringing thought, 
 feeling, action, home to the consciousness of the spectator 
 from the artist's consciousness on which they have been im- 
 pressed. Painting can tell a story better than sculpture, can 
 represent more complicated feelings, can suggest thoughts of 
 a subtler intricacy. Through colour, it can play, like music, 
 directly on powerful but vague emotion. It is deficient in 
 fulness and roundness of concrete reality. A statue stands 
 before us, the soul incarnate in ideal form, fixed and frozen 
 for eternity. The picture is a reflection cast upon a magic 
 glass ; not less permanent, but reduced to a shadow of reaUty. 
 To follow these distinctions farther would be aHen from the 
 present purpose. It is enough to repeat that, within their 
 several spheres, according to their several strengths and 
 weaknesses, both sculpture and painting present the spirit to 
 us only as the spirit shows itself immersed in things of sense. 
 The light of a lamp enclosed within an alabaster vase is still 
 
3o5 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 lamplight, though shorn of lustre and toned to coloured 
 softness. Even thus the spirit, immersed in things of sense 
 presented to us by the figurative arts, is still spirit, though 
 diminished in its intellectual clearness and invested with hues 
 not its own. To fashion that alabaster form of art with 
 utmost skill, to make it beautiful, to render it transparent, is 
 the artist's function. But he will have failed of the highest 
 if the light within burns dim, or if he gives the world a lamp 
 in which no spiritual flame is lighted. 
 
 Music transports us to a different region. It imitates no- 
 thing. It uses pure sound, and sound of the most wholly 
 artificial kind — so artificial that the musical sounds of 
 one race are unmusical, and therefore unintelligible, to 
 another. Like architecture, music relies upon mathematical 
 proportions. Unlike architecture, music serves no utility. It 
 is the purest art of pleasure — the truest paradise and play- 
 ground of the spirit. It has less power than painting, even 
 less power than sculpture, to tell a story or to communicate an 
 idea. For we must remember that when music is married to 
 words, the words, and not the music, reach our thinking faculty. 
 And yet, in spite of all, music presents man's spirit to itself 
 through form. The domain of the spirit over which music 
 reigns, is emotion — not defined emotion, not feeling even so 
 defined as jealousy or anger — but those broad bases of man's 
 being out of which emotions spring, defining themselves 
 through action into this or that set type of feeling. Archi- 
 tecture, we have noticed, is so connected with specific modes 
 of human existence, that from its main examples we can 
 reconstruct the life of men who used it. Sculpture and paint- 
 ing, by limiting their presentation to the imitation of external 
 things, have all the help which experience and association 
 render. The mere artificiality of music's vehicle separates it 
 from life and makes its message untranslatable. Yet, as I have 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SC ALA THEATRE. 307 
 
 already pointed out, this very disability under which it labours 
 is the secret of its extraordinary potency. Nothing intervenes 
 between the musical work of art and the fibres of the sentient 
 being it immediately thrills. We do not seek to say what 
 music means. We feel the music. And if a man should 
 pretend that the music has not passed beyond his ears, has 
 communicated nothing but a musical delight, he simply tells us 
 that he has not felt music. The ancients on this point were 
 wiser than some moderns when, without pretending to assign 
 an intellectual significance to music, they held it for an axiom 
 that one type of music bred one type of character, another 
 type another. A change in the music of a state, wrote Plato, 
 will be followed by changes in its constitution. It is of the 
 utmost importance, said Aristotle, to provide in education for 
 the use of the ennobling and the fortifying moods. These 
 philosophers knew that music creates a spiritual world, in 
 which the spirit cannot live and move without contracting 
 habits of emotion. In this vagueness of significance but in- 
 tensity of feeling lies the magic of music. A melody occurs 
 to the composer, which he certainly connects with no act of 
 the reason, which he is probably unconscious of connecting 
 with any movement of his feeling, but which nevertheless is 
 the form in sound of an emotional mood. When he reflects 
 upon the melody secreted thus impromptu, he is aware, as 
 we learn from his own lips, that this work has correspond- 
 ence with emotion. Beethoven calls one symphony Heroic, 
 another Pastoral ; of the opening of another he says, " Fate 
 knocks at the door." Mozart sets comic words to the mass- 
 music of a friend, in order to mark his sense of its inapti- 
 tude for religious sentiment. All composers use phrases like 
 Maestoso, Pomposo, Allegro, Lagrimoso, Con Fuoco, to ex- 
 press the general complexion of the mood their music ought 
 to represent. 
 
3o8 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Before passing to poetry, it may be well to turn aside 
 and consider two subordinate arts, which deserve a place in 
 any system of 3esthetics. These are dancing and acting. 
 Dancing uses the living human form, and presents feel- 
 ing or action, the passions and the deeds of men, in 
 artificially educated movements of the body. The element 
 of beauty it possesses, independently of the beauty of the 
 dancer, is rhythm. Acting or the art of mimicry presents the 
 same subject-matter, no longer under the conditions of fixed 
 rhythm, but as an ideal reproduction of reality. The actor is 
 what he represents, and the element of beauty in his art is 
 perfection of realisation. It is his duty as an artist to show 
 us Orestes or Othello, not perhaps exactly as Othello and 
 Orestes were, but as the essence of their tragedies, ideally 
 incorporate in action, ought to be. The actor can do this in 
 dumb show. Some of the greatest actors of the ancient world 
 were mimes. But he usually irxterprets a poet's thought, and 
 attempts to present an artistic conception in a secondary form 
 of art, which has for its advantage his own personality in play. 
 
   The last of the fine arts is literature ; or, in the narrower 
 sphere of which it will be well to speak here only, is poetry. 
 Poetry employs words in fixed rhythms, which we call metres. 
 Only a small portion of its effect is derived from the beauty 
 of its sound. It appeals to the sense of hearing far less 
 immediately than music does. It makes no appeal to the 
 eyesight, and takes no help from the beauty of colour. It 
 produces no tangible object. But language being the store- 
 house of all human experience, language being the medium 
 whereby spirit communicates with spirit in affairs of life, the 
 vehicle which transmits to us the thoughts and feelings of the 
 past, and on which we rely for continuing our present to the 
 future, it follows that, of all the arts, poetry soars highest, flies 
 widest, and is most at home in the region of the spirit. What 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 309 
 
 poetry lacks of sensuous fulness, it more than balances by 
 intellectual intensity. Its significance is unmistakable, be- 
 cause it employs the very material men use in their exchange 
 of thoughts and correspondence of emotions. To the bounds 
 of its empire there is no end. It embraces in its own more 
 abstract being all the arts. By words it does the work in 
 turn of architecture, sculpture, painting, music. It is the 
 metaphysic of the fine arts. Philosophy finds place in 
 poetry; and life itself, refined to its last utterance, hangs 
 trembling on this thread which joins our earth to heaven, this 
 bridge between experience and the realms where unattainable 
 and imperceptible will have no meaning. 
 
 If we are right in defining art as the manifestation of the 
 human spirit to man by man in beautiful form, poetry, more 
 incontestably than any other art, fulfils this definition and 
 enables us to gauge its accuracy. For words are the spirit, 
 manifested to itself in symbols with no sensual alloy. Poetry 
 is therefore the presentation, through words, of life and all 
 that life implies. Perception, emotion, thought, action, find 
 in descriptive, lyrical, reflective, dramatic, and epical poetry 
 their immediate apocalypse. In poetry we are no longer 
 puzzled with problems as to whether art has or has not of 
 necessity a spiritual content. There cannot be any poetry 
 whatsoever without a spiritual meaning of some sort : good 
 or bad, moral, immoral, or non-moral, obscure or lucid, 
 noble or ignoble, slight or weighty — such distinctions do 
 not signify. In poetry we are not met by questions whether 
 the poet intended to convey a meaning when he made it 
 Quite meaningless poetry (as some critics would fain find 
 melody quite meaningless, or a statue meaningless, or a 
 Venetian picture meaningless) is a contradiction in terms. 
 In poetry, life, or a portion of life, lives again, resuscitated 
 and presented to our mental faculty through art. The best 
 poetry is that which reproduces the most of life, or its 
 
3IO ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 intensest moments. Therefore the extensive species of the 
 drama and the epic, the intensive species of the lyric, have 
 been ever held in highest esteem. Only a half-crazy critic 
 flaunts the paradox that poetry is excellent in so far as it 
 assimilates the vagueness of music, or estimates a poet by his 
 power of translating sense upon the border-land of nonsense 
 into melodious words. Where poetry falls short in the com- 
 parison with other arts, is in the quality of form-giving, in 
 the quality of sensuous concreteness. Poetry can only pre- 
 sent forms to the mental eye and to the intellectual sense, 
 stimulate the physical senses by indirect suggestion. There- 
 fore dramatic poetry, the most complicated kind of poetry, 
 relies upon the actor ; and lyrical poetry, the intensest kind 
 of poetry, seeks the aid of music. But these comparative 
 deficiencies are over-balanced, for all the highest purposes 
 of art, by the width and depth, the intelligibility and power, 
 the flexibility and multitudinous associations, of language. 
 The other arts are limited in what they utter. There is 
 nothing which has entered into the life of man which poetry 
 cannot express. Poetry says everything in man's own lan- 
 guage to the mind. The other arts appeal imperatively, each 
 in its own region, to man's senses ; and the mind receives 
 art's message by the help of symbols from the world of sense. 
 Poetry lacks this immediate appeal to sense. But the elixir 
 which it offers to the mind, its quintessence extracted from 
 all things of sense, reacts through intellectual perception upon 
 all the faculties that make men what they are. 
 
 VII. 
 
 I used a metaphor in one of the foregoing paragraphs to 
 indicate the presence of the vital spirit, the essential element 
 of thought or feeling, in the work of art. I said it radiated 
 through the form, as lamplight through an alabaster vase. 
 
CHERUBINO AT THE SCALA THEATRE. 311 
 
 Now the skill of the artist is displayed in modelling that 
 vase, in giving it shape, rich and rare, and fashioning its 
 curves with subtlest workmanship. In so far as he is a 
 craftsman, the artist's pains must be bestowed upon this 
 precious vessel of the animating theme. In so far as he has 
 power over beauty, he must exert it in this plastic act It 
 is here that he displays dexterity ; here that he creates ; here 
 that he separates himself from other men who think and 
 feel The poet, more perhaps than any other artist, needs 
 to keep this steadily in view ; for words being our daily vehicle 
 of utterance, it may well chance that the alabaster vase 
 of language should be hastily or trivially modelled. This 
 is the true reason why " neither gods nor men nor the columns 
 either suffer mediocrity in singers." Upon the poet it is 
 specially incumbent to see that he has something rare to say 
 and some rich mode of saying it The figurative arts need 
 hardly be so cautioned. They run their risk in quite a 
 different direction. For sculptor and for painter, the danger 
 is lest he should think that alabaster vase his final task. 
 He may too easily be satisfied with moulding a beautiful 
 but empty form. 
 
 The last word on the topic of the arts is given in one 
 sentence. Let us remember that every work of art enshrines 
 a spiritual subject, and that the artist's power is shown in 
 finding for that subject a form of ideal loveliness. Many 
 kindred points remain to be discussed; as what we mean 
 by beauty, which is a condition indispensable to noble art ; 
 and what are the relations of the arts to ethics. These 
 questions cannot now be raised. It is enough in one essay 
 to have tried to vindicate the spirituality of art in general. 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 
 
 I. 
 
 Some years' residence in the Canton of the Grisons made me 
 familiar with all sorts of Valtelline wine ; with masculine 
 but rough Inferno, generous Forzato, delicate Sassella, harsher 
 Montagner, the raspberry flavour of Grumello, the sharp invi- 
 gorating twang of Villa. The colour, ranging from garnet 
 to almandine or ruby, told me the age and quality of wine ; 
 and I could judge from the crust it forms upon the bottle, 
 whether it had been left long enough in wood to ripen. I had 
 furthermore arrived at the conclusion that the best Valtelline 
 can only be tasted in cellars of the Engadine or Davos, where 
 this vintage matures slowly in the mountain air, and takes a 
 flavour unknown at lower levels. In a word, it had amused 
 my leisure to make or think myself a connoisseur. My lite- 
 rary taste was tickled by the praise bestowed in the Augustan 
 age on Rhaetic grapes by Virgil : 
 
 Et quo te carmine dicam, 
 Rhsetica? nee cellis ideo contende Falernis. 
 
 I piqued myself on thinking that could the poet but have 
 drank one bottle at Samaden — where Stilicho, by the way, in 
 his famous recruiting expedition may perhaps have drank it — 
 he would have been less chary in his panegyric. For the 
 point of inferiority on which he seems to insist, namely, that 
 Valtelline wine does not keep well in cellar, is only proper to 
 this vintage in Italian climate. 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 313 
 
 Such meditations led my fancy on the path of history. Is 
 there truth, then, in the dim tradition that this mountain land 
 was colonised by Etruscans? Is J^as the root of Rhaetia? 
 The Etruscans were accomplished wine-growers, we know. It 
 was their Montepulciano which drew the Gauls to Rome, if 
 Livy can be trusted. Perhaps they first planted the vine in 
 Valtelline. Perhaps its superior culture in that district may 
 be due to ancient use surviving in a secluded Alpine valley. 
 One thing is certain, that the peasants of Sondrio and 
 Tirano understand viticulture better than the Italians of 
 Lombardy. 
 
 Then my thoughts ran on to the period of modern history, 
 when the Grisons seized the Valtelline in lieu of war-pay 
 from the Dukes of Milan. For some three centuries they 
 held it as a subject province. From the Rath-Haus at Davos 
 or Chur they sent their nobles — Von Salis and Buol, Planta 
 and Sprecher von Bernegg — across the hills as governors or 
 podestks to Poschiavo, Sondrio, Tirano, and Morbegno. In 
 those old days the Valtelline wines came duly every winter over 
 snow-deep passes to fill the cellars of the Signori Grigioni. 
 That quaint traveller Tom Coryat, in his so-called Crudities, 
 notes the custom early in the seventeenth century. And 
 as that custom then obtained, it still subsists with little altera- 
 tion. The wine-carriers — Wein-fiihrer, as they are called — first 
 scaled the Bernina pass, halting then as now, perhaps, at 
 Poschiavo and Pontresina. Afterwards, in order to reach 
 Davos, the pass of the Scaletta rose before them — a wilderness 
 of untracked snow-drifts. The country-folk still point to 
 narrow, light hand-sledges, on which the casks were charged 
 before the last pitch of the pass. Some wine came, no doubt, 
 on pack-saddles. A meadow in front of the Dischma-Thal, 
 where the pass ends, still bears the name of the Ross-Weid, 
 or horse-pasture. It was here that the beasts of burden 
 used for this wine-service, rested after their long labours. 
 
314 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 In favourable weather the whole journey from Tirano 
 would have occupied at least four days, with scanty halts 
 at night. 
 
 The Valtelline slipped from the hands of the Grisons 
 early in this century. It is rumoured that one of the Von 
 Salis family negotiated matters with Napoleon more for his 
 private benefit than for the interests of the state. However 
 this may have been, when the Graubiinden became a Swiss 
 Canton, after four centuries of sovereign independence, the 
 whole Valtelline passed to Austria, and so eventually to 
 Italy. According to modern and just notions of nation- 
 ality, this was right. In their period of power, the Grisons 
 masters had treated their Italian dependencies with harsh- 
 ness. The Valtelline is an Italian valley, connected with 
 the rest of the peninsula by ties of race and language. It 
 is, moreover, geographically linked to Italy by the great 
 stream of the Adda, which takes its rise upon the Stelvio, 
 and after passing through the Lake of Como, swells the 
 volume of the Po. 
 
 But, though politically severed from the Valtelline, the 
 Engadiners and Davosers have not dropped their old habit 
 of importing its best produce. What they formerly levied 
 as masters, they now acquire by purchase. The Italian 
 revenue derives a large profit from the frontier dues paid 
 at the gate between Tirano and Poschiavo on the Bernina 
 road. Much of the same wine enters Switzerland by another 
 route, travelling from Sondrio to Chiavenna and across the 
 Spliigen. But until quite recently, the wine itself could 
 scarcely be found outside the Canton. It was indeed quoted 
 upon Lombard wine-lists. Yet no one drank it ; and when 
 I tasted it at Milan, I found it quite unrecognisable. The 
 fact seems to be that the Graubiindeners alone know how 
 to deal with it ; and, as I have hinted, the wine requires a 
 mountain climate for its full development. 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 315 
 
 II. 
 
 The district where the wine of Valtellina is grown extends, 
 roughly speaking, from Tirano to Morbegno, a distance of 
 some fifty-four miles. The best sorts come from the middle 
 of this region. High up in the valley, soil and climate are 
 alike less favourable. Low down a coarser, earthier quality 
 springs from fat land where the valley broadens. The 
 northern hillsides to a very considerable height above the 
 river are covered with vineyards. The southern slopes on 
 the left bank of the Adda, lying more in shade, yield but 
 little. Inferno, Grumello, and Perla di Sassella are the 
 names of famous vineyards. Sassella is the general name 
 for a large tract. Buying an Inferno, Grumello, or Perla 
 di Sassella wine, it would be absurd to suppose that one 
 obtained it precisely from the eponymous estate. But as 
 each of these vineyards yields a marked quality of wine, 
 which is taken as standard-giving, the produce of the whole 
 district may be broadly classified as approaching more or 
 less nearly to one of these accepted types. The Inferno, 
 Grumello, and Perla di Sassella of commerce are therefore 
 three sorts of good Valtelline, ticketed with famous names 
 to indicate certain differences of quality. Montagner, as 
 the name implies, is a somewhat lighter wine, grown higher 
 up in the hill-vineyards. And of this class there are many 
 species, some approximating to Sassella in delicacy of flavour, 
 others approaching the tart lightness of the Villa vintage. 
 This last takes its title from a village in the neighbourhood 
 of Tirano, where a table-wine is chiefly grown. 
 
 Forzato is the strongest, dearest, longest-lived of this whole 
 family of wines. It is manufactured chiefly at Tirano ; and, 
 as will be understood from its name, does not profess to 
 belong to any one of the famous localities. Forzato or 
 
3i6 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 Sforzato, forced or enforced, is in fact a wine which has 
 undergone a more artificial process. In German the people 
 call it Stroh-wein, which also points to the method of its 
 preparation. The finest grapes are selected and dried in 
 the sun (hence the Stroh) for a period of eight or nine 
 weeks. When they have almost become raisins, they are 
 pressed. The must is heavily charged with sugar, and fer- 
 ments powerfully. Wine thus made requires several years 
 to ripen. Sweet at first, it takes at last a very fine quality 
 and flavour, and is rough, almost acid, on the tongue. Its 
 colour too turns from a deep rich crimson to the tone of 
 tawny port, which indeed it much resembles. 
 
 Old Forzato, which has been long in cask, and then 
 perhaps three years in bottle, will fetch at least six francs, 
 or may rise to even ten francs a flask. The best Sassella 
 rarely reaches more than five francs. Good Montagner and 
 Grumello can be had perhaps for four francs; and Inferno 
 of a special quality for six francs. Thus the average price 
 of old Valtelline wine may be taken as five francs a bottle. 
 These, I should observe, are hotel prices. 
 
 Valtelline wines bought in the wood vary, of course, accord- 
 ing to their age and year of vintage. I have found that from 
 2.50 fr. to 3.50 fr. per litre is a fair price for sorts fit to bottle. 
 The new wine of 1881 sold in the following winter at prices 
 varying from 1.05 fr. to 1.80 fr. per fitre. 
 
 It is customary for the Graubiinden wine-merchants to buy 
 up the whole produce of a vineyard from the peasants at the 
 end of the vintage. They go in person or depute their agents 
 to inspect the wine, make their bargains, and seal the cellars 
 where the wine is stored. Then, when the snow has fallen, 
 their own horses with sleighs and trusted servants go across 
 the passes to bring it home. Generally they have some local 
 man of confidence at Tirano, the starting-point for the home- 
 ward journey, who takes the casks up to that place and sees 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 317 
 
 them duly charged. Merchants of old standing maintain 
 relations with the same peasants, taking their wine regularly ; 
 so that from Lorenz Gredig at Pontresina or Andreas Gredig at 
 Davos Dorfli, from Fanconi at Samaden, or from Giacomi at 
 Chiavenna, special qualities of wine, the produce of certain 
 vineyards, are to be obtained. Up to the present time this 
 wine trade has been conducted with simplicity and honesty by 
 both the dealers and the growers. One chief merit of Valtel- 
 line wine is that it is pure. How long so desirable a state of 
 things will survive the slow but steady development of an 
 export business may be questioned. 
 
 III. 
 
 With so much practical and theoretical interest in the pro- 
 duce of the Valtelline to stimulate my curiosity, I determined 
 to visit the district at the season when the wine was leaving it. 
 It was the winter of 1881-82, a winter of unparalleled beauty in 
 the high Alps. Day succeeded day without a cloud. Night 
 followed night with steady stars, gliding across clear mountain 
 ranges and forests of dark pines unstirred by wind. I could 
 not hope for a more prosperous season ; and indeed I made 
 such use of it, that between the months of January and March 
 I crossed six passes of the Alps in open sleighs — the Fluela 
 Bernina, Spliigen, Julier, Maloja, and Albula, with less diffi- 
 culty and discomfort in mid-winter than the traveller may 
 often find on them in June. 
 
 At the end of January, my friend Christian and I left Davos 
 long before the sun was up, and ascended for four hours 
 through the interminable snow-drifts of the Fluela in a cold 
 grey shadow. The sun's light seemed to elude us. It ran 
 along the ravine through which we toiled ; dipped down to 
 touch the topmost pines above our heads; rested in golden 
 calm upon the Schiahorn at our back ; capriciously played 
 
3i8 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 here and there across the Weisshorn on our left, and made the 
 precipices of the Schwartzhorn glitter on our right. But 
 athwart our path it never fell until we reached the very summit 
 of the pass. Then we passed quietly into the full glory of the 
 winter morning — a tranquil flood of sunbeams, pouring through 
 air of crystalline purity, frozen and motionless. White peaks and 
 dark brown rocks soared up, cutting a sky of almost purple 
 blueness. A stillness that might be felt brooded over the 
 whole world ; but in that stillness there was nothing sad, no 
 suggestion of suspended vitality. It was the stillness rather of 
 untroubled health, of strength omnipotent but unexerted. 
 
 From the Hochspitz of the Fluela the track plunges at one 
 bound into the valley of the Inn, following a narrow cornice 
 carved from the smooth bank of snow, and hung, without 
 break or barrier, a thousand feet or more above the torrent. 
 The summer road is lost in snow-drifts. The galleries 
 built as a protection from avalanches, which sweep in rivers 
 from those grim, bare fells above, are blocked with snow. 
 Their useless arches yawn, as we glide over or outside them, 
 by paths which instinct in our horse and driver traces. As a 
 fly may creep along a house-roof, slanting downwards we 
 descend. One whisk from the swinged tail of an avalanche 
 would hurl us, like a fly, into the ruin of the gaping gorge. 
 But this season little snow has fallen on the higher hills ; 
 and what still lies there, is hard frozen. Therefore we have 
 no fear, as we whirl fast and faster from the snow-fields into 
 the black forests of gnarled cembras and wind-wearied pines. 
 Then Siiss is reached, where the Inn hurries its shallow waters 
 clogged with ice-floes through a sleepy hamlet. The stream 
 is pure and green ; for the fountains of the glaciers are locked 
 by winter frosts ; and only clear rills from perennial sources 
 swell its tide. At Siiss we lost the sun, and toiled in garish 
 gloom and silence, nipped by the ever-deepening cold of 
 evening, upwards for four hours to Samaden. 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 319 
 
 The next day was spent in visiting the winter colony at 
 San Moritz, where the Kulm Hotel, tenanted by some 
 twenty guests, presented in its vastness the appearance of 
 a country-house. One of the prettiest spots in the world 
 is the ice-rink, fashioned by the skill of Herr Caspar Badrutt 
 on a high raised terrace, commanding the valley of the 
 Inn and the ponderous bulwarks of Bernina. The silhouettes 
 of skaters, defined against that landscape of pure white, 
 passed to and fro beneath a cloudless sky. Ladies sat and 
 worked or read on seats upon the ice. Not a breath of 
 wind was astir, and warm beneficent sunlight flooded the 
 immeasurable air. Only, as the day declined, some iri- 
 descent films overspread the west ; and just above Maloja 
 the apparition of a mock sun — a well-defined circle of 
 opaline light, broken at regular intervals by four globes — 
 seemed to portend a change of weather. This forecast 
 fortunately proved delusive. We drove back to Samaden 
 across the silent snow, enjoying those delicate tints of rose 
 and violet and saffron which shed enchantment for one hour 
 over the white monotony of Alpine winter. 
 
 At half-past eight next morning, the sun was rising from 
 behind Pitz Languard, as we crossed the Inn and drove 
 through Pontresina in the glorious light, with all its huge 
 hotels quite empty and none but a few country-folk abroad. 
 Those who only know the Engadine in summer have little 
 conception of its beauty. Winter softens the hard details 
 of bare rock, and rounds the melancholy grassless mountain 
 flanks, suspending icicles to every ledge and spangling the 
 curved surfaces of snow with crystals. The landscape gains 
 in purity, and, what sounds unbelievable, in tenderness. 
 Not does it lose in grandeur. Looking up the valley of the 
 Morteratsch that morning, the glaciers were distinguishable 
 in hues of green and sapphire through their veil of snow; 
 and the highest peaks soared in a transparency of amethys- 
 
320 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 tine light beneath a blue sky traced with filaments of windy 
 cloud. Some storm must have disturbed the atmosphere 
 in Italy, for fan-shaped mists frothed out around the sun, 
 and curled themselves above the mountains in fine feathery 
 wreaths, melting imperceptibly into air, until, when we had 
 risen above the cembras, the sky was one deep soHd blue. 
 
 All that upland wilderness is lovelier now than in the 
 summer; and on the morning of which I write, the air 
 itself was far more summery than I have ever known it in 
 the Engadine in August. We could scarcely bear to place 
 our hands upon the woodwork of the sleigh because of the 
 fierce sun's heat. And yet the atmosphere was crystalline 
 with windless frost. As though to increase the strangeness 
 of these contrasts, the pavement of beaten snow was stained 
 with red drops spilt from wine-casks which pass over it. 
 
 The chief feature of the Bernina — what makes it a dreary 
 pass enough in summer, but infinitely beautiful in winter — is 
 its breadth ; illimitable undulations of snow-drifts ; immensity 
 of open sky ; unbroken lines of white, descending in smooth 
 curves from glittering ice-peaks. 
 
 A glacier hangs in air above the frozen lakes, with all its 
 green-blue ice-cliffs gUstening in intensest light. Pitz Palu 
 shoots aloft like sculptured marble, delicately veined with 
 soft aerial shadows of translucent blue. At the summit of 
 the pass all Italy seems to burst upon the eyes in those steep 
 serried ranges, with their craggy crests, violet-hued in noon- 
 day sunshine, as though a bloom of plum or grape had been 
 shed over them, enamelling their jagged precipices. 
 
 The top of the Bernina is not always thus in winter. It 
 has a bad reputation for the fury of invading storms, when 
 falling snow hurtles together with snow scooped from the 
 drifts in eddies, and the weltering white sea shifts at the will 
 of whirlwinds. The Hospice then may be tenanted for days 
 together by weather-bound wayfarers ; and a line drawn close 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 321 
 
 beneath its roof shows how two years ago the whole building 
 was buried in one snow-shroud. This morning we lounged 
 about the door, while our horses rested and postillions and 
 carters pledged one another in cups of new Veltiner. 
 
 The road takes an awful and sudden dive downwards, quite 
 irrespective of the carefully engineered post-track. At this 
 season the path is badly broken into ruts and chasms by the 
 wine traffic. In some places it was indubitably perilous : a 
 narrow ledge of mere ice skirting thinly-clad hard-frozen banks 
 of snow, which fell precipitately sideways for hundreds of sheer 
 feet. We did not slip over this parapet, though we were often 
 within an inch of doing so. Had our horse stumbled, it is not 
 probable that I should have been writing this. 
 
 When we came to the galleries which defend the road from 
 avalanches, we saw ahead of us a train of over forty sledges 
 ascending, all charged with Valtelline wine. Our postillions 
 drew up at the inner side of the gallery, between massive 
 columns of the purest ice dependent from the rough-hewn 
 roof and walls of rock. A sort of open /o^gia on the farther 
 side framed vignettes of the Valtelline mountains in their hard 
 cerulean shadows and keen sunlight. Between us and the 
 view defiled the wine-sledges ; and as each went by, the men 
 made us drink out of their iri?iketti. These are oblong, 
 hexagonal wooden kegs, holding about fourteen litres, which 
 the carter fills with wine before he leaves the Valtelline, to 
 cheer him on the homeward journey. You raise it in both 
 hands, and when the bung has been removed, allow the 
 liquor to flow stream-wise down your throat. It was a most 
 extraordinary Bacchic procession — a pomp which, though un- 
 dreamed of on the banks of the Ilissus, proclaimed the deity 
 of Dionysos in authentic fashion. Struggling horses, grappling 
 at the ice-bound floor with sharp-spiked shoes ; huge, hoarse 
 drivers, some clad in sheepskins from Italian valleys, some 
 brown as bears in rough Graubiinden home-spun ; casks, 
 
322 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 dropping their spilth of red wine on the snow ; greetings, 
 embracings ; patois of Bergamo, Romansch, and German 
 roaring around the low-browed vaults and tingling ice pillars ; 
 pourings forth of libations of the new strong Valtelline on 
 breasts and beards ; — the whole made up a scene of stalwart 
 jollity and manful labour such as I have nowhere else in such 
 wild circumstances witnessed. Many Davosers were there, 
 the men of Andreas Gredig, Valar, and so forth ; and all of 
 these, on greeting Christian, forced us to drain a Schluck from 
 their unmanageable cruses. Then on they went, crying, 
 creaking, struggling, straining through the corridor, which 
 echoed deafeningly, the gleaming crystals of those hard 
 Italian mountains in their winter raiment building a back- 
 ground of still beauty to the savage Bacchanalian riot of the 
 team. 
 
 How little the visitors who drink Valtelline wine at S. 
 Moritz or Davos reflect by what strange ways it reaches them. 
 A sledge can scarcely be laden with more than one cask of 300 
 litres on the ascent ; and this cask, according to the state of 
 the road, has many times to be shifted from wheels to runners 
 and back again before the journey is accomplished. One 
 carter will take charge of two horses, and consequently of two 
 sledges and two casks, driving them both by voice and ges- 
 ture rather than by rein. When they leave the Valtelline, the 
 carters endeavour, as far as possible, to take the pass in gangs, 
 lest bad w^eather or an accident upon the road should overtake 
 them singly. At night they hardly rest three hours, and rarely 
 think of sleeping, but spend the time in drinking and conversa- 
 tion. The horses are fed and littered ; but for them too the 
 night-halt is little better than a baiting-time. In fair weather 
 the passage of the mountain is not difficult, though tiring. 
 But woe to men and beasts alike if they encounter storms ! 
 Not a few perish in the passes ; and it frequently happens that 
 their only chance is to unyoke the horses and leave the sledges 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 323 
 
 in a snow-wreath, seeking for themselves such shelter as may 
 possibly be gained, frost-bitten, after hours of battling with 
 impermeable drifts. The wine is frozen into one solid mass of 
 rosy ice before it reaches Pontresina. This does not hurt the 
 young vintage, but it is highly injurious to wine of some years' 
 standing. The perils of the journey are aggravated by the 
 savage temper of the drivers. Jealousies between the natives 
 of rival districts spring up ; and there are men alive who have 
 fought the whole way down from Fluela Hospice to Davos 
 Platz with knives and stones, hammers and hatchets, wooden 
 staves and splintered cart-wheels, staining the snow with blood, 
 and bringing broken pates, bruised limbs, and senseless com- 
 rades home to their women to be tended. 
 
 Bacchus Alpinus shepherded his train away from us to 
 northward, and we passed forth into noonday from the 
 gallery. It then seemed clear that both conductor and 
 postillion were sufficiently merry. The plunge they took us 
 down those frozen parapets, with shriek and jauchzen and 
 cracked whips, was more than ever dangerous. Yet we 
 reached La Rosa safely. This is a lovely solitary spot, 
 beside a rushing stream, among grey granite boulders grown 
 with spruce and rhododendron : a veritable rose of Sharon 
 blooming in the desert. The wastes of the Bernina stretch 
 above, and round about are leaguered some of the most 
 forbidding sharp-toothed peaks I ever saw. Onwards, across 
 the silent snow, we glided in immitigable sunshine, through 
 opening valleys and pine-woods, past the robber-huts of 
 Pisciadella, until at evenfall we rested in the roadside inn 
 at Poschiavo. 
 
324 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The snow-path ended at Poschiavo; and when, as usual, 
 we started on our journey next day at sunrise, it was in a 
 carriage upon wheels. Yet even here we were in full mid- 
 winter. Beyond Le Prese the lake presented one sheet of 
 smooth black ice, reflecting every peak and chasm of the 
 mountains, and showing the rocks and water-weeds in the 
 clear green depths below. The glittering floor stretched 
 away for acres of untenanted expanse, with not a skater to 
 explore those dark mysterious coves, or strike across the 
 slanting sunlight poured from clefts in the impendent hills. 
 Inshore the substance of the ice sparkled here and there 
 with iridescence like the plumelets of a butterfly's wing under 
 the microscope, wherever light happened to catch the jagged 
 or oblique flaws that veined its solid crystal. 
 
 From the lake the road descends suddenly for a consi- 
 derable distance through a narrow gorge, following a torrent 
 which rushes among granite boulders. Chestnut trees begin 
 to replace the pines. The sunnier terraces are planted with 
 tobacco, and at a lower level vines appear at intervals in 
 patches. One comes at length to a great red gate across 
 the road, which separates Switzerland from Italy, and where 
 the export dues on wine are paid. The Italian custom-house 
 is romantically perched above the torrent. Two courteous 
 and elegant finanzieri^ mere boys, were sitting wrapped in 
 their military cloaks and reading novels in the sun as we 
 drove up. Though they made some pretence of examining 
 the luggage, they excused themselves with sweet smiles and 
 apologetic eyes — it was a disagreeable duty ! 
 
 A short time brought us to the first village in the Valtelline, 
 where the road bifurcates northward to Bormio and the 
 Stelvio pass, southward to Sondrio and Lombardy. It is 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 325 
 
 a little hamlet, known by the name of La Madonna di Tirano, 
 having grown up round a pilgrimage church of great beauty, with 
 tall Lombard bell-tower, pierced with many tiers of pilastered 
 windows, ending in a whimsical spire, and dominating a 
 fantastic cupola building of the earlier Renaissance. Taken 
 altogether, this is a charming bit of architecture, pictur- 
 esquely set beneath the granite snow-peaks of the Valtelline. 
 The church, they say, was raised at Madonna's own command 
 to stay the tide of heresy descending from the Engadine ; 
 and in the year 1620, the bronze statue of S. Michael, which 
 still spreads wide its wings above the cupola, looked down 
 upon the massacre of six hundred Protestants and foreigners, 
 commanded by the patriot Jacopo Robustelli. 
 
 From Madonna the road leads up the valley through a 
 narrow avenue of poplar-trees to the town of Tirano. We 
 were now in the district where Forzato is made, and every 
 vineyard had a name and history. In Tirano we betook 
 ourself to the house of an old acquaintance of the Buol 
 family, Bernardo da Campo, or, as the Graubiindeners call 
 him, Bernard Campbell. We found him at dinner with his 
 son and grandchildren in a vast, dark, bare Italian chamber. 
 It would be difficult to find a more typical old Scotchman 
 of the Lowlands than he looked, with his clean close-shaven 
 face, bright brown eyes, and snow-white hair escaping from 
 a broad-brimmed hat. He might have sat to a painter for 
 some Covenanter's portrait, except that there was nothing 
 dour about him, or for an illustration to Burns' "Cotter's 
 Saturday Night." The air of probity and canniness com- 
 bined with a twinkle of dry humour was completely Scotch ; 
 and when he tapped his snuff-box, telHng stories of old days, 
 I could not refrain from asking him about his pedigree. 
 It should be said that there is a considerable family of 
 Campells or Campbells in the Graubiinden, who are fabled 
 to deduce their stock from a Scotch Protestant of Zwingli's 
 
326 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 time; and this made it irresistible to imagine that in our 
 friend Bernardo I had chanced upon a notable specimen of 
 atavism. All he knew, however, was, that his first ancestor 
 had been a foreigner, whq^^ came across the mountains to 
 Tirano two centuries ago.* 
 
 This old gentleman is a considerable wine-dealer. He 
 sent us with his son, Giacomo, on a long journey under- 
 ground through his cellars, where we tasted several sorts of 
 Valteline, especially the new Forzato, made a few weeks 
 since, which singularly combines sweetness with strength, and 
 both with a slight effervescence. It is certainly the sort of 
 wine wherewith to tempt a Polyphemus, and not unapt to 
 turn a giant's head. 
 
 Leaving Tirano, and once more passing through the poplars 
 by Madonna, we descended the valley all along the vineyards 
 of Villa and the vast district of Sassella. Here and there, at 
 wayside inns, we stopped to drink a glass of some particular 
 vintage; and everywhere it seemed as though god Bacchus 
 were at home. The whole valley on the right side of the 
 Adda is one gigantic vineyard, climbing the hills in tiers and 
 terraces, which justify its Italian epithet of Teafro di Bacco. 
 The rock is a greyish granite, assuming sullen brown and 
 orange tints where exposed to sun and weather. The vines 
 are grown on stakes, not trellised over trees or carried across 
 boulders, as is the fashion at Chiavenna or Terlan. Yet 
 every advantage of the mountain is adroitly used ; nooks and 
 crannies being specially preferred, where the sun's rays are 
 deflected from hanging cliffs. The soil seems deep, and is of a 
 dull yellow tone. When the vines end, brushwood takes up 
 the growth, which expires at last in crag and snow. Some 
 
 * The Grisons surname Campell may derive from the Romansch 
 Campo Bello. The founder of the house was one Kaspar Campell, wlio 
 in the first half of the sixteenth century preached the Reformed reli<^ion in 
 the Engadine. 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 327 
 
 alps and chalets, dimly traced against the sky, are evidences 
 that a pastoral life prevails above the vineyards. Pan there 
 stretches the pine-thyrsus down to vine-garlanded Dionysos. 
 
 The Adda flows majestically among willows in the midst, 
 and the valley is nearly straight. The prettiest spot, perhaps, 
 is at Tresenda or S. Giacomo, where a pass from Edolo and 
 Brescia descends from the southern hills. But the Valtelline 
 has no great claim to beauty of scenery. Its chief town, 
 Sondrio, where we supped and drank some special wine 
 called // vino de^ Signori Grigioni^ has been modernised in 
 dull Italian fashion. 
 
 V. 
 
 The hotel at Sondrio, La Maddalena, was in carnival 
 uproar of masquers, topers, and musicians all night through. 
 It was as much as we could do to rouse the sleepy servants 
 and get a cup of coffee ere we started in the frozen 
 dawn. " Verfluchte Maddalena ! " grumbled Christian as he 
 shouldered our portmanteaus and bore them in hot haste to 
 the post. Long experience only confirms the first impression, 
 that, of all cold, the cold of an Italian winter is most pene- 
 trating. As we lumbered out of Sondrio in a heavy diligence, 
 I could have fancied myself back once again at Radicofani or 
 among the Ciminian hills. The frost was penetrating. Fur- 
 coats would not keep it out ; and we longed to be once more 
 in open sledges on Bemina rather than enclosed in that cold 
 coupe. Now we passed Grumello, the second largest of the 
 renowned vine districts ; and always keeping the white mass of 
 Monte di Disgrazia in sight, rolled at last into Morbegno. 
 Here the Valtelline vintage properly ends, though much of the 
 ordinary wine is probably supplied from the inferior produce 
 of these fields. It was past noon when we reached Colico, 
 
328 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 and saw the Lake of Como glittering in sunlight, dazzling cloaks 
 of snow on all the mountains, which look as dry and brown 
 as dead beech-leaves at this season. Our Bacchic journey had 
 reached its close ; and it boots not here to tell in detail how 
 we made our way across the Spliigen, piercing its avalanches 
 by low-arched galleries scooped from the solid snow, and 
 careering in our sledges down perpendicular snow-fields, 
 w^hich no one who has crossed that pass from the Italian side 
 in winter will forget. We left the refuge station at the top 
 together with a train of wine-sledges, and passed them in the 
 midst of the wild descent. Looking back, I saw two of their 
 horses stumble in the plunge and roll headlong over. Un- 
 luckily in one of these summersaults a man was injured. 
 Flung ahead into the snow by the first lurch, the sledge and 
 wine-cask crossed him like a garden-roller. Had his bed 
 not been of snow, he must have been crushed to death ; and 
 as it was, he presented a woeful appearance when he after- 
 wards arrived at Spliigen. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Though not strictly connected wnth the subject of this 
 paper, I shall conclude these notes of winter wanderings in 
 the high Alps with an episode which illustrates their curious 
 vicissitudes. 
 
 It was late in the month of March, and nearly all the 
 mountain roads were open for wheeled vehicles. A carriage 
 and four horses came to meet us at the termination of a rail- 
 way journey in Ragatz. We spent one day in visiting old 
 houses of the Grisons aristocracy at Mayenfeld and Zizers, 
 rejoicing in the early sunshine, which had spread the fields 
 with spring flowers — primroses and oxlips, violets, anemones, 
 and bright blue squills. At Chur we slept, and early next 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 329 
 
 morning started for our homeward drive to Davos. Bad 
 weather had declared itself in the night. It blew violently, 
 and the rain soon changed to snow, frozen by a bitter north 
 blast. Crossing the dreary heath of Lenz was both magnifi- 
 cent and dreadful. By the time we reached Wiesen, all the 
 forests were laden with snow, the roads deep in snow-drifts, 
 the whole scene wintrier then it had been the winter 
 through. 
 
 At Wiesen we should have stayed, for evening was fast 
 setting in. But in ordinary weather it is only a two hours' 
 drive from Wiesen to Davos. Our coachman made no objec- 
 tions to resuming the journey, and our four horses had but a 
 light load to drag. So we telegraphed for supper to be pre- 
 pared, and started between five and six. 
 
 A deep gorge has to be traversed, where the torrent cleaves 
 its way between jaws of limestone precipices. The road 
 is carried along ledges and through tunnels in the rock. 
 Avalanches, which sweep this passage annually from the hills 
 above, give it the name of Ziige, or the Snow-Paths. As we 
 entered the gorge darkness fell, the horses dragged more 
 heavily, and it soon became evident that our Tyrolese driver 
 was hopelessly drunk. He nearly upset us twice by taking 
 sharp turns in the road, banged the carriage against telegraph 
 posts and jutting rocks, shaved the very verge of the torrent 
 in places where there was no parapet, and, what was worst 
 of all, refused to leave his box without a fight. The dark- 
 ness by this time was all but total, and a blinding snow-storm 
 swept howling through the ravine. At length we got the 
 carriage to a dead-stop, and floundered out in deep wet snow 
 toward some wooden huts where miners in old days made 
 their habitation. The place, by a curious, perhaps uncon- 
 scious irony, is called Hoffnungsau, or the Meadow of Hope. 
 Indeed, it is not ill named; for many wanderers, escaping, 
 as we did, from the dreadful gorge of Avalanches on a stormy 
 
330 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 night, may have felt, as we now felt, their hope reviving when 
 they reached this shelter. 
 
 There was no light; nothing above, beneath, around, on 
 any side, but tearing tempest and snow whirled through the 
 ravine. The horses were taken out of the carriage ; on their 
 way to the stable, which fortunately in these mountain regions 
 will be always found beside the poorest habitation, one of 
 them fell back across a wall and nearly broke his spine. 
 Hoffnungsau is inhabited all through the year. In its dismal 
 dark kitchen we found a knot of workmen gathered together, 
 and heard there were two horses on the premises besides our 
 own. It then occurred to us that we might accomplish the 
 rest of the journey with such sledges as they bring the wood 
 on from the hills in winter, if coal-boxes or boxes of any sort 
 could be provided. These should be lashed to the sledges 
 and filled with hay. We were only four persons; my wife 
 and a friend should go in one, myself and my little girl in the 
 other. No sooner thought of than put into practice. These 
 original conveyances were improvised, and after two hours' 
 halt on the Meadow of Hope, we all set forth again at half- 
 past eight. 
 
 I have rarely felt anything more piercing than the grim 
 cold of that journey. We crawled at a foot's pace through 
 changeful snowdrifts. The road was obliterated, and it was 
 my duty to keep a petroleum stable-lamp swinging to illuminate 
 the untracked wilderness. My little girl was snugly nested 
 in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white covering of 
 snow above her. Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen masses 
 to our faces, lashed by a wind so fierce and keen that it was 
 difficult to breathe it. My forehead-bone ached, as though 
 with neuralgia, from the mere mask of icy snow upon it, 
 plastered on with frost. Nothing could be seen but millions 
 of white specks, whirled at us in eddying concentric circles. 
 Not far from the entrance to the village we met our house- 
 
BACCHUS IN GRAUBUNDEN. 331 
 
 folk out with lanterns to look for us. It was past eleven at 
 night when at last we entered warm rooms and refreshed 
 ourselves for the tiring day with a jovial champagne supper. 
 Horses, carriage, and drunken driver reached home next 
 morning. 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DA VOS. 
 
 I. 
 
 Light, marvellously soft yet penetrating, everywhere diffused, 
 everywhere reflected without radiance, poured from the moon 
 high above our heads in a sky tinted through all shades and 
 modulations of blue, from turquoise on the horizon to opaque 
 sapphire at the zenith — dolce color. (It is difficult to use the 
 word colour for this scene without suggesting an exaggeration. 
 The blue is almost indefinable, yet felt. But if possible, the 
 total effect of the night landscape should be rendered by 
 careful exclusion of tints from the word-palette. The art 
 of the etcher is more needed than that of the painter.) 
 Heaven overhead is set with stars, shooting intensely, 
 smouldering with dull red in Aldeboran, sparkling diamond- 
 like in Sirius, changing from orange to crimson and green 
 in the swart fire of yonder double star. On the snow this 
 moonlight falls tenderly, not in hard white light and strong 
 black shadow, but in tones of cream and ivory, rounding the 
 curves of drift. The mountain peaks alone glisten as though 
 they were built of silver burnished by an agate. Far away 
 they rise diminished in stature by the all-pervading dimness 
 of bright light, that erases the distinctions of daytime. On 
 the path before our feet lie crystals of many hues, the splinters 
 of a thousand gems. In the wood there are caverns of dark- 
 ness, alternating with spaces of star-twinkled sky, or windows 
 opened between russet stems and solid branches for the 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 333 
 
 moony sheen. The green of the pines is felt, although 
 invisible, so soft in substance that it seems less like velvet 
 than some materialised depth of dark green shadow. 
 
 11. 
 
 Snow falling noiseless and unseen. One only knows that 
 it is falling by the blinking of our eyes as the flakes settle on 
 their lids and melt. The cottage windows shine red, and 
 moving lanterns of belated wayfarers define the void around 
 them. Yet the night is far from dark. The forests and the 
 mountain-bulk beyond the valley loom softly large and just 
 distinguishable through a pearly haze. The path is purest 
 trackless whiteness, almost dazzling though it has no light. 
 This was what Dante felt when he reached the lunar sphere : 
 
 Pareva a me, che nube ne coprisse 
 Lucida, spessa, solida e pulita. 
 
 Walking silent, with insensible footfall, slowly, for the snow 
 is deep above our ankles, we wonder what the world would 
 be like if this were all. Could the human race be acclimatised 
 to this monotony (we say) perhaps emotion would be rarer, 
 yet more poignant, suspended brooding on itself, and wakening 
 by flashes to a quintessential mood. Then fancy changes, 
 and the thought occurs that even so must be a planet, not 
 yet whoHy made, nor called to take her place among the 
 sisterhood of light and song. 
 
 III. 
 
 Sunset was fading out upon the Rhaetikon and still reflected 
 from the Seehorn on the lake, when w^e entered the gorge 
 of the Fluela — dense pines on either hand, a mounting drift 
 of snow in front, and faint peaks, paling from rose to saflron. 
 
334 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 far above, beyond. There was no sound but a tinkling stream 
 and the continual jingle of our sledge-bells. We drove at a 
 foot's pace, our horse finding his own path. When we left 
 the forest, the light had all gone except for some almost 
 imperceptible touches of primrose on the eastern horns. It 
 was a moonless night, but the sky was alive with stars, and 
 now and then one fell. The last house in the valley was soon 
 passed, and we entered those bleak gorges where the wind, 
 fine, noiseless, penetrating like an edge of steel, poured slant- 
 wise on us from the north. As we rose, the stars to west 
 seemed far beneath us, and the Great Bear sprawled upon 
 the ridges of the lower hills outspread. We kept slowly 
 moving onward, upward, into what seemed like a thin im- 
 palpable mist, but was immeasurable tracts of snow. The 
 last cembras were left behind, immovable upon dark granite 
 boulders on our right. We entered a formless and unbillowed 
 sea of greyness, from which there rose dim mountain-flanks 
 that lost themselves in air. Up, ever up, and still below us 
 westward sank the stars. We were now 7500 feet above 
 sea-level, and the December night was rigid with intensity 
 of frost. The cold, and movement, and solemnity of space 
 drowsed every sense. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The memory of things seen and done in moonlight is like 
 the memory of dreams. It is as a dream that I recall the night 
 of our toboggining to Klosters, though it was full enough of 
 active energy. The moon was in her second quarter, slightly 
 filmed with very high thin clouds, that disappeared as night 
 advanced, leaving the sky and stars in all their lustre. A 
 sharp frost, sinking to three degrees above zero Fahrenheit, 
 with a fine pure wind, such wind as here they call " the moun- 
 tain breath." We drove to Wolfgang in a two-horse sledge, 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 335 
 
 four of us inside, and our two Christians on the box. Up 
 there, where the Alps of Death descend to join the Lakehorn 
 Alps, above the Wolfswalk, there is a world of whiteness — 
 frozen ridges, engraved like cameos of aerial onyx upon the 
 dark, star-tremulous sky ; sculptured buttresses of snow, en- 
 closing hollows filled with diaphanous shadow, and sweeping 
 aloft into the upland fields of pure clear drift. Then came the 
 swift descent, the plunge into the pines, moon-silvered on their 
 frosted tops. The battalions of spruce that climb those hills 
 defined the dazzling snow from which they sprang, like the 
 black tufts upon an ermine robe. At the proper moment we 
 left our sledge, and the big Christian took his reins in hand 
 to follow us. Furs and greatcoats were abandoned. Each 
 stood forth tightly accoutred, with short coat, and clinging cap, 
 and gaitered legs for the toboggin. Off we started in Hne, with 
 but brief interval between, at first slowly, then glidingly, and 
 when the impetus was gained, with darting, bounding, almost 
 savage swiftness — sweeping round corners, cutting the hard 
 snow-path with keen runners, avoiding the deep ruts, trusting 
 to chance, taking advantage of smooth places, till the rush and 
 swing and downward swoop became mechanical. Space was 
 devoured. Into the massy shadows of the forest, where the 
 pines joined overhead, we pierced without a sound, and felt far 
 more than saw the great rocks with their icicles; and out 
 again, emerging into moonlight, met the valley spread beneath 
 our feet, the mighty peaks of the Silvretta and the vast blue sky. 
 On, on, hurrying, delaying not, the woods and hills rushed by. 
 Crystals upon the snow-banks glittered to the stars. Our souls 
 would fain have stayed to drink these marvels of the moon- 
 world, but our limbs refused. The magic of movement was 
 upon us, and eight minutes swallowed the varying impressions 
 of two musical miles. The village lights drew near and nearer, 
 then the sombre village huts, and soon the speed grew less, and 
 soon we glided to our rest into the sleeping village street. 
 
336 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 It was just past midnight. The moon had fallen to the 
 western horns. Orion's belt lay bar-like on the opening of the 
 pass, and Sirius shot flame on the Seehorn. A more crystal- 
 line night, more full of fulgent stars, was never seen, stars 
 everywhere, but mostly scattered in large sparkles on the snow. 
 Big Christian went in front, tugging toboggins by their strings, 
 as Gulliver, in some old woodcut, drew the fleets of Lilliput. 
 Through the brown wood-chalets of Selfrangr, up to the undu- 
 lating meadows, where the snow slept pure and crisp, he led 
 us. There we sat awhile and drank the clear air, cooled to 
 zero, but innocent and mild as mother Nature's milk. Then 
 in an instant, down, down through the hamlet, with its chalets, 
 stables, pumps, and logs, the slumbrous hamlet, where one dog 
 barked, and darkness dwelt upon the path of ice, down with 
 the tempest of a dreadful speed, that shot each rider upward 
 in the air, and made the frame of the toboggin tremble — down 
 over hillocks of hard frozen snow, dashing and bounding, to 
 the river and the bridge. No bones were broken, though the 
 race was thrice renewed, and men were spilt upon the roadside 
 by some furious plunge. This amusement has the charm of 
 peril and the unforeseen. In no wise else can colder, keener 
 air be drunken at such furious speed. The joy, too, of the 
 engine-driver and the steeplechaser is upon us. Alas, that it 
 should be so short ! If only roads were better made for the 
 purpose, there would be no end to it ; for the toboggin cannot 
 lose his wind. But the good thing fails at last, and from the 
 silence of the moon we pass into the silence of the fields of 
 sleep. 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 337 
 
 VI. 
 
 The new stable is a huge wooden building, with raftered 
 lofts to stow the hay, and stalls for many cows and horses. It 
 stands snugly in an angle of the pine-wood, bordering upon the 
 great horse-meadow. Here at night the air is warm and tepid 
 with the breath of kine. Returning from my forest walk, I 
 spy one window yellow in the moonlight with a lamp. I lift 
 the latch. The hound knows me, and does not bark. I enter 
 the stable, where six horses are munching their last meal. 
 Upon the corn-bin sits a knecht. We light our pipes and talk. 
 He tells me of the valley of Arosa (a hawk's flight westward 
 over yonder hills), how deep in grass its summer lawns, how 
 crystal-clear its stream, how blue its little lakes, how pure, with- 
 out a taint of mist, " too beautiful to paint," its sky in winter ! 
 This knecht is an Ardiiser, and the valley of Arosa lifts itself 
 to heaven above his Langwies home. It is his duty now to 
 harness a sleigh for some night-work. We shake hands and 
 part — I to sleep, he for the snow. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The lake has frozen late this year, and there are places in it 
 where the ice is not yet firm. Little snow has fallen since it 
 froze — about three inches at the deepest, driven by winds and 
 wrinkled like the ribbed sea-sand. Here and there the ice- 
 floor is quite black and clear, reflecting stars, and dark as 
 heaven's own depths. Elsewhere it is of a suspicious white- 
 ness, blurred in surface, with jagged cracks and chasms, 
 treacherously mended by the hand of frost. Moving slowly, 
 the snow cries beneath our feet, and the big crystals tinkle. 
 These are shaped like fern-fronds, growing fan-wise from a 
 point, and set at various angles, so that the moonlight takes 
 
338 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 them with capricious touch. They flash, and are quenched, 
 and flash again, light darting to light along the level surface, 
 while the sailing planets and the stars look down complacent 
 at this mimicry of heaven. Everything above, around, be- 
 neath, is very beautiful — the slumbrous woods, the snowy fells, 
 and the far distance painted in faint blue upon the tender 
 background of the sky. Everything is placid and beautiful ; 
 and yet the place is terrible. For, as we walk, the lake groans, 
 with throtded sobs, and sudden cracklings of its joints, and 
 sighs that shiver, undulating from afar, and pass beneath our 
 feet, and die away in distance when they reach the shore. 
 And now and then an upper crust of ice gives way ; and will 
 the gulfs then drag us down ? We are in the very centre of 
 the lake. There is no use in thinking or in taking heed. 
 Enjoy the moment, then, and march. Enjoy the contrast 
 between this circumambient serenity and sweetness, and the 
 dreadful sense of insecurity beneath. Is not, indeed, our 
 whole life of this nature.? A passage over perilous deeps, 
 roofed by infinity and sempiternal things, surrounded too with 
 evanescent forms, that like these crystals, trodden underfoot, 
 or melted by the Fohn-wind into dew, flash, in some lucky 
 moment, with a light that mimics stars ! But to allegorise and 
 sermonise is out of place here. It is but the expedient of 
 those who cannot etch sensation by the burin of their art of 
 words. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 It is ten o'clock upon Sylvester Abend, or New Year's Eve. 
 Herr Buol sits with his wife at the head of his long table. 
 His family and serving folk are round him. There is his 
 mother, with little Ursula, his child, upon her knee. The old 
 lady is the mother of four comely daughters and nine stalwart 
 sons, the eldest of whom is now a grizzled man. Besides our 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 339 
 
 host, four of the brothers are here to-night ; the handsome 
 melancholy Georg, who is so gentle in his speech; Simeon, 
 with his diplomatic face ; Florian, the student of medicine ; 
 and my friend, colossal-breasted Christian. Palmy came a 
 little later, worried with many cares, but happy to his heart's 
 core. No optimist was ever more convinced of his philosophy 
 than Palmy. After them, below the salt, were ranged the 
 knechts and porters, the marmiton from the kitchen, and 
 innumerable maids. The board was tesselated with plates of 
 birnen-brod and eier-brod, kiichH and cheese and butter; and 
 Georg stirred grampampuli in a mighty metal bowl. For the 
 uninitiated, it may be needful to explain these Davos deli- 
 cacies. Birnen-brod is what the Scotch would call a " bun," 
 or massive cake, composed of sliced pears, almonds, spices, 
 and a little flour. Eier-brod is a saffron-coloured sweet bread, 
 made with eggs ; and kuchli is a kind of pastry, crisp and 
 flimsy, fashioned into various devices of cross, star and scroll. 
 Grampampuli is simply brandy burnt with sugar, the most 
 unsophisticated punch I every drank from tumblers. The 
 frugal people of Davos, who live on bread and cheese and 
 dried meat all the year, indulge themselves but once with 
 these unwonted dainties in the winter. 
 
 The occasion was cheerful, and yet a little solemn. The 
 scene was feudal. For these Buols are the scions of a warrior 
 
 race : 
 
 A race illustrious for heroic deeds ; 
 Humbled, but not degraded. 
 
 During the six centuries through which they have lived 
 nobles in Davos, they have sent forth scores of fighting men to 
 foreign lands, ambassadors to France and Venice and the 
 Milanese, governors to Chiavenna and Bregaglia and the 
 much-contested Valtelline. Members of their house are 
 Counts of Buol-Schauenstein in Austria, Freiherrs of Muh- 
 lingen and Berenberg in the now German Empire. They 
 
340 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 keep the patent of nobility conferred on them by Henri IV. 
 Their ancient coat — parted per pale azure and argent, with a 
 dame of the fourteenth century bearing in her hand a rose, all 
 counterchanged — is carved in wood and monumental marble 
 on the churches and old houses hereabouts. And from 
 immemorial antiquity the Buol of Davos has sat thus on 
 Sylvester Abend with family and folk around him, summoned 
 from alp and snowy field to drink grampampuli and break the 
 birnen-brod. 
 
 These rites performed, the men and maids began to sing 
 — brown arms lounging on the table, and red hands folded 
 in white aprons — serious at first in hymn-like cadences, then 
 breaking into wilder measures with a jodel at the close. 
 There is a measured solemnity in the performance, which 
 strikes the stranger as somewhat comic. But the singing 
 was good ; the voices strong and clear in tone, no hesitation 
 and no shirking of the melody. It was clear that the singers 
 enjoyed the music for its own sake, with half-shut eyes, as 
 they take dancing, solidly, with deep-drawn breath, sustained 
 and indefatigable. But eleven struck; and the two Chris- 
 tians, my old friend, and Palmy, said we should be late 
 for church. They had promised to take me with them to 
 see bell-ringing in the tower. All the young men of the 
 village meet, and draw lots in the Stube of the Rathhaus. 
 One party tolls the old year out; the other rings the new 
 year in. He who comes last is sconced three litres of 
 Veltliner for the company. This jovial fine was ours to pay 
 to-night. 
 
 When we came into the air, we found a bitter frost; the 
 whole sky clouded over; a north wind whirling snow from 
 alp and forest through the murky gloom. The benches and 
 broad walnut tables of the Rathhaus were crowded with men, 
 in shaggy homespun of brown and grey frieze. Its low 
 wooden roof and walls enclosed an atmosphere of smoke. 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 341 
 
 denser than the external snow-drift. But our welcome was 
 hearty, and we found a score of friends. Titanic Fopp, 
 whose limbs are Michelangelesque in length; spectacled 
 Morosani; the little tailor Kramer, with a French horn on 
 his knees; the puckered forehead of the Baumeister; the 
 Troll-shaped postman ; peasants and woodmen, known on 
 far excursions upon pass and upland valley. Not one but 
 carried on his face the memory of winter strife with avalanche 
 and snowdrift, of horses struggling through Fluela whirl- 
 winds, and wine-casks tugged across Bernina, and haystacks 
 guided down precipitous gullies at thundering speed 'twixt pine 
 and pine, and larches felled in distant glens beside the frozen 
 watercourses. Here we were, all met together for one hour 
 from our several homes and occupations, to welcome in the 
 year with clinked glasses and cries of Prosit Nmjahr ! 
 
 The tolling bells above us stopped. Our turn had come. 
 Out into the snowy air we tumbled, beneath the row of 
 wolves' heads that adorn the pent-house roof. A few steps 
 brought us to the still God's acre, where the snow lay deep 
 and cold upon high-mounded graves of many generations. 
 We crossed it silently, bent our heads to the low Gothic arch, 
 and stood within the tower. It was thick darkness there. 
 But far above, the bells began again to clash and jangle 
 confusedly, with volleys of demonic joy. Successive flights of 
 ladders, each ending in a giddy platform hung across the 
 gloom, climb to the height of some hundred and fifty feet ; 
 and all their rungs were crusted with frozen snow, deposited 
 by trampling boots. For up and down these stairs, ascend- 
 ing and descending, moved other than angels — the frieze- 
 jacketed Biirschen, Grisons bears, rejoicing in their exercise, 
 exhilarated with the tingling noise of beaten metal. We 
 reached the first room safely, guided by firm-footed Chris- 
 tian, whose one candle just defined the rough walls and the 
 slippery steps. There we found a band of boys, pulling ropes, 
 
342 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 that set the bells in motion. But our destination was not 
 reached. One more aerial ladder, perpendicular in dark- 
 ness, brought us swiftly to the home of sound. It is a 
 small square chamber, where the bells are hung, filled with 
 the interlacement of enormous beams, and pierced to north 
 and south by open windows, from whose parapets I saw the 
 village and the valley spread beneath. The fierce wind 
 hurried through it, charged with snow, and its narrow space 
 was thronged with men. Men on the platform, men on the 
 window-sills, men grappling the bells with iron arms, men 
 brushing by to reach the stairs, crossing, recrossing, shoulder- 
 ing their mates, drinking red wine from gigantic beakers, 
 exploding crackers, firing squibs, shouting and yelling in 
 corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted, one could see 
 it by their open mouths and glittering eyes ; but not a sound 
 from human lungs could reach our ears. The overwhelming 
 incessant thunder of the bells drowned all. It thrilled the 
 tympanum, ran through the marrow of the spine, vibrated 
 in the inmost entrails. Yet the brain was only steadied and 
 excited by this sea of brazen noise. After a few moments 
 I knew the place and felt at home in it. Then I enjoyed a 
 spectacle which sculptors might have envied. For they ring 
 the bells in Davos after this fashion : — The lads below set 
 them going with ropes. The men above climb in pairs on 
 ladders to the beams from which they are suspended. Two 
 mighty pine-trees, roughly squared and built into the walls, 
 extend from side to side across the belfry. Another from 
 which the bells hang, connects these massive trunks at right 
 angles. Just where the central beam is wedged into the two 
 parallel supports, the ladders reach them from each side of the 
 belfry, so that, bending from the higher rung of the ladder, and 
 leaning over, stayed upon the lateral beam, each pair of men can 
 keep one bell in movement with their hands. Each comrade 
 plants one leg upon the ladder, and sets the other knee firmly 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 343 
 
 athwart the horizontal pine. Then round each other's waist they 
 twine left arm and right. The two have thus become one man. 
 Right arm and left are free to grasp the bell's horns, sprouting 
 at its crest beneath the beam. With a grave rhythmic motion, 
 bending sideward in a close embrace, swaying and returning 
 to their centre from the well-knit loins, they drive the force 
 of each strong muscle into the vexed bell. The impact is 
 earnest at first, but soon it becomes frantic. The men take 
 something from each other of exalted enthusiasm. This 
 efflux of their combined energies inspires them and exas- 
 perates the mighty resonance of metal which they rule. 
 They are lost in a trance of what approximates to dervish 
 passion — so thrilling is the surge of sound, so potent are the 
 rhythms they obey. Men come and tug them by the heels. 
 One grasps the starting thews upon their calves. Another is 
 impatient for their place. But they strain still, locked together, 
 and forgetful of the world. At length they have enough : then 
 slowly, clingingly unclasp, turn round with gazing eyes, and 
 are resumed, sedately, into the diurnal round of common life. 
 Another pair is in their room upon the beam. 
 
 The Englishman who saw these things stood looking up, 
 enveloped in his ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his 
 forehead, like a monk. One candle cast a grotesque shadow 
 of him on the plastered wall. And when his chance came, 
 though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for some 
 moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the 
 swinging bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely 
 whether he ascribed too much of feeling to the men he 
 watched. But no, that was impossible. There are emotions 
 deeply seated in the joy of exercise, when the body is brought 
 into play, and masses move in concert, of which the subject 
 is but half conscious. Music and dance, and the delirium of 
 battle or the chase, act thus upon spontaneous natures. The 
 mystery of rhythm and associated energy and blood tingling 
 
344 
 
 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 in sympathy is here. It lies at the root of man's most tyran- 
 nous instinctive impulses. 
 
 It was past one when we reached home, and now a medi- 
 tative man might well have gone to bed. But no one thinks 
 of sleeping on Sylvester Abend. So there followed bowls of 
 punch in one friend's room, where English, French, and 
 Germans blent together in convivial Babel ; and flasks of old 
 Montagner in another. Palmy, at this period, wore an arch- 
 deacon's hat, and smoked a churchwarden's pipe ; and neither 
 were his own, nor did he derive anything ecclesiastical or 
 Anglican from the association. Late in the morning we must 
 sally .forth, they said, and roam the town. For it is the cus- 
 tom here on New Year's night to greet acquaintances, and 
 ask for hospitality, and no one may deny these self-invited 
 guests. We turned out again into the grey snow-swept gloom, 
 a curious Comus — not at all like Greeks, for we had neither 
 torches in our hands nor rose-wreaths to suspend upon a 
 lady's door-posts. And yet I could not refrain, at this 
 supreme moment of jollity, in the zero temperature, amid my 
 Grisons friends, from humming to myself verses from the 
 Greek Anthology : — 
 
 The die is cast ! Nay, light the torch ! 
 
 I'll take the road ! Up, courage, ho ! 
 Why linger pondering in the porch ? 
 
 Upon Love's revel we will go ! 
 
 . Sliake off those fumes of wine ! Hang care 
 And caution ! What has Love to do 
 With prudence ? Let the torches flare ! 
 
 Quick, drown the doubts that hampered you ! 
 
 Cast weary wisdom to the wand ! 
 
 One thing, but one alone,. I know : 
 Love bent e'en Jove and made him blind ! 
 
 Upon Love's revel we will go ! 
 
 And then again : — 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 345 
 
 I've drunk sheer madness ! Not with wine, 
 
 But old fantastic tales, I'll arm 
 My heart in heedlessness divine, 
 
 And dare the road, nor dream of harm ! 
 
 I'll join Love's rout ! Let thunder break, 
 
 Let lightning blast me by the way ! 
 Invulnerable Love shall shake 
 
 His aegis o'er my head to-day. 
 
 This last epigram was not inappropriate to an invalid about 
 to begin the fifth act in a roystering night's adventure. And 
 still once more : — 
 
 Cold blows the winter wind ; 'tis Love, 
 
 Whose sweet eyes swim with honeyed tears. 
 
 That bears me to thy doors, my love, 
 Tossed by the storm of hopes and fears. 
 
 Cold blows the blast of aching Love ; 
 
 But be thou for my wandering sail. 
 Adrift upon these waves of love, 
 
 Safe harbour from the whistling gale ! 
 
 However, upon this occasion, though we had winter-wind 
 enough, and cold enough, there was not much love in the 
 business. My arm was firmly clenched in Christian Buol's, 
 and Christian Palmy came behind, trolling out songs in Italian 
 dialect, with still recurring canaille choruses, of which the facile 
 rhymes seemed mostly made on a prolonged amu-u-u-r. It is 
 noticeable that Italian ditties are specially designed for fellows 
 shouting in the streets at night. They seem in keeping there, 
 and nowhere else that I could ever see. And these Davosers 
 took to them naturally when the time for Comus came. It 
 was between four and five in the morning, and nearly all the 
 houses in the place were dark. The tall church-tower and 
 spire loomed up above us in grey twilight. The tireless wind 
 still swept thin snow from fell and forest. But the frenzied 
 bells had sunk into their twelvemonth's slumber, which shall 
 be broken only by decorous toUings at less festive times. I 
 wondered whether they were tingling still with the heart- 
 
34^ ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 throbs and with the pressure of those many arms ? Was their 
 old age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life — the 
 young men who had clung to them like bees to lily-bells, and 
 shaken all their locked-up tone and shrillness into the wild 
 winter air ? Alas ! how many generations of the young have 
 handled them ; and they are still there, frozen in their belfry ; 
 and the young grow middle-aged, and old, and die at last ; 
 and the bells they grappled in their lust of manhood toll 
 them to their graves, on which the tireless wind will, winter 
 after winter, sprinkle snow from alps and forests which they 
 knew. 
 
 " There is a light," cried Christian, " up in Anna's 
 window ! " "A light ! a light ! " the Comus shouted. But 
 how to get at the window, which is pretty high above the 
 ground, and out of reach of the most ardent revellers ? We 
 search a neighbouring shed, extract a stable-ladder, and in 
 two seconds Palmy has climbed to the topmost rung, while 
 Christian and Georg hold it firm upon the snow beneath. 
 Then begins a passage from some comic opera of Mozart's 
 or Cimarosa's — an escapade familiar to Spanish or Italian 
 students, which recalls the stage. It is an episode from " Don 
 Giovanni," translated to this dark-etched scene of snowy hills, 
 and Gothic tower, and muUioned windows deep embayed 
 beneath their eaves and icicles. Z>e/i vieiii alia finestra I 
 sings Palmy- Leporello ; the chorus answers : Deh vieni I 
 Perche tion vte?n ancora ? pleads Leporello ; the chorus 
 shouts : Perche 1 Mio amii-ti-u-r, sighs Leporello ; and Echo 
 cries, amti-ii-ti-r f All the wooing, be it noticed, is conducted 
 in Italian. But the actors murmur to each other in Davoser 
 Deutsch, " She won't come. Palmy ! It is far too late ; she is 
 gone to bed. Come down ; you'll wake the village with your 
 caterwauling ! " But Leporello waves his broad archdeacon's 
 hat, and resumes a flood of flexible Bregaglian. He has a 
 shrewd suspicion that the girl is peeping from behind the 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 347 
 
 window curtain ; and tells us, bending down from the ladder, 
 in a hoarse stage-whisper, that we must have patience ; " these 
 girls are kittle cattle, who take long to draw ; but if your 
 lungs last out, they're sure to show." And Leporello is right. 
 Faint heart ne'er won fair lady. From the summit of his 
 ladder, by his eloquent Italian tongue, he brings the shy bird 
 down at last. We hear the unbarring of the house door, and 
 a comely maiden, in her Sunday dress, welcomes us politely 
 to her ground-floor sitting-room. The Comus enters, in grave 
 order, with set speeches, handshakes, and inevitable Prosits ! 
 It is a large low chamber, with a huge stone stove, wide 
 benches fixed along the walls, and a great oval table. We sit 
 how and where we can. Red wine is produced, and eier-brod 
 and kiichli. Fraulein Anna serves us sedately, holding her 
 own with decent self-respect against the inrush of the revellers. 
 She is quite alone ; but are not her father and mother in bed 
 above, and within earshot ? Besides, the Comus, even at this 
 abnormal hour and after an abnormal night, is well conducted. 
 Things seem slipping into a decorous wine-party, when 
 Leporello readjusts the broad-brimmed hat upon his head, 
 and very cleverly acts a little love -scene for our benefit. 
 Fraulein Anna takes this as a delicate compliment, and the 
 thing is so prettily done in truth, that not the sternest taste 
 could be offended. Meanwhile another party of night- 
 wanderers, attracted by our mirth, break in. More Prosits 
 and clinked glasses follow ; and with a fair good-morning to 
 our hostess, we retire. 
 
 It is too late to think of bed. *' The quincunx of heaven," 
 as Sir Thomas Browne phrased it on a dissimilar occasion, 
 "runs low. . . . The huntsmen are up in America;" and not 
 in America only, for the huntsmen, if there are any this night 
 in Graubiinden, have long been out upon the snow, and the 
 stable-lads are dragging the sledges from their sheds to carry 
 down the mails to Landquart. We meet the porters from the 
 
-7 
 
 348 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 various hotels, bringing letter- bags and luggage to the post. It 
 is time to turn in and take a cup of black coffee against the 
 rising sun. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Some nights, even in Davos, are spent, even by an invalid, 
 in bed. A leaflet, therefore, of '"Sleep-chasings" may not 
 inappropriately be flung, as envoy to so many wanderings on 
 foot and sledge upon the winter snows. 
 
 The first is a confused medley of things familiar and things 
 strange. I have been dreaming of far-away old German 
 towns, with gabled houses deep in snow ; dreaming of chalets 
 in forgotten Alpine glens, where wood-cutters come plunging 
 into sleepy light from gloom, and sinking down beside the 
 stove to shake the drift from their rough shoulders ; dreaming 
 of vast veils of icicles upon the gaunt black rocks in places 
 where no foot of man will pass, and where the snow is weaving 
 eyebrows over the ledges of grey whirlwind-beaten precipices ; 
 dreaming of Venice, forlorn beneath the windy drip of rain, 
 the gas lamps flickering on the swimming piazzetta, the 
 barche idle, the gondolier wrapped in his thread-bare cloak, 
 alone ; dreaming of Apennines, with world-old cities, brown, 
 above the brown sea of dead chestnut boughs ; dreaming of 
 stormy tides, and watchers aloft in lighthouses when day is 
 finished ; dreaming of dead men and women and dead 
 children in the earth, far down beneath the snow-drifts, six 
 feet deep. And then I lift my face, awaking, from my pillow ; 
 the pallid moon is on the valley, and the room is filled with 
 spectral light. 
 
 I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is a hospice in 
 an unfrequented pass, between sad peaks, beside a little black 
 lake, overdrifted with soft snow. I pass into the house-room, 
 gliding silently. An old man and an old woman are nodding. 
 
WINTER NIGHTS AT DAVOS. 3^9 
 
 bowed in deepest slumber, by the stove. A young man plays 
 the zither on a table. He lifts his head, still modulating with 
 his fingers on the strings. He looks right through me with 
 wide anxious eyes. He does not see me, but sees Italy, I 
 know, and some one wandering on a sandy shore. 
 
 I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is S. Stephen's 
 Church in Wien. Inside, the lamps are burning dimly in the 
 choir. There is fog in the aisles ; but through the sleepy air 
 and over the red candles flies a wild soprano's voice, a boy's 
 soul in its singing sent to heaven. 
 
 I sleep, and change my dreaming. From the mufflers in 
 which his father, the mountebank, has wrapped the child, to 
 carry him across the heath, a little tumbling-boy emerges in 
 soiled tights. He is half asleep. His father scrapes the 
 fiddle. The boy shortens his red belt, kisses his fingers to 
 us. and ties himself into a knot among the glasses on the 
 table. 
 
 I sleep, and change my dreaming. I am on the parapet of 
 a huge circular tower, hollow like a well, and pierced with 
 windows at irregular intervals. The parapet is broad, and 
 slabbed with red Verona marble. Around me are athletic 
 men, all naked, in the strangest attitudes of studied rest, 
 down-gazing, as I do, into the depths below. There comes 
 a confused murmur of voices, and the tower is threaded and 
 rethreaded with great cables. Up these there climb to us a 
 crowd of young men, cHnging to the ropes and flinging their 
 bodies sideways on aerial trapezes. My heart trembles with 
 keen joy and terror. For nowhere else could plastic forms be 
 seen more beautiful, and nowhere else is peril more apparent. 
 Leaning my chin upon the utmost verge, I wait. I watch one 
 youth, who smiles and soars to me; and when his face is 
 almost touching mine, he speaks, but what he says I know 
 not. 
 
 I sleep, and change my dreaming. The whole world rocks 
 
 ^ 
 
350 ITALIAN BYWAYS. 
 
 to its foundations. The mountain summits that I know are 
 shaken. They bow their bristling crests. They are falling, 
 falling on us, and the earth is riven. I wake in terror, shout- 
 ing : Insolitis tremuerunt motibus alpes ! An earth- 
 quake, slight but real, has stirred the ever-wakeful Vesta of 
 the brain to this Virgilian quotation. 
 
 I sleep, and change my dreaming. Once more at night I 
 sledge alone upon the Klosters road. It is the point where 
 the woods close over it and moonlight may not pierce the 
 boughs. There come shrill cries of many voices from behind, 
 and rushings that pass by and vanish. Then on their sledges 
 I behold the phantoms of the dead who died in Davos, long- 
 ing for their homes ; and each flies past me, shrieking in the 
 still cold air; and phosphorescent like long meteors, the 
 pageant turns the windings of the road below and disappears. 
 
 I sleep, and change my dreaming. This is the top of some 
 high mountain, where the crags are cruelly tortured and cast 
 in enornious splinters on the ledges of cliffs grey with old- 
 world ice. A ravine, opening at my feet, plunges down im- 
 measurably to a dim and distant sea. Above me soars a 
 precipice embossed with a gigantic ice-bound shape. As I 
 gaze thereon, I find the Hneaments and limbs of a Titanic man 
 chained and nailed to the rock. His beard has grown for 
 centuries, and flowed this way and that, adown his breast and 
 over to the stone on either side; and the whole of him is 
 covered with a greenish ice, ancient beyond the memory of 
 man. " This is Prometheus," I whisper to myself, " and I am 
 alone on Caucasus." 
 
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