B.C.T 
 

 
 ' 
 
MINUTES OF REMARKS, 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
SUBJECTS 
 PICTURESQUE, MORAL, 
 
 AND 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS, 
 
 MADE IN A COURSE ALONG THE RHINE, AND DURING A 
 RESIDENCE IN SWISSERLAND AND ITALY, 
 
 IN THE YEARS 1822 & 1823. 
 
 BY WILLIAM WEBB, ESQ. M.R.I. A. 
 
 DEPUTY COMMISSARY-GENERAL TO THE FORCES. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 BALDWIN, CRADOCK, AND JOY; 
 WILLIAM FREDERICK WAKEMAN, DUBLIN 
 
 1827. 
 
ISION COLLEGE* 
 LIBRARY. 
 
 BENTIIAM AND HARDY, PRINTERS, 
 
 CCCILIA-tmCET. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES TO VOL. I. 
 
 NOTE I. PAGE 91. 
 
 The Author has to regret that, perhaps, from the brevity imposed upon him 
 by the limits of a marginal note, he has omitted to do justice to the excellent 
 worth of this accredited document of the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, 
 on so solemn an occasion as that of making 1 a statement of their tenets to the 
 Commons' House of Parliament, by not transcribing a cardinal tenet of that 
 Christian sect that proclaims itself the Autocrat in all matters relating to this 
 world, and to the salvation of every human soul in that which is to come. These 
 reverend personages in collective assemblage, and with deliberate con- 
 sideration protest that their object " is to procure a RELIGIOUS, not a SCRIF- 
 " TURAL education of Ireland." Be that thoroughly authenticated, and 
 plain-spoken averment, their touchstone ! The thing is specially characteristic 
 of the body from which it proceeds : it is either an excellently, and pellucidly, 
 Christian dogma ; or, it is a profane and enormously flagitious declaration, that 
 deserves to be proclaimed as such. 
 
 NOTE II. PAGE 168. 
 
 The present afflicting situation of this country traces its primary origin dis- 
 iinctly back to the situation of the Island, from our first historical knowledge of 
 it. Talk of the cabals and strifes that were renewable on the demise of a 
 Sovereign, under the elective Monarchy of Poland I This were harmless mat- 
 ter in comparison with a Monarchy, that was at once elective and hereditary, as 
 was the case in Ireland, of which the Crown devolved to such son, or nephew, 
 or cousin of the deceased King, as should get the better of his rivals by assas- 
 sination, or by a struggle in open war, that must have shaken the State with 
 volcanic convulsion. 
 
 VOL. i. a 
 
316 NOTES. 
 
 Then, beside* the "King of all Ireland," there were provincial Kings 
 and sub-provincial, the succession of whom, severally, was the sport of the 
 same legal pruvUiun for assassination, among the half dozen, or perhaps, twenty 
 joint heirs in expectancy, and for carnage among the population at large, that 
 of course was split into parties, each of which followed its idol leader with the 
 fury of partisan ignorance, and the thirst for blood and confiscation that is 
 proper to civil war. Beyond all this, the self same law applied to private lito, 
 and granted but a life interest to the occupant of a family property ; so that 
 the demise of each possessor of land was the signal for renewed family dis- 
 traction. 
 
 This homogeneous confusion, which made nothing sure but perpetual inse- 
 curity from robbery and massacre, in an endless intricacy of quarrel was en- 
 titled ' the Brehon Law." It was a thoroughly Irish affair ; for it combined 
 continuity with outrageous dis-connection. It was as abhorrent from any 
 possible application to human purposes as in reference to a modern draw-well 
 with its appurtenant tackle and bucket one of those natural, fathomless, 
 perforations, in mockery of a well, could be, into which a stone, dropped by 
 a rustic philosopher, leaps from one ragged projection to an answering ledge 
 opposite, from which to rebound in repetition of clatter, that is attested by 
 the ear, long after what creates the turmoil has disappeared from the eye ; 
 under which description I crave leave to allegorize the Brehon Law. 
 
 This-system was upheld among the native Irish, without the English pale, for 
 ages subsequent to the invasion of Henry II. It were superfluous, and quite 
 bootless, to dwell on the wars of the English with the Irish, whether military 
 or legislative, which extended from 1 172, to shall we say 1772. That epoch 
 introduced one farther ingredient , to contribute to the more violent working of the 
 caldron of mischief. The generations of that six hundred years, whose errors 
 or whose crimes to whatever extent they may have been reduced this 
 fair island to its present plight, are gone to their account. Of the most distant 
 share in producing that plight, the present generation of Legislators is as 
 innocent, even in thought, as their offspring yet to be born can be. But they 
 are as ardent for a change of it, as if the mischiefs bequeathed for our present 
 fcourge were of their personal infliction, and demanded at their own hands 
 expiation and, beyond that, the largest retribution. 
 
 I would confine myself here to the evil which this tissue of events has in- 
 duced, in the degradation of the mass of our aristocracy into a systematic 
 absentee-ism, which is a direct violation of the duty that they owe to their coun- 
 try ; and to the corresponding degradation of our peasantry into a condition 
 of helpless wretchedness that, for its vileness, cannot be paralleled elsewhere in 
 Europe. I have stated in the text, that "the peasantry of Ireland are put 
 " into mortal hostility with their landlords, by the very tenure of their acre 
 " of land, and the very agreement by which they give their labour." If any 
 tuggeitiou of iniii* could avail for the correction of so baleful a system, in tvcn 
 
-NOTES. 317 
 
 the most inconsiderable degree, my apology would be absolute for the excur- 
 siveness of the present supplementary Note. 
 
 The peasantry (I speak of the mere peasants^ are destitute of property in 
 stock, or even in house furniture. Their habitations are most wretched huts. 
 Their numbers were long ago redundant ; and early and prolific marriage is 
 ever adding to them in a fearful acceleration of increase. There is no demand 
 or tantamount to none for their labour, except on the farms of the landholders, 
 on whom, severally, they depend : and the rate of wages is so mean, and the 
 total sum that it is possible to acquire by labour through the year so small, 
 that they are ever steeped in poverty. Hence poverty's every various vice 
 laziness, hypocrisy, pilfering. 
 
 Yet it is strange, that within the landlord's dwelling, and in every thing that 
 concerns house furniture and clothes, be it of little value or much, even 
 under the temptation of daily ingress and egress unwatched, all is safe from 
 hands that are ever prone to mischief, and the practice of fraud without doors. 
 The land and its concerns are the debateable ground of the peasant : the do- 
 mestic concerns of his master's family are under the guard of his better feel- 
 ings that are unwarped to ill, and in the kindliest play. 
 
 But, in the main, they have an interest which is at utter variance with that 
 of their employer : and this is so wrought into their existence, that even the 
 few lucky individuals of them who, having climbed into comparative compe- 
 tence, are placed in a post of superintendence over the rest, will see the family 
 to which they owe their all, robbed under their own eyes, without its being 
 possible to draw from them a disclosure of the circumstance, or even a previous 
 hint, by which the perpetration of it might have been prevented. No such 
 disclosure can be wrung from them by the impulses of gratitude, by the hope 
 of reward, or by the risk of expulsion from their own station of affluence, by 
 any or all these, under the firmest confidence in their own breast, that their 
 intimations would be held sacredly confidential. Such is the force of sympathy 
 by which t he mass of the Irish peasantry is banded together in mysterious 
 separation from their countrymen of all other classes besides, as though it 
 were by a magic circle, that is impervious while it is invisible. To all these 
 classes it opposes an ever active system of aggression, masked under the shew of 
 peace and personal attachment. Lounging is their substitute for the day's 
 labour, unless that labour be by task-work : not a field-gate but is a temptation 
 to them for fuel and, where fuel abounds, for disport of their animal spirits in 
 search of mischief : not a post is suffered to remain any where for the protec- 
 tion of young timber : that young timber is often destroyed through sheer 
 wantonness. What wonder can there be, if these repeated hostilities should 
 have their effect on the landholder, and should work on him, also, some pecu- 
 liarity of character ? What more is required to explain his demand of a rack- 
 rent, which the produce of the land is absorbed in producing, leaving not a 
 shilling to compensate the labour of the tiller, or even to cover the cost of the 
 seed .' Take landlord and tenant out of the respective situations in which 3 
 
318 NOTES. 
 
 perversity of lot has placed them, and you have not a finer creature breathing 
 than an Irish peasant, of more industry, more affectionate attachment, more 
 strict honesty and truth. Of these there are but comparatively few who can 
 emigrate : the old world, at least, superabounds in hands. But the landlords 
 emigrate in crowds, and by the most unaffected exhibition of every solid quality, 
 and every grace of mind and manner, lay claim to the admiration of Europe. 
 And Europe, while admiring them, brands them in the same breath as absentees, 
 the deserters of their duties, the curse and bane of Ireland. The naked fact 
 of their non-residence at home is held to justify all this opprobrium : and it is 
 not surmised, that their expatriation is too often in their own despite ; that their 
 benignity is unable to bear the deterioration of their species under their de- 
 pendence, which they feel impotent to relieve ; and that to relieve themselves 
 from a degree of pain, amounting to physical horror, occasioned by such a 
 sight, they take refuge in absence from the ever-during miserable hostility, of 
 which they are the mark, and which they scorn to retaliate. 
 
 View the system in home action, as I had occasion to see it in the commenc- 
 ing months of the year 1820 in Connaught. Premising that causes the 
 bearing of which, on this point, I have not seen brought together, and may 
 not stop to enunciate, have created in the Irish peasant a passion, that is next 
 to instinctive, for realizing his year's stock of food of his own growth ; it fol- 
 lows, that though the landholder may lay what price he will on his ground, he is 
 sure to let it to the last inch, leaving after all, a crowd of candidates whom he is 
 unable to gratify. The terms laid down in Connaught for some years had been 
 eight pounds up to guineas per English acre, for ground remote from any 
 town, and requiring the bating or burning of its surface-sod, as a preparative 
 for producing potatoes, and two-thirds of that sum for land that had been 
 somewhat impoverished by preceding crops, of which the contemplated produce 
 was oats. The tenant gave his labour to the landlord every day which tho 
 occasions of the latter demanded: his wife, it may be, worked similarly: a 
 supply of seed, on account, was perhaps furnished by the landlord for their 
 plat of ground, in the clods of which was sunk all the spare labour of days out 
 of employ, as well as before and after hours of the landlord's work-days. The 
 money produce of a full crop if converted into money could not possibly 
 equal the amount of the rent and the seed : an indifferent season left them far to 
 the bad. In either calculation their own labour went for nothing, or was more 
 than paid for by the luxury of the possessing land. The amount of their day's 
 work performed for the landlord, in the sum of the reckoning, would probably 
 not cover the rent due to him for their land : and their pig was sold under legal 
 process, or, perhaps, their wretched cow, which they hnd reared from a calf 
 on the browning afforded by tli<- mini Mile, and subsequently fostered into the 
 dr-like ngility, required for purvey ing nutriment within less public precincts. 
 It WM not a very unheard-of thing, that the three or live articles of which tho 
 inventory of their hut's furniture run-i-u-il, wriv -imiliirly alienated. Take, 
 with all thif, that land wasjiut at that time at its lowest state of depression, and 
 
NOTES. 319 
 
 that the embarassmcnts of the English agriculturists precluded them from 
 giving employment to any of the hordes of these same wretches, who made 
 their annual migration to work as supernumerary labourers in the harvest time : 
 that avenue to the gain of great wealth, which might enable them to pay their 
 covenanted rents, was in a great measure closed. 
 
 In this state of things, and the military force having been largely withdrawn 
 for the purpose of putting down the Manchester and Glasgow revolutionists, 
 a junta of mischief-makers issued Commissions for each of which they received 
 and pocketed a money price of Five Pounds. Each commission conferred, 
 with the rank of Captain, the right to redress peasant wrongs and, at the same 
 time, to make a profit by doing so. To each of these captains, the junta as- 
 signed a district, in the manner of an excise officer's walk, within which they 
 were severally authorised and required to swear the peasantry to secrecy and 
 obedience ; and from each recruit they were to receive ten pence, being the 
 value of the Irish bank token then in currency. The aggregate of these petty 
 exactions was the fund allotted for re-payment to them of the cost of their com- 
 missions, the surplus being for their personal emolument. Nightly assem- 
 blages followed, and a search for arms, of which they exerted themselves to 
 obtain the general surrender through terror, or by actual attack. The timid 
 were affrighted ; the temporizing of whom there were too many, met with 
 temporary favor ; but the spirited resident gentry, who exerted themselves to 
 put down the mysterious combination, were marked for assassination to which 
 some fell victims. The mischief thickened so very suddenly, that five thou- 
 sand troops were, by forced marches, poured into the country, of which they 
 took military possession. Tranquillity followed : the law had its regular assize 
 course ; and the secrets of the confederacy transpired. But who shall pretend 
 that the danger of explosion is past, while all the elements of mischief are in 
 the same potent life and appalling elasticity ! 
 
 Without going into any farther statement respecting the hideous war of Jac- 
 querie, which has raged in one or other district of Ireland ever since that time, 
 let me ask, what enactment, of a mountebank senator's introduction, can unravel 
 and lay open the maze of perversity, which robs the gentry of Ireland of the 
 kindly influences over a happy surrounding tenantry, in which their nature 
 languishes to indulge, and places them in the painful and most dangerous pre- 
 eminence of a West India planter encompassed by imported African slave?. 
 What legion of enactments can effect this } Who shall move for bringing in a 
 bill for prohibiting early marriages 1 or marriages beyond the proportion of 
 one in three, or in five, of the marriageable couples among the Irish peasants, 
 to be selected at a Vestry meeting, or recommended under the hand and 
 seal of the parish priest ? What is there in all this connexion between Land- 
 lord and Tenant, that is tangible by a statutory enactment ? Shall Grand 
 Juries be empowered, or shall it be made peremptory on them, to present as 
 nuisances every house without a chimney ? or hovels generally? Who shall 
 fii a minimum on labor ? Or who shall dare to fix a maximum for rents .' 
 
320 NOTES. 
 
 What other remedy remains ? There is one, perhaps, which would strike at 
 the root of the evil : possibly it has been unthought of, because it is, in its 
 direct simplicity, impracticable. That is, m legislative provision, of which the 
 effect should subject to a nullity as strict as that which quashes gambling 
 debts, all obligations growing directly or indirectly in contemplation or in 
 consequence out of demands for rent, on the foot of a written obligation, or 
 ns a lien on the crop, in any case whatever where rent may be concerned, in 
 which, in that description of instances now in purview, one-half or, at the 
 lowest, one-third of the full year's obligation had not been paid before entry. 
 Is such a statutory provision out of measure absurd in our eyes ? In Swisser- 
 land, that is hailed as a most free and happy land of Cocagne, they enact in the 
 merest routine, and they also enforce, laws that are just as out of the way, and 
 of which the results are far less beneficial. Whatever possible legislative pro- 
 vision can be brought into bearing, with however remote an approximation to 
 this point blank aim, will do good. And in proportion as Landlords will 
 struggle for it must be a strong struggle to coniform their practice to the 
 principle of this measure, they will, individually, do good. They will iever 
 the slave's chain, that extends from the Peasant to the Landlord, and is hurtful 
 to both; They will destroy the every year's recurring bubble of a bargain 
 between them, that is but made to be broken, because it cannot, by possibi- 
 lity, be honestly fulfilled. While they do not lessen in any way the aggregate 
 quantity of the labor which they severally have to give, they will substitute 
 weakly payments for yearly delusions. They will submit the labor of each 
 week, or day, to a test, inducing the rejection from their employment as the 
 penalty for sloth, and their countenance and patronage as one reward for indus- 
 try. To honest industry, as a marketable commodity, they will open a direct 
 market. Farther, they will create a legitimate, wholesome, and most efficient 
 corrective to the evil of improvident ly early marriages that source of various, 
 hideous, endless crime. The entire disease of the present vassalage will be 
 put into a train of dissolution ; and cottage virtues and landlord kindnesses 
 will walk hand in hand, which they never can do, as long as the present hor- 
 rible system shall remain in sufferance. Need I apologise for adding since in 
 o momentous a matter the minutest detail is of incalculable consequence, 
 that by an arrangement of eaxy contrivance, (and the frequency of which does 
 honor to our age and to human nature,) district or parish depots, for the sale 
 of the necessaries of life, may be established generally, and the nuisance of the 
 huxter be effectually put down.* 
 
 * A mass of most useful and important facts, bearing on this subject, has 
 been Utoly pre-ented to the Public, in the most succinct and unostenUtiou* 
 form, l>y Mr. \\illiam Allen, a member of the Society of l-'riund*. The title 
 of this little tract is " Colonies at Home." Solely with reference to Ireland, 
 to the condition of which he specially addresses himself, I have to observe 
 that hi* recommendation of Lucerne is not borne out by a practical knowledge 
 of the soil and climate of this country, of which the indigenous grasses are too. 
 powerful to suffer iti growth without the most systematized attention. I need 
 
NOTES. 321 
 
 And be it not left unremarked that, under such a system, the awful devasta- 
 tion by famine in 1822, would not have had existence ! Incredible as this 
 averment may be to those who know Ireland only by their good intentions, it 
 is as true as it is strange. 
 
 One farther word as to absentee-ism. Statute Law cannot compel our landed 
 proprietors to residence on their estates. There are two moral forces which 
 may operate in that way the sense of duty in their own breasts, and the deep 
 and utter scorn in which they are held as the deserters of their duties. Of the 
 existence and universality of that scorn, they must be feelingly conscious, 
 however high spirit on their part, and good manners on that of the society in 
 which they mingle, may suppress its overt symptoms. Though dislodgment 
 from their homes be the result of almost direct violence, strangers cannot com- 
 prehend, and of course cannot sympathize with the sufferings inflicted under the 
 Servile War, that curses the relations of Peasant and Landowner in Ireland. It is 
 indeed impossible that they should, any more than that they could give their 
 sympathies to sufferings under some mode of bad passion that may influence a 
 community in the Moon, and is incomprehensible to the organs of men tenant- 
 ing our planet. A certain Highland Duke, on the occasion of adjusting the 
 adjournment of the House of Peers, on the occasion of the Queen's trial, 
 stated in his place, that less time than some few weeks would be an unreasonable 
 hardship: and in proof of this, he instanced the" impossibility of his return to 
 his estates, after an absence since the Spring. His Grace, who I apprehend is 
 on the verge of seventy, did go, taking his Duchess with him : and they re- 
 turned within the one month, for which the House was adjourned over. Dur- 
 ance in even the most comfortable carriage, for four days and part of their 
 nights in going, and of as much more in returning, is a pain which looks for 
 specific compensation. To men of this order, the scene of their home duties 
 is that of their dearest enjoyments. Home residence is to them a necessary of 
 life. It is true British nutriment. Such men are not merely unable to sympa- 
 thize with tastes and practices that are counter to their own, but they must 
 execrate, as recreants to manliness, the tribe which lives in abandonment of their 
 plainest duties. 
 
 It may be a trite, but it is an awfully true observation, that our allotments 
 in life prescribe to us our duties. These are, to some men, of easy fulfilment, 
 while to others they are laborious and of life-long tribulation : but in no case 
 will the difficulty attendant on their discharge be taken as a justification for 
 having systematically deserted them. 
 
 scarcely add, that accurately systematized diligence is so far from being a cha- 
 racteristic of the existing peasant population of Ireland, that it must be held 
 as altogether at variance with their habits. 
 
REMARKS, 
 
 PICTURESQUE, MORAL, AND MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 CALAIS, 26TH JUNE, 1822. 
 
 DINNER at Meurice's table d'hote, twenty-four persons $ 
 soup and two courses, much variety in each, and abundant 
 in itself for a large company ; a desert of at least half a 
 dozen kinds of fruit. The table fare was a sufficient an^- 
 nouncement that you were out of England, which idea was 
 ratified by the cost not quite three shillings, including 
 wine. A dinner of the same description on the other side 
 of the water would have been at least four times the 
 money.* 
 
 Calais is in a miserable strand>-shore situation. Within the 
 fortifications it is a neat well built town : the streets run 
 strictly parallel, and are intersecte'd by others as regularly 
 parallel and of uniform elevation. There is here no air of 
 antiquity, not even a coin-stone appearing of the buildings 
 of the olden time. It disappoints an Englishman's anti- 
 cipations, whose historic recollections would pourtray Calais 
 
 * It may be right to state here, that these minutes were commenced at the 
 foot and on the back of inn-keeper's bills, and have from this pigmy origin, 
 with progressive audacity, increased to their present size. 
 
 B 
 
2 ST. OM ER S. 
 
 as the frontier fortress of France, bearding the British cliffs, 
 and tempting British Quixotism, of which it was for cen- 
 turies the prize and trophy, as Gibraltar is at tl>e present 
 day. 
 
 27th. On the road to St. Omer's, some corn-fields appear 
 already cut: the houses all along in this garden country 
 are excellent in their respective kinds, and in the best state 
 of repair ; the people are well clothed and comfortable 
 looking ; the men in cocked hats, and coats of antique cut. 
 The long stretches of road are guarded by fosse, and lined 
 with elms or tall poplars. Special care is taken in pruning 
 these trees and restraining them to a head, the most pro- 
 mising shoot being trained for a leader a most judicious 
 practice. 
 
 In the salon of the Inn at St. Omer's a large printed 
 sheet is appended to the wall, with the heading " To the 
 glory of France three victories per day." These victories 
 are catalogued as won from 1793 to 1815. The average of 
 three is most modest, since in just arithmetic the number in 
 the list would cover nearly four. It remains to state that, 
 as memorials of this national glory are specified the naval 
 victories of Earl Howe of the 1st of June, of Lord Nelson 
 at Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the land battles of Maida, 
 Vimiera, Vittoria and Waterloo. These are but stray 
 samples of French glory placarded on this sheet, as won 
 at the expense of their enemies. 
 
 28th. To CASSEL AND LILLE. Much wheat reaped and 
 some flax : the corn-stubbles mostly ploughed, and in some 
 fields cabbages already put in; others covering with 
 manure ; the country most rich and wooded. From Cassel, 
 a cheerful town on the crown of a high hill, the view is 
 most extensive, the wood so grouped as to occupy in ap- 
 pearance more than two-thirds of the expanse, whereas 
 the reality must be the converse of this. I understand that 
 seventeen fortified towns, including Dover Castle, are visible 
 
CASSEL AND LILLE. O 
 
 from the noble mansion of General Vandamme here, toge- 
 ther with fifty open towns and one hundred villages. 
 
 LILLE. At the garrison parade in the evening, on the 
 esplanade, I observed a practice which struck me as of very 
 unmilitary precision the regimental bands performing .with 
 their music-books held spread before them by boys, and 
 when in march extended by their own contrivance in the 
 best way they could : this practice I understand to be general 
 on the Continent. 
 
 29th JUNE. To MENIN, in two hours, a barrier town of 
 the kingdom of the Netherlands, begirt with newly-erected 
 fortifications. In two hours more to Courtrai, ah excellent 
 town for its size, and deserving of notice, even after Lille. 
 In the evening to Ghent : and on the following day, Sunday, 
 ranged fully through this extensive city, now in the dead ebb 
 of energy and departed wealth: And this half-alive aggre- 
 gate of palaces and superb public structures was once a 
 sort of London, proud, turbulent, pouring forth armies 
 out of its own streets, and asserting its might, and exer- 
 cising its dictation in the congresses of kings. The re- 
 trospection of these past realities is like the phantoms of a 
 dream. 
 
 One instance among many of the preference given by 
 our continental neighbours to the shewy rather than the 
 useful, is exhibited in the clocks appended to the public 
 buildings, and which are very numerous in every town. 
 These proclaim with loud hurdy-gurdy tune the hour, and 
 chime in prolonged base music each division of time down 
 to the half-quarter, but are invariably without a minute- 
 hand, or any help to indicate time to the eye except by guess 
 from the place of the hour-hand on the dial. * 
 
 1st JULY. To ANTWERP. Till within four miles of this 
 town the country is extremely rich ; its flats not disagreeable 
 to the eye from the number of trees spreading over the 
 expanse and coming up to the road, the avenue ranges of 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ANTWERP. 
 
 which give effect and dress to the general landscape. The 
 oaks are all lopt : this discipline, as well as the want of age 
 of all the timber of this country is explained by the great 
 demand for house fuel. Crops of corn immense: towns 
 and villages along the road superior in style to any thing I 
 had hitherto seen ; the road itself as if ground was of 
 higher value much narrower. Garlands and other gauds 
 in honour of St. Peter's day, hung across the streets and 
 roads every where as we advanced. This festival cele- 
 brated also with music and dancing they call the Kermesse : 
 in character it reminds me of the Irish Roman Catholic fes- 
 tivals which they call patrons. 
 
 Near Antwerp the country is a forlorn flat, intersected by 
 vile plashes and dikes, without one tree to relieve the 
 eye ; fit domain for a stern fortified place which has frowned 
 from its contiguity all vestige of human industry or habita- 
 tion. Crossed the Scheldt by a ferry, about half the breadth 
 of the Mersey at Liverpool. Antwerp, its buildings and 
 lanes, very mean after the magnificence of Ghent ; but it is 
 all activity and bustle of trade. In Churches it is beyond 
 any Flemish town 1 have yet seen. Of the interior of its 
 Cathedral I will not pretend to speak, inasmuch as its ex- 
 terior has to me a clumsiness and coarseness, for which I 
 was not prepared in a structure extolled without reserve. 
 
 Harsh weather and a strong wind, precluded my ascent 
 of its steeple. I could have much wished to have had the 
 view from thence, of which a friend long ago told me, that 
 while the cultivated and densely peopled expanse, to the 
 utmost verge of the horizon around, occupied the gaze and 
 drew the continued expression of amazement of his party 
 for a whole hour, one individual alone had not uttered a syl- 
 lable till the moment of descending, when he imparted, as 
 the sum of his observations, that not one tile or slate was 
 wanting or required re-setting on the roof of house or of 
 out-house of all that had been under his eye. The remark 
 
MAL1NES. O 
 
 had its meaning, and I believe it is equally true of every 
 view from every other steeple throughout Flanders. 
 
 To M ALINES in the afternoon : its floridly rich and vene- 
 rable Cathedral and some other relics of dignity and state, 
 commensurate with stir and ambition long fallen asleep, 
 give I know not what painful spasm to check the otherwise 
 lethargic cast of this place. The country thence on to Vil- 
 verde is as dull as the city. From Vilverde, the road ranges 
 for six miles to Brussels along a noble canal, with rows of 
 tall beech on one side, and on the other poplar and after- 
 wards elm. Here all corn disappears, and no other crop 
 but grass is seen ; the expanse rich in woods breaks into 
 beautiful hills. In front to the canal lie, in thick succession, 
 houses of entertainment handsomely built, and still more 
 numerous villas laid out with finely-kept gardens. Well- 
 dressed people in abundance, sitting toping and smoking in 
 front in open air; and crowds of hackney carriages and 
 private equipages in full motion over the spacious roads. 
 The splendour of the villas increases as you proceed, and 
 the bold and rich features of the country also prominently 
 increase until you come in view of the Royal Palace of 
 Lacken ; its faade shewn with dignity from the brow of one 
 of those fine hills, large accompaniments of wood sup- 
 porting it, and extensive pleasure grounds with water 
 diffused in the English garden style ranging around and 
 in front down to the road. More than a mile farther on 
 rises another of the noble swells of ground through which 
 you move, with the plain at its foot, occupied in its full 
 breadth, and from summit to flat, by the gay metropolis 
 itself, Brussels. In the Hotel de Flandres, in the Place 
 Royale, crowning the topmost elevation of the whole, I have 
 my quarters fixed. 
 
 The Place Royale is an oblong of moderate dimensions, 
 environed by palace structures and a fine modern Church. 
 Close to it is Belle-vue Pare, of somewhat less extent than 
 
Q BRUSSELS. 
 
 Stephrn's-green in Dublin. Round its four sides ranges a 
 suite of magnificent houses, one of them a town palace of 
 ** Sa Majest^ )e Roi," as with full expectoration of his dig- 
 nity was stated to me, buttressed on one side by the Palace 
 of the Corp Legislatif, and on the other by that of the 
 British Ambassador. The rest of the series is in a style 
 which by no means derogates from these. The inner area, 
 intersected with walks and embellished by numerous marble 
 statues, is distributed into divisions, some of open and gay 
 extension, others of retirement in groves so tall and thick 
 as to shut out the sun, and with underwood so close as to 
 seclude each portion of it from every other, and to give to 
 the entire the impression of immense. What is still more 
 strange in a town site, the surface is so broken, and, in spots, 
 the dells so strongly featured as to impart the character of 
 remote and wild woodland scenery. I may fairly anticipate 
 my farther experience, and pronounce this Pare of Belle-vue 
 a thing unrivalled. 
 
 JULY 4. Left Brussels at five in the morning for Water- 
 loo: a charming drive through cheerful villages and rich 
 farms ; and tl>e wood a grove of the tall slender elm so 
 common in this country, soon yielding to beech exclusively. 
 At Waterloo, a portion of ground like common taken in for 
 a cemetery, where some of our heroes lie. Waterloo Church, 
 a structure of mere village dimensions, without, imposing, 
 from the boldness of its cupola ; within, miserable save for 
 the garniture of inscriptions round its walls, tributes of affec- 
 tion to relatives or comrades fallen in the battle. Some of 
 these are deeply affecting ; Canning, and a hero who was 
 killed by the side of his brother, especially ; not forgetting 
 the tablet of names furnished by the Royal Scots, which 
 most properly includes their gallant Sergeant- Major killed 
 in supporting the colors which had passed successively 
 from one victim bearer to another of some five or six commis- 
 sioned officers. The Scots and the Germans (of which las.1 
 
WATERLOO, 7 
 
 we had a legion in the action) have been laudably national 
 in their inscriptions the English and the Irish quite un- 
 national, but not on that account I ween unfeeling. 
 
 Traversed the field from centre to the farm-house of 
 La Belle Alliance, close opposite to it; from that farm- 
 house to Hugoumont ; and returned by the opposite hill and 
 the valley, in which, after the action, 130 pieces of French 
 artillery were collected. At Hugoumont (round which the 
 slaughter of the enemy was frightfully immense in attempt- 
 ing to penetrate the precincts) I was shewn the family Chapel, 
 where the foot and nothing more of the wooden image 
 of the Virgin Mother was scorched by the fire of the French 
 shells, which had consumed the straw-roofs and whatever 
 else was combustible in the out-buildings, of which this 
 Chapel formed a portion. 
 
 The proprietor of this mansion, Baron de Goumont, 1 
 think they called him, died from a broken heart, so affected 
 was he by the devastation of the day to the premises and 
 his surrounding property. 
 
 La Haye Sainte along the left of the field of which 
 we have heard so much, makes now a miserable fence. It 
 had been a hedge, thick and strong below, while it shot to 
 the height of lofty sapling trees. So utterly was it beaten 
 down by the battle-hail, and so numerous were the perfora- 
 tions from the passage of our troops, that it remains a ragged 
 outline, its gaps unclosed, and the shoots cut for fuel as they 
 rise above the unsightlj' level. 
 
 It has been imputed to the Duke of Wellington as an 
 oversight, that he left to its own resources a German force, 
 stationed within the farm-house of La Haye Sainte, the 
 consequence of which was, that being at length without 
 ammunition while their post was surrounded, they were 
 overpowered and put to the sword. The admission of the 
 fact by his Grace, and the taking of the blame on himself, 
 are characteristic of the unobtrusiveness of his pretensions. 
 
8 WATERLOO. 
 
 The bouse in question was not twenty perches from the British 
 centre ; yet so severe was the French onset, and so stub- 
 bornly was it maintained on our front, that they mastered, 
 and in their turn garrisoned a post almost in our contact. 
 
 My guide over the field, a very intelligent man, had two 
 or three days before accompanied a son of Lucien Buona- 
 parte, recently married to his cousin, a daughter of Louis, 
 and now in Flanders. He mentioned that having detailed 
 to the young man the particulars connected with the different 
 localities, with a fidelity which could be in no way flattering 
 to French vanity, inasmuch as facts could not on the spot be 
 made to sort with illusion his hearer received all with seeming 
 fixed attention, but without moving a muscle of his countenance, 
 or being once betrayed into the slightest syllable of remark. 
 
 So far as I may depend on the statement of my guide, and 
 he seems a man of accurate mind, the approach of the Prus- 
 sians was first ascertained about five o'clock, and the Duke 
 of Wellington made his grand charge two hours after ; the 
 Prussians not arriving to co-operate with it otherwise than 
 by the discharge of their cannon as they came within range.* 
 
 At Waterloo an Englishman is subject to all the an- 
 
 * On this often debated point, the British and Prussian official accounts ac- 
 curately agree. The latter describe the French to be " fighting with desperate 
 " fury at HALF-FAST SEVEN ; but some uncertainty to be perceived in their 
 movements, and some of their cannon to be retreating. At this moment the 
 first columns of General Ziethen arrived at the poiut of attack, and instantly 
 charged the enemy ; his right was broken in three places ; our troops rushed 
 11 forward at the charge-step, while at the same moment THE WHOLE LNSLISH 
 LINE advanced." In the London Gazette, the Duke of Wellington states 
 that, " ABOUT SEVEN, the enemy made a desperate attack which was defeated ; 
 and having observed that they retired in great confusion, and that the march 
 of General Bulow'ti corps had begun to take effect," &c. his Grace 
 " determined to attack (he enemy, and immediately advanced with his whole 
 line : the attack succeeded in every point." Can any event be more con- 
 kentaneouxly stated by two different rrlator* ? and do pot both accounts establi-h, 
 that, at the close of the day the British army had completely repelled their an- 
 tagonists, had made them retire " in great confusion" after their fiercest and 
 expiring effort, and were in condition to advance in their entire extent of line, 
 and to retaliate iu their unbroken strength on a recoiling and disorganized 
 
WATERLOO. 9 
 
 noyances which give pain at every point of strong attrac- 
 tion on the Continent. An old beggar-retainer of the 
 Church mumbled out a demand for a contribution for it on 
 some score or other, in such a way as if he wished it not to 
 be understood. Tho fille at the auberge, who also shews 
 the grave-ground, when she contended for a fee of a franc 
 and half, when a franc would have been most liberal pay- 
 ment, pleaded also somewhat about the Church : I called her 
 quietly, " avare," to which imputation she resignedly sub- 
 mitted, but had her franc and half in full. 
 
 But such a cloud of mendicants as distribute themselves 
 over the field, under pretext of being hawkers of relics 
 alleged to have been found there ; or of paltriest child's 
 toys, fabricated of pot metal, or as they tell you, from frag- 
 ments of cannon and other appointments that seven years 
 ago strewed the field. Then their pertinacity in chase 
 of you, through all your windings of a mile, in defiance 
 alike of intreaty or refusal, and to the utter confounding of 
 all accurate communication with your guide : and such a 
 torrent of deep-mouthed scurrility against your nation and 
 yourself, before they give place to another miscreant swarm 
 which relieves them in an ever-circling round of chatter 
 and disgust ! Can it be, in sober fact, that they are vam- 
 pire exhalations from the heaps of defeated corpses below, 
 who have thus succeeded in still wreaking on us their hate 
 unquenched in death ! 
 
 These memoranda are but of trifles ; and I find myself 
 taking refuge in trifles : for 1 recoil from tracing the feeling 
 dominant on the spot, even as materials for future and less 
 
 enemy ? In what produced or regarded the relative situation of the British 
 and French armies the confusion and route of the one contrasted with the 
 determined front and power for forward offensive operations of the other 
 the Prussian army had nothing whatever to do. In co-operating in those final 
 offensive operations they had a large share, and, fresh as they were numerous, 
 a much larger in the consummation which crowned the day of the 18th of 
 June. 
 
10 BRUSSELS* 
 
 excited reflection. Crecy, Poictiers, Agincourt, our greatest 
 achievements of the chivalrous ages, have here been fully 
 equalled, and our rival nation, or, in customary phrase, 
 natural enemy, is laid low in a contest sacred from national 
 animosities. Yet still, England having, here, wrested the 
 palm of victory from the Attila of our day, and thereby put 
 an end to that tyranny which had debased and kept in 
 thraldrom all Europe save itself England, the sole nation 
 which had throughout held cheap this proudest and vainest 
 and most successful of boasters, and finally beat him and 
 his enthusiastic myrmidons to the ground and to powder; 
 the localities and the name of Waterloo must ever kindle 
 the justest and honestest pride in the bosom of Britons. 
 This pride will swell higher the more they reflect, that the 
 surpassing glory of their nation is built on their home insti- 
 tutions, results as these are of liberty invigorating law, 
 and being invigorated by it, and developing themselves to 
 the utmost in thought and in deed, in moral sentiment, 
 manners, gesture, almost features and look, in guise so 
 unequivocal, that Englishmen stand the conscious and the 
 recognised " Lords of human kind." What a fearful weight 
 of debt is theirs, individually and collectively, for blessings 
 at home unknown to every other age and people of Christen- 
 dom for might abroad, and for that protection under which 
 this their exercise of it became deliverance to the world from 
 wrong and robbery. To feel that they owe, is here how- 
 ever to pay : to act, each and all, under a due sense of their 
 obligations multiplied and mighty as they are will be 
 taken in full acquittance of their debt. 
 
 Returned to Brussels in the forenoon. 
 
 Of the public structures here beyond the precincts of the 
 Place Royale and Belle-vue, little can be said. None of the 
 Churches, not even the principal one, struck rne with interest. 
 It has, in common with every other town of the Netherlands, 
 its Maison de Ville a description of edifice prodigious in 
 
LIEGE. 11 
 
 dimensions, of imposing architecture being a mixture of 
 Gothic and Moorish and venerable from antiquity. The 
 Guildhall of Ghent is stupendously noble. That of 
 Brussels stands on the more open site of the Grande 
 Place ; and the opposite and contiguous structures, of 
 Brobdignag massiveness, with devices and inscriptions still 
 extant on their front memorials of the achievements of ge- 
 nerations long since gone to sleep come in aid of the un- 
 couthness of its Maison de Ville so that, if somewhat less 
 in size, it yields not in impressive character. Its curious 
 gothic tower contributes to this impressiveness ; it is in 
 height nearly 400 feet, and serves to guide the strangers in 
 Brussels through its dense labyrinth of streets. But more 
 fantastic far than all this, is the roof with which the building 
 is capped ; so monstrous in. elevation, and of such conse- 
 quent inclined plane, as to exceed in superficies the elevation 
 of front which it surmounts. Over this roof, to make it yet 
 more grotesque, are distributed in regular ranges, tier after 
 tier of windows, laid thick, side by side, in the manner of 
 projecting sky-lights, and answering no doubt to stories of 
 garret apartments. The number of these stories, though I 
 counted them but three hours back, it staggers me to minute 
 on the credit of my memory ; they cannot be less than half 
 a score. Thus possibly it was that, in the same old fashioned 
 times, the doublet of satin which cased the frame of Lord 
 Keeper Hatton, or other antique courtier, was not more brave 
 to view than the "high crowned hat," which surmounted his 
 person. 
 
 Quitted Brussels on the evening of the 5th, for Aix-la- 
 Chapelle ; the first part of the journey of course by night, 
 but with such a moon as to display a continued expanse 
 of undulating country under corn cultivation and with but 
 few trees. Passed through Louvaine, the features of which 
 presented nothing remarkable, with exception of its Maison 
 de Ville, nobly gothic in feature, its surface rich in tracery, 
 
12 LIEGE. 
 
 its general aspect cuplivatingly picturesque. Through Tir- 
 Ic-mont also, which possibly looked handsomer than by day; 
 its streets, regard being had to their minor scale, superior 
 to those of Louvaine superior, if the moon mocked me 
 not, to many in Brussels. The barred gate of this city, 
 on our going out, was opened by a female, in burlesque I 
 presume of its walled and fortified apparatus of protection. 
 Breakfasted at Orey, at three in the morning ; a most 
 miserable safeguard against the privation of all food, which 
 awaited me till the close of the day and end of my journey. 
 To LIEGE at 9 a. m. The view from the hill on which 
 the city is built, overlooking the valley of the Maese, is 
 extensive and magnificent. Liege itself is a large ugly 
 city, forcibly reminding me of some of our principal Irish 
 towns in the character of its streets, in the appearance and 
 detail of dress of the lower orders of women and perhaps 
 of men, and, I am sorry to say, in their squalidness, which 
 forms a shocking contrast with the cleanly and healthy ap- 
 pearance of the population in every other place I have seen 
 since my landing. Mendicity is excessive here, and extends 
 onward to the Prussian frontier in the vicinity of Aix-la- 
 Chapelle, the road to which, for a tormenting extent of 
 leagues, is lined with hordes of most sturdy beggars. 
 Beyond the Prussian frontier, the open exercise of mendicity 
 is prohibited. The Ecclesistical Government of this country 
 is at an end : the vast and magnificent Palace of its Prince 
 Bishop is converted to municipal purposes : a territory in 
 which the fruits of imbecile administration have so grievously 
 prospered is added to the Sovereignty of the Netherlands : 
 and let us hope that a policy totally different will gradually 
 conform its institutions, its practices, its habits, even its 
 morals, to those of that nation of industry and comfort. 
 
 A succession of hills of bewitching beauty continues from 
 hence to Aix-la-Chapelle: little corn ; grass generally ; the 
 fields in t>mall enclosures ; luxuriant hedges and hedge-row 
 
AIX-LA-CHAPELLE 13 
 
 trees, and numerous scattered tufts of wood grouping with 
 them; a tract of exquisitely lovely and most productive 
 farm country, for which, perhaps, I should vainly seek a 
 parallel in England, so much more varied is its surface than 
 any thing which England generally can shew. 
 
 Ample time has been given me to gaze on this charming 
 scenery, so far at least as the movement of our coach, or as 
 it is right fitly named, post-wagon was concerned. The 
 course from Liege has been a crawl, a something short of 
 walk, if that be possible ; " because," as the conductor 
 explained to me, " there were but two sets of horses for the 
 entire line, and they could not be worked harder." The 
 equipment I suggested, of a third set, was an extravagance 
 to him at first incomprehensible, but which, when he could 
 be brought to view as a mere supposition, he scouted as ri- 
 diculously absurd.* 
 
 From time to time as, winding upward from the bosom 
 of each delightful vale, we gained the terrace eminence 
 of the successive hills, I remarked in front towards 
 the horizon a lofty range of mount of austere coloring 
 which, on nearer approach, proved to be mantle of 
 forest investing a barren ridge that cuts across the softer 
 featured expanse. On the off side of this stern ridge, which 
 is traversed partly by steep ascent and partly through a 
 natural gap, lies Aix-la-Chapelle, in a region equally charm- 
 ing with that which the ridge shuts out. The antique fortress 
 walls, and manifold architectural peculiarities of this city, 
 carry back the mind without effort, to the days of its youth 
 and domination under Charlemagne whose seat of empire 
 it was. 
 
 JULY 7th, Sunday The shops all open and business-like ; 
 not in the manner of Ghent, where I remarked, that though 
 
 * This nuisance I learn has been since abated by the Government, which has 
 substituted a Diligence that positively moves. 
 
14 AIX-LA-CHAPELLE. 
 
 open they appeared to serve rather as front parlours, from 
 whence to gaze upon the street loungers. 
 
 Strolled into the Great Room, called the Salle des 
 Redoutes as large perhaps as the Great Room at Bath, 
 and better proportioned. There were here assembled some 
 hundreds of well dressed idlers females intermingled : 
 two tables ; at one of them deep play, au bane ; much money 
 displayed, and no want of grave faces on the part of those 
 concerned. The whole exhibition was quite astonishing, 
 and at one o'clock on Sunday disgusting. 
 
 Show places are few within the town : but then, what a 
 world of beauty in the outlets ! Close in circuit are first the 
 ramparts, and highly kept shrubberies and gravel walks, of 
 noble extent, and commanding variously charming woodland 
 views. Prolonging the stroll for a league, from the town to 
 Drimborn, or to Boursette, you pass through field-paths, which 
 frequently pursue the course of streams, that occasionally 
 expand into reservoirs. Luxuriance of grass ; umbrage of 
 thicket, or loose plantation of accacia, elm and beech ; the 
 surface of ground in active play from bill to valley ; the 
 softness of features, and tranquillity diffused, that is almost 
 tangible ; these all render a forenoon's expatiation here, a 
 luxury to highwrought day-dream of delight. No where 
 else have I seen the simple elements of beauty in such po- 
 tency of combination as to call forth the same abundant and 
 almost excited emotion. 
 
 From th6 Louisbourg, the scenery is of another character. 
 It is a hill overbrowing the town, of such height as to have 
 served for the first of three principal trigonometrical 
 points in the survey made a few years since by the French 
 Engineers of the Provinces on the Rhine. Its sides are 
 boldly steep, and are clothed with plantations intersected 
 with numerous walks and drives. The expanse seen from 
 its summit is a noble one those features of loveliness in 
 aggregate, which below charm in the detail. The same 
 
AIX-LA-CHAt>ELLE 15 
 
 character is preserved on this side of the barrier-range of 
 mountain, which I had admired on its farther one in the 
 course from Liege except that here this range gives sup- 
 port to the picture by its close vicinity, and sheds magni- 
 ficence over the swells that luxuriate at its foot and almost 
 identify themselves with its grandeur. To these the greatly 
 leading feature is superadded of this ancient city with all 
 its imperial recollections just below sovereign still of a 
 domain of exquisite attraction. 
 
 It remains to speak of within doors. Of my Hotel of 
 the Golden Dragon, I had heard much warning tattle of the 
 exorbitance of charge. Royal personages frequent it as- 
 suredly, of which there has been one instance since my ar- 
 rival. But I am accommodated unexpensively, though most 
 comfortably. Its table d'hote is to an Englishman, fresh 
 from home, worth any money ; such a display of dishes and 
 succession of courses, sufficient to endanger, if that were 
 possible, the simplicity of palate, in which it was my high 
 good fortune to have been educated. Yet the exuberant 
 abundance of the table and endless multiplicity of fare after 
 you think again and again that you have dined ! I counted 
 eighteen dishes in a first course, and seventeen in the second, 
 at one time on the table : and as each dish is successively 
 carved, the attendants wait on the guests quite round with 
 it. Then the excellence of the cookery, which makes a dish 
 of frogs of which I have partaken knowingly and with 
 liking equal to chicken, and which preserves to the largest 
 turkey all its juices though so overdone, as we should sup- 
 pose it, as to be carved into minutest fraction by the back 
 of a knife or side of a silver fork. We have nothing to match 
 with all this in our utmost extra displays at home. Then 
 the ease and loiteringly slow movement with which all the 
 table arrangements are conducted, which can leave not a 
 doubt but that, in ordinary routine, a part of the entertain- 
 ment is put down after the first course has been served : for 
 
16 COLOGNE. 
 
 frequent and set gaps of time intervene, the leading one of 
 which extends to half an hour, a slight portion of which 
 is occupied by chit-chat, and the rest devoted to the instru- 
 mental and vocal performances of three male and two female 
 musicians. What with this slow march and these cessa- 
 tions, the dinner is an abomination of two terrible hours. 
 Compelled as I have found myself to pay the tribute of 
 enjoying the exquisiteness and profuse variety of such pro- 
 tracted feasts, I have morally felt myself swallowing down, 
 like Pistol, the leek of disgust at refinements of table sen- 
 suality that are degrading to manhood. 
 
 Wednesday night, 10th July. Pass to COLOGNE: the 
 country traversed in the dark I had previously informed 
 myself to be for far the greater part a fertile but stupid flat. 
 What remained of it for morning to disclose was not better. 
 
 Several good streets, and many very good, though not 
 magnificent, houses in this old fashioned and narrow-streeted 
 city, which has far more trade than its antique and melan- 
 choly appearance would at first lead to suppose. Its quay 
 is a scene of bustle and, for a town so far in-land, an ob- 
 ject of surprise : not fewer than sixty or eighty vessels of 
 two masts, and, I should guess, from 80 to 130 tons, lying 
 along-side it ; the Rhine a deep, impetuous and majestic 
 river. 
 
 The commmunication between the shores of this broad 
 
 / 
 
 and very bold river, is maintained with the utmost ease by 
 a flying bridge as it is called, two long vessels fastened 
 abreast, sustaining a planked floor which projects over their 
 sides, so as to form a square area of at least eighteen 
 yards every way. A frame in form of a door-case stands 
 perpendicularly across it : from midway the brace at the 
 top of this frame proceeds a chain to the nearest of seven 
 boats, which are fastened to each other in line of births up 
 the river : the uppermost boat is tightly moored so as to 
 secure it without movement in mid-channel ; the moving of 
 
COLOGNE. 17 
 
 the second is somewhat slacker, and each boat in succession 
 has an increasing length of cable down to the seventh, 
 which can swing from the centre of the channel to within 
 one-sixth of the river's breadth towards either bank. With 
 this apparatus of pivot, by the simple agency of the helm on 
 the impetuosity of the current, the bridge, with its freight of 
 men, women, and infants in sufficient number for the popu- 
 lation of a little village and their live and dead stock to 
 bear them company, is impelled across with perfect steadi- 
 ness, and in less time than a common boat could effect the 
 passage by dint of good rowing. 
 
 An air of poverty and dejected misery is undisguised 
 among the poorer classes here : but I know not what to 
 make of the statement I find in my guide-book,* that 
 Cologne, before its occupation by the French, contained 
 twelve thousand beggars, each of whom was proprietor of a 
 station for mendicant purposes, which was transferable by 
 descent to his heirs. At least mendicancy now no longer 
 exists, its exercise being forbidden by the Police. 
 
 It is a dreadful pity of the Cathedral ! The French con- 
 verted what their first havoc had spared of it into a corn- 
 store for their troops. It must have been a supreme!} 7 
 glorious Gothic edifice. Mausolea remain within, uncom- 
 monly numerous when their magnificence is considered. 
 What a gauntlet the proud stained glass of which much is 
 escaped has had to sustain ! 
 
 " London sealing wax" labelled up on a shop window, 
 though Holland intervenes, whose wax we prize beyond 
 comparison. But German preference extends not to the 
 imitation of our insular manners. Formality upholds here its 
 utmost rights. I had occasion to return to the diligence office, 
 where my seat is taken for to-morrow to Coblentz, in 
 order to remove a possible misconception, which it occurred 
 
 * Schrieber's ; a very good work, only too much in minute and protracted 
 detail. 
 
18 COLOGNE. 
 
 to me might endanger the loss of my seat in the open 
 cabriolet in which I uniformly travel. Being much heated 
 by long walking under a burning sun, I forebore on entering 
 the office to take off my hat, to which however I put ray 
 hand in regular salute. But the offence of standing un- 
 covered drew down on me a storm of angriest reprehension 
 from the Principal. However much 1 was surprised, I did 
 not feel the attack to be personal : it was an explosion of 
 indignation against an exhibition unintelligible to him unless 
 on the ground of its being meant as a deliberate insult. To 
 have pleaded national custom might have enhanced the un- 
 intentional affront by provoking his incredulity ; and this 
 again might have cost me, by the deprivation of the cabriolet 
 seat, the loss of the Rhine scenery along this, the loveliest 
 range of its shores. A reference to the suffusion of my 
 cheeks and my consequent apprehensions, with the repeated 
 assurance that I had raised my hat on first entering, had the 
 effect to bring my conduct within his comprehension, and to 
 procure me the hearing which my purpose required. 
 
 Friday morning, left Cologne under a violent thunder 
 storm with bursts of rain in broad cataract : the lightnings 
 shot in successive volley from cloud after cloud of coal-black 
 darkness, borne rapidly by the tempest across the strath 
 we were measuring, that was so unsheltered as to permit 
 the study of each on to the verge of the eastern horizon in 
 its formation, its thickening into wrath, and its explosion. 
 No other interest was excited over the rather sandy but 
 highly-tilled tract, through which the road lay southward, 
 until our arrival at Bonn, which we were prevented entering 
 by the breaking up of a piece of road in its contiguity in 
 order to its better formation. We rounded this city closely; 
 and in site and vicinity it is quite enchanting. A range of 
 hills on the right of the wide strath, at first remote, but 
 closing at length home upon the view, and increasing in 
 richness as its woody and vine-clothed details had become 
 
COLOGNE. 19 
 
 distinct. Still more remote, to the left, another range could 
 be so discovered as to induce the belief of its being similar 
 in character. But a groupe of eminences in front, which in 
 general effect had assumed the appearance of the Malvern 
 hills though far more wildly pyramidal at Bonn became 
 vast and of savage character, their name the Seven Moun- 
 tains. Here they occupied the immediate left, close on the 
 eye while the right screen formed full in front and over the 
 city, its utmost summit crowned with a noble ruin. In the 
 now narrow champaign between, the Rhine urged its course, 
 close to the foot of the headlong rocky face of the nearest of 
 the Seven Mountains, the renowned Drakenfels. This, the 
 king of all this region of severe mountain and forest and 
 vine-robed steep and fertile vale, is also castle-crowned 
 that castle apparently inaccessible to mortal approach, though 
 it was palpably of man's erection. And alike over all this 
 transcendent domain is shed the enchantment of romance, 
 in memorial of which the precipitous brows and now inac- 
 cessible cliffs on either side the river are frequently turreted 
 with castles, each individual ruin a scene of barbarous 
 crime, or as barbarous virtue, in endless variety of legen- 
 dary marvel. 
 
 The road for some hours was close on the Rhine ; of which 
 the banks are also gladdened by excellent and numerous 
 villages, intermingled with substantial mansions of the 
 landed proprietors. Two of these, extremely conversible 
 and well-informed persons, I have had the good fortune to 
 travel with in the cabiiolet for much of this day's route. 
 
 After quitting Rheimagen, where a good and most plenti- 
 ful Diligence dinner awaited us at the cost of 2\ francs, the 
 vale grew wider and less interesting, except from the occa- 
 sional view of the different vallies on our right, each breaking 
 into this grand one of the Rhine. One of these vallies, that 
 of the Ahr, I am informed runs up for six leagues with a 
 character similar to that of its fine termination, clothed with 
 
 c 2 
 
20 <-OBLENTZ. 
 
 immense crops of a grape, the wine of which rates beyond 
 Bourdeaux in price. Again, the main valley narrows for 
 some few miles : opening once more as you approach the 
 ancient but miserable town of Andernacht, the Rhine itself 
 becomes lost as a feature in the landscape, and the expanse 
 is of little interest up to the precincts of Coblentz where I 
 arrived early in the afternoon, and lodged on the quay, 
 at the Three Swiss, in an apartment looking on the Rhine 
 and its bridge of boats, and with the stupendous precipice 
 and fortress of Ehrenbreitstein rising directly from the 
 water's edge on the opposite bank. 
 
 A singular circumstance is stated to me by my fellow- 
 travellers, respecting the crops of the recent harvest in all 
 the tract T have been traversing. They aver it to have been 
 devastated, to a ruinous extent, by myriads of field-mice, 
 the appearance of which is an unaccountable phenomenon, 
 unless it be explained by the weather of last winter, which, 
 though unusually stormy, was remarkably warm.* 
 
 As Aix la Chapelle is unique in the soft and beautiful hills 
 which compose its environs, so is Coblentz unique also in 
 quite another style ; vast in the materials of its landscape 
 which by a rare felicity of subdivision, not interfering with 
 its magnificence, breaks into endless detail of hill and val- 
 ley, brow and ravine, in play so captivating as to dispute 
 the admiration claimed by the almost mountain majesty of 
 summit and precipice, which ramparts the extraordinary site 
 of this city. The proudest feature of all is the fortress of 
 Ehrenbreitstein, formidably picturesque on the crest of its 
 headlong rock of 800 feet perpendicular, washed beneath 
 by the Rhine : a position so superb as to laugh at 
 
 * In supplement to the information thus minuted, I subjoin the following 
 extract from a Newspaper of a few weeks later date, which struck my eye lim 
 in Switzerland. " DEPARTMENT or LOWER RHINF. Mice to the number of 
 ' " 1,570,000 have been caught in a fortnight in one arrondissemcnt : it is con- 
 " sidered that perhaps as many more perished in their holes. The loss by hail 
 " and them is calculated at twelve millions," 480,000 sterling. 
 
RHEINGAU. 21 
 
 the utmost strength of artillery, directed with the utmost 
 human skill. This was evinced in the late war, when its 
 garrison baffled for many months the most stubborn efforts of 
 a French besieging army, and were only subdued by actual 
 starvation. The French then razed the fortress utterly with 
 gunpowder : at present it is in re-construction, on a magni- 
 ficent scale, and with money exacted by contribution from 
 France. 
 
 I have rounded Ehreinbreitstein with admiration also of 
 the majestic and precipitous ranges of many miles, scarcely 
 inferior to itself, with which it closely groupes, separated 
 by ravines of much boldness, or by valleys of deep descent 
 and great beauty. Through all this tract there is a rich 
 growth of vines on terraces, and luxuriance of corn-ground 
 diffused over the topmost heights ; while the extent of frac- 
 tured and richly embellished surface, under the eye at one 
 view, is unspeakably enchanting. 
 
 Coblentz itself, lying on the water's brink, under the 
 protection of the fortress, is a dull though well-built town. 
 The two great rivers whose confluence here had excited my 
 expectations, have in no way disappointed them. Over the 
 Moselle is a noble bridge of thirteen large arches ; in fact, 
 the channel of this river appears nearly as broad as that of 
 the Rhine, which, however, at their junction makes an influx 
 within the channel of the Moselle, evinced by a line of shal- 
 lows thrown up by the counteracting current of the more 
 powerful river as it is borne back in eddy. A bridge of 
 masonry has not yet been constructed over the Rhine itself, 
 through all its course from Constance lake to the ocean. A 
 bridge of boats is here the medium of communication be- 
 tween its opposite shores. 
 
 Left Coblentz for Mentz, at three in the afternoon, in 
 an open voiture. The road accompanies the Rhine almost 
 in the manner of a quay : the course of the river is also 
 straitened by a series of wooded and vine-clothed steeps 
 
22 ST. GO AH. 
 
 close on either side very many of them turretted with castle- 
 ruins for about half way to Boppart ; for the remainder of the 
 course thither, twelve miles in all, the steeps are rather 
 monotonous. In front of Boppart, the Rhine makes a horse- 
 shoe bend ; and the low ground included within this curve 
 in combination with the biokenness of the environing steeps, 
 occasioned by the termination of the lateral vallies that 
 penetrate the main one ; and along with this contrast and 
 variety, the spires and other picturesque buildings of the 
 antique little town all together forms a very lovely scene. 
 From thence about eight miles to St. Goar, with more than 
 one alternation of scenery, from sameness to variety of bare 
 rock, protruded from wooded and castle-crowned precipice ; 
 the river broad and bold, giving animation to each successive 
 picture. Near a place called Hirzenach, is first one scene, 
 and afterwards a second, giving in side view an effect that 
 strongly reminds me of the cliff aptly called the Giant's 
 Stairs in Cork Harbour. Close before St. Goar, on a brow 
 on the left is a ruin ; then on the hither bank, almost con- 
 tiguous to the town and over it, another vast one,* and again 
 on the off bank a third, from which shots were on one oc- 
 casion discharged by the garrison at Buonaparte, when 
 
 * To give an idea of the vastness, past strength and importance of this for- 
 tress, I transcribe from the guide-book, this passage : 4i Diether the Rich, 
 " Count of Katzenellenbogen, converted a Monastery on this site into a for- 
 " midable Cattle, which he employed to force a tax on all vessels plying here. 
 " Sixty cities on the Rhine, combined to resist his exactions, assembled an army 
 * and besieged it for fifteen months without effect. They afterwards formed 
 " with different other States a league, which was the origin of the first celebrated 
 ' league of the Rhine, that destroyed nearly all the Castles which harboured 
 ' the brigands along the whole course of this river. But this league was dis- 
 " solved in the great quarrel between the territor'ml barons and the free cities. 
 " In 1692, the bra\e Hewian Colonel Goertz stoutly defended this Castle 
 " against the French Marechal Tallard, who at leagth set his camp on fire, and 
 " \\ithdrewfrom before it. The French, however, obtained possession of it 
 ' with U-K trouble in the revolutionary war ; for it surrendered at the first sum- 
 moiw, aud they blew it up. Its fragments of upturned wall are of immense 
 thickness and, though recent from ruin, of absolutely picturesque and awful 
 ' character." 
 
ST. GOAR. 23 
 
 travelling the road below : dismantlement by his command 
 followed on its coming into his possession. These three 
 ruins, each high aloft on its precipitous brow, I command 
 from the single window of my bed-chamber. 
 
 I am persuaded that to see the valley of the Rhine 
 hereabouts as it deserves, would require much deviation from 
 the course of its bed. Ascending among the ruins of the 
 Castle over St. Goar, 1 saw beneath me a most delightful 
 valley on its flank, deep and bold as the main one of the 
 Rhine, and resembling it, except from its greater narrowness, 
 which gave it a force that almost compensated for want of 
 river. On the off side of the river, the eminence on which I 
 stood set forth the configuration of the mountain surface so 
 fully as to exhibit a reticulation of valleys without number, 
 along and athwart this region that forms a lofty screen and 
 broad guard to the Rhine ; each valley, whether sidelong or 
 across, very deep and very winding, and if inference ever 
 can have force, teeming with luxuriance, and the abode of 
 plenty, comfort and repose under the finest forms of rural 
 beauty. 
 
 Of village customs in this little town, let me minute the 
 hair of the young girls, carefully plaited, and falling down 
 over their shoulders to a length that reaches below the waist : 
 such is the rage for toilette decoration (human nature being 
 still human nature) among this sober people and in this quiet 
 village. Pity that the taste for dress should march so far in 
 rere of the inclination for its display ! Here as all along my 
 course on the Rhine, the vile custom prevails of scull-cap- or 
 coif square, oblong, or round ; every form of them put 
 on in a variety of ways, and made of quite diverse materials ; 
 all of them hideous in effect. Of colours, coquelicot is the 
 ton for dress and equipments ; red for the women's gowns, 
 the boys' and mens' caps red in the bordering ; even the 
 umbrella covers are red ; so that a groupe of peasants on 
 the road or in a boat on the river make a. flaming shew. 
 
24 BINOKN. 
 
 But the fashion is little matter, if there be not scantiness of 
 the materials of clothing ; and it is a pleasure to observe in 
 the villages no want of this comfort. 
 
 14th. Left St. Goar in the morning; supper, bed, and 
 breakfast all excellent charged three francs ! The scenery 
 onward is superior again to that of yesterday : various noble 
 castle ruins ; each of them connected with some wild legend, 
 or more sober history of interest. One of them is Schomberg 
 Castle, the residence, from before the times of Charlemagne, 
 of the Schomberg family, one of whom is illustrious in 
 English history from having as a Huguenot refugee com- 
 manded in Ireland under William III., and lost his life at 
 the Boyne.* After this castle is a diminutive islet of rock, 
 sustaining a tower of contracted dimensions, in model not 
 unlike Chinese, but with Gothic furnishings. In this tower 
 is the closet allotted in former times for tlie accouchement 
 of the Countesses Palatine, who, on each occasion of this 
 kind, were transmitted hither for that special purpose ! But 
 of legend or of history, or of either grafted on the other, 
 each ruin, and even each particular rock teems with sub- 
 ject; and the scenery gives effect to the illusion. 
 
 At Baccharach, seven miles on, the valley appears to 
 open, with corn in front : again it closes, and on to Bingen, 
 nine miles more, all is very fine. Ruins of castles, two or 
 three in one mile ; then an interval without them for a mile 
 or two ; and again, crowded repetitions of ruins, cresting 
 the cliffs that overbrow the river's course. 
 
 Within two miles of Bingen, where the vale finally ex- 
 pands, is a great castle, with out-works considerably de- 
 
 The CaMle of Schomberg is said " to derive id name from having been the 
 renidence of seven sister* of extreme beauty, who turned the head* of all the 
 " young cavalier* of the neighbourhood, and of the occupants of all the I'n-tli-* 
 " far around. But being prudish an they were fair, they were metamorphosed 
 ' into seven rock*, the pointed summit- of which are een below the surface of 
 " the river when the water run- low, and till bear the name of the Seven 
 ' pamHi." GUIDE. 
 
BINGEN. 25 
 
 tached from it, widely separated from each other, and 
 perched on various pyramidical rocks, with remains of em- 
 brazured turrets. Immediately after these, the mountain 
 side begins to bristle into such forms of pointed rock, that 
 it is not easy to say what is the work of man, and what of 
 nature. So it is, that on a site nearly opposite that island in 
 the river, on which stands the famed Archbishop Button's, or 
 the Rats' tower is a lusus naturae in the form of a ruined 
 castle, so deceptive as to have induced in me, in the manner 
 of Triermaine, a notion of the realities of centuries back ap- 
 pearing in actual disclosure, and calling on me to pursue my 
 destiny, and follow up the adventure. In sober fact, so 
 potent was the sorcery of this scenery, that I made distinct 
 detection of my having become a victim to its delusion ; 
 proof of which will be held that I sedulously looked for, 
 and wondered that I did not find it marked on my map as the 
 site of a castle ; and this, not at that particular moment, 
 but at different subsequent opportunities of this day's course. 
 
 At Bingen, the river takes a lake-like character, with 
 islands interspersed in it. Here also, the side-screens which 
 had given such distinction to its course from Bonn, nearly 
 fourscore miles, finally retire: Taking leave of this 
 lengthened and majestic valley, I may say that its sameness 
 in some parts is like the sameness of learning by heart a 
 favourite lesson, with high relish for the occupation ; and its 
 characters are by repetition so inculcated, that they never can 
 lapse from the memory. 
 
 A very large proportion of the cliffs which overhang the 
 Rhine is devoted to vineyard, the grapes of the choicest 
 quality for wine : it has been to me the amplest exemplifica- 
 tion of the hardness I had so often remarked in the lines of 
 many continental landscapes, which I am now enabled to 
 trace to the servile copying of the vineyard thread-bareness 
 of their covering a drapery, if drapery it deserves to be 
 called, sere to poverty in comparison with copsewood 
 
26 BINGEN. 
 
 clothing on one hand, or on the other, with mantling of the 
 meanest sward. Still the sheeting of these proud cliffs far 
 and wide with such vegetable riches is a triumph of man's 
 industry, and largely contributes to the comfort and com- 
 petence of the population which gladdens these shores in 
 frequent succession of towns and villages. Quite another 
 aspect, however, is constantly recurring of rural wealth, in 
 the luxuriant fields of corn or of grass, bosomed at the foot 
 of the cliffs, where the retiring river creates on one or the 
 other brink a recess, minute at times and cushion-like, but 
 not unfrequently so large, as to leave a grand bay of undu- 
 lating surface, overgrown almost to thicket obscurity by 
 the exuberant products of field crops and of kitchen-garden, 
 and by groves of fruit trees in every variety, and, at least 
 in the instance of the walnut, which is universally prevalent, 
 in forest grandeur. As a third, and leading division of the 
 garniture of this lengthened valley, it suffices to mention its 
 immense sheets of wood, its precipices of naked rock, or of 
 wood and rock in combination and almost competition. 
 With this simple mention of them I yield from the subject. 
 
 Bingen is just without the territory of Prussia, and we 
 here passed its last barrier post, marked, as were various 
 others of them which had crossed my road, by a pole pre- 
 cisely like our old English barber's pole, except that for the 
 blood-colour of the latter, black is substituted with which 
 emblazonment all Prussian property is marked. This pole, 
 managed as a lever or steel-yard, either lies horizontally 
 across the road like the uppermost bar of a gate, or is 
 raised to the perpendicular, according as the passage is 
 open or closed to you. Whether or not it is because present 
 evils weigh heaviest, that the Prussian Sovereignty is con- 
 sidered severe, I know not ; but there is a general opinon that 
 its taxation is high, and that its functionaries and even its 
 soldiery are difficult and exacting while the French are 
 spoken of as having been extremely manageable and most 
 
MENTZ. 27 
 
 easily satisfied, unless on the instant levy of contributions. 
 The King of Prussia personally, is universally spoken of as 
 a most amiable man, of just and benevolent intentions. 
 Whether the harshness of his functionaries in these recently 
 acquired provinces arises from their being new-fangled in 
 the exercise of their powers, or from an organization of 
 authorities which induces each place-holder to make the 
 most of his station before he gives way to a successor, or 
 from what other cause it may be, single or combined, it 
 would be presumption in me, a stranger to facts, to speculate. 
 
 To MENTZ, sixteen miles, over a country of broad ex- 
 panse, most heavily featured, and in tedious hill evermore ; 
 exciting little interest, unless at one spot which gives a mag- 
 nificent back view of the grand mountain valley I had left. 
 I ought not to omit the noble road which runs hither onward 
 all the way from Cologne, constructed principally by an 
 Elector some fifty years ago. Along its fair level roll very 
 numerous drays and carts, with burdens often of some tons 
 weight each, though supported by a single pair of wheels, in. 
 rim as thin as those of an English cabriolet. Friction of 
 course they guard against, by this strange narrowness of 
 streak : but how they construct this flimsy wheel of strength 
 sufficient to hold out under such a weight of loading has re- 
 peatedly astonished me. 
 
 I noticed frequently along the road, houses constructed in 
 frame-work of wattling, filled and coated with clay, but 
 much thinner than similar buildings in the Netherlands, and 
 very cold, I learn, in winter. A large proportion of the 
 houses are of massive frame, and collected in villages the 
 fortification walls of which remain, with all the peculiarities 
 appurtenant for protection against besiegers before the 
 existence of artillery. Within, as without, all remains old 
 fashioned : even the coxcomical arrangement of the slating 
 attracts notice ; the rows of slate drawn diagonally and not 
 horizontally, and the outward angle of each slate rounded 
 
28 MENT7.. 
 
 off: in the greater towns, and in the great houses in the 
 meanest ones, the slates are usually of different colours, tes- 
 selated to carpet pattern, or frail help to human immortality ! 
 bearing the initials of the founder's name, and the Anno 
 Domini flaring midway on its pent in similar tesselation. 
 
 The afternoon, from five, has given me time for viewing 
 Mentz. Its quay is a noble one ; and the city itself is quite 
 a superior place in respect to buildings and their state of 
 preservation to that woe-begone looking place Cologne. 
 Mentz Cathedral, however, is not to be spoken of, nor, gene- 
 rally, its public structures. But the streets are good, several 
 of them large and cheerful, and even in those which are nar- 
 row there is no dilapidation of houses, nor perhaps a single 
 dwelling of very ancient date: It is full of troops of the Ger- 
 man confederation ; various uniforms and very fine looking 
 men. They occupy all the best edifices, palaces and all, and 
 must cause a great outlay of money among the inhabitants. 
 
 The men here are a better looking, race than I have lat- 
 terly been among: the women quite as bad still their 
 figure on a par with their face, which I think a caricature of 
 the visage I so much disliked in Flanders : its characteristics 
 I recollect to have been the forehead in slope backward so 
 smart as to threaten the very crown with actual contact, the 
 nose so bold in parallel slope as to project like the gnomon 
 from a sun-dial ; and the lines of the chin composed in accord- 
 ance with the other two : the general effect mean, simia-like 
 almost ; at best this cast of features has a shrewish expres- 
 sion. Saying this, I in all honesty absolve the Flemish 
 women of shrewish propensity beyond the proportion which 
 is rightfully and of universal property common to the sex. 
 
 JULY 15. After another review of Mentz for some hours, 
 proceeded to Franckfort on the Maine, nineteen miles 
 crossing the Rhine, which cannot be less than 400 yards 
 wide, by abridge of about fifty boats. I counted seventeen 
 mills moored in line at a short distance from the bridge, in a 
 
FRANCKFORT. 29 
 
 direction athwart each with its wooden house, comprehend- 
 ing a complete human habitation ; the machinery driven by 
 a water-wheel, worked by the impetuosity of the current, 
 aided by a slight fall in the level of the river. By Hochkeim, 
 renowned for its wines ; the country a wide and unwieldy 
 expanse bounded, however, on the left by a continuation 
 of the Rhingau hills, that here have diverged far from the 
 river. Their coloring was beautiful, their outline is a good 
 one. My guide book gives them an elevation of 2000 feet ; 
 yet most of their surface seems subject to culture. 
 
 FRANCKFORT astonishes me from its magnificence of 
 streets, their rectilinear direction and breadth: not but that 
 it has a number of miserable lanes also ; but through these 
 they are now making openings, and raising spacious ranges 
 of houses. All is business, and industry, and opulence. 
 In these respects Franckfort is now what Ghent and some 
 other towns of the Low Countries were in ages that are long 
 gone by. Here, too, are the external appearances of riches 
 in various display: splendid equipages are quite in crowd. 
 What is most to my taste is the range of public garden, 
 which extends in a semicircle from the river to the river 
 again, and includes not only the entire city, but a wide tract 
 of ground without it, laid out in villa gardens, each with its 
 appurtenant mansion. These edifices are handsome, fre- 
 quently magnificent : the gardens, in the highest keeping, ' 
 spread from the houses to the public walks, by which they 
 are commanded, and are separated from them only by 
 shrubs or a low hedge. Without the circuit of the public 
 grounds, extends a continuation of similar garden and villa 
 grandeur. Between both, and, as the phrase is, calling in 
 both, the public grounds run in a wide belt, skirted on either 
 side by an avenue of evergreens, limes, or, most commonly, 
 acacias. The main range is shrubbery, in the distribution 
 of which great taste is evinced, and every advantage taken 
 of the inequalities of the ground. The walks are conducted 
 
30 DARMSTADT. 
 
 in some places through close wood of forest growth, or open 
 grove ; in others through tall shrubs and plots of grass, or 
 parterre beds, bordered or bespread with herbaceous plants 
 and the choicest flowers, annuals as well as perennials, in 
 boundless profusion, and running into minutely numerous 
 botanical varieties. Geraniums, and their associates of 
 green-house delicacy, are frequent; and it is in contempla- 
 tion to introduce plantations of orange trees, to be hutted in 
 the winter. The crossings of the different public roads that 
 run out from the city are tended with as much care as the 
 interior walks ; while each path affords, at every five minutes 
 interval of progress, an avenue of return into the city, in 
 direct approach to its centre and bustle. 
 
 Thursday. My stay at Franckfort, since Monday, has 
 afforded me an opportunity to physiognomize on its popula- 
 tion. The women here are once more women, of handsome 
 figure, and really female features ; their movements too, the 
 goddess gait. Exceptions, which occasionally come into 
 view, of the squab in form, and mis-arranged in features- 
 shape and traits equally proclaiming them of a different 
 caste make the contrast more striking, and prove distinctly 
 that the sex has here resumed its rightful attributes. The 
 men, also, are a fine race, tall and of good person ; not so 
 improved as the other sex ; but in both the change is palpa- 
 ble and comfortable. 
 
 Quitting Franckfort, I note generally as indicative of the 
 style of its buildings, that my hotel, the Paris, has thirteen 
 windows in front, and is four stories high below the wall- 
 plate, besides two stories in the slating Even this extent 
 is quite inferior to at least two other hotels here ; and these 
 again are equalled by very numerous private establishments. 
 
 Leaving Franckfort for Carlshrue, the capital of the Grand 
 Duchy of Baden, the country for the first sta^e is almost a 
 continued kitchen garden : by degrees, corn-fields appear, 
 with vines, and even forest, intermingling. On to Darm- 
 
CARLSHRUE. 31 
 
 stadt, fourteen miles. This town is built in the very forma- 
 lity of regularly large streets and squares. Its court is now 
 absent ; and in consequence of this, the metropolis looks at 
 once so spacious and so diminutive, so well built and so 
 untenanted and it is withal so piteously exposed to a coun- 
 try flat, and bald, and sandy, that the effect is benumb- 
 ingly stupid. It has all the forlornness of the mansion of 
 some squire who has out-built and half ruined himself, and 
 whose family is in absenteeship on the continent. An ex- 
 tensive and empty barrack, isolated on open downs, may 
 perhaps be an apter illustration of Darmstadt. 
 
 A mile or two beyond it, began on the left a range of lofty 
 heights, beautiful in outline, and of superb forest mantling. 
 This after some miles yielded to the very inferior garniture 
 of vines, with alternation of forest, and the labours of the 
 agriculturist invading both : Castles and look-out stations 
 in antique masonry, with villages not unfrequent : the whole 
 uncommonly fine till the close of the day, which brought me 
 to Heidelberg (42 miles from Franckfort) shut out further 
 view, not, however, before I had reason to lament, from 
 what I saw of the valley of the Necker which joins here 
 that time did not allow me to explore its wooded and se- 
 questered beauties. But I was fortunate enough to view 
 Heidelberg, a city venerably picturesque from the style of 
 its buildings, and from its imposing site castle-crowned ; 
 and to witness its sovereign effect over the whole landscape 
 tract which it commands. 
 
 Pursued my course partly by night, and arrived at five in 
 the morning at Carlshrue, 32 miles. What I have seen of 
 the road yields to yesterday's portion of it, solely from its 
 diverging into the rich plain, and farther from the roots of 
 that forest-sweep of contiguous mountains the western 
 front, as I now collect, of the renowned Black Forest, or 
 Schartzwald, the range of which extends till it breasts the 
 Jura in Swisserland. 
 
32 CARLSHRUE. 
 
 CARLSRUHE, the present metropolis of this noble country, 
 "13 a city worthy of its fair domain, that extends from Darm- 
 stadt to the southern confines of Germany, 140 miles ; and, 
 throughout its breadth from the Rhine to the Black Forest 
 of the character, as I am given to understand, of the tract 
 that I have been traversing. The city is a creation of the 
 last century, on a formal plan, which exhibits the figure of 
 a fan the Chateau in the centre, nine streets running thence 
 in regular divergence, and these again crossed by three 
 others equally regular. It follows from the plan, that the 
 Chateau is a conspicuous object from every intersection of 
 streets throughout the city. It is a superb edifice in fa9ade, 
 as in every other respect, utterly beyond the palaces of 
 Bonn, Coblentz, or any similar pile I have seen elsewhere 
 in Germany. In its front is an immense Place, rather 
 meagre, but that it is thickly environed with orange trees. 
 In rere, a highly-kept garden and wooded park, at all times 
 open to the public, spreads in great extent. Princesses of 
 the sovereign house of Baden are now on the thrones of Ba- 
 varia and Russia. 
 
 Here has been an affair of table d'hote quite surprising to 
 me, after all my gastronomic experience. After we had 
 achieved, as I thought, a long and heartily abundant meal, 
 and after all fit usage seemed to have been gone through, I 
 discovered, to my great amazement, that a fresh set-to was 
 expected from us. A vast pig was brought forward, with 
 an orange stuck in its mouth roast ducks too, and various 
 other weighty materials for a substantial dinner. The pig 
 was decapitated at the side-table of course to which he had 
 been removed ; and his bead, with the orange, replaced 
 before us : his body correctly subdivided, and, in succession, 
 the ducks and every other matter went round the company; 
 and all was dissipated. It was the greatest scene of gor- 
 mandizing save specially one in Ireland I ever yet assisted 
 at. The company not passing genteel ; some quite vulgar. 
 
CARLSHRUE TO FREYBOUKG. 33 
 
 From Cavlshrue, after a two days' stay, on the 2 1st, in 
 an open voiture, which engages to take me at diligence price 
 to Basle, 1 1 miles, in three days. By nine to Rastadt, a well- 
 built, spacious-looking cheerful little town. By one to Hub, 
 near Buhl, within the skirts of the Schwartzwald ; and was 
 astonished to find myself, by quick transition, dropped from 
 the open country into a spot quite romantic. High and preci- 
 pitous hills extensive hanging woods, looking each other 
 close in the face bold and noisy torrents ; in the midst 
 of all this wildness, a quadrangular building, of which one 
 side was occupied by the haberdashery and jewellery of a 
 country fair, the main structure being a hotel of high fa- 
 shion. Numerous gay carriages were drawn up in the 
 ground tier of apartments, and covered most of the court in 
 the centre. The company were just arranging themselves 
 in great force at high dinner, the dread of which, with the 
 presence of a set of musicians site and scenery so strangely 
 in contrast with all this, to say nothing of breakfast at Ras- 
 tadt but three hours before incapacitated me from facing 
 such a Babel of sensuality, and made me turn on my heel ! 
 to explore the forest ravines around. Sudden and violent 
 rain, however, compelled me to adjourn among a world of 
 rustic belles and beaux ; why congregated thus I had no 
 interpreter to explain : it certainly was Sunday, and this a 
 place of mineral waters from which much may be inferred 
 as to the crowd of High-life in the salon, and the equal as- 
 semblage of High-life below, to witness the amusements of 
 their betters, and to prosecute their own. The damsels of 
 this latter class are the most absolute frights I have ever 
 seen bumpkin in figure can I say bumpkin in features ; 
 such hips and such shoulders, and such size of head, as if 
 the person had been crushed down to lateral enlargement ! 
 Boddices of one color, skirts of another ; one color perhaps 
 green, the other and the predominant, angriest red ; stream- 
 ers of broadest ribband ; hair bolstered into something like 
 
 D 
 
34 CARLSHRUE TO FREYBOURG, 
 
 a blowzed periwig, with a full Sunday display of gew-gaw 
 ear rings, necklaces, and other multiplied trinkets. All were 
 gay and most self-satisfied, and footed joyously in the rus- 
 tic ball with their swains, who seemed in no respect superior 
 to themselves ; heavily dressed, also their very hats (even 
 down to the little boys) being in three-cock ; occasionally 
 one flap let down by some extra beau, gave display to a 
 grand affair of party-colored hatband. With all this squat 
 en-bon-point, and all this gorgeous cumbrousness of exu- 
 berantly good dress, when once the disgust which these 
 must excite could be got over, the mind returned to witness 
 with satisfaction so many specimens of peasant comfort, im- 
 plying every day abundance of good food, and, I should 
 think, full complement of every day clothing ; while across 
 all their meannes of features was spread, in characters not 
 to be misinterpreted, hearty good nature and honest feeling. 
 
 Left this romantic scene of high and low-life revelry for 
 Offenberg ; where our landlord for the afternoon and night, 
 and his sister the hostess, were the worst, or only bad sam- 
 ple of an inn-keeper I have yet met on the continent. 
 
 22d July. Starting now each morning at five, dinner is 
 not amiss at half-past ten, which seems in this country the 
 grand hour of repast. At a village called Kenzingen, where 
 we stopped at this hour, my two companions, Germans, 
 left me; and I was compelled to endeavour to explain by 
 signs my desire to join in a meal I saw in preparation. The 
 good people of the house, anxious to understand in what 
 way they could most fully oblige me, sent out for a hair- 
 dresser, who, as having been in France just long enough to 
 attempt a miserable smattering of some French phrases, 
 they were desirous should interpret my wishes. These had 
 been confined to the simple demand of whatever viands they 
 could give me ; and this 1 had contrived to explain before 
 the interpreter's arrival, though they had remained incredu- 
 lous that I could be so easily served. A meal was then 
 
CARLSIIRUE TO FREYBOURG. 35 
 
 served up, which being at so early an hour, and to so small 
 a company five only and a child, demands to have its 
 items particularized : soup of course ; bouilli with cucum- 
 bers ; cutlets in profusion ; semblance of a side of veal 
 roasted, but between its coating and its bones, veal was none 
 for, portentous to tell, a large pudding had been substituted 
 for the animal flesh ; kidney beans ; roast ducks ; fillet of 
 roast veal ; large spunge cake saffroned ; pease ; almonds ; 
 wine of good quality : all and every thing in large supply: 
 excellent coffee to conclude : the charge 48 kreutzers ; eight 
 more to the waiter, made the total cost two francs French, 
 i. e. nineteen pence English. Sorry I should be to say, we 
 sat down about half-past eleven, and left the table at one 
 but for the company, a Clergyman, two persons whom I guess 
 to be landed proprietors without the village, and a female of 
 rather inferior rank with her child. To be sure I did not 
 understand a word of their language, nor one of them a 
 word of mine, or of French : but their attentions, rather 
 hospitalities, tfere in a language that is universal. I was 
 placed at the head of the table, the Clergyman at my right, 
 and the more wealthy proprietor, as it seemed, at my left : 
 the latter carved and performed all the honors, punctually, 
 but quietly, serving me first ; and the whole company good- 
 naturedly alive to consult my wishes. I never can forget the 
 scene of unaffected kindness. What a contrast to the un- 
 companiable tables d'hote, I have latterly been used to ! 
 For persons too, as these were, in moderate life, their 
 behaviour was pattern not once spitting (as is the custom 
 in base frequency through all this country even with per- 
 sons of high mode) no approach to awkwardness, no airs or 
 graces, no loud talk, quiet conviviality all. I hope and 
 believe I pleased them all, by venturing as a farewell salute, 
 an English shake-hands with the old Clergyman, when our 
 company broke up. 
 
 The countr from Carlshrue has continued of the same 
 
36 FREYBOURG. 
 
 character with tliat north of it. From all I can see of Suabia 
 it is a happy region its climate and soil, its various and 
 cheerful surface, its inhabitants, and, I must believe, its go- 
 vernment. The roads are excellent, and the hedges every 
 wr ere in high order. Much irrigation, with apparatus for 
 executing it, that implies expense in the first formation and 
 care in upholding it ; much and various industry. I cannot 
 omit to mention, that frequently on the road I have seen 
 herds, shall I call them, of from 100 to beyond 300 geese, 
 as if they had them in product of mechanic manufacture. 
 To-day the crowded population is as much immersed in toil 
 as yesterday they were agog for pleasure ; their habitations 
 substantial, their cattle sleek though at full work, themselves 
 in en-bon-point, and in most comfortable working dresses. 
 Now the women's brave gear of yesterday no longer 
 appears extravagant, nor the men's magnificence of high 
 cocked hat, dark colored coat of court-dress fashion, and 
 full skirt with lining and facing too of white ; red waist- 
 coat, with long pockets, and not unfrequently a lacing to it 
 of gold; black breeches and white stockings. Thus set 
 forth, and mounted on a large-sized full-fed horse with long 
 tail, a little farmer here and many a one such I met yes- 
 terday makes on the Sunday in approach an imposing 
 and worshipful shew. But nothing of all this is in discord- 
 ance with the hale, well-fed, and comfortably though plainly 
 clothed working appearance of the same man and his same 
 sleek horse, with one or two more in match to him, in draft, 
 on Monday. 
 
 At FREYBOURG soon after four. The mountains on (he 
 left having been joined by an array of others from the right, 
 the views in front, heightened by some lucky coincidences 
 of weather and clouds, were very fine for the last several 
 miles. The city is flat at foot of several vine-clothed cliffs, 
 \\.-iIl-liko and very high over it, and which, when scaled by 
 zigzag walks, command, westward into France, and north- 
 
FREYBOURG. 37 
 
 ward also, a most extensive and unimpeded prospect: To 
 me the view backward into the fir-bespread and glorious 
 ravines which here branch off into the severe recesses of the 
 Black Forest, was of incomparably higher delight. 
 
 Freybourg Cathedral and its lofty spire, very rich in al most 
 filligree ornament, needle-like in slenderness, though in 
 open-work throughout to its summit, pleases me intensely. 
 Except Cologne, which is in quite another style, I have seen 
 since my landing no such structure. To say nothing, as is 
 my wont, of pictures, stained-glass, or other high adorn- 
 ments of churches, I am struck here with the statuary re- 
 presentation of the Last Supper the principal figure fine, 
 and the Disciple leaning on him with devotion of his whole 
 self the two Disciples listening, the Traitor: the entire I 
 admit is toyish : but I have seen no other toy hitherto in 
 church furniture of the slightest interest. 
 
 This city was founded seven centuries ago by a family, 
 sovereign in rank and of extensive possessions. The 
 Fribourg in the south of Swisserland, was also theirs in 
 appanage : they are now extinct in blood as in general 
 recollection, the house of Zaeringen : they continue, at 
 least, to give their name to the hotel in which I am lodged ; 
 that is as absolutely comfortable, not to say hospitable, and 
 as surprisingly cheap as any I have met on the continent. 
 
 Of the population of Freybourg, I learn that it includes 
 forty or fifty families of noble rank, a University with 34 
 Professors and 600 Students ; is the residence of many 
 men of letters ; principal quarters of the military also ; 
 quite contrasted in character to the trading and stirring city 
 of Basle, for which I set out in the morning. 
 
 23d July. Through a country partaking more of the 
 mountain and forest character of the Black Forest, and with 
 the Vosges chain in the distance to right, to another speci- 
 men of German village simplicity, Mulheim, where again, 
 at half- past ten, it was incumbent to dine. In the room 
 
38 FHEYBOURG. 
 
 stood several tables, at each of which a separate company : 
 even the family of the house, when all the other sets had 
 ended, arranged themselves at one of these tables to their 
 regular meal. But what astonished me to delight, was a 
 long table, to sit down to which twelve or fourteen working 
 people, men and women, entered whether farming or 
 handicraft, I am unable to decide, all hale in their appear- 
 ance and perfectly clean in dress. When within the room 
 door, they all stopped short, and a boy, ten or eleven years 
 old, stood forth from among them and, they remaining in 
 reverential silence, pronounced in a sober undertone, a 
 prayer, which may have lasted perhaps a minute. At table 
 their behaviour was particularly decent, their food plentiful, 
 and their appetite of right healthy tone. When finished all 
 rose together, and arranging themselves as at their entrance, 
 the same boy returned with similar solemnity, what I pre- 
 sume to have been a thanksgiving, bowing at its close 
 towards a crucifix at that end of the room to which they all 
 faced. This concluded, they retired with a cheerfulness, 
 and, let me add, a propriety, uninfected with either affectation 
 or starchness. I had never witnessed such a scene, and I 
 was unable to draw from my fellow-travellers so much ex- 
 planation of it, as whether the bow made by the boy had 
 any other than accidental reference to the crucifix, in other 
 words, whether this highly decent company was Protestant 
 or Roman Catholic. I believe them assuredly to be the 
 former. 
 
 The remainder of my journey has been up and down 
 high and unwieldy masses of hill, to within five miles of 
 Basle, and from the final brow of which I have obtained 
 my first view of the snow-clad Alps, in raggedness 
 low on the horizon's edge. Across the moor intervening 
 from thence to tin- Rhine, all is sluice and channel for irriga- 
 tion ; and storks in great number pervaded the flat fields, 
 or roosted on the chimneys of the houses up to the streets 
 in this quarter, of Basle itself. 
 
SECTION II. 
 
 BASLE, JULY 25. 
 
 I have passed nearly two days in this large and loose- 
 lying city, without much interest. Its Cathedral is plain to 
 clumsiness, while aspiring to ornament through ugliness of 
 trappings : yet it is a grand pile, and is associated with the 
 memory of Erasmus, and of certain ecclesiastical events of 
 leading importance. Of its University, I am happy to learn, 
 that vigorous exertions are employed to establish it, not 
 merely on an extended plan, but on a soundly respectable 
 footing. Of education generally, I find that by positive 
 law, it is not left to the option of parents to send their 
 children to school or to withhold them from it : the truant 
 urchin who would wrap himself in the indulgence of his 
 kindred, is ferreted out by the magistrates' authority, which 
 also visits with legal punishment the encouragers of his 
 sloth. Here is tyranny in the strictest sense, though in a 
 country proverbially free: if end ever justified means, it is 
 in a case of enactment such as this. 
 
 I here take my leave of the Rhine, that most noble river, 
 which at this distance from the ocean is of many hundred 
 feet in breadth, and, with a current as impetuous as a strong 
 sea-tide, sweeps before Basle in depth in some places of 
 forty feet : then its livingly translucent color, greenish, but 
 inimitably sweet ! The river in its course here, is the sepa- 
 ration between the Black Forest and the Jura mountains, 
 through which latter, my route lies by Arau and Zurich in 
 progress to Schaffhausen two sides of a triangle instead of 
 
40 BASLE, TO AKAU. 
 
 the base consequence of some infatuation of Swiss Govern- 
 ment Diligences, against which I received warning, though 
 too late, not merely as to my being misconducted but mal- 
 treated. 
 
 I have had no reason to complain as far as to Arau. For 
 many miles along my actual course has ranged a series of 
 mountains of the lower order, deliciously, almost prodigally 
 wooded towards their summits. These mountains are the 
 side-screens to a suite of close valley, each one as soft, and 
 the long succession of them as charming, as any my memory 
 can just now compare with them. The skirts on either hand 
 are invaded by cultivation in full activity ; the houses bril- 
 liantly neat in comparison I am sorry to say it with the 
 habitations of the Brisgau. 
 
 The road led us at length up a mountainous ascent, from 
 the farther brow of which was spread the sublimest display 
 of landscape grandeur I have ever beheld. Its main fea- 
 tures, (the glaciers of the Alps ranging aloft though in the 
 back ground) were a semicircular basin, whose interior 
 surface was one headlong descent, dreadful in cincture of frac- 
 tured calcareous rocks, to the imprisoned subject space be- 
 low ; a chasm in the front of this vast framing at once dis- 
 closes, and affords the proudest foreground to the immeas- 
 urable space without. The inner recess beneath, as well 
 as the unspeakably mighty outer expanse, was broken 
 ground in every possible variety of form, from soft valley 
 to the wildest stormy abruptness that mountains, short of 
 the utmost Alps, could be thrown into, contending with the 
 luxuriance of a most populous and richly cultivated plain 
 which everywhere largely intervened. 
 
 Directly opposite, on one sharp crest of mountain which 
 ran athwart, at perhaps, two leagues distance, frowned the 
 remains of an antique castle. On the descent, some two 
 hundred yards down, two magnificent rocks, as if split 
 asunder and with corresponding faces, afford but passage to 
 
ZURICH. 41 
 
 the road, to whose tortuous and fearfully rugged, monstrous, 
 descent, they seem the giant portals. During the whole progress 
 downward, this blaze of mingled awfulness and beauty is 
 presented to the eye, with still some new variety caused by 
 the frequent change of the point of view. At foot the river 
 Aar sweeps with impetuous course; we crossed it at a town 
 called Olten, by a wooden bridge, lined along the sides and 
 completely roofed with substantial timber : this covering I 
 learn to be of general usage in Swisserland. 
 
 To Arau through a few miles of softer country. Here 
 the coach conductor (who happens not to be of this district 
 and speaks French) joining me, I find him repeat what had 
 been distinctly stated to me at Basle, that in this country 
 Germany is held cheap in estimation. The cattle here are 
 housed separately, not as there ; the population better cir- 
 cumstanced ; in every view a higher civilization. The detail 
 of good feeding in this tract, as given by this personage, is 
 more ludicrous than refined " Always eating ; breakfast at 
 seven ; second breakfast at nine ; dinner at eleven ; gouter 
 at three ; and at seven a solid supper." All this is vouched 
 to me as sober fact.* The females he laughed at un- 
 sparingly ; " their faces like horse-face for breadth ; their 
 legs, oh, oh ! and as for strength, their breadth bespoke it 
 unequivocally." Certainly, with occasional exceptions con- 
 firming the general position, there is hereabouts a new 
 school of female shape ; half-height, with almost three times 
 a fair average of breadth. 
 
 29th July. Through a country of high tillage by one, 
 to ZURICH with the statements abundantly confirmed to 
 me of the discomfort of my Diligence, of which the hours of 
 stoppage have been so irregular as (o lose me my night's 
 rest : for being under orders to depart from Arau at eleven 
 at night, this hour was adjourned to one ; then to day-break ; 
 
 * 1 have since reason to believe that in this and some other districts, it is 
 but matter of fact. 
 
42 ZURICH. 
 
 and finally, I hud to pace the streets outside my vile inn 
 for two hours before it started, at six in the morning. And 
 this is the regular Government Diligence. 
 
 Zurich is so wonderfully picturesque, without and 
 around that, notwithstanding its being German, I had de- 
 termined to fix myself here for ten or fifteen days, and out of 
 the bustle of its great inn, l'Ep6e.* The usual spare ac- 
 commodation of the town, however, is occupied by the Mem- 
 bers of the General Diet, numbers of whom generally attend 
 our table d'hote and by the Ambassadors who have shifted 
 hither their residences during the term of its sittings. In 
 consequence of this, all the inquiries J have set on foot for 
 three days, including from back garret rooms to villa 
 situations on the lake have been met by mis-statements so 
 disgusting in tissue, as to dislodge me from Zurich in a 
 shorter time than I might otherwise have remained at 
 my inn. Yet I know no town, whose site and accompani- 
 ments are so striking. In front, the Alps at vast distance, 
 seen from the ramparts, from the bridges, from the inn win- 
 dows : then such splendid opulence of water ; the Limmat, 
 of very bold course and great body, translucent to its utmost 
 depth ; and the Sihl, more furious far, and vilely turbid 
 running in the same channel, side by side, for hundreds of 
 yards after their junction, the filthy distinct from the pure. 
 Again, through all the city, up its different heights of which 
 it has several superb ones fountains of water spouting to 
 prodigality : I have never seen any city which makes so 
 noble a display of this element. 
 
 Of Zurich lake, fine as it is, I do not join in the general 
 admiration. It has, certainly, perhaps twenty-four miles in 
 
 * " We are not slaves here as the people are in England," was the very calm 
 eipression to me of a laquaii de place at this inn, to whom 1 had been referred 
 for getting some slight repairs done to my umbrella, a delay of which might have 
 lost me a long afternoon'* promenade. It is but fair to say, after this, that no 
 coarseness of manner of any kind attache* to the people themselves of the inn, 
 which is excellent. 
 
ZURICH. 43 
 
 extreme length, and its shores are in range of farm and 
 woods of exuberant luxuriance, displayed in swells to 
 the water's edge which, in remoter stations is backed here 
 and there by nobly fractured mountains. But these forms 
 of precipitous majesty break not into the margin, and the 
 entire sheet of lake, undiversified by an island, is seen from 
 almost every station in the shape of a weaver's shuttle a little 
 contorted, but so free from concealment at any one stand, 
 as to give no stimulus to view it from any other. It is a 
 lake not dissimilar in character, but exceedingly inferior in 
 accompaniments, to Windermere. 
 
 In dudgeon of disgust, at the deception from all varieties 
 of untruth that thicken round me almost since my arrival at 
 Basle ;* tired also with being among a people whose lan- 
 guage estranges me almost from human communication, 
 I have left Schaffhausen and Constance behind and pro- 
 ceeded (29th) in a voiture for Lucerne ; the road measuring 
 through a series of highly-wooded mountain elevation 
 ranging southward, and which I had before become ac- 
 quainted with as forming the noblest portion of the lake's 
 back ground. 
 
 The progress was as if through an umbrageous lane, until 
 our arrival at its extremity of ascent, Mount Albis, which, 
 in lake phrase, is one of the grand stations from whence the 
 surrounding expanse of lake and wooded mountain and 
 opulence of farm largely intermingled, can, with utmost 
 distinctness and map-like effect, be viewed. It is a spot 
 which merits its reputation ; I add that it gives the definitive 
 seal to my appreciation of Zurich lake. 
 
 Descended through a country of very inferior beauty and 
 meaner husbandry, but with an immense son of the Alps 
 confronting us Mount Pilate his -name indicating his le- 
 gendary history, inasmuch as Pontius Pilate became here a 
 
 * The Cigogue inn there excepted, which emulates Brisgau houesty. 
 
44 I.I I KM . 
 
 hermit outcast from mankind, and finally put an end to 
 himself by drowning in a little lake aloft among its preci- 
 pices. Of such evil fame was this lake, through many 
 centuries, from the mischiefs perpetrated by him and a 
 retinue of attendant spirits, that the Cantonal Council pro- 
 hibited approach to its vicinity under the severest penalties. 
 By subsequent grace of the Government, permission to make 
 such a visit was accorded to travellers of especial distinction, 
 the favour to whom is recorded in the state records. 
 
 Crossing the rivers Reuss and Emmen, arrived at 
 LUCERNE, an old irregular city, and distinctly inferior to 
 Zurich ; yet with that city and Berne, honoured in annual 
 rotation by the sittings of the General Swiss Diet. 
 
 This city also is most superb in site, amid mountain 
 steeps, clothed in wood, that rise like walls around and on 
 high over it ; and it has a lake, in form and accompaniments 
 utterly superior to Zurich. 
 
 Here has been just raised a monument in commemoration 
 of Swiss gallantry and good faith, which has kindled my en- 
 thusiasm to a haughty pitch. The subject is the slaughter 
 of the Swiss Guard at the Thuilleries, by the Parisian revo- 
 lutionary mob, on the 10th of August and 3d of September, 
 1792. It is the work of Thorvaldson, a Norwegian sculp- 
 tor ot illustrious name, and a denizen of Rome : it repre- 
 sents, cut on the face of the living and perpendicular 
 rock, a lion become victim to death of overpowering 
 assailant force. The simplicity of the conception, and 
 the dignity with which it strikes, are quite sublime ; while 
 the total absence of frippery in the finishings sustains to 
 the full the tone of mind which the emblem has excited. 
 In this moment of enthusiasm for so grand a work of art, 
 so unexpectedly presented, hallowed from being called 
 into such exercise, I have not hesitated to copy its in- 
 scriptions. 
 
LUCERNE. 45 
 
 Without the little Chapel which is attached, 
 
 LVVICTIS PAX. 
 And also, 
 
 10 August. 2 and 3 September. 
 
 26 Duces. 16 Duces. 
 
 760 Milites. 350 Milites. 
 
 PER VITAM FORTES, SUB INIQUA MORTE FIDELES 
 
 Within the Chapel, 
 
 Juratac fidei decus est perstare tenacem ; 
 
 Perstantem decus est in statione mori : 
 Haecce monere meum, seclis memoranda futuris, 
 
 Perstando fides et moriendo viros. 
 Ne temnas monitum, generosa nominis haeres, 
 
 Helveta gens ; prisca stare memento fide. 
 Stabit tuta salus, stabit tibi nomen avitum, 
 
 Si tibi perstiterit virtus avita Fides. 
 
 Firm on its post sworn faith is stedfast found, 
 
 Though myriad rabble trample it to ground. 
 
 Ages unborn ! from me the lesson hold ! 
 
 Of plighted faith in guard, to death be bold ! 
 
 Revere my words, heirs to a spotless fame, 
 
 Keep faith unspotted, and the' Helvetic name ! 
 
 To virtue of your sires acquitted stand : 
 
 Sure then shall last your fates proud rest your land ! 
 
 And it was among the slaughtered corpses, here particular- 
 ised in number, that Helen Maria Williams, an English female, 
 and then a young one, was seen the morning after, hanging on 
 the arm of an English gentleman, and leisurely promenad- 
 ing over the scene of carnage. At least one witness of the 
 fact is still living ; who was near enough to be struck with the 
 contrast of the wincing of her conductor at the horrors which 
 politeness to a lady compelled him to loiter through, and the 
 perfect ease which reigned over her deportment. Such were 
 
46 MOXT RIGHI. 
 
 the sensibilities of a woman who was just then deafening the 
 world with uproar and huzzas for philanthropy ! Nature re- 
 mains ever unchanged. Agave and her Bacchants were 
 religionists: the sister zealots of our day started forth poli- 
 ticians. Fanaticism is thus potent to convert the means of 
 consolation into gall the angel charities of woman into 
 the rabidness of the mad dog. 
 
 Tuesday afternoon, embarked on the lake for MONT RIGHI 
 a mountain isolated in position, its face on all sides pre- 
 cipitous, or so nearly so, that it can only be ascended by a 
 painful zig-zag staircase. The lake magnificent in surface, 
 yet unfolding itself only by parts ; while its barrier-shores, 
 reaching some thousands of feet perpendicular, are the 
 noblest in prominence and wall-like erectness that ever de- 
 lighted my view. Nothing of flat is visible in any part of 
 its outline : a very moderate proportion is adorned with gen- 
 tle eminences, crowned by villas embosomed in rich woods ; 
 but even those swells are buttressed closely behind by 
 abrupt and immense mountains. Even in the naked 
 rocks, there is an absolute contrast of color ; strong 
 red on one side and in face, while the purest calca- 
 reous white distinguishes that lengthened mountain front 
 against whose base the water beats on the off-shore, 
 and in whose fractured features grandeur supreme ac- 
 knowledges in submission some superior and exquisite 
 power of elegance. Then the water-views ! on the left, 
 towards Kusnacht, a large branch of the lake itself; and 
 backwards towards Mount Pilate ; and on the right, the long 
 continuation of lake up the Valley of Sarnen these are scenes 
 with which nothing within my knowledge can compare. 
 
 On one of the wild rocks, frequently isolated by water, 
 which congregate in closeness to margin as with tracery one 
 tract of this glorious shore, the A MM- Raynal, that blown- 
 bladder in oratory and political science whose flights to 
 fame by help of both have borne him into oblivion under- 
 
MONT RIGHT. 47 
 
 took the erection of a structure in puff of himself, though 
 declaredly monumental to William Tell. But so abominably 
 at variance is this sooterkin of a fool's conception with the 
 stupendous majesty, in union with the softest loveliness, that 
 reigns here, and at the same time so outrageously at jar 
 with the recollections with which it sought to identify itself 
 that the Swiss resented the project as an unmanly and 
 intolerable insult, and by special edict, stifled the abortion.* 
 
 Landed at Weggis a two hours and half climb of 
 severe fatigue, varied with frequent pause of gaze on the 
 stupendous and bewitching scenery around. The path is 
 very usually on the ledge of a monstrous precipice, up to 
 the inn of Staffel, from which, when "arrived at it, you think 
 you could precipitate a stone, not to be stopped by any im- 
 pediment from rolling into the Kusnacht arm of the lake, 
 4200 feet down beneath, in perpendicular measure. 
 
 Instantly on my arrival, had commenced without any pre- 
 vious symptom, the most awful storm of thunder and sheeted 
 rain I ever witnessed. No precaution of window-shutter 
 availed to keep out the quiver in constant play of the broad- 
 est and brightest flame. The inn is constructed exclusively 
 of timber, which did not strike me at the time, as inducing 
 danger of its being set on fire ; but it certainly rocked to the 
 storm magnificently. 
 
 Wednesday. Have been so fascinated by this my newly 
 acquired mountain domain that, though I had engaged a seat 
 in the Lucerne diligence of to-morrow morning, I decided 
 to forfeit it, and have sent away my guide under an arrange- 
 
 * I have since detected that the rebuff which the Abbe" of eager ambition re- 
 ceived, was from the. Magistracy of Uri, in whose canton he had first desired to 
 plant this monument to his patronage of Swiss heroism. The wretched needle 
 which he did raise ou Lucerne lake, guarded as it was atop by an arrow with cleft- 
 apple whose single shaft had the two-fold aim of emblem, and of lightning con- 
 ductor has been the mark of thunder in such frequent disport, that every one of 
 the inscriptions on its four several aspects in different languages, and bearing the 
 names of William Tell and his two associates, and the name of the Abbe" of course 
 has been blotted out by the lightning's repeated conflagration. 
 
48 MONT KM, 111. 
 
 raent for his return to me on Saturday. To borrow lake- 
 phrase again, Righi is the great station for Swisserland in 
 mass ; and the extent and variety of expanse seen from its 
 summit, through some especial happiness of position, is 
 quite beyond rational anticipation. Sunrise and sunset are 
 the favorable times for distant vision, with the adjuncts 
 of roseate color on the distant Glacier chain to southward, 
 which no other hour of the day can supply. The gradual 
 progression of light over such an extraordinary breadth of 
 dread mountain, and deep valley, and inequality of earth's 
 surface, such as Europe beside can but faintly imitate, is, 
 of course, a study deeply interesting. The weather is ra- 
 ther inclement ; yet each moment free from rain-fog, presents 
 a scene uniting contrarieties I had ever believed to be irre- 
 concileable ; for landscape satisfaction is here combined 
 with bird's-eye view over immense map extension. I had 
 heard of the fourteen lakes which can be seen from hence, 
 and had, from all my experience, decided that they must 
 form fourteen white plashes on the earth's surface, their 
 accompaniments of lofty shore, (where such might exist) 
 going for nothing when reconnoitred from so unfavourably 
 distant, and almost aerial a stand. I have counted these 
 lakes myself Zurich figuring as an individual, and not the 
 most remote *one frequently enough to vouch for their 
 being palpably under command : and, I know not how it is, 
 I have shaken hands for this special occasion, with my 
 previous theory, and felt cordially, that instead of marring, 
 they enrich the view : grandeur to vastness it wanted not. 
 
 Even the home scenery of Righi is enchanting. The air 
 is of an elasticity and kindliness, in which the animal spirits 
 luxuriate into exhilaration. The objects arc all new the 
 life pastoral ; for here during the summer, a population of a 
 hundred or more families, is distributed over the extensive 
 and undulating surface, that is table-land within its boun- 
 dary precipices. These people occupy houses of timber, 
 
MONT RIGHF. 49 
 
 broad, wide, but with their eves low nearly to the ground 
 called chalets : their cattle at milking time, and it may hap- 
 pen for the night, are stabled in buildings of not dissimilar 
 construction. The sound of the large bells hung round the 
 necks of the leader cattle is borne through the air as they 
 rove at their pasture : but towards evening is heard, in 
 frequent reverberation around, the whistle or the chaunt of 
 the national air, the Rans des Vaches, by which the herds- 
 men and women call home their charge for milking. This 
 is that air, of such sorcerous effect on the Swiss auxiliaries 
 in foreign service, as to have induced the special prohibition 
 of it within their hearing. 
 
 That herds of black cattle so numerous as to require 
 tending by such a population, should receive sustenance 
 from a surface of soil thus elevated, was to me another 
 wonder. Benlomond, much less Skidd aw or Snowdon, or 
 any mountain in Ireland, cannot come into competition 
 with Righi, whose summit is 4646 feet above the level of the 
 lakes which wash its base : yet round this highest spot, 
 bullocks of great size graze and fatten : and the whole sur- 
 face sod of Righi that is clear of forest is fat to rot- 
 tenness. 
 
 This forest is exclusively of spruce fir. My poor home- 
 experience had induced firmest acquiescence in the planter's 
 doctrine respecting this ^tree, that "when the brains were 
 out the man was dead" when the trunk was felled the tree 
 was gone by, and even its root submitted to destruction ; 
 at all events, when the leader was destroyed, the stem was 
 seriously injured. Here I have learned a different lesson: 
 rioting in the plenty consequent on such extent of forest, 
 they fell here their trees at several feet upwards from the 
 ground ; and a tree so cut down sends from forth of its trunk 
 a shoot that grows into fresh timber stem. Often also, the 
 center of a competently rotted trunk becomes the receptacle 
 of seed falling casually into its hollow, whence a vigorous 
 
 E 
 
50 MONT UK. HI. 
 
 tree germinates by process of grafting, the like of which 
 never entered into gardener's brain. Again, wherever thin- 
 ning by the woodman has permitted the atmosphere to 
 create a sward, young plants, from the droppings of cone, 
 luxuriate in such force of numbers, and with such vigour as 
 to triumph over the utmost mischief cows can perpetrate in 
 a plantation which is a phrase of large acceptation : these 
 rapidly supply all vacancies with a dense population of tim- 
 ber, as well as a succession of strong plants that have the 
 effect of underwood, and undergo from season to season the 
 same discipline of the hatchet, as beech copse wood does in 
 England. 
 
 My favourite walk here has been the lesser culm or emi- 
 nence, from which the lake is seen in expanse towards 
 Weggis, and the distant Sarnen lake lies secluded in a 
 long and majestic Alpine vale ; and, remoter still, the Glacier 
 range is stretched in marvelous pavilion. Greatly nearer is 
 a line of headlong cliffs, thousands of feet in altitude, which 
 in the approach by water to Weggis, had been in front : 
 somewhat removed from them, and to their left, the noble 
 pyramidal rocks, with the grand valley at their feet ; and 
 other snowy mountains largely beyond. The wonders here, 
 at each wreathing and disrobing of these mighty masses by 
 cloud in all variety from froth-white in color to angriest 
 black from mere vapour to density and severe harshness 
 and in countless shapes or shapeltssness ; the pictures they 
 framed and then obscured, but to create and frame quite 
 new ones from the same materials, so as to mock the gazer 
 with the imagination that he must have shifted his own 
 position, and had to do with a fresh region of objects ; 
 some few of these pictures 1 shall long remember : but to 
 commit them to paper were a vain attempt. Of humbler 
 landscape, the little valley in flunk of my inn, a ravine 
 which runs down deep and increasingly important in sepa- 
 ration of the pasture surface, and to whose sides the village* 
 
MONT Riant. 51 
 
 of chalet cluster, as for the protection of its shelter- this 
 has continued to exercise on me its charms. 
 
 Righi is one of the grand shew exhibitions of Swisserland. 
 Besides my own inn, there is another, 400 feet above it, on 
 the highest culm, as it is entitled, or summit of the moun- 
 tain ; from whence is a sheer fyeadlong lapse into the lake 
 of Zug, which on that side washes the base of the Righi pre- 
 cipices. There are, as I am told, three other miserable inns 
 in the ravine I have just mentioned ; all in high business in 
 the summer. In the topmost one, I was informed, 24 per- 
 sons were bedded on one of the nights of my being here. 
 I have seen the Staffel equally crowded : and on coming 
 down one wild and stormy morning, after an endeavour to 
 catch the first lights of day-break on the culm, I counted 
 sixteen men and six females attended by four guides who 
 had ascended with the same object. In winter these inns 
 are closed up, and left without human occupant. 
 
 Saturday morning, 3d August. Descended from Righi to 
 Kusnacht, very safely indeed. This descent I had rather 
 dreaded : but how people, even females, go on horseback 
 up and down these ladder paths for they often run into 
 long succession of, literally, rungs of wood I cannot com- 
 prehend. 
 
 Opposite, on one spot of the descent, was pointed out 
 Goldau, where, so late as the autumn of 1806, the whole 
 face of a mountain fell to the valley below destroying 
 several villages, great numbers of cattle, and property 
 generally estimated to the amount of 150,000. Between 
 four and five hundred of the inhabitants were crushed in the 
 ruins, and, with them, sixteen strangers then on a tour of 
 pleasure to Righi : a small number of this party, who hap- 
 pened to be detached, were lookers-on of the catastrophe. 
 The drear waste is even now glaringly strong on the eye. 
 
 A slight turn from the road led to an ornamental chapel- 
 building, commemorative of the spot where William Tell 
 
 A2 
 
52 MONT RIGHI. 
 
 I spell liis name at length killed the tyrant, Geysler. I 
 hold in delight the hereditary gratitude and still-subsisting 
 deep reverence, with which his name, and the names of bis 
 noblj confederates against a robber, foreign authority, are 
 worshipped. J have occasionally heard the story of his 
 steadiness of hand in cleaving the apple on his son's bead, 
 treated with more than scepticism, on the ground of its im- 
 possibility. I once witnessed as singular an instance of 
 dexterous aim : it was in boyhood, when standing in an 
 open field, close by a servant whose skirt was in my hand, 
 I heard the report of a fowling-piece a minute or two 
 after which we were joined from an adjacent field by the 
 youth, who, unseen and unthought of by us, had discharged 
 it, and who with apparent carelessness, inquired of the 
 man why his hat was so ragged ? The wearer asserted his 
 hat to be a perfectly good one, and was with difficulty per- 
 suaded to take it off, to put his assertion to the proof ; when 
 its crown was found torn to a riddle by the shot dis- 
 charged against it by the youth, whose marksmanship it 
 had tempted, in the mere instant that the man had raised 
 it perpendicular to his forehead with one hand while he 
 scratched bis head with the other. If there was no bias 
 in Tell's case from a father's yearning, at least the scatter 
 of small shot not one of which had touched this person 
 may be set in balance against the simplicity of an arrow's 
 shaft : and I remain convinced of the literal truth of this 
 story of ancient Swiss renown. 
 
 From Kusnacht, in two hours and half delightful sail, to 
 Lucerne ; where I found that, with extra-honesty, a seat 
 awaited me in the Diligence, in lieu of that I had forfeited. 
 Proceeded on Sunday for Berne, by Aarbourg ; again two 
 sides of a triangle to achieve the distance measured by the 
 base ; which here, however, a vast Alpine tract makes it 
 physically impossible to effect direct. In winding up the 
 lofty hills that confine the Reuas and E rumen rivers, the 
 
AARBOURG. 53 
 
 road gave frequent farewell views of Righi : and notwith- 
 standing the strong delight I had felt through four days' stay 
 on its elevation, I am unable to explain the exuberant sa- 
 tisfaction I feel, now that I am descended from it and ac- 
 tually in the world again. I was in rapture with my situa- 
 tion when aloft ; I am penetrated with gladness in feeling 
 released and below. 
 
 The road leads along Sempach lake which, pretending 
 to nothing like Zurich with all the faults of that lake, and 
 without any of the beauties which form its pretensions is 
 still a sweet scene. It is margined to large breadth with 
 richly cultivated and largely wooded and populous shores. 
 Sempach lake was the scene of a battle of frightful carnage, 
 gained by the Swiss in an age whose heroism bequeathed 
 rest and immunity from wrong to their posterity, down to 
 our day ; when the existing generation, at rest indeed ! is 
 unblest with national independence, of which the soap- 
 bubble is, on their own confession, burst. 
 
 The country, as seen in passing on, is a continued garden, 
 as is all of Swisserland I have yet visited, wherever the hand 
 of man can operate : but often, as here, it is a garden dirtily 
 kept. Not a spot, nor a corner is left without culture ; yet 1 
 never saw such filthy collections of weeds as their grass 
 fields if grass they can be called, where the predominant 
 growths are sorrel, blacktops, and other offspring of a sour 
 soil ; crowfoot, too, in exuberance, and the various trash that 
 are its wonted companions old acquaintances of mine at 
 home, and there of detested intrusion : docks in proudest 
 glory ! Such cartloads of crop of this kind, the third mowing 
 too, as I saw hereabouts, awaiting the drawing hope ! 
 
 By ZOFFINGEN a very well built little town, many of the 
 houses spacious, with the appendage of pleasant gardens 
 to Aarbourg. And here, by some hitch in the connection of 
 diligence communication, I am left from Sunday till the njght 
 of Monday, when the course is to be resumed for Berne. 
 
t> AARBOURfi. 
 
 The site of Aarbourg is romantic, at foot of a range of an 
 inaccessibly steep brow over the Aar. In coronet to the 
 town is a grand National fortress, with cannon and all the 
 pretense of modern war ; but with that ignorance of it which 
 preceded the invention of gunpowder, and placed ancient 
 castles in sites where their garrison might be kept in cow 
 by horse-pistols. Even the picturesque effect of the long 
 embrazured parapets, bringing into relief the rocks fiom 
 whose face they bristle, and of the various irregularities of 
 outworks and mightier tower is a mean palliative to the 
 disgust at that stupidity, which can keep up this apparatus of 
 strength without power of warlike means laughing-stock to 
 whatever visitation, in these days, of poor musketry. 
 
 Restrained within my village inn by most inclement wea- 
 ther, I turn to ruminate on my recent observations. An 
 Irishman is, assuredly, a very different being from his Eng- 
 lish fellow subject : at least the latter will bear me out in 
 thinking so. A Scotsman is quite dissimilar to either: 
 and which of us three will say that he resembles the Welsh ? 
 At home we are familiar with this main distinctness of cha- 
 racter, and with all the subdistinctions of it : but here I find 
 it hard to give faith to the evidence of my own senses at the 
 almost parish diversities I meet. Not exactly, I admit, as 
 to my own sex ; but the other runs substance, and acci- 
 dence both into an endless variety. The dames of Basle, 
 whose thick squat forms are sustained by mill-post limbs, 
 which their economy of petticoat conspicuously displays, 
 and surmounted by a head invested with a cap, the caul of 
 which is to the edging, as a nutshell to its kindred leaf of 
 hazol ; the real investiture of the head, Lilliputian, and the 
 vans floating from cither ear so immense as to redeem into 
 babyism even their prodigious visage ; these were suc- 
 ceeded at Zurich by a race of comely, tall, truly handsome 
 females, creditable to the beauty of the sex in any country, 
 and quite sufficient to redeem womankind from any reproach 
 
AARBOURG. 55 
 
 on the score of Basle. Then as to dress, the women of 
 Zurich wear no caps. At Lucerne the figure changes once 
 more by a subtraction of two or three inches in height, for 
 which ample amends is made, by an increase in the breadth : 
 a cap, like a pair of butterfly's wings, is appended to a most 
 gorgeous cushion, which cases a grand knot of hair, perched 
 on the crown of the head not forgetting the weighty, dou- 
 ble-plaited tail that depends quite below the waist. But the 
 grand distinctive badge of a Lucerne female is her straw 
 hat flat as a tray, forming a vast awning, with four very 
 broad ribbons framed into a cockade, and laid down in their 
 extreme width over its extensive surface, in alternation of 
 pale red and green ; the effect exquisitely gaudy and despi- 
 cable. 
 
 Every dozen miles of route exhibits a change of race. At 
 and after Sempach, comes again ugliness of shape tall, 
 certainly, but abominably masculine: no dress could con- 
 ceal, and even theirs does not distort its mal-proportion. Two 
 strapping females, ambitious to figure in the long-waisted 
 garb that is just gone out in our English mode, distinctly 
 exhibited, through their Grecian robes, an ugliness of person 
 which identifies them with the other natives. These changes 
 of figure, and nature, appear even more frequent than the 
 changes of costume : for the flat hat of Lucerne, of umbrella 
 diameter, with its decorations of broad ribbands commensu- 
 rately bespread, continues on to Zoffingen. Its Sunday 
 accompaniments are a gorgeous stomacher, that from either 
 brawny shoulder tapers down over the man's breast which 
 disdains it ; and from protuberance of hips to abomination, 
 jupes in dependence, which it requires no pains to count, to 
 the number of three each being of a different color from the 
 other, and all of different lengths the innermost red, the 
 second yellow, the outside pale snuff-color the innermost, 
 lowest of the three, and that lowest reaching but two or 
 three inches below the knee, so that, from my seat in the 
 
66 AARBOCRG. 
 
 cabriolet, the rich red gaiter of the female pedestrians was 
 an object of distinct display : the stockings, invariably white, 
 shewed great thickness and a grenadier's length of leg. 
 
 At Zoffingen and Aarbourg, where the canton of Berne 
 begins, all was changed instantly on the canton's boundary 
 line, quite as if by trick of juggler's wand. The form large 
 still, but graceful ; but the garb changed still more : the ha- 
 biliments black even the head-gear is black, being no other 
 than black horse-hair wrought into crape, and into lace also 
 for edging to thf\t crape ! From a cap of this material with 
 the simple addition of a caul, or rather crown-piece, of black 
 velvet depend two lappets of three-inch-wide black ribband, 
 one over each shoulder, and reaching below the waist. I 
 have achieved the purchase of one of these caps ; the gar- 
 nishing of which, attached to this diminutive caul, stands 
 perpendicular over the wearer's forehead, and at right angle 
 to either ear like the semicircular screen to the flame of a 
 candle, so broad either side-screen as to equal the latitude 
 of the full face. This species of cap is worn universally 
 here, as are, each within its own puny parish limits, all the 
 other costumes of which I make mention : grandaraes, ma- 
 trons, six-years-old infants all wear this uniform. I see I 
 am forestalled in this detail ; for I now learn that these mat- 
 ters are so generally understood, that their diversities are 
 exhibited in sets of engravings of every size and merit. At 
 Berne it behoves me to procure a set of these, which shall 
 cut short my labours of detail for the future. , 
 
 In this village nook the whirl of the Diligence in opposite 
 direction brought me, adreamed of no such calamity, into 
 clash, for the hour of its stop, with two ardent politicians 
 who volunteered for my benefit, and in demand of my sym- 
 pathies, a virulent philippic on the cannibalism of the Turks, 
 and lauded to the skies the Pythagorean exemption from 
 carnal stain of their Grecian slaves. Indiscriminate execra- 
 tion of the one, and a doating, undistinguishing admiration 
 
BEKNE. 57 
 
 of the other, would alone be received from me ; and to de- 
 cline any conversation on the maddening topic, was as bold 
 an offence to these sons of liberty, as to controvert their 
 positions direct. 1 hold both parties to be deep sunk in the 
 dregs of vileness the Turks who enchain, and the Greeks 
 TV ho have so long been enchained. I found myself on a 
 doctrine recognised for truth back even to Homer's days : 
 
 Jove fix'd the day 
 
 " Made man a slave took half his worth away." 
 
 I have a horror of slavery incomparably more strong and 
 rooted than that of many who disdain me as a Tory. Slavery 
 inflicts on its victim a deterioration of mind, that not even 
 the magic of Paine's and Mirabeau's maxim, " To be free, 
 it is to a nation sufficient that it wills it," is powerful to do 
 away. It cannot expunge the leprous blotches of which the 
 misery has infected his exterior : far less can it expel the 
 ichor, corroded into poison, that holds his veins and himself 
 in inflammation, and renders disease habitual to his exist- 
 ence. The first presence of the Doctor here is not renova- 
 tion to his patient ; nor can the Surgeon, by amputation of 
 whatever limb, give immunity from a jot of his sufferings to 
 what remains of his frame. 
 
 /To decline figuring as I very quickly, and with best for- 
 mality, craved to do in this session on Greek and Turkish 
 affairs, availed nothing for my peace. They shifted at once 
 their deliberations to the grievance of Englishmen in such 
 multitudes overlaying the Continent with their selfishness 
 and their " gold." On this last word they laid severe em- 
 phasis to the discomfort of their diminished dignity, as was 
 vouched by their boiling indignation. 
 
 Tuesday morning, 6th of August. To BERNE. About 
 nine miles from it, crossed the angriest river I have ever 
 seen of amazing width, the bridge appearing nearly two- 
 thirds of that over the Rhine at Basle : much of the bed 
 gravel, deeply ploughed by the torrent ; but three times 
 
58 BERNE. 
 
 more in breadth was water, sheeting the rough pavement, 
 over which the current, of dark brown or dirt color, scoured 
 most fiercely. The name of this river is the Emmen, second 
 of that name I have met. The country onward to Berne 
 swells into large and cheerful hills; farms and houses in 
 substantial style : the road magnificent, alive with market 
 people ; the women in their best dresses, their farming pro- 
 duce made up in baskets or little bundles the men with 
 loaded carts ; all onward to the fair to be held at Berne this 
 day, as being the first Tuesday of the month. By degrees a 
 broad footway, with curb-stone regularly cut, claimed notice 
 long before the city came in view of whose consequence 
 my anticipations became excited by every object. And far 
 has Berne been from disappointing me : all within and with- 
 out proclaims it a capital of substantial, though unassuming, 
 dignity. In this respect I have seen nothing like it since 
 Brussels, to which, though inferior in some points, it has 
 a majesty superior impressed on its small compass. Its 
 site is a haughty peninsular cliff over the Aar, which 
 washes, in elongated and narrow horse-shoe course, the base 
 of the chasm that severs it from the surrounding cliffs the 
 brows which crest the outer precipices replying, in faithful 
 cincture, to those whereon, in interior, the city stands. Of 
 the character of these interior brows suffice it to state, that 
 the Cathedral that is close on the main street stands on a 
 precipice, in direct wall to the river, of 1 15 feet. 
 
 The houses are all of a cream-coloured stone, and of 
 construction most solid. A piazza extends along their front 
 and covers the foot- way, in the manner of Co vent- Garden. 
 Their elevation is regular and uniform ; and the streets they 
 compose run in right lines, crossed by shorter ones at right 
 angles, not always adequately wide, though the buildings 
 are lofty : the effect thence is somewhat heavy, but certainly 
 grand. Every feature breathes consequence ; and many a 
 city of rank, with triple its aggregate of buildings, would 
 
THOUNE. 69 
 
 figure as of village meanness when compared with the grave 
 and sustained dignity of Berne. The ramparts command, as 
 1 have been repeatedly told, the grand glacier range of the 
 Alps, close on the eye : unfortunately, heavy clouds at this 
 time shut them entirely from sight. Independently of their 
 sublimity, the views of the ravine beneath the Aar, large 
 and in maddening speed along its channel, which is almost 
 trough of stone the walls of that ravine a precipice, with 
 contrast on the outer margin, of a nearly headlong steep of 
 carefully nurtured grass or hanging wood, the mountains 
 directly closing on that margin, and wreathing themselves in- 
 to such variety of grand form ; these altogether compose a 
 home prospect, which, to a city, I conceive to be unique and 
 unrivalled. 
 
 In the afternoon, embraced the opportunity to go to 
 Thoune with an English family the lady of which justly 
 observed, that Berne shews itself as if risen in conformity 
 to one bold plan in one single and most brief space of time. 
 The road, sixteen miles, lies through a populous country : 
 much wood-cutting, and much drawing and piling of it, for 
 winter fuel ; large buildings, which here, as throughout the 
 rest of Swisserland, household the entire crop of corn un- 
 threshed, the family occupying a very confined portion of 
 the covert ; a succession of dirty meadows ; apple and other 
 fruit trees in countless numbers ; in one tract of the road, 
 manufacture at last, namely, of crockery-ware. The features 
 of the country are a long vale, of which the boundary moun- 
 tains, by some perversity, are too loosely hung together, or 
 are at' too lazy a distance from the road on its either hand, 
 to give spirit to the scenery. 
 
 Wednesday morning : crossed Thoune lake, in its length 
 thirteen miles ; our boat rowed by two men, and a female 
 of fine figure and beautiful features. Still the clouds reign 
 over the great mountains, whose glacier recesses it is our 
 purpose to visit. The shores of Thoune lake, though of 
 
60 THOUNE. 
 
 good outline, are usually not precipitous, except towards its 
 eastern bounds, where the mountain screens are majestic, 
 and fall direct into the water. At distance from the southern 
 shore, too unsatisfactory for just boundary, is a mountain 
 called Niesen, reminding me, by its conical form, of our 
 Wicklow Sugar-loaf. This Swiss potentate is 5,985 feet in 
 height above the lake ; that of which it recalls the memory 
 is 2,002 : yet such is the illusion, whose causes it remains 
 for me to explore, that the lesser mountain produces as 
 potent an effect on the landscape as this which is, arithme- 
 metically, almost three times its altitude. 
 
 Over the lofty face of a precipice I remarked a fall of wa- 
 ter pouring, just then, in exuberant supply into the lake at 
 foot its first appearance being in burst forth from a hole 
 on the front of the rock within whose recesses must be 
 caverned its reservoir and its channel. The appearance was 
 wild and peculiar : I take it however to be but a fitful cata- 
 ract, its effect rather dependent on the recent inclement 
 rains.* 
 
 With whatever pretensions Thoune lake can derive from its 
 mountain neighbours for back ground and its more imme- 
 diate craggy screens and though its margin is abundantly 
 rich, and frequently embellished with mansions and villages 
 and village spires ; in my appreciation it falls decidedly below 
 the rank allotted to it by tourists. Perhaps its frequency of 
 mention, and its praise by them, may be explained from its 
 being the routine track to the recesses of Lauterbrun and 
 Oberland ; whither my course is now directed. 
 
 Landing at Newhaus, proceeded in a course of 20 minutes 
 through that straggling, enormously uncouth, wooden-house, 
 
 * 1 find lhat the cavern from whence this stream pours was the retirement, 
 and contain* the remain*, of a certain St. Beat, an Englishman, the first preach- 
 er of Christianity among the Swiss : its regular orifice, inland, has been long 
 walled up, to preclude the celebration within of the superstitious rites of the 
 numerous pilgrims who flocked thither on the Saint's annual festival day. 
 
INTERLAKEN. 61 
 
 river-girt, river-trisected town,Unterseen to INTERLAKEN, 
 a spot of enchantment : fields almost oppressed with the 
 denseness and grandeur of walnut groves ; and mountains 
 direct in rere and in front being a continuation of those 
 which hold-in Thoune lake. Here they confront each other 
 in dread loftiness and severity ; their valley giving course 
 towards that lake, to the Aar, deep, full, and in rage as 
 usual, in its progress from the lake of Brientz : the inter- 
 vention of valley, of three miles, is richly worth the waters 
 of any lake. 
 
 Quite satisfied at the inn here with the apartment I was 
 shown into, and the look-out from its window, the waiter's 
 pause after my declaration to that effect, induced an inter- 
 rogation, to which he replied, that I might desire one in the 
 story still higher up. This I declined, until he explained 
 that the charge for it was higher, from the view being finer. 
 On proceeding thither, I found the difference fully worth 
 the additional expense. Direct in front is the Jungfrau, the 
 highest calcareous mountain in Europe, and that acknow- 
 ledges but two granite mountains superior in Swisserland. 
 The name, done out of German, is I believe, Young Woman ; 
 her French title is la Vierge. She has thrown off her veil 
 just now, and with one small cloud athwart her bosom her 
 habiliments of snow are in purest silver display, set off 
 brilliantly in sunshine. This mighty picture is put in frame 
 by two mountains, which in the direction onward must 
 nearly approach her, as hitherward they are almost conti- 
 guous to my station. The disclosure of the Jungfrau results 
 in fact from a break in the continuity of one of the two side- 
 screens, which form Interlaken valley. My information is 
 distinct that up this break a road runs to Lauterbrun, and 
 the base of the Jungfrau : but that it is distinct, I should 
 have thought access by such a chink to be matter of wish, 
 rather than of possibility : for it has all the appearance of a 
 chink or crack of a mountain once whole ; either jaw of the 
 
62 u: K.V . 
 
 orifire being sufficiently perpendicular. Whether this per- 
 pendicular measures much under, or much over 3,000 feet, I 
 am unable to guess : yet high aloft over that cliff on the right, 
 aud sloping to its precipice, is spread an extent of cleared 
 ground, with its cattle I presume grazing, certainly with a 
 chalet conspicuous even here below at a distance of abyss 
 utterly frightful. Framing again and a grand one is 
 formed to this first framing of the Jungfrau : it consists of 
 the enormous walnut woods, which seem to choke the close 
 vale they grow out of; and which, however that may be, 
 blot out, right and left and to their summit, the receding 
 ranges of the longitudinal barrier : but they leave amply dis- 
 closed, through a grand opening in the centre of their cumbrous 
 shade, a portion of the rocky or forest breadth of cleft moun- 
 tain. Such a recession I never witnessed : the walnut woods 
 heightening into force the wild mountain close at their back ; 
 and a chasm, from the lowest base of that mountain, bringing 
 home on the eye such an object as the Jungfrau. 
 
 Let me not forget, before I quit my window, the village 
 spire, which, though very lofty, overtops but little the vast 
 trees amid which its appertaining church lies hidden. Pro- 
 ceeded in the afternoon in a stroll through a hamlet of most 
 industriously-occupied people ; their work generally carpen- 
 try, which must be a leading trade : all the houses here- 
 abouts are of timber. Every thing in this close valley is 
 more mountain- like, clumsy, strange more utterly Swiss 
 than I have heretofore beheld. The villagers are all be- 
 nignity of manner, frankness, kindness. Aarbourg, Berne, 
 Thoune, Interlaken, are all in the Canton of Berne; and 
 of the inhabitants of every one of these places I am im- 
 pressed with favourable recollections. From an eminence 
 beyond this hamlet, where is still some remnant of a castle, 
 I had the view of Brientz lake : its screens are less culti- 
 vated, and descend with much more direct mountain rough- 
 ness to its shores than those of Thoune; yet without produc- 
 
BERNE. OJ 
 
 ing boldness or variety of margin. I judge it to be two-thirds 
 of the surface extent of Thoune. 
 
 Returned to Interlaken, and to my window : from which, 
 though close to nine o'clock, the features of my picture, if 
 somewhat darkened, are little impaired in loveliness. Be- 
 neath, among the groves, an association of females of the 
 country, whose vocal performances are in high request 
 among tourists on the lake of Brientz, are in rich mellow 
 chorus of our British air, " God save the King." This is 
 charm in superabundance. 
 
 Thursday. The Jungfrau's admission of me to her after- 
 noon's converse was but a passing courtesy. And here has 
 been a landscape-painter for nearly three weeks, waiting 
 vainly for serenity and clearness of the atmosphere. The 
 evil hour like that which shrouded Sir Walter Scott's cre- 
 ation of Mertoun, the recluse of Zetland still shrouds in 
 gloom, to their base, every individual of this array of Alps, 
 here congregated in majesty, in awe and terror, beyond 
 aught else that Swisserland can shew. Departure therefore 
 is peremptory on me, to scenes level to man's every-day 
 opportunities, and in unison with the tenor of life's ordinary 
 enjoyments. Returned over the lake to Thoune, and thence 
 to Berne. 
 
 Friday, 9th August. At breakfast, heard of a recent 
 occurrence, in which a countryman of ours figures as the 
 hero and without the self-destruction which he seemingly 
 courted in leaping, from vagary, across the chasm of a 
 precipice, so vast in width, and so appalling in all the cir- 
 cumstances, as to make the performance impossible in the 
 eyes of all other men, under whatever urgency or impulse. 
 A Swiss, to whom the feat of this leap was recounted, and 
 who was acquainted with the fearful localities, made on it 
 the quiet comment that the person, thus adventurous, must 
 have been either mad, or an Englishman. 
 
64 LAUSANNE. 
 
 From Berne to LAUSANNE, in an open voiture ; stopping 
 for the night at Payerne. The dignity of Berne is as well 
 preserved on this side as on my first line of approach, by a 
 magnificent road and footway ; and by all other external 
 circumstances which can bespeak opulence in the people, 
 and, I would say, a Roman loftiness of character in the 
 government. 
 
 The face of the country onward is broken into rounded 
 swells, the expansive views over which are frequently im- 
 peded by large woods. From the crown of one of these 
 undulations, Bienne lake is remotely seen to the right ; but 
 the road bears direct to that of Morat. This latter lake, which 
 is five and half miles by one and a fourth, has for boundary to 
 its farther shore, a low ridge of ground that is unwontedly bare 
 of trees, though every inch of its surface is cultivated. On the 
 off side of that ridge ranges the lake of Neufchatel ; of 
 which, and of the marshy termination of whose northern 
 extremity, from the eminences I had passed, I had command 
 to satiety. Morat town, petty as it is, and on a cliff over 
 its lake, is illustrious from the destruction before it, and on 
 the lake, of an immense Burgurdian invading force, by the 
 Swiss patriots of the 15th century : it yet retains its encir- 
 ling fortress walls of ancient time. 
 
 From Payerne, a sweet vale to Moudon ; whence the 
 road is an ascent of the long slopes of the Jorat mountains, 
 that no where gain any crest elevation the views are conse- 
 quently confined to the farm sjcenery and pine forest inter- 
 mingled with it, which are exhibited in front or flank by these 
 lazy slopes. The summit eminence at last gained at a 
 league from Lausanne spread before me the Lake of Ge- 
 neva, which from this first view of it, I set down as beyond all 
 1 have seen, and all I had supposed possible in lake scenery. 
 To any past reality, or any picture of my imagination, it is in- 
 describably superior. It is invested with the full luxuriance 
 of lake beauty, in unison magic it would seem with that 
 
BERNE. 65 
 
 quality, foreign to it, the magnificence of ocean, a world 
 of waters in itself, yet no where without definite shore ; 
 throughout all its boundary ever various, from swell of 
 champaign cultivation to mountain savageness immense in 
 range and transcendent in grandeur; in one tract to the 
 east, its mantle of snow, not now in August laid aside and 
 therefore eternal. 
 
 In the afternoon, at Gibbon's house, now in possession of 
 a family, the old lady-mistress of which required admission- 
 fee to be paid at the entrance to her female servant. The 
 sum of three-pence obtained for me a stroll in the garden; 
 from which the views are as lovely, and as surpassing in all 
 manner of magnificence, as Gibbon himself has described 
 them. There is somewhat of drawback in the sere and 
 formal vineyard, spread everywhere over the near grounds, 
 in direction down to the lake at Ouchi, a full mile of descent 
 the effect of which, as contemplated in expanse, is worse 
 than that of a dressed plat of raspberries. The summer- 
 house is in disrepair ; the accacias are gone ; the present 
 growth of trees is of mean species ; and this unrivalled 
 esplanade is neglected to desolation. The mansion itself 
 a fashionable banking-house is substantial, handsome, and 
 in full repair. 
 
 Sunday : A church is allotted by the government for the 
 large English congregation here. Mr. Kemble now holds 
 at Lausanne the distinction which Gibbon possessed in 
 his day when other English residents were next to none, 
 and is supreme among his countrymen. At church my 
 station brought, under positive observation, the earnest 
 and quite unaffected ardour of his solemn attention, and 
 gave to my hearing his distinct responses throughout the 
 service. I felt exaltation in claiming to myself, in a foreign 
 land, this fine old gentleman as my countryman.* 
 
 * By the demise of this very distinguished person, the suppression of this 
 minute is now unavailing from any view of personal delicacy. 
 
 F 
 
66 VEVEY. 
 
 Monday, 12th August. To VEVEY, 1 1 \ miles. The lake 
 on the right, with the Meillerie headlong mountains for 
 boundery on this part of its opposite shore : the Jorat, in 
 fantastic irregularity of peak to the left in front its charac- 
 ter reminding me of that home range of mountain which im- 
 pends over Bantry Bay. and that ranks among the highest of 
 our Irish mountains. Between the Meillerie and the Jorat, 
 and receding aback of a large low-land recess, or land-bay, 
 another family of mountains holds itself apart: two indivi- 
 duals of these are pre-eminently elegant in form, though the 
 loftiest that the eye commands in any direction the Dent 
 de Morcles, and the Dent du Midi ; the latter of these, that 
 snow-invested form which has claimed my awe since my 
 first knowledge of this lake. By a pass between these two 
 mountains of which the extreme narrowness is distinct on 
 the eye, notwithstanding a distance of some twenty miles 
 the Rhone has but room to force its passage hitherward, 
 where it deepens and enlarges into this sublime expanse 
 of lake. 
 
 With the mere road-side scenery from Lausanne to Vevey^ 
 I am, as sconery, sorely displeased. It is utterly without 
 tree and bare to the sun's rays, which are vehement, 
 literally to burning. Its slope to the lake's verge is laid out, 
 stair-case form, in tier after tier of vines ; each narrow tier 
 is a horizontal surface, supported by a wall in front, the 
 perpendicular height of which is far greater than the breadth 
 of the flat on which the vines stand. 1 have in some spots 
 been at the pains to count the number of steps formed by this 
 odious accumulation of wall after wall ; in one instance 
 I found them amount to forty-five. Over Vevey and be- 
 yond it, the spread of meadow, or pasture, or forest dis- 
 played in mountain grandeur, must afford subject for expa- 
 tiation, without need of running the gauntlet of stone walls 
 aloft on one side, or mere water, however nobly bounded 
 on the other, in frequent visits to Lausanne. That city 
 
VEVEY. 67 
 
 is a scene of stable ordure and bad smells ; of bustle and ex- 
 tortion in various and active practice on strangers ; a large 
 town without one corresponding satisfaction ; as ugly a col- 
 lection of streets as any town can exhibit, huddled on a sur- 
 face so irregular, that, in bad weather, the communication 
 must be matter of positive danger. 
 
 F 2 
 
SECTION III. 
 
 September. VEVEY. I had, in the first nidiments of 
 geography, known that Swisserland presents, in mountain 
 inequalities, and in exuberance of lake surface, the utmost 
 landscape capabilities. I am now to learn the potency of 
 other and heretofore unthought of agents, contributing an 
 unforeseen effect to land and water combination purity of 
 atmosphere, and the sun's effulgence ; the one giving to vision 
 every object, however remote, within the range of the hori- 
 zon and the other imparting an intensity of colour and 
 diversity of tint to which our grosser latitude is- a stran- 
 ger. It is as if a force of lustre were superadded to the 
 potency of our sun, as much beyond its former brilliancy as 
 its present gladness surpasses the sobriety of clouded wea- 
 ther. I can in no other way explain the glowing and endless 
 variety of colouring on the surface of this lake, that is quite be- 
 yond any thing of lake or sea surface in our climate. The 
 decision of the colours, ranged often in right lined breadths, 
 side by side of each other, is truly extraordinary : jet black, 
 bottle-green, reddish brown, verdigris of the liveliest glow 
 this the most frequent ; blue, as rich as on the peacock's 
 breast, and breaking into sapphire and every other exquisite 
 hue ; and in bold spread and endless mutable form that 
 displays vast breadths of. coloring, there is at times a gran- 
 deur, and at others a vivacity of disport, of which our dull 
 watery expanse with all its aids of cloud's motion, or curl 
 from breeze is utterly devoid. 
 
 Not but that In this bright climate- arc to be met the illu- 
 sions atoo of a vapory atmosphere. I have seen the Creux 
 
VEVEY. 69 
 
 du Valais that semi ellipse of low land at the bottom of the 
 lake's eastern extremity with the mountains that tower over 
 it, so suffused in haze, that their prominences came into re- 
 lief as if in parallelism ; each remoter mountain moulded into 
 distances so just as to compare, one behind the other, with 
 the managed arrangement of the side-screens of a theatre. 
 Each one of these projecting screens, rising to the height of 
 thousands of feet, yet, at almost the same angle of elevation, 
 approaches boldly to the perpendicular ; each interval of them 
 after other to the number of thirteen on one side compel- 
 ling the imagination to body forth within its extent regions 
 of sublimity and wonder. 
 
 Nor does this atmosphere refuse any of those illusions 
 under which the boldest mountain droops at one time to the 
 level of the earth, and at another assumes awe, added to its 
 own, of crest erect to midmost sky. With milder play the 
 mountain's surface is known, at the caprice of this viewless 
 power, to recede to a strange remoteness or to press imme- 
 diately on the eye ; while water similarly assumes various 
 modifications of extension removing at one time the Savoy 
 shore far without the eye's accustomed purview, and, at ano- 
 ther, narrowing the intervening expanse from the actual 
 breadth of above half a dozen miles, to the seeming of a 
 river's width. 
 
 Of evening darkening into night, the pomp is often dazzling, 
 from coruscation in untired play, through many hours, from the 
 bosom of a cloud that is black on the south and west the rest 
 of heaven's vault being serenest blue, whose skirts are in 
 radiant fringe of incessant quivering flame. Night after 
 night, week after week, may the eye gaze on these splen- 
 dours a sort of exercise of the heavenly armory, as harm- 
 less as are the field movements and the blank cartridge ex- 
 ploded in rehearsal of battle mischief, compared with the 
 horrors of actual conflict. 
 
 But the sunsets of this climate leave us most of all behind : 
 
70 VEVEY. 
 
 and no where have I seen a spot where sunset shews as 
 from the terrace of St. Martin's Church, or whatever 
 other of the numerous eminences over Vevey. Directly be- 
 low is the lake, nearly seven miles over to the Meillerie 
 range of precipices, that are 6,000 feet above the water: 
 lower grounds, in onward direction to west, are the lake's 
 boundary for 32 miles of shore. On the side with the spec- 
 tator, mountainous swells spread in corresponding boundary. 
 Athwart the termination of both is the Jura chain, distinct 
 and bold on the view, though forty miles distant : this chain 
 stands up apparently in wall from the off margin of the lake. 
 The evening array in blaze of every richest hue, and at 
 once in every glorious and fantastic display of aerial, yet al- 
 most substantial effulgence, I consign to the effort of imagi- 
 nation, working on past recollections, to embody : the at- 
 tempt would be futile to realize in minute the splendors 
 which float through and fire the westward tract of sky. 
 It is a strange phenomenon, however, that the Jura chain, 
 on which the embodied effulgence seems enthroned, stands 
 distinct in heaviest blue the lustre above and around being 
 an emanation from the luminary receding to his western bed, 
 and his influence, therefore, withdrawn from this eastern 
 aspect. Strange too it is, that this dark blue shadow of 
 mountains, forty miles off, is seen, in distinctest reflection, 
 from the watery expanse that apparently bathes their base. 
 And such being the potency of vision in this atmosphere, 
 what must not be the distinctness and effect of the un- 
 speakable lustre of gold and flame and the whole remainder 
 of the celestial ornature of colors, reflected in largest extent 
 in the same wondrous mirror ! and this with change of glories 
 from moment to moment ! 
 
 I have seen these reflections rendered in nearly the entire 
 extent of liquid plane, from the foot of the Jura to the margin 
 below the brow on which I stood : and not merely on even- 
 ings when panoply of cloud accompanied the sun's going 
 
VEVEY. 71 
 
 down : in the clearest sky a roseate hue lias suffused the 
 whole atmosphere, and been given back again, in inexpres- 
 sible vividness, and in the same vastness of extension. 
 
 Another mirror like this lake of Geneva, in any similar 
 purity of atmosphere in such aptness, and at the same time 
 such marvellous magnificence of framing I conceive there is 
 not on earth's surface ; such a liquid plane under command 
 of the eye such sublimity, softening into such beauty of 
 accompaniments on either hand, and to such remote extent ; 
 so arranged the whole ; the outlines most few, the vast can- 
 vass full. 
 
 It is thus, that unbroken as this lake is by projection of 
 promontory or inroad of deep bay, it has ever novelty on its 
 surface. Its colors, vivid often as the colors of the vegeta- 
 tion on its shores its Alpine barriers, and, again, the po- 
 tency with which it calls within its bosom the repetition of 
 these from the snow-crested Dent du Midi, fourteen miles 
 from its margin, to the Meillerie, superincumbent over its 
 margin one and other projected in their shadow, often far 
 more than half way athwart the lake ; the luxuriant swells, 
 westerly, which sometimes are massed together in guise of 
 mere vegetable nature ; while at other times, by change of 
 atmosphere, their immense folds are seen in distinct em- 
 bossment of numerous towns and villages, and the actual 
 zone of garden fertility between the foot of the Jura and the 
 water unfolds itself, with its villas, and farms, and woods, 
 and all the riches with which the industry of man can clothe 
 the earth's surface. In change of object the eye may dwell 
 on the animation of human life in the various boats some 
 borne by sail others, in utter calm, propelled by oars : and 
 in those island stretches of liquid surface, which appear as if 
 of heterogenous fluid, however mild, yet refusing to mingle 
 with all around it as though oil were diffused over an irre- 
 gular extent, and glistening through leagues in length and 
 breadth ; or as though these extended planes of repose 
 
72 VEVEY. 
 
 were living silver; in all that extent distinctest percep- 
 tion is had at twenty or thirty miles from the spectator of 
 the ripple in the long line of every boat's wake, when the 
 boat itself is but a black speck, with difficulty to be discov- . 
 ered from the path it has traced. 
 
 It is with especial perspicuity that, in an island of purest 
 quicksilver such as I have mentioned when it spreads 
 contiguous to the Jura, the evening shadow of that range is 
 beheld in exquisite repetition, at forty miles distance. No 
 drawing-room mirror can yield more satisfactory reflection 
 of an object in its proximity than the lake yields back, on 
 such occasions, of this far remote mountain. 
 
 The Meillerie line of mountain has long been given shall 
 I say ? to notoriety of fame. Us precipitous front, rising di- 
 rect from the lake's edge, runs along the water's margin for 
 ten or twelve miles its breast clothed with chesnut forest, 
 unless where the prominence of headlong steeps or beetling 
 crags preclude vegetation : its summits are broken into naked 
 peaks of beautiful raggedness. Towards the centre a vast 
 ravine breaks backward into the recesses of this desolation, 
 but penetrates not to the base whose unity of heavy line is 
 no where interrupted. Space is here and there found at its 
 base for a village and its precincts of garden enclosure. 
 And it is strange to view, across the expanse that separates 
 the spectator from the Savoy shore, the village smoke, large 
 in volume at certain hours of the day, but how puny in aspir- 
 ing into air ! some six score feet, as measured on the tre- 
 mendous wall of six thousand feet behind it. Another phe- 
 nomenon I have often remarked here is the range of clouds 
 thrown in scarf across the mountains, sometimes for twenty 
 miles of continuous length, from the inmost eastern recess 
 of the Creux du Valais to the utmost western flank of Meil- 
 lerie ; this scarf at times very low down, at others along 
 their mid-height or athwart their breast. I havo occasionally 
 marked two ranges of these strata of vapour, the circum- 
 
VEVEY. 73 
 
 stance which astonished me in their appearance being the 
 mathematical directness of the lines confining them. Some- 
 times breaks occur in their continuity, or the upper margin 
 is serrated into jaggedness ; but never is a single portion 
 detached above or beneath the mighty bound which invisibly 
 contains their ribband-like breadth. It is the aspiring of these 
 Alpine heights so many thousand feet beyond the daring of 
 our giant mole-hills of Britain, that gives a gauge to the at- 
 mosphere, and furnishes a scale on which the parallelism of 
 its strata is put into delineation and measurement ; while the 
 clouds but cap our stunted masses of mountain, or blot them 
 out altogether. 
 
 Not but that thickest cloud can wholly blot out at its will 
 the mightiest Alps from summit to base, and reveal them 
 too, in such fragments as its wrath or sport may please. It 
 is to one of these sublime forms, cloud and tempest-clothed 
 below, and clear above, that Goldsmith's simile alludes. I 
 can conceive it literally to refer to the Meillerie : 
 
 " As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
 Swells from beneath, and midway leaves the storm ; 
 Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
 Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 
 
 But it is especially strange that the otherwise stainless sim- 
 plicity of Goldsmith's idiomatic diction should have admitted 
 the collocation " eternal sunshine," after the artificial con- 
 struction of ancient language pardonable to other poets by 
 the score but so wide from his own pure practice, that the 
 departure can only be accounted for from his having been 
 bewrayed by the solemnity of the subject to which his simile 
 refers. His description simply contemplated the unclouded 
 shining of that luminary which is of eternal grandeur, and 
 aimed not at the eternal exemption from cloud of the moun- 
 tain's summit : he meant but to say, the shine of the eternal 
 sun. This his solitary sin of ambitious foreign ornament 
 
74 VEVEY. 
 
 betrayed him into an error that falsifies the truth of his pic- 
 ture, an error that is partially compensated by the noble 
 close it gives to the thought ; that close addressing itself 
 to superficial and not to just conception. 
 
 The simile of which I attempt the illustration just as at 
 this time it occurs to me has been always to me of especial 
 interest; a favorite one as it was with a father, of whom, 
 not speaking of accessaries of situation, it was in strong and 
 justest prototype. 
 
 The unvaried narrow line of road along the Meillerie base 
 presents but few temptations for expatiating in ramble along 
 that shore ; and the flatness of the strath, once part of the 
 lake's actual domain, and now its eastern boundary, being 
 the arena of that mighty amphitheatre, the Creux du Valais, 
 that is meadow in marsh, spangled, however, with groves of 
 fruit trees and finest timber this range is still less tempting, 
 unless I withdraw altogether from the lake's precincts. But 
 from Villeneuve round to Vevey is a tract of scenery com- 
 bining water, Alps in precipice and in ravine, forest, grove, 
 softer grass ground, mild little vale, busy village in one spot, 
 silence that speaks in another : there is every thing in the 
 half score miles along this shore, and back from it lo half 
 that extent, that can claim the poet's or the painter's eye, 
 or strike across his imagination. 
 
 Perhaps a little less rage of the sun might be desirable, 
 by whose scorching rays, in one of my excursions to Chil- 
 lon, on taking off my hat for half a minute to let the perspi- 
 ration pass, a blister was raised which went through as re- 
 gular a course as if it had been produced by cantharides 
 and took beyond a week to heal. 
 
 This Castle of Chillon was built by Peter of Savoy, a 
 Nimrod of the 13th century, who also built the castle, in one 
 remaining portion of which 1 am accommodated in the town 
 of Vevey. The Jorat mountains, a family of the Alps of 
 very peakisb display of precipice and pinnacle clothed in 
 
VEVEY. 75 
 
 chesnut, here rush headlong to the lake's verge, leaving no 
 other site for the fortress than a rock within the water's 
 range and almost below its level ; and of this rock advantage 
 is taken for the basement flooring and dungeon cellerage. 
 In an apartment thus deepest down, the prisoners were se- 
 cured to the stone pillars which range in its centre, by chains 
 that allowed to each the liberty to move round in contact with 
 his own pillar. 
 
 The view of the lake from hence is the very worst I have 
 seen ; and with all my partiality for Vevey, I must say that 
 Lausanne presents the best. Gradually as you go eastward 
 from this last station the lake suffers. I admit that from 
 Lausanne you have the Meillerie mountains greatly to the left; 
 but their majesty supports them still :* and in front is a lower 
 range of Savoy mountains, beyond that most noble breadth 
 of lake, which noble range and breadth of lake you lose 
 when Meillerie is abreast of your station. Then, west of 
 Lausanne, is an expanse of water, so vast as not to be sus- 
 ceptible of enlargement to the eye by all that it gains in 
 extent from removal to Vevey : this is matter of measure- 
 ment, not picture. At the eastern termination all is taken 
 in flank, and the liquid plane, onward to west, presents 
 no grandeur of range additional to that exhibited in the 
 same aspect by the enchanting immensity of waters at Lau- 
 sanne, at about three-fifths of its full length from its western 
 and almost sea-like shore. Worse than all this, athwart the 
 lake's whole length, the Jura mountains without any fore- 
 ground,- stand so erect, and are so distinctly seen, as to con- 
 trol the eye into belief of their not being at half their actual 
 distance : they thus degrade the dimensions of the lake ut- 
 terly beneath its natural dignity. 
 
 * I ought to have added, that even from Lausanne you have to the west of 
 the lake the Creux du Valais ; of which I fully admit the justness of the remark 
 I have since been favored with, that the view of Borrodale from Keswick of 
 course, in miniature dimensions bears a marked resemblance of features to it. 
 
76 VEVEY. 
 
 Montreux, cresting a steep brow, half a league westward 
 of Chillon, is precisely on that site and in that combination 
 of structures which, if it had been its founder's purpose to 
 create a picturesque village as an object in termination to 
 the lake, could not be surpassed. The interior of the place 
 is mean ; but its bridge over a yawning ravine of cliffs, with 
 the play of the mountain torrent among the vast fragments 
 of rock below is study for the painter quite endless. Then 
 its Church spire! The Church itself is steadied on a most 
 narrow ledge of several hundred feet in perpendicular face 
 the mountain upwards being a nearly inaccessible precipice 
 of several thousands. Just within its esplanade is planted 
 a poor-box, of which the inscription in stone exhibits a dig- 
 nity of demand not usually displayed in petition for alms. 
 The poetry, putting forth the conception which it is meant to 
 dovetail into honest connection, is not superabundantly clas- 
 sical : but I have copied the words on the score of the singu- 
 larity : 
 
 " Toi qui viens admirer nos rians paysagcs 
 
 En passant, jctte ici ta pitic ; 
 Et le Dicu dont la main dcssina ces rivagcs 
 Te benira des Cieux." 
 
 In rival church-yard English : 
 
 " Stranger, whose gaze our landscape's charms explores, 
 To want that pines even here, thy dole be given : 
 
 80 Ho who robed in grandeur these bright shores, 
 May deign thee blessings from his highest heaven." 
 
 Mendicancy is prohibited in Swisserland : this beggary 
 under sanction, as it were, here, proceeds from a versifying 
 parish clergyman, whose zeal in the muses' cause has incited 
 him to this I conceive breach of municipal law. The 
 trespass may claim forgiveness on the ground of its being 
 a first offence. Swiss versifiers arc now as rare us Swiss 
 poets neither one nor other intrusive, if they exist. 
 
VEVEY. 77 
 
 Nearer again to Vevey, is the ancient mansion of Chate- 
 lard, once the residence of the heroine of that most true 
 history, the New Heloise. Undoubting tradition declares this : 
 it even designates the death-bed apartment of Julia. The 
 castle is a square building, perched on the summit of a staring 
 hill, that has no covering save vineyard on all its sides, as 
 viewed from the lake side, from the vicinity of which it rises. 
 The house therefore looks as if placed there to scorch and 
 calcine under the blazing sun, and, as if sensible to its own 
 pain of burning, to protrude itself for complaint or sympathy 
 on the beholder's eye. Yet when, by an avenue which winds 
 round the cliffs base, the eminence is gained, you have not 
 merely in front one of the noblest views possible of the lake, 
 but in flank you overhang a precipitously steep valley, through 
 which runs, and often maddens, the river Clarens. The 
 back view is over a sweetly undulating surface, rich in wood 
 and even in turf, as well as vines. Closely impending are 
 the pine forests and precipitous pastures of the ragged Jo- 
 rat. It is widespread sylvan scenery, bursting as if from 
 magic's instant creation. 
 
 Nearer the Jorat's feet is another noble site, occupied by 
 the castled mansion, through 700 years, of the family of 
 Bloney, by whom it was founded. Such prospects as it 
 commands, far and wide to the horizon's round ! And such 
 home landscape in endless variety of glen, and hanging 
 wood, with such luxuriance of multiplied stream ! Yet all 
 these accompaniments are to be had also at a mile thence 
 in appanage to the modern chateau and its extensive English 
 grounds of Hanteville. From a Rotunda which crowns a 
 knoll here, is commanded perhaps the loveliest scenery in 
 creation. Each one of the six views that are obtained by 
 the framing in of any couple of the columns of this little 
 temple, successively as the spectator turns round, is a pic- 
 ture distinct from every other : and all are, in loveliness as 
 in grandeur, matchless. 
 
78 VEVEY. 
 
 From this spot a grace is imparted to the lake which it 
 often wants ; I mean a fore-ground in sport as of a mantle 
 upborne on the air in every gracefulness of multiplied fall 
 and fold. The lake of Geneva has two great wants : want 
 of islands, and want of a boldly indented coast. But it re- 
 sults from this absence of all break on its surface, and from 
 its outline running thus every where in the large, that it is 
 able to expand an extension which imitates ocean grandeur. 
 Such grandeur is unmanageable in landscape : and the pre- 
 cipices that beetle over its waters in vast range line, serve 
 as little for stations to put it by parts into picture, as do the 
 more receding mountains from which it is thrown rather into 
 map. Want of break, or almost of undulation, in the glacis 
 in which its milder shores too usually slope onward, shews the 
 whole lake there, ever in presence, and ever in sameness of 
 dimensions. But of Hauteville the vicinity, rather than the 
 contiguity, is so happy ; it has such bold hill and knoll, and 
 soft descent of ground, and abrupt dip ; of that diversified 
 surface much of the vesture is the velvet green, which the 
 Swiss course of from three to five annual mowings gives to 
 meadow : there is such richness of wood and in tuft ; such 
 variety and such plenty of material, or I would call it ma- 
 chinery of all kinds, as to subjugate this vast plane of 
 water to every form caprice can ask ; to disunite it from its 
 accompaniments, and to combine them ; to break its outline ; 
 to give any one portion of it into partial view ; to diffuse it 
 in fullest exposure, or blot it out wholly from the sight : and 
 all in any two or three hundred yards' movement through this 
 garden paradise. 
 
SECTION IV. 
 
 October. It is time to turn to the moral world ; in transi* 
 tion to which I must notice the mingled illusion and delusion 
 which Goldsmith has shed on the theme of Swisserland. If 
 storm be found here, there is also long continuance of genial 
 serenity : if there is mountain, there is very much soil 
 that is not churlish : the hills afford abundant food, to say 
 nothing of vines : and though snow rests on the mountains 
 through the summer, melons, and peaches in more plenty 
 than apples in his native Roscommon, ripen in the gardens 
 and orchards in open air on the slopes beneath. What time 
 all this blooms I know not : but I know that two crops of 
 hay had been cut and harvested in July ; and at this present 
 writing, I feel comfortably warm without idea of fuel, and 
 with my window broad open ; and the trees shew so little 
 symptom of dropping their leaves, that a noble lime-tree 
 contiguous to it, continues to hide from me too much of the 
 landscape. Meteors I have not seen ; but a sky more in- 
 tensely blue than for these several weeks past, with little in- 
 terruption, I have witnessed, I cannot expect even Italy shall 
 shew. As to the peasant's little lot being here the lot of all, 
 it is mis-statement as utter as is his description of his ha- 
 bitationif that be not also miserable mis-nomer: a hut 
 exists not in Swisserland : even as a dwelling, cottage exists 
 not. The dairy-man's house includes space for his cows on 
 the ground-floor ; its garret is spacious enough to store the 
 winter's provision of hay-s the rest of the house accommo- 
 dates his family. The agriculturist, besides all this, has 
 room for his corn crop, not an atom of which is ever stacked 
 
80 VEVEY. 
 
 out of doors. Those who cannot afford a house to themselves 
 club with others to obtain and occupy one : but hut or shed 
 or cabin in Swisserland, I have not seen one. Then Gold- 
 smith makes the countryman's employment to be hunting 
 and fishing, fully as much as driving his plough at venture 
 of his neck. Lakes are numerous here assuredly ; but fish- 
 ing would be piteous wasje of time to a people devoted to 
 their cattle on the mountains, where fish are never ; or so de- 
 voted to their agriculture below, that their country is one 
 great garden, and of course gives not covert for game, or 
 amusement to the hunter : whoever hunts must go for his 
 prey to the highest Alps, and out of the reach of man's ac- 
 customed or possible habitation. The line 
 
 et No product here the barren hills afford," 
 is as foolishly unjust as that succeeding it, 
 
 " But man and steel, the soldier and his sword," 
 
 is cruel burlesque on the Swiss character. In short, Gold- 
 smith's description of this country is got up exclusively for 
 the picturesque ; and I shrewdly suspect his knowledge of it 
 was obtained by peregrination made within the season of 
 winter.* 
 
 * The justness of this conjecture I have since been able to verify : the life of 
 Goldsmith prefixed to the London edition of bis Works, in 4 vols. 8vo. 1801. sup- 
 plies (he data. His entire course of perigrinntion was nbout one year : his nirival 
 in London was in 1750, and in January : the commencement of his tour, from 
 Leyden, was of counrse the mid-winter preceding ; nnd hi* knowledge of Switzer- 
 land is distinctly stated to have been obtained before he passed into Italy, where Ite 
 was for six months in the single town of Padun : time also must be given for his 
 expatiation over other pnrts of Italy, ns well its for his course in return ncross 
 France together not so little in possibility ns two, and probably exceeding three 
 month more. It follows that he left Swi.sserlaml in April, if not in Murch ; no 
 power of calculation can bring down bis knowledge to a practical one of the effects 
 of Winter lingering in the lap of Mny: these be could hnve known but by poetical 
 anticipation. lie left Swisserland, it is clear, the Instant the roads were practicable. 
 And his whole description of it smells of an Alpine winter, or rntber a Greenland 
 one, not to be supplanted by Summer's luxuriance, or by Autumn'* prodlgnllly of 
 bounty. 
 
VEVEY. 81 
 
 1 turn to the conversations, in their result, for which my 
 residence here gives opportunity on subjects of national in- 
 stitution or usage. The education of the Vevey females of 
 genteel family is excellent : geography, history, eloquence, 
 belles lettres ; so it is detailed to me, and not as of rote. 
 Of languages they are required to study their own, the 
 French, scientifically; and to learn German, some English, 
 and perhaps some Italian : music also and drawing. Indis- 
 pensible is held for them a course of religious instruction : 
 and a range of general reading is established for their study, 
 comparatively more deep and extensive than for the men 
 which it may easily be, so that they are substantially- in- 
 structed. 
 
 The course of religious instruction for young ladies is of 
 two years, as it is for young men also. This duty is allotted 
 to one Clergyman in the town as his exclusive charge, 
 with a full and regular stipend ftom the Government for its 
 peculiar performance. A gratuity, suitable to the circum- 
 stances of the instructed, follows its completion : but this is 
 wholly optional, and matter of complimentary civility. My 
 informant paid for her son, four Louis. 
 
 For the young women who have not fortunes, and are not 
 early married, a constant opening offers as governesses, 
 principally in Holland : that country also absorbs a number 
 of respectable and valuable females of a lower order, as nur- 
 sery maids of the best description. Each year a company or 
 two proceeds, in voiture, for these destinations. The morals 
 of these young persons, their propriety of manner, and other 
 qualifications results of a well cared-for education are 
 oftentimes so highly estimated, that many of them return to 
 their country with the provision of a handsome life-annuity 
 from the families in which they have lived, so very many, 
 that the obtaining of it is an object of calculation : in every 
 view, as well to employers as employed, it is of beneficial 
 consequence. 
 
 G 
 
82 VEVEY. 
 
 The young men quit their country on similar speculation 
 not so much as formerly with a view to England ; but, as far 
 as opportunities afford, with purpose of a similar kind, and 
 similar eventual provision. 
 
 Swisserland, though nominally one nation, is in reality a 
 confederation of various distinct countries; the nature of its 
 union, is like that of a bundle of sticks, loosely tied, and with 
 slender twine : even that poor band rather goes round than 
 draws close ; and the faggots, thus congregated, are not 
 merely of quite different lengths and thicknesses, but of dif- 
 ferent species of timber. Each member meddles only with 
 i f s own affairs : none knows or cares for those of any other : 
 beyond this, each views every other with the prejudice of 
 home against a stranger. To say nothing of the three divi- 
 sions in matter of language the German, the French, and 
 the Italian it is of more immediate, yet natural and human, 
 import to state, that the Germans dislike and are disliked 
 by all their neighbours ; that the Bernese contemn the 
 Vaudois, their former vassals ; and that these latter in 
 wilful pride, or in that ignorance which each canton dis- 
 plays as to the concerns of every other, are ever prompt to 
 deny to the Valaisans the designation of Swiss. 
 
 Besides the mischiefs done to Swisserland in common 
 with the water-drinking places of England generally, there 
 is inflicted on this country a farther one, from its being a 
 poorer nation. Any thing other than golden opinions is pur- 
 chased by Englishmen here, by the large outlay of English 
 money. With the contempt for the pigeon that is plucked, 
 is associated the abhorrence resenting that English pride 
 which to foreigners on their own ground I speak not of ex- 
 ceptions is overpowering to indecency. With these two 
 special ingredients in influence, and with the whole system 
 at work of exaction common to places of fashionable resort, 
 the organized frauds of the innkeepers and iheir swarm of 
 rctainers,the deceptions and brutalities of the voituriers who 
 
VEVEY. 83 
 
 are here a drunken and mulish fraternity and the tricks 
 and wilfulness of guides ; a course through Svvisserland is a 
 thorough abomination to the sentimentalist. Of consequence, 
 Swiss demoralization is a constant theme of eloquence with 
 our disappointed countrymen. 
 
 The mischiefs, resulting from this origin, are not confined 
 to the traveller from inn to inn, or to the resident for the sea- 
 son. The native inhabitants feel largely a rise of prices 
 consequent on the numbers and ultra-wealth of strangers. 
 
 And whither go the twenties and fifties of thousands, which 
 the English spend annually in however most various shape 
 in Swisserland ? In the northern towns, and places on the 
 great road, where the expenditure is mainly confined to the 
 inns, it ever creates a large demand for the commodities of 
 the gardener, the grazier, the cultivator of the soil, if for 
 no other purpose than provender of the draft horses em- 
 ployed in post on the road. Within each town are the coach 
 and the harness-makers and a set of crafts men, need less to 
 do more than hint at. Much as is all this, it is as nothing to 
 the new face of things in towns of resort for English modish 
 residence. With all this increased activity and accele- 
 rated circulation of money, no permanent wealth accrues to 
 any other class than that of innkeepers, who are so gorged 
 with custom and profit, as to become wealthy in their own 
 despite. To almost all beside applies that law of all water- 
 ing places, which dissipates the wealth it draws together 
 often with a doubtful honesty. Luxury has in all these 
 towns, and among the Swiss too generally, struck a deep 
 and baleful root. A taste for expense has been every where 
 excited. The gardener without town, and the gardener's 
 daughter, enjoy luxuries and spend money in wearables, of a 
 description quite other than heretofore was in their usage. 
 In town, servants' wages, at call of the same new wants, 
 are nearly double what they were eight years ago. The 
 mischief runs upward in every link of detail : and a residence 
 
84 VEVEY. 
 
 on the lake of Geneva, with any thing of English comforts, 
 is now more expensive than in many districts of England. 
 What, to the Swiss, is far worse than all this, is the appe- 
 tite confirmed to them for luxuries, and the habit of expense. 
 Should the present resort of English fail them through change 
 of fashion, or be forbidden by political changes, their poverty 
 and sufferings under such an abdication must be miserable 
 perhaps despicable. 
 
 Of the tracts of Swisserland not frequented by the English, 
 1 know that the manners are abundantly simple still : and, 
 doubtless, much simplicity and moral propriety remains 
 among a large portion of the Swiss generally. But, for 
 Arcadian feeling, for inborn generous sentiments cherished 
 into practical effects, or for exterior polish, a man must 
 travel elsewhere. If this people be not vicious in manner, 
 they are almost as repulsive as though they were. They 
 have not bad intention to you : rather they lack for you in- 
 tention altogether. They have no bent that can carry them 
 beyond transacting with ordinary care, and in a coarse way, 
 the affairs of jog-trot life. In their dealings within that dull 
 round they are plain and honest : and in their domestic du- 
 ties, and the attachments of kindred, they are, questionless, 
 exemplary. 
 
 I believe the Swiss to be largely imbued with the domestic 
 virtues, and to enjoy their blessings, as intensely as human 
 nature can, or human creatures anywhere do. Being thus the 
 home of family affections, this country must be a country of 
 happiness. Superadded to all this, the Swiss area religious 
 people whether Catholic or Protestant; not with a propen- 
 sity to put religion into parade, but treating it as a matter 
 strictly influential on conduct a something for best home 
 use ; home-bred, perhaps, and plain in appearance, indeed 
 rather scouting appearance, and having nothing to do with 
 taste ; matter, shall I say again of within-doors, and even 
 kitchen utility. 
 
VE'VEY. 80 
 
 Given up thus to the indulgence of their home-bred pro- 
 pensities, the Swiss have little to do with strangers : and if 
 strangers are not much taken with them, no pact on their 
 part is broken : they had much rather be let alone. Cer- 
 tainly, of the stranger's share of the kernel within their re- 
 pelling husk little can be said in praise. As society for 
 persons of intellect and enlarged knowledge, they are not to 
 be thought of. No general topic of paramount dignity 
 awakes in them interest: local trifles alone can stir into poor 
 dimple the surface of their sympathies : they are of course 
 I now speak in wholesale a people in humdrum. 
 
 One characteristic of the Swiss is specially offensive to 
 foreigners. Since the days of William Tell, so to speak, they 
 have ceased substantially to have a history. They have not 
 had events, nor men to create them, nor a desire for one or 
 other. They have, in all the centuries since, remained in a tor- 
 por of human passions, in dead eddy, close by and quite out 
 of the torrent and dread turmoil which has, with reason or 
 without it, embroiled all Europe else. I say they have re- 
 mained in torpor of the passions ; for without embroiling 
 themselves in wars on their own score, they regiment them- 
 selves on a national scale, and under their national cog- 
 nizance to fight the battles of others, and spill their blood 
 in quarrels of whose merits they know and can care nothing. 
 They have not sympathy therefore with any one member of 
 the grand European family, since what does not come home 
 to their actual touch, it is not in their mental tejnperament to 
 study ; melancholy proof of this abeyance of manly feeling 
 for the fortunes of man, when- printing and the post-office put 
 under each man's eye what his fellow-creature is doing on 
 whatever part of earth's surface, proof and punishment at 
 once it is, of the desuetude of thought that has lapsed into 
 decrepitude as the measure of mind here ; that their igno- 
 rance has prepared and perfected their nation's subjugation. 
 They knew nothing and would care nothing ever of th& 
 
86 VEVEY. 
 
 wars between England and France ; of the competitions 
 between France and its neighbour Continental States ; of 
 the contests of those States among each other. Of Italy they 
 would know but as their trading concerns forced on them 
 facts ; of Spain nothing whatever. Washington is a name 
 nnpronounced among the descendants of William Tell. Yet 
 in what poetry of politics do I not remember these Swiss to 
 have been robed ! At the outset of the Revolutionary War, 
 this land of Republican virtues was, by prophetic strain, 
 hailed as proof against possible irruption of calamity, and as 
 mediatrix, through compassion for the miseries that con- 
 vulsed the world beside, to conciliate universal peace.* And 
 what was the fact ? This people became, after a puny and 
 inglorious skirmish of a few weeks, thrall to France, and 
 its land-proprietors and merchants were squeezed into po- 
 verty by unresisted, sorest French exaction. Its land of 
 mountains and defiles was degraded into the battle-field of 
 French, and Austrian, and Russian grand armies : in one 
 campaign, Massena, of detestable fume from Genoa and 
 Portugal and Suwarrow, of truculent notoriety from Ismail, 
 were the leaders pitted against each other in ravage through 
 this neutral and neutralized country ! And now, that these 
 things are gone by, their national diets, and thence, their 
 cantonal directories and councils of village communes are 
 mere register-offices for the mandates of the Czar, distinctly 
 understood to be such, and to admit of neither qualification 
 
 Since my return 1 am able to refer to the passage in the pamphlet of 
 Jasper Wilson, (the late Dr. Currie,) which I cannot but quote, page 64 : 
 Men of Swiserland, how I reipect you ! While the hurricane of human pas- 
 sion* sweeps over France, Italy, and Germany, elevated on your lofty moun- 
 tains, you are above the region of the storm. Secure in your native sense, 
 your sincere patriotism, your simple governments, your invincible valour, your 
 eternal hills you can look down on the follies and the crime* which desolate 
 Europe with calamity, and with pity anticipate the happy rcra when you per- 
 hap may mediate universal peace. Sea-girt Britain might have enjoyed thi* 
 situation" ! ! ! 
 
VEVEY. 87 
 
 nor protest : bitter retribution for having suffered the high 
 endowments of man's nature to merge into stupid appetite 
 and mean care of man's ordinary and coarsest wants. 
 
 The subjugation of the Swiss being palpable to themselves, 
 inasmuch as it is brought to the evidence of their bodily 
 senses, their political duties derive thence great simplifica- 
 tion : for, with implicit submission for their guidance, they 
 can now indulge in their cherished apathy. Yet will these 
 boasters declare all the while, with book-talk, that they are the 
 only free nation in the world, since they only among nations 
 have no King. These vain-glorious declaimers sink, or speak 
 not of America: they but recite a chatter that dates beyond 
 Columbus, and in the same set phrase, unaltered in one sylr 
 lable by his discoveries. Not one of them will hesitate 
 to admit that whatever the Imperial Minister demands must 
 be put into immediate enactment, and become of force 
 through all the parishes of Swisserland. Their Imperial 
 masters, they will say, are Imperial monsters. Be it so. 
 But can the epithet of tyrant be more odious than that of 
 vassal is despicable ? 
 
 There are departments of legislation in which the Swiss 
 luxuriate, unrestrained by foreign authority. For instance, 
 besides an assize price for bread, which they enjoy in com- 
 mon with the subjects of certain kingdoms, they have an 
 assize also for butchers' meat in order, as they boast, that 
 grazier and butcher may be restrained from mutual injustice 
 in their bargains, and that the public may be put into similar 
 equity of standard exactness. Of course the butchers' cus- 
 tomer has no choice of the nicer or coarser parts of the car- 
 case : he must take the portion he wants as it comes, in the 
 hope that if he has bone to-day, he may have meat to-mor- 
 row. Besides this, the number of persons allowed to ex- 
 ercise the trade of butcher in a district is strictly limited. 
 And for the benefit of the traveller, the number of inns is 
 rigidly restricted ; not as with us, by license for this or the 
 
88 VEVEV. 
 
 other house within a set number but to certain houses in 
 a town, and none else, possessing that privilege. No inn- 
 keeper can transfer to another house, or to a house built for 
 the express purpose of an inn on a new site, the privilege of 
 his primary station. To give a farther instance, an inn- 
 keeper, removing from one inn to another, is not permitted 
 to hold both on his own account, or, by shutting up his for- 
 mer house, to preclude competition. 
 
 Again, among scores of strait-waistcoat guards against 
 any and every man's going wrong in his own private affairs, 
 the exact day of the commencement of the vintage is desig- 
 nated by the government ; which punishes as a heinous of- 
 fence, the previous exposure of grapes in market, or their 
 sale in private : this to protect the interests of landlord and 
 tenant, between whom, by the usual tenure of land, the 
 crops are divided in moiety to each. Should it be pleaded 
 that the landlord had given his consent, as well he often 
 might for his personal profit, to an early sale, his will avails 
 nothing in this land of liberty. As little avails it that the 
 landlord occupies his own ground, or that the grapes, grown 
 on a wall, are over-ripe five weeks before the day arrives for 
 their being convertible into money : so much the worse for 
 the owners and as in American- English it would be ex- 
 pressed for intending purchasers. Wholesale wisdom rates 
 exceptions of all kinds, as wilfully non-conforming and 
 punishable follies. Besides, the sovereign legislature has in 
 view the enforcement of one general occupation of hands in 
 one mightily busy week,in order that each farmer's family-force 
 being employed in his own ground, and the whole population 
 a-field in mass, none may with impunity intrude to glean 
 along the verge, or pilfer farther within the precincts of his 
 neighbour's vine-ground. 
 
 Theny if the crops have not turned out very productive, 
 restraint is put on expense in the matter of public recreation. 
 An elephant which has been travelling this season for exhi- 
 
VEVEY. 89 
 
 bition, was denied hospitality by the municipality of Vevey, 
 and ordered forthwith to begone not because he was under 
 ban of the Russian emperor, but for the distinctly expressed 
 reason I have stated. The six francs levied on strangers 
 as fee indispensible for sufferance to them to remain beyond 
 four days in the district, was spurned at in comparison of 
 the mischiefs his stay might induce. Even in ordinary times 
 and as matter of standing law, no family is allowed to give 
 a little dance in its own household circle, without special 
 licence for that purpose had and obtained. And nothing in 
 that licence expressed extends, or will be construed to ex- 
 tend, to the prolongation of this amusement in one's own 
 drawing room, and in the quietest way, after the hour of 
 
 midnight at latest. And in the case of Madame 
 
 having collected for an evening's enjoyment a dozen .young, 
 among elder persons, if one of the latter, fond of the violin? 
 should begin to scrape, and the younger persons spring up 
 impromptu to foot it a little together, my poor friend must 
 stand forth to stop the frolic, as under ban of legal conse- 
 quences or let them have their way and, next day, be call- 
 ed on, as without fail she will, by the police officers, (how 
 their ears are thus ever on the alert I know not, unless they 
 have a share in the profits,) for the fine of half-a-crown 
 money, as she justly says but nothing in comparison of the 
 annoyance involving a sort of disgrace, of a bailiff's Visit. 
 
 One other legal proviso I must not forget, for family com- 
 fort. In contracts between servant and master, it is in vain 
 that the latter shall stipulate, and that the other shall be 
 thereto specially consenting, that misconduct on the servant's 
 part shall be justification to his master for an immediate 
 termination of the connexion. The law here says, that all 
 such contracts are null in themselves, and that the ser- 
 vant, under whatever circumstances of mal-practice, shall 
 receive his fall quarter's stipend. 
 
 Our English grumblers against the tyranny consequent on 
 
90 VEVEY. 
 
 their own poor laws, will Lere receive a practical rebuke 
 from the law of local settlement, which is so jealous, that 
 an English gentleman and his wife, after a summer's 
 residence, and on the eve of a six week's excursion 
 into the northern parts of Italy were compelled to lodge, 
 as caution-money that they should not leave in definitive 
 abandonment their three little children and nursery-maid, or, 
 in the event of such abandonment, should have secured to 
 the municipality a provision for the future wants of the 
 infants as paupers, the sum in cash of one hundred Louis. 
 The lodgment of this money, under these precise circum- 
 stances, has been just now made under my personal 
 knowledge: all this in vigilant severity of poor-law enact- 
 ment. And all these things taken together amount to 
 neither more nor less than slavery not the less such, that it 
 is vassalage to dead unmeaning letter of statute-law : a 
 strange display it is of prank and freak of legislation let to 
 run random-mad, and worshipped in its madness and mis- 
 chief by this most grave people. 
 
 These sage cantonal communities would almost make 
 one a believer in Tom Paine. But the temperament of this 
 people, or rather their want of it, explains their institutions. 
 Add to this the due supply of home-wants, and the satisfied 
 feeling of competence that is diffused through all classes, 
 and gives to all an interest in the preservation of the existing 
 quiet: hence, every tendency to restlessness is smothered, 
 if any son of restlessness should, for bad or for good like 
 the blithe wight who found his way into the Castle of In- 
 dolence make chance-entry into this home of the dullest 
 virtues. 
 
 Add another great cause effect and cause mutually the 
 education, compulsorily enforced, of all classes, from the 
 very poorest upwards. It is surely not so much the reading 
 and writing and arithmetic, learned by the poor at these 
 schools truly valuable acquisitions though these are as the 
 
VliVEY. 91 
 
 moral discipline inculcated in the process of their acquire- 
 ment, that constitutes the main utility of this education. 
 The moral lessons thus taught and the habits acquired during 
 several years' training, are efficient for life. The man up- 
 holds for his own control the restraints first imposed for the 
 comfort and welfare of the child. And the universality of 
 the discipline is the establishment of propriety, sobriety and 
 morals, co-extensive with the State's population, Combine 
 with this, as they ought ever to be combined, the lessons of 
 religion : and then, with all man's proneness to depravity, 
 what a basis is there not laid for a whole nation's prosperity, 
 and the pursuit of man's loftiest destinies ! Would that in my 
 own country, the peasantry were not forbidden the portal 
 of moral instruction, as conjoined with school training, by 
 one portion of the class who assume to be its spiritual 
 Pastors.* Irishmen ought, even in national rivalry, to 
 
 * But see the petition of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland to the 
 House of Commons, of the 9th of March, 182-4: diffuse in its averments 
 and explanations certainly, but bringing forward one novelty under their 
 voucher of its truth. " The, literary and religious instruction of youth are 
 " universally combined, and no system of Education which separates them can 
 " be acceptable to the members of that communion.'''' \V hat a wall of separa- 
 tion between that communion and us their fellow-subjects, as unfit for their con- 
 tact ! But let two things be observed ; first, that the ' universal combination" is 
 in absolute non-observance wherever children of Roman Catholics, able to pay 
 their way, are sent to school in ordinary course ; and secondly, that the poor 
 and the peasantry of that communion in Ireland have been, up to now, educated 
 in Irish fashion, by halves. Their literary instruction has been left altogether to 
 themselves : they were not taught to read : when they did contrive to 
 learn it, they were left, without any check, to batten on such books as the Ad- 
 ventures of a Highwayman, and the Biography of a Prostitute. On the other 
 hand, their religious instruction was so sedulously cared for that, with the sole 
 exception of Spain, the Irish poor are the mostbesottedly bigotted people that 
 can claim to have to do with the Christian faith. Their intellects were left to 
 ripen or to go to seed as they might : their morals were abandoned to corrup- 
 tion : but their religion, that ought to have leavened the lump, was of orthodox 
 effeteness, of ritual observance, and of unqualified vassalage to their spiritual 
 masters. This made bounteous amends for all beside. 
 
 One Roman Catholic Bishop, Kildare and Leighlin, fusing chronology 
 and facts in declamation that is half wish-wash, half gall, gives us quite an op- 
 posite view of the matter ; and protects his averments by quoting the practice 
 
92 VEVEY. 
 
 establish at home the training which has given to Scotland 
 its highest dignity. And Swisserland, like Scotland only 
 still more universally, and with a still more strictly combined 
 system of religious with moral training derives from these 
 best sources whatever makes the Swiss name estimable. 
 But that it stands redeemed by this institution, Swisserland 
 would be a nation mean beneath mental as well as moral 
 vileness. 
 
 In matters of literature there may be some resemblance 
 nationally between the Scots and Swiss a mouthful to 
 every one, a bellyful to few. But I do not any where here 
 meet the self-sufficient and disputatious spirit of which our 
 northern brethren stand accused. Like all other matters of 
 property, what the Swiss possess in this way they keep for 
 their own purposes. 
 
 In another point of comparison, there is here small symp- 
 tom of that ambition, which carries forward Scotsmen to the 
 front stations in the foremost walks of life. Both nations 
 send out their emigrants but with very different aims. 
 One reason for this, doubtless, is the right of primogeniture 
 in inheritance among the Scotish aristocracy* whereas in 
 Swisserland, the parent's property must descend in gavel. 
 But the main cause for the Scotsman's aspiring restlessness 
 I take to be, his being accustomed from infancy to con- 
 eider society under gradations from the lowest, perhaps his 
 own to the supreme ; and to see the highest stations 
 filled by men born to the meanest fortunes : in Swisser- 
 
 of a predecessor Bishop, who " in his hed of mud instructed youth mth kit 
 " own tongue^ and ohared with them the criut which he had first watered with 
 *' his tear*." Boarding-school institution this of course 1 and not larnry ex- 
 tended to the peasantry. And this Mray precedent doe* away the (act that 
 Mirh Dublin booksellers existed within the last thirty years u Cross, Wilkin- 
 son and Fleming : it disproves the circulation by any sucn booksellers, na 
 main part of their trade by the agency of pedlars, and on the itand of every 
 possible country fair of the sets oftrtctt, of 3 doren in the infamous catalogue, 
 some of which are particularised by name in the Captain Rock of Mr. Thotnan 
 Moore which last gttttfonan of course ,J.K.L. clearly substantiates t< be in thi- 
 itutanc* a defamer ! 
 
VEVEY. 93 
 
 land, there is no field for ambition : all is the level of a 
 nation of farmers ; and the Country Justice who makes the 
 greatest figure here, would be sorely annoyed when drawn 
 away from his family pursuits, had he not a stipend of fifty 
 or sometimes a hundred pounds per annum, in compensation 
 for his trouble. Their army is a mere yeomanry corps : 
 and their bar-practitioners are like our village lawyers 
 with the farther clipping of wing to keep them to their own 
 dung-hill ; each bar being limited to its own cantonal 
 jurisdiction, in disconnexion with every other of the 
 twenty-two. Their National Diet the only thing national 
 they have is a conversazione with closed doors, of staid 
 country gentlemen ; each set of whom proposes to the rest 
 of the company what it may think worth suggesting for its 
 own interest ; and no decision, however peremptory, of 
 this company can bind any dissentient member. Of 
 course, when the purpose of no man, or set of men rather 
 in bare proxy of their state can be compromised, no man's 
 ambition can be excited. It is what the North American 
 Indians call a talk, that is held; and the talk concluded, the 
 company disperses. 
 
 I have looked through the school course that is prepa- 
 ratory for the Academy, or as we would call it, University 
 of Lausanne. It is a very mean one, confined from begin- 
 ning to end, to excerpts in the manner of our books called 
 Selectae. No author is read in the entire, nor of any author 
 more than a trifling portion. Greek is all but in name ne- 
 glected ; substantially it is unstudied. At Lausanne, a seven 
 year's course is indispensable for the bar, and one of nine 
 years for the church. What the precise subjects of study, 
 or the text books used in these courses may be, I have 
 failed in my endeavours to learn : the only distinct informa- 
 tion I have gained is, that the preliminary basis of learning- 
 is little, if at all enlarged or confirmed there, and that the 
 substance of the lectures delivered is regulated by the ex- 
 
94 VEVEV. 
 
 teraporaneous pleasure of the professors. I am sure I have 
 felt annoyance, as though it were my own affair, at seeing 
 that inborn enthusiasm which ever displays itself where 
 knowledge unrols her page to the youthful student when 
 I have witnessed the aspirings of some of my young Vaudois 
 friends, who would 
 
 " O'er Bodley's dome their future labours spread" 
 
 which must, after a few years of luxuriant shooting, be 
 powdered by mildew of a lazy air, in ascent to manhood's 
 development, as surely as trees of however healthful tem- 
 perament, and in whatever kindliness of soil, perish from 
 marine atmosphere and storms. 
 
 It is so regulated here, that the masters and assistants in 
 the schools, from highest to lowest description, receive 
 as the main part of their emoluments a public stipend, 
 and are dependant on their pupils for so very moderate 
 a payment, as can scarcely make any increase or diminution 
 in their numbers an object to them. But it is to be recol- 
 lected, that of these pupils each according to circumstances 
 of life, and including all classes of it, the attendance is com- 
 pulsory on the parents ; to whom in return the expense of 
 their children's instruction is a mere nothing. Modes of 
 expense can alone explain whether the stipends, thus paid, 
 are a competency to the parties or not. The advertised 
 stipend for the village school of Tour du Peil, near Vevey, 
 is 400 francs per annum, (about 16.) with house, vine- 
 ground, and two gardens. In the principal school of Vevey 
 an assistant has 50 louis, the second master 100 ; and, I 
 think, double that sum to the Principal. Each has, besides 
 this direct endowment, various sources of emolument: for 
 instance, the Principal gives private courses, and has a 
 boarding establishment. 
 
 Of the Clergy, a suffragan has for the first two years, 
 during which it id indispensable that he should fill that sub- 
 
VEVEY. 95 
 
 ordinate station, 750 francs, viz. 30 pefr annum. A 
 Clergyman placed has 1800 francs, or 72. per annum 
 which stipend receives at triennial intervals, or thereabouts, 
 a progressive increase, until it reaches the maximum of 3,000 
 francs, or 120. per annum. With such an endowment, the 
 Clergyman may be relegated to a mountain seclusion, away 
 from all human intercourse, except the neighbouring peasants, 
 and at a toilsome distance from any thing in the shape of town. 
 In towns, the Clergyman has various means of consulting 
 his comforts, and enlarging his income. I believe no body 
 of Clergy any where to be more exemplary, and surely 
 there is none more respected than that of Swisserland. 
 
 1 6th of October. I grow each day more into rapture 
 with the climate and scenery of this country. The real 
 Swiss season for these matters seems to be but commencing : 
 the oven-like heat is gone by ; the breadths of shadow are 
 increasedly majestic ; the air is tense and clear, and the sun 
 still so surpassingly bright, that no brilliancy of effect has in 
 the least degree suffered, while new and remarkable ones 
 are called out. For these five days past, of which part has 
 been very fine and part stormy, the surface of the Meillerie 
 and Dent du Midi mountains, has exhibited a soft aerial 
 veil, to which my eye has ever till now been a stranger. 
 The hue is that of the plumb, rich, full, deep, decided ; but it 
 is of a brilliant glow, which extracts from the mountains all 
 their materiality, and gives to their extension the ap- 
 pearance of color spread athwart the sky. This effect is 
 heightened by the contrast, wherever white clouds spread in 
 wreathe over detached portions of the general surface. How 
 it is produced, or what share in producing it falls to the 
 season, I know not ; and admiration of the novelty stifles 
 any desire to speculate. Observer as I have been from in- 
 fancy, and worshipper, of mountain coloring in all its diver- 
 sities and combinations of tint and hue, I see here, for the first 
 time, substantive color, and surface of mountain in the ab- 
 
96 VEVEY. 
 
 sence of mountain matter ; as though the grain of the 
 material substance were expressed thence were put into 
 absorption, or absolute solution mountain spiritualized, 
 yet object of gaze, in astonishment almost to distrust of the 
 senses. 
 
 29th of October. The moon nearly full ; and the moun- 
 tain ranges shewed, under her influence as though it were 
 day in the same aerial brilliancy, supplanting their ma- 
 teriality. A haze in one tract injured the effect, as did also 
 a touch of frost, setting in with the advancing night. 
 I infer that this mellowness of hue owes its perfec- 
 tion to a sky equally remote from either extreme 
 of weather rich light, whether of sun or moon co- 
 operating. 
 
 Besides due temperature of atmosphere, the intensely blue 
 sky of this climate is indispensible. That intensity of azure 
 throws the magic mountain robing into absolute relief from 
 the grand canvas, and specially where the monntain out- 
 lines are traceable in their minutest irregularities on the 
 sky cutting it, as the sublime Blackmore might have said, 
 into indenture. The phrase is as mean as the statement it 
 involves of fact if facts can be associated with surface so 
 etherial is untrue: this wonderous shew of mountain 
 form, void of substance, springs buoyantly forth from the 
 blue vault, instead of being delineated on it ; not blotting 
 out that part of heaven to whose summit dome it claims to 
 aspire ; an essence rival to the empyrean, uncmbodied as 
 itself. 
 
 The town begins to fill . During the summer months the 
 affluent householders of Vevey repair to the mansions on 
 their estates in its vicinity, for the purpose of superintending 
 their cultivation and crops. This fact bespeaks competence to 
 luxury ; for the villas in all the contiguous district are numer- 
 ous, even to crowdedncss; their construction substantial, 
 and their condition of absolute family comfortableness. 
 
97 
 
 Within the town which counts 430 numbered houses, 
 exclusive of the suburbs are some very spacious mansions ; 
 their fronts and wings suitable to property among us of 
 many thousands per annum. Of one family the head pos- 
 sesses 3000. a-year : the lady of another brought her hus- 
 band a fortune of 25,000. At Lausanne, individuals rate 
 at double this extent of property. But these instances are 
 rare. The usual occupation of these persons of property is 
 the speculation on their wines, which they export in large 
 quantities to the German cantons : they combine, therefore, 
 the distinct characters of squire and merchant. 
 
 Of the winter evening amusements here, there is but one 
 opinion and feeling ; they are a continued round of unex- 
 pensively pleasurable sociality. The soire6 begins at eight, 
 and concludes by eleven : it is an assemblage of the inviting 
 family's selection for the evening, with little games, con- 
 versation, music ; and with abundant refreshments of tea, 
 coffee, confectionary, fruits, liqueurs a sort of tea-table sup- 
 per ; sometimes, with leave before-hand obtained, a ball on 
 a large scale for that class of society with which the inviting 
 family associates. Theseclasses are held severely separate; 
 and such distinctions trace not at all to English aristocratical 
 interference, though the English enjoy prescriptively the 
 rights of the principal society. For introduction it is the 
 preliminary form, in direct reverse to our mode, that 
 strangers shall pay the first visit. Asa reason for this, it is 
 alleged that to the resident gentry it is a matter of pru- 
 dence to satisfy themselves as to the pretensions of those 
 who claim admission to their society ; and again, that it 
 is fit they should have notified to them that the stranger 
 distinctly desires such introduction ; since travellers many 
 there are who, from health or from temper, are disinclined 
 to general company. For my own part I should, in the event 
 of a stay for the winter, have recoiled from the infraction 
 of our national habits, fortified by personal temperament : 
 
98 VliVEY. 
 
 but this would not have proved a bar to my intercourse with 
 the best society in triumph of self-gratulatory feelings I 
 have it to say, and in much gratitude for the kindness of not 
 less than half a dozen families, from whom has proceeded to 
 me, in first instance, the obliging intimation of their desire 
 to pay me all hospitable attentions. 
 
 Yet strange and most unfavourable is the impression that 
 is made on this respectable people by the pride, too often 
 put into offensive action, of the English. The horror it 
 excites, as it often finds expression to me 1 am happy to 
 feel as being regarded in the character of a neutral between 
 them and my countrymen partakes, to a degree, the charac- 
 ter of rancour, with a tinge of the ludicrous. It is believed 
 that many of us descend to indecencies, which at home we 
 should consider debasing to the dregs of our mob, but which 
 here we indulge in, as displaying how utterly we contemn 
 the foreigners, with whom, for the sake of novelty or whim, 
 perhaps of temporary convenience, we mingle. Thus it is 
 that, with much bitterness and I think most just scorn of 
 the delinquent I have heard it stated of a lady, of not 
 merely title, but absolute rank in society, and besides, of 
 really estimable qualities ; that she would degrade herself 
 at table in the mere matter of taking salt, by thrusting her 
 fingers, and almost fist, into the salt-seller as it was thought 
 to put to proof what an unconscionably vulgar people these 
 Swiss were held to be beneath being hurt by whatever 
 brutality. This is but one instance out of dozens or scores. 
 Worse again ; ; it is credited that we descend here to a de- 
 testableness of immorality we should hold loathsome, if 
 practised among, shall 1 say, the human species as we 
 regard it, in Britain. Such is the horrible impression excited 
 by English seduction of Swiss girls, through a wantonness 
 in wickedness, as to induce the conviction that it is rather 
 result of contempt for the natives than of any other incen- 
 tive of a notion that they are inferior to us in race, Blacks 
 
VEVEY. 99 
 
 or Hottentots, English virtues grafted on English pride, if 
 they had no better stock, ought to have taught and, I trust, 
 do teach many of us another lesson. 
 
 It were unpardonable in me to forget the extremely 
 pleasing qualities of the genteel females here. The educa- 
 tion they receive is a foundation not merety for the best 
 virtues of woman, but for much and varied, elegant acquire- 
 ment. No where is good taste in manner strictly including 
 the style of dress more striking than in this little town. 
 Their persons are rather under than exceeding the middle 
 size ; their figure remarkably nice ; their features altogether 
 regular, and of right good-natured and good-humoured ex- 
 pression, in unison with intelligence, and that air which is 
 the effect of good breeding. 
 
 Of the gentlemen I cannot say so much: their ladies will 
 say for them that their outside is their worst. I believe it ; 
 or rather exterior propriety is with them a non-existence. 
 Their life long evaporates in lounge, or in billiards, through 
 morning after morning of wearisome forenoon with beard 
 unshaven to brutality of three day's growth ! I have tried 
 to preach the ladies into insurrection on this last text. But 
 shaving regularly is a recognised English oddity, which 
 continental beaux wonder at, and assuredly will not imitate. 
 
 A yawning gaze at the dry bones of the French news- 
 papers is also, wilh the gentlemen, one desperate resource 
 for getting quit of ten minutes of their forenoon ; with 
 exactly the same interest in weighing the vicissitudes of 
 political events that they feel in discussing the state of the 
 weather. Their speculation on either topic is by no means 
 that of the moralist or the philosopher. Either presents but 
 a question of pecuniary profit or loss ; in respect to the 
 seasons as affecting their vintage, which is, in other terms, 
 their rents ; and with regard to the political atmosphere, its 
 fluctuations as shewn, by the barometer of the French funds, 
 
 H2 
 
100 VKVEY. 
 
 whose rise and fall they study with the anxiety of the inve- 
 terate stock-jobber. 
 
 Such being the habits of upper life, we cannot be sur- 
 prised at any coarseness in the lower orders. Yet little can 
 be added, as marking them beyond what I have stated of their 
 betters farther than that, even to the children, they indulge 
 in smoking a home-grown tobacco of vile quality and pe- 
 culiarly foetid odor, which, wherever you go, poisons the 
 atmosphere ; and that they torture your ear, equally in all 
 the streets of the town as on all sides in the open country, 
 with a never-remitting whistling, that is utterly without 
 musical sequence The Welsh, I well recollect, are also 
 ear-piercing performers in whistle let the inference thence 
 be what it may. 
 
 Can it be possible ? Yet I believe it strictly true, that 
 one-fourth or even one-third of the females here, are af- 
 fected by goitre, more or less ; that of the better orders 
 much concealed by dress, and perhaps seldom so bad. 
 Among the lower classes this hideous excrescence is usually 
 much exposed, and often immensely protuberant : on market 
 days it is as common to see a peasant with, as without it. 
 Of two English families the young ladies have, in no pro- 
 tracted residence here, been visited by it. Males, though 
 far from being exempt, are less frequent subjects of goitre. 
 Within these last three years the application of loud has 
 been found efficacious in counteracting its formation, and 
 even in its alleviation almost to removal, in cases of not 
 inveterate growth. Respecting its cause there is such a 
 muss of contradictory allegation, that 1 feel even a guess 
 beyond me. 
 
 Of the mountain peasantry it is stated to me, that su- 
 perstition rules them with sternest force, and by illusions, 
 I plainly see, the same that prevail in Scotland and the 
 north of Ireland. The Banshee is here in full jurisdiction ; 
 
VEVEY. 101 
 
 as are all our other old acquaintances of the goblin and 
 fairy world, without the least variety of costume, or change 
 in the refelation or exercise of their mysteries. It were 
 easy to account for similarity in traditional mythology ; but 
 this identity is astonishing. 
 
 The Swiss have one habit which is peculiar to themselves, 
 and almost the only symptom of an enlarged nationality that 
 they evince. It is the practice of peregrinating their coun- 
 try on foot, throughout its various districts. I have been 
 in few parts of Swisserland, where I have not seen a swarm 
 of school-boys, from ten years old upwards, with their mas- 
 ter at their head, each individual equipped with his knapsack 
 and long walking pole, in progress of this kind. Of the 
 utility of a fortnight's march of such a brigade of puny 
 boys, I cannot detect a possible element ; and to the victims, 
 thus dragged through the relentless jaunt, there can be as 
 little pleasure, however one and other may accrue to lads 
 of more advanced years. For the behoof of these latter, 
 there is an extraordinary stated assemblage in the October 
 of each year, at Zoffingen, a town twenty miles to the north 
 of Berne. The muster takes place from all parts of Swiss- 
 erland, under the semblance of a half literary, half-patriotic 
 congress : the whole crowd joins in grand mess at meals, 
 and associates in every way that can promote among them 
 personal acquaintance with each other, and, in so far as 
 these opportunities will admit, the formation of future friend- 
 ly connexion. I put thus into my own words the ideas that 
 are communicated to me of this remarkable convention. 
 But what are the phrases, demi-official, in which they are de- 
 lineated by the body itself ? Thus they run : 
 
 " Lausanne, 22, October. La reunion de la societ6 des 
 " etudians de Zoffingen a eu lieu cette ann6e, le 4 et 5 de 
 " ce mois. On y comptoit 200 membres presens, la plupart 
 " des Cantons de Zurich, Berne, Lucerne, Basle et Vaud. 
 
102 VEVBY. 
 
 " L'harmonie la plus toucbantc, 1'umour de la patrie le 
 44 plus ardent, re-unis a la plus grande DKCBNCE, ont preside 
 44 a cette reunion comme a celles des annees precedjentes." 
 Etudians ! Is this mawkish, or maudlin, or beneath 
 epithet ? 
 
 1 9th of November. Grand market day, as usual on the 
 Tuesdays, in the Place. This is the most spacious square 
 in Swisserland ; one of its sides being a quay along the 
 lake, to the scenes presented by which perhaps no other quay 
 in the world can shew the parallel. It has its flotilla of from 
 twenty to thirty market boats, that arrive from the east end 
 of the lake, or from Savoy that lies opposite. These boats 
 move with oars or with two sails, each attached to its mast, 
 and in form like the wings of a butterfly in repose, if one 
 wing could be supposed placed in line before the other. 
 Occasionally these sails are worn a-jee, or one set with its 
 reverse end opposite to the other, like the cocked hat of an 
 old beau with its grand flap worn jauntily over the forehead. 
 The lake boasts also a species of large merchant boats : 
 of one of these I find the dimensions to be ninety-seven 
 feet from stem to stern, by twenty- four feet in the breadth 
 of the deck : the keel is rather flat. Either of its two masts 
 ia somewhat shorter than the enormous yard, that slants it, 
 and that in fact measures one half of the vessel's extreme 
 length : the lower extremity of either yard, when the sail 
 is spread on it, is strained down to a direction not re- 
 mote from the perpendicular ; and its upper and longer por- 
 tion is thus made to serve as a topmast, in prolongation of 
 the mast that is fixed fast in the hull. The effect, in both 
 large vessel and lesser one, though simple, is very pic- 
 turesque. 
 
 The market concourse of peasants may rate at 600 ; and 
 among them count not less than four distinct costumes : 
 First the Savoyard: then that detestably ugly one of the 
 
VHVEY. 103 
 
 Fribourgers, with their tete of horse-hair, or wool, .stuffed 
 within a cloth-covered roll, resembling a black pudding : over 
 this roll the wearer's hair is arranged in peruke form, and so 
 remains undisturbed through a week's clattiness. The waist 
 is in meet ugliness being of a bed-gown form the material, 
 brown ticken crossed with pale red stripes : below this the 
 skirt, that is neither brown nor black, hangs in drip: and thus 
 the human figure is exhibited in disjointment, or rather it is 
 scattered into as many fragments as the human frame has 
 parts. Then come the Valaisan females, of whom the distinc- 
 tions are a hoop-like petticoat, and a diminutive oval hat of 
 white silk : this hat is of the shape of a shallow baking-pan 
 when upturned its inch-wide rim scarcely sufficing for the 
 breadth of a thick garland of parti-coloured ribband, (but 
 predominantly black) which serves as the hat-band. Lastly, 
 the Vaudois, of whose costume the sole remaining vestige, 
 and ah ugly one, is a round chimney top, or shield's umbo, 
 that surmounts their straw cottage bonnet : their attire in all 
 other respects much in the style of our English ladies' maids, 
 though with less frippery and more taste. Certainly in come- 
 liness of person and regularity of features they may chal- 
 lenge competition with the very choicest specimens of Eng- 
 lish peasantry. 
 
 21st. November. As I sit this morning at my window, I 
 am occupied with wonder at this noble winter climate the 
 casement wide open as occasionally I read, write, or gaze 
 and enjoy. Sometimes the sun appears ; sometimes he is 
 hid by the many flickering clouds, of a flaky, indurated look- 
 ing consistence, that at palpably various heights, and of 
 hues of all diversity from purest white to darkest umber 
 enrobe the sky, of whose azure an eye beams forth here 
 and there in intensest blue. The vault above is furnished 
 in fitness to the lake at large below, and to the partly um- 
 ber, and partly snow-clad Alps ; which rise aloft in front, 
 
104 VEVEf, 
 
 and on either side to form this chamber of glory of a love- 
 liness as exquisite as its majesty is transcendent. 
 
 My continued study of the mountain forms that confront 
 me, has led me to remark along the range-line of ragged 
 precipices that crest the utmost elevation of the Meillerie 
 mountains, one interval in the outline of a broadly truncated 
 cone. This vacancy is the more striking, inasmuch as all 
 to right and left of it composes a shivered series of abortions 
 of pyramid. The entire summit of the Dent du Midi is a line 
 of similarly barbarous serratedness : it is the same with 
 the Dent du Morcles, opposite ; teeth all, or rather tusks, as 
 their very name bespeaks them to be. This sole smooth 
 termination of cone truncated towards the base, which lies 
 to the right and aloft of the grand gorge over St. Gingolph 
 is indication sufficient of the enormous pyramid that once 
 capped that cone, having slidden off at some remote epoch 
 in the olden time. Referring, on the moment, to my guide- 
 book of Ebel, I see recorded, and by a cotemporary episco- 
 pal historian, Bishop of Avranches and Lausanne, as having 
 taken place in the sixth century, and justly from these rocks, 
 a fall of t!u- mountain " that caused a most frightful inunda- 
 " tion of the lake. Not merely the castle and town of Tau- 
 " ritunura," an old Roman colony of which no trace exists, 
 " were crushed with all their inhabitants ; but the lake rose 
 " considerably above its level, to the ruin of all the towns 
 " and every habitation on its shores, and the immense loss 
 " of human lives, and destruction of vast numbers of cattle. 
 " Even the bridge of Geneva, at the far extremity of the 
 " lake, was destroyed by the calamity." Among the shore- 
 towns that were ruined was the original Lausanne, half a 
 league distant from the present, to the site of which latter, 
 the inhabitants who escaped thought it prudent to remove. 
 I hud often vainly endeavoured to discover from the forehead 
 and face of this part of the mountain the traces of this lapse, 
 
VEVEY. 105 
 
 of which even Keller's map gives intimation : but now, when 
 not thinking of it, the study of the topmost, precipices detects 
 this to be the spot from which a dislodgment must have 
 taken place, from Pelion of its Ossa, into the lake which it 
 overhangs, and whose consequent undulations of madness 
 spread into deluge of its utmost extent of shores. 
 
SECTION V. 
 
 24th November. This day puts me to the severe pain of 
 quitting Vevey : it is a sort of second dislodgment from the 
 comforts and charities of home; for such has been to me the 
 family society into which I have had the fortune to be, acci- 
 dentally, thrown. My course is for Milan, by the valley of 
 the Rhone and the Simplon. The bearishness and extortion 
 of the well-known coach-owner at Lausanne reduces me to 
 travel by the Government Diligence, which, though carrying 
 the mail, travels but little in the night. 
 
 Passed Chillon and Villeneuve ; the headlong steeps over 
 the road covered with chesnut copse, separated through the 
 force of torrents now dry, by parallel and close furrows as 
 if by giant industry ploughed as deep as the rocky core of 
 the mountain would suffer. Beyond Villeneuve is not 
 merely privation of the lake, but, as if in lieu of it, marshes 
 with cross lines of trees and deep fosses. The plain then 
 roughens into bold champaign, of various product. The 
 Meillerie, here taken in flank, shews a range of precipice, 
 pyramidal still in spikiness, yet often razor-like in edge. 
 On the left, in winding round the utmost southern base of 
 the Jorat, vallies are disclosed in their rere, of chasm-like 
 depth and more savage cragginess than on their lake front. 
 Specially before coming to Aigle, opens a fearful ravine of 
 this description, bare of all vegetation. 
 
 Aigle lies in the bottom of a sort of bowl, of which the 
 sides are monstrous in savage forms, while lower down, their 
 
VALA1S. 107 
 
 clothing is exquisitely soft: the luxuriant strath below is 
 alive with a population, intelligent looking, healthy, and 
 contented. 
 
 In thridding upwards this stupendous valley, the mind 
 reverts to the period when this tract of it was flooded by the 
 Rhone, in continuation of the lake. Athwart the level lie 
 two most picturesque swells of ground, which, when wave- 
 encircled, must have formed two nobly featured islands : at 
 present they lie stranded on the strath ; one of them is 
 crowned by castle ruins, St. Trifond. In front beyond them 
 is that Dent du Midi, nine thousand feet and upwards, in 
 altitude over the valley, spreading its breadth almost into 
 zenith of the sky which now in evening, is so purely blue 
 and so delicate in that hue, that the effect thence to the 
 mountain is an elegance at variance with its grandeur. To 
 the left in front, is that other Dent de Morclea, on the ex- 
 treme crest of which, nearest the road, a mass of pinnacle 
 like that summit of the Meillerie which excited the lake to 
 inundation, is perched, as if tottering, or rather in the act of 
 movement in fall, with destruction of fragment over all the 
 valley below. 
 
 Though night set in before I could get to Bex, the moon 
 shewed distinctly the closure of this mighty valley by the 
 contact at base of these two mountains of Midi and Morcles: 
 so home do they approach each other as to leave mere space 
 for the Rhone to find passage between. It is crossed by a 
 bridge of one arch, of which the roots of the two mountains 
 supply the respective abutments : the farther, or Valaisan, 
 bank rises in a perpendicular face of rock of several hundred 
 feet: the hither, or Vaudois, is in bold glacis, terminated by 
 a building, of which one flank is on, or in, the water and 
 the other gable is inserted in the mountain side. By a gate- 
 way direct through this edifice, which is the cantonal guard- 
 house, lies the High Road, which, coming on the bridge 
 that immediately succeeds, is there crossed by a second gate. 
 
108 YALA1S. 
 
 On the farther bank is an ancient Valaisan castle, stiJl used 
 as a fortress. 
 
 Arrived on this bank, we come into the grand military 
 road constructed by Buonaparte, which conducts from Geneva 
 by the south shore of the lake, and proceeds to and over 
 the Simplon. At first sight there is ample proof of its mag- 
 nificence : it runs with the Rhone far below one of its edges, 
 and with monstrous precipices, beyond the perpendicular, 
 bounding its other edge : there is, therefore, bare room for 
 passage between the river and the rocks for some hundreds 
 of yards, till you get to St. Maurice, part of whose street 
 has its puny, baby-looking, yet two or three story-high 
 houses, backed by the base of this dread steep in lieu of a 
 wall of human masonry.* 
 
 Left St. Maurice before day, with the mountains on either 
 hand subtending an angle, as I could clearly see them do, 
 of perhaps sixty degrees. High almost to the topmost 
 brow of one of them, blazed a forest fire possibly em- 
 ployed in reducing the wood round it into a charcoal but 
 more probably the effects in conflagration of the woodman's 
 fire for cookery or refreshment, spreading, through neglect 
 or accident, into devastation of the trees within its reach : 
 the sight of the flames in night, thousands of feet towards 
 the highest vault of heaven was greatly sublime. 
 
 Arrived after day-break abreast of the celebrated cataract 
 
 Since my return from Italy, I have met a very able account of the Simplon 
 road, in a thin pamphlet juit published-" La route du Simplon," Basle, printed 
 1823 ; from which I shall give a few excrepts in the margin. 
 
 " At St. Maurice, toe Valais is on a sudden closed up between two immense 
 < mountains, the Dent du Midi of 10,458 feet, and the Dent do Morcles 0.766 
 ' feet over the sea's level ; and the bridge over the Rhone, occupies the valley in 
 ' its utmost width, its abutments being based on these mountains respectively. It 
 ' consKt* of but one stone arch, of 170 feet in span, buili, or at least re-construcled 
 
 in 1482. by Jodocus, the military bishop, who rebuilt the CasUes of St. Maurice 
 ' and MarUgny. At the entrance of St. Maurice, a rock that jets out remains yet 
 ' to be taken away ; it overhangs the perpendicular, and Its base leave* the passage 
 
 very narrow." In reference to the above statement, which I give in English 
 measure, the lake of Geneva is 1,826 feet above the level of the sea. 
 
VALAIS. 109 
 
 of the Pisse-vache, which is on the very road-side. It was 
 in rather beyond moderate fall of water, on the abundance 
 of which it relies for display of its magnificence. This must 
 only be expected in summer, when, the accumulated snows 
 of the preceding winter being dissolved by the solar violence, 
 every river channel in Swisserland rages in the utmost mad- 
 ness of torrent, and every lake's bed is swelled to its brim 
 quite in contrast to the effect of our northern seasons : in the 
 lake of Geneva, I have witnessed the consequent difference 
 between the summer and the now winter level, to be equiva- 
 lent to that between a moderate neap tide and low water in 
 our sea. In its summer pride the Pisse-vache, as I am in- 
 formed, bursting from a very narrow chasm, comparatively 
 low down on the face of a precipice, though at 250 feet 
 from its base, and by a channel not unlike in character to that 
 behind Lodore breaks in vast mass of wave and spray over 
 the rock, that here ranges for miles in confine of the 
 road, which the Rhone narrows on its offside ; so that it 
 is impossible to pass without undergoing a thorough wet- 
 ting. The iris phenomenon in such circumstances must be 
 superb. 
 
 Nearly a mile onward, a break at length occurs in the 
 boundary precipice : its either side within is perpendicular 
 as far as the eye penetrates ; its width some twenty-five 
 feet, giving issue with not an inch to spare to a river in 
 progress to the Rhone which continues close on the left, and 
 with which its junction is at right angles. The height of 
 either cheek of this rift is specified in the guide-book to be 
 1280 of our feet. Yet can this be possible ? It is declared 
 to me by a person assuming to know it, that it is practicable 
 to wade on horse-back up the bed of this river, winding for a 
 a quarter of an hour (after which the ascent becomes too 
 steep) within walls of rock, giving not more breadth of pas- 
 sage than at the portal-orifice. 
 
110 TALAIS. 
 
 Two miles further is an advanced pyramidal brow crown- 
 ed by an antique fortress, La Batia. After winding round 
 the base of this height, the river Dranse is seen advancing 
 from its close valley to join the Rhone. A brief turn up its 
 bank takes the town of Martigny into the road's course. 
 Here is present to me the horrible scene of a number of houses 
 thrown flat down through a deluge, four years ago, of this 
 Danse. The fall of congealed snows from the surface of a 
 mountain, some miles up, had dammed the gorge that gives 
 passage to the river, and had created behind this portentous 
 barrier, of 400 feet high, and 2,000 feet at the base, a large 
 lake. This obstruction the country people, alarmed at the 
 consequences of its bursting, had been for some time occupied 
 in gradually breaking away. But the operation of the ele- 
 ments was fatally instantaneous in its removal by a burst 
 from the bottom. The sweep was tremendous. I speak 
 of the spot where I have witnessed its ravages, which are 
 at this moment conspicuous, high in the heads of ancient 
 trees in the street of Martigny, whose firmest boughs it has 
 twisted and torn away : some scores of houses were pros- 
 trated in this single town the ruins of several of them re- 
 maining as the flood left them : and many of the inhabitants 
 perished. The career of the deluge may be inferred from 
 the fact, that in the first hour after the out-break it had 
 swelled twenty miles onward : and though it took place at 
 five in the afernoon, it had swept, and ruined, all the valley 
 of the Dranse, and had, in destructive accumulation of the 
 waters of the Rhone, attained by eleven, the lake of Geneva. 
 Thus, in this fearful region of the Alps, the casualties with 
 which, ever and anon, it is visited peculiar as they are por- 
 tentousare diffused with the force of the electric fluid ; and 
 the calamity which befals one spot spreads destruction as 
 by pulsation. 
 
 The direction of the Rhone's valley had been hitherto s. E. 
 
VALAIS. HI 
 
 At Martigny it turns by an elbow, somewhat to N. E. for 
 nearly seventy miles,* to Brigg, at the Simplon foot. Along 
 the nearly perpendicular sides of the enclosure mountains 
 hereabouts, are seen pressing aloft over each other, moun- 
 tain farms, chiefly in grass, the cultivators of which groupe 
 for habitation into villages, that are usually hid from the 
 road by a projecting screen of rock, or nestle, protected by 
 a wooded bank, in a corner. But there is one farm on the 
 left of the valley, of perhaps thirty, or it may be sixty acres, 
 since accurate guess depends on the elevation, which also 
 it is hard to estimate : there may be in this case 2000 feet 
 in the height of the precipices, which exalt it from the vale: 
 it is closed in by naked and precipitous sheets of sheer crag 
 on either side and aloft in its rere. It shews one most com- 
 fortable looking farm-house ; but the access to it, after an 
 hour's study for so long I had it in view I was unable to 
 trace ; plain before me, as was the mountain's face, on which 
 not even a path-way mark, if such existed, could elude the 
 search. To chuse among impossibilities, I am reduced to 
 the supposition, that the climber thither must take to a ravine 
 that. is now dry, though palpably after rains the bed of a 
 vast suite of cataracts ; from up the front of one rock of 
 which to that next above each step of this monstrous stair- 
 case being perhaps twenty or forty feet in face there seems 
 no alternative but to strain in frightful clamber. It is stated 
 to me, that whatever be the approach, it can scarcely be once 
 needed for years a family so circumstanced having their 
 cattle, their food in variety, and for man and beast, their 
 
 " The valley of the Rhone is the deepest known on the globe. This depth is 
 " especially observable in the vicinity of Brigg, which lies between the Finsterar- 
 ' horn 14,1 16 feet, and Monterosa 15,552 feet above the sea. Brigg itself is 2,244 
 ' feet above that level ; so that the northern barrier is 11,872, and the southern 
 ' 13,308 feet in net height. The valley of Chamouni is but 12,300 feet below the 
 ' summit of Montblanc; that of Lauterbrun 11,116 below the Jungfrau ; and 
 ' Chimborazo, the highest of the Andes, rises but 10,647 feet above the valley of 
 ( Quito." Route du Simplon. 
 
112 VALAIS. 
 
 home-grown and home-woven clothes, and generally their 
 home-made matters of furniture all a peasant's wealth to 
 luxury, in previous store or regular supply within this islet 
 of verdure, like bird's nest in the bosom of inaccessible 
 precipices, t 
 
 After passing the Rhone at Riddes, a nobly savage 
 view is had of a very lofty mountain in the form of a trilate- 
 ral pyramid : two of its fronts are of absolutely naked white 
 stone ; the third rather larger in breadth, and somewhat 
 convex in form is not so utterly steep as the others ; and 
 it is clothed, as a change in the road's direction enabled 
 me to ascertain, with spruce firs, of which in long first 
 approach the margin seen, on either verge, had the fantastic 
 effect of black lacing to either front precipice's edge ; an 
 edging I had often remarked in other situations in this coun- 
 try, but no where so singularly regular. The two naked 
 fronts of this pyramid are of almost chalk white, and as re- 
 splendent as they could be in a quarry after first opening. 
 
 To SION, the capital of the Valais. The approach to it is 
 very striking, surmounted as it is by three lofty masses of 
 precipitous crag the third not seen separate till leaving the 
 place on the other side. That to the right is crowned by an 
 ancient cathedral, with a seminary attached for instruction of 
 aspirants to the priesthood the religion here being Ro- 
 man Catholic : the remaining and highest pinnacle gives sta- 
 tion to the handsomest ancient fortress in all the detail of 
 keep and lesser towers, connected by curtain of embattled 
 wa ]l s that my memory can just now recal having seen since 
 
 f "There are tiling*-* in this course, several thousand* of feet high from (be 
 " river, and secluded several months of the year from the rest of the woild ; and 
 " others are lnacc*Mihlp, but by help of ladders raised from precipice to precipice 
 " In ascent." Route du Slmplon. 
 
 Here is removed, and scarcely, the difficulty as to the human inhabitant ; and 
 naturalists have achieved the explanation to us of the fry of fish animating the 
 remotest moisture of mountain rill. But who shall expound the manner In which 
 a mountain farm thus circumstanced wa first put into stock of black cuttle ? 
 
VALAIS. 113 
 
 leaving Mentz and the Rhine. But that these two crags, 
 that alone shew in the hither view, are disparted lower down, 
 they might somewhat resemble Dumbarton Rock in form, 
 while surpassing it in picturesque boldness. 
 
 Going out of Sion the first instance has occurred along 
 this noble road of locking the coach-wheels, and that on the 
 mere descent from the gate. The course onward is under a 
 savage range of precipices to the left, with the Rhone di- 
 rectly below on the right. Beyond the village of St. Leonard's 
 there overhangs a craggy face of evidently loose rocks ; each 
 mass of this ill compacted beetling precipice is of enormous 
 dimensions, and appears so ill poised that the slightest gust 
 of wind might bring all down. The road is now incumbered 
 with one vast mass, smashed into fragments, which fell with 
 astounding noise about five years ago. A loaded waggon had 
 just passed ; a voiture, which was coming up, had not quite 
 reached the spot ! No actual calamity took place. For 
 several miles, the same symptoms of impending destruction 
 give terror to this road . 
 
 At SIERRES, crossed the Rhone again ; and were soon 
 lost among a crowd of conical mountains, that run subordi- 
 nate to a forest side of mountain yet higher. Very consi- 
 derable tracts of the trees are sheeted with a thick cobweb 
 of some species of insect, whose lodgment is destructive of 
 their soundness. I never saw any thing approaching the 
 universality of the ravage they exercise here. 
 
 Emerging hence, and across an ugly strath, a view is ob- 
 tained on the breast of the barrier mountain opposite, of a 
 battle-field of extraordinary achievement by the brave 
 Valaisans, in resistance to Buonaparte's usurpation. Its 
 site is hither of the gorge leading to the baths of 
 Loesche : the general scenery is a tract of forest outlined 
 by enormously precipitous crags ; embosomed in which the 
 theatre of action, or rather of sufferance, is hideously con- 
 spicuous from its being totally bare of vegetation. A French 
 
 i 
 
H4 
 
 force of fire or six hundred men, hemmed in on all sides of 
 the mountain skirts, had dragged hither their cannon and 
 baggage for concentration during the night; under protec- 
 tion of the darkness, fire was set to the trees closest to their 
 posts, by which, with the wood that harboured them, they 
 were involved in such dread conflagration that not one re- 
 mained to describe the fate of his companions even their 
 last straggler having been made victim in war's murder. 
 
 And if war is ever lawful to man, this havoc of it was 
 hallowed: exactly as in the case of a highway leader and his 
 gang,, it was in self protection against Buonaparte, who 
 played the same heinous robber-game in the Valais on a 
 lesser scale, that he did in Spain on a large one. And the 
 Valaisans behaved like men, and like what ought emphati- 
 cally to be called Swiss. And after a protracted and un- 
 compromising resistance, alike to his intrigues and his 
 armies, they succumbed like brave men. The British arm 
 could not reach them ; and, except by a portion of the 
 Bernese, of true magnanimous spirit, they were left unsup- 
 ported by their countrymen, to the lasting disgrace of the 
 degenerated inhabitants of this land of mountain bulwark, and 
 the forfeiture of the inheritance of their nation's old renown. 
 Modern Rome, with the protection of its streets by our 12th 
 Light Dragoons, of which it was glad in 1794, has HS much 
 right to claim the triumph of Rome of old over Hannibal, as 
 the Swiss can have to quote the name of William Tell, or to 
 utter that sacred word, Freedom. 
 
 The seizure of the Valais by Buonaparte was made, ac- 
 cording to his own Manifesto, on the state pica that it was 
 needful for the consolidation of his Italian and French 
 sovereignties, by giving to his armies an uninterrupted pas- 
 sage through this valley, which formed the line of communi- 
 cation between them. He had projected such a road 
 immediately after his first splendid successes in Italy, and 
 bad proposed its construction to his then masters, the Re- 
 
VALAIS. 115 
 
 publican Directory. His subsequent Imperial greatness 
 enabled him to realize that plan, in furtherance of the Babel 
 dreams of universal empire, which have for him so miserably 
 perished. It is an awful instance of retributive justice, that 
 the first and only use to which this Grand Simplon road was 
 ever put, was the giving passage from Italy to an Austrian 
 army, pressing forward for that concentration of force that 
 destroyed him. 
 
 The eye, as well as the mind, is now so satiated with this 
 lengthened valley as to admit the belief that its barrier cliffs 
 are of diminished grandeur. But every now and then, an 
 opening on their flanks disclosed the dread glaciers behind, 
 which are the valley's actual bounds, whereas the screens 
 that close it in, to a breadth sufficing only for the river, and 
 the road without parape tthat overbrows its course, though 
 lofty to magnificence, are the mere mountain skirts. Igno- 
 rant as I am of geology, I was forcibly struck with the 
 suddenly new arrangement of this dread skirting, which be- 
 gins at Turteman the road's direction^by the compass conti- 
 nuing unchanged. Hitherto the mountains uniformly rest 
 with their front to the river's course: thenceforward they 
 present to it their flank ; the effect being as diverse, as if in a 
 city the houses had shifted their fronts into the position of 
 side or division walls, and presented to the streets their ga- 
 ble ends. 
 
 At Visp, a river of this name joins the Rhone, almost as 
 ample in volume as that to which it resigns its dignity and 
 fame. At the head of the valley through which it flows, 
 stands, nobly in view, as I learn, in a clear day, Mont 
 Rosa, the rival of Mont Blanc : but the evening vapor shut 
 it from my view. 
 
 Brigg, which we reached by nightfall, is a handsome little 
 town, exceedingly well built, in the style of Sion and some 
 other Valaisan towns. The houses have an air of scientific 
 design ; the stones are justly squared and in true arrange- 
 
 i 2 
 
116 VALAIS. 
 
 ment; the windows are of exact propriety, their outer 
 framing of cut stone, their sashes handsomely glazed ; the 
 quoins clean ; the whole elevation set off in fairest plaister : 
 quite contrasted to that fashion of harsh corner, mean 
 pinnacle, high roof, and straggling galleried outside of every 
 human hahitation, which prevails from the Brisgau onward 
 hitherto. It is a fashion so extravagantly grotesque, so much 
 in hump and ugliness, as to be fitly described by the epi- 
 thet, * Barbarous.' I have seen, however, in the Valais, 
 many log-houses coated with plank, erected from the ground 
 on posts like those which sustain our cornstands, such as we 
 may figure to ourselves would be the first essay towards 
 domestic accommodation of our Canadian back-settlers ; 
 but in their edifices of stone there is a positive merit of chaste 
 design ; and the streets which these compose are quite 
 handsome. One unsightly peculiarity the houses here have, 
 in a tall heavy tower surmounting their summit elevation, 
 a remain it must be of some antique fashion of building, 
 though now an appendage to structures of a style far more 
 modern, and in all other points surpassingly elegant. I am 
 told the inhabitants occupy the chambers which this tower 
 supplies, as family storerooms: the convenience does not 
 redeem the incongruity. 
 
 Industry and personal cleanliness, are said to be qualities 
 not distinctive of the Valaisans. This has been a high 
 holiday with them : the morning was ushered in by vollies 
 of musketry from the market square of Martigny : through- 
 out the day, in every town we passed through, the villagers 
 exhibited their grandest and most showy costume. But it 
 was shocking to be compelled to witness, among these gay 
 crowds, instances of goitre, and, very often, monstrously 
 loathsome. 
 
 2Gth November. On the road at three this morning the 
 night clear as a summer one. The appearance to me in 
 progress was often, when the road was in zig-zag, as if 
 
VALAtt. 117 
 
 under the illusion of putting forward for the face of a precipi- 
 tous mountain, and as though no way onward was practica- 
 ble, unless by means of some passage vaulted through the 
 mountain's entrails. Again, when the road was a mere 
 ledge along the face of the headlong mountain, it seemed 
 impossible to disengage one's-self from this aerial gallery, 
 winding on like a mathematical line, length without breadth, 
 and, by postulate, producible to infinity. 
 
 Day light shewed a ravine, abreast of which the road had 
 lain, so closely approached by an opposite and correspond- 
 ing precipice, that we crossed ,it by a bridge. The Saltine 
 river runs along the bottom of the chasm at vast distance be- 
 low, though it is there not greatly narrower than at the roads 
 level, or even at a thousand feet above it. By various zig- 
 zags, after about an hour's progress, the road gained a ham- 
 let called Persal, the chief house of which is for travellers' 
 accommodation . 
 
 From a window of this " Refuge," as it is called, the eye 
 looks down on the bridge, at a hideous distance beneath, 
 towards which the torrent is seen rushing through a chasm, 
 in form of an irregular V greatly narrowed at the top ; 
 the elevation of its jaws of stone so tremendous aloft as to 
 mock any guess at their height. All around else, and where- 
 ever forest tree might plant its root, was larch in utmost 
 venerablenes-s. I had been on the look-out, through Swiss- 
 erland, for this tree, without seeing, taken together, above 
 some forty in all, scarely one of them beyond what my own 
 practice has proved to be of safely transplantable size : these 
 scattered strangers were stuck in gardens, perhaps designed 
 to be a V Anglois. Here they are in tens of thousands, of 
 giant dimensions, and patriarchal age, and palpably hardier 
 than the spruce fir, which sickens in this lofty region, while 
 the larch out-braves the most inclement snows. 
 
 Within doors of this refuge, all is uproar of tor- 
 rents numerous, and in descent headlong : the ear is inces- 
 
118 SIMPLON. 
 
 santly assailed by the roaring of the torrents ; while the eye 
 is attracted to three awful mountain pikes of inaccessible 
 height, the sides of which are sheathed with everlasting 
 snow. These monstrous cones are seen across the dips of 
 fir and larch-clothed foregrounds magnificent mountains 
 themselves without taking into account my present eleva- 
 tion, and rating their base as on the level with my shoe. 
 
 It is only thus, by piecemeal progress, that man's bounded 
 powers can measure themselves with the dimensions of the 
 Alps. The ambitious mortal who, in a human edifice would 
 plan a superadded hundred feet of elevation, to the three 
 hundred of which the effect was already impressive, would 
 find that fourth hundred to count on the eye as but sixty, and 
 the hundred beyond it again, as a supplemental forty ; the 
 laws of vision thus laughing into nothings man's haughtiest 
 darings, or capabilities. It is the same in the scale of crea- 
 tion's dimensions; the mountain summit of six thousand feet 
 looks, to man's eye, very little superior to the crest of four 
 thousand ; that of eight, or even ten thousand, by no means 
 looks into littleness the other of six ; and so on, even to 
 Mont Blanc of fourteen thousand, whose majesty is apparent 
 only comparatively with its subjects, and not absolutely from 
 its effect on the eye. 
 
 Thus it is that these Alps, with all their elevation of feet, 
 in thousands so many that it sounds like legend statement, 
 and though in such precipice and terror of front, do not, from 
 the Rhone side, convince the senses of the mathematical 
 fact, of their absolute grandeur. Even now, after a four 
 hoars' ascent, I have below me such chasms of ravine, that 
 their depths diminish into a map-like miniature the objects 
 they enclose; yet the stand 1 have gained is the ground- 
 work of Alps as impressive on the sight as their topmost 
 height appeared from the vale. Still more from that vale 
 the robe of inow they wear is in the manner of scarfing to 
 their crests ; while here, from the hem of that snow is a re- 
 
S1MPLON. 
 
 gion upward, in which, spread forth in vastness as amazing 
 as from below, the mountain's face clear of snow could, 
 down to its roots, be supposed to measure. 
 
 In the progress of ascent the road runs along the face of 
 the second ravine in a counter direction to that on the oppo- 
 site one. Every now and then it penetrates recesses, like 
 marine bays, that primarily were formed by the action of 
 cateracts from on high. Along these depths of mountain 
 bosom the road coasts on a shelf of merely its own width 
 all above being perpendicular, while below the path is sus- 
 tained in various places by a masonry wall of tremendous 
 elevation from its foundation, that is on the summit of crags 
 the base of which it were a vain effort to search out in the 
 monstrous abyss. 
 
 This tract of road passed, an immense field is presented to 
 ttie eye, of the Grand Valley ; the Rhone for many leagues' 
 length through it; Brigg and other towns and villages on its 
 nearer bank. On its farther side ascends, for apparently a 
 mile and half's slope, a smiling extent of farm as far to the 
 right as the bend of the Rhone's valley above Brigg admits 
 a view, and to those mountains with gable end to the val- 
 ley, on the left. Beyond this luxuriance of rural wealth, far 
 in point of fact, but through illusion of the sight towering 
 closely extends in eternal snow the proudest range of 
 Swisserland's glaciers, from Finsterarhorn and the Jungfrau 
 to the Gtiemmi. 
 
 At some 2000 feet, very possibly a vast deal more, at the 
 foot of a forest- clothed steep of which the road threads the 
 uppermost margin, rolls another mountain river, the Taver- 
 nette ; its junction with the Saltine is at the point of this 
 promontory. The road turns up the brow of the ravine 
 which it creates, and which becomes soon so contracted in 
 width, as to induce the belief, that a carbine would reach 
 point blank across : its depth the eye refuses to measure I 
 had read of such things. 
 
120 KIMFLON. 
 
 Forward, beyond another Refuge, the road pursues its 
 way, unnairowed, through a vaulted passage in the rock, of 
 one hundred and eight feet in length. Here the fine weather 
 began to fail, and all above was wreathed in dripping fog : 
 the tracts below and onward continued so clear as to shew, 
 while moving round a horse shoe bend of road, which took 
 me thirty-six minutes of smart walking, numerous effects of 
 the storms and avalanches which in this spot are peculiarly 
 frequent and formidable. The ground hereabouts was all 
 snow ; yet in one place the marks of ravage were frightfully 
 visible, the ground upturned, and very many trees uptom 
 and smashed.* 
 
 Of the main fork of the Tavernette the fog concealed 
 the course beyond about two hundred feet upwards 
 from the road, which here bridges it : that course is, 
 literally, upwards, and in precipice, over whose face it divides 
 into two tails : its waters, through their entire /all, are lined 
 in the front, the sides, and all their contiguity, with most 
 fantastic icicles pipes in mighty resemblance of that majes- 
 tic instrument, the organ, whose form is loosely traced in 
 repeated tier above tier of the ice's descent. 
 
 Home on this cataract comes a second gallery, pierced 
 through the bowels of the rock, of one hundred and thirty-six 
 feet : it is not dry like the preceding one ; for from the 
 pourousness of this rock, its whole vault is exuberantly 
 hung with icicles, whose constant dropping sheets the floor, 
 i. e. the road, with most slippery ice.t And here the fog, 
 now in sleet, was so intense, as to show but the road's 
 breadth ; which running in deep snow over a table-land 
 that is its summit level, the Voiture's celerity of speed 
 
 ID May, 181 1 , an avalanche falling her* overwhelmed eight person*, whom 
 " it swept over the parapet of (he road into the bottom of the valley beneath. 1 ' 
 
 + " This gallery is sometimes blocked up by the snown which precipitate thora- 
 " delves from the Schonhorn pike ; and the water which filters through the rock 
 " forma within it a cuunUnt rain." 
 
SIMPLON. 121 
 
 compelled me to discontinue the walk I had enjoyed 
 from Persal. Passed the vast shell of convent begun by 
 Buonaparte, but left unfinished intended to have been 
 suffragan to St. Bernard, whose brethren watch over the 
 security of travellers in these regions of danger ; and ar- 
 rived at the village of Simplon, which is surrounded with 
 deep snows : in its front a torrent rages, at some hundreds 
 of feet below the brink of the precipices which controul its- 
 waters in progress to rivers in Italy, tributary to the Po. In 
 this forlornly situated village is a comfortable inn, over whose 
 saloon, in papering of large French fashion is, with strange 
 selection of subject, the whole detail of a great sea-port 
 town, its merchandize and shipping, and the sea. If ever 
 whale was stranded in metaphor, it is in this spot where I 
 write mindful to audacity of Gray's precept to a friend 
 entering on the Italian journey" Cum pictor non sis, ver- 
 bis omnia depinge." 
 
 The road, when resumed, recedes by long zig-zag from 
 the chasm in front of the village, through which its stream 
 dives from one mysterious depth to another, usually unseen, 
 though constantly heard, even at such profoundness of abyss. 
 Having gained the bed of another stream that proceeds 
 from an opposite direction, the road reverts along its valley 
 and regains the first which, after the junction of both, has 
 the name of the Doveiria. By these traverses we were placed 
 just beneath, and in bird's flight distance very near 
 Simplon village, and in enfilade of the first stream's most 
 dread descent in most short course. That course, in all 
 its terrors of close and deep chasm, is but a prelude to the 
 quite new scenery of the rest of this Simplon road for eleven 
 miles, as taken without curve by measure on the map : it is 
 the passage through a rift between confronting cliffs, not 
 more wide asunder than the river's breadth with the road on 
 its brink ; and of a height exceeding in many places 2,150 
 feet. 
 
122 SIMPLON. 
 
 " I state the height as 'tis stated to me :" 
 
 the larger portion of these cliffs being an absolutely perpen- 
 dicular wall. Such, in few and faithful words, is the re- 
 mote part of the Simplon road, utterly more savage and 
 sublime than its western counterpart. 
 
 At first entrance here, is a vault once more, of 230 feet, 
 through which the road passes. It proceeds close on the 
 bank of the river, that runs from ten to thirty feet below : 
 the water is glass-green where the fury with which it runs 
 through the crags, that are every where in interruption, has 
 not converted it into white. Even here the road is smooth 
 as a garden avenue, quayed with cut-stone in as high finish 
 as whatever magnificent terrace any European seaport can 
 exhibit. 
 
 Farther on is the spot where before the construction of 
 the present road, the bridge of beams having been crushed 
 by a fall of rocks from the cliffs aloft, and its materials swept 
 away by the torrent into which they fell a passage was 
 effected by a French force of 1,000 men under circumstances 
 the most frightful. The holes into which the beams had been 
 inserted in the rocks on either side being the only remains 
 of bridge, a rope was fastened through their means on the 
 hither bank ; and an adventurous soldier letting himself down 
 the precipice, and crossing the torrent, strained the rope to a 
 similar fastening on the opposite side. The General, Be- 
 thincourt, was the first man who crossed, by passing his arms 
 over the rope, and working his way by its means high in air. 
 After him every soldier, man by man, with his arms slung, 
 and his marching baggage, performed the same feat. Five 
 dogs they had with them, when all had gone over, leaped 
 as by concert into the gulph below, to follow their masters : 
 three of them were dashed to pieces ; but two were able to 
 make good their passage alive, and to crawl after the co- 
 lumn. 
 
 By means of gunpowder these precipices have yielded 
 
6IMPLON. 1:23 
 
 a less hideous passage, and from which the torrents diz- 
 zying career may be safely contemplated. All on the road's 
 inner edge, and all on the river's farther brink is cliff inac- 
 cessable, unless by the eagle's flight. More than once the 
 road shifts, by a bridge, from bank to bank, to avail itself of 
 such ledge as it can find, or best create for its continuance. 
 Dreadful crags every where beetle over, so as to preclude the 
 eye from pursuing the course of this chasm in the mountain 
 bowels, even when it runs directly onward : but frequently 
 it is abruptly sinuous. At length these crags become ab- 
 solute wall. Before they assume this latter character, ano- 
 ther vaulted gallery is passed through, the greatest of all ; 
 it is somewhat winding in its course, for the express pur- 
 pose of military defence. Its length is 728 feet ; its width 
 twenty-six and a half, which is the accustomed front of the 
 road's march : its height is also twenty-six feet. Two mon- 
 strous orifices, practised in its side, admit the requisite light. 
 
 Beyond this, and beyond Iselle particularly, the walls, 
 as I have said, of the ravine are really walls ; as of a pa- 
 lace in ruins, that had been constructed originally by ma- 
 nual labour of the giants. Super-human they must be held, 
 even in the attempt at a tower of Babel ; yet their strata, 
 broken into blocks, have the appearance of dread masonry. 
 To say that they are as perpendicular as human masonry 
 could aim at, were, however, to say not more for them than 
 the miles that had preceded them of less regular face, though 
 not yielding to them in perpendicularity. Wherever here a 
 broken nest occurs for the reception of vegetable seed, as 
 in the ruins of man's labour ; in every such rock is a tuft 
 of forest growth : but the effect is often as puny as that of 
 wallflowers on our poor works ; for, as I have said, these 
 walls frequently exceed 2,150 feet. 
 
 Latterly these erections of creation's magnificence, shat- 
 tered by the profuse explosion of gunpowder, have in various 
 places received an under-prop of actually human masonry. 
 
124 SIMPLON. 
 
 Most remarkable, in a way contrasting with this, is a fourth 
 gallery under whose vault the road passes here ; for security 
 of which and stay of a vast face of naked rock, high to hea- 
 ven above it, a solitary pier of the ancient granite is ap- 
 pointed to remain. 
 
 One circumstance alone fell short of my expectations in 
 penetrating this awful crevice in the mountain's entrails its 
 waterfalls. The summer snows had exhausted their sup- 
 plies before my arrival : I saw but one fall, that was a burst, 
 from beyond a thousand feet aloft ; but its waters were dis- 
 sipated into rain, and thence into mist, long before they could 
 reach the cliff's base. Yet I cannot conceive a more tre- 
 mendous scene than this valley of Doveiria, during the hur- 
 ricanes, so frequent among the Alps. I have witnessed such ; 
 thunder, sheeted rain, blast irresistible ; our northern cli- 
 mate has not, in the excesses of its stormiest winters, any 
 thing to compare with them. But in this lengthened, con- 
 tracted, profoundly deep pass, the thunder, repeated and re- 
 echoed in roar until the succession is upheld by a fresh ex- 
 plosion ; the rains, in sweep of water and foam and smoke 
 over the whole enclosure-cheeks of precipice ; the wind, in 
 blast so furious, that its force is like that of gunpowder con- 
 fined in a tube, compressed in this long and strict defile ; 
 and where there is a break in the defile's direction, its ed- 
 dies, more terrible than all, uprooting trees, sweeping in fury 
 the loosely -poised crags of rock, and hurling in air all the 
 wrecks of its madness such a scene as this, no rage of 
 the elements elsewhere can equal. Here, however, it often 
 occurs,* and I should think no rage of ocean-storm can 
 match its terrors. " Oh !" exclaimed repeatedly in a land- 
 
 * Stomu often, and sudden hurricanes are not lew dangerous here than tho 
 u avalanche*. Just before my first journey, an immense mass of granite had 
 " blocked up the roads; one hundred and fifty persons from the villages of Sini- 
 " plon, nod lioudo, wcr busy iu removing thcj'ragmentt." 
 
SIMPLON. 125 
 
 storm, and in bed in his own house in Dublin, a gallant 
 Admiral,* " Oh ! would that I were at sea !" The excla- 
 mation, in the case I have described here, would, in a tra- 
 veller's ejaculations, have all propriety. 
 
 For the benefit of my Dublin friends, votaries of our 
 Wicklow scenery, I must note, that to figure to themselves 
 this valley of the Doveiria, they must suppose our Dargle 
 to be of a dozen times its length ; its sides incomparably 
 more steep ; spruce-fir intermingled with the deciduous 
 forest growth, instead of oak, for its clothing unless where, 
 as ordinarily is the case, the cheeks of precipice, close to- 
 gether as those directly beneath the Moss-house, are 
 headlong as the Lover's Leap, and confine the torrent's 
 course ; their front, thus perpendicular, exceeding the 
 altitude of the Great Sugar Loaf, which stands but 2,000 
 feet above the sea's level. In other words, it is as though 
 the Sugar Loaf were lengthened out to the extension of a 
 dozen miles, with a continuance of its summit elevation ; 
 and that being rifted centrally to its base, a road were 
 carried through its inmost depths. Beyond all, this 2,000 
 feet of depth, and this continuity of ravine, the narrowest that 
 the absolute disparting of the sides will admit must be held 
 as in subservience to the mountains that, not retiring as with 
 us, tower superincumbently close, and towards the sky's ze- 
 nith, crowned with perpetual snow, and with pre-eminence of 
 height as far surpassing our highest mountains as these exceed 
 the height of their little subject gorge. It is true, that in the 
 depths of this tremendous ravine, its cheeks are so erect as 
 usually to shut out every object, except the breadth of sky di- 
 rectly overhead ; yet an occasional shift of the course in the ra- 
 vine's onward drift affords glimpses of those ice-cuirassed and 
 snow-robed regions that, refused as they may be generally 
 to the eye, must ever dwell in awful presence on the mind. 
 
 At length, the mountain on the left retiring, space i& 
 
 * The late Lord Longford. 
 
126 SIMPLON. 
 
 given to a lovely little plain, of two miles diameter, sur- 
 rounded by gigantic mountains, that embosom villages of 
 new aspect, and strikingly cheerful white, thickly scat- 
 tered over the profusely rich robe of grove and emerald 
 grass. The elegance of these village groupes is not more 
 remarkable than is the style of their churches, that are 
 distinctly conspicuous from the square tower of tall and 
 elegantly fine dimensions, that stands by the side of each, 
 instead of ifs flank fa9ade. Round the brow of the moun- 
 tains is a continued forest of spruce and larch, varied, lower 
 down, by groves of chesnut : and, infringing on the skirts, 
 or invading the depths, of the less elevated spread of tim- 
 ber, are tracts of vine that rise in terrace, or cleared spots 
 of luxuriant pasture. This charming valley has the name 
 of Davedro. 
 
 Another course of chasm then commences, in some places 
 as narrow as that preceding, and with a gallery of 180 feet 
 through the granite, in the side of which an orifice is pierced 
 for the admission of light. Fatigued with the renewal of 
 these horrors, I hailed, after a league's course, a second 
 expansion into vale, larger than the former, and still more 
 delicious the vale of Domo d'Ossola. Its entrance is by 
 the brow of a bank, beautifully soft, but of great elevation : 
 a bridge that crosses the ravine bed of a river, which breaks 
 the bank's continuity, is, perhaps, without parallel for plan, 
 and admirable for elegant effect the bridge of Crevola. It 
 consists of two arches, each of 73 feet in width, their sup- 
 porting pillars, rather than piers, being 76 feet in height : a 
 house, close by, presents its front to the flat below, while in 
 the uppermost of several stories is the coach-house, with a 
 coach standing in it, on the same level with the road over 
 the bridge which also it faces. 
 
 Of this spacious valley it is not so much the loveliness, 
 though surpassing beyond any thing I have seen heretofore, 
 as it is the novelty of all the objects, that disconcerts my 
 
DOMO D'OSSOLA. 127 
 
 endeavours to fix its features in ray recollection. Its surface 
 is an absolute plane of transcendant luxuriance, crossed in 
 various^directions by rapid rivers, each fresh from its Alpine 
 cradle ; and the process by which the almost oppressive 
 wealth of vegetation all around is produced, appears sub- 
 jected to nearly the cognizance of the eye's power. Egyp- 
 tian fertility, I conceive, cannot exceed it : and over all this 
 fair surface is scattered a crowd of villages and towns, wear- 
 ing an air of happiness that brooks no inundation ; churches, 
 and their very tall and graceful towers or "campaniles" 
 attached each to its own clustering groupe of habitations. 
 Groves every where give to the ground a picturesque ap- 
 pearance ; and the trees composing these groves are indi- 
 vidually clothed with climbers of vine, after that manner 
 which we English worship, while we vainly strive to train 
 woodbine up through some single tree contiguous to an or- 
 namented cottage. Here, vines protruding their multiplied 
 shoots through each branch and spray of boughs of every 
 tree, are thus trained in ordinary peasant practice, and are the 
 usual garden produce, if not the weed, of the country. Be- 
 sides this, vines are largely spread, in many of the village 
 grounds, over a horizontal trelliage, that is parallel to the 
 earth's surface, at various heights from it, according to circum- 
 stances, and as with us they cluster the roof of a conserva- 
 tory. With respect to the framing in which all this fertility 
 is set, it is an enclosure round of the Alps : in front are those 
 mountains down whose face I am just descended ; and an- 
 swering them are mountain forms as noble as the appendages 
 of the Lake of Geneva the rocks of Meilerie. For drapery, 
 it is like the Vale of Davedro, which precedes it forest im- 
 mense, of which the skirts are repressed below by man's 
 daring in very lofty, but comparatively puny, height of terrace 
 in vines, or by his larger success in the spread of pasture.* 
 
 * I have since seen Italy in length nearly, and in breadth ; and the impres- 
 
128 ROUTE TO MILAN 
 
 27th November. Proceeded for MILAN ; still along the 
 Simplon road or Sempione as is the Italian word which 
 does not terminate till it reaches that capital.* A rich flat 
 winds here through lesser Alpine forms : its surface is often 
 mean looking, but often also striking, from the extensive 
 sheets of horizontal trellis for vines, at from four to a dozen 
 feet from the ground : similar trellis is frequently spread 
 over the orchards of fruit trees, or tracts of elm, planted in 
 orchard regularity squares always, not quincunx. These 
 trees stand up through the trellis ; and those of them that are 
 fruitbearers, are lopt already, at uniform heights aloft, for 
 sake of the fuel which is yielded by the last third or more 
 of their boughs. Beneath is sod, or tilled ground : thus 
 the one spot teems with living complication of vegetable 
 wealth, meadow or corn grapes stone fruit, or in lieu of 
 it, crops of timber for firing. Up the mountain sides run 
 vines in terrace, far more pleasing to the eye, than the stair- 
 cases in stone of Swisserland : for here the facing of each 
 step is green sod, perpendicular not the less : the flats are 
 often but the width of a footpath ; of others, that of a nar- 
 row or broad corn ridge. Over the strath was diffused a 
 humid haze, not reaching to a tall tree's height ; silver in 
 color, veiling every thing, but not hiding any thing within 
 its influence. The dead level is too sure a witness of its 
 
 sion continue* as fresh on me as at first of the luxuriance and loveliness and 
 grandeur also of the scenery that spread* in basin round Domo d'Ossola. 
 
 * The entire cost of its original construction cannot be estimated at less 
 than seventeen millions, i. e. jf680,000, sterling. The annual expense of keep- 
 ing it op amount*, to the canton of the Valais for that portion of it within the 
 Swiss territory, to from 35 to 40,000 francs." J 1,400 to 1,600. 
 
 The distances over the mountain itself are thus stated : from Brigg to 
 Persal, 6 leagues ; thence to Simplon village, 6 do. to Iselle, 3 do. to Domo 
 d'Ostola,5 do. ; total 20 leagues," viz. almost 56 English miles. The ef- 
 fective distance from Brigg to Domo d'Ossola i* about 14j league*." vix. 41 
 miles. "'I'll.' height of the summit level of this road is, above Brigg, 4252 
 bet i above Domo d'Ossola, 5,575 feet ; above the level of the sea, 6,579 ft." 
 Route du Siraplon. 
 
, ROUTE TO MILAN. 129 
 
 being no stranger in this valley, and its effects can::ct but 
 be insalubrious. 
 
 Came to the shore of the LAGO MAGGIORE, and its Bor- 
 romean islands. The prominent object of curiosity, Isola 
 Bella, covered by a palace and its gardens, is disfigured to 
 the view by the former,, which rises in as rigid regularity as 
 any of the store buildings over Liverpool Docks. A fine 
 theatre in its centre, which is left an unfinished shall, might 
 have somewhat redeemed the stupidity of the square flanks : 
 but the whole concoction ought to have been thrown into 
 even fantastic form, to suit the fairy character of the island, 
 and to consort with nature as seen all around. From the 
 windows, one after another, all this delicious scenery, with 
 its large dignity of lake-domain in accompaniment is en- 
 joyed to luxury. But the grotto ground-floor, which is a 
 suite of appartments in palace multitude, realizes the fancies 
 one might call up of magician-built structure for the use of 
 Sultaun, in the tales of the Arabian Nights. The gardens 
 are an extraordinary edifice and edifice literally : they were 
 raised some 140 years ago from the level of the lake, by tier 
 over tier of arches, like a bee-hive filled compact with cells 
 to the shape of its enclosing cover, and to such height, that 
 the summit 100 feet above the lake greatly overlooks the 
 lofty appurtenant palace. Up this artificial mount, rise, one 
 after other, ten tiers of terrace, by means of which the whole 
 surface is former into a grove of orange and lemon trees 
 that are now hutted for the winter. In other parts of the 
 garden, and also in the wilderness of the Isola Mad re, 
 the growth of ornamental vegetation is extraordinary ; the 
 common aloe beds itself every where in the rocks on the 
 lake's brink ; the yucca is quite superb ; hydrangea six feet 
 high ; the oriental cypress and our common laurel as tall, as 
 clean in stem, and large in the head, as the noblest deci- 
 duous trees I could wish to see single on an embellished 
 lawn. Isola Madre, given to nature unsophisticated, atones 
 
 K 
 
130 ROUTE TO Mil \N 
 
 for the extravagance of Isola Bella. The sail from one to 
 the other groupes the northern and magnificent boundary of 
 the Alps into much nobler masses than had presented them- 
 selves from any point of the latter island, or from the lake's 
 margin. Certainly this lake has very far exceeded my anti- 
 cipations of it. 
 
 Proceeded along the shore, through a succession of towns 
 and villages, at foot of a series of hills ascending in terrace 
 up to their summits, and attired in grass and grove, with 
 treble or quadruple growth of crop, on my right ; the lake, 
 alive with boats, on the left. Behind I left the boldest mar- 
 gin of the lake, with villages and large towns in throng, as 
 far as the Alps in the back-ground would suffer. Parallel 
 to my course, on the opposite shore, was one hill of striking 
 loveliness, ranging perhaps three miles onward, lofty, wood- 
 clothed, and wood-crowned, its base washed by the lake, 
 its termination a chalky precipice, surmounted by a castle- 
 like structure ; and on this scene the evening sun bestowing 
 its richest colours. In front the hills soften into plain ; and 
 as they mellowed in the distance, hues were diffused over 
 the whole breadth, to the horizon such as, in fancy's 
 dreams, I had been used to imagine might be poured over 
 Italian landscape in the richest calm of an Italian sky. Ar- 
 rived at the Ticino, which is the lake's outlet ; and by a 
 pont-volant crossed from the King of Sardinia's territory to 
 Seste Calende, the frontier of the Lombardo- Venetian king- 
 dom. 
 
 In review of this recent array of town and village and sin- 
 gle house of which every appurtenance is, in every point, 
 of chastest elegance it is a plain matter, that no man 
 should venture to build even a stable without previous rudi- 
 ments had from such studies as are here, without exception, 
 presented. The look-back on our English house-building 
 is loathsome: but Swiss enormity of stone wall, from the 
 torment of which I am just escaped, I treat as the baboon 
 
ROUTE TO MILAN. 131 
 
 airs of an impudent stone-mason ; their pavilions, their pin- 
 nacles pointed into spike and sheathed in tin, their roofs 
 bristling into every horror of crookedness ! Then their de- 
 tached non-descripts, with pranking in this part of red, and 
 that other contravent set out in green. I speak riot of the 
 Swiss farm-house, with its roof as tall again as the walls 
 that support it, the buttresses that stick out from these walls, 
 and the granaries, or back-yards (but that they are in front,) 
 that in story after story of gallery and lesser pendicle at- 
 tainable by ladder, bespread in glory of clumsiness the 
 house on all its faces excrescences out of the house, and 
 yet part of the house, often as much in area as the whole of 
 what the absolute walls enclose in interior. I allude exclu- 
 sively to the gentleman proprietor's mansion ; of the farther 
 barbarity of which I would merely add, that in shew, as in 
 in fact, the basement story is partly barn and partly coach- 
 house ; and that, with cognizance of the nose, part of it com- 
 prehends all the beastliness of the stable. 
 
 28th November. The Austrian police here is at once felt. 
 Its officer demanded and enforced a strict search of ray bag- 
 gage, even as he specially stated to my books and writ- 
 ten papers. This demand, involving delay of my journey, 
 and though previous search had been, slightly enough, made 
 last evening by the custom-house officers, was met by me 
 with much but ineffectual resistance : yet, though his inspec- 
 tion was strict, and as ungracious as tyrant's task must be, 
 it was conducted by him with perfect good temper, and I 
 must say propriety, and finally with much complimentary 
 courtesy. 
 
 Delayed by this officer for some hours, the result to me 
 was the tenancy of a back seat in a new voiture here pro- 
 vided for my course to Milan. But with the alchemy every 
 traveller ought to have and put into use, I had pleasure in 
 finding spread before me, while traversing the copsewood 
 that is in long and slow ascent from Seste, the horizon from 
 
 K2 
 
132 ROUTE TO MILAN. 
 
 the right to far round on the left, barriered high to heaven 
 by the Alps in chain. It is palpable that these mountains 
 are utterly more precipitous on the Italian than on their far- 
 ther face: no where in Swisserland have I had a view at all 
 comparable to this, in extension or grandeur seen too over 
 an expanse of vapor, with the effect of spread of the sea, 
 that wrapped all the intervening plain home every where to 
 their base. Of the mighty masses thus rising direct over 
 the off-shore, the colours were strangely various ; some 
 milk-white, some the moon's argent, some that higher lus- 
 tre in which the moon's mildness assimilates to the sun's 
 golden richness ; others again saddened into color of rock- 
 salt ; many rising from that shade to the red of burnished 
 copper ; and, diverse from all these, vast surfaces were in- 
 tensest black : all this, with play of seeming veins, inter- 
 mingling, as their precipitous faces or the breaks on their 
 surface gave change to the lights, in such sport, that even 
 through the purest white could be traced like appearances to 
 those we qualify aa the Man in the Moon,* in figuring out 
 the inequalities of that luminary's disk. Why all these very 
 various colors thus give themselves at once into display, 1 
 can only account from the extent of the chain, that includes, 
 as I suppsse, part of the Tyrol on the one side, and the 
 mountains ranging to Turin on the other : I say I suppose, 
 for no one of my company could define distinctly so much as 
 one of their names. For another cause, the weather must 
 have been in various mood along this dread line of front, 
 since in two or three tracts it was in that fitfulness as if pur- 
 
 ' Popular opinion in Italy make* this Man (o he no other than the flnt murderer. 
 Cain, under a load of thorn* that give him torture. Dante, from this very text la- 
 bors the Milij.-d of the moon's surface-obscurities for the greater part of his second 
 Canto of tbe Paradise- though such a mire of schoolman'* nonsense, in mixture 
 with philosophical experiment no wide of the mark, and (except by resort ultimately 
 to a great first cause) so unavailing)', ami, far worse, so stupidly, u to have made 
 roe alnuxt forswear tbe Poet's further company. 
 
ROUTE TO MILAN. 133 
 
 posing, and retracting every now and then its purpose, to 
 break from sun to sunlessness, and again relaxing into sul- 
 ky gloom preliminary to rain. I never had the opportunity 
 to study light and shade on such a surface and to such migh- 
 ty extent. 
 
 In our own climate, we have a something that in dumb 
 shew looks this awful substance 1 mean a range of cloud 
 skirting the horizon of a sky else pure blue, and this cloud 
 striking into those forms which more usually we liken and 
 with reason, for often they wear the guise of indurated mat- 
 terto battlemented wall, and loftier towers, of mighty cas- 
 tles in chain ; and which, with as little exertion of fancy by 
 those who have once seen the Alps, might more aptly in 
 their masses, that lengthen endlessly, and start up in this 
 place, and spire in the other in majestic or in fearful ragged- 
 ness, with every variety of swell or of break in their fronts, 
 that fancy can paint or clouds assume ; and with colours, 
 from skirt to pinnicle, strange and glorious as an evening's 
 (perhaps more strictly speaking, a sour winter afternoon's) 
 sun can impart figure out as the eternal mountains them- 
 selves. Strange that of mountain mass and of mere vapour, 
 effects to the eye should be produced so sublimely at one. 
 
 Stopping at a village-inn, the charge made me for refresh- 
 ment was so impudently extortionate, with so little means 
 on my part, in ignorance of Italian customs, of resisting it, 
 that having discharged the bill to the waiter, he was embol- 
 dened to put on me a demand for his own fee, with a look 
 of covetousness as if the John Bull who stood before him 
 was one living purse of coins, into which he yearned to dtp a 
 finger with an air as though my meanest droppings must 
 be wealth tojiim, while he repeated, and re-repeated the 
 ejaculation " You are very rich." The scene was quite 
 counterpart to that of the cat languishing on the cistern's 
 brink for the gold fish below. 
 
 Through a luxuriant plain, thick with towns, to MILAN ; 
 
134 MILAN. 
 
 not however before nightfall, and with the weather broken 
 into actual rain. 
 
 30th November. For these two days the weather has 
 been as black at noon as, in the November of England it is 
 at four in the afternoon. With every allowance for this, Mi- 
 lan has but the look of a vast village, or at best a great 
 country-town, devoid of the stately airof a capital, for which 
 it has abundant dimensions. Its immense cathedral is of 
 most costly materials ; even its exterior is coated with po- 
 lished marble ; and the whole is elaborately bespread with 
 the richest ornaments : it fails, however, to impress admira- 
 tion or even respect. The Grand Hospital, though in brick, 
 is a structure vast in all its quadrangles ; and its fa9ade, 
 running into upwards of sixty windows in the range, is su- 
 perb enough not to demand stone materials for the increase 
 of its dignity. The Sforza name is still to be read on the 
 tablet over its entrance. I am given to understand that this 
 institution is excellently managed, and that, immense as is 
 its accommodation, it is adequately occupied. 
 
 Of Milan streets, I must minute the expedient for dimin- 
 ishing the friction of carriage wheels by track-ways in the 
 centre, of eighteen inches flagging, at an interval from each 
 other, of an axle's usual length ; they are, in fact, a substi- 
 tute for rail -way s. In some of the broad streets run two 
 pairs of these flag-ways ; pedestrians have the privilege of 
 the general pavement. 
 
 Among the novelties of Italy, at least hereabout, must be 
 held the construction of the houses. In the first instance, 
 they exhibit very spacious dimensions : but the front pre- 
 sented to the spectator is but one of four, the stucture being 
 quadrangular. Round the court within, story after story, 
 are spacious galleries, into which, respectively on their own 
 ranges, all the apartments open. Round the pillars that 
 sustain the balcony fronts of these galleries, vines are trained 
 which spread their loose awning over the court-area. 
 
COMO. 135 
 
 Around, on high above, is ranged a fair shew of flowering 
 shrubs, in vast earthen vases. Of statues, in position of van- 
 tage, there is also good store. All these might have been 
 held in course : but the strangest decoration is the painting 
 of the exterior walls largely in picture, and with most vivid 
 colours, some done in gilding, and more in water-colours 
 as though it were with no other drift than to exhibit the 
 triumph of their climate ! As a set-off to all these novelties, 
 the interior of the apartments now in winter at least is 
 deplorably forbidding : the floor is a composition of brick 
 reduced to plaister, into which oil is rubbed after the paste 
 is laid on ; it retains always the offensive red color of the 
 original brick. Flooring of this kind, or very frequently of 
 tiles, is universal ; and not a board is under foot in any story 
 of the house : no carpet, or substitute for one : and whatever 
 addresses the other senses is of equally chilling discomfort. 
 
 Of Italian gew-gaw in dress though in the meaner ranks 
 an instance is most noticeable here a skewer of twelve 
 inches, stuck horizontally through the knot into which the 
 hair is clubbed behind ; and, converging to its centre, from 
 sixteen to twenty points of a supposed semi-circle, to which 
 the skewer is diameter, are smaller skewers, or great bod- 
 kins, with conspicuously great heads ; these pass, like 
 spokes to the stock of a wheel, through the same club of 
 hair, so much of their upper half uncovered as to make a 
 grand scolloped shew often in pewter ! Among the lower 
 ranks this caricature of ornament is. universal. 
 
 I am sorry to observe goitre no unfrequent malady 
 here.* 
 
 Monday morning : To COMO, in seven most slow hours ; 
 the latter part in heavy rain; the country insipid, though 
 well cultivated. On the left, nearly at the entrance of Como, 
 is a conical mountain of elegant form, clothed partly with 
 
 * I haye remarked different instances of goitre at Naples, 
 
136 MILAN. 
 
 vine, bat mostly with forest ; it is surmounted by a ruin, no- 
 ble, though not extensive which the pinnacle site forbids. 
 Its out- works and various portions of the main structure are 
 broken into great fragments : but a very lofty square tower, 
 that rises majestically from among these,, appears to give 
 added elevation to the mountain on which it is based. From 
 this mountain, a series of others of similar form ranges in 
 beautiful perspective, on the left of the lake ; which last 
 with all its appendages, the rains, now set in with inveterate 
 anger, make to me an utter blank. 
 
 Opposite to my inn, which is on the lake's verge without 
 giving to view an acre of its surface, appear two cataracts 
 foaming down their ravines, in the mountain's front, that 
 overbrows the town ; they are dry in all other weather than 
 such as I now experience ; but they afford some faint idea of 
 the terrors, that in the like hurricane of floods, must invest 
 the whole front of precipices, on either hand of the valley of 
 the Doveiria in the Simplon passage. 
 
 4th December. After two nights stay at Como, without 
 hope of better weather, returned to Milan ; and learned at 
 night, that I have escaped a set of robbers, who, at two 
 o'clock in the day, on a spot of the road I had passed an 
 hour before, stopped another coach: a young man of its com- 
 pany gave way to unmanly grief not, however, to noise or 
 alarm; but it so provoked one of the highwaymen as to 
 shoot him dead : the othor three robbers fled ; and the mur- 
 derer remaining, rifled the dead-man's pockets, and the poc- 
 kets and baggage of three surviving travellers. I am told, 
 notwithstanding this instance, that winter travelling here is 
 safer than that in summer, when the thicket which universal 
 foilage creates, forms an impenetrable shelter to the ban- 
 ditti, who may lurk unseen on the road's verge. I am now, 
 therefore, to study the country in skeleton. 
 
 Such is the security against the movements of the lawless 
 at their will, that is afforded by the passport system ! Yet 
 
MILAN. 137 
 
 its regulations present very numerous and most severe im- 
 pediments to travellers on their lawful occasions. At Como 
 I was compelled to make a half hour's walk through streets 
 that were sheeted deep in all their breadth, and with tor- 
 rents cascading in two or three spouts from every house's 
 roof, and falling at all possible varieties of interval from 
 their fronts ; and this in order to make a personal appear- 
 ance at the Police-Office to obtain my passport, with leave 
 granted on it to go back again to Milan. And at that office, 
 in the minute or two my passport was referred to an inner 
 room, happening to cast my eye on a bale of blank printed 
 forms, for routine office business, that were lying on the 
 counter, just as they had been received from the printer, I 
 received a coarse admonition, that inspection of the kind was 
 an offence under formal prohibition.* 
 
 * It is right to say, after having been through Italy, that in no other Office 
 of Police, under the Austrian Government, or any other, have I met the slight- 
 est discourtesy. On the contrary, all persons, in every town I have been in, 
 seemed to vie in active obligingness, and in giving all the facilities that their 
 forms will admit. 
 
SECTION VI. 
 
 6th December. Left Milan in a voiture, or vettura, in the 
 cabriolet seat of which (that is covered and in front of 
 the vehicle) the Vetturino engages, for three louis d'or to 
 take me to Florence within five days he paying all charges 
 on the road of supplementary horses to draw up mountain 
 steeps, tolls of roads, bridges, ferries, and so forth ; and 
 moreover, of two meals for me per day, and bedchamber, 
 fuel and candle by night : the engagement is vouched by a 
 formally executed written indenture, as is this country's 
 usage.* 
 
 Arrived, in four hours and an half, at LODI ; being the 
 first day's march, and through the same deadly rains that 
 yet obscure the sky. The country is all a plain ; but that 
 it has some inclination is made palpable to the eye by the 
 torrent sweep of the canals, which, always at one side of 
 the road, and sometimes on both, are fraught with supplies 
 for irrigation. It would seem as though the land must be 
 drowned by this power as a demon, instead of being cher- 
 ished by it as a deity of tutelar bounty. Besides these la- 
 teral dikes, which are as large as navigable canals in Eng- 
 land, and impetuous as mountain rivers, the road is also 
 crossed, at Marignano, by a river; and, farther on by an 
 aqueduct course, of considerable magnitude. At Lodi comes 
 
 Moderate in th extreme aithi*imt **em to the un travelled in Italy, I 
 have tince learned that it was by a third too much. 
 
LODI. 139 
 
 the Adda, vast in breadth, and terrible in the volume as in 
 the impetuosity of its waters forming the sole outlet of 
 Como Lake, and of the countless torrents from the conti- 
 guous Alps. 
 
 It is in this same country, that, with a fitness which 
 to home-bred critics, is bathos, "Virgil enumerates as one 
 of the features of a storm-scene " implentur fossae," the 
 ditches are filled. It is no descent from his majestic tenor 
 of images and phrase ; since, in this, his own country, the 
 ditches dikes far rather are rivers under the influence of 
 the season ; and rivers too of sublime torrent, and multi- 
 plied swell and rage. 
 
 An Italian, whom I have in company, has been good 
 enough to guide me without the town, to its celebrated 
 bridge. Over it, at the interval of a road's breadth, rises 
 on one bank, the town's cincture of ancient wall on the 
 opposite, which was that occupied by the French, spreads 
 as absolute a flat as the mind can figure to itself of earth's 
 surface its level is but a few inches over that of the dread 
 river. The bridge is but a simple wooden one ; broad, ab- 
 solutely horizontal, and close on the flood to whose plane it 
 corresponds. The fire must have been altogether murder- 
 ous ; since along the whole bank is not the least cover of 
 wall, nor any vegetation beyond the growth of grass. On 
 the part of the French it must have been very much confined 
 to musketry : cannon would have beaten down the walls, at 
 the base of which the Austrians were drawn up, and which 
 are but little shattered. 
 
 From my companion I gather, that there is here a rooted 
 aversion to the domination of Austria : this dislike vents 
 itself in execration of the climate, and the produce of the 
 Austrian Hereditary States, into which it is the present poli- 
 cy to transfer the Italian conscripts, in exchange for Ger- 
 man levies sent hither for garrison. It is urged to me that 
 the Italian troops pine in an insalubrious climate, and starve 
 
140 LODI. 
 
 from the substitution for their accustomed home nutriment, 
 of a scanty diet: unwholesome, if for no other reason than 
 that it is alien to their habits. To my strained apprehensions 
 that the world is now released from the murder of war, it 
 was replied, that human beings were subjected, now as then, 
 to premature dissolution, and that the death was more igno- 
 minious, which accrued amid the torpor of privation of hu- 
 man comforts, than that which was lost in the spirit-stirring 
 conflict, when those who fell died like men, and of the sur- 
 vivors many rose in war's lottery to high distinction. The 
 inference is, that here is discontent which cannot mend itself, 
 and indulges therefore in irritational anger. From the un- 
 constrained communications of this person, which exhibit no 
 symptoms of the declaimer, or of the fanatic radical, it is 
 clear that he speaks the ideas which are current among his 
 countrymen. 
 
 Lodi is the centre of that district of rural occupation, 
 where is fabricated, for consumption over Europe, the cheese 
 that goes by the name of Parma: the misnomer is similar 
 to that in the home instance of Stilton, or that meaner one 
 of Waterloo each misleading to the extent that names can 
 set wrong as to localities. 
 
 My supper table was joined by another Italian stranger, 
 who, I since learn, is a lawyer ; with whom I have had 
 much, and instructive conversation. Towards its close, 
 some expression on my part, implying the statement of my 
 being an Englishman (the conversation was in French) 
 startled him utterly : " You an Englishman ! You ! Quite 
 " impossible ! Why, you talk. An Englishman never talks. 
 ' It is quite out of question that you should be English." It 
 became necessary on this, that I should, as a possible so- 
 lution to his wonder, put into plea the fact of my being an 
 Irishman,* which to a degree quieted bis surprise : but in 
 
 * His umia had been, to far as he had formed one, that I was SWIM. 
 
LOD'I. 141 
 
 explanation, as well as proof, of his grounds for holding 
 such an opinion of English taciturnity, he stated to me an 
 instance of his having had, as one of a party travelling to 
 Turin, an English gentleman in company, who for three 
 days that they were together never uttered a word- -had 
 usually a book in his hand in the frequent intervals not oc- 
 cupied by which, he seemed in sore throes of thinking, even 
 to the swelling of the veins of his forehead. This gentleman, 
 on their arrival 5 it Turin, pressed on the company an invi- 
 tation to dinner, with such seeming good-will, that non- 
 compliance with it would, in all likelihood, have pained his 
 feelings. Well ; at the dinner, and during the full course 
 of its convivial sitting, this English entertainer uttered not 
 a word, nor gave play on his countenance to a smile : one 
 isolated instance declared this my conversible, and I must 
 say sensible, companion of many in his experience, con- 
 firmative to him that an Englishman's sulk will not allow 
 his thoughts to stray into cheerfulness, nor permit his 
 mouth into movement of social talk, 
 
 6th December. Left Lodi soon after four in the dark of 
 the morning : arriving about ten at the lordly Po, we found 
 that its bridge of boats, leading to Placentia, had been 
 swept away by the recent floods ; and were detained in a 
 muddy field for three hours, before we could obtain passage 
 by a boat ; which, though not large in dimensions, carried 
 over in the one trip, our great vettura, several drays, a num- 
 ber of cattle, and the company composing the suite of all these. 
 The Po in most majestic breadth, and a dense and very 
 bold sheet of water ; its bank, as deep as the river allows 
 it to be viewed, is an earth as fine as powder, and fat almost 
 as that of a church-yard. Nearly at the point at which 
 we landed, half a mile above Placentia the Trebia, vast in 
 its supplies of torrent, unites with the Po. We passed 
 through Placentia without making any stop : its look is for- 
 lorn ; and it exhibits no traces of having been at any time 
 
142 PARMA. 
 
 magnificent. To a little place, called Fiorenzula, for the 
 night ; where in the one inn four vast vetture came into heap 
 for several and collective plague : for me separate and ex- 
 cellent accommodation was procured : but how the pell- 
 mell multitude of English found stowage, ladies and gentle- 
 men, I cannot divine. 
 
 7th December. Through another miserable day, but by 
 noon, to PARMA. The aspect of the country is changed 
 since our passage of the Po : much agriculture ; and each 
 contracted farm has its distinct dwelling-house: beyond the 
 Po, the cultivators are congregated into villages, or several 
 families of them occupy one spacious mansion that is the me- 
 tropolis of the property. The explanation of this is, that 
 the soil is here stiff, and requires four yokes of bullocks to 
 subdue a surface to which, in the other tract, one is fully 
 equal. Vines, it is needless to say, have in great measure 
 disappeared here, and, with them, the universal thicket of 
 grove. 
 
 In the progress to Parma we crossed the bed of a torrent 
 the Taro ; whether a quarter of a mile wide, more or less, 
 I know not ; but over that utmost width, are proofs of the 
 occasional rage of the floods, descending from the Appen- 
 nincs, (which mountains, since yesterday, are in view ;) more 
 frequently its bed is nearly dry, as is at present the case, 
 even after all the late rains, but with a surface of loose 
 stones rolling in sand, that is abominable to the passenger 
 whether in carriage or on horseback. Over this immense 
 and dangerous interruption, a magnificent bridge has been 
 constructed by Maria Louisa, the late Empress of France, 
 now sovereign of this country, and highly and affectionately 
 spoken of for numerous excellent qualities. 
 
 The unfavorable state of the weather precluded the view, 
 to any purpose, of the Cathedral and Baptistey, the cupolas 
 of both which are painted by Coreggio ; they are said to 
 have been master-pieces of that artist, but the freshness of 
 
PARMA* 143 
 
 their colouring is gone. Some pictures, recovered from 
 Paris, were, however, accessible in good light at the Aca- 
 demy. At the Public Library I witnessed another proof of 
 Maria Louisa's well-directed munificence, in the noble aug- 
 mentation she has made to it, through the purchase of a 
 collection of books, and between three and four thousand 
 manuscripts : for the reception of these, the apartment in 
 which they are arranged was specially built. 
 
 A bust of this " fair imperial flower," by Canova his 
 latest work, and but just arrived has given me high plea- 
 sure. The air is noble, the forehead and the other features 
 fine ; in particular the expression of the mouth has in it 
 much, I fancied, of goodness. The entire, I have reason 
 to believe, is a striking likeness one of those triumphs in 
 resemblance which only genius can attain ; handsome, per- 
 haps, beyond what the original can strictly claim. On 
 hinting this to the person who shewed it, his countenance 
 well seconded his expression of affectionate assurance, that 
 if she be not a perfect beauty she is eminently amiable, and 
 that the marble is an excellent likeness. 
 
 But how may I do justice to the fascination which I ex- 
 perienced, while gazing on the various typographical tri- 
 umphs of Bodoni! His printed pages are pictures. Such 
 beauty of characters, such disposition of the lines, such con- 
 trivance obvious often, and often concealed for facilitating 
 the progress of the eye ; giving mastery to that organ, and 
 to the mind, over the most involved circuit of period through 
 each successive maze, page onward after page, of whatever 
 sized volume in whatever character. His Greek, beyond 
 all, it were impossible adequately to praise. His speci- 
 mens also in two large volumes of penmanship, in vast va- 
 riety, and with all the beauty of engraving, though effected 
 by moveable types ; and his specimens of the Lord's 
 Prayer in one hundred and fifty-five dialects of different lan- 
 guages are substantive objects of admiration, as addressed 
 
144 i. OKI. 
 
 to the mere eye. A true son of St. Patrick must complain 
 that along with numerous other Celtic dialects the Irish 
 is NOT included. Careless even about fire, and, far more, 
 scarce editions, as Samuel Johnson himself, these creations 
 of beauty in the abstract, as it were, of printing, held me 
 spell-bound. And this monopoly of my time lost me the 
 sight of Maria Louisa's nursery furniture, supplied by Buon- 
 aparte, and which is among the usual lions here : the cra- 
 dle, silver ; great chair the same ; toilet-table, and all the 
 other items for child's or nurse's accommodation, solid sil- 
 ver, unless where mother of pearl could be intermixed for 
 lightening the utensil : the whole in some shabbily set forth 
 apartments of the mean palace which she occupies. I say 
 this on the authority of an English gentleman, who here 
 joins our vettura for Florence : for missing the actual view I 
 am to suffer the penalties of female reprehension, in family 
 lecture at home. 
 
 Various concurrent circumstances, and the explanations 
 consequent on these, pourtray to me Lombardy as under hi- 
 deous mal-government Here is a people quick of percep- 
 tion, of pungent sensibilities, poetic in talent held under 
 the rod of another, whose make, intellectual as well as bo- 
 dily, is in contrast to all these who are tramontane and 
 outlandish to barbarism to the nation over whom they domi- 
 neer with a tyrant severity that disdains appearances. All the 
 functionaries, from the ecclesiastical dignity of archbishop 
 of Milan, to that mean lay one of custom-house inspector, 
 are Germans. The trade of export is chained with prohi- 
 bitions ; that of import is manacled by prohibitions also, or 
 by exactions that are tantamount ; and all that they may 
 be as drawfarm to their transalpine task-masters, who mon- 
 opolize the supply of this noble region with their coarse and 
 clumsy manufactures. German home-industry battens on 
 them, and German extra population lords in it the exercise 
 of every possible public trust. Hungarian and Bohemian and 
 
PARMA. 145 
 
 Austrian regiments parade their towns ; while the native 
 youth are banished, in counter-change, to eat the bread they 
 loathe receiving, from task-masters who have closed on them 
 the path of military honors, that might exalt them nationally, 
 as it threw wide the door to promotion personally amid the 
 risks of war. I admit and the admission is painful that 
 ambitious or even manly purpose is far less vigorous among 
 the higher orders of whatever classes here than among 
 the lower, who compose the valuable portion of the Ita- 
 lian people, and have capacities to run a noble race. A 
 drummer, under French organization, became a captain, and 
 soon returned as such to his native village. Right well I re- 
 member who instanced to me this one, among numerous facts 
 that, wherever they were spoken, made the hearers alert for 
 enterprise. In those times too, wherever war allowed 
 commercial intercourse, the dominant policy smoothed the 
 avenues to it. 
 
 Badged slaves as are the Lombards, from the Noble 
 down to the husbandman, they are chained to their home. 
 To seal hermetically the elements of mischief, it is part of 
 the Austrian policy to hold their Italian thralls in virtual in- 
 carceration. No nobleman, in the Lombard States, is 
 allowed to pass their confines for travel, or even for health : 
 no merchant, unless on matter of mercantile business. To 
 the former description of applicants the reply is, that amuse- 
 ment and tfealth may be had as well at home, as abroad : to 
 the latter, the strictest inquisitorial interrogatories are put 
 as to the transaction exacting their personal presence : and 
 they are required to exhibit their books and make disclosure 
 of their accounts and the relevant letters of their correspond- 
 ents. Even after all this, reference is indispensible to the 
 Imperial Council at Vienna, whose decision must be had, be- 
 fore leave for a stipulated term of absence is accorded. 
 
 Sooner or later there must come an explosion, close-cork- 
 ed up though all be. Of its success, to any good purpose, 
 
 L 
 
140 PARMA. 
 
 1 see enough to induce despair. And then, the ill-will go on 
 ,to putrify into morbidness, and into avenging, merciless mis- 
 chief to Austria herself. The system, as now followed, I 
 admit to be traceable to the dread of Jacobin illumina- 
 tion and enterprise. But the Austrian government is strong 
 enough to put down all Jacobins or Carbonari as is their 
 present Italian designation ; it is also strong enough, if it 
 were just enough, (wise enough is another matter!) to give 
 full scope to honest enterprise, and receive its own reward 
 from the blessings that would crown its accomplishment. 
 Kut knowledge is hateful to this tyranny that dares, among 
 other darings, to prohibit within its dominions the circula- 
 tion of the Bible. Our Queen Mary had doubtless a lauda- 
 ble object in view, when, to vindicate Christianity, debased 
 by ages of priestcraft into idolatry, she fed the Smithfield 
 fires with victims of her zeal. Austrian power, of equally 
 blind zeal, has the farther demerit of combining with it rob- 
 bery, as sordid as it is flagrant. 
 
 The whole of this system is execrable. It is the self-same 
 one by which past generations of English held the past gen- 
 erations of Irish in torment which at this day is become a 
 cancerous disease to both English and Irish. One Island is 
 is equally unconscious as the other, of the sins, offensive or 
 defensive, of the half-milennium of centuries that is gone by. 
 It is the fervent study of all that are honest in our time in- 
 nocent of the past injuries, but heirs to their consequences 
 to redeem the deadly oppressive mortgage incumbrance. 
 One portion of that incumbrance is our lazzeroni popula- 
 tion, in locust cloud of multitude and mischief; the mob- 
 leaders of it, more vile, as they are more miscreant, than any 
 of the vilest of the stragglers at its farthest fag-end. Ages 
 past, how many and how blind ! have created the misery : 
 ages, bow many to come ! must rue the results, and live in 
 dread perplexity how to obviate or escape from them !* 
 
 * I find, in coune of studying Dante, (hot the present wickedness is but repeti- 
 
BOLOGNA. 147 
 
 8th December. Through a country not materially differ- 
 ent, by Reggio, the birth-place of Ariosto : the walls of this 
 city we rounded, as the passage direct through its streets 
 would have occasioned much passport vexation, and an hour 
 or two's expense of time. Passed the night at a house of 
 homely but comfortable accommodation. Next morning 
 to MODENA a city in the propriety of streets and the as- 
 pect and architecture of its Ducal Palace, beyond any thing 
 I have yet seen in Italy. 
 
 Passing hence towards Bologna, is a series of pretty and 
 flourishing villages. Dispersed in their vicinity smile, most 
 numerously, neat farm-houses ; each house with out-buildings, 
 its corn and hay stacked under a permanent roof all the 
 fronts being open. I have not at all seen such a sight since 
 the Pays-bas : and it is now exquisitely refreshing. 
 
 Within two miles of Bologna, viewed from a bridge, is 
 a most lovely picture on the right. A soft hill on one side, 
 a far finer one on the other : the valley between them bed 
 of a river that meets the road at right angles gives vista to 
 a bold mountain, of which the sharp summit ridge is crown- 
 ed by an edifice that, at a remote distance on the road, had 
 appeared as the conical top of a farther mountain, whose 
 mass was shut out by an intervening one of rival height. 
 
 tion on the part of Imperial Germany, of the infliction of miseries, which the 
 poet mourned over more than five centuries ago, A. D. 1300. He strings together 
 metaphors of unsparing invective against his conntry's forlorn debasement. 
 
 Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, 
 
 Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta, 
 Non donna di provincie, ma bordello ! 
 
 Thou servile land of pain and woe vast borne, 
 Thou storm-beat ship, of pilot's skill bereft, 
 Dame once of subject nations ! brothel now ! 
 
 In addressing, in vehement apostrophe, the Imperial Sovereign, he hails him " Ger- 
 " man Albert," an epithet, says his latest and best commentator, and also coun- 
 tryman, Biagioli, " that in the poet's mind carries with it a contemptuous hate, 
 u which comes home to our feelings." 
 
 K2 
 
148 BOLOGNA. 
 
 This edifice now declared itself a church, with grand cu- 
 pola ; its main structure hexagon, with a portico, an ex- 
 quisitely featured object below, and giving true Italian 
 finish to the landscape. I learn it is three Italian miles (of 
 which sixty to a degree) distant from Bologna, from which 
 the progress to it is in ascent under a continued roof sus- 
 tained by 650 arcades of regular architecture. Close tow- 
 ering behind, and ranging largely on either side of this mag- 
 nificent feature, are the Appennines in mingled elegance and 
 majesty of form, their skirts sinking in many a fold of 
 wooded loveliness, into the varied cultivation which rises 
 from their base. This theatre of grand and pleasing objects 
 in graceful arrangement is exquisitely framed in by the hills 
 that run home on the road of both which tho finish over 
 their whole surface down to the river, whose course they 
 guide, is in adaptation to the picture they disclose. 
 
 Bologna is a large and noble city ; its streets in the pecu- 
 liar style of piazzas, that compose the front of the ground- 
 floor story, so that the foot-ways are a continued arcade : in 
 this respect it resembles Berne. 
 
 Viewed, in the evening, its two leaning towers, that are 
 not worth looking at; the noble bronze statue of Neptune, 
 which gives pride to the grand fountain ; a church of Gre- 
 cian architecture and of sweet simplicity of parts within its 
 chancel windows, however, in the set shape, frame and sash, 
 of parlour windows in a bow termination, four or five in num- 
 ber, strangely and strikingly offensive to the ej-e, with which 
 they are in level. Had time also to view the Grand Church, 
 which is in full Gothic within ; its very lofty and light vault- 
 ing of roof supported by massy columns that sustain gross 
 semi-circular arches 1 shall I call them Saxon, even here in 
 Italy. 
 
 Bologna is situated in a plain at the very foot of the Ap- 
 pennines. Having left it at the usual hour of four, day -light 
 found us among these mountains to me of new character: 
 
APPENNINES. 149 
 
 no vast masses with intersection to their base of valley, 
 either wide or in ravine, but rather a continued ascent over 
 large surfaces, that had been withdrawn, as if by forceful 
 undulation, from their neighbouring eminences ; their forms 
 beautiful, and giving repose to vales in large range around. 
 Over a reticulation of such vales occasional loftier heights 
 gave extensive command. One summit, pointed into sharp- 
 ness that here was a singularity, was topped by a half-ruined 
 edifice, which for three full hours our course being a horse's 
 smart and sometimes slow walk stood in the distinction of 
 a landmark. 
 
 Arrived at the region of snow; at least where, while rains 
 were deluging the plains, snows had last week fallen to 
 the depth of four feet : so far as their veil suffered me to 
 judge, the mountains onward assumed a coarse and heavier 
 appearance. Towards evening several of their summits 
 were quite in cone, as if forming crater of volcano : and 
 at dusk we saw bickering, yet very clear, at perhaps a 
 mile's distance the Pietra Mala, an exhalation as of flame, 
 from the side of a little conical eminence, standing on a table 
 land environed by mountains. I am told it is not seen in 
 summer at all ; nor in winter, unless in the dark, and then 
 least bright when there is most wind; highest towards 
 morning, when it reaches the height of a tall man. 
 
 To a post house where unprecedented sight as yet in 
 Italy ! we were waited on by a bevy of five tall wenches 
 correct quite in their demeanor daughters of the host and 
 hostess. Men in Italy are the domestic drudges of all work, 
 even to chamberlainship of the ladies. 
 
 Our course the following morning was through mountain 
 tracts, freed from snows, and that are nobly broken in vari- 
 ous and headlong valley : the wood no where profuse. In 
 anxious look-out as we proceeded, for the site of Udolpho 
 Castle all the features by which its localities could be de- 
 tected fresh in my recollection I had at length the felicity 
 
160 KOl'TB TO FLORENCE. 
 
 to hit on the identical mountain, on a brow beneath whose 
 crest it unquestionably stood. I lament that time did not 
 permit me to expatiate in tracing its massy fragments, that 
 now are, of course, covered with lichen and overgrown with 
 trees or, perhaps, resolved into coating of the cliffs from 
 which they had for centuries loured in tall bulwark. A single 
 hint that could guide others to the spot, I will not trust even 
 to my minutes. If the secret committed to a pit of earth, dug 
 by the whisperer to receive it for his own easement, became 
 disclosed by the contiguous and tell-tale vegetation, the 
 stocking-foot, stealthy pace of the lead pencil over my tablet, 
 might equally get forth into tattle to the guide-book manu- 
 facturers ; and the public would be forthwith assaulted with 
 appendixes thick and three-fold, in supplement to the exist- 
 ing editions of Udolpho, in which the important information 
 was grafted to say nothing of the substantive appearance, 
 in two cream colored quartos, of a tour express to the place, 
 with the accompaniment of some two dozen of aquatinta de- 
 lusions. Sin of such uproar in the publishing world shall 
 not lie at my door ! 
 
 It is, by the way, justice to Mrs. Radcliffe to state, that 
 the materials of her descriptions are genuine : her moun- 
 tains and vallies, with all their drapery ; her palaces and 
 other buildings ; the whole warehouse full that she spreads 
 in such prodigality over her canvas all is Italian, faithful to 
 fact. But she /ails miserably in the distribution : she puts 
 things into chance-medley combination, into a patch-work 
 that mocks not merely perspective that were a trifle ! but 
 possible Nature. Like a piece of clock-work, of which the 
 glass vase that contains it, gives to sight every and each 
 wheel and pinion and cog, and the pendulum in fair vibra- 
 tion ; but which shall be put into such capricious mal-ad- 
 justment, consistent with movement, as never to give any 
 other indication of time than the reading of the dial-plate 
 may furnish without the aid of hands, which may be attached 
 
ROUTE TO FLORENCE. 151 
 
 to the interior work : similarly, with all her apparatus of in- 
 cident and description, she is always, unless by hap-hazard, 
 at variance with justness of placing, and with truth in time: 
 her landscapes are evermore out of keeping, as is the mind's 
 tone on the part of the beholder, to dwell on them.* 
 
 This course takes us to FLORENCE, the time expended in 
 reaching which from Milan, will have been seven days : how 
 many English miles it may be, there are no means of com- 
 puting, the posts here being measured by time and not by 
 space : but unquestionably, the distance could be performed 
 in one third of the time by English stage coach travelling, 
 and still allow the same length of nightly stoppage from 
 about six in the evening till four ; and in defiance of the bad 
 weather, and of the multitude of mountains since Bologna. 
 Up their ascents our Vetturino's three stout horses that 
 come the journey through received the supplementary aid of 
 a couple of the oxen of the country. These are of a most 
 noble race, in color always white, or deepening thence into 
 dun handsome, tractable ; in the descents they kept in a 
 smart trot in front of the horses. I ought not to omit that 
 through these Appennines there is no want of a village popu- 
 lation, however it may have been under the Udolphan sway 
 of terror. And the villagers' houses are well built ; while 
 they are themselves well clothed, and appear in no way 
 scant of village comforts. 
 
 Towards ten we had descended into a rich vale, animated 
 with villages and villas. A river, 'running counter to our 
 road's progress, seemed to draw in reference to its cheerful 
 course the numerous hanging woods that intermingled with 
 
 * I must not be ungrateful to Mrs. Radcliffej whose books, next after or along 
 with Boswell's Johnson, (materials in delightful scatterment of thought, on men 
 and manners) are indispensibles. It were hard that, from her profusely stored 
 magazine of poetic landscape materials, I coulfl not frame endless visions of scenery 
 to my mind's eye, in that often recurring temperament which luxuriates in the sport 
 of castles, and of human visages that can be excited iu twilight, from the exhibition 
 of a sea-coal fire. 
 
152 KOUTE TO FLORENCE. 
 
 man's labors. Embosomed here, stood, with its appurte- 
 nant village, a summer residence of the Grand Duke of Tus- 
 cany, in lovely and serene retirement. 
 
 The sun at length, after nine days' absence even thus in 
 Italy ! diffused his beams over this vale ; up which, to its 
 head, our road ascended ; and after an hour's course over 
 its table land, the view broke on us of Florence the cupola 
 of its great church, its other cupolas, its numerous tall 
 towers, turrets and spires, of various architecture. I have 
 seen not a few finely-situated towns, but never any compa- 
 rable in site to Florence, in the midst of what might be 
 deemed a park worthy of such a mistress : for its vast and 
 noble vale is in the style of a high-kept garden scene, ap- 
 propriately ornamented with village, and town, and palace- 
 structure. The cincture of this magnificence in amplitude is 
 the Appenines, in range behind range, answering in den- 
 sity beyond, to the tracts we had traversed, and on whose 
 southern brow we now stood : either array of mountains 
 as if withdrawn to give spread to the scene of man's tri- 
 umphs in nature's embellishment below and high around. 
 Midway flowed the Arno its course from the left, beyond 
 some miles, shut from sight by mountains in close press : 
 to the right, or seaward, the vale continued its display as 
 far as the eye could strain.* 
 
 Two miles short of Florence, to the left, and separated 
 by a close and very deep valley from the eminence we were 
 descending, stands the most captivatingly-elegant mountain 
 I have ever any where beheld. From its base upwards it is 
 one scene of palaces on terrace- sites, amidst magnificent 
 gardens. Aloft on its crest are numerous structures of pa- 
 lace front also monasteries, I am told, and can well believe 
 them to be : from amidst them rise two or three campaniles, 
 
 Gray write* to bis correspondent, then proceeding to Italy : " In your course 
 *' down the Appenines, you will see, if the sun shine*, all Tuscany before you." 
 Though the canvass is most fast, Gray no exnggerator usually gives it " rerge 
 too much." 
 
ROUTE TO FLORENCE. 153 
 
 very lofty, and of absolutely elegant expression. Their 
 subject town is contiguous : but the vertex some hundred 
 or two of feet above all this receives its finish, and gives 
 it also to the mountain's lowest skirts : it is the station of a 
 quadrangular edifice, that is vast enough to answer the ut- 
 most demands of its immense elevation. This place of won- 
 der is Fiesole a name consecrated by Milton's association 
 of its loftiness of stand with the midnight studies of the hea- 
 vens by Galileo. It is, besides, the mother city of Florence 
 that is but the offset of Fiesole. 
 
SECTION VII. 
 
 A grand triumphal arch which was erected in compli- 
 ment to the husband of Maria Teresa gives entrance within 
 the lofty wall that cinctures Florence. The first view of the 
 interior by no means disappoints expectation. The streets 
 are lined by houses of majestic elevation ; and their surface 
 through all their breadth is flagged, like our home footways, 
 with cut stone. Along this surface, smooth and unchiseled, 
 equestrians, as well as horses in draft, move safely and at 
 ease. 
 
 12th December. The Grand Duke's square is a contract- 
 ed space, environed with ancient and stately buildings. I 
 should be slow to believe that in any other square in any 
 Italian capital, I shall meet so many and exquisite statues 
 as stand here in open air : the bronze equestrian statue of 
 Cosmo triumphant over Sienna, conspicuous in the centre ; 
 but the Roman warrior carrying off the Sabine female, in 
 disregard of her father who writhes in agony below is a 
 a groupe which supremely fixes the attention. 
 
 Thence, within the gallery close by, to worship the Ve- 
 nus de Medicis the Niobe ; and to gaze in distracted won- 
 der for the first hour's view. I can testify its effects on my- 
 self, which were a thrilling of the fibres about the brain, that 
 ended in head-ache. 
 
 14th December. One marked characteristic of the Flo- 
 rentines, (it is but fair to include the Italians generally, BO 
 far as I have gone,) is good-nature, radically and actively 
 
FLORENCE. 155 
 
 alert. The proofs of it are abundant and incessant. A 
 squalid man, that had noticed the halt and hesitation on my 
 part, from not recollecting the particular archway that gives 
 entrance to the gallery, approached me with the offer of his 
 services, for whatever explanation utterly gratuitous on 
 his side he could afford to a stranger ; and was with diffi- 
 culty dissuaded from foregoing the trouble of passing with 
 me across the Place, and to the very stair-foot. I have al- 
 ready, and at frequent times in my search for one or other 
 object of curiosity, applied to a passing stranger for guid- 
 ance ; who not being able to give the information I required, 
 or as he could wish, has stopped a second, who has stopped 
 a third or even a fourth ; and a ring was thus formed round 
 me of decent persons, studying to make out my best course. 
 In my journey through the Valais, a Florentine who was 
 fellow-traveller through a short part of the way, and of whom 
 I had asked some local information as to the accommoda- 
 tions to be had in Florence pressed on me, that I should 
 give him a call on my arrival here, in order to his affording 
 me his personal assistance ; for which purpose he gave me 
 his address. He has fully redeemed the promise of being 
 thus serviceable to me.* 
 
 These kindnesses, that are are evinced in every way that 
 is possible, remind me of the singular humanity so striking 
 at Brussels, and the triumph over the grave of monumental 
 gratitude, that still pays its debt to the population of that 
 city, for warm-hearted courtesies experienced there, some 
 seventy years ago, by an Earl of Aylesbury ; who, by will, 
 directed the erection of a handsome and very useful fountain, 
 in memorial of the feelings which the inscription records ; 
 as well as that the testator's wishes were carried into effect 
 
 * This kind-natured and, I believe, very respectable person Luigi Bardi 
 whom I found to be printer to the unrivalled enrgraver, Raffael Morghen was 
 subsequently so considerate as to furnish me with a reference to a correspondent 
 at Rome, to whom I had occasion to be similarly troublesome. 
 
156 FLORENCE. 
 
 by the succeeding Earl. Florence is alive with this more 
 than courtesy, this saliently active benevolent feeling. 
 
 15th December. Behind the Grand Duke's residence, 
 rise in steep ascent the attached gardens of Boboli. These 
 are open to the public two days in the week ; and as a spe- 
 cimen of Italian gardens on a grand scale, have been the 
 object of my curiosity. Of course, they are extremely re- 
 gular. The greater part of their surface is covered with trees, 
 principally ever-greens : these are traversed by straight 
 walks ; one of which, sixteen feet wide, is in its entire con- 
 tinuance a bower of bay, laurustinus, &c., woven across in 
 a living roof of great loftiness. In the shew parts, the 
 ground assumes an amphitheatric form, with walks fronted 
 by stone ballustrades in the ascent and on the level of its 
 topmost elevation: statues and flower vases, immense store 
 crown these ballustrades. The connecting tracts between 
 amphitheatre and amphitheatre are numerous; and, in splen- 
 did vista up the whole gardens' ascent, are flights of stairs 
 on either band of the regular glacis which always intervenes. 
 In midway height of the gardens is, of course, a grand 
 basin of water a Neptune presiding, which, they say, is 
 colossal ; but whose trident, it irks me to criticise so of Flo- 
 rencefalling beneath a fish-spear, is but a flesh- fork. 
 A bove this, and in the proudest station of the gardens, as 
 it deserves to be is the statue of one of the M edicis, who 
 was the reigning sovereign at a period in the seventeenth 
 century, when, as the inscription in thankful commemora- 
 tion records, all Europe else being torn by Civil or Foreign 
 war, or a prey to famine and pestilential disease one wide 
 theatre of mischief and misery ; Tuscany alone reposed in 
 peace, abundance and the enjoyment of earthly blessing. 
 
 The utmost elevation of these gardens is the site of a 
 small fortress, which would grant at least temporary security 
 to the Grand Ducal family against mob-ebullition, if that 
 could be matter of apprehension. But the views from all 
 
FLORENCE. 157 
 
 these high grounds over Florence and the vale of the Arno 
 drew me, in spite of myself, to exclusive gaze on them, and 
 neglect of Italian gardening. 
 
 At present the hue that every where bespreads the earth's 
 surface a brown or heavy heath color, is monotonously 
 sullen : it is the consequence of there being no vthere in the 
 champaign country one patch of sod : all is dug ground, 
 and just now, for the far greater part, uncovered, as the sown 
 corn does not yet shew itself. All that is not corn is kit- 
 chen garden. In either case the spread is uniform of elm 
 trees in regular rows, that are closer together than in Eng- 
 lish orchards : these elms are a species bordering on the 
 witch, and forking like apple trees : their boughs are lopt 
 regularly to a level, from which process results a vigorous 
 growth of their side-shoots, so that the naked wood is suf- 
 ficiently dense to disguise, in brown bark color, the surface of 
 the soil even though ilTwere sod. But a change will come 
 with the change of season, when these elms will extend one 
 uninterrupted spread of leaves in shade aloft, and the vines, 
 through the support of their stems, will stretch in garland 
 from tree to tree, and weave from bough to bough a floating 
 robe of braided foliage and fruit, in second shelter to the 
 corn crop clothing the bosom of the soil below rich nou- 
 risher of all ! It is then that the almost continuity of villages 
 and villas needed for the population, to whom it is toil unre- 
 mitting to marshal and keep in method this riot of vegeta- 
 tion, will almost escape the eye, demanding the trace of hu- 
 man habitation. At present the strath appears so thickly 
 bespread with houses, that one might suppose that Florence 
 or a metropolis of five times its dimensions had walked 
 forth on a grand festival day to take the air in country ex- 
 cursion. 
 
 This staring effect of a city broken into scatter, which is 
 offensive on the flat, gives place on the mountain fronts that 
 every where oppose a barrier to the vale, to quite other per- 
 
168 FLORENCE. 
 
 ceptions. Every where there the structures rise in purest 
 elegance of design, in graceful dispersion, and despite their 
 crowd, in sites which the lover of landscape would have soli- 
 cited for their display. Above all, the mountain that sustains 
 Fiesole, its cathedral, its convents, its palaces that deck the 
 summit and forehead and descent, to the utmost base has 
 air of a grand garden, through which the edifices are distri- 
 buted, as if for no other purpose than its embellishment. 
 Italian architecture works much of tbis wonder. But the 
 precipitous mountain face gives the triumphs of that art into 
 transcendent display by its terrace positions, with the far- 
 ther aid of Italian evergreens, most welcome in vicinity to 
 villa structures ; the cypress and the olive. These trees are 
 in strange contrast of form and of colour : the latter, sere in 
 its leaf, which is pale as the reverse side of the sallow's ; 
 maigreit would seem from want of vegetable green,* with 
 which the other that is from five to seven feet in girth here 
 looks to be saturated to painfulness. Both are garden plants : 
 they are one and other evergreens ; and their oppositeness 
 of hues is moderated by the deciduous tribe in its present 
 brown leaflessness, with the help of an occasional stone-pine. 
 To each terrace- breadth of ground, a character is thus de- 
 rived of special garden ornament, in adaptation to the edifice 
 which, with all its grandeur, seems not to command, but to 
 belong to it. Yet of all these edifices, most various in size 
 and style and purpose, let me repeat, that all combine to 
 captivate the eye by a purity, congruity and grace which 
 seem as in unity of principle to belong to every one of them : 
 
 * Gray, with his own accurately just power of epithet, describes Fiesole, 
 " glauca ua canescere nylva," viz. a grey green vesture. Gray was for most of 
 his time in Italy at Florence : and he worshipped the peculiarities of Fiesole 
 
 Nou ego TOS posthac Ami de valle vidabo 
 Porticibuii circum et cnndenti cincta corona 
 Villaruni longe nitido consurgera dorto, 
 Antiquamve ^Edem et veteres prsrferre cuprMMt 
 Mirabor, tectUque uper peodentia tccta. 
 
FLORENCE. 159 
 
 and scattered thick as they are, right and left, or one aloft 
 over other in competition of haughty stand, not a wish is stir- 
 red that any one object should change its position, or orna- 
 ment ; while the collective dazzle of their multitude is sub- 
 dued by the array of grove, amid which they are distributed, 
 as it were gay enamel and inlay on the exuberance of nature. 
 3 1st December. Of course FIESOE, two miles from 
 Florence, is a frequent scene of my expatiation. The 
 views thence are of various character, some of them splen- 
 didly savage. But what an ascent must be gained of 
 flagged road too now coated with snow and ice ! The 
 summit cone is stair-case absolute. And this was the 
 site of an Etruscan city, ancient in story before the aera 
 when Rome was infant. Fragments are yet shewn of its 
 town wall : they consist of blocks of vast size put together 
 without cement, framed for endurance till the consumma- 
 tion of time. But man has destroyed the labour of man ; 
 and, in A. D. 1010, the Florentines, triumphing in war, and 
 perhaps by perfidy, over Fiesole, from which they had 
 sprung, razed its buildings, and in the rage of civil broil 
 transported their materials to serve for new structures in the 
 plain below. 
 
 My path was on one occasion infested by a youth a 
 sturdy beggar in guise of a Cicerone who, despite every 
 protestation on my part, and his own conviction that I did 
 not want his services, stuck close to my steps at every 
 turning, with the determination to extract a donation, that 
 would have been an encouraging premium to one variety of 
 highway violence : once he sent stones after me down a pre- 
 cipitous descent which I was curious to explore. An acci- 
 dent, after two hours, put his hat into my power, just as we 
 were close to the Cathedral. One of the Clergy, then on 
 duty, to whom I applied, received from me his hat, and es- 
 corted him in my company to the " Curato," which reverend 
 personage was snug a-bed, to be safe, as I presume, from 
 
160 FLOREXCE. 
 
 the cold, which certainly was intense. Twenty minutes 
 were required for getting together different habiliments from 
 other apartments, and for investing himself therewith behind 
 the curtains of the alcove, within which his bed was esconc- 
 ed ; an interval which made me weary, notwithstanding 
 my thirst to learn the course of justice before such a tri- 
 bunal. The Curate- a walking feather-bed having heard 
 both sides, very quietly proceeded to infliction of punish- 
 ment, by giving the creature a tremendous box with his 
 hand on one jaw, and repeating it on the other : he then 
 seized a little cat-of-nine-tails, which had been lying on a 
 chair, and flogged the culprit about the room in a way that 
 compelled me very speedily to interfere, for the relief as well 
 of the executioner as the criminal ; who thereupon was re- 
 quired to kneel to me for pardon. My expression of it was 
 proclaimed by the by-standers with thanks to me for my 
 clemency : the wretch was dismissed, and the court dis- 
 solved. The delinquent has since slunk from me on the 
 road as if with fear of catching my notice. 
 
 New Year's Day, 1823. A bouquet neatly made up, 
 is brought in with my breakfast consisting of geranium 
 leaves, pinks, roses, and three other sorts of flowers, strang- 
 ers to me ; a species of compliment beyond the rough cordi- 
 ality of our northern usages, as it is beyond our ordinary 
 means to provide. 
 
 I cannot praise a Florentine winter. I admit that the pre- 
 sent one is held to be the severest since 1791. But its wea- 
 ther is strangely variable. On my first arrival, a warm day, 
 I was in amaze at the wrapping of the Florentine gentlemen, 
 in double mantles and fear-noughts. The riddle was, 
 towards the close of the same day, solved by the searching 
 cold which set in of the wind wherever it had course, while 
 where it was otherwise, the weather was sultry. The harsh 
 wind increased day after day. At length, the dense clouds 
 it had collected hid out the sun ; and BO bitter was the blast, 
 
FLORENCE. 161 
 
 and the dust in such persecution, that going into the open air 
 was penance. All the while, wherever the wind's current 
 was cut off, the heat was so oppressive, that all the pores of 
 the body were opened in the sweltering course of .a single 
 street to be penetrated by the blast at that street's first 
 corner ; that wicked March wind which, in our very late 
 winters, brings snow, and a softness far beyond our April, 
 being in constant alternation of assault on the system. At 
 length, the 22d and 23d drenched the streets inches deep in 
 rivers of rain, and buried the Appennines and their out-posts 
 under most heavy snow. Close on this fall came a heat that 
 scorched whatever was not under shelter the sun burning 
 that side of the human body he shone on, while the other, in 
 shade of it, was in contrast of cli mature. 
 
 But such Christmas weather as we have had to endure 
 angrier, fiercer, more scathing far than nine in ten of our 
 home ones : for two days, the streets full of snow : the inte- 
 rior of the houses penetrated with chill ; then a few hours, 
 once and again, of scorching sun-beam ; and large relapse 
 into the bitterest cold that can fasten on the bones : this 
 New-year's-day, renewed snow. Save me from such ano- 
 ther winter ! 
 
 All this might be more tolerable despite the intermittent 
 heats if winter were guarded against in manly English 
 fashion. But the fashions here, outside of the house, as well 
 as within, are summer ones ; and winter-precautions are but 
 make-shifts. The Italian is thatched with a cloke, of which 
 the mere weight is oppressive : in size, it is so immense, 
 that one portion of the lower fold is hoisted up to bespread 
 the front of his body with a second covert, of which a large 
 supplementary corner overhangs his shoulders in rere. The 
 working people usually wear their outside jacket in the man- 
 ner which is held distinctive of our Irish Paddies, but that 
 it is not positively buttoned behind : its front is certainly be- 
 hind; and its back covers the breast, which all here carefully 
 
 M 
 
.162 
 
 FLORENCE. 
 
 fortify the reins and spine being left in care of them- 
 selves. 
 
 Florence streets, with all their magnificence, are in rain 
 more intolerable than even those of other continental towns. 
 Here, in common with all the others,, the shoots not spouts 
 for carrying off the water from the roof, a couple or three of 
 them to each house, of different lengths, and in most different 
 levels, guide the element in all possible directions of fall into 
 the street, from its verge to the centre, and even its opposite 
 side, on through all its length : a gauntlet of cascades im- 
 possible to escape. It is one of many proofs to an English- 
 man, that the most attainable comforts of life are not, out of 
 bis own country, within even the speculation of enjoyment. 
 Florence streets, that are composed of smooth flagging, 
 and destitute of kennel or water course, present the add- 
 ed abomination of a diffusion of water, how many inches 
 deep I will not dare to state, though through its depths it has 
 been my fortune to win my way by wading. 
 
 And within doors is just as miserable. The blazing 
 hearth is held as but an English accommodation, and a fo- 
 reign luxury, which it is a stretch to arrive at or conform to. 
 Even the stove seems out of its latitude here. The succe- 
 daneum is a portable vessel filled with burning charcoal, on 
 which, when within the bouse, you rest your soles while you 
 sit, and which, when in movement, whether in or out of the 
 house, you wear on the hands, as tramontane ladies carry 
 muffs. Here in families of easy circumstances, the hours 
 crawl on in a shudder of cold, and the anxious killing of time, 
 till the moment arrives that gives the signal for turning out 
 to the theatre as the lady of the house will ever and anon, 
 in the agony from chill have explained- to escape from the 
 horrors of their home atmosphere, to the luxury of warmth 
 from the concourse of a crowd ! 
 
 The theatre is with the Florentines a passion, as they 
 themselves admit, to mania. It is here specially rainistrant 
 
FLORENCE. 163 
 
 to deplorable dissoluteness. The posse of youths from shop 
 and manufactory repair hither nightly, on terms of most easy 
 access, and, to a large extent, with free admission on the 
 score of making themselves useful as candle-snuffers, scene 
 shifters, and workers of the stage machinery, which demands 
 numerous hands as well as in composing grand train in pro- 
 cessions. The corresponding rank of females arrives in 
 equally numerous resort ; and the consequences are a popu- 
 lation of the lower classes greatly polluted. Decency out- 
 ward there is ; no street-walking ! that is bat exterior pro- 
 priety, and a mask. 
 
 Among the upper orders, where family comfort is so ill- 
 understood that home is fled from, he must deceive himself 
 who can expect morals much better. The gentleman pur- 
 sues his object in one direction, the lady follows her's in 
 another. It is a statement which meets you in a hundred 
 ways, that among the Florentine ladies of fashion, there are 
 but three say six, whose names reject not the imputation of 
 gallantry: suppose them to be six score, would not the re- 
 maining number be a frightful crowd ? 
 
 The fashion of Cicisbeism or as the name now goes, at- 
 tendance by a Cavaliere Servente, is no tale of by-gone times, 
 but continues in established vogue. Take one of its least 
 offensive instances. A couple, married these sixteen years, 
 childless, the lady about forty, arrange their afternoons so, 
 that the gentleman, about the hour of his wife's little party, 
 of three or six, collects, retires till midnight or after : of the 
 company he leaves behind is, invariably since their marriage, 
 one gentleman, about fifty unmarried who pays the lady, 
 and receives from her, all the attentions of all kinds, that 
 before a third person can pass between man and wife living 
 in the mutual affection of these relations. The husband and 
 this Cavalier Servente are on the most easy terms together : 
 with the domestics it is an understood regulation, never to 
 
 M 2 
 
164 FLORE1SXE. 
 
 break in on the privacy of their lady when alone with this 
 latter: their connexion is as well understood as that of wife 
 with husband. Nothing mercenary mingles with their at- 
 tachment: the gentleman makes the lady no presents, or none 
 that in cost are worth a thought : and this arrangement will, 
 in all probability, last to extremity of age and for life. 
 
 True it is, that some of the Italians, startled at the disgust 
 which such practices have called into the countenances, and 
 the gestures of the English, under whose loathing they feel 
 themselves look small, have tried to pass all this for Plato- 
 nic. All assuredly is under correct seeming: but this 
 proves no more than the absence of street-walking proves 
 absence of vice among the inferior classes : rather it is 
 demonstration of its universality. The mere " Not Guilty" 
 as pleaded by every culprit at the outset of his trial, every 
 body takes as a phrase of course. Human nature is too well 
 understood, to be thus mis-stated into being on the level with 
 the stock or stone. It is held by our laws, and it is so stated 
 in instructions to Jurors from the Bench, in trials for crim. 
 con. that the fact of the parties being seen to come together 
 from a house of doubtful repute, is proof absolute of crime. 
 
 Even this despicable veil is usually unworn : and such of 
 our countrymen as are not birds of passage, cannot escape 
 invitation to the privileges of the system. An instance has 
 occurred within my own circle, of an English gentleman, who, 
 on the occasion of a bride being, as is of course, to nominate 
 aCavalicre Servente, was held eligible, and had the proposal 
 made to him to that effect, by her friends. He consulted a 
 friend of his own nation, qualified by long residence in Italy 
 to counsel him in mysteries so strange and was advised, 
 that the attentions he would be required to pay, being as 
 loathsome as those ministered by the humble companion of 
 the other sex in our country, would probably out-weigh and 
 greatly outlast the gratification to be experienced under the 
 
FLORENCE. 165 
 
 tenure of offices so miserably servile. And he was, I will 
 not say virtuous enough, but prudent enough to decline the 
 proposition. 
 
 The current language of mere courteous attention to En- 
 glishmen of a season's stay on the part of the ladies of the 
 best society I use not the word reputation is, " Have you 
 yet provided yourself with an Arnica?" If the answer be 
 Yes, it is taken for matter of course : if in the negative, and 
 this continues, it induces surprise at the gentleman's being 
 so very difficult in his selection. One of the pleasantest cir- 
 cles of English resort is that of a Widow-lady of forty-five 
 whose connexion with a male friend of thirty, that pos- 
 sesses with her a husband's privileges, nobody affects to 
 misunderstand. This lady is of excellent qualities, and 
 the first respectability ; and she has grown-up unmarried 
 daughters. All these things are not merely understood, but 
 are matters of as usual talk as any possible items in the 
 Red Book. 
 
 There are special instances where the lady makes choice, 
 and adheres to it, of her husband as her Cavaliere Servente : 
 and there are also instances of husbands who have prohi- 
 bited such an attendant in the train of their wives. Again, it 
 does not follow, that there are exceptions as well as extreme 
 cases, in this strangely bad system that the Cavaliere Ser- 
 vente shall not, in every instance, be admitted to the utmost 
 privileges of his services, or, in other words, that Cicisbe- 
 ism and adultery shall not be held as synonimous terms. 
 Yet it belongs to exceptions to take care of themselves. Or, 
 on the score of exception, let it not be forgotten, that there 
 are wives, whose choice of a Cavaliere Servente is governed 
 by mercenary incentives, as there are husbands of whom it is 
 positively affirmed, that they disdain not their share of the 
 profits so accruing. I am informed, and my information 
 throughout is from countrymen who scout the atrocities of 
 whose existence they have positive knowledge, that whether 
 
166 FLORENCE. 
 
 from English birds of passage being so numerous as to iri- 
 fluence the Ton, or from English habits being so abhorrent 
 of this heinous complication of crime prostitution declar- 
 edly venal is becoming more usual. Any thing to expel 
 prostitution from the marriage chamber ! Any remedy to 
 dislodge gout from the head or the stomach to make it wel- 
 come in the knee or the hand ! 
 
 I shall not readily forget the contemptuous expression with 
 which, from his inmost feelings, an Italian spoke to me of cer- 
 tain ladies, his country-women as " pieces of stick" some 
 thing like what our girls about to enter on their teens think as 
 to their dolls, which they have scarcely given up the delight 
 of overlaying with millinery. In France, the women transact 
 the family affairs, as well without doors as within : in Italy 
 the sex cope not with the superintend ance of menial detail ! 
 Hence is explainable one cardinal fault, which we, tramon- 
 tanes, find in the dramas of Goldoni. This play-writer was 
 neither poet, nor capable to imagine any thing he had not seen 
 in archetype. He was, however, a lively representer of life's 
 incidents as he saw them. The perplexity of his plots turns 
 evermore on the most arrantly childish casualties the out- 
 witting of each other by two girls, each anxious to surprise 
 the other by exhibiting in a gown of a new fashion ; the 
 loss of a fan putting a whole family, and village, wrong, 
 and driving the leading personages into derangement of the 
 brain ; or some other affair as egregiously infantine and as 
 terrific in its results. Italian family affairs, that can have to 
 do with comic perplexity, are of the paltriest detail and 
 utter monotony. This cause of Goldoni's intolerable stupi- 
 dity is never adverted to by our English travelling critics, 
 who use him as a primer in learning the language. Yet Gol- 
 doni is in high estimation with his countrymen ; though his 
 moral vein and this, praise be his, with all his faults is as 
 noble as that of the Waveily novels : I fear that this quality, 
 if taken into account by the Italians, is regarded as but po- 
 
FLDRENCEv 167 
 
 etic coloring in decoration of mere human and matter ov 
 fact transaction.* 
 
 Of the gentlemen's superiority of range little can be 
 said : the state of Italy is an unhappy one. It affords 
 no prize of ambition other than literary : and the past 
 national glories extinguish modern competition. The land- 
 ed proprietors crowd universally into the towns, to con- 
 sume in sloth the products, that are paid in kind, of their 
 estates. Moneyed or mercantile interest is none ; or in the 
 rare instance of a child of fortune through trade, or the more 
 frequent one of property obtained at the bar, the fund* so 
 acquired sink into landed purchase, and disappear from en- 
 terprise. Then comes that levelling enactment, introduced 
 from France, infliction there of Jacobinism the distri- 
 bution of family property in equal shares among all the 
 children : a proviso, which unless timely counteracted, will 
 steep coming generations in misery unspeakable will fritter 
 mankind into a community as mere as the vermin which 
 crust and destroy the leaf and bud of the rose. Even now 
 Palaces are to be kept up here with but a fractional portion 
 of the means which erected them ; and every sordid effort 
 is practised to uphold exterior shew, while hunger reigns 
 within.t Allthe faul ts of aristocracy remain, and all the 
 
 * I super-add of Goldoni, that his characters are but personifications, seve- 
 rally, of so many abstract ideas, and as decompounded as elemental geometric 
 truths. Each character has its own definitive quality, or color ; it is absolutely 
 red or positively black : in no case does one hue blend into another in his hu- 
 man compositions. How anti-human all this, it vails not to say ! 
 
 f A liveried menial, in the pomp of his master's dignity and bis own errand, 
 demanded loftily at the bar of a coffee-room here, for carrying home, a " mezza 
 eiaccolata.'' a half cup of chocolate, very probably in score, the cash-price l^d. 
 
 " for his master the Prince of ," being breakfast for the representative of 
 
 one of the most dignified old families of Tuscany. " Sic fortis Etruria crevit" 
 burst, involuntary, as loud, in Partridge quotation, from one of our very first Greek 
 Scholars, present in the room ; whose ejaculation of amazement at such provision 
 of breakfast for so mighty a grandee spread into such notoriety among his country- 
 men, as to have disdained the etiquette of suppressing his name, even if that could 
 now affect him the late Dr. Elmsley . 
 
168 FLORENCE. 
 
 tricks of the pedlar are needed to bolster it up. A retail 
 trade the flask bung out as a sign, to beg your custom for 
 a single bottle of wine, at haughty palaces by the score ; 
 the filthy resource of usury by others of these grandees ; 
 every contrivance plied to squeeze together some little gain, 
 or, more frequently, to keep the wolf from the door. 
 
 What a different order of men were the Italian proprie- 
 tors who, like the Borromean family, created the enchant- 
 ments of their patrimonial Lago Maggiore, founded the 
 Ambrosian library and in all ways returned to their 
 country the wealth they drew from it. I cannot figure to 
 myself a happier lot than that of an Italian proprietor seated 
 among his tenantry ; bound fast to them by an identity of 
 interests, inasmuch as the seasons which swell their harvests 
 or injure their crops, equally enlarge his revenues or dimin- 
 ish his returns. Would that it were so in Ireland, where the 
 peasantry, by the very tenure of their acre of land, and the 
 very agreement by which they give their labour, are put into 
 mortal hostility with the landlords.* Here the intercourse 
 between landlord and tenant must be productive of unmin- 
 gled benefits ; the poorest year sufficing for supply of food, 
 the richest spreading store of comforts. Even the occasional 
 vintage residence of such proprietors must be the renewal 
 of kindness, as their town magnificence was the diffusion 
 of opulence and a stimulus to enterprise. The peasantry still 
 continue in their round of labour : but all is torpor in the 
 cities. While each subdivision of a property must suffice 
 to uphold a state-appearance to its dwindled possessor, 
 to that possessor no exercise of activity is opened beyond 
 consuming the income that" falls to his lot, and no play 
 of mind beyond the shifts to make his miserable modicum 
 work out the most splendid effect. A set of retail shop- 
 
 ' This statement will receive distinct illustration in the conclusion of the mi- 
 nute*. 
 
FLORENCE. 1G9 
 
 keepers forms the commercial interest : and the cities thus 
 fall into partition of huxters and their customers. There 
 is no healthy tide-movement, no current surface- on the mean 
 waste : all is a marsh level, with marsh miasmata and noi- 
 someness : sloth and rottenness every where, in lieu of 
 healthful activity of mind, and enterprise, and all human 
 virtue. 
 
 Still the raw material of the Italian is a noble one. Their 
 temperament is subtle, thoughtful, anxious, ardent ; with 
 great affinities to genius, or, more correctly speaking, great 
 impregnation of genius. They have a tinge, too, of melan- 
 choly, to which true genius ever shews a propensity. Hu- 
 mour is deep-engrained in their composition, and all their 
 fibres beat responsive to its sallies. Altogether they are 
 a nobly-gifted race. But the sensuality of their upper orders 
 is their disqualification for whatever potitical enterprise can, 
 presently or prospectively, be either useful or safe. For the 
 lower orders, their fast maxim is that of Candide, " We 
 must by all means tend our garden." 
 
 Of the government of Tuscany I was most glad to learn, 
 that it fs mild and protective. A most intelligent Florentine, 
 who confirmed to me all that I had heard of the miserable 
 slavery of Lombardy, stated of his own country " We are 
 more free than you English." The public functionaries of 
 all descriptions are supplied from the Tuscans themselves, 
 though the Grand Duke is brother of the Emperor of Aus- 
 tria. This Prince moves about with the unaffected simpli- 
 city and graciousness of an English country squire among 
 his friends. His palace is a scene of cordial hospitalities ; 
 and, personally, he mingles, on foot, with his Grand Duchess 
 on his arm, among the promenaders who daily frequent the 
 Cascine, a dairy farm, his property, close to the city and 
 over the Arno, bespread with wood, that is intersected with 
 numerous walks and drives. His noble private gallery is 
 open to all persons : of his library it is mentioned to me by 
 
170 FLORENCE. 
 
 a friend who wished to see it, and, if I misremember not, 
 with permission as of course to consult some of the books, 
 that in the absence of a servant, the door was opened by 
 the Grand Duke himself, so unassumingly that, but for ca- 
 sual knowledge of his person, he could not have remarked 
 him from any mere stranger. 
 
 There is something gracious in the expression of the 
 " Carta di sicurezza," or police document, given here in 
 temporary counter-change against the stranger's passport. 
 
 It runs that, " of , by condition , dur- 
 
 " ing his residence in Tuscany, which shall be of 
 
 " months," renewable at pleasure, " is assured of the as- 
 " sistance of the laws, he conforming to their regulations 
 " and those of the public authorities."* I cannot banish 
 from my recollection the wording of the document that is 
 vouchsafed in the canton of Vaud in like cases. In se- 
 quence worse than its title of " Permis de Sejour," and with 
 condescension little short of ruffianly, it assumes primarily 
 that you are an object of severe vigilance an outcast of a 
 stranger country, and not welcome to theirs : and it formally 
 makes the owr.er of the house in which you reside responsi- 
 ble for your actions ! With that house-owner your docu- 
 ment of permission must be lodged to the embarrassment 
 of your movements, if you wander to the distance of half a 
 day's excursion into any of the cantons bordering. If the 
 enslavers of the Swiss thus make them the instruments of 
 their political resentment, they ought at the same time to 
 forbid them brutality of manners. 
 
 I0th January. The streets continue placarded with regu- 
 lations for restraint of Carnival abuses. These placards 
 seem the sole vestige of the Carnival's existence, subse- 
 quent to the multitudinous uproar of a few (nights ago 
 
 The tenor of this instrument, I since find, to equally courteous throughout 
 
FLORENCE. 171 
 
 through the town, in villainous attempt at fun. Some pro- 
 cession, in carriages and carts, there was of the lower or- 
 ders ; which they had to themselves, for the night was impe- 
 netrably dark. The blast of horns continued for several 
 hours in execrable noise, without even an attempt at tune, 
 as in English stage coach guard's practice. Screams of 
 horns, and shout in progress by night through the streets 
 were not what I had figured to myself of an Italian Car- 
 nival. 
 
 Before quitting Florence, the excellence, the plenty, the 
 cheapness of provisions of all sorts, merit a minute. What 
 especially strikes me on this point is the abundance of small 
 birds, which, every successive day, are exhibited through the 
 streets on sale : your ears are deafened with the cry of 
 " Ucceletti," viz. small birds thrushes in great part ; be- 
 speaking how crowdedly the multiplied coverts of the coun- 
 try are alive with the feathered race. Thousands must be 
 expended for each day's supply, and thousand thousands 
 be each winter's victims. 
 
 Of the churches of Florence, the S to ' Spirito claims first 
 rank, for interior architectural expression. The Annunziata, 
 and one chapel in the S 1 * 1 Croce, are dazzlingly splendid in 
 rich ornament. But the nave of the S ta< Croce was my fa- 
 vourite haunt the Westminster Abbey of Florence, in so 
 far it is the grand repository of its illustrious dead of whom 
 suffice it to specify Michel Angelo and Galileo, saintly 
 sage, the Italian Newton ! Here too lies, of, little, modern 
 men, Alfieri, the reputed husband of our Charles Edward 
 Stuart's widow : she has obtained, for distinction of the 
 poet's tomb, a figure of Italy mourning over him executed 
 by Canova, who has given the lady quite enough for her mo- 
 ney, let that have been what it might. 
 
 The Great Church of Florence is a vast pile, noble, al- 
 most, on the score of its immensity : it is crowned by an 
 octagonal cupola of glorious dimensions. Its interior 
 
172 FLORENCE. 
 
 spreads into unfinished, certainly unfurnished, vacuity to 
 stupidness, with marvellous escape from all of awful, that 
 such vastness would seem as from necessity to imply : and 
 the main walls of the columns, indispensible for sustaining 
 the roofing of so mighty a pile and so wondrous a cupola, 
 are destitute of even an attempt to impart to them effect. 
 
 This edifice is handsomely isolated. I was at the pains 
 to make out the Xasso di Dante, that spot of the benches of 
 stone that run along the houses composing the Church-Place, 
 which was the poet's favourite seat. There is raised a 
 stone footstool to correspond to these benches ; and that 
 part of it where he delighted to rest is distinguished by 'a slab 
 of white marble. It were superfluous to say, he chose a 
 good spot : it is the best point of view possible, holding in 
 command from the exquisite campanile near on its west 
 point, to the extreme termination of the majestic structure, 
 the whole southern front in perspective, and, though so close 
 on the view, shewing the whole from the base to the summit. 
 
SECTION VIII. 
 
 Monday 13th January. Quitted Florence for Rome, the 
 course being stipulated not to exceed five days. 
 
 The road for the first day's journey goes through the Ap- 
 pennines, whose cultivation contends with forest. A num- 
 ber of handsome villas were seen, the site being often on the 
 verge of the mountain-crest, to whose outline they give force 
 and also grace. Onward the villages are of frequent occur- 
 rence ; their sites also are chosen with strong propensity for 
 the crown, or, at least, the brow of a steep and lofty emi- 
 nence. Their circuit is embraced by a wall that is of mode- 
 rate height within, while in exterior it is, in consequence of 
 the rapid descent of the ground, of most imposing front, and 
 has all the air of an ancient fortification. The houses are in 
 that chaste style which pervades all classes of building in 
 this country : these surmount finely the fortress walls, and 
 are themselves surmounted by one or other palace or con- 
 vent structure and the whole is brought into unity by the 
 battlements of the principal church, with a campanile or two 
 beside, or perhaps spire of a different construction group- 
 ing or massing the village into connexion as of one great 
 castle, with which the fortress walls give it identity of ap- 
 pearance. The two first villages of this description, as seen 
 from the road at the base of the cliffs on which they were 
 erected, did in .fact, impose on me as castle edifices in undi- 
 vided property. 
 
 Tuesday before noon has brought us to Sienna The pre- 
 
174 SIENNA. 
 
 ceding county is a tract of fine oak woodland, which here has 
 superseded the round headed, pale leaved olives, of which 
 yesterday the orchard rows were evermore in monotonous 
 spread. This morning's range had also the decoration of 
 frequent foitress ruins, memorial from their lofty stations of 
 the sanguinary contests between Florence and Siennc., when 
 each was the metropolis of a separate State. Sienna like 
 the villages along this tract, lies high, though a large city. 
 A storm of rain, which would have dipped me ankle-deep 
 in the floods that sheeted its flagged streets, (like those of 
 Florence) confines me to the inn, and loses to me the 
 glimpse of this city's famed cathedral. 
 
 After Sienna, the country is for many miles rather bare of 
 wood, its surface coarse, and in unwieldy roll rather than 
 undulation. Still numerous villages, on pinnacle site, ex- 
 hibit the same embattled cincture : their entrance is by a 
 low gateway : their general Torm a long rectangle, with an 
 occasional projecting break that gives spirit to the outline ; 
 one or other master edifice subjecting to singleness of its 
 control the mass of appendant buildings like a baronial 
 seat of sway and strength. 
 
 Near San Quirico opens the first pleasing scenery since 
 leaving Sienna. Here is a long and narrow wooded vale, 
 with its river : on the off-side are perched two or three of 
 these little villages ; and besides, there are some castles of a 
 dissimilar character, and quite in the style of the castle ruins 
 over the Rhine. Onward is a most mean though mountain 
 surface ; the ravines faced with hard clay instead of rock : 
 yet amidst this desolation the plough shews its tracks, and 
 a castle-like village is the ornament of every eminence of 
 which we get into view. No where is a groupe of houses, 
 or a detached one, found below the mountain's brow through 
 terror, I should presume of noisome summer exhalations. 
 
 In front, through the whole day's course, was conspicuous 
 the great mountain fortress of Radicofani, by which lay o u 
 
RADICOFANI. 175 
 
 road : the ascent to it, at our wonted slow rate of march, 
 occupied the entire afternoon. A rock, in position of the 
 mountain summit, is itself of several hundred feet high : its 
 sides are quite wall like ; and it occupies several acres on 
 its plane, which is most strikingly marked by the ruined 
 remains of an old fortification whose sentinels must have 
 had more to do in watch of the eagles than of their fellow- 
 men of the vallies beneath, or even of the Appennines 
 around, over which its view extends to a vast distance. 
 The height of this eminence is 2,630 feet above the sea. 
 Keeping close to the base of this rock which is regular in 
 elevation, and a regular cube in form, and the extent of 
 which cost considerable time to measure we arrived in 
 twilight at the town of Radicofani lying at the foot of this 
 awful mass of stone, 590 feet below its summit plane. At 
 this place we had the satisfaction, notwithstanding first ap- 
 pearances, of decent entertainment, which to a degree made 
 amends for the highway fraud that at breakfast viz. noon 
 allowed but one thrush, an ounce weight of sausage, and as 
 much omelet, to each leaving us sharper set when the 
 whole was eaten than when we sat down ; and which sturdi- 
 ly and with insult denied us farther provision, even under 
 promise of payment separate from that of our vetturino 
 with whom the cheats were in league. This fellow had, at 
 Florence gate, shewn himself a miscreant ; and has all along 
 kept it up ; quite different from the person I had the good 
 fortune to have for conductor from Milan to Florence, who 
 was owner of the carriage and horses he drove, and a man 
 not merely the bargain once made ! of good faith, but 
 of strong intellect and large information John Costa. 
 
 Of this man, let me not forget the strange story, as he 
 thought it, and involving facts which he implored me, in- 
 credible as they were, not to disbelieve, inasmuch as they 
 were within his absolute knowledge : no less than that an 
 Englishman who had once been a brewer, and another Eng- 
 
176 RADICOFANf. 
 
 lishman, a coach-maker whom he had positively known as 
 such, on the occasion of his having been once on a time in 
 London ; these identical men, beyond physical possibility of 
 mistake as to their persons, he had since seen in Rome, en- 
 joying its amusements, and going about to see all sights, 
 just as other Englishmen who travel for their amusement ! 
 Absolutely a brewer and a coach-maker J I might depend 
 on the fact ; which though he entreated me to do on his as- 
 sertion, he could scarcely swallow the belief on the evidence 
 of his own senses, that witnessed the invasion by such men 
 of the pretensions, and investment of themselves in the pre- 
 rogatives, of gentlemen. 
 
 Conceptions of this kind are not limited to persons of 
 this relater's class. 1 have found them prevalent among the 
 well-educated. And on the subject of this nationality, 
 though on that chapter of it which refers to taciturnity, in 
 return for my stating this evening the occurrence at Lodi, 
 a Russian Baron, who has been much in England, and 
 speaks English fluently? recounted to us his having been on 
 a some weeks' visit to one of GUI northern Bishops, of that 
 class that seeks not translation to the Archiepiscopal rank 
 of sound talent and especial activity of mind : on the oc- 
 casion of a gentleman having left them for London, after 
 having for a month occupied the fireside corner, without, in 
 all that time, his voice having given utterance to a sound, or 
 his countenance reverberation to any thing of idea thrown 
 out for his hearing, his Lordship lamented pathetically the 
 loss of his society : " He was so sensible a man and so 
 " thoroughly agreeable a companion." A stock or stone, a 
 picture against the wall, or the chimney mantle-piece, would, 
 throughout his stay, have supported bis part to the life. 
 Irishman as I am, fool's rattle is worse to me than vertigo 
 worse surely than blue devils : yet why chaunt, as highly 
 chaunted they often are, the praises of these blue devils ? 
 Thursday. Not well an hour on the road, in the midst of 
 
RADICOFANI. 177 
 
 such mountain desolation that the only work of man we 
 could see was a village on the offside of the valley, up to 
 whieh it would have taken an hour or two to climb, with all 
 around it so waste, that it is puzzling to guess whence such 
 a nest among crags and sheets of naked stone can draw sus- 
 tenance ; in such a spot the fore-axle of our vettura break- 
 ing in two, gave us the luxury of an adventure. Our ruffian 
 vetturino was softened into tears by the calamity. With 
 strong heartening of encouragement, and, I must say, some 
 mirth of face from the novelty to be hereafter dwelt on, we 
 roused him from his panic, and propelled him onward in 
 search of a hamlet from which he returned with a pair of 
 noble bullocks and a wain : on this our vehicle was made to 
 rest in front, and so spliced as to move with steadiness. 
 These fine animals had apparently not been trained to the 
 road trot, so that our march was a plough movement, in 
 which they were stimulated by a sharp-pointed stick con- 
 stantly goading or threatening them, in the hand of one at- 
 tending peasant, while a second regulated their direction : 
 this was for a distance of twelve or fifteen miles, to Aqua- 
 pendente whither, as being the nearest forge also, our vet- 
 turino had preceded us with the swifter movement of his 
 horses, drawing with them by an easy contrivance the two 
 fore-wheels and broken axle, which the night long was ex- 
 pended in welding. I am sorry, for the sake of my friends, 
 that nothing in the shape of banditti came within our ken : 
 on the contrary, the little public house at which we contrived 
 to get a breakfast, was even hospitable in its kindnesses ; 
 and of the very few peasants we crossed on the road the de- 
 meanor indicated the offer of farther assistance if it had been 
 wanted. 
 
 In this tract of road we passed into the Ecclesiastical 
 States from Tuscany : in quitting which be it said, that from 
 what little 1 have been able to remark, and certainly from 
 
178 KADIC'OFANf. 
 
 all I have been able to collect, as it were in unanimous ac- 
 clamation of the fact the peasantry of Tuscany are perhaps 
 the finest of that class in the world ; laborious, sober, honest, 
 cheerful ; especially cleanly, personally ; intelligent also, 
 and well informed to a remarkable degree : their women, 
 utterly in contrast to the females of their great towns, of ir- 
 reproachable morals and pattern purity. Of the city dames, 
 and country females, the pretensions to beauty are on a par, 
 and very moderate. I have heard it said, that on entering a 
 Tuscan farm-house, you see all the numerous offspring with 
 one family face a test of pure morals as old as the ancient 
 Roman satirist : but I extend the remark so as to leave 
 that bearing behind altogether. The female peasantry of 
 Tuscany have but the one face ; and that approaches not 
 more to woman's beauty, than the face of their young men 
 might do, if set forth in female habiliment coarse and strong 
 in muscle. Their own dress, (which T suspect has been revo- 
 lutionized) does not mend the matter sad-colored, down to 
 black ; a black plume surmounting (at least now in winter) a 
 black hat, which though not so high in the crown as the hat of 
 a Welsh woman, is, from its shape of hatter's block, far fitter 
 for a boy's head than a female's. But I surmise that the best 
 fancied head-dress would little influence this provincial unifor- 
 mity, of strong cheeks and stiff features with brown substi- 
 tuted for the Welsh carmine. Of either country, the style of 
 countenance treads close in resemblance of best animal points 
 repulsive to that class of humanity which, not being ut(< r 
 clay, has to do with sensitiveness. But here, at least, the 
 resolute physiognomist will not be baffled by even this unpro- 
 mising surface of features, cut and to the one pattern out 
 of wood : and, be the dial-plate homely as it will, the Tuscan 
 peasantry are no wooden clock-work. Their high intelli- 
 gence may be distinctly inferred from the decision of their 
 air and gestures from their fine ryes, and the expression 
 
AQUAPENDENTE. 179 
 
 which accompanies them from the countenance generally, 
 that looks any thing but vacuity, and in which active thought 
 appears to be the habitual exercise. Of the peasantry ad- 
 vanced in life, the lineaments of face are strikingly fine. 
 And of aged or of young, there is abundant force of just ex- 
 pression on every subject, from grave to the liveliest. 
 
 Aquapendente is in a lovely site : our oxen, at different 
 times, sunk in the attempt to drag the ponderous vehicle up 
 the mountain ascent necessary to its approach. The sides 
 of this mountain are splendidly clothed with Spanish chesnut, 
 through which break almost as numerously as their stems, 
 ragged rocks, of form akin to that of a fractured pillar ; and 
 the guide-book talks of basaltic appearances between Radi- 
 cofani and Bolsena, which is before us. Often, dropping the 
 columnar shape, the rocks resemble a vast wall, where their 
 breadth does not, from overhanging the perpendicular, look 
 like a wall half overturned and vegetation-stained. Through 
 a recess, originally wrought by the action of the waters into 
 the mountain's face, along one cheek of which the road winds 
 upward the other cheek seen in front at each zig-zag made 
 in the mountain through this recess is that fall of stream 
 which gives name to the place : its noise we heard ; but the 
 deep bosom it has hollowed out shut it from our view. 
 Here and there, under the town, which is on the cliffs' verge, 
 the chesnut forest has been forced to give way to garden?, 
 with their terraces in staircase, or rather ladder declivity, 
 and with all the profusion of Italian garden growth in trellis. 
 To the right, even after the town has been scaled, and con- 
 fronting its gate, soars from that level a sheet of perpendicular 
 rock, the finest precipice for its dimensions that I can recol- 
 lect having seen in the Appennines. The town in exterior 
 becomes its station ; two or three church structures, with 
 square capanile or spire appurtenant ; various grand edifices, 
 that must primarly have been constructed for palaces ; vari- 
 ous convents, of magnificence rival to these ; and several 
 
 N 2 
 
130 BOLSF.NA. 
 
 antique towers ; the whole massed in outline, at once easy 
 and noble: within, it exhibits only penury and desolation. 
 
 Friday. Along the road this morning the rocks and soil 
 are caverned into continued recesses for the repose of cattle 
 in the summer heats, and security boxes 'for the banditti 
 who, in this frontier tract, as well as the adjacent one of 
 Tuscany, were not long since sufficiently frequent. On, 
 about four miles, is an isolated rock crowned by extensive 
 fortress ruins, of which the irregular outline is, from several 
 points, strikingly picturesque. The position of their foun- 
 dation-rock is a lovely one a deliciously wooded vale re- 
 joicing in its seclusion, and animated by its small but vehe- 
 mently rapid stream. 
 
 To BOLSBNA, where the lake of that name opens. The 
 town it did not please the Vetturino to enter ; and I believe 
 I have thus escaped a scene of desolation. But its exterior 
 displays towers and turrets, and the spacious shell of one 
 edifice rising with the ground's elevation over its fellow a 
 transcendant scene of pictured abruptness. This extraordi- 
 nary collection of turrets, and pinnacles, and structure over 
 structure, in half-ruin, occupies the site of Volsmium, one of 
 the twelve Etruscan Cities. 
 
 Hence onward, I have been able for some three hours to 
 walk at my ease before my vettura, with the lake close to 
 the right, and the noblest woods clothing the mountains t 
 the left and in front. It is an old story that these woods 
 have been strictly reserved from the axe on tho very score 
 of their antiquity : but now nearly all those along the road 
 are destroyed, not by the axe but by tl>e action quite re- 
 cent, of fire ! to clear the ground for agriculture, and with 
 the more direct object, it is stated, of guarding the road 
 from robbers, to whom these most majestic trees afforded a 
 secure shelter. Of the trees more removed, a number of 
 venerable ones are so completely crusted with lichen, to the 
 farthest extremity of every spray, that it has cost me much 
 
MONTE FIASCONE. 181 
 
 pains to verify from particular instances that they are not 
 evergreens, or that their green was not, despite our English 
 impossibility, of this spring's foliage already disclosed. The 
 mountains of which this forest is the vesture, are worthy of 
 their robe from the loveliness of their forms, and the exqui- 
 site play of their range in long-retiring perspective. 
 
 But let me not forget the lake, alive with wild ducks, 
 its extent in any direction nearly seven miles, and its out- 
 line pleasingly varied. Its farther shores are mountains of 
 moderate swell, richly robed with vegetation, richly studded 
 also with villages. Two islands, happily placed to break 
 yet more the general outline, are happier still in their pic- 
 turesque shall I say, basaltic forms ; their perpendicular 
 cliffs, majectic through, and high surmounting the woods, 
 that bespread wherever it seems possible the island surface 
 should yield them growth. One humbler space on them alone 
 seems vacant of the proud robing. The whole scenery here, 
 forest and mountain forms on one side, and the lake, and its 
 islands, and shores far beyond on the other, I take to be one 
 of genuine Italian captivation. 
 
 Pursued my way through these wooded mountains to 
 MONTE FIASCONE, a walled town, as usual here, and with 
 an ancient castle : but its churches have exchanged for the 
 campanile square tower, the decoration of a cupola, large to 
 grandeur, and imparting grace to the circuit of the town they 
 surmount. Monte Fiascone, celebrated for its wines, is 
 noted in Italian guide-book story, as having been the termi- 
 nating stage of the German Bishop's travels, who, having 
 sent on his servant to make in each town fit reconnoissance 
 of the best wine-houses, the latter in this place wrote outside 
 pursuant to directions, Est ; but in notation triple of his 
 orders, to express the excellence of the article ; which the 
 master's palate ratified to an excess that caused his death, 
 and the epitaph over him, " Est, Est, Est ; et propter 
 nimum est, Me est," The sight of three Ests on a sign-post 
 
182 VITKRBO. 
 
 outside of the town, was all that Monte-Fiascone afforded us 
 of its fare : our vetturino excusing himself by jocky-ship 
 from entering the gate, brought us on to Viterbo, fasting till 
 five in the evening. 
 
 The people in this tract seem of meaner and more indo- 
 lent cast than the Tuscans. But their women are incompa- 
 rably more beautiful. At Monte Fiascone as we passed, 
 the road was crossed by a female of the lower orders, of 
 beauty equal to any I have ever seen in woman, and in its 
 most feminine softness and grace with a complexion, to my 
 surprise, highly marked in carnation. Her dress, which 
 begins hereabouts to be in a costume distinct from the Tus- 
 can, was, much of it, bright scarlet. 
 
 From Monte-Fiascone, we had in view of some dozen 
 miles off, a range athwart the horizon of wooded and lofty 
 mountains, at the base of which is VITERBO. The interven- 
 ing plain is bare of tree, bare too of cultivation of any kind : 
 yet it is rich to rankness, and its grass a deep, copperas 
 green : a house is here and there singly scattered, its walls 
 as thick as if, notwithstanding its small size, it had been 
 built with a view to defence or perhaps, to keep out the 
 noisome air of this melancholy region : and certainly, at a spot 
 about two thirds of this stage, we were forcibly compelled to 
 remark a mean plash of a very few acres at some distance 
 from the road to the right, from which the stench was intole- 
 rably noisome : many bubbles were noticeable on its sur- 
 face. 
 
 Nearly on entering Viterbo, is a street composed of 
 caverns, hollowed out of the rock, as regular as the base- 
 ment story of a line of houses. Strange to say here, the 
 site of Viterbo somewhat approaches a flat ; it is a filthy 
 place, though decorated with a fine fountain, and many noble 
 palaces : churches and convents are numerous, and ecclesi- 
 astics in absolute swarm. The inn here (on the left as you 
 enter the town) made us such miserable amends for the 
 
VITEIIBO. 183 
 
 day's fasting, that it was with difficulty we procured enough 
 to eat : for the wine, near as we were to Mante-Fiascone, one 
 kind was worse than another of three sorts produced to us, 
 though in our own defence we paid for it extra ; this in a 
 large city; our vetturino of course had his understanding 
 with his host. fc 
 
 Saturday. The road ascends through rich woods, with 
 which olives are intermingled. Gradually it gains a mountain 
 side through pomp of oak-forest for many miles range to the 
 left, with lofty peaks aloft beyond, while vast precipices 
 break its sweep in front. The range to the right is oak forest 
 also, but in such discontinuity, that the eye, aided by the 
 fall of the mountain's surface, commands an immense tract 
 of irregularly varied-country. The under furniture to the 
 timber trees is broom in luxuriant thicket. 
 
 Towards the road's summit elevation the fire had largely 
 done its office of felling ; and the charred trees were lying 
 along or across, in the topsy turvy way in which each had 
 succumbed. The ground beneath them was covered by 
 young corn, just beginning to tinge the surface, that was ex- 
 tensively broken up not by the plough assuredly, since the 
 narrow ridges ran continuedly under the giant half burned 
 stems, without regard to their interruption. Yet whence these 
 spadesmen ? From Viterbo to this spot is not one trace of 
 habitation. It was the same thing from Bolsena to Monte 
 Fiascone not a roof nor a wall to support one. The culti- 
 vators then must be townsmen of Viterbo, unless in the 
 mode of the extravagantly-proud district of Kilgarvan in our 
 Irish kingdom of Kerry, where as has been certified to me 
 the corn was luxuriant and the potato ridges superb, with- 
 out its being discoverable how either crop came into growth. 
 Neighbour and treacherous curiosity detected that the farm- 
 ers of this tract proud of the Spanish blood running in their 
 veins, from a colony established on this, the nearest Irish 
 shore to Biscay, some five thousand years ago recoil from 
 
184 RONCIGLIONE. 
 
 being seen at work, and are ever alert on the alarm of a 
 passenger coming in view from the road, to squat prone 
 down in the concealment of their field ridges. These Hi- 
 dalgos are seven score in number. On the occasion of a 
 collection at chapel to enable a candidate for the priesthood 
 to prosecute his college studies, among the rubbish in cop- 
 per received were found seven score silver half-crown pieces, 
 obviously the donation of the grandees, who on this account, 
 as well as their ever retiring dignity, go by the name of the 
 Seven-score Gentlemen of Kilgarvan. Though we are on 
 old Roman ground, it were vain to look for feeling kindred 
 to theirs among its present cultivators. Many crosses have 
 taken place in the breed, and sorely puddled has been the 
 blood of the Italian peasantry since the days of Cincinnatus 
 and the four-acred nobility of Rome and Volsinium. 
 
 Heavy rains in the descent blotted out, I believe, equal 
 forest magnificence and much superior mountain surface 
 which on the reverse face, and close on the road, breftks 
 greatly into ravine. A lake here has been obscured from 
 me, to which the guide book gives a circuit of three miles : 
 it must be a delicious spot if it be similar in its accompani- 
 ments to the approach to Ronciglionfe the first town in this 
 day's march. It is magnificently conspicuous from without, 
 by its cathedral-like cupola, Its interior must, and at no 
 long time past, have been captivating indeed a Collection 
 ol'jmlares, summer retreats, probably, of the Roman nobles, 
 from the noisome air of the Eternal City. These splendid 
 edifices have been destroyed under Borne infliction of recent 
 revolutionary rage; their roofs demolished, their interior 
 gutted ; but their fronts still remain in itndestroyed embel- 
 lishment. Can a more miserable symptom disclose Itself 
 of the late of this nation, than that on the part of proprie- 
 tors, who could have occupied these edifices, there should 
 be the inability, or the lethargic crime, to suffer their homes 
 to remain desolate rains, and without an attempt at even 
 
CAMPANIA. 185 
 
 their homely renovation, more than if they had devolved in 
 property to the devastators ? 
 
 Three miles from this place trees disappeared, and the 
 expanse became a grazing waste no cattle however on it ; 
 nor, for several miles, a house, or a human being, with the 
 exception of two men occupied, one in plashing a hedge, 
 while his companion not superintendent overlooked him. 
 Frequently in this rich waste, 1 experienced a current of me- 
 phitic exhalation, that was not traceable to any such pool as 
 that beyond Viterbo. ' ^f 
 
 This desolation gives me again to chew the mystery of 
 the extensive manual labour bestowed on the cleared grounds 
 on Viterbo mountain. It has occurred that the persons 
 employed may have been brought in a body from some 
 densely inhabited district for this special enterprise. But 
 how again account for the very numerous bands of peasan- 
 try whom we met on the road there, as if in progress to Vi- 
 terbo market ? I could not make an opportunity to ask any 
 of them, and have since been unable to learn : assuredly 
 they are not residents of that heap of ruins, Ronciglione. 
 The commodities with which their mules' pack-saddles were 
 loaded, are obviously the product of some highly cultivated 
 country, skirting probably largely to right and left the base 
 of the mountain in the passage of which they met us. Much 
 of their loading was wine in long narrow casks, or rather 
 great kegs : and many a lengthened string we passed of their 
 scattering mules. There were, besides, large peasant bands 
 disembarrassed of such convoy, or of any commodities. 
 They are, in either case, the prototypes of those groupes 
 with which the Italian landscape painters have made us so 
 familiar. The woman were of remarkable beauty of high 
 complexion their persons fine ; their array of dress very 
 striking the colors pale red or high scarlet ; some little 
 brown, but much green, intermixed. Even in the men's 
 dress, where green also intermingled, such was the propen- 
 
186 CAMPANIA. 
 
 sity to red, that they were frequently seen in breeches of 
 that color : their oil-cloth umbrellas, a regular appendage to 
 their equipments, were red also. With their flapped hats 
 of monstrous crown, in shape of a cone truncated very near 
 its vertex, and various other personal singularities ; and 
 with the march of their numerous files of horses and mules 
 in disorderly straggle, they made altogether a highly pictu- 
 resque exhibition. 
 
 The large and stupid plain we now traversed, was confin- 
 ed on the right by low mountains, that at length closed in 
 front at Monte-Rosi, a striking little spot, with a castle- 
 tower at seme distance towards the summit height, giving 
 decoration to the woods that here advance on the view. 
 Monte-Rosi, within, is the dirtiest town tjbave seen ; replete 
 with piles of stable dung, one of which close in front of the 
 inn, rises to confront the first floor windows. 
 
 To the left forward, perhaps a dozen miles, and seen 
 over another wide plain, is Mount Soracte ; it is quite iso- 
 lated, its form that segment of a circle of which the height 
 may be two parts in five of the chord ; its outline serrated ; 
 and its whole front apparently forest-robed. 
 
 Hence over a mean and uninhabited surface of very inferior 
 fertility, until another range of unfeatured heights required 
 to be scaled, and, for half an hour traversed, before reach- 
 ing Baccano ; from whence, though eighteen Italian miles 
 off, may, as I learn, be distinguished the cupola of St. 
 Peter's. 
 
SECTION IX, 
 
 Sunday morning, 19th January saw us sometime before 
 day -break on our route, over ground glazed in ice, and some- 
 what powdered with snow. This tract, though every where 
 spread in plain, is in no part level ; and there is much of 
 scar, dell, and even long incision of vale depths, in which, 
 in English poverty of landscape materials, many an improver 
 could he command them, would riot, as superb provision for 
 working into picturesque park scenery, by the proper adjuncts 
 of wood, and the managed fund of the mirthful streams that 
 here are frequent. Though the surface sod is rich, it every 
 where discloses a stony substratum, and breaks into little 
 inclined planes, or even perpendicular sheets of that volcanic 
 substitution for stone, called tufo ; giving thus full scope 
 to all possible vagary of the landscape gardener. This 
 very surface was once the garden of the world, though now 
 so desolate that its sod is unpastured ; and there is no po- 
 pulation, or symptom of it, other than a stray, isolated, ap- 
 parently unoccupied dwelling, unless the post-houses for 
 relays to travellers be excepted : and these houses are ri- 
 valled in the dimensions of their entire stabling, by accumu- 
 lated piles of stable dung, useless possibly, certainly un- 
 used, for field or garden manure. Every where else that 
 I have been on the continent, manure is of such value that 
 the diurnal droppings are systematically collected by the 
 children and grown female peasants. 
 
 Far in front lay one groupe its unparalleled elegance 
 
188 ROME. 
 
 claims the term ; one groupe of mountains, the Latian and 
 Alban : and lees remote to the lelt rose another more length- 
 ening and much loftier range, of similarly fascinating outline 
 the Sabine mountains. Over the vile breadth of treeless, 
 houseless, green desolation, where man's exertions seems 
 arrested by some mysterious and dread spell, and himself 
 forbidden to trespass by his presence on nature's loneliness, 
 a tract nevertheless, which testifies man's occupation by 
 the grass grown plough-furrow, and other symptoms of his 
 lost empire, as strikingly as it declares his present reject- 
 ment ; over all the expanse the eye could detect no object 
 to dwell upon, save an isolated tower or two, of square 
 form and barbarous aspect, constructed, forsooth, for refuge 
 from the Saracens, by whom these shores far inland were 
 formerly ravaged, as were our own, in the olden time, by 
 the Norsemen. 
 
 At length, when five miles from our journey's end, numer- 
 ous cupolas and other lofty edifices of the Great City were 
 descried over the undulating and even hilly green waste that 
 intervened, with the Latian mountains for glorious back- 
 ground. An ancient church in ruin, near us, was the city's 
 only precursor in buildings ; and soon after, on a bank close 
 over the road, an antique tomb, the sepulchre of the family 
 of Naso. Deserted villas then thickened over a beautiful 
 valley, which we traversed, with desolation still for com- 
 panion, until, two miles from the City-gate, at the Ponte- 
 Mola, a handsome bridge, we crossed the Tiber. My friend 
 and myself celebrated the circumstance with hats off and 
 an English huzza. Hence a broad road and spacious foot- 
 way, with frequent buildings running at the base of a pre- 
 cipitous cliff, partly naked rock, partly wooded or in gardens 
 the crest perhaps one hundred feet perpendicular, con- 
 ducted us to the Porta del Popolo, the imposing entrance, 
 from the north, of modern Rome. 
 
 Within the Portal is u spacious Place, ornamented on the 
 
ROME. 189 
 
 left and contiguous to the gate, by a stately Church : on the 
 right are great preparations for some new structure : and in 
 front, two churches of rather fantastic beauty, and nearly 
 counterparts in design, form the grand' coins of three streets 
 that diverge as from a central point, at an angle each from 
 other of about twenty degrees. The middle street of these, 
 the great one of Rome, the Corso, we drove up, with the 
 Sunday crowd thronging our passage ; and arrived at the 
 Custom-house in a transport of admiration on beholding the 
 noble though deplorably injured columns the relics of some 
 ancient temple's fa9ade, which are left sticking in face of 
 the modern building, their intercolumniations being walled 
 up to constitute a front. By the time we had passed our 
 baggage, and performed the toilet observances, which our 
 week's travelling had made most needful, it approached 
 three o'clock, and we were fasting. My companion, how- 
 ever, declared, that to him it was matter of conscience to 
 see St. Peter's, even in that state ; and having^ commanded 
 my attendance, we had on our way thither the surprise of 
 the Pantheon : and after being penetrated to amazement 
 despite every anticipation with the majesty of the interior of 
 St. Peter's, we contrived to stray into the Vatican museum, 
 and rejoice in our obeisance to some of its proudest treasures 
 and that the proudest of all triumphs of human art, the 
 Apollo. 
 
 20th January. Rome for exterior effect, as commanded 
 by the approach, is not comparable to Florence. But if I 
 was struck with the cupolas and towers of the latter at 
 Rome their number gives amazement : they are so multi- 
 plied and diversified as, even in enumeration, to be immense. 
 Then the masses of palace and other stupendous structure- 
 range which the ground throws into boldest exhibition, most 
 vast in array of front, and as if in mighty terrace elevation ; 
 theQuirinal pile, for instance, majestically prolonged and high 
 pre-eminent above the aggregate of other lines of edifice as 
 
190 HOME. 
 
 vast and as majestic, though in less proud site among those 
 hills, which raise the more distinguished to a station of gran- 
 deur : surely there cannot be such a sight elsewhere in the 
 world. 
 
 The immensity of these palaces individually has nothing 
 to compare with in other great capitals. Paris can shew 
 nothing of the kind that here meets the eye every where. 
 Two hundred feet in front is an ordinary extent ; their flank 
 is correspondent and their elevation. The Place of An- 
 t' minus's column is formed on three of its sides by edifices, 
 either single buildings, as the Chigi Palace, or the Post- 
 office, or by an elevation raised on unity of design. In the 
 centre of this Place stands Antoninus's column; which, with 
 Trojan's at some 500 yards off, in another Place, gives sin- 
 gularity, and surely majesty in the shew of Rome's various 
 structures. Analogous in some little degree to them are the 
 very numerous obelisks, Egyptian hieroglyphics inscribed 
 on them ; of Egyptian origin of course : but how the ancient 
 masters in mechanics contrived their transport hither, is an- 
 other Roman wonder. In contrast to all this is that Corin- 
 thian column, standing lone in front of the Great Church 
 of St. Mary Maggiore, so consumed into thinness as though 
 it were by time and yet its delicate (lutings incorroded 
 that it seems scarcely able to bear up the weight of the 
 mere statue imposed on its capital, and is from its extreme 
 slenderness but the more exquisitely graceful. 
 
 Before plunging altogether into the world of Rome, I 
 must give one word to our protracted and week-long jour- 
 ney hither. We had winter's worst weather ; a miscreant 
 vetturino for Cicerone on the road and providore at the inns : 
 some of these inns were miserable, and occasionally where 
 they were not, the people were in league with the vetturino 
 to defraud us. Yet it has been the pleasantest journey I 
 ever made of the same length. My friend and I, associating 
 our Russian companion, found in all vicissitudes u some 
 
ROME. 191 
 
 thing of adventure : we were, at least I was, gratified at the 
 direct one of our breakdown : we found speculation in the 
 wayward sulk of our vetturino : so far as vice can be view- 
 ed without pain, we were diverted with his frauds, and with 
 the ready-witted denial of fit food, meat or drink, by the 
 innkeepers : we laughed at the hunger we could not appease 
 we triumphed over cold : our communications grave or gay 
 occupied every interval of direct annoyance: and I never 
 passed a week of more cheerful mirth or more buoyant spi- 
 rits, than amid the misadventures and even misery of this 
 our Appennine journey. 
 
 24th January. My first day's riot on the splendour of 
 Rome has miserably exhausted the stock of admiration due 
 to it in detail. Beyond what then presented itself, with the 
 exception of the Colisseum, little remains that is not shat- 
 tered into ruin, or could be impressive though it were entire. 
 The toe or the knuckle of a giant, separately taken, is a 
 poor affair. Half an hour's stroll exhausts the remnant of 
 column or triumphal arch of the Forum and its vicinity. 
 Much, to be sure, there is, in various quarters, of brickwork 
 heap, vast enough in extent, but destitute of magnificence, 
 and singularly devoid of picturesque interest. The remains 
 of whatsoever kind, of the time beyond Augustus, can be 
 counted on the fingers of one hand : the Mamertine prison, 
 a dungeon of close size ; and the keystone and very little 
 below it, over water, of the outlet of the Cloaca into the 
 Tiber are two of the four or five objects of royal or repub- 
 lican date. Of the magnificence of the twelve Caesars the re- 
 lics must be hunted for in the brickwork vaulting of the 
 cellar story of their palaces. Of the remnants of marble 
 every day reduces the existing stock ; for in such phrase it 
 is best fitting to speak of the sawing down of whatever can 
 be laid hands on, for working up into new forms, by build- 
 ers or sculpters. They could not be better employed ; for 
 they are so shattered into fragments, and these fragments 
 
192 ROME. 
 
 are so widely strewed over or under ground, that neither 
 the eye can groupe them, nor the imagination divine under 
 what possible design they had ever been marshalled. In 
 their present state they can serve no human purpose, other 
 than text to the impudent nonsense of the Feas and Nibbis 
 by name, and the dozen or two other Cicerones, quite as 
 well informed though nameless, who dogmatize and lecture 
 on the stocks and stones and dust of the wilderness of Old 
 Rome's ground plan. 
 
 Where ancient Rome has succumbed to modern restoration, 
 how miserable is the change, evinced in the Capitol under 
 the hands of Michael Angel o ! Of course that mighty ge- 
 nius must have been documented by the Pope of the day, 
 into giving this design : it might well suit for the townhall of 
 some third rate city unknown to history : it is pitiable as 
 occupying this sacred rite. Of the " immobile saxum," 
 the very front has been quarried off, of course for building 
 stone. I have ground for the belief that the face of this pre- 
 cipice underwent change during the last century, through 
 the fall of some of its crags, probably undermined in de- 
 predation of this kind. " Along of this" it is that the Tar- 
 peian Rock is a puzzle to the Cicerones, as is evinced by 
 their joint and several disagreement on the matter. At all 
 events the spot, which foreigners are vulgarly referred to as 
 "the true and genuine original precipice," is the verge of 
 a little garden, about fourteen feet above another elevation, 
 on the level with which is the roof of a three-story high 
 house, whose court-yard is at the base of the precipice.* But 
 that court-yard is considerably higher than the ground which 
 falls in valley from thence ; and the houses that form a street 
 
 Ilow gratuitous must be select ion of the real spot of precipitation, when 
 Miuon who travelled in 1688 states its elevation to be twenty feet ! There 
 must have ben, since that time some vast pile of rubbish cleared from beneath 
 some ..I, MUM- brow of the cliff, that now porhap*, is remote from the path taken 
 by t rangers. 
 
ROME. 193 
 
 along the brow of this 'valley, with their rere towards the 
 rock; are obviously built on the made ground furnished by 
 the ruins of antiquity. And though the height of the 
 summit cliff might, by assuming a mean between its eleva- 
 tion over the Via Sacra and the Velabrum no mighty dis- 
 tance asunder be had to almost mathematical certainty, the 
 whole scene, notwithstanding, resolves itself into an affair of 
 the imagination, having to do, not with the spot you stand 
 on, but with the site where that spot generally was. 
 
 At the base of the Capitoline hill spreads the Forum, with 
 its three or four columns of one temple, of which all and every 
 part beside has vanished ; two or three of another ; and a 
 single one, lately dug out from beneath the rubbish, raised, 
 as its inscription declares, not to either Roman divinity or dig- 
 nitary, but to a certain Emperor Phocas of the Lower Em- 
 pire ! It seems as impossible to recal accurate ideas of 
 what the Forum was in its days of pride, as to form probable 
 conjecture to what structure or design this column was, in pri- 
 mary purpose, made to serve. Besides such remains as these, 
 are the fa9ade of Antoninus and Faustina's Temple, the Tri- 
 umphal Arch of Severus, and that of Titus ; and through the 
 mean void space in which these few objects stare before you, 
 are the trees lining a walk commenced, even here ! on a plan 
 that purports to be of an English garden. Surmounting the 
 Palatine Mount, that is opposite, amid the relics of vaulting, 
 now gardener's stores or stabling, and repositories of horse 
 provender, and amid the heaps of bricks, encumbering the 
 soil but which once rose in air cased with the costliest 
 marble, the palaces of Augustus, and subsequently in Brob- 
 dignag extent, of his successors; you have a tract of neatness 
 and elegant arrangement quite ultramontane the property 
 and residence of an English gentleman. 
 
 The craving excited, not merely by general anticipations, 
 but by some very prominent remains of architectural wonder 
 
 o 
 
194 ROME. 
 
 at Rome, soon ends in disappointment and languor. It ia in 
 vain'that 1 occupy myself in church-hunting, or regale my- 
 self with galleries r in vain, also, is the stay afforded by the 
 Forum or the Temple of Vesta, beautiful under all the inflic- 
 tions its shell has endured, and in spite of the coronet of 
 ugliness imposed on it, by some barn-builder, in the way of 
 roofing. In vain do I find even the frequent drams I take 
 amid the remains of that sublimest monument of Rome's 
 grandeur, the Colisseum. I am therefore thrown perforce 
 on that marvel of the modern world, St. Peter's, which is in 
 itself worth any length of journey but to view ; and of which 
 the study, day after day, mitigates not the first eagerness to 
 make it still the scene of untired expatiation. 
 
 Of the exterior, it were trite in me who have seen it, to 
 repeat what all the world who have not seen it know, as if by 
 rote, that it is a failure. How great that failure is can only 
 be appreciated by whose who have viewed it, and can bring 
 into contrast the recollection of St. Paul's, triumphing over the 
 lanes by which it is held in pound ; while the Roman Cathe- 
 dral rejoices in a just site, in ample extent of open space, 
 and with accessories of colonnade on either hand, on which 
 the utmost pomp of architecture has been exhausted. 
 On entrance, the contrast is reversed utterly. The interior 
 of St. Paul's is as vapid a failure as that of St. Peter's is be- 
 yond all attempt to trace or express its complication of sub- 
 lime impressions. 
 
 Such is human perversity that, despite the blended amaze- 
 ment and delight with which its first effect penetrated me, I 
 felt inexpressibly mortified by the three tiers of windows, of 
 common place fashion, with which its nave is terminated. 
 It reminds me of a tier of windows nearly on a level with 
 the eye, not in the nave, but the chancel of a church at 
 Bologna, there most offensive : here their stare is atrocious, 
 unless refuge can be taken in the notion, alas, but notion ! 
 that the nave is cut short by a temporary screen, to be re- 
 
ROME. 195 
 
 moved when the regular termination, which in exterior is 
 the structure's grand front, shall have been given to view on 
 the architect's design being completed. 
 
 These windows are, besides, in direct aid of the universal 
 impression, that the church appears of far less than its actual 
 dimensions. This impression, of which the laws of vision 
 are the primary cause, is greatly encreased from the circum- 
 stance, that the lateral supports of the vaulting over this 
 length of nave two hundred and ninety feet are but four 
 arches, whose buttress pilasters, notwithstanding their enor- 
 mous magnitude, the eye passes swiftly over : the effect, 
 thence produced, is inveterately confirmed by these windows 
 throwing in their strong illumination, and with barbarous 
 force compressing this noble space into unnatural con- 
 traction. 
 
 Such grace as reigns within this noble pile, in conjunction 
 with such giant bulk of parts, I could not have believed at- 
 tainable. The diameter of the rotunda formed by the cupo- 
 la is 140 feet ; and this cupola is sustained by four buttresses, 
 of which the measure is 68 feet on each of their four sides, 
 with the exception that the interior coin of their square is 
 rounded off to conform to the inscribed circle, reducing these 
 sides to thirty-five feet : the span of the transept, taken be- 
 tween the buttresses, is seventy-two feet. These instances 
 are in just exemplification of the enormous scale that regu- 
 lates the proportions of the edifice. But such is the simpli- 
 city of the parts that the vastness of each portion, being com- 
 prehended without any effort of vision, reduces itself by a 
 delusion of the senses into exemplary moderation. Under 
 no correction will the eye be disabused into a correct estimate 
 of these majestic dimensions. It is in vain that you tire your 
 limbs by pacing the nave, still lengthening on your walk, as 
 the farther shore of a river recedes from a wearied swim- 
 mer's eye. It is in vain, also, that you measure thirty-four 
 feet, the front of each of the three abutments that, in se- 
 
 o2 
 
190 ROME. 
 
 quence to the buttresses of the cupola, support the arches, of 
 forty-four feet span, which on either side are the nave's 
 framing : still, when you look on that diffusion of marble 
 area below, and its framing rising on either hand so free at 
 once from distraction of parts, and from heaviness, by the 
 dignity of aperture thrown between its buttresses that are so 
 few in number you are, as much as at first, proof against the 
 weariness of your legs, and the stupifying monotony and for- 
 getfulness to keep count of the countless lengths, of whatever 
 measuring instrument you use, in tracing the extent of surface 
 that mocks your progress. It is one distinct attribute of 
 this edifice, that it disdains to be measured : there is no one 
 measurer's statement of its dimensions in the detail, that is 
 not in laughable contradiction of every other. The sublime 
 in feeling baffles here the geometrician's theory, and sets 
 wrong his practice. 
 
 I pass by the tricks played on the sight, by the doves in 
 sculpture, close on the eye, and which the eye decides to be 
 of but dove's size ; by the infants, supporting the vases for 
 holy water, into which you can reach to dip the finger but 
 of which seeming infants the magnitude is not less than that 
 of the men of full grown stature who wonder at them : 
 and above all, the illusion of the pen in the Evangelist's 
 hand, beneath the rim of the dome one on each of the four 
 buttresses that sustain it done in mosaic ; the pen like the 
 human figure, of seemingly just size, and notwithstand- 
 ing that seeming six feet long. This illusion I refused to 
 believe possible, on my first visit : but my companion, with 
 sterner faith and strict information, identified this to be the 
 very pen he had prepared himself to look out for : the appa- 
 rent size in each of the four instances is strictly that of a 
 common writing pen. Large and least, all is homoge- 
 neous : to this hour I am unable to figure to myself that this 
 domee quals in area, and surpasses in elevation, that structure 
 of sublime dignity, the Pantheon. 
 
ROME. 197 
 
 The struggle between actual and apparent magnitude is 
 ever producing far nobler effects than these, through the strong 
 perspective into which every portion of the structure is 
 thrown, from points of view the least remote. Any one por- 
 tion taken separately is a rich architectural picture : every 
 where can be selected a view perfect in its impression, from 
 the grandeur of the arches in front, the receding vaulting more 
 or less disclosed, and the parts that are disclosed cut at any 
 angle the fancy may chuse, and with every possible effect of 
 light and shade from the projection or retirement of the co- 
 lumns or parts of columns, the cornices, the numberless ac- 
 cidents, in short, that crowd the architect's vocabulary in 
 endless combinations of picturesque effect. Taken thus in 
 detail, this sublime interior affords a display of grand picture, 
 dependent solely on the will of the beholder, in matter 
 of novelty as well as variety. For a view of finished and per- 
 fect beauty may, for instance, be selected, in the Tribune, the 
 set of two buttresses and the archway of forty-four feet 
 span which they support, as a model for the most superb tri- 
 umphal arch that man's genius could devise. For a broken 
 picture, (perhaps the grandest to be obtained,) it is but to 
 retire into the first chapel on the right after entering ; from 
 which, with a fore-ground of the colossal buttress separating 
 it from the nave, may be had a greater or less portion at 
 pleasure of the nave, its vaulting and cornice, (that vaulting 
 one hundred and fifty -two feet above the floor) the buttress 
 opposite, a large portion of that to the right, and a fragment, 
 if you will, of that yet farther off, with the aisle thrown by 
 both into such play of intersection of sides, of vault, of re- 
 cess and projection of every description whole, abrupt, half- 
 length, quarter length that the vast materials and their fine 
 distribution can give into exhibition, in astonishing change, 
 made to depend on the spectator's movement two steps or 
 three to right or left of his first stand, or in front or rere of 
 it. 
 
198 HOME. 
 
 No variety of parts, in an edifice of less stupendous di- 
 mensions, could produce these sublime results : and to resume 
 where I began, the effects of that grandeur triumph in the 
 perspective ever in play, even where the objects of sight con- 
 front each other in rectangularly parallel position, and at the 
 closest possible approach, for taking in that regularity. Wit- 
 ness the buttress correspondent to that at whose base you stand, 
 and which your eye refuses to believe its fellow, from the 
 distance of the arch's span reducing it to comparative dimi- 
 nution : and witness also, the ever- recur ring belief that co- 
 lumns on the opposite side of an archway and in minutest 
 correspondence, can have no possible reference to each other 
 in size. Whoever would know what perspective is, ought 
 to see it in St. Peter's, where its reign is exhibited in all va- 
 riety of potent enchantment. 
 
 Much has been sacrificed to the dome ; yet that is but 
 partially had. Its vast cornice severely abridges its appa- 
 rent extent. Then the four buttresses sustaining it, have for- 
 bidden to the aisles the loftiness to which, as accessories to 
 the nave, they have a right : and the subterfuges by which 
 that deprivation is effected, are perhaps the second great de- 
 fect of this noble interior. They are narrowed in the rere 
 of each buttress except that which supports the dome by 
 a sort of portal arch, exquisitely graceful in itself, but sur- 
 mounted by an attic, which, frightful to say ! is perforated, 
 within the building, by a window that gives light to a 
 closet, or cock-loft, above. This range of garret tabernacles 
 usurps the upper portion of the aisles, whose dimensions, but 
 for them, would be dignified. The usurpers of the aisle's 
 breadth below are of far other pretensions : and it savors of 
 Radical Reform, to glance at the possible removal of the 
 superb and incomparably beauteous columns that, on either 
 hand, are their guard. Besides, as the buttresses supporting 
 the dome would refuse to give height corresponding to what 
 
ROME. 199 
 
 would be obtained by the removal of this blemish, we must be 
 content to enjoy that removal, and the grandeur of aisles 
 worthy of such a nave, as matter of theory and imagination. 
 Indeed we may extend our ill humour to the nave itself, 
 so miserably is its vapid surface tacked on the rotunda over 
 which the dome is suspended. That mighty ornament has 
 necessitated buttresses more massive than those that are in 
 sequence, which have not to do with its pressure : and, in re- 
 sult of this disparity of dimensions, the breadth of the nave is, 
 in one portion of it, so contracted, as not to be contained 
 in its entire, on either side, by one right line. The break, 
 which takes place at the end of the second buttress, is such 
 that it has not been judged prudent to attempt disguising it in 
 the cornice : it is even allowed to declare itself in the ceiling. 
 Let me not quit St. Peter's without a syllable on its pic- 
 tures. They are but copies yet of the supreme class of 
 paintings ; executed inimitably, and not in oil. As though 
 it had been determined to spurn the fragility of mere paint- 
 er's coloring when appropriating the triumphs of his art to 
 the decoration of such a temple they are executed in im- 
 perishable mosaic. This art, in its present state, appears to 
 be one of the greatest wonders of man's attainment. A 
 palace in the precincts of St. Peter's church is devoted by 
 the government to the copying of the first rate paintings : 
 and the detail of the process is of remarkable interest. 
 Not least noticeable is the variety of colors which they have 
 in as regular arrangement as the letters of the alphabet in 
 a printer's workship to the number, whether of eight thou- 
 sand or fourteen thousand shades of color I have forgotten 
 at the distance of but four hours after having been told it : 
 I am confident it does not fall below the lesser number, 
 which is just as extraordinary as the greater, when an un- 
 instructed conjecturer must think it absurd to surmise as 
 many hundreds. 
 
SECTION X. 
 
 Thursday 30th January. The carnival shew began this 
 day, at two in the afternoon : its stupid alacrity of merri- 
 ment lasted till five. Till about half-past four the Corso was, 
 throughout its entire length of carriage way, crowded by two 
 strings of coaches, the one going and the other returning : 
 the side spaces of the street and the centre, where its width 
 admitted, were filled with pedestrians. In the rere again, 
 wherever a gateway or a raised causeway gave opportu- 
 nity, chairs stood ready for hire, to those who preferred gaz- 
 ing on the moving shew without the pains of moving through 
 it. In all the windows, up to the attics, were gazers also : 
 and the fronts of the houses were put into gala, by richly 
 colored and embroidered tapestries dependent from the win- 
 dows, or displayed over the balconies. The multitude be- 
 low made themselves merry with the showers dispersed, by 
 one practicable joker or other, of sugar-plumbs larger than 
 the heaviest hail, of which cartloads of a mean quality were 
 on sale at occasional street corners. The number of masks 
 was not great, as is the understood custom on the first day : 
 they were dressed to produce an effect like that of our cha- 
 racters in farce and harlequin entertainments. 
 
 The carriages having drawn off, on gun-fire signal, 
 the termination of the affair was a horse race, of seven 
 or eight horses, without riders, that were started from 
 a barrier at one end of the Corso, through the close lane of 
 pedestrians that hemmed in their course, to its other extrem- 
 
ROME. 201 
 
 ity1840 yards. It was a disgustingly miserable exhibi- 
 tion. A she wy caparison, supportiug cords armed with 
 barbed pins, which the animal's movement causes to act 
 against their flanks, and into their sinews, and inflict torture 
 proportionate to their increased exertions is one mode prac- 
 tised to urge them to speed : but matches of touchwood 
 stuck into their body, or gunpowder squibs attached, that are 
 contrived, by timely explosion, to frighten them, are means 
 not neglected. The first two or three horses went forward 
 with spirit game enough ; but the rest lagged in a mean 
 and irregular canter, that was provocative of loud laughter 
 among the crowd. 
 
 The entire three hours' exhibition is a practical lampoon 
 of the nation on itself, which can thus, year after year, and 
 generation after generation, enjoy instead of putting down 
 mummery beneath the sufferance of manhood, however viti- 
 ated, or even manhood unbreeched. The regiments which 
 in all the pomp of uniform and arms, and full glory of mili- 
 tary band, marched up the Corso, to line the street and up- 
 hold order, were pitiably mean, with the exception of a small 
 body of well-looking and well-disciplined dragoons. Of the 
 infantry but a part were regulars, I mean nominally such : 
 by much the larger portion was composed of shopkeepers 
 and artisans, who are so far brought into military arrange- 
 ment, as to be regimented and equipped. Their officers 
 were the most superb feature of the Carnival : they far out- 
 did the characters in mask. With the ambition which in our 
 service prompts our little fellows to aspire to the Grenadier 
 company, these dignitaries were, I truly think, all that is 
 grotesque and ugly in the full population of Rome. Far the 
 greater part of them were illustrious by a grossness of 
 paunch, so little common here, that it looked as if they had 
 been selected for command on this very score possibly be- 
 cause the post of officer ought of right to be that of rion-exer- 
 
202 HOME. 
 
 tion. The waddle they performed for a march in topped 
 boots too was exquisitely diverting. 
 
 Friday forenoon. A solemn service, as exequies in ho- 
 nor of Canova, lasted nearly three hours. The Church of 
 the Apostles was splendidly set forth for the occasion : the 
 Corinthian pilasters, in pairs, were so imitated by hangings 
 from cornice to floor, as for a while to impose on the eye for 
 white marble : the whole drapery was disposed in ex- 
 cellent taste. Day-light was excluded ; and the church was 
 uniformly and charmingly lighted, principally by an arrange- 
 ment of tapers over the entablature, in groupes close enough 
 together, while at beautiful interstices lucid points, diadem- 
 wise, each groupe. The breeze admitted above that was 
 unfelt, but through its refreshment below frequently de- 
 ranged or extinguished these lights ; in the regulation of 
 which numerous attendants were seen actively moving back 
 and forward, secure on the cornice, in perpendicular attitude, 
 unimpeded by the vaulted roof, that springs from the rere of 
 its ample esplanade. The expense was 8,000 scudi (1,600 
 sterling) of which one half was defrayed by the Academy 
 of St. Luke, or of Painting, and the rest supplied by the 
 Government. 
 
 High Mass, with due aid of music, was first performed : 
 then followed from the pulpit a discourse in eulogy of the 
 deceased, distributed into two parts ; the first biographic 
 and in detail of his merits as an artist, with an appeal, one 
 after another, to the triumphs of bis genius, which, in auto- 
 ' ' graph of cast model, were ranged around in exemplification 
 of his proud deservings. The other division of the discourse 
 had for subject the private worth and public virtues of the 
 man, the purity and sanctity of his life. The orator's voice 
 was delicious in the extreme distinct, full, exquisitely mel- 
 low, and richness itself; in a chaunt shaming all attempt at 
 chaunting it has hitherto been my lot to listen to. 
 
ROME. 203 
 
 It is absolute relief to-day, though instantly after the com- 
 mencement of the Carnival, to find that its fooleries and up- 
 roar are suspended until Monday this being Friday, to- 
 morrow some fast or festival day, and the day after Sunday 
 days on which, each for its own special reason, an intermis- 
 sion takes place of the Carnival, which is to count ten actual 
 days of celebration, running through, perhaps, three weeks. 
 
 5th February. Though a grand ball of the most modest 
 pretensions much more a masked ball is a scene at va- 
 riance with my constitutional and cherished habits, I am, 
 as a traveller questing foreign sights, so penetrated with the 
 duty that character imposes, or the madness of Carnival so 
 rules the hour, that I had no option but to put into use my 
 ticket, and mix with the throng last night congregated at the 
 Duke of Bracciano's assembly.* The palace in which it 
 
 * This affair, and the honour of association with this upstart grandee, is matter 
 of specific expense, levied by the entertainer through the juggle of trade, in which 
 he does the part of your banker, Torlonia untitled. To say nothing of a clerical 
 error, as it was pleaded to be insertion, through pretended blunder, of a double 
 per centage for commission, where one is the outside charge any tradesman thinks 
 of making, which plea was unaccompanied by any offer of repayment in correction 
 of the alleged mistake : to say nothing of this, there was a charge, in the account 
 furnished me by this establishment, of 9^ scudi (or dollars) for less than half a dozen 
 letters two of them, it may be, double ; the charge as seemed to me, treble that 
 of the Post-office. Mr. Matthews was cheated at Naples by a Bishop : at Rome 
 the visitors tell strange stories of a Duke. But in this country a beggar at starting 
 may become a pawnbroker, and, from the profits thence accruing, PURCHASE a 
 Dukedom. 
 
 But commerce has, the world over, its sons enthusiastic of gain. By an English 
 company at Rome, rival to the Roman Duke, and which also undertakes the trans- 
 mission of luggage and works of art, the charge made me for the conveyance thence 
 to Leghorn of 191bs. weight of books and 44 prints, loose, was 2 10s. 6d., in 
 a lumped sum. The shipment at Leghorn, the freight thence home, the duties 
 at home of 14d. per Ib. &c. with the Dublin merchant's charge, all, in aggregate, 
 came to but a nothing beyond as much more. The items of this " bill of costs" I 
 have since specially obtained : and the Custom-house duties of Italy I find to be but 
 half a scudo : but an unplaned deal packing-box is stated at '2 scudi 18 bai, nearly 
 one-fourth of the ten scndi of total, which, by exchange practice, was swelled into 
 fifty shillings. Duke Torlonia himself allowed me ten scudi for a very trifle beyond 
 two guineas ! TJlrum horum ? 
 Things were managed for me in a widely different way in respect to a much hea- 
 
204 ROME. 
 
 took place is held to be one of the most splendidly appoint- 
 ed in the city. The walls of the numerous apartments are 
 set forth in much magnificence as well as taste, each one in 
 the suite differing from every other in the color of its satin 
 hangings and the style of its ornaments. Of two or three of 
 these apartments, the floor is a varied inlay of the rarest 
 marbles, and even precious stones at an expense, I learn, 
 of 1,500 sterling for one floor. Mirrors, that delicious lux- 
 ury of continental furniture, are frequent, of course, and of a 
 splendour to be in keeping with the other accompaniments. 
 For me, as I was proceeding at my ease down one noble 
 room into another in continuation of it, not less noble, I 
 received from an Italian gentleman, whom I was passing, 
 an intimation that I was not to go farther : this kindled on 
 my part a rather displeased demand of Why? which was 
 answered by the statement that it was glass ! I had hap- 
 pened to be a very little aside of it, in face of a pilaster which 
 formed its framing and, for the instant, had concealed from 
 me the reflection of my own person. And all Ihis palace 
 magnificence is put to use merely for the occasional extra- 
 vaganza of a grand route from a superstition that marks 
 for death, within the year, the owner who shall dare to make 
 this edifice his habitation. 
 
 Two grand galleries, connecting the suites of apartments, 
 are rich in statues and paintings : these, with the Hercules 
 and Lycas of Canova a groupe of intolerable affectation 
 bore their part in the interest of the evening, of which the 
 main attraction was the crowd of a thousand (possibly near- 
 ly approaching a second thousand) of languid or active 
 loungers a very large portion of them English. Few of the 
 Italians attempted disguise in character; and of my coun- 
 trymen not many, and with the usual poor average of suc- 
 
 ier parcel which I received through Mr. Molini of Paternoster- row to whose M- 
 Usfactoriness in all points I offer Uiis cheerful testimony. Ho is correspondent of 
 Molini, and of other bouse* in Florence. 
 
ROME. 205 
 
 cess. One Highland officer appearing desirous of making 
 himself remarkable, I asked him in English, the number of 
 his button, to which, as he demurred to reply, I subjoined a 
 request to know what was his regiment : the answer, at 
 length made, indicated that he could not comprehend my ex- 
 pression ; and the bad French, in which it was conveyed, 
 proved that the tartan petticoat was honored by the wear of 
 an Italian. 
 
 Of the English throng, whether masked or not, each seem- 
 ed, as by freemasonry, known to other, as countryman or 
 countrywoman : and I was surprised to see the usual cour- 
 tesies of private society pass current among ourselves, free 
 from the contancrous restraint which, on the Continent, stiffens 
 all mutual approach to decently civil bearing or even com- 
 mon good manners. Some of our ladies, I must say, in this 
 assemblage, where masks and covering were rather called 
 for than nakedness, made a display of shoulder blades in 
 positive nudity. Perhaps these specimens of Englishwomen 
 set themselves off thus to exhibit in character, and in the spi- 
 rit of the entertainment and that our gentlemen critics were 
 too dull to penetrate their scope, as we were uncharitable 
 enough to give them no credit for the sacrifice theymade 
 with view, doubtless, to the spectator's gratification. It is 
 a ruled point that the policy of this display is as mistaken, as 
 the taste it indicates is miserable. Even of Alcina's sorce- 
 ress self, flagitious and supreme in enchantments, and of 
 utmost contrivance and skill in attraction and even by 
 Ariosto it is sung that her concealments of beauty were 
 such that the eye of Argus could not penetrate them : 
 
 Non potria Paltre parte veder Argo : 
 Ben si puo giudicar, che corrisponde 
 A quel, ch'appar di fuor, quel che s'asconde. 
 
 Every part of the Venus de Medecis is beautiful : but if the 
 rest of the body be covered, the blade bones in special na- 
 
206 ROME. 
 
 kedness can excite no idea of loveliness, nor any other 
 elegant or agreeable perception, or shall I say, sensation. 
 And pravity of principle seems to contend with imbecility of 
 judgment in protruding on the eye those " prominent and 
 most unsightly bones," as I remember Cowper calls them. 
 But there must be representatives of us of every description ; 
 and with the drawback of these representatives of adventur- 
 ous dash, it was a delightful and proud thing to see the 
 crowds of very elegant, and many of them highly beautiful 
 Englishwomen, in dress as in demeanour, an ornament to 
 the English name. 
 
 The throng of English we have in Italy is wonderful : at 
 Rome it is understood there are 1,600 of us, and with less 
 mixture than might be expected, though some meaner ad- 
 mixture there is. In descending, the other day, from the up- 
 permost range of the Colisseum, when about half way 
 down, 1 was met by two Englishmen ascending with their 
 Italian Cicerone, between whom and them appeared no 
 power of intercourse in any dialect of language : as I passed, 
 one of the two, in honest hum-drum conjecture, said to the 
 other, " this I suppose to be the Colisseum," that is, a re- 
 main of ancient magnificence, five hundred and forty feet in 
 extent, and of impression beyond even these amazing di- 
 mensions a thing unique in this world. In the same man- 
 ner, in the Vatican museum, three days ago, the English 
 party was pointed out to me by a friend, who had two mi- 
 nutes before overheard its leading female observe inquiringly, 
 that the Apollo Belvedere, on which she was then looking 
 all life and mind, and exhibiting body and mind in utmost 
 energy ; the stem of a tree which the sculptor has grouped with 
 him, palpably as silent and inanimate as any stock ought to 
 be that this work could not be any thing so old as the Ve- 
 nue de Medicis which she had seen at Florence, inasmuch as 
 its marble was not so fresh and clean : her husband, as he 
 
HOME. 207 
 
 seemed, ventured in reply his belief that it had been cleaned 
 up ; and that the statue was equally ancient, with exception 
 of the head which he averred to be modern. 
 
 But whatever we are at home, we act in Italy a topping 
 part. As the late Mr. Spencer Perceval said of a leading 
 demagogue in Parliament of that day, that he had consti- 
 tuted himself a walking Committee of the House of Com- 
 mons ; so our doughty sons of John Bull consider themselves 
 severally here as representatives plenipotentiary of the Bri- 
 tish nation. Their whole bearing is that of sovereigns of 
 Italy, in exercise of ownership ; save that in lieu of drawing 
 rent from it,they spend here the income of property that is not, 
 in more seeming, their own. To walk over the unresisting 
 Italians, is not consistent with the old Roman, and I trust mo- 
 dern British, magnanimity of sparing the subjects of your pow- 
 er: and to intrude on whatever domestic assemblage on the 
 score, not of card invitation, but of pass word that the interloper 
 is " Inglese," indicates arrogance more atrocious than the pa- 
 tience which suffers it is vile. But all givers of entertain- 
 ments in modern Rome are not modern Romans. And an 
 Englishman or two, who in this way favoured with their 
 presence, just recently, a route of the Austrian ambassador, 
 met with a rebuff so signal as to have marked them to cele- 
 brity even among their countrymen, which must preclude 
 such an enterprise from being repeated. 
 
 Even the mild spirit of the government, overflowing in 
 hospitable kindnesses to the nail-pairings of the English, 
 has been roused. An Englishman who had obtained per- 
 mission to make extracts, at the Vatican library, from a 
 tract valuable from its scarceness, posted up, outside the 
 entrance door, a placard inviting copiers, on terms that 
 were to be stipulated, for the declared purpose of making 
 different copies under the one permission. The conse- 
 quence has been a regulation proscribing the abuse, but 
 by restrictions which materially interfere with the power of 
 
208 ROME. 
 
 making extracts on the part of future scholars, guiltless in 
 thought, of such an outrage. 
 
 I knew the Englishman, whose simplicity gave way to 
 the exclamation, " What! you have got ducks in this coun- 
 try too !" on seeing at a moderate time after his arrival in 
 Ireland, some dozen of that species of poultry near the road 
 he was travelling. In the same mood of wonderment our 
 sons of jog-trot are struck into a heap at meeting what they 
 never dreamed possible abroad that is without their forty 
 English counties, human decencies of mind, or the adjuncts 
 ministering to the barest corporeal comforts. On first irrup- 
 tion these persons act without cheque. Whether their freaks 
 be regarded as fooleries or enormities, they are an abomi- 
 nation which no other people could run the length of without 
 ruin : the grossnesses of the few must, and do, involve the 
 character of the many. But such is the national staple of 
 sterling good qualities ; such also is the impression of English 
 prowess as a fighting nation, and of that magnanimity that 
 stood in resistance to the whole civilized world, banded 
 against her, over which she triumphed but to achieve that 
 world's deliverance that the hardihood of certain of its un- 
 worthy sons can with safety develope itself in extravagances 
 that dazzle this, the most debased of all European nations 
 that knows not to distinguish arrogance from just pride. 
 Weight of purse in this most cheap country fosters the 
 haughty propensity : and the contempt of that pettifogging 
 spirit that ever goes hand in hand with neediness, holds high 
 on the one side a spirit of honorable feeling, and produces 
 on the other such consciousness of degradation, that even 
 the Italians rate themselves a mean and fraudulent race, 
 meriting almost to lick the shoes of a nation straight forward 
 in all its doings ; and among whose sons, visitant among 
 them at least in usual course not a breath of (he voice 
 proceeds, nor an innuendo escapes, that is not punctuality 
 where it is not probity. 
 
ROME. 209 
 
 There is honesty among the Italians too ; much among its 
 agricultural population ; and however mongrel, there is a 
 leaven of.it in its great towns. Yesterday, for an engraved 
 ground plan in folio of St. Peter's church, being up in the 
 street for sale, the flying stationer who owned it asked me 
 four pauls, in the usual chaffering way of this country, that 
 is an understood affair : I offered him two ; which he having 
 accepted, I paid him in half-pauls, that are rather thin than 
 small silver pieces ; and having gone a dozen yards off, he 
 called me back to return me a fiftb>fealf-paul, which he had 
 discovered I had given him, through oversight in counting. 
 
 6th February. However I may dislike bird's-eye views, 
 that which is obtained from the Campanile of the Capitol, I 
 found a most noble one. The various intervals of valley 
 between the original hills on which the ancient city was 
 built, are now of course greatly filled, and the surface ine- 
 qualities proportionably reduced. Here, these inequalities 
 are seen at their best : the great masses of palace stand out 
 in their individual grandeur : the churches, their cupolas and 
 spires, and the numerous obelisks, specially the Trajan 
 and Antonine columns all are finely distinguished : above 
 all other objects, the Colisseum, here in proximity, chal- 
 lenges deepest astonishment. Then, in the distance, and in- 
 vesting the waste green of the Campania swell, to North and 
 East, the Sabine mountains with Tivoli, distinct by its 
 white buildings, high on one brow of their range : left of it, 
 a noble mountain gorge, the vale of the Anio. To the 
 South, the Latian mountains, with Frascati and other 
 towns equally distinct on their ascent, rising 2,500 feet 
 above the plain, and contending with the Sabine chain, which 
 shall bear from other the palm of lovely outline, and exqui- 
 sitely and endlessly picturesque character, in which either 
 perhaps transcends every combination of mountain form else- 
 where to be found. After all, what are the works of men's 
 
 p 
 
210 ROME. 
 
 hands, even Rome and its majesty and its recollection*, to 
 the ever-during and simple sublime of creation ! 
 
 Yet to undervalue these recollections were to cease to be 
 man. From this stand the eye surveys a theatre of man's 
 achievements, with which no other tract of earth can com- 
 pare. Local associations, in sovereign force, kindle back 
 along the train of deeds of magnanimity, and all that is sub- 
 lime within man's attainment through one thousand years 
 of historical details, and still farther, and with fidelity to 
 man's genuine feelings and who is there can say but with 
 fidelity to true story and actual facts through countless ages 
 when history was legend, up to the tale of Troy, the most 
 ancient on mere human record.* The prowess, the patri- 
 otism, the wisdom of this greatest of nations, present to all 
 our thoughts from infancy's immaturity, is here present to 
 our organs of sight. Equally plain on the eye is the hideous 
 ruin into which the civilized world fell, when a prey to sav- 
 
 Even of that '* pedetentim" plodder, Bontselten, the imagination is so Agitated 
 by the localities be survey*, that be soberly believes Virgil to be a chronicler, and dis- 
 cusses bis statement of cabinet and battle vicissitudes \vitli the same credence he gives 
 to his topography in verifying which he takes praiseworthy pains. He seems weigh- 
 ed down with the gravity of historical testimonies, in throng, to establish the magni- 
 ficent poet's veracity ; -which testimonies, when he finds it decent to specify them, 
 are after all besides another poet, Ovid in bis Fasti the rhetorician Dion) sins of 
 Halicarnassus, who retails some of these old legends, and retails also some other 
 legends to contradict them ; and the sober Appian, whom be nrnkes " positively 
 to affirm" that JEneas and Dido were cotemporaries ; In doing so, he "positively" 
 misquotes Appian, that sets forth certain stories of the origin of Carthage in a pro- 
 forma exordium of one book, and certain stories of that of Rome in a similar 
 exordium of another book; and in neither draws into chronological reference the 
 founders of these nation*, nor brings that point into assertion or discussion. If 
 Appian bad so asserted, his say-so would be of as little weight as that of any compiler 
 of to-day, since in respect to Queen Dido's time. Appian was a modern, quite. Still 
 the zeal of Mr. Bonstetten is proof how a man may be run away with by the 
 poetry of Virgil, and the localities of Latium. 
 
 Mr. Bonstetten's book was specially recommended to me by a friend : but I find 
 it replete with drivelling and with Inexactness. It Is quite In character with such a 
 writer to talk of the " Logic of History," which he pride* himself in employing 
 for verification of the details of Virgil's History of the Acts and Deeds in Italy of 
 King Maeia. 
 
ROME. 211 
 
 age man, wanton in destruction as an escaped bedlamite. 
 Even of the abasement in which, consequent on that ruin, 
 the human race wallowed for centuries, the proofs stare us 
 in the face : memorials stand every where around often 
 chance-medley enough in appropriate trace of the wayward 
 march from barbarism, through all stages onward, to our mo- 
 dern day. What a field for story that midway period, com- 
 bining the instruction of the old with the interest of exist- 
 ing institutions, and causing to vibrate the heartstrings of 
 this entire world of ancient and after and recent recollec- 
 tions. It was on this spot that Gibbon made that happiest 
 and matchless choice of a subject, to which I never, till now 
 that I am on the spot, did one hundredth part of the justice 
 it challenges. And in spite of the torment of his style, and 
 of his perpetual strain, that is not narrative, but innuendo, 
 in spite too of his heartlessness and a spirit of sneer that is 
 not English, Gibbon is a historian worthy of his theme, 
 and his book one of the high trophies of the march of intel- 
 lect in the modern world. 
 
 8th February. The turmoil of Carnival rages increas- 
 ingly ; masks more numerous far, and vagaries more tur- 
 bulent. I learn that a very large proportion of the exbibi- 
 tants in the early drive are shopkeepers and working peo- 
 ple, who squander in this annually returning parade of 
 shewy dress, and in daily coach hire, the savings they had 
 for months past been making, prepensely with this view, at 
 cost of the main comforts of life in their humble walk of it. 
 Yet the Romans have tact enough to keep their offspring 
 from even the sight of the mixed fooleries and disso- 
 luteness, in which they yearly drench themselves. All 
 the children are relegated, during the season of riot, 
 to retirement of one description or other, generally con- 
 vents. One convent has six hundred in a sort of board*, 
 ing-school jail. Another contrivance was stated to me, as 
 in practice by the clergy, to divert some at least of the peo- 
 
 P 2 
 
212 HOME. 
 
 pic from the range of the frenzy : it is processions headed 
 by a cardinal Fesch was mentioned by name from station 
 to station round the fourteen altars that are distributed over 
 the Colisseum. I repaired thither during one afternoon's 
 hey-day, and after some time the cardinal approached, sus- 
 taining a great wooden crucifix : with him, half a dozen 
 monks were in masks, and of these, two bore lighted Ian- 
 thorns suspended from tall poles : forty or fifty females, 
 mostly of humble rank, followed ; and as they held on the 
 regulated services, some two or three score men grouped 
 with the assembly ; the aggregate of which cardinals, 
 priests, and handful of poor devotees were in odd and pi- 
 tiable contrast with the sublime ruin through which they 
 straggled ! Thus futile were the exertions of the Christian 
 priesthood to avert, by a sidewind, an abomination of which 
 the Temporal Sovereign of the same priests is the actual 
 Patron. 
 
 The number of beggars that range through the coffee- 
 rooms is so great as to be a novelty, and a disgusting one. 
 They enter in an unceasing series, and pursue their trade 
 with the most confident assurance, and without passing a 
 single person of the company. Whatever hitherto may have 
 been the case at Rome, there is now as little squalor and 
 misery as in the average number of Great Cities ; and the 
 mendicants are specially of that order whom we designate 
 Sturdy Beggars : usually, too, they are well and neatly dress- 
 ed ; and some of them carry about, for their greater com- 
 fort, chaffing dishes with the fit provision of live charcoal. 
 They are the same bands from day to day, without change. 
 Some of them parade two or more children, for whom they 
 open the door of the apartment, waiting outside for the re- 
 sult of the cruise of their apprentice auxiliaries ; who, so 
 far from claiming aid on the score of insufficient garments 
 or famished cheeks, are set forth in bravery of dress and 
 curled locks, and shew a skin sleek from abundant and 
 
ROME. 213 
 
 healthful feeding. It is palpably a trade its practice to me 
 peculiarly and nervously loathsome. 
 
 These coffee-rooms, which are farther infested by bands of 
 most importunate pedlars are, even the most select of them, 
 the permitted resort of the strangest diversity of compa- 
 ny. Market women after selling their commodities, with 
 their basket of wares by their side servants out of livery, 
 and also in it and perhaps worse than these, men with 
 more pretensions and as much coarseness of behaviour : 
 all are distributed at their ease among the better and the 
 best order of customers. With many of these, and through 
 all this variety, the waiters are on a companionable footing. 
 
 There is great disregard to the distinctions between the 
 different classes of society at Rome far more, unquestion- 
 ably, than at Florence. This ease of enjoyment of each 
 individual, in whatever groupe of association, pronounces on 
 the ignorance and grossness, at all points, of the population, 
 from the Noble down to the man that is next above the work- 
 ing artisan or journeyman barber. 
 
 And in the present state of the world, can morals rate 
 above these base manners ? With the ignorance of the 
 inhabitants of this great city their want of occupation 
 for either body or mind their lounging habits and with 
 no one check from public opinion, or guard from any por- 
 tion of society in the way of esprit du corps, jealous of 
 the good name of all the individuals within its membership ; 
 is it wonderful that the whole population should be a nerve- 
 less, miserable race ? Their highest flight of excitement is 
 the stupid pomp of a procession : in the raree-show of Car- 
 nival they evince delight rather in the parade than the mer- 
 riment in a tithe of what, among any other human creatures, 
 must be created by the antic tricks of the maskers, who, whe- 
 ther male characters or female, are of supreme dulness. 
 Take them in conversation, and they are equally vapid : 
 
214 ROME. 
 
 perhaps there is no where a greater dearth of ideas than 
 among the women of Rome who lack the common powers 
 of conversation chartered right, though it be of females, to 
 talk agreeably with nothing for the subject. Then the opi- 
 nion entertained of them by their mates and natural guar- 
 dians ! An Italian most gravely remarked to me, this very 
 day, that female irregularities I misrepresent him, for that 
 is in the teeth of his remark infidelities, being the result of 
 purely natural propensities, can never occasion surprise to 
 any person that thinks seriously on the subject ; and the like- 
 lihood of such an infidelity ought, consequently, never to ex- 
 cite speculation in the mind of a husband. The crew that 
 wallow in this pollution of habitual creed are below man- 
 hood and, by an incapacitation almost physical, unfit for po- 
 litical regeneration. They seem as forlorn a human subject 
 for cultivation, as their Campania is an agricultural one for 
 the diffusion over it, of a sturdy British yeoman popula- 
 tion. 
 
 Sunday 9th February. The theatre at Rome, usually 
 shut for the rest of the year, has regular licence during the 
 season of carnival, Sundays inclusive. The latter is the af- 
 fair of the Italians : I lament to know that it is also fre- 
 quented, on this day, by my countrymen. 
 
 One noble trace of distinction between British and Conti- 
 nental usages is, that on the Continent generally the thea- 
 tres are open on Sundays by approved usage, while with us 
 they are closed by positive legal provision : and were it 
 otherwise, indulgence in stage entertainments on that day 
 would be held scandalous. Englishmen abroad ought to re- 
 coil from a practice that at home would subject them to the 
 lash of the law : similarly they ought not, as exulting in free- 
 dom from the censurate of public opinion, to take leave of 
 their sense of shame. It may be said, that the aberration 
 proceeds from want of thought : I will believe this when I 
 see an Englishman on the Continent lay aside his habits of 
 
ROME. 
 
 personal cleanliness, or take leave of his almost instinctive 
 national pride. 
 
 It is useless to fence in the way of apology, or to allege 
 that the Calvinists of Geneva are equally lax, in this point, 
 with the Roman Catholics of Italy. What a sneaking 
 cruise of conscience this, to go as on discovery through the 
 various professions of Christianity, with purpose to cab- 
 bage out from each some one or other indulgence pro- 
 scribed by the community to which we belong ! Take 
 it even that abstinence by a Church of England-man from 
 stage entertainments on Sundays shall be held as ana- 
 logous somewhat to abstinence by a Roman Catholic from 
 animal food on Fridays even thus, it is no release to 
 our countrymen that they are out of cognizance and reach 
 of a constable, or do not give scandal, to the ruin of their 
 characters, in the walks of private society. Quiet confor- 
 mity to national usage may in this, as in any other instance, 
 be practised without assumption of the alarming character of 
 a travelling reformer. The very knowledge among foreigners 
 that such is English municipal law, fortified by family and 
 personal practice, will acquit each and every one of us from 
 the imputation of sanctimonious singularity : and it will 
 speak truths, the remote good consequences of which we may 
 leave in higher hands, satisfied with having discharged a 
 duty that is but the simple refraining from indecency. 
 
 Even the instant consequences would be much to bare 
 self-importance. On the demise of the Princess Charlotte of 
 Wales, which was felt as a family calamity wherever, over 
 the world's surface, the name reached an English ear, our 
 countrymen at Florence as Mr. Matthews states, who was 
 there at the time who were engaged to an entertainment 
 given by the Grand Duke, excused themselves, as by com- 
 mon accord of apology, from attendance. And the feeling 
 struck on that sovereign of excellent moral and gentlemanly 
 qualities as something noble, and implying high worth in 
 
216 ROME. 
 
 the British character. " How dignified their true national 
 spirit ! How greatly it does them honor !" was his exclama- 
 tion. The application is obvious. 
 
 It is one of the tritest of suppositions taken, as of course, 
 for granted that as other great Empires have fallen, so 
 must come the turn of Britain. I have ever held this dogma 
 in scorn, being as devoid of support from reason or analogy 
 which, in this matter, is history. A State in one respect, re- 
 sembles neither tree nor any other production of nature, of 
 which developement is, by an inevitable law growing out of 
 its organization in preparation and maturity of its decay and 
 dissolution. Luxury is but a comparative term : that luxury 
 is not pernicious or criminal, which effeminates not the body, 
 and debases not the mental powers. There never was an 
 nation in which riches were in such practical diffusion as in 
 England : yet England may challenge any people, ancient or 
 modern, for bodily force as for intellectual vigour. It is 
 clear, therefore, that from the possession and enjoyment of 
 wealth cannot be inferred national deterioration or decadence. 
 Then, such a political organization as ours, the world has 
 not elsewhere known with powers in constant action to re- 
 produce sound institutions, and to lop off those which have 
 decayed. Each generation, to be sure, must be, and for its 
 own sake, the guardian of its own blessings, and, being so, 
 it discharges its duty to all that are to follow : and thus im- 
 perial station, with blessings in continuance and stability 
 to 
 
 Nati nutorum et qui nascontur ab illis, 
 Our sons of sons iu series through all lime, 
 
 ceases to be a vision. 
 
 But it behoves us to hold fast to our national institutions, 
 which are national distinctions, and to keep clear from the 
 mire of our continental neighbours. It were well that we 
 should refuse to educate among them our children thereby 
 hot-bedding them into Frenchmen and Italians, to whom 
 
HOME. 217 
 
 British institutions must be as distasteful, as its climate and 
 sky of painful inclemency. 
 
 I speak not of special exceptions : but, generally, those 
 English who barter their high privileges for the sensualities 
 to which the continent invites, dis-entitle themselves to their 
 birthright, and and beyond that wage as far as their puny 
 means can, a civil war against their country. As long as we 
 are true to British virtues, as long as a sense of the blessings 
 of law and religion shall be the basis of British dignity, and 
 the flame of gratitude for these blessings mingle with the 
 blaze of each family fire-side, so long Britain shall stand 
 in happiness at home and exempt from foreign danger. Con- 
 tinental alliances may consolidate ; America may grow a 
 giant: our internal force will be a match against all aggres- 
 sors : it will be strength, moral and intellectual, in compres- 
 sion within our succinct ramparts. Say that we be over-run, 
 we can be conquered but by extirpation : aggression on our 
 shores will be but the commencement of the struggle : 
 
 Still more majestic shall we rise, 
 
 More dreadful from each foreign stroke ; 
 
 As the loud blast which rends the skies, 
 Serves but to root our native oak. 
 
 I accept the augury of our poet, as well as, in this point, the 
 analogy : because as long as we have a living root, as long 
 as liberty and religion are our practical strength, we are safe 
 against all the elements of uproar. But once more I discard 
 the theory which condemns our institutions to the weakness 
 and extinction that await the tree, whose period must arrive 
 of physical disorganization. 
 
 Here I am amidst the ruins of the mightiest empire that 
 ever rose to power, and underwent destruction. As it was 
 the mightiest, it was also the most depraved, its moral rot- 
 tenness having resolved it into mental and animal decre- 
 pitude. Its catastrophe we know to have been matter of 
 repeated prophecy. And its punishment is immeasurably 
 
218 ROME. 
 
 more awful than that which crushed the other vast empires 
 that preceded it, into non-entity, so that the most pains-tak- 
 ing research can detect of their remains but hillocks of 
 building material of featureless heaviness. ' History records 
 sparely though enough for our warning their rise, their 
 spread, and their extinction respectively. Of them all, the 
 fate of Egypt alone is analogous to that of Rome to this 
 day the basest country, no more a kingdom. Yet her fate is 
 almost more enviable than that of Italy, whose curse it has 
 been to have organized into imposture and fraud the truths 
 of the Gospel, and to have wrought out the restoration of 
 pagan blindness, in forgery and mockery at once of a reli- 
 gion, whose purity were proof in itself, that its origin is su- 
 perhuman. Then what a " ludibrium" a mirror in which 
 to reflect itself in features the most frightfully despicable 
 this Papal sovereignty appears of the empire and crimes of 
 ancient Rome ; this domination of old women, lording it 
 afar off by arts, mean as those by which a beldame terrifies 
 infancy into subjection and at home drivelling amid the 
 relics of all that is ennobling in human achievement. An- 
 cient Rome seems doomed to exposure among the nations, 
 in pillory even yet, while in kindness the ruined grandeur 
 of all the other robber empires has been withdrawn from 
 man's gaze, by extinction and the shroud of earth's bosom. 
 And for still farther and mysteriously sublime lesson, that 
 viewless avenger the Malaria minister of Him who, work- 
 ing by secondary means, " turneth a frightful land into a 
 wilderness, for the wickedness of them that dwell therein ;"* 
 keeps watch and ward ; the ancient garden of the world, 
 garden soil still, a waste of pestilential desolation ; and 
 Rome, the world's mistress, in hideous derision of nature's 
 impossibilities, a sort of living corpse of a metropolis. 
 
 " And the whole land thereof ii brimstone, and salt, and burning ; even all 
 " nations thall ay, wherefore and what meaneth the heat of thii anger ? To bring 
 " upon it all the curse* that are written in this book." 
 
ROME. . 219 
 
 Monday 10th February. The Carnival scene of to-day 
 has been distraction and frenzy, with shouts of a multitude as 
 if possessed orgies quite. It is shocking that the majority 
 of the maskers are of the other sex : that a number of these 
 in woman's dress should be men by no means does away the 
 disproportion. Women or men, all parties rioted in drunk- 
 enness that had nothing to do with drink. It was dangerous 
 to be a spectator of the madness, so spitefully fierce, yet 
 steady, was the hail-storm of hard confectionary that raged 
 through the air, and, when spent in execution, whitened the 
 pavement. 
 
 Shrove Tuesday : equally frantic with yesterday : but with 
 this day the madness has expired. To celebrate the death, 
 as it is denominated, was reserved for dusk, when the Corso 
 was illuminctedthrough all its windows ; and, below, the same 
 carriages, the same crowds, the same masked and unmasked 
 materials of crowd, each individual bearing a lighted taper, 
 raged along the street with all the vehemence that leave- 
 taking of the festival could super-add, and the protection of 
 the night encourage. The street sent out, ever and anon, a 
 running volley of shouts, by which the actors cheered each 
 other to intensity of frenzy for an hour and half. A compa- 
 rative repose ensued, partly because the lights had expended 
 themselves, and partly because the principal actors hastened 
 to secure the delights of madness by a change to the revels 
 of the Aliberti theatre ; where a masked entertainment pro- 
 longed the license in which all were drenched till the moment 
 of midnight : so that Ash Wednesday morning finds the 
 good people of Rome in fit qualification for the abstinence 
 and humiliation of the forty days of Lent. 
 
 14th February. Corsini gardens : the view hence from 
 the brow of a fine hill is considered to be the very best that 
 can be had of Rome. It does uot break the surface into the 
 disconnexion of masses that may be obtained frono different 
 less ambitious stations ; and is quite inferior to the Capitol 
 
220 ROME. 
 
 in bringing on the eye the sacred relics of antiquity, apart 
 from the structures of the modern city. But from no where 
 else does Rome shew the same grandeur of dimensions a 
 vast tract of noble buildings, with endless magnificence of 
 facade, of columns, pediments, spires, and cupolas : while 
 this stand so happily near as to feast the eye on all man- 
 ner and detail of architectural ornaments is elevated enough 
 to put under veil all that in close approach might offend by 
 deformity or meanness. Then such an immense surface of 
 houses, with roofs flat, or approaching to flatness a sort of 
 pavement of roofs, in spread of several miles square ! 
 
 Sunday, 16th February. The weather is recovering from 
 the foulness of rain and inclement storm that savagely che- 
 quers the winter, even thus far south. The evenings are of- 
 ten of the loveliest blue : the other evening, the moon, not 
 twenty four hours beyond the new, beamed in radiance like 
 a star bathed recently in ocean. One o'clock : all the world 
 is alive ; the Corso one crowd of belles and beaus of all or- 
 ders the bucks of moderate and humbler degree pretty ge- 
 nerally shaved, and clean habiliments conforming butterfly 
 periodical emergement from grub impurity : the females in 
 glorious equipment of red and carpet-pattern robe and multi- 
 plied ribband to say truth, strikingly pleasing, but that the 
 satisfaction is dashed by intruding notions of the preceding 
 week. The barbers' shops, up to this hour, in full activity 
 of soap-suds and razor. In the Corso the inferior orders of 
 the males, notwithstanding the improved weather, are be- 
 spread with mantling large enough to deploy into tent, and 
 with ornament or outbuilding or both of a cape down to 
 the hips, and a skirt exalted across the breast and over the 
 shoulders, in cover pent-wise thence to the back : it is a 
 honsement altogether which one of ns, northerns, would pre- 
 fer being frost-bitten and frozen through, rather than be its 
 porter in the slowest lounge. This walking tabernacle is 
 not worn to hide any meanness in inner habiliment on this 
 
ROME. 221 
 
 shew-day of which ever and anon the finery is disclosed, 
 while the laden beau halts to shift and re-arrange his outer 
 panoply ; Gens togata in miserable acceptation ! 
 
 Wherever I have been on the Continent, the slight differ- 
 ence in the male costume between any one district and any 
 other and between all generally and our own has struck 
 me. It would appear that the beaus and dandies of Rome 
 employed a London tailor. But between their fine men and 
 ours the difference is immense : all here is over-acted with a 
 view to imposing to use the French word "farouche:" 
 whiskers coaxed to a grotesque thickness and curl, as if 
 to imply that in their hair lay their strength ; a wicked hat ; 
 a waistcoat in pattern of the bordering of a cotton shawl ; 
 the watch-chain loaded with divers non-deseripts of quite 
 brutal lump of carrot color, and of shape or shapelessness 
 beseeming ; the watch-key surmounted with a globe of base 
 composition, of the bulk of a plumb, or with a quoit of the 
 same material, in circumference of a dollar piece: in fur- 
 nishings, thus challenging worship, too usually do the II- 
 lustrissimi greet our vi*w, when they descend from their 
 equipages to measure dignity with their humbler compa- 
 triots, or with Englishmen of whatever rank. It must be 
 from hence that the promenade strut has been imported into 
 England , where it is now a sore grievance ; the tramp on 
 the flagstones of the iron heel, with valor in the act rival to 
 that of the ass in spurning the dead lion : similarly, many a 
 human ass now kicks against the pavement with an energy he 
 would forbear, if there were danger that it might kick back 
 stamping the street's length and back again to a march of 
 its own heels' music, and the swell of its own importance. 
 I seriously infer that this poor trick has come among us by 
 inoculation from these foreign specimens of pomposity des- 
 titute of solid consequence whom first our travelling cox- 
 combs regard with contemptuous laughter, and then 
 imitate ! 
 
222 ROMU. 
 
 Even in progress within doors picture galleries and 
 churches, for instance the consciousness of what these per- 
 sonages owe to themselves, deserts them not: it is evidenced 
 in the introduction, through a whole suite of apartments, of 
 a menial in unbrushed slovenliness the living attestation of 
 his master's consequence, and the bearer of his wardrobe of 
 great coat. A ludicrous instance of this occurred the other 
 day in the gallery of Cardinal Fesch, where a fellow whose 
 dirt would not be suffered in an English stable-boy, at the 
 moment of his meanest work, was the porter of a load of 
 frowzy clokes and coats (the day being one of settled se- 
 renity,) belonging to three persons, who suffered or encou- 
 raged him through the Cardinal's nest of little apartments, 
 laid out with English snugness to block up, one after other, 
 the passages to the English crowd, in which was more than 
 one individual, whose rank would match the proudest, and 
 whose possessions would outgo in value the united domains 
 of twenty, on good average, of the richest of their grandees. 
 The moving nuisance was every where and in all directions, 
 lumber in every body's way, and palpable to the Italians 
 as it must have been was patronized by them throughout ; 
 and this not from incivility, of which they harboured not a 
 thought, but as an appendage and evidence of their conse- 
 quence. 
 
 Not but that liveries are here also as shewy and as nu- 
 merous as they are with us in the affair of our Lord Mayor 
 and Sheriff's processions on high corporation days: but 
 there is this difference that their exhibitions of gaudiness are 
 routine and diurnal, whereas our buffooneries are occasional. 
 Livery servants in excessive number, and an equipage, are 
 indispensable with families, that with the utmost straining 
 uphold their keep that occupy, spider-like, a corner in the 
 wide, unfurnished shell of palace from which they daily issue 
 in parade ; the droppings, or savings, beyond what that 
 parade costs sufficing but to procure for them the absolute 
 
ROME. 223 
 
 wants of nature. The matter is not mended by a large in- 
 come, which goes out on prodigal shew, leaving discontent 
 and hunger to hold their track just the same. 
 
 Before quitting the theme of the discrepancies of the man- 
 ners of the male sex from those of home, let me not omit 
 that of which every day puts me in loathesome recollection 
 the noisomeness of an Italian concourse from the use of 
 garlic ; the stench of which ever and anon dislodges an 
 Englishman from this or the other comfortable station for 
 viewing to advantage the various raree-exhibitions inviting 
 his speculation. No advantage of post can be retained, and 
 no intensity of curiosity but must be extinguished by the 
 chance-medley execution of this foe : you are compelled in 
 each instance to flight, without having the power of thought 
 that in your next asylum you run on the same noisomeness. 
 
 This pestilence is an infliction by the meaner ranks : 
 but among all classes prevails, within doors as without, that 
 gross act of hawking, and the supplementary one of spitting. 
 There must be some substantive delight felt by foreigners 
 when indulging in this evacuation, quite unknown to our 
 coarser insular organs. It is a delight so intense, that they 
 claim from all bystandards sympathy with their satisfaction. 
 No homebrewed fop in the days of our Queen Anne and the 
 Spectator, could more quaintly regulate the conduct of his 
 snuff-box, or display his knowing manner of paying respect 
 to his nostrils, than is exhibited by every fine man among 
 these Italians in the dilettante-ship of wheel-round to con- 
 front the standers-by, leisurely spread of bis world of toga, 
 and leisurely grimace of exertion in collecting and getting 
 quit of his nasty excrement. 
 
 I began this desultory note with the shews in dress 
 of this very fine Sunday : and it is time to return to 
 that subject, and give the ladies their share. The higher 
 classes, then, are at so little remove from English guise as 
 incapacitates me from discussing the distinctions. But with 
 
224 HOME. 
 
 the lower orders is a costume as provincial as any in a moun- 
 tain canton of Swisserland, and the more striking from its 
 glaringness that the Tuscan uniform I may well so speak 
 is constrastedly simple. Red, principally, and flamingly 
 so and green, are here the rage. Quite round the circle 
 of seam which joins the arms of the robe to the body, are 
 attached beaued knots of ribband in streaming display. 
 With the like prodigality of ornament, every individual seam 
 of the bodice is laid over with broad ribband : and round 
 the skirt below spreads another and greater shew of ribbands, 
 most likely mitred ; or a trimming sprawls there of large 
 loose cotton or worsted lace ; this latter, not unfrequently, 
 holds zig-zag occupation of the bodice also. That neither 
 ribband nor lace may be robbed of their effect, it is matter 
 of special attention that their colors shall be diverse from 
 that of the robe ; and of gaiety to captivate, though this 
 their ground-work be crimson or scarlet. 
 
 Their head-dress is far less shewy ; but it is very singular. 
 The hair, of much luxuriance, is gathered up behind into a 
 large fold ; and through its balls an immense skewer, is 
 passed horizontally : its extremities project so as rather to 
 measure the distance between the shoulder joints than that 
 between the ears : for ornament, this skewer is sometimes 
 armed with a coral heading, breaking into horns in miniature 
 resemblance of a ram's skull. Erect above the summit of 
 the ball of hair, that rises above the crown of the head and 
 stands perpendicular from its rere, a comb is fastened in such 
 a position, that the whole appendage gives a backward deter- 
 mination to the entire person in walking, which almost out- 
 goes the perpendicular, and certainly carries with it dignity 
 in the movement. Then comes the singular and very sim- 
 ple covering which they use as head-dress a narrow rect- 
 angular handkerchief, strange to say, always unornament- 
 ed a mere napkin, of which one extremity comes on the 
 forehead, and rising to the hair-comb, falls thence below 
 
ROME. 225 
 
 the interval between the shoulders ; and by the pent which 
 it assumes to obtain that summit and the subsequent fall, 
 the effect is increased and decided of that stately gait, by 
 which these females are distinguished. 
 
 No where can the sex be in more loveliness of personal 
 beauty than in Rome femininely soft truly fine features, 
 and complexions that, in Italy, surprise me from their car- 
 mine as well as their white : the women we hourly see are 
 precise counterparts to the female beauties of usual occur- 
 rence in the paintings of Raphael whose actual residence 
 was Rome, and who transferred to his canvas the portraits 
 of the forms by whom he was surrounded, in the mannerism 
 of their day, which is the mannerism of the present. 
 
SECTION XL 
 
 Wednesday, 19th February. Engaged in an excursion with 
 some friends into tlie Campania, in the direction of Albano. 
 The road we took leads by the sepulchre of the Scipios, now 
 a nest of miserable arched chambers, like begrimed coal- 
 vaults, bereft of the ashes and urns, which ought still to have 
 maintained their possession, if aught of ancient Rome, how- 
 ever hallowed, could expect reverence or repose. The pre- 
 sent age has the demerit of the final spoliation of these 
 tombs. One stray fragment of their spoils, bearing an in- 
 scription that some very learned critics decided to be bad 
 Latin, was picked up here about two centuries ago. In 
 1780 the existing disclosure was made of the sepulchre, au- 
 thenticated by various inscriptions of the names of members 
 of the family here entombed., and authenticating that poor 
 fragment, of which the genuineness had been denied. No- 
 thing now is left that could tempt the hand of spoil to carry 
 off: along with some fragments of minor importance, a noble 
 sarcophagus of one of the heads of the family was removed 
 to the Vatican, where it claims special interest and venera- 
 xation. But these remains can be but relics saved from the 
 depredations of the dark ages, that ruthlessly subjected the 
 monuments, here deposited, to the basest purposes of the 
 stone mason. I can believe, also, that a large extent of 
 vaulting, consecrated to the sepulchral accommodation of 
 this hero- family, must have been extinguished from excava- 
 tion, so carelessly made that the chambers have fallen in. It 
 
ROME. 227 
 
 is one of the fancies I could indulge in, that the front of the 
 little hill, within which these chambers yet remain, of such 
 sacred association, should, by the whimsy, to call it by its 
 worst name, of some Englishman obtaining it in property, 
 be placed within the hermetical protection of a curtain wall, 
 whose modesty of design and some little design and a suc- 
 cinct inscription I would give it should best bespeak the sin- 
 cerity of human affections knitting themselves in active kind- 
 ness with human virtues, in disregard of whatever drear 
 interval of centuries ; sheltering even what was shelter to 
 their mortal remains from idle, which is unhallowed curiosity; 
 and upholding to the bare possibility of a remnant of such 
 dust, even yet, the immunities of the grave's sanctuary. 
 
 Such cares are an absolute debt of the living to the dead. 
 Let the poet call them " vain ;" such fondnesses are a part 
 of our nature, implanted in us for wisest ends, as we must 
 believe, and beautiful in their workings, as we must feel. It 
 belongs to some one of that class in Britain, the stability of 
 whose house, rooted in the land for a thousand years, holds 
 forth the best assurance man can build on for prosperous 
 grandeur through a thousand years to come, to guard as a 
 hereditary possession, so long as property shall in Italy 
 be municipal care, this space of building memorial of a fa- 
 mily of heroes, mightiest in talent and meekest in wisdom, 
 and vindicating to itself, by the most exalted and the ten- 
 derest sympathies, the grave's privileges. 
 
 At present the beldame who, with her brawling imps, 
 does the office of chamberlain to these drear abodes, com- 
 ports fitly with her station. She is a singular instance of 
 brutality in this country, where all orders, even to the lowest, 
 are attractively courteous : I can but liken her to the female 
 jailor in Guy Mannering. The circumstance is worth notic- 
 ing, from the contrast (between this coarse woman-brute and 
 her cubs, and the sickly, half-famished family who occupied 
 this stand about twenty years ago, as described by Bons- 
 
228 ROME. 
 
 tetlen who, wherever he went throughout Latium, saw, 
 under circumstances widely different from the present, no- 
 thing but disease and starvation in the actual agonies of 
 death : and dread misery of that depth of that horror, his 
 book would impress on the reader to be the usual course of 
 things, through the efflux of whatever season of political 
 vicissitude. 
 
 The sepulchre of the Scipios is a fit preparative for the 
 excursion of which it re the commencement, and of which 
 the course lies partly near and partly upon the old Appian 
 Way that went straight onward to Albano, regardless of 
 obstacle, over the plain, and up the mountain on whose 
 ridge is Albano, sixteen English miles from Rome. Most 
 of this Way, having been long disused, is lost under the 
 field's sod : still the eye verifies its course by the double file 
 of sepulchres, in more or less ruined condition, and at va- 
 rious intervals, all onward to Albano. It is a perspective 
 inexpressibly saddening. 
 
 Without the city walls, for the first two miles, the re- 
 mains of tomb are rarest. The wants of the townsmen 
 could not be supposed to have spared masonry materials, so 
 close to their building sites. The first conspicuous sepulchre 
 about a mile out is a ruin on the right of the road, of the 
 size of a two story farm-house ; high in a cranny on its side 
 flourishes an Aloe as one of our company said as a brave 
 cockade. After another mile is had, on the crown of a hill, 
 the circular mausoleum of Cecelia Metella, wife of the tri- 
 umvir Crassus one of the most majestic remains of Roman 
 architecture, at least as applied to family purposes. In di- 
 ameter it is stated to be 89 J feet, the thickness of its walls 
 thirty feet. The basement of this circular edifice is a square 
 one; and so solid is the superstructure that it stands unin- 
 jured, though much of its supporting framework has been 
 abstracted for building. The ashes of the tenant have long 
 been dispersed: the noble sarcophagus I saw the other day 
 
ROME. 229 
 
 in the Court of the Farnese Palace at Rome, whither it 
 was removed, nearly 300 years ago, by Pope Paul III. of 
 that family. Were not the association of ideas a base one, 
 I should say that this great edifice has in puny resemblance 
 of it those massive buildings which we have in Ireland at 
 least in hewn blocks of granite, and mortar-cement as hard 
 as the granite, called Martello towers* but that these con- 
 structed simply with a view to the resistance to impression by 
 artillery have their front rather battering than perpendicular, 
 and are every where naked of decoration ; whereas of this 
 dignified structure the perpendicular elevation is surmounted 
 by a rich frieze in accompaniment to a fitting marble entabla- 
 ture. The touching simplicity of the inscription on the 
 marble tablet high in front the most untravelled have long 
 been acquainted with. 
 
 Not only have the pigmy generations of the middle ages 
 employed themselves at one time in subducting from the 
 basement of this pile, but they busied themselves under dif- 
 ferent temptation, at another in making to it the fribble ad- 
 dition of a parapet. It became, forsooth, a place of strength 
 to some of the Roman barons in their obscure hostilities of 
 attack or defence : and the works of man cannot furnish a 
 stronger contrast than is here to be seen, of the paper walls 
 of the barrack buildings for their retainers, and of their cir- 
 cumvallation ; which, meagre as they are, have strength to 
 stand in jeer of the mausoleum, that is degraded to bear them 
 company, and deformed by the sorry masonry of parapet and 
 embrasure, which they conceived to fit it to citadel purposes. 
 The materials employed by these masons, were mean as 
 their conceptions ; tufo, a volcanic matter, which, may be 
 best likened to rotten stone, of the colour of poor brick ; 
 some brick also : whereas the sepulchre is of vast blocks of 
 travertine that is volcanic also, but of enduring hardness 
 
 * I measured one of these towers near Dublin to be 40 feet in diameter, and 
 compute its height to be about two-thirds of that extent of feet. 
 
230 ROME. 
 
 and a fair substitute for marble. I must read my Gibbon 
 again ! I must make myself acquainted with the times when 
 the human species could, on such a theatre, have undergone 
 deterioration almost to the debasement of monkey intellect, 
 before they could have been capable of such pranks. 
 
 When clear of the wretched appendages of this mausoleum, 
 we had full in view, on to Albano, the street, not of houses, 
 but of tombs. They are, in general, mis-shapen masses, 
 heavy in form : of a very few, the shapes are a little fanciful 
 or grotesque. Their color is a mean one that faint red, or 
 bad yellow of the tufo. It is singular that in this land of 
 devastation of ancient structure, one aid alone is refused ; 
 ivy, that most ornamental of destroyers. Its very appear- 
 ance, it is said, is vindictively resented: yet where laziness is 
 paramount, I cannot give credence to the assertion, often as I 
 have provoked its repetition, by mourning the ivy's absence. 
 
 One only of these remnants of mausoleum evinces any 
 symptom of care .' it is the single one of which it is possible 
 to identify the family to which it belonged the Servilian : 
 rather it is the creation of a monument commemorative of 
 that mausoleum's locality, and with the help in the way 
 of decoration of some few fragments of its materials 
 an emanation of the classic piety of Canova ! It is, as 
 it were, part of a wall of ancient, which is incomparable, 
 brick, built up again ; or as though it were an old wall, 
 repaired and puttied with fresh plaister ; here and there a 
 morsel of ancient marble stuck into it a bit of a shaft, two 
 or three capitals a rich fragment of frieze fastened into its 
 face or into the edge of the wall-end : the stone, whose in- 
 scription identifies the spot, placed near the top ; and at 
 some very modest distance below it, a tablet stating the 
 discovery, and enunciating the name of him wiio caused the 
 reparation. 
 
 Except in this case, and that completely attested one of 
 the Scipios, that of Cecilia Mctella, and possibly the freed- 
 
ROME. 231 
 
 men of Livia, there is not in all this dread way of tombs, a 
 ray of record to designate to whom any one was erected for 
 tenancy. We know generally that here were entonabed the 
 lordly owners of the Latian Campania, and of the world. 
 Welcnow, too, that Cicero a name that makes precious to 
 us, by so many ennobling recollections, the Roman name, 
 and disarms to us much of the hardness of the Roman cha- 
 racter expresses of this identical Appian Way, and of the 
 awful line of sepulchres by which it was bounded on either 
 hand, that here were deposited Calatinus, the Scipios, the 
 Servilii, the Metelli ! And he asks if the beholder can sup- 
 pose the distinguished personages here entombed to expe- 
 rience misery in their actual departed condition ? The con- 
 clusion he arrives at by deductions admirable for their pre- 
 cision, and elegant to a degree inimitable by whatever other 
 reasoner establishes a futurity for man, worthy of the wis- 
 dom and the beneficence which shine in all the works of 
 creation. But such a conviction was personal to the few 
 ornaments of their species, far above the level cf their fellow- 
 men : and the vast mansions erected by the ancients, in tri- 
 bute to their dead, evince at once, and proclaim, that the liv- 
 ing had no faith in consolation for their departed friends that 
 was beyond this world's competence to bestow. Their pie- 
 ty to their dead was limited, therefore, but by their abilities. 
 In our altered circumstances, our practice is the inverse of 
 their's ; and, with reserve of our mightiest among their fel- 
 low mortals, our sepulchral monuments are but the effusion 
 of mortal which are legitimately pious regrets. Still a 
 village church-yard is to us a scene of awfully-sacred mus- 
 ing : to the Romans the palaces they constructed, in allevia- 
 tion of the fate, and tributary to the memories of their de- 
 parted friends, might well be supposed to contribute self- 
 satisfaction and pleasure.* 
 
 V 
 
 * Mr. Hobhouse, in his Illustrations of Childe Harold, remarks, that " the 
 
232 HOME. 
 
 Wide from our practice, and at direct variance with ottr 
 principles, as was this usage of the Romans, it is not diffi- 
 cult to call up to our imagination the magnificence of its ef- 
 fects. Of some of their mausolea we have the existing evi- 
 dence of the colossal dignity : we have examples, also of 
 their variety of design from the circular sepulchre of Cecilia 
 Metella, to the equally vast edifice, in regular pyramid, of 
 Cains Cestius. A double suite of structures, of which but 
 the purpose and the interior chamber of each had any thing 
 in common with every other ; in which the magnitude and 
 the design of each was matter of individual choice; in which 
 ornamental architecture was thus urged to exhibit itself in 
 the utmost diversity of plan that could consist with the gra- 
 vity of the object, and with the genius of the nation, 
 must have furnished a perspective, and in detail a study, 
 easy to place before our fancy, but impossible to expatiate 
 on adequately in language. We are farther to recollect that 
 of many of these edifices the casing was that fine yellow 
 Travertine stone, that falls not below the dignity due to St. 
 Peter's fa9ade ; that of many more the coating was marble ; 
 that the choicest decorations of architecture column, and 
 capital, and entablature, with richest frieze and relievo 
 were here extensively lavished ; that statues of which we 
 have now, it may be, but the refuse, crowded the niches, 
 surmounted the pediments, and crowned, in succession of 
 story or station, the elevation of many of these piles, with a 
 prodigality of ornament. 
 
 Beyond all this array of exterior magnificence, we have 
 
 " RELIGION or the people, and the WISDOM of the higher orders, combining 
 ' with the beauty of the sepulchres prevented any melancholy reflections." 
 
 tl Otcer trve a talc." I believe : and each of the two description!) in other 
 words, the poor and the rich had their appropriate consolation ; the one in the 
 half-forlorn hope, that some future modification of existence might not be de- 
 nied to their departed friends : the other in the construction, in honour of their 
 relative! of, not mere tombs, but temples, magnificent as any structure* of 
 whatever species of architectural grandeur. 
 
ROME. 233 
 
 still to make room for the impression of the treasures of na- 
 ture and of art, enshrined within the chambers of death, so 
 countless in value and numberless in series as to perplex our 
 calculations as utterly as the fictions of an Arabian story- 
 teller could dazzle our fancy. Of these treasures we have 
 even now some few stray specimens from the chaste tra- 
 vertine sarcophagus, whose inscription tells of that Scipio 
 Barbatus, " who was Consul, Censor, JEdile to you," who 
 " took Samnite towns, and subdued all Lucania," " a brave 
 " man and a wise," and " whose personal form was- in fullest 
 " match to his virtues ;" to those other sarcophagi of rarest 
 porphyry, that from their hardness refused themselves to the 
 sculptor's impression or to the marble ones, rich in tissue of 
 chiselled figures and the most elaborate designs of the artist. 
 A number of these remain some of the chastely venerable 
 debased enough in their appropriation ; and those of more 
 ambitious pretensions given to be coffin of this or the other 
 Cardinal or Pope : instances of this are the porphyry sarco- 
 phagus at the Lateran, inclosing the remains of Clement XII. 
 which was withdrawn from the Pantheon ; that verde antique 
 one in St. Mary Maggiore, in which reposes another Pope ; 
 and again the marble coffin at St. Lorenzo without the Walls, 
 in which sleeps a Bishop who had been some Pope's ne- 
 phew not the less sound his rest, that the sculptured series 
 which clothes its exterior is the exhibition of a marriage ce- 
 remony, and, as part of it, a Pagan sacrifice. Of the va- 
 rious treasures consigned to these vaults of silence, let that 
 one suffice as a specimen which, by extraordinary chance 
 escaping the robber prowling of centuries, up to the six- 
 teenth, was then found in a sepulchre but a very few miles 
 hence, near the Frascati road : I allude to the Barberini vase, 
 obtained through purchase by Sir William Hamilton, from 
 whom it was similarly gained by the Portland family, by 
 whose munificence befitting British ducal rank it is now 
 reposited in the British Museum ; a treasure, matchless from 
 
234 ROME. 
 
 the singularity and elegance of its materials, and of which 
 the sculpture has been, since its discovery, the theme of 
 wonder.* 
 
 The locality of the discovery of this vase, leads to ano- 
 ther consideration, which is, that this range of tombs along 
 the Appian Way was possibly the grandest still but one 
 of the great number of similar ranges which gave accompa- 
 niment to the highways, that like the spokes of a wheel 
 from its stock spread to the utmost extent of the Campania, 
 in divergence from the imperial centre of activity and splen- 
 dour. Between the respective intervals of all these great 
 roads, let us conceive the inlaying of villas and of gardens ; 
 and the whole surface, thus strongly marked into compart- 
 ments each compartment thus in relief of decoration pre- 
 sents to our thoughts a scene which, however astonishing 
 from its extension, or from the ordered pomp of so mighty 
 a display, the mind, as I have said, can easily master, and 
 bring into picture for its review. It is no wonder that it 
 should have been difficult to fix the limits where a city, so 
 circumstanced, should be said to have its terminating verge, 
 or that its population should have been run up in estimate to 
 six millions. We must feel, however, that where the wealth 
 of the living was ever, from ostentation or from piety, in 
 overflow for the construction of edifices, indestructible by 
 
 * " Or bid mortality rejoice or mourn 
 
 ' O'er the fine forms of Portland's sculptured urn." 
 
 Darwin's Botanic Garden : the book, for reasons good two or three at the 
 the least lies now unread. But I would refer to the twenty-second Note of 
 the first volume, for liis exposition of these mysterious figures, through eight 
 closely-printed page* of elaborate detail. He confident the different compart- 
 ments to represent parti of the Eleusinian Mysteries, told in sculptured story 
 each individual part of exquisite elegance. And as the figures are bas-relief, of 
 white opaque glam raited on a ground of deep blue glass, they must have been 
 made bj cutting away the external white crust of the vaae, in the way the finest 
 Cameo* have been produced. Of course this vase must have been the labor 
 of many yean a matter of high family treasure, consigned to the grave in al- 
 leviation of family dbtrets, or as tribute of family piety. 
 
ROME. 235 
 
 the lapse of time, in honor of the deceased, the accumulation 
 of these mansions of silence, along so prodigious a length of 
 line, and multiplied in such ramification of range, must have 
 approached to an equality with the number of structures in oc- 
 cupancy of the bustlers of day ; and that in extent, in mag- 
 nificence, in display to say nothing of impression the city 
 of death yielded in nothing to the palace-grandeur of the 
 living Romans. 
 
 We proceeded for two miles along this street of sepulchral 
 remains, which in some parts of the way were very thick 
 together : in others a greater width of the intervals gave the 
 mind leisure to regard other objects. Towards Ostia the 
 country trends in a coarse and dreary flat, with the appear- 
 ance as if contending with marsh : yet it is dry and of a tem- 
 perament not retentive of water. Onward, the road having 
 disappeared under an accretion of soil from decomposed 
 ruins, we had to make our progress across the sward, or 
 over an extensive tract of tilled ground, through which the 
 corn, now of three inches in growth, had need of the full 
 influence of spring, to uphold its struggle with the broken up 
 pavement of rubble stone bestrewing the surface, over which 
 we most painfully walked : there appeared fully as large a 
 share of the level occupied by these loose stones as by soil. 
 The occupations of the men who were seen here in some 
 few places, drew our attention. In one spot excavations 
 were making at the expense and for the account of a shop- 
 keeper in the Corso, who, in the way accustomed here, had, 
 for a consideration stipulated with the ground proprietor, 
 purchased permission to make search for antiques, which it 
 was surmised may be here overlaid. We saw several remains 
 of marble shafts and capitals, and learned that an entire sta- 
 tue had been dug out, which is now on view in Rome. The 
 excavations, though not more than six feet deep, have dis- 
 closed the walls of chambers and their floors in thick pattern 
 
836 ROME. 
 
 of mosaic work, which also the workmen were employed 
 in taking up for removal. This structure, from what we 
 saw of it, must have been a villa. In another place we had 
 the sight, close to us, of a hare hunted and killed by the 
 shepherd dogs of the peasants, every man of them mounted, 
 and furnished with a fowling piece, who also joined the 
 chace in full glee. These men had apparently no other ob- 
 ject than watching the droves of black cattle, that spread 
 over the extensive grassy plains in which were contained the 
 stony corn-grounds we had traversed. Of course they had 
 their profit as well as occasional amusement in such a chase 
 as that we saw, and in bringing down with their fusils the 
 small birds for supply of the markets of Rome. For that 
 supply multifarious in its diversity we found two men 
 leisurely occupied in digging up as they could find it, dande- 
 lionto be used as salad. 
 
 The extent of our excursion was the Casale Rotundo 
 a dwelling-house now round as its name imports, of large 
 dimensions and in seemingly comfortable repair, though 
 in its original purpose and construction a sepulchre. One 
 or two of us wished much to get in, for the double pur- 
 pose of refreshment and curiosity ; but no knocking at the 
 door could obtain for us an answer. Here was the scene of 
 the duel between the Horatii and Curiatii : and our minds 
 were so warmed with the recollections of all kinds, grow- 
 ing out of the topography of every spot we trod ; and 
 so full before us, and at but half distance from Rome, rose 
 the A I km mountains, and on their brow among thickly scat- 
 tered villas, the city of Frascati, the ancient Tusculum, all 
 in " moenia candentia" now, just as resplendent as in the 
 olden days of course from the use of the self-same quar- 
 ries of building stone : with such incentives we were ardent 
 to prolong our excursion, through two days more, to Albano 
 and its neighbour districts. This purpose we were com- 
 
ROME. 237 
 
 pelled to forgo from consideration of the uncertainty of Ro- 
 man weather in February basely fitful, and perfidious to a 
 degree, against which no prognostic can warrant. 
 
 Diverting our course across the Campania in the direction 
 of the main road to the left, we passed through a tract of 
 dilapidated villas, apparently of a time far later than the old 
 Roman. Here is extensive under-ground vaulting : but 
 with the exception of a spot which seems to have once been 
 a fish-pond or reservoir, I have had abundant proof that, 
 from whatever other cause the Malaria of this country may 
 arise, it is not to be traced to a soil saturated with wet, or 
 that has need of draining. I never viewed a country that 
 demands that operation less than this tract : it is sound 
 ground ; and wherever my course has heretofore lain across 
 the Campania, it was equally so. 
 
 While moving along the double file of tombs on the Ap- 
 pian Way, our attention had been frequently drawn thence 
 by the vast range and lofty elevation of an aqueduct, bending 
 its course towards us, as if in progress from the foot of the 
 Alban mountains. Our change of direction brought its 
 suite of arches into front ; and these, being now without 
 any competitor for notice over the whole plain, engrossed 
 our wonder. It is the Claudian aqueduct, completed by that 
 miserable Emperor commenced by his predecessor, of fran- 
 tic wickedness, Caligula. It is a problem in history, invit- 
 ing much and various speculation on the state of the Roman 
 world, degenerated as it was, which could, under half lunatic, 
 half drivelling guidance, realize a conception unequalled in 
 grandeur by perhaps any other enterprise of man. It was 
 matter of amazement among the Romans themselves, with all 
 their opportunities of comparing it with whatever other and 
 numerous architectural feats, centuries of hardihood and 
 unborrowing genius could exhibit. No better evidence of 
 this fact can be looked for than Pliny, and no testimony 
 can be more distinct. " The Claudian aqueduct," he says, 
 
238 HOME. 
 
 '* has its head at the fortieth mile from Rome, in the direction 
 of Subiaco up the vale of the Anio and is conducted on 
 such a level as to supply water to the summits of the several 
 hills over which Rome extends ; giving such abundance to 
 the public wants, to baths, fish-ponds, houses, feeders, gar- 
 dens, suburbs, country villas, its arches constructed for 
 such a length of course, mountains perforated, valleys 
 levelled, with a magnificence of enterprise and execution not 
 to be surpassed in the astonishment it excites by any other 
 object in the world." What we yet see justifies the wonder 
 of Pliny. Its course here may be traced for many miles, 
 with numerous and large gaps intervening, but with vast 
 ranges unbroken : these are as bold on the sight as can be 
 imagined of an archway series over dry land, exalted on but- 
 tresses so high that, if there were water between for naviga- 
 tion, vessels might pass under with top-gallant mast 
 unstruck. The whole is constructed of blocks of hewn 
 stone in handsome finish. The matchless dignity of such an 
 extension of arcade, its singularity to a modern eye, the si- 
 lence of the plain it traverses, every thing combines to 
 impress conviction of the awful distance between the puny 
 race that now crawls over these tracts of dreariness, and 
 that mighty people, of a majesty of successful enterprise so 
 surpassing, that if the proofs were not before us, the deline- 
 ation of it, as possible, must be accounted hyperbolic legend. 
 That this prodigality of means should have been lavished 
 through ignorance of the principles of hydraulics, the un- 
 expensive application of which would have proscribed the 
 mad outlay, is another most puzzling phenomenon. Such 
 blindness in Science is grotesquely in contrast with such 
 wonder-working proficiency in the Arts. 
 
 In the conduct as well as in the conception of this enter- 
 prize, there is nothing with which the feelings of mankind 
 of our day can mate. It consorts not with our usual tone of 
 project : its interminable march of state brooks not analogy 
 
ROME. 239 
 
 to our modern darings, even at their mightiest stretch. A 
 writer after the model of certain recent and largely popular 
 French describers, would not hold as extravaganza here, an 
 apostrophe so vehement as in its career, forgetting that its 
 outset was farcical should claim the heart's sympathy of the 
 hearers, from the orator's self being aghast through the 
 fright, natural under the conviction of his senses, that this 
 array of arcade was an army of giants, in positive march be- 
 striding the plain, to trample into powder the toy glories of 
 the mistress of nations when in the height of her power.* 
 But a scholar's imagination, granting it to be a little imbued 
 with Ovidian tincture, might indulge in less unclassical 
 dreams. With the unknown tracts of eld before us, beyond 
 the periods of vicissitude, 
 
 Ssepius et nomen posuit Saturnia tellus, 
 This Saturn's land full oft resigned its name, 
 beyond the occupancy by Saturn himself, that was sovereign 
 here over merely human colonists the fancy may be tole- 
 rated that this fair region was swayed and enjoyed by that 
 Patagonian or far more tremendous race, whose strength 
 and whose impiety are attested by the ancient poets that 
 were historians too ; of whose escaped remains the extirpa- 
 tion was the toil of Hercules ; of whom the villain Cacus, 
 slain close by, would seem to have been the last surviving 
 ensample : but whose main force of nation, the power 
 against whom they had dared to war, had arrested in the 
 act of displaying their numbers and, in the transmutation of 
 them into these abiding ranges of stone, at once cleared the 
 country for man's habitation, and left for man's warning the 
 impiety of his predecessors, in punishment and memorial for 
 ever. 
 
 * See Raoul de Rochette's Swiss Tour, passim, for rant wild as this, and stupid 
 also. The poor gentleman is ever in a funk which his own rhetoric conjures up. 
 But in respect to the above rant, I acquit him : I am not so deliberate a slanderer 
 as to lay at the door of this conceited rhapsodist my offences, whether of sober 
 statement, or of Aurora Borealis play of fancy. 
 
240 ROME. 
 
 But trace and pardon obtained for flights in riot of reverie 
 this enormous extent of arcade claims enduring occupa- 
 tion of our thoughts. I can.iot agree with my companions in 
 this excursion, that the effect is on the whole picturesque ; 
 for there is in the continuation of this structure, a unifor- 
 mity that is at variance with picturesque effect ; and the 
 more so, that the Campania here is, in all its expatiation, 
 forlorn of tree or twig. Of course the progress of the aque- 
 duct is naked from the sward, and if it intrude for that rea- 
 son with more force, it also exhibits the more monotonous 
 grandeur. Yet, wherever a portion of but a few arches is 
 isolated by a large interval from the neighbour ranges, the 
 effect is a fine one not only from such a fragment's juster 
 proportion of breadth to its height, but also from the fractur- 
 ed outlines of its extremities. Monotony is also counteracted 
 by the march of this immense train of aqueduct, which, 
 though occasionally piercing through the bowels of a moun- 
 tain, or passing a ravine in direct traverse, yet has availed 
 itself of the best levels it could of the ground's surface 
 which though approaching to flat is far from level : and in 
 consequence the arcade's course is sometimes finely sinu- 
 ous ; and the eye is not pained by a rectilinear continuity, 
 which, despite the magnificence of the object, must be of 
 trying annoyance. But the whole range being conducted in 
 the easy curves of nature and the whole also being frac- 
 tured into portions, some of a mile's continuity, others of 
 but a furlong's rather too seldom into minute fragments, 
 the exhibition is of that large effect, and at the same time 
 that harmonised subdivision, which may be figured by an 
 army in evolution, broken into brigades and regiments and 
 detached outliers each least portion moving with refer- 
 ence to that larger one to which it appertains all active to 
 form into regular line, from which each individual part is just 
 so far removed, that all seems unorganized while all is me- 
 thod. 
 
ROME. 241 
 
 An hour's wandering brought us to that road, issuing 
 from Rome, which is the present highway to Albano ; and 
 at a house of entertainment on its side, of slight exterior 
 pretensions, we found ample materials for a good dinner : 
 during the preparation of which, we had the opportunity to 
 bring theCIaudian aqueduct here close by into comparison 
 with another aqueduct at but a few score yards interval ; 3. 
 modern structure, indebted to the ancient for both plan and 
 materials, inferior in workmanship, and yet running a course 
 from its reservoir of twenty miles, in no discreditable rival- 
 ship of old Roman enterprise the work of a Pope, the cele- 
 brated Sixtus V. to whom the City owes more of its edifices 
 of grandeur than to almost all the other Pontiffs put together. 
 His acqueduct, in actual supply of abundant and excellent 
 water, confronts here, and seems to beard the Claudian. 
 Both contrast extraordinarily with the bereavement, which 
 the earth's surface exhibits of all other furnishing that man's 
 labour can contribute, in ploughing, in planting in any 
 growth from the ground other than sod and briars in house 
 of whatever dimensions in human occupation. 
 
 I ought, as a set-off to this desertion, to except the cottage 
 inn ; which, in a spacious room that is at once kitchen and 
 parlour, supplied us with an abundant and excellent repast : 
 the wines were so superior in quality to the average afforded 
 by the trattorias of Rome, that we could not but suspect our 
 entertainers to have a good understanding with the dealers 
 that aim at pushing their supplies into the city, without cog- 
 nizance of the Custom-house. It was matter also of sur- 
 mise that the custom of the Mercantanti of the Campania, as 
 the freebooters are facetiously called, and who, when their 
 purse is recently filled, love good cheer, and know where to 
 find it, may be an object to the holders of this lone dwel- 
 ling. But I hear also that an excursion from the city, in 
 the season when the autumnal rains have banished Malaria, 
 
 R * 
 
242 ROME. 
 
 is a usual amusement of the Romans, and this a favourite 
 house with them of tavern comfort. 
 
 It was evening before we resumed our course, and an hour 
 after night when we reached the precincts of the city after 
 an expatiation of which the recollections can never recur to 
 me without lively pleasure. 
 
SECTION XII. 
 
 21st February. The entrance to Rome from the Alba- 
 no road, by which 1 am recently returned, pleases me 
 always more than any other part of the city. Immediately 
 within the gate is a vast open space, part of it a grassy, 
 lawn-like surface. In front, and on a swell of ground that 
 falls towards the gate, are masses of the Claudian aqueduct 
 in stupendous half-ruin. Within this quarter of the city five 
 aqueducts once converged.* The present city-gate, Porta 
 Maggiore close on the farther verge of this gentle, fence- 
 less meadow is a castellum, or one of those towers of larger 
 dimensions, interposed at certain distances for reservoir and 
 other purposes in the Claudian, as was the practice in the 
 other acqueducts. In the stroll towards it, the antiquarian 
 will experience more disappointment than pleasure from his 
 search after the temple of Venus and Cupid, and the Am- 
 phitheatrum Castrense : but the modern church of Santa 
 Croce presents an imposing fa$ade. Out of all comparison 
 with it, and (with the exception of St. Peter's) the most 
 majestic Church in Rome, stands on the opposite side of 
 this open space the church, with its appendent Palace of St. 
 John Lateran mother church of Christendom. Assuredly 
 we, English, do not recognize Christianity as she presents 
 
 * Mercian, Tepulan, Julian, Claudian, Anio novus. These did not, every one 
 of them, extend to the length of the Claudian. The Julian, constructed by 
 Agrippa, was of but fourteen miles, of which course twelve were under ground : 
 the rest was diversified by seven hundred basins, five hundred fountains which it 
 fed, and one hundred and thirty castella ; and it was decorated by three hun- 
 dred statues in bronze, and four hundred columns in marble ! Pliny, Book 36. 
 
244 ROME. 
 
 herself here, in robe of legend, and crutched by imposture. 
 Without this structure is the Holy Staircase, of twenty-eight 
 steps in marble, of which it is required to believe that up 
 its identical steps our Saviour proceeded when it stood in the 
 palace at Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate. With this belief 
 is coupled the practice of ascending it on the knee-pans 
 in which movement, severely painful, I have seen such a 
 crowd engaged at one time, as to hide under them the whole 
 structure of stairs. 
 
 Within the Lateran Church are memorials of Christianity, 
 equally scandalizing : from these I recoil. This church, 
 besides, is of most heavy and dull interior and, despite 
 its appointments, of impression by no means correspond- 
 ing to its exterior majesty. In this respect it is in some 
 degree (praised be in either case the genius of the archi- 
 tect) the converse of St. Peter's ; and there is nothing at 
 Rome so noble as its front fa9ade erected under Sixtus V. 
 The palace is a massive pile, the work of that Pope also, 
 with the magnificent view of providing suitable accommoda- 
 tion for the Emperor, whenever he should visit Rome. To 
 uphold it in all ages in a condition befitting such a guest, he 
 made an edict that his successors in St. Peter's Chair should 
 occupy it for two months in each year a regulation whose 
 vanity can be ill-reconciled with this most extraordinary 
 man's wisdom, unless by supposing in him a leaven, to 
 childishness, of confidence in the awe his name, after death, 
 should continue to inspire. But though awe is not, in his 
 case, followed by obedience, the structures on which he has, 
 in every quarter, impressed his genius, command reverence 
 for his wonder-working energy. The creator of these ma- 
 jestic edifices makes himself felt in the present grandeur of 
 of the Roman city: the erection of the building dedicated to 
 the Vatican Library, and the main endowment of that In- 
 stitution is his title to liege devotion as the benefactor of 
 of the world at large. 
 
ROME. 245 
 
 If I have any more to say of this quarter of the city it is 
 that hence is, on one side, a prompt approach to the Colis- 
 seum that ever interesting object of amazement : and on 
 another side by an ample and most quiet avenue of some 
 1 ,500 yards, with gardens on either side, and with scarce- 
 ly the intervention of a house is a promenade to another 
 church, rivalling the Lateran the S ta Maria Maggiore. 
 
 The Walls of Rome are deserving of special attention 
 from their high picturesque effect ; and in no part so much 
 as in this portion of their cincture. Brick they generally 
 are : but they rise nobly, very frequently in arched work in 
 the interior; which, without impairing their strength, vener- 
 ably diversifies their surface. There is, here and there, the 
 relief of a buttress, and the break of workmanship of a dif- 
 ferent age perhaps got up under terror of an approaching 
 beseiger. There is, also, frequent inequality in their eleva- 
 tion, sometimes positive, and at others resulting from the 
 inequality of the ground or the obstruction of some remark- 
 able structure, entire or half ruined breaking their course 
 into parts and picture. 
 
 That portion of the Wall, at some distance hence, called 
 the Muro Torto, is an especial curiosity. It is brickwork 
 as the rest, but in reticulated pattern ; and it lines the front 
 and breast of the Pincian Hill which seems, through some 
 inward convulsion, to have swelled out from its entrails so 
 that its cliffs belly far beyond the perpendicular : yet by a 
 tenacity of its parts, which could never have been inferred 
 from its porous volcanic nature, it sustains itself in that pos- 
 ture. The Wall must have been built before this throe of 
 the hill ; and it adheres steadily to the cliffs, and overhangs 
 much of the road's breadth, for nearly 200 yards. 
 
 The gates, generally, are in appropriate diversification of 
 the Wall ; and several of them possess dignity of individual 
 character, besides the having attached v to them distinction 
 of ancient story. Of the Porta Maggiore I have already 
 
246 ROME. 
 
 spoken. The gate of St. Lorenzo, -which also was a por- 
 tion of an aqueduct, is striking from the peculiarities of its 
 construction of cumbrously antique fashion ; it is farther 
 venerable from bearing over the front of its low-browed 
 archway, inscriptions which, though fractured and partly il- 
 legible, through the injuries of time, still promulge that they 
 are the original memorials of repairs made in the reigns of 
 Augustus, of Titus, and of Caracalla, respectively. 
 
 Destroyed, or silent as with the exception of two are 
 the aqueducts which once bestrode the Campania with a 
 grandeur consecrated to utility, water is still supplied to 
 Rome, with a prodigality of luxury, that brings to recollec- 
 tion my amazement, similarly excited, in that little Swiss 
 city, Zurich unlike to Rome in every possible particular be- 
 side. Both the one and other are striking, in this way, to a 
 degree of which he who has seen neither cannot form a con- 
 ception. The water which spouts forth at every street's end 
 here, in every corner, in the centre, and in flank of every 
 open space is set forth with a magnificence and a variety 
 of fountain that is endless. I will not say there is felicity 
 in the devices of those of most usual occurrence : on the con- 
 trary, it is a rarity in lucky thought, I conceive, which that 
 unobtrusive one against a house in the Corso exhibits a 
 man holding across his body a cask, from the bung of which 
 the water issues An idea of kindred happiness struck me 
 the other day in the marble receptacle for the Holy Water in 
 the Church of St. Sebastian ; which is in the form of a shell 
 horizontally placed, with its corresponding shell hinging on 
 it and half open, as might be seen in a real specimen from 
 the aquatic world. But the instances of miserable design 
 arc countless ; and it is by the marble materials, the varie- 
 ties of design, and the positions of the figures innumerable, 
 which, after all, spurn competition with whatever in the 
 same line can be met elsewhere, that we are attracted to 
 gaze on them, sure at least of the delight, which, in a 
 
ROME. 247 
 
 great city, the translucence of gushing water cannot fail to 
 afford. 
 
 The Sixtine Aqueduct, or in appellation after his baptis- 
 mal name, the Aqua Felice, is terminated by a fountain, 
 backed by a fa9ade, of amplitude to be divided into three 
 grand sculptured departments of which the centre and main 
 one works on a conception that is sublime, Moses striking 
 the rock, and the Israelites and their flocks, in all the excited 
 gesture of wonder at once and avidity, to drink. But the 
 execution is miserable. There is nothing retained in the 
 figure of Moses, indicating his having raised a finger or 
 played any other part almost than of looker-on. The wa- 
 ter, instead of rushing from a chasm in the stone, proceeds 
 through square gullets in the vulgar way, quite out of and 
 below the tablet which is vast euough to have afforded an 
 orifice, and to have given life to the eager positions, and truth 
 to the picture. The four lions, which that most eloquent 
 dealer in soap-suds and whitewash poor Mr. Eustace de- 
 scribes as in haste to slake their thirst, in act directly the 
 reverse, squirt water from their mouths in supply supple- 
 mentary to that of the gullets. 
 
 In far nobler execution is the fountain from the Aqueduct 
 in front of the Pope's Quirinal Palace. The vase in which 
 the element is received, and whose verge it luxuriantly 
 overflows, is so immense as to give the dimensions of a pool : 
 its circumference is stated at seventy-six feet. In accom- 
 paniment to it, the Egyptian obelisk forty-five feet high, 
 taken from the vicinity of Augustus's mausoleum, is in a dig- 
 nified style of ornament : and the magnificence, I will not 
 say congruity, is complete by the two colossal human figures, 
 each in attendance of a horse of corresponding boldness, 
 rearing high in riotous animal spirits, which the man at once 
 admires and seeks to subdue. Under one of these figures 
 is inscribed the name of Phidias, and under the other that 
 of Praxiteles, on authority utterly apochryphal, though they 
 
248 ROME. 
 
 are of undoubtedly high antiquity, and their merit is consid- 
 erable. But why minute any thing further on the subject for 
 future refreshment of the memory ? John Bull as I just 
 now, and for the first time, hear has got one of the human 
 figures, in merchantable fac-simile, in Hyde Park, and dubs 
 it Achilles ! and under circumstances as repulsively disgust- 
 ing as the foolery is despicable. 
 
 The most copious display of water in volume within Rome 
 is that supplied through an aqueduct that is noble, notwith- 
 standing its cumbrousness, originally the Trajan aqueduct, 
 and thirty five miles in course from the Lake Bracciano, 
 repaired by Paul V., with materials robbed from the Forum 
 of Nerva, and bearing that Pope's name. It pours three 
 immense cataracts from forth of a facade, cumbrous too, and 
 vain-gloriously inscribed, but majestic. Much as the plunder 
 which reduced the Imperial work that bears Nerva's name 
 to its present disconsolateness, must be execrated, there is 
 something to redeem it in the taste which has so hung out 
 this dignified structure on the summit-edge of the Janicular 
 Mount, as to display, at various and very remote distances, 
 the out-pouring of the three cascades in a manner consum- 
 mately fine, and with effect, I think, unique. Nor does that 
 effect suffer from criticism on the spot, from which, by the 
 way, is a lovely view of Rome generally, and of its circum- 
 jacent territory of plain and mountain. The floods, which 
 afar off appeared in such impetuosity and breadth of flow, 
 are here found to give movement to a street's length of mills, 
 that occupies the descent of a ravine which has the air of 
 having been channeled by the water's natural working into 
 the bosom of the mountain : and they feed the separate and, 
 as it seemed to me, unwieldy establishments of each concern 
 down this street, and sometimes on both sides of it, with 
 supplies superabundant, and that mock regard for economy. 
 
 In altogether a different position, and with at least equal 
 pretensions, is the Fountain of Trevi. It is fed by Agrip- 
 
ROME. 249 
 
 pa's aqueduct, which also supplies that strange fountain in 
 the piazza of Spain, that is in the shape, and of the dimen- 
 sions of a large boat, full of water, which spouts up within 
 itself. But the main force of this aqueduct bursts from 
 forth of the rocks, which, in the ruggedness of a natural 
 quarry, or, with that savageness well imitated, are left to 
 stare above the surface of the street, and are basing to a 
 Palace of finishedly polished materials and which I cannot 
 estimate at less than 180 feet in front. Its fa9ade is distri- 
 buted into three compartments each of the lateral ones en- 
 riched by Corinthian pilasters, with windows interposed : 
 four Corinthian columns stand forth in front of the centre 
 compartment, whose main extent retires into a great niche 
 occupied by a colossal statue, representing how unfitly, 
 thus far within land, I will not say Ocean. But he has 
 noble accompaniments, and numerous attendants ; his car, 
 his sea-horses, his Tritons all is alive with figures : and 
 nothing can be crowded where, in a basin extending the 
 full front of the Palace, and of commensurate largeness, 
 and with break of rocky obstruction * interspersed in every 
 part, and descent to give impetuosity to the rush the water 
 spreads its uproar and enchantment over the whole. I have 
 seen the supply of this spacious sheet of architectural and 
 sculptured device so moderate, as not to give turbulent ani- 
 mation. But I have occasionally witnessed the flow so 
 copious, and the madness over all the extent of basin so 
 wild, as, combined with the evening light seen from that 
 point of its margin a little to left of the Via Muratti to set 
 off the play of the element with effects magically delightful. 
 This most splendid ornament of a City is at a very short 
 distance in rere of the Corso. It remains not to leave in 
 neglect one other Fountain, which, if it yields some little 
 to the Trevi in extent, is superior in the masterly merit of 
 
 These rocky obstructions are blocks of Travertine, withdrawn nlas ! by rob- 
 bery also from the basement of Cecilia Metella's Mausoleum. 
 
260 ROME. 
 
 its decorations that in the Piazza Navona. This place, 
 which is an oblong of about 250 yards in length, is, with 
 exception of the grand open before St. Peter's, the hand- 
 somest, as it is by far the most regular in Rome, though 
 its buildings wear the appearance of decay, and its area is 
 the scene of a weekly most miserable market. Through the 
 month of August in each year, I learn that it is floated on 
 Saturdays and Sundays with water, through which splash 
 the equipages of the upper orders intermingled with a pe- 
 destrian throng, in compliance with inveterate custom, that 
 perhaps may connect itself with the time when this, ancient- 
 ly the Circus Agonalis, was the scene of various games, 
 and probably popular buffooneries. To supply water for 
 this weekly fooling seems an obvious affair ; at either ex- 
 treme is a grand fountain, with such variety of decorations 
 as in any other City than this, would claim especial notice. 
 But in the middle is the main one : from the centre of its 
 basin rises a rock to the height of forty-one feet ; and this 
 is surmounted by an Egyptian Obelisk of fifty-one feet 
 more. The rock is perforated through and through, into 
 caverns open on its four fronts ; and these shew, in happy 
 position, a sea-horse and a lion, of noble size and just pro- 
 portions. There are besides four colossal human figures, 
 emblematic of the four principal rivers of the world ; from 
 all which the water issues in redundant distribution. As I 
 occasionally gaze on this Fountain, I cannot but wonder at 
 the freakish humour that must have pervaded the day-dreams 
 of its Architect Bernini ; instance present of which is the 
 revenge he has taken of Borromini, the Architect of St. 
 Agnes' Church, which is just in front of it, with whom he 
 had a quarrel, and in punishment of whose expressed unfa- 
 vourable opinion of the Fountain, Bernini has placed that 
 one of his river-gods facing the Church, in the attitude of 
 arms upraised, and gesture and look of fear, as if the 
 Church dome, were from its fragility, in act of tumbling to 
 
ROME. 251 
 
 overwhelm him and all around in ruin. But what parallel, 
 out of Bedlam, can be found for Bernini's fancy, of sustain- 
 ing on this beautiful elevation of rock, the Obelisk it now 
 supports perpendicularly ; and which he purposed to esta- 
 blish at an angle with the horizon of perhaps seventy de- 
 grees, as though it were evermore to be in the crisis of 
 being raised to ninety ; this inclined position to be main- 
 tained by the agency of three human figures workmen 
 two of them on the off-side, and the third within the acute 
 angle, and so close on the point of meeting of its sides, that 
 his shoulder and single strength should, in fact as in shew, 
 be the Obelisk's sole support.* 
 
 Bernini was not always mad. To him we owe that glo- 
 rious peristyle disposed before St. Peter's in answering se- 
 micircles, in quadruple colonnade the central of the three 
 avenues, into which its columns are arranged, being a drive, 
 with ample liberty to pass and repass, for all the equipages 
 of Rome collected together on a gala day. Midway between 
 the answering fronts of the two ranges of the peristyle is 
 that Egyptian Obelisk, brought over by Caligula, seventy- 
 eight feet high, which is but a small exceeding beyond the 
 colonnade's elevation of sixty-one ; and on the obelisk's 
 either hand the two fountains, grand, simple in their simpli- 
 city of shaft, and of basin above immense basin, exquisitely 
 beautiful and sending up wreathed torrents of water, it 
 would seem as high as physically that element can mount in 
 open air ; with foreground accompaniment, in sunshine, of 
 regular and almost permanent Iris. These ornaments are 
 nobly conspicuous in a space capacious of Rome's popula- 
 tion of spectators on shew days, at luxurious ease in front of 
 this sovereign temple. 
 
 * I have seen Bernini's design to this effect, in the hands of my affectionate 
 friend, Captain Hely ; to whose abundant kindness, and tried worth, as well 
 as to his briNiant talents and extensive acquirements, I am impelled to promul- 
 gate this altogether unsanctioned and cordial testimony. 
 
262 ROME 
 
 The felicity of adaptation of the colonnade to these orna- 
 ments and this vast space, and to the Church, exhibited by 
 Bernini, is not less exquisite than the colonnade in itself is 
 supremely majestic. With all its majesty and massive im- 
 mensity, it is liege subject to the fa9ade, of which it is the 
 appendage ; losing none of its own^ dignity while it claims 
 but secondary rank. And what a world of heterogeneous 
 edifices and objects does it not shut out ! 
 
 One portentous, intruding aspirant baffled Bernini. It is 
 the elevation of the Vatican, that mounts, loft above loft in 
 the air, to Babel altitude, showing high in exaltation above 
 the Colonnade its coin that is awry to the Church, and in 
 such a salient cruelty of angle as to pain the eye, with an 
 affection like that which jars on the nerves from seeing a 
 wedge's or a hatchet's edge in mis-directed bias. That 
 monstrous ugliness of coin he could not blot out : yet it is 
 connected with so immense a structure, which in any other 
 view has its own majesty, that the single nuisance (over- 
 looked it cannot be,) has its own recommendation, and even 
 solemn impression. In outrage of the general scheme as it 
 is, I would not give it up. 
 
 Sunday, 23d February. What a source of delight in 
 every continental town, where the English are in number 
 sufficient to establish a congregation for our Church service, 
 Paris, Versailles, Tours, Geneva, Lausanne, Florence, 
 even Rome : to get free from all discomfort of foreign 
 growth through the last seven days ; and for two whole 
 hours to make a grand escape to our native home ; if not to 
 where bells knoll us to Church, * at least to Church, and 
 
 What sentence in the compass of English prow can match, at least can 
 out-match this sentence : " It was pretended that one bell in a steeple was 
 " sufficient for ttuinmontug the people to prayers ; and the country was in dau- 
 ' get of losing its sweetest music a miixic hallowed by all circumstance* \ 
 " which according equally with social exultation, and with solitary pen-ivetMs*, 
 " though it falls on many aa unheeding car, uever foils to find some hearts 
 
ROME. 253 
 
 shut out from all alien objects, to mingle in a crowd of our 
 countrymen, our object English, in the noblest sense, and 
 bating thought of that paramount object all our associations 
 of home at once brought into contact and actual enjoyment. 
 It is a removal of a thousand or two miles away, effected in 
 one instant. 
 
 25th February. I had often been surprised at seeing, 
 directly over the hall door of a house in the street Ripetta, a 
 fountain in bold race of water. In a visit to the Borghese 
 Palace, and its 1,300 paintings, this mysterious elevation 
 of water athwart a door-way was explained. The Palace 
 itself perhaps 400 feet, certainly twenty- five windows in 
 front and large enough on one flank to comprise a court 
 within its quadrangle, converges at its farther side to the 
 breadth of a closet apartment, that is separated from the 
 nearest building to it by a lane, on which is the flank of the 
 house I have mentioned. This closet on the first floor, 
 looks, across the lane, on the fountain so whimsically 
 brought from that distance into play at the same height, and 
 large enough to occupy the window's field of view with a 
 felicity of termination, and its life and brilliancy, and cata- 
 ract force imparting such a witching effect as I am unable 
 to describe, to the tone of enjoyment that reigns in this 
 dark, fancifully appointed chamber of summer repose. It 
 is a hint to be pursued into much less whimsical practice. 
 That sort of earth bank that close to many of our country 
 mansions has been cut down to banish damp, and give 
 space for a walk ; of that bank the face channelled deeply 
 inward, but most sparingly in breadth ; down such a furrow 
 a gush of water diverted ; such are the materials with the 
 farther one, easily had in Ireland, of a ledge of granite, on 
 whose rough surface for the water to do its utmost in wear 
 from which might be framed a little picture, that would hold 
 
 " which it exhilarates, and some which it softens." Southey's Book of the 
 Church, vol. 11., p. 121, 
 
254 HOME. 
 
 in pity the contempt that would hold it paltry ; as I could 
 compassionate the sobriety proof against the illusion it would 
 shed over the small study window brought to bear close on 
 its sound and volubility to which, and scarcely to border 
 object beside, 1 would confine my window's scope, in closet 
 offset of the study-room's sanctuary. 
 
 The proprietor of this palace, a man of immense es- 
 tates, unhappy in his marriage with a sister of Buona- 
 parte, a most dissolute woman, with whom he has ceased 
 to live has not been at Rome for many years : but his town 
 residence here is well kept up. This is wide from the prac- 
 tice of most other Roman palaces, which are miserably up- 
 held, even by their resident owners. Noble galleries of 
 paintings there are, and suites of rooms of magnificence 
 such as we are used to believe on the faith of books, -but of 
 which it rests with actual view to give the due impression : 
 these are numerous in Rome. The owner mean while and 
 his family occupy, spider-like, a little apartment or two, and 
 at the remotest end of this almost endless suite of chambers. 
 And such most mean chairs and whatever else can be desig- 
 nated as usables in these immense receptacles of pictures 
 and statues and tables of marble or alabaster or still costlier 
 substance, or of superbly tesselated composition ! Some 
 of the pictures will move on hinges, outward from the wall, 
 to exhibit them in a just light ; and in a room, every where 
 else hung in satin, will be detected the paltry space which 
 a picture hung to be moveable can occupy, in uncolored 
 plaister, for saving of so much hanging. Their floors, 
 which it is well in this climate should not be of board, are 
 of vulgarest red color resembling our dragoon water-decks 
 when of plaister : but this is a pitch of grandeur above 
 the brick flooring that many of them exhibit. Whether brick 
 wrought into putty, or bricks in their raw state, the floor is 
 suffused with the same odious red saturated as with raddle. 
 In one of these shew mansions, I saw, a few days back, the 
 
ROME. 255 
 
 dinner table of the owner a single man be it owned ; but 
 the table was a heavy short deal one, of which the rung and 
 legs told that it had seen much service since last it had been 
 scoured : the dirt was thick on it, in no discountenance to 
 the cloth, that was mean rubbering. 
 
 I believe Prince Doria descendent and representative of 
 the great Andrew Doria to be one of the most respectable 
 nobles of Rome, as he is one of the richest, and his collec- 
 tion of paintings amongst the foremost. His palace is not 
 merely splendid, but it is well maintained. Yet within its 
 court, and near on the grand stair case, is held a retail shop 
 for the sale of the produce of his farm, strictly for his profit. 
 His shop is open two mornings in the week : and here a 
 friend of mine, bird of passage like myself, provides him- 
 self with cheese and with breakfast butter of excellent qua- 
 lity, perhaps the best in Rome, and to be had in quanti- 
 ties down to half a Ib. at 18 baiocchi or half pence ; a few 
 days ago at 16 baiocchi per Ib. : cheese 7 baiocchi per Ib., 
 which is 12 English ounces averdupoise. 
 
 To the general discomfort of the Roman palaces, there 
 are other occasional exceptions. In one way it is fair to 
 mention the Barberini palace, perhaps the very largest in 
 Rome, and in which the apartments occupied at the very 
 farthest end of their suite are fitted and upheld with English 
 neatness, and the aid of English enjoyments, fire and fire- 
 side inclusive while modelled on Italian beauty of mate- 
 rials. Its last boudoir is thrown open to English curiosity, 
 with, I will not say the courtesy, but the fine good nature of 
 the Princess, an elegant and interesting woman, whose retire- 
 ment to an adjoining closet, as often as a stranger or set of 
 strangers may be announced, must be, in a capital of such 
 resort as Rome, a tax on her good temper most frequent 
 and sore.* 
 
 * Daughter, and, with her sister, coheiress of that Prince Colonna, of whom 
 
256 ROME. 
 
 To speak of the exterior of these palaces, many will be 
 found not according with the best principles of architecture ; 
 but all are dignified. There are whole streets of them here. 
 They are also scattered in more or less dis-connexion, yet 
 extremely frequent, through all the tracery of cut-short streets 
 and abrupt lanes that occupy the greater portion of this ca- 
 pital's inhabited surface, an imbroglio of passages cutting 
 each other at every oddity of angle ; the whole as if in a 
 dance of confusion, could they but get free to move : they 
 are packed tight as it were to suffocation. 
 
 English Officers had, long before I had indulged the notion 
 of visiting Italy, surprised me by the statement of the effects 
 in Sicily of the straight forward measures of Sir John Stuart, 
 our Commander of the Forces there ; who having no rever- 
 ence for any altar as protection to an assassin, brought re- 
 morselessly to the gibbet, the professors of that trade as they 
 put it into exercise, and from whatever sacredness of church 
 asylum. The Sicilians were at first struck with horror at 
 his severity, which they considered Draconian : but the pro- 
 fession soon fell into abeyance in that island. The like 
 wicked promptitude of the French at Rome and Naples, 
 banished the practice there also ; and Italian revenge has 
 since these dates, and under continued regulation of the 
 police, become as harmless as the indulgence of malice all 
 elsewhere in Europe. The very wearing of a knife, much 
 more the drawing of it, constitutes a legal offence, and is se- 
 
 Eustace state* that " he merited the title and supported the character of an old 
 " Roman senator. lie raised and maintained a regiment against the invade IN 
 of hi* country; and, when obliged to yield, he submitted with dignity. 
 " Though almort ruined by the exactions of the French, and the subsequent 
 " injustice of the Neapolitan government, and obliged to sell not only hi* pic 
 ' tun--, but bis kitchen utensils, he yethad the public spirit to present the Pope 
 with a superb carriage and six horses to enable him to enter Rome with proper 
 ' dignity." Fit representative this of a family of which Forsyth says : " The 
 4 princely house of Colonna has produced more illustrious men, and can pro- 
 ' duce a nobler descent, than any in Rome. At for its other princes, most of 
 ' thm date from upstart Popw." 
 
ROME. 257 
 
 verely punishable. A murder, however, was some days 
 ago, perpetrated here, which thrilled Rome with horror 
 as dread as could have been roused by such an act in 
 a Scotch village. The excitation of the very decent people in 
 whose house I have apartments was unmeasured : the thing 
 was the talk of all lips in every street. The knife used on 
 this occasion of crime, was not, however, in usual wear by a 
 bravo of whatever order : it was wielded in the frantic pas- 
 sion of a shoe-maker, in race after his apprentice, returned 
 after a day or two's absence without leave, and with whom 
 he had passionate altercation, whom, questionless, in try- 
 ing to overtake, it was his purpose to kill ; but being stopped 
 in his chase, rather late at night, by a civic officer of charac- 
 ter and respectability, who untimely crossed his course, he 
 had made this gentleman the object of his frenzy. The cri- 
 minal was arrested : the impatient detestation of all ranks 
 designated the spot and hour of his execution : it was an up- 
 roar in demand of legal expiation. By degrees, and with 
 the delay of but a very few days, the disappointment of its 
 having been withholden was subdued into whispered specu- 
 lation when might be the date of a punishment so condign. 
 I took especial pains to mark each change in the storm 
 from its fury to its subsiding, in justest course of natural 
 feeling, into despair that the murderer's fate rested under 
 a shroud impervious to all but the supposition that he 
 might, by this time, be one of the manacled gang, many of 
 whom we see in daily task cleaning the streets, and of whom 
 also parties are kept at hard work out of public exposure ; 
 or that he might have availed himself of a most miserable 
 remnant of Italian legislation which, even in this instance 
 of privation of life of an officer in discharge of a public duty, 
 considers the offence as less of public than private concern, 
 like an action of damages with us to be met by payment of 
 money, the subject of compromise running through the whole 
 shuffle of barter and cheapening. 
 
 s 
 
258 KOMI:. 
 
 That with such an inoperative provision against the utmost 
 foul crime in the scale of human atrocity, murder shall conti- 
 nue an offence almost unknown, is proof absolute of the good 
 disposition and humane nature of this naturally fine people.* 
 
 The following enumeration of the present population of Rome has all the 
 appearance of authenticity and correctness : 
 
 Easter 1825. Population.. 138,750 
 
 Families 33,721 
 
 Priest* 1 ,483 
 
 Monks and Frian 1 ,662 
 
 Nuns 1 ,562 
 
 Marriages 1,158 
 
 Births 4,243 
 
 Deaths 4,446 
 
 In hospitals 2,002 
 
 IB Prisons 1,02O 
 
SECTION XIII. 
 
 26th February. The curtain of death is nearly drawn over 
 
 poor M , the interesting and amiable young Scotsman, 
 
 whom I first saw for two minutes at Sienna, and subsequent- 
 ly at an inn or two on the road to Rome, where he did me the 
 favour of inviting a renewal of our acquaintance, that has led 
 to intimacy. He is one of the very numerous victims sent 
 from home to die abroad of pulmonary disease in its closing 
 stage. In his case there was especial cause from other 
 and similar calamity within the family threshold, for trying 
 the chance of expulsion thence. And I know that his ban- 
 ishment has been of happier endurance than nineteen times in 
 twenty is the lot of such candidates to fill a foreign grave. 
 He has had the fortune to be thrown on the friendship of Dr. 
 C , the leading English physician here, a man of tho- 
 rough worth, and to experience from him every attention not 
 merely of a physician's, but almost a parent's care : while 
 
 that excellent lady, Mrs. C , has worn herself down in 
 
 personal nursetending and nightwatching of him, and in ad- 
 ministering to him the active charities of a sister. The aids 
 of their friends have also been called in, as I, utterly uncon- 
 nected with all the parties, have the opportunity of witnessing 
 in a way delightful to human feeling. He is in apartments 
 that are next to being under their roof, and by night, as by 
 day, is not for a moment given over to the lone ministry of a 
 menial attendant. 
 
 But this is an instance of casual good fortune. And it is 
 
 s 2 
 
260 ROME. 
 
 laid on me as a solemn injunction, by one who speaks from 
 accurate and large, though unprofessional experience, of this 
 climate, to spread on my return home, to my utmost stretch, 
 the disclosure that Italy in an especial manner, Rome is 
 bane and death to persons not merely of decayed, but of 
 doubtful lungs. Whatever the South of France, or even Nice 
 may be, Italy generally, to these is fate. Having nothing to 
 fear personally on the score of pulmonary affections, and 
 nothing, I may say, from inclemency or variableness of the 
 weather, 1 have not failed nevertheless to imbibe from facts, 
 entire conviction of the righteousness of the warning to all 
 concerned, to recoil from consignment hither, as from death 
 without sentence or almost respite under bereavement, in 
 searching need, of the charities of kindred and home. 
 
 I have had counted out to me, in distinct catalogue, nu- 
 merous recent instances of victims to a land journey hither, 
 that must have shattered into nervous irratibility and impo- 
 tence the frame, of which the life strings had been sapped 
 before setting out, and which, under the complicated ex- 
 haustion, is to be subjected to the action of this atmosphere 
 of extremes and of mischief. How should such a shiver- 
 ing frame support the deceitfulness of a winter, in blast 
 angrily cold, one day, and in stream of tepid, and almost 
 sulphureous air the next, or the remainder of the same, day? 
 Tepid is a pretty poetic word ; Zephyr is another : but 
 heated, or hot, as applied to air, though of less beautiful 
 association, is a term as plain, and more fitting, in as much 
 as its oflensiveness is true to the idea of noisome, which an 
 honest describer would seek to convey. To be buffeted be- 
 tween chill # and hot in stern vicissitude, with the action 
 and re-action of foot-ball playing, is the course of endurance 
 
 Were our won! chilling enunciated conformably to the law of Italian pronun- 
 ciation, which gives ch the sound of our *, it would exhibit a consonance of sound 
 and tense : it would be tilling, with a grlevousness of applicability pardonable in 
 eriou statement. 
 
ROME. 261 
 
 that awaits our valetudinarian pilgrims during winter with 
 unrelenting confinement all the while at home with strict 
 care that that home be situate in one of the streets not infected 
 with the local plague of pestilential air ; with inhibition from 
 promenade, unless within St. Peter's Church, and there in 
 regimen, and under restrictions prescribing attention to its 
 details of grandeur ; with absolute seclusion not merely from 
 all sight-seeing, but from all variety, under forlornness 
 continued through ordinarily, or rather periodically, very 
 many weeks of a rainy season that is the extinction of 
 hope and prohibition to look onward to Spring. Supposing 
 that to be attained, or rather summer for spring here is 
 neither winter nor summer, and has no character of its own 
 the heat comes with it that is not endurable by the natives, 
 unless in the artificial twilight of their chambers by day, or 
 by turning the day into night. To avoid this, the exile 
 must try back his fatigue, and endure once more the multi- 
 plied and protracted abominations of an Italian land journey. 
 
 In Italy, however, if he lives to insist on it, he may stay 
 the summer, immured in his darkened apartment, and 
 without power to take exercise till towards twilight At 
 Rome he has no alternative : flight thence is peremptory on 
 him, if his living, panting skeleton be moveable, to get 
 from reach of the Malaria that spares not robust health, 
 and reigns at Rome through the hot season in pestilence and 
 funerals. But this is a danger scarcely worth weighing : 
 when after the winter's hot and chill fits, and even in that 
 season the climate's baleful peculiarities, survivorship is 
 rare, speculation becomes next to superfluous. 
 
 5th March. My very amiable friend has found a place 
 here, with all the decencies of interment that are in. our 
 English practice ; our sublime funeral service gone 
 through with befitting solemnity, and with the guard of two 
 Papal soldiers, from the City-gate guard-house contiguous, 
 as it were in sanction to the proceeding, and security against 
 
262 ROME. 
 
 possible disorder, in the manner of peace-officers. And he 
 is laid in a cemetery allotted expressly for us English Pro- 
 testants " terrarum dominos," by the present Pope. 
 
 Close by this cemetery is a plot of ground, which, for 
 more than a century, has served as burial ground to foreign 
 Protestants casually resident in Rome, and is become inade- 
 quate for further use, now that this City is each winter oc- 
 cupied in throng by English families. It was but one 
 corner of an extensive common, that borders on and is within 
 the City walls ; and hence has resulted the expediency that 
 with a larger tract taken in from the common, it should re- 
 ceive the protection of an enclosure. For this purpose sub- 
 scriptions were extensively collected among the English, not 
 in Italy merely, but also among those in France who had re- 
 turned hence, or meditated the journey hither. An unex- 
 pected obstacle started up, in the shape of an objection, on 
 the part of the Public Body which has official care of the 
 monuments of antiquity and the works of art at Rome and 
 which, I am bound to admit, was a just one. Mearing on 
 this place of graves is the mausoleum of Caius Cestius, 
 " Epulo," or providore of banquets to the gods, cotempo- 
 rary of the Emperor Augustus. It is a pyramid, regular 
 as those of Egypt, cased with marble, its wall twenty-five 
 feet in thickness the enclosed sepulchral chamber eighteen 
 feet by twelve, and thirteen feet high, even yet retaining va- 
 rious portions of its original embellishments of painting. 
 The perpendicular height of this pyramid is stated to be 113 
 feet : but the earth has so accumulated around, as to have 
 required a trench of fifteen feet deep to come at its base and 
 door-way. * It is singular, and I think picturesque, that 
 
 In Sadeler's View, A. D. 1606, this pyramid ii delineated as bated on a 
 platform, whose fides ar perpendicular, and two courses in height, of the same 
 sized blocks with those which cose the rest of the edifice. If bis delineation be 
 jiHt, of which there can he scarcely a doubt, the trench 1 *|>eak of is not cleared 
 deep enough to expose the entire of the structure. 
 
HOME. 263 
 
 the wall of Rome, majestic as I have stated it to be, comes 
 home on either flank to include this mausoleum in its course 
 on one flank the wall in its ordinary range, and not far 
 from it on the other, one of the city gates , St. Paul's. Wall, 
 however, and gate, with all their loftiness, are in but humble 
 association with the pyramid. With its face or its effect 
 side-wise and rather aback as they are they do not in the 
 slightest degree interfere. But the projected cemetery wall 
 of the English would have closed it in front with an unwor- 
 thy interruption of the view, and materially degraded its 
 elevation, by blotting out the inferior, though main portion of 
 the structure. An injunction against the procedure was 
 most properly directed by the Papal Government, and the 
 whole project dropped. But loose reports diffused through- 
 out Europe the dissatisfaction of the English, some censur- 
 ing the restraint put on a scheme of accommodation, that in 
 the main was highly reasonable, and others imputing that 
 restraint to the inveterate bigotry of the Holy See. 
 
 Certain proceedings in Parliament soon after, and, spe- 
 cially, a speech of Lord Colchester, gave alarm to the 
 Pope's government. Without any communication with any 
 persons or person of the English nation, the government at 
 once allocated as an English cemetery a space, which I com- 
 pute at an acre and half, at fitter and suitable distance from 
 Cestius's mausoleum : one side of this space being already 
 confined by the city wall, they enclosed the other three 
 with a new and substantial wall of, perhaps, fourteen feet, 
 in handsome finish of plaister without and within ; and 
 the entrance secured by a suitable iron gate. So completed, 
 and at the expense, from first to last, of the Pope's treasu- 
 ry, they handed over possession of the place to the English 
 whose fund, already raised for this object, must of course 
 submit to some other direction. At the same time the Ro- 
 man government drew round the former cemetery a deep 
 trench, well secured, in efficient protection from even a tres- 
 
264 HOME. 
 
 passer's foot on its sod, and against whatever injury to the 
 monuments which cover the greater part of its surface. 
 
 From the English cemetery, and ranging still within the 
 city walls, spreads a flat tract by the map a quarter of a 
 mile to that wonder, in its way, of Rome, the Monte Tes- 
 taccio, or Potter's hill, 163 feet in perpendicular height, and 
 in circuit 590 paces : it is mainly composed of earthen 
 ware in fragments perhaps in some places mingled with 
 earth ; but where I found the best_ opportunity of viewing 
 it, the disposition is of pottery and a pulverized earth in 
 alternate layers, more in slope than in horizontal position 
 as if the material of either had been spread on the uppermost 
 surface and fallen thence in coating over the sides. These 
 fragments of pottery are also spread over all the flat that 
 extends to Cestius's mausoleum, as different trenches here 
 and there made in the ground disclose : even the excava- 
 tion of fifteen feet to the base of that pyramid, is through 
 similar layers. This extensive tract is thus an accumulation 
 of shattered pans and crocks, which in its flat part can be 
 referred to an epoch subsequent to Cestius's, that is, Au- 
 gustus's time ; while in respect to the mount, which spreads 
 a surface of half a dozen acres, high over that level, I know 
 not that any datum is afforded for tracing the era of its ori- 
 gin. With all this power to date remotely back, with full 
 impression on the thought of the immense population of old 
 Rome, and with the knowledge that the ancients preserved 
 their wine in amphoroe of crockery ware, it is labor to the 
 mind to measure itself to the truth of the fact, that such an 
 accumulation of this material under the plane surface, and in 
 the mountain above it, should have been brought into mass. 
 At present one face of the mount is, in its lower tract, 
 practised into vaults, and fronted by a range of store build- 
 ings, in which the wholesale merchants warehouse their 
 wines that are kept in the greatest coolness from the 
 ventilated air that by countless chinks pervades the moun- 
 
ROME. V 265 
 
 tain's inmost recesses. For this reason also it is a favorite 
 autumn lounge of the Romans to repair hither to sip their 
 wine in shelter and unheated air. 
 
 On the summit of the mount velvet green stands a cru- 
 cifix, which shews conspicuously from numerous and remote 
 points of view. On the other hand, the view thence is a 
 noble one, the Tiber at its base, and seen in various wind- 
 ings, or rather links, Rome itself subjected in map-like 
 spread on one side ; while on the other, the dusky plain 
 crockery ware below, and brown sand half victorious over 
 sward on the surface extending first to Cestius's pyramid, 
 creates a sort of Egyptian landscape : and the working of 
 thought which thus receives birth, is fed with no dissimilar 
 aliment from the gaze on the city walls, that here are seen 
 in long retiring and sometimes apparently doubling suite, 
 and at a distance which gives to their venerable arched work 
 the mournfulness of colors, and the awfulness of a bound- 
 less range of palace ruins. Beyond their masses the mau- 
 soleum of Cecilia Metella, seen several miles over the flat, 
 prolongs and fixes the picture of nature associated in pain 
 and degradation with man's past glories, one and other out- 
 spread indesolateness. 
 
 6th March. Without the gate of St. Paul's a heavy mile, 
 is the Church of St. Paul's, built in the fourth century. It 
 was approached once from the city, by that mile's continuity 
 of a corridore of marble pillars supporting a roof of copper 
 gilt of all which suite of portico not a trace remains. The 
 church is now silent within as well as in that approach, unless 
 to the tread of a foreign visitant to gaze on its equipment of 
 marble columns withdrawn in plunder from that Brobdignag 
 pile that outwent all previous outgoings in sepulchre Adri- 
 an's mausolem, now the castle of St. Angelo and citadel of 
 Rome. Of the forty columns which support the grand nave, 
 twenty-four are of perhaps matchless value each of, what is 
 called, violet marble, or pavonazzo, from its tinge which has 
 
266 ROME. 
 
 the semblance of a peacock's plumage. Their order ia 
 Corinthian, their height thirty-nine feet, their circumference 
 eleven in one single piece : they are fluted to two-thirds of 
 their height. The remaining sixteen columns are of Parian 
 marble ; as are forty others of minor dimensions, belonging 
 to the subordinate naves, of which there are two on either 
 side of the grand one. On high over the colonnade of this 
 last, run in series the portraits of all the Popes ; the earlier 
 part being of rival authenticity to those of the Scotish Kings 
 atHolyrood, however genuine may be the likeness of those 
 of the last three or four centuries : the entire number, from 
 St. Peter to the present Pope inclusive, they state to be 
 254. What I have seen explains a prophecy I heard in boy- 
 hood, which augured the extinction of the pontificate from 
 the entire of the niches being occupied by the portraits of 
 the different Popes, with the exception of one, which might 
 receive the portrait of the reigning Pontiff. A fresh lease 
 of papal sovereignty is taken out ; and a new series of por- 
 traits is begun with that of Pius VI. Eight or ten ovals 
 are already delineated, in commencement of a series to be 
 occupied by the present and succeeding Sovereigns . 
 
 There are various other wonders within this Church, ex- 
 citing recollections of deep solemnity from its connexion, 
 that is undoubted, though disguised by legend ornament, 
 with the Apostolic martyr, and coeval with Christianity 
 from an inconsiderable period after its first promulgation. 
 That solemnity is not lessened by the view of its roof, 
 which is unceiled, and in a frame-work of massive joists, 
 naked wood now, even unpainted : they were once sheeted 
 with gold, to emit beams harmonizing with the sun's ra- 
 diance, as is proclaimed by Prudentius, a poet of the fourth 
 century also, and witness of the effulgence he describes. 
 The present flooring is another curiosity : it is composed of 
 fragments of flags, of shape as irregular as a paver's ham- 
 mer could shatter them into in positions such as each scrap 
 
ROME. 267 
 
 might, helter-skelter, receive, in laying on the large frag- 
 ments, and inserting among the crevices four or five lesser 
 hits : they are accordingly in brave motliness of colors, 
 from black on to white, letters, half syllables, portions of 
 two or three words, sculptured on their surface at every hap- 
 hazard of angle of one with another, and in all sizes of 
 graved character ; a fritter of smashed tomb stones, that 
 coats the area in continuous and pell-mell confusion. 
 
 Appendent to this Church is an extensive Monastery, that 
 is now all but untenanted : in summer, I hear, it is quite 
 SOj the Malaria reigning here in supreme desolation. 
 Close by, however, is a small wine-house, where my 
 friends and T, after much previous fatigue, obtained the re- 
 freshment of excellent bread, good cheese, and something 
 more than two half tumblers of very passable wine each, at 
 the charge to us severally of five baiocchi or halfpence.* 
 
 It is not merely in the area of this Church that the travel- 
 ler's eye sees brayed into ruin the materials of old Rome's 
 grandeur. He sees rich marble ornaments in fragment serv- 
 ing the purposes of coin-stones, hall door and back door 
 steps, spud-stones, to which last paltriest use a portion of 
 a fluted column, or of the capital itself, with its emboss- 
 ment of frieze, is right often preferred : columns are built 
 up in a wall, in manner of the ordinary uprights we employ 
 in raising stud-work. Let me get quit of this painful subject, 
 with the one farther note of the morsels of rare and most 
 expensive porphyry, and the bits of marble, white, red, 
 
 * I presume it was to the mischief of this identical wine-house that this most 
 venerable Church owed its destruction by fire - through the inebriation of some 
 plumbers employed on its roof on the 15th of July following. The burning con- 
 tinued for several days. A friend, who summered at Frascati, in writing to me on 
 the subject, states that he found himself unable, after several days lapse, to muster 
 spirits to repair to the scene of ruin ; that "every one of the columns that formed 
 " the grandest colonnade ever erected by man, is overturned;" of course, broken 
 into fragments ; and these fragments, by action of the fire, more or less dissolved 
 into lime. 
 
268 HOME. 
 
 yellow, and verd-antique, and so-forth, which the eye de- 
 tects in cheapest occurrence, and even mixture with the 
 usual material of stone in the street pavements ! But what 
 an immensity of the costliest marbles, wrought once to the 
 highest purposes of human conception, are now invisible, 
 from the devastation of the centuries which converted them 
 into lime for mason's mortar ! 
 
 March 8tb. The Pincian Hill rises over the entrance of 
 Rome by its northern gate ; and directly also over the 
 Piazza di Spagna, which is the crack spot of English resi- 
 dence, and Bond-street resort. Its description by Vasi is a 
 fair sample of guide-book accuracy, and of Mr. Eustace's 
 vein, whose work is guide-book " set to rhetoric," 1 
 might say to music too . " This Piazza is one of the most 
 " vast in Rome ; it is surrounded by large and handsome 
 " houses, and a number of Palaces." To speak of it in 
 unexaggerated English, it is tolerably like in shape, and 
 pretty nearly the same in dimensions, but of most torpid 
 general similarity, to that portion of the Strand between St. 
 Clement's Church and Temple-bar. But a vacancy on one 
 of its sides, of four or five houses frontage, is the basement 
 of an ample staircase in double flight : I believe they count 
 in either 114 steps, of cheerful and unlaborious ascent to 
 the final landing place : on the level with this, stands the 
 Church of Trinity of the Mount, with sufficiently dignified 
 facade to suit its magnificent station ; and in the area in its 
 front is an Egyptian obelisk, 44i feet high, exclusive of its 
 pedestal. 
 
 Connected with this Church is a Convent ; and on a wall 
 of its sacristy is one of the very finest paintings in Rome 
 the taking down from the Cross by Daniel di Volterra. 
 Strange and awful it is, that this Convent is almost deserted 
 from Malaria, that infests this elevated site, as a friend of 
 mine, lodged in all other points enviably enough, close by, 
 bad reason to know ; mysterious plague, that ascends to 
 
ROME. 269 
 
 this height, and leaves the not remote Quirinal hill safe 
 that ravages one side of the Corso in the flat below, while 
 the opposite houses of the same street, and at the same sea- 
 son of each year's rotation, are comparatively safe. 
 
 The summit surface, generally, of the hill is laid out in 
 gardens, with numerous and pleasant walks and drives : 
 the approach for carriages is by a spacious avenue of very 
 gradual ascent practised on the face of the hill, and over- 
 looking in its windings, the noble amphitheatric arrange- 
 ment, now in progress to completion of the Piazza del 
 Popolo, which lies immediately within the city gate. Ano- 
 ther brow of this hill is lined by the Muro Torto ; and it 
 there overlooks the suburban gardens of the Prince Borg- 
 hese, who gives them in free scope open to the public. 
 
 With our English these gardens are a fashionable airing, 
 though but garden run into farm neglect. Their Casino, or 
 mansion, is a handsome one, and still preserves numerous 
 remains of the paintings and statues in which it was once 
 most rich ; but it exhibits frequent and violent traces, sub- 
 stantiating the robberies of the French, and possibly, as it 
 is also said, the subsequent sales by the owner, whose re- 
 sidence at Rome would by no means induce his habitation 
 of this villa, which is peculiarly liable to Malaria. Within 
 these grounds is an extensive Circus, with several ranges of 
 stone seats in amphitheatric disposition. What pleased me 
 particularly was a little circular temple, its bronze dome sup- 
 ported by eight columns of Columbaro marble : within its 
 rotunda stood a statue of Diana carried off to France : still 
 the inscription remains to the structure " Noctilucae, sylva- 
 " rum potenti." Another very handsome temple, dedicated 
 to JEsculapius, adorns the brink of a pretty sheet of water, 
 of which the margin, in a style new to me, is lined in all its 
 range of sinuosities with a plaister imitative of marble, as 
 though the whole lake's waters were contained within one 
 vast shell an extraordinary whimsy ! 
 
270 ROME. 
 
 Quanta prcestantius esset 
 
 Num0n aquae, viridi si margine clauderet undas 
 Herba, nee ingenuum violarent marmora tophum. 
 
 Seemlier of guise had been, 
 In margin free of nature's living green, 
 The wave diffused in nature's gentlest tone, 
 Than cramped by alien guard of chisseled stone. 
 
 I give paraphrase, not translation, of Juvenal's quotation ; 
 which applies with equal fitness to this lake's durance as to 
 the false taste in decoration of Egeria's fountain, against 
 which he inveighed. 
 
 Straying to the left behind these gardens, I came on quite 
 different and finely-simple scenery. It is close on the mine- 
 ral spring called Acetosa ornamented by a fa$ade designed 
 by Bernini that a country lane conducts you on the Tiber, 
 here much wider than at Rome, where its measure is stated 
 to be, at the bridge of St. Angelo, 315 feet. It is a river 
 of ample and noble volume. 
 
 Vorticibus rapidis et multa flavus arena, 
 Yellow with sand, its whirlpools sweep along 
 
 livingly true to this its description in Virgil. One tract only 
 of theground here is flat, eastward, and principally in the di- 
 rection of that fascinatingly lovely Appenine chain, the Sa- 
 bine range which, at fifteen miles distance, is under full 
 command. Soracte, detached from that range, is seen hence 
 somewhat less completely, from the interference of the shoul- 
 der of a fine eminence more in front, connecting itself with 
 bold undulations of hill, which spread thence quite round to 
 the west, On one of these swells stands a ruin, inducing 
 no mean play of ideas in reverie, and behind it, a lofty 
 slender tower graces a brow still bolder. The hills, thus 
 finely featured and marked, rise from the bank of the river, 
 whose course here is very sinuous, and its reaches so grand, 
 that there is nothing but its impetuosity quite boiling to 
 contradict the illusion that each succeeding reach is a small 
 
ROME. 271 
 
 lake of exquisite outline, retiring from the view at its either 
 termination. The hither bank is not inferior to that opposite, 
 though altogether dissimilar. It is a precipitous range, per- 
 haps 150 feet high, of tufo rock, over whose brow, or where- 
 ver lower down its crevices will give leave, is spread an 
 embroidery of ilex the indigenous growth of this country 
 in brave immunity from the hostility whether of cattle or of 
 man through which the champaign of the Campania is be- 
 come tree-less. Under these cliffs, that confront the swells 
 on the farther shore onward to the Monte Mario, that towers 
 aloft over the Vatican hill is a lounge along this haughty 
 river's margin of rich luxury, of I know not how many 
 lengthened furlongs, till it comes on the Ponte Mola, and the 
 road which gave me such pleasure in first approach to Rome. 
 
 9th March. A letter just received from a friend at Vevey, 
 of the 1st of this month, detailing the dreadful snows and 
 continued inclemency of this most severe winter throughout 
 all Europe has, before closing, the information, that the 
 weather seems to be taking up : " Just now we have glori- 
 " ous weather : I think our lake and mountains were never 
 " more superb : the Dent du Midi is, all over, in the dia- 
 " mond's blaze " " brille comme un diamant." Be it my 
 luck to luxuriate ici has under an Alpine winter, on the 
 Leman lake shore ! 
 
 JHere we have dreadful thunder with lightning this Sun- 
 day afternoon, direct over the City, I may say in its streets 
 as tremendous as that of Righi, last summer and rain 
 in volumes of measureless density, and plumb descent. A 
 naval friend assures me, that the sheets of rain we hear so 
 much of in the tropical climates, were not so wetting within 
 his full experience on the West India station as he finds 
 them here. Yet the ground is so porous as to absorb, 
 spunge like, these rains almost immediately after their fall, 
 and to leave scarcely a trace of surface humidity. The 
 cause of this must mainly be the volcanic nature of the Cam- 
 
272 ROME. 
 
 pania ; for there is no question but that Latium, home to the 
 Appennines base, was once overspread by the deeps, from 
 which it emerged through the raging action of volcanic fires. 
 Strombolo, and other volcanos, far isolated in the sea, even 
 yet give instances of fire in unextinguished blaze from the 
 midst of fathomless waters. But that so extensive a region 
 as this Roman Campania should have been raised from forth 
 of the sea in independent terrene beauty, is a truth so dread, 
 that the imagination cannot shape itself to the conception ; 
 though, after at least three thousand years' interval, it con- 
 tinues attested by the living witness of facts co-extensive 
 with the new creation's limits of phenomena of distinctest 
 speech. 
 
 Our poet, Thompson, would seem to have in idea images, 
 quite other than the frightfulness of conflagration and throes 
 of earthquake in which Latium rose from the sea's abyss, 
 when he bodied forth Britain rising from ocean to sympho- 
 nious gratulations of its guardian powers, hailing, in sure 
 prophecy, her fairer, though mightiest domination. 
 
 Monday. A gala-day, and monstrous bustle, consequent 
 on the declaration of twelve Cardinals created by the Pope. 
 At night musical entertainments in different parts of the 
 City, and an illumination of the principal and some of the 
 secondary houses of the chief streets, as well as of others 
 in meaner situations occupied by connexions of the new dig- 
 nitaries. Monte Citorio palace, occupied as the Pope's 
 office of audit, and as the residence of certain high officers 
 who preside in it, was splendidly blazing in its exterior ; 
 the ornaments of its interior court strikingly beautiful. In 
 each of the niches that are in range round it, was a well 
 furnished tree ; on every of all the portions of this, and ter- 
 minating every individual bough, was a light in form of a 
 blossom ; this fanciful richness in just keeping with the bril- 
 liancy distributed to all parts of the court's topmost eleva- 
 tion. A sumptuously grand orchestra, with a numerous 
 
ROME. 273 
 
 band, had its station on high. Then such a chain of car- 
 riages in un-ending series, entering by one gate, setting 
 down, and returning : and such a living mass of pedestrians 
 borne in at one side-door, and getting out at another! 
 Failing to stem this solid matter of entering column, to 
 eighteen inches of impression, I hit, at second thought, on 
 the English entrance, as in matter of fact it was being the 
 carriage-way, and quite safe close together as they moved 
 to the few who I suppose thought themselves privileged to 
 use it. No native seemed to take this to be his case, lined 
 on either hand as it was by grenadier soldiers, that were all 
 subservience to us strangers. 
 
 With all this hurry-scurry throughout the day, and till 
 now, late at night during all which time the Corso has 
 been one rush of carriages, and not a face in the crowd, 
 down to the coffee-house waiter, but is suffused with self- 
 consequence to agony, 1 must say that the scene is painful,- 
 when I put into comparative thought the trifles which excite 
 it, with the manlier objects which claim exultation in Bri- 
 tain. " A creation of Cardinals ! ! ! " was the lofty reply to 
 my first question in the street of " What means all this vast 
 " stir ?" To my next, of " How many ?" " Twelve " 
 was the response, with an air, as John Bull would tell of 
 twelve sail of the line captured in a sea fight, or as an old 
 Roman might have spoken of twelve hostile dignitaries com- 
 ing on to grace a Consular triumph. Every man of every 
 class stands twelve inches higher in his stocking soles, as 
 though the creation of these twelve Cardinals conferred on 
 him personal consequence. There is in all this a debase- 
 ment or derangement of the mental feeling, as outrageous 
 as in the instance, which at this time occupies all our En- 
 glish newspapers, to our national disgrace, that does not 
 put down the nuisance by forbidding such publications en- 
 trance into whatever house, that even affects decency I mean 
 
274 ROME. 
 
 of that unhappy nobleman, who, in lunacy, would have big 
 throne as king of Hampshire, and display all his majesty in 
 the celebration of his wife's understood to be not his own 
 child. This mis-used personage had the growth in mind. 
 and the wisdom in various ways, of a child of eight years 
 old : just as infantine, as to what a nation ought to be, are 
 the modern Romans, collectively and individually. 
 
 1 1th March, Of the illuminations of last night, besides 
 one or other repetition, we have this night tar barrels in bon- 
 fire in the streets. Exclusive of these extra splendors, there 
 is, when the weather's fitfulness suffers it, a feast to the eye 
 and the imagination, that is greatly fascinating. Twilight is 
 here comparatively very short ; and the sun's going down is, 
 not slowly, succeeded by darkness : but this is associated 
 with a purity of sky and effulgence of stars, that we northerns 
 know not, unless under the agency of frost ; while here the 
 air, in its good humour, is at once serenely lucid and tem- 
 perate. Windows lie open, and doors ; and of the lights 
 within, the brilliancy is thrown unconfined abroad : there is 
 not a current to make them flare : within or without, all is 
 blandness ; and, indeed, without is clearly the favourite sta- 
 tion : groups in small chat collect there their seats. The 
 pomp and prodigality of blue sky, thick set as with a rain 
 of stars, the profusion below of lights every where, and the 
 hilarity of the crowds giving animation to all, together rea- 
 lize the pictures I had often met in books, of an Italian city in 
 luxury of animal existence, with accompaniments such as our 
 climate knows not in any of its vicissitudes, and so strange 
 to us therefore, as to appear of ultra-human or faery enjoy- 
 ment. Full surely we have nothing to compare with the 
 winter delights of this country, when winter is lambent. 
 But when tyrant, as it is in miserably frequent moodiness, 
 what is its fire-side ! A non-existence ; and within as with- 
 out the scene is on a par of dreary discomfort. 
 
ROME. 275 
 
 12th March. Guide's Aurora, in fresco, on the ceiling 
 of the summer-house of the Rospigliosi Palace : * how de- 
 lightful, how free, too, from the embarassment that besets 
 allegory in painting as in poetry ! How sober the gait of 
 all the personages except perhaps the attitude of speed of 
 Aurora, and perhaps that of the most perfect figure of all, 
 the boy bearing the torch or star of morning : the faces of some 
 of the Hours exquisite, and of two or three of them the atti- 
 tudes especially admirable. They all seem going with staid 
 mind, though with buoyant vigor, on their daily mission : 
 and, though the horses paw, they soberly float: the dra- 
 peries indicate decided motion, as agitated by the action of 
 the air -displaced by the velocity of the groupe's onward 
 impulse. 
 
 Of the Hours the age is so young-womanish, that the 
 Apollo becomes, in respect to the lineaments of his face 
 and a little, of his form rather a boy, borne on by them 
 as a shew play-thing ; somewhat overdoing the portraiture of 
 this divinity by mythologists. In an engraving I have ob- 
 tained of this painting, this fault disappears : but engrav- 
 ings cannot be trusted for good or for ill. There is at 
 Rome a rival Aurora, by Guercino, which the proprietor 
 does not suffer to be approached, nor the villa grounds in 
 which it is enclosed of which he is usually a non-resident 
 to be entered by a votary of even an Ambassador's rank. 
 Of this picture, the engraving gives the story badly told, 
 
 * Guido would appear to have borrowed from Dante : 
 L' alba vinceva 1' ora mattutina 
 Che fuggia 'nnanzi, si che di lontano 
 Conobbi il tremolar delta marina. 
 
 Purg. I. 115, 
 A poet of our own certainly studied Guido : 
 
 O mark ! again the coursers of the sun 
 At Guide's call their round of glory run : 
 Again the rosy hours resume their flight, 
 Obscured and lost in floods of golden light. 
 
 Rogers. 
 T 2 
 
276 ROME. 
 
 its main parts heavy, though beset with light figures, that 
 break it into flutter ; the horses adapted for a brewer's dray : 
 the one conception severed into different distinct acts each 
 act a contrast of clumsiness and fritter ; a Flemish 
 procession, but that there is great fritter. Yet a friend 
 who by rare luck, some years ago, achieved the sight of 
 Guercino's very picture, assures me that it is an equally 
 lovely effusion, realized with elasticity and happiness quite 
 equal to this poetic dream evolved by Guido. 
 
 In this painting Aurora is not free from the shading of the 
 darkness which she proceeds to dispel. The effulgence of 
 day reigns round the head of Apollo, from whom the golden 
 lustre emanates : yet his locks are rather a soft lambency of 
 light, too aerial in hue as in consistence, for the coma of any 
 comfortably covered tete of nether earth. From the locks 
 of neither divinity as here colored, is illustration to be de- 
 rived and yet it is from the view of this picture, as if by 
 back-hand practice of " lucus a non lucendo," that the ex- 
 planation has broke on me of that rich phrase of Milton, 
 " tresses like the morn" of which I had often and fruit- 
 lessly laboured with myself the solution, and sought it in 
 cruise after the opinion of one or other intelligent friend. 1 
 had referred it, therefore, to that statute of Burke's critical 
 code, under which impossibles are wrought up into a compo- 
 sition not the less potent nor less legitimate that the mass 
 is destitute of meaning, and absolute nonsense.* So it is 
 that, on this spot, the explanation has dropped into my 
 mouth : the phrase means no more than saffron locks au- 
 burn tresses. Yet in self-exculpation from the charge of 
 obtuse poetic vision, and in expectoration of vindictive feel- 
 ing against Milton, I must aver the fault to be his ; since, 
 
 I Allude to the Chapter on Word* (Sublime and Beautiful, part v. sect. 5.) 
 which ha for title " Examples that wordi may affect without raising images,'' 
 where that mott masterly philosopher instances the recipe in Virgil for the 
 fabrication of thunder in Vulcan'* forge. 
 
ROME. 277 
 
 taken in sequence after the antecedent " love-darting eyes," 
 the phrase " tresses like the morn," ought to involve an 
 image outgoing the statement of mere material color, and 
 failing to do so sends the mind in vain quest of fanciful 
 emotion to assort with the leading idea. The passage, 
 taken in its just meaning, is an anti-climax ; which Milton 
 shelters from notice by the " words that burn," with which 
 he clothes the concluding clause, a disguise at once richly 
 beautiful and obscure. 
 
 To return to the subject of Guido and Guercino ; what I 
 have just seen in the painting of the former, reminds me of 
 the Rinaldo and Armida, which I saw a few days ago in the 
 Costaguti Palace the work of Guercino, in which reigns 
 the same inexpressible movement without motion palpable 
 progress without the organs of movement of the actively on- 
 ward beings, seemingly put into mechanic stir; all at ease, 
 yet all winning their way without violence to the truth of 
 painting, whi9h is kept at once in the absence of a limb or 
 smew's action, and in the lightest lock of hair decidedly 
 aback, as from the encounter of the opposing atmosphere. 
 This minor picture makes one the more regret the exclusion, 
 under which we all labor, from his Aurora. 
 
SECTION XIV. 
 
 13th March. An excursion this day by that nearly-aban- 
 doned outlet of St. Paul's Gate. Winding from the church 
 to the left, by a quiet road that is somewhat concentric to 
 the city walls, we had abundant opportunity of witnessing 
 the tissue of excavations into which all beneath the ground's 
 surface seems to run according to accounts which I can 
 now well credit through all the tract onward to Ostia ! 
 The tufo, wherever it occurs, invites perforation, from its 
 porousness, and its frequent larger voids : and the loam is 
 of a sharp sandy texture that is easily practised into cavern, 
 and prompts to such an excavation by its positive value as 
 an ingredient in forming the best building cement of that 
 description termed Puzzuolane. That these chambers of 
 desolation, in the void of the one and other material, in such 
 awfully interminable spread, should have been put to the use 
 of sepulchres was natural ; and that they should have most 
 largely served as retreats to the early Christians from the 
 rage of persecution, is also so natural, that we cannot but 
 acquiesce in the statements to that effect, as miserable fact. 
 To what other and baser purposes they may have been sub- 
 servient, in all the blackness and crime of the subsequent 
 ages, it were bootless to guess. At present they are very 
 usually built up, even within the churches, to some of which 
 they were once appurtenant as tracts of sepulture. Yet on 
 this line of road (a sweet stroll it furnishes, and part of it 
 on the front of a fine woody cliff) there are here and there 
 
ROME. 279 
 
 outlets from this Brobdignag rabbit-warren, some of them 
 mean enough, but others frightfully impressive : the conca- 
 tenation in its spread, breadthwise as well as onward, can 
 be viewed without quitting the highway. In one or two places 
 on its edge are yawning vaults, into which a horse and cart 
 might be ingulphed, through any slight inadvertency of the 
 beast or its driver : one chamber of horror thus open, and 
 of capacious round, I cannot compute at less than sixteen 
 feet deep. That such pitfalls to destruction should gape on 
 the highway side, is but a symptom of that indolence which 
 the governing power here too frequently discloses not in 
 enterprise but in detail ; a sluggishness as if the spring 
 which had given concoction and growth to enterprise had 
 spent itself ; that sluggishness of which we have exemplifica- 
 tion in the scaffolding round a part of the Church of St. John 
 Lateran, that has remained there ten years, and may remain 
 ten years more, or till it tumbles down because, being public 
 property, it touches no man's or no public body's interest 
 and there is in no quarter care to remove the eyesore. 
 
 Coming out on the Appian Way by the Church of St. Se- 
 bastian, we crossed it onward to a tract in which from 
 what cause it were vain to speculate are numerous remains 
 of public edifices. The temple of the God Ridiculus is su- 
 perb in architectural decoration, in that base material, brick, 
 in a way that could not have been surmised possible ; pillar, 
 pilaster, cornice, frieze all as correct in pattern and rich in 
 relief as if they had been cast in a foundery. . 
 
 The valley in which it lies is delicious hills, retiring to 
 great remoteness, giving it feature and loveliness ; and the 
 inexpressibly elegant forms of the Campania's boundary 
 mountains shewing strong in the back ground. The strath 
 is now under a severe, and what must prove an effectual 
 course of drainage : springs gush numerously from the hills 
 on either hand ; and these they are concentrating into a main 
 and active current. These hills are very steep for their 
 
280 ROME. 
 
 height, with here and there a frontlet of naked tufo, or a 
 tiara of low wood ; on one brow a tall and deserted farm- 
 house, whose square top, if " bosomed high" in grove, 
 would give added distinction, and diffuse new trains of 
 thinking, in this exquisite valley. In such a scene I should 
 play foul with my whole temperament and habits if I stop- 
 ped short of in idea floating the surface that lies aback, 
 with a luxuriance of wave conforming to the sinuous course 
 of the boundary swells, and brimful to the base of some of 
 the bolder heights which art would fracture into cliffs, to 
 be re-created in the mirror at their feet. The limpidest wa- 
 ter in abundance breaks forth in rills for the purpose prin- 
 cipally from Egeria's grotto, of which the site is within one 
 of these tufo crags, and the floor of which it were not ne- 
 cessary to violate by my proposed accumulation of the ele- 
 ment. That project would as little sacrifice the vegetable 
 health of the rest-of the valley parterre, as it would dimin- 
 ish any one useful product, by devoting tracts, in the series of 
 heights, to a fringe of undergrowth, or to a grove in mile 
 long sweep of sylvan pomp. The capabilities are all before 
 me ; but it is with the incitement of Tantalus. 
 
 I6th March. Still the galleries of the Vatican museum, 
 open on the afternoons of Sundays and Thursdays, invite 
 us English in shoal. The Romans crowd at this exhibition 
 too. That new branch of it, formed by the present Pope is 
 bating certain few and inimitable master-pieces after all, 
 the principal attraction. It comprehends a great deal that 
 is valuable, and under compact arrangement ; but this, with- 
 out derogation to the glorious garniture of the main collec- 
 tion, disposed in apartments that of themselves claim won- 
 der from their grandeur and proportions. I know no better 
 way of measuring their astonishing extent in suite, than by 
 the fatigue they create on each occasion of pursuing their at 
 once vast and magnificent series : inviariably you leave them 
 with the pain of beaten feet from the single, round. In one 
 
ROME. 281 
 
 termination of these wonderful chambers are those Frescos 
 of Raphael, which many a groupe of English tourists pass 
 by without emotion or notice, but of which a life's term 
 would not supply time for the adequate study. Pity that 
 time and some damp should have impaired them ; and that 
 more window-light cannot be brought in illumination of their 
 dusky general complexion. Still some of them are in mode- 
 rate preservation, the School of Athens, the Conflagration 
 and that marvellous display of multitudes in inimitable 
 grouping, of energy and tumult in the utmost justness of 
 figures and attitudes, the Battle of Maxentius ! 
 
 The oil-paintings of this collection are very few ; but of 
 their number are face to face the St. Jerome of Domeni- 
 chino, and the Transfiguration of Raphael, I confess the 
 former always detains me, and brings me back to it, prefer- 
 ably. I know my own incompetency too well to attempt an 
 apology to myself for, perhaps, my nonsense, when on the 
 subject of that, the very first picture in the world the Trans- 
 figuration I except to the double action. In this I have 
 found supporters. But in my farther exception, that among 
 the figures in the lower field a sort of blank is left, as with 
 the purpose that, from either hand, reference should thence be 
 created to the compartment above which blank is be- 
 yond what a just distribution of the figures, without need of 
 that reference, would warrant, in this I have met no con- 
 current opinion : yet I do not feel disposed to give up my 
 criticism. 
 
 From the museum the rush is to St. Peter's Church, for 
 vesper-service : and there John Bull's family is dispread in 
 all its glory very many hundreds of us, and of both sexes. 
 The choir in that chapel, where service is performed, has 
 prime attraction ; about twelve in number, of whom three qua- 
 lified at all points, and putting their qualifications into dis- 
 tinctest proof. That Chapel we totally occupy. The crowd 
 else of us sweep in all diversities of direction through the. 
 
282 ROME. 
 
 tribune and the lesser naves, and spread over the grand nave, 
 in most corporeal puissance ; while the good-natured at once, 
 and pusillanimous, Italians flit before us, like immaterial es- 
 sences suffer us, as it were, to walk over, and absolutely 
 through them, as though they were thin air ; like the shiv- 
 ering figures within the infernal portal, whose dispersion by 
 dint of his sword was meditated by .SSneas, until instructed 
 that they were bodiless forms. I must do John Bull the 
 justice to say, that on his side no swagger is exhibited or 
 implied : it is but the movement of absolute flesh and blood 
 corporeal presence, not troubling itself with un-embodied 
 shadows. No where is the contrast between the two nations 
 in such forcible display, ludicrous at once and lamentable, 
 as on the floor of this their great Temple, boast and glory 
 though it be of Italy, to which the world beside - can instance 
 nothing similar or second.* 
 
 Again and again I must feel for the absolute inferiority of 
 our St. Paul's, chill and forlorn as though it were a shell left 
 in poor mortar by its builder ; and disconsolate as a lumber 
 room into which have been cast, in haphazard carelessness, 
 the statues which ever and anon obtrude in excrescence or 
 nuisance; while St. Peter's looks, and is, warm with exhi- 
 laration and high-wrought satisfaction its marble surface of 
 floor, its marble pilasters, or linings of the wall in marble : 
 where these strike not, its pictures mightiest efforts of hu- 
 man genuis, given in living (ruth and abiding perpetuity : 
 its dome in its utmost spread, and to its summit height 
 wrought in mosaic picture : then such an entablature and 
 cornice ; and a vaulted ceiling springing from it in luxuriant 
 
 Nor hu this contrast been confined to the present generation. " I know 
 a very sensible and learned Italian, who being desirous to examine the truth 
 of a popular opinion in Italy, that no Englishman fears death prevailed on 
 " himself to attend the execution of the Lords Lovat, Ax. whose heroism indi- 
 " vidually confirmed him in the belief of the English generally being in this 
 " point what his countrymen conceive of us." Sharpe'i Lett en from Italy, 
 fubluhtd $uty ycart ago. 
 
ROME. 283 
 
 ornament wrought in stucco, with gold every where, most 
 chaste in distribution, and interminably large in diffusion. It 
 were impossible to conceive such majesty, unimpaired by 
 such splendor of furnishing that splendor being, in such 
 association, modest sobriety. 
 
 My favorite stand which I have chosen out for myself 
 is near the circumference of the dome, as marked out on the 
 floor, in that south-west part of it between St. Veronica's 
 statue and the angle of the south transept. Hence I com- 
 mand, almost without change of the eye's direction, the 
 larger portion of the dome's interior one arm of the 
 transept the tribune in one half of its extent the mighty 
 cornice the vaulting of the nave in perspective inimitable 
 and indescribable ; the whole length, graceful at once and 
 majestic, from end to end of the stupendous fabric ; guarded 
 in my position by side screens, which adjuncts on the spot 
 supply, in interception of the tribune's termination on one 
 hand, and, on the opposite, of the blaze of those ever exe- 
 crable three tiers of window. I have thus at once all that 
 the structure can exhibit of magnificence, and am saved from 
 the pain of being stared at by its disgrace. 
 
 Still, and with my constant visits to St. Peter's, I feel 
 amply confirmed the remark of an Italian gentleman on my 
 first arrival at Rome, that, visit it as often as I might, 
 I should at each visit find something to admire, that, at each 
 and every former survey, had escaped my remark. Farther ; 
 the vastness of its dimensions is as uncognizable by my fa- 
 culties as ever. First, the baldachino, or canopy over the 
 high altar, in bronze of which the Pantheon was despoiled 
 is of a beauty and delicacy that they eye delights in, as it 
 would in some small and elegant ornament : yet I am una- 
 ble to come at any just information as to its height : the pre- 
 valent statement gives it an altitude, to its summit orna- 
 ment, of 11 65 palms which at 8f inches of our foot, is 
 about 85| feet a close approach to the elevation of the 
 
284 ROME. 
 
 Farnese Palace, the most massive in Rome, a work of Mi- 
 chael Angelo. I can well believe this statement : for small 
 and uncommandiogly elegant as it shews in reference to the 
 dome, beneath whose centre it stands, it refuses not to com- 
 pare itself in loftiness with the entablature, 95 feet in eleva- 
 tion from which springs the vaulted cieling of the nave, 
 the pitch of that ceiling being 152 feet from the floor ! 
 
 I have before noticed that no two measurements of this 
 structure go near to each other : still, I go on from time to 
 time to puzzle and lose myself over its Serbonian but 
 that it is marble spread of area, in vain measuring of 
 its parts. To my surprise I frequently detect dispari- 
 ties between portions which ought to have been in exact 
 correspondence, bnt of which the variance must be re- 
 ferred to changes in the plan by successive architects. 
 These discrepancies the eye does not detect being here a 
 most puny minister to our perceptions of exactness : and it 
 is as little able even after long habitude to master the 
 matter-of-fact magnitude of every portion of the structure, as 
 at first. For instance, each of the four buttresses which 
 support the dome is, with exception of the interior coin, that 
 is rounded in, a mass of 68 feet on every face : three good 
 dwelling-houses, in a fair street in London, could stand on a 
 front of 68 feet.* Of those buttresses which, ranging with 
 
 * In point of fact, a church, a convent, and their appurtenances stand in 
 Rome on a spot of these dimensions : I defend not the whimsy : it was the 
 madly fantastic Borromini's. A friend, in my presence, took the trouble to verify 
 the measurement of this church and convent, and found it to tally with mine of 
 the single buttress of St. Peter's. I subjoin Vasi's account of Borromini's 
 building : 
 
 " This church of St. Charles was built in 1640, after the design of Borromini, 
 " who has constructed a church and appurtenant dwelling house on a space of 
 " the same extent occupied by one of the buttresses of the cupola of St. Peter's. 
 " The facade is decorated by two orders of columns ; and the interior is sup- 
 " ported by sixteen columns. The court of the dwelling attached is also 
 " remarkable, inasmuch, as notwithstanding its small size, it is decorated by 
 two porticos, one over the other, supported by twenty-four columns." 
 
ROME. 285 
 
 it, enclose on either hand the grand nave, the centre perfo- 
 rated all along gives continuity to the lesser naves, and to 
 such a breadth, that I have recorded my repinings that their 
 arcade's height is not suffered to reach to the summit of the 
 garret chamber, which their vaulting includes. Still, despite 
 this enormous bulk, which the eye and the mind cannot dis- 
 cipline themselves into crediting, all is moderation and con- 
 summate elegance. 
 
 St. Patrick's Day. An attempt has been made to get up 
 a festive dinner in solemnization of St. Patrick's day : but 
 its concoction was in Ihe same spirit which recently also 
 projected at Rome an English club a heavy castle built to 
 last out the Roman ten week's season in which ONE black 
 bean was to exclude, and the admission fee was fifty pounds 
 in inexpressible fitness of foolish match the one provision 
 to the other. John Bull delights to curvet in whimsies : the 
 plan has dropped, though the vagary of section in manner 
 and according to the property of the polypus of London 
 high-fashion's Freemason association, to be produced cut 
 and dry at Rome, is perhaps but adjourned for discussion, 
 or adoption, by some future winter's flight of Pococuranti. 
 
 Needs not then to say that a St. Patrick's dinner, got up 
 after this fashion, must have failed. All that is Hibernian in 
 our Irish blithe nature must hold in loathing spleen striving 
 by fresh child's whimsy to get free from self persecution, 
 and sulk in toil of creating for itself materials of sociality. 
 This exhibition was private enough to let its punishment of 
 a most dull afternoon remain within its own undisturbed 
 keeping ; and it was just public enough to prevent a far 
 more rational solemnization from being had. One frag- 
 ment of the extensive number who had wished for a na- 
 tional gathering (in no shape excluding English or Scots) 
 grouped in festivity and pleasantry genuinely Irish : whether 
 from accident or from the miserable prerogative of age, the 
 work of chairmanship devolved on me. I know we did our 
 
286 ROME. 
 
 duty of best wishes to our native Island, and to our world 
 of home recollections : I know we passed on the divan 
 which assumed to lead, and was undeserving of either fol- 
 lower or associate in the evening's enjoyment, the compas- 
 sionate wish of a " better way of thinking :" I know we had 
 hilarity, and anecdote, and intercommunication of facts and 
 of knowledge expressed with eloquence : and writing this 
 the day following, I trust never to forget my St. Patrick's 
 day spent at Rome, and will indulge a hope, and a belief, 
 that not an individual of my associates in its conviviality but 
 will for life keep in fresh memory the hilarity and genially 
 gamesome gaiety they enjoyed, in the company of each other 
 and of their chairman. 
 
 19th March. Was yesterday to make proof of the im- 
 mensity of St. Peter's Church over a district of it till then 
 unseen by me, on its roof, thence in round up between 
 the exterior and interior walls which compose the fabrick of 
 the cupola (that from out to out is 22 feet thick ;) thence 
 again to within the ball, from which I have had my first clear 
 view of the Mediterranean. On the roof, it is far more than 
 possible to go astray and be lost in the complexity of parts 
 and immeasurably spread extension where " cupolas," mi- 
 nor, but noble ones, " form streets." 
 
 This day, the Vatican library the great room of which 
 is unapproachably out of competition with any other, devoted 
 to a similar purpose ; such is its lightness, its largeness, 
 its cheerfulness, its fancifulness, and redundant floridness, 
 as well as gracefulness, of pictured ornament. Then the 
 distribution of the books in a way that mocks the cumbrous 
 scaffolding of our usual shelving the cases down the centre 
 of this saloon, that a double debt contrived to pay are at 
 once capacious repositories and spacious tables, in style of 
 construction and of shape elegant, in colour and finishing 
 exquisite, their arrangement over the floor simple, and giv- 
 ing a rich finishing to its breadth of forty-nine feet ; their 
 
ROME. 287 
 
 contents come-at-able in front and in rere, and without a 
 ladder, and each volume secured from dust by a closed front. 
 What nests of gloom, compared with this, are the Bodleian 
 or the Grand Paris library. 
 
 I must not trust myself with the shew curiosities, of what- 
 ever kind, in the Vatican library, farther than the plan I have 
 seen in it for the fa$ade of St. Peter's church, as designed 
 by Michael Angelo, so miserably superseded by a subse- 
 quent practitioner in masonry and marble. It is severely 
 noble ; simple from the fewness of its parts, but with a 
 dignity so rare in practical imitation on par with the por- 
 tico of the Pantheon, and, I cannot but feel, with all its 
 portico's impressive sublimity, even though unaided by the 
 decidedly grand station which, in front of St. Peter's, and 
 on that amphitheatric elevation, it would have enjoyed. 
 Scarcely less loss than this was the protraction, by the 
 same plodding supplanter of Michael Angelo, of the nave, 
 which had been designed to accord with the figure of the 
 Grecian cross, of which the four limbs approach to equality 
 of dimensions, of whose grandeur we have example here 
 in the church of St. Mary of the Angels, where Michael 
 Angelo had the fortune to complete the construction. Now, 
 all that is gained by the prolongation of St. Peter's nave, is 
 mathematical extension of feet and inches, without one add- 
 ed particle of sublime emotion thence excited. To give 
 light to this immeasurable unmeaningness of nave the three 
 stories of window lights, substantial and cardinal abomi- 
 nation ! became a needful make-shift. So far as to the in- 
 terior : and in respect to without, the dome, to which such 
 sacrifices had been made, and which is worth more than 
 all that was given up for it, is itself sacrificed, absolutely 
 walled up from sight. 
 
 The engraved views we every where have of it, are to the 
 last shred of them, false : so far onward is the nave protru- 
 ded, and so stupidly climbs into air the fa9ade, usurper on 
 
288 ROME. 
 
 Michael Angelo's design, that the dome appears but in a 
 third or at most a half of its dimensions, its uppermost por- 
 tion solely even at the farthest distance the Place in front, 
 a measured quarter of a mile gives it to exhibition. How 
 different a fate from that of our St. Paul's, as seen from Black- 
 friars' bridge, and of which the majesty is absolute from the 
 spot, so close under it, in St. Paul's churchyard, to right or 
 left from Ludgate Hill ! 
 
 20th March. Concluded the forenoon with that surpassing 
 chamber in the Capitoline Museum, which possesses the best 
 Juno I have seen, according to my idea of her attributes 
 the Venus from the bath the dying Gladiator! these par- 
 ticularized out of seventeen, which that small apartment con- 
 tains: and that branch of this museum which has to me the 
 charm of Romance, exhibiting relics of the ancient time, in liv- 
 ing illustration of the acts and deeds of that time, and stirring 
 fancy's dreamings the Wolf struck with lightning, the scar 
 of which is within the hinder thigh* the bronze geese, the 
 Consular Fasti : even the paintings on stone ; the bust, by 
 himself, of Michael Angelo ; to descend thus in sketch of the 
 character of these apartments, through the mention of one or 
 other item of their contents : but it is not descending when I 
 mention the name of Michael Angelo. 
 
 Within this suite of apartments is the Senate-room : for 
 such a room, and with such a designation, exists in the Capitol^ 
 
 * " Tactus est el lain illc, qui hnnc urbem condidit, Romulus, quern iiiauratum 
 ' in Capitolio parvuni et lactantem uberibus lupinis inhiantem fuisse meminis- 
 " tis." Cicero in Catal. Orat. 3. The infants are, accordingly with this apos- 
 trophe, and declaredly, of modern work. One writer has been afraid that liu 
 fancy should run away with him that the thing was too good to be true : he 
 therefore would not believe his eye as to the genuineness of this tear. I will 
 trust my eyes and my understanding, fortified by the judgment of Foryth 
 though I should at the same time delight my fancy. " No object in Rome ap- 
 " pea red to me so venerable a* this Wolf. The Etruscan stiffness of the figure 
 " evinces a high antiquity ; its scathed leg proves it to have been the Matue 
 " which was ancient at the death of Cswar ; and it still retains some streaks of 
 " of the gilding which Cicero remarked on it." 
 
ROME. 289 
 
 with its long table : the dignitaries by whom it is graced 
 as is declared to me with bocca Romana, magnificently 
 open mouth, as though proclaiming the speaker's self-im- 
 portance are not less than FOUR ; of whom one is perma- 
 nent grand officer, and, in his sole person, Senate ; the other 
 three being his assessors, chosen every six months from the 
 Roman nobles mere robe, wig aud title, the four. In 
 goodly keeping with themselves is their chapel of devotion : 
 among its decorations the Four Evangelists : but other fool - 
 cries of painting, sycophant of Popish idolatry, all around 
 and specially and monstrously so on the centre of the ceil- 
 ing were so intolerable, from the contrast of past recollec- 
 tions, that I was relieved from fevered swimming of the 
 head when I had achieved an escape into open air. 
 
 21st March. In the Sistine Chapel which is in the Vatican 
 the extraordinary frescos of the ceiling, and the still more 
 wonderful surface of fresco occupying that wall to which 
 the altar is attached : the first are in one, or other, of numer- 
 ous compartments, each of which is explained to you to con- 
 vey, in consecutive picture, the story of the Creation : there 
 is, besides, a different set of figures, that you are to take, each 
 as ornament for the angle or lunette it respectively occu- 
 pies. Still, such figures, and such positions as they are thrown 
 into, could have proceeded only from Michael Angelo. 
 These aloft over the floor. The main piece, and which meets 
 you in face, is the Last Judgment enormous in certain of 
 its extravagances, yet exciting, and justifying all your 
 amazement, from its seeking and securing effect through an 
 almost interminable detail, and from its imparting to the 
 entire, as one composition, one master interest giving you 
 to know that of the Sublime the distinctive term in expres- 
 sion is the " Terrible." 
 
 It was impossible on seeing this effusion of a genius so 
 unique, blurred with the smoke, as it has palpably been 
 and must be, of the torches used at service of the altar di- 
 
 u 
 
29O ROMK. 
 
 rectly under it, as well as mouldered under many a succes- 
 sive generation's damp, to repress the feeling, ardent to 
 enthusiasm, that our Sovereign, conspicuous for his love of 
 the arts, and illustrious for his patronage of all that can tend 
 to his country's glory, should, by special interference, obtain a 
 fac-simile in oil as close as the most gifted son of genius 
 in our day could create, of this picture of the Last Judgment 
 and of the accompanying designs of the ceiling, for portrai- 
 ture of a hall of corresponding dimensions if not built TO 
 BE BUILT express, at home : and similarly of the Battle of 
 Maxentius and the other almost super-human frescos, in 
 another style, of Raphael : thus rescuing though in copy, 
 yet in faithfulest and most masterly copy, the productions 
 of two such wonders of the human race, from the eventual 
 ruin to which they are consigned, and perpetuating them to 
 unborn ages ; identifying to those ages the glory personally 
 of our Monarch, and that of the age which, with Augustan 
 magnificence, asserted the grandeur of our empire flour- 
 ishing not more in arms than in knowledge and the arts. 
 
 In thus presumingto speak of my Sovereign, the standing 
 and ugly impediment intrudes of the wherewithal, his muni- 
 ficent patronage of the arts cramped by ccconomy, in a rage 
 that is become actual vice.* Real oeconomy is true wis- 
 dom, and parent often of grand enterprise, by furnishing the 
 means : but penny wisdom is puny folly a burlesque on 
 common sense. 
 
 22d March. The Villa Albani : its elevation unique in 
 beauty as a rural palace ; its interior, with the exception 
 of one delightful suite of rooms a tissue of closets lum- 
 bered with works of art, a proportion of which are valu- 
 able, but which, as a collection, disappointed me: it is 
 
 \ici-Mimlf grateful of which at the time of writing the nbovo, no omen 
 could b conl rued into promise, nor wat augur found o sanguine ns to be ou 
 lix.k-oul Tor the prewgc- MOM attend* u-. March I s ' I 
 
ROME. 291 
 
 however, a replenishment, and a laudable one, after a 
 general sweep of the French. 
 
 On the exterior of Rome, in a counter direction, I have 
 this day been able to visit a villa in quite another style the 
 Doria Pamphili of which the Gardens are the attraction. 
 They are a capital specimen of Italian ground decoration, 
 the extent large, the walks spacious, the shrubbery hed- 
 ges from the dignity of the walks not cumbrous, nor 
 even very formal, though of close and lofty growth : per- 
 haps the open groves of stone pine rather melancholy ; in 
 cast like what might be produced by a similar disposal of 
 Scotch Firs, to whose Kilmarnock bonnet, however, the 
 high umbrella-spread of the Italian Pine is decidedly to be 
 preferred. But the water works please me most. They have 
 at command the whole exuberance of the Pauline aqueduct, 
 but do not wanton in their wealth : there is a water-organ, 
 against which I am not wise enough to except as a toy ; for 
 I conceited its notes to be liquidly sweet. I admit that, on 
 entering or quitting the little edifice in which it performs, 
 you are liable to the practical joke of being spewed over 
 with the water which issues from the floor, that is in open 
 work, like the cover of a warming-pan. The best fancy of 
 the place is the noble canal which, by some magical ma- 
 nagement, has, in spite of its right-lined margins, the air of 
 a river. I can only explain this effect by qualifying my epi- 
 thet of right-line, since the ground lies aslope, which acts 
 on the eye in correction of the undeviating onward course of 
 the water : and I say course, for through its channel a bold 
 current is propelled, which, in the distance above, is seen 
 shooting in the vehemence of a beautiful cascade. Arrived 
 at that cascade, you find yourself in an amphitheatre, with 
 fountains distributed around, and in their centre, a master 
 one, exquisitely fine. I say nothing of the statues and 
 minor decorations of this amphitheatre ; within which 
 reigns such variety, such simplicity, such elegance, 
 
292 ROME. 
 
 such effect. Seated here, with redundant torrent of water, 
 sporting in ways of which 1 would abate nought in them of 
 the fantastic, in favor of the more natural, with this fine 
 canal before me with the verdure and serenity of nature 
 around, I fear no imputation of frivolity, while I envy not 
 the grandest displays of water-magnificence within the city, 
 not even the Navona, or the TrevL 
 
SECTION XV. 
 
 Palm Sunday. Attended before nine at the solemn ser- 
 vice in the Pope's Quirinal Chapel. His age and the infir- 
 mities of it preclude to us English, agape for shows, the 
 effect which his personal dignity would impart. Twenty- 
 eight Cardinals present, who changed, in our presence, their 
 splendid, gold-embroidered, shorter robes, for plain long 
 purple ones : to support and give theatrical spread to these, 
 at each change of the wearer's position, was the province 
 of a sub-dignitary attached to each. The blessing of the 
 Palm was an uninteresting ceremony : having been depo- 
 sited near the altar in bundles, a single palm was delivered 
 thence, by the Cardinal officiating for the Pope, to his brethren 
 respectively, each of whom in succession came forth to receive 
 it in protracted monotony of reverences and other dumb or 
 muttered show. After this followed, with more summary 
 civilities, a distribution of olive boughs to the clergy of lower 
 degree, and to the train-bearers. I see also olive in com- 
 mon wear in the streets, as yew is with Roman Catholics in 
 Ireland. The march of all this body of Cardinals and train- 
 bearers and clergy, thus bearing their branches out of the 
 Chapel, in procession vilely mimic of tha.t of which it pur- 
 ports to be commemorative and their similar march back 
 again into it, where all resumed their seats and heard mass, 
 was a dull exhibition, and excites no high idea of the Holy 
 Week, of which it is the commencing shew. 
 
294 ROME. 
 
 There is, however, a display of preparation for this week, 
 quite amazing, in the throng of recently arrived strangers of 
 all conditions, and, as it were, from all countries. Of ul- 
 traraontanes the English far outnumber all the rest put toge- 
 ther : but even these are very numerous. The concourse of the 
 Italians is equally astonishing ; especially so the some thou- 
 sands of well, and shewily dressed, peasants who crowd in, 
 for the double purpose of devotion at this season of highest 
 solemnities, and of bringing to the City the butter, hams, 
 bacon, all the surplus produce of their farms that, through 
 the year, they have created and accumulated for sale. Of 
 far other guise, and in something like equal throng, are the 
 pilgrims, with staff and cockade of cockle ; pitiable at once 
 and whimsical in their equipments as well as their bearing, 
 their languid, worn down condition, after a march from the 
 most distant provinces, and the object by which they are so 
 solemnly misguided. 
 
 25th March. Having heard, rather late, of an English 
 horse race, to take place about two miles off, I proceeded 
 thither with the exclusive purpose of studying the Italian 
 concourse which such an exhibition was sure to draw toge- 
 ther : was after the time : from an eminence over the 
 Anio, I had the view of a vast multitude, whose break-up 
 and return, (had I awaited it,) must have been suffoca- 
 tion to me from dust March dust, as with us in clouds, 
 even where was no crowd. I have, however, had the de- 
 tails minutely stated to me. 
 
 The plain, occupied for the occasion, is a vast field per- 
 haps four score acres of rich and rather moist soil, which I 
 had traversed a few days back, in exploring the banks of 
 the Anio, and all the purlieus leading to the hillock, that 
 Antiquarians protest to you is the veritable Mons Sacer, a 
 conical eminence so small that it might be covered by a 
 club of ringleaders, instead of sufficing for the posse of the 
 Roman population. To part at least of the eminences which 
 
ROME. 295 
 
 range thence and, equally with it, overlook the plain in ques- 
 tion, I am induced to extend the plebeian encampment. 
 When first I saw this field, it was occupied by large droves 
 of cattle grazing on its after-grass, to which this multitude 
 of persons, dismounted, mounted, and in carriages, must be 
 destruction to say nothing of the coming growth. Pos- 
 session of the field was, however, taken without leave asked 
 or civility of any kind passed on the owner, who, resent, 
 ing a similar unceremonious entry, recently made on his pre- 
 mises, had gone to some pains in making up fences and put- 
 ting up a gate. That gate was this day taken down ; and 
 how the owner will conduct himself, I shall be curious to 
 learn.* 
 
 The behaviour on the ground, thus made a race-common 
 by our equestrian heroes, was equally English. The course 
 was cleared of all the Italians, whether in crowd or single strag- 
 glers, by smack of whip and suitable threat of thong. The 
 Italians have complained that the demonstration of the lash 
 was equivalent in insult to an actual stripe ; this in subse- 
 quent communication : and it having been stated to them 
 that this jockey procedure was of pure English custom, 
 that plea has with them satisfied all scruple. Beyond this, 
 and more strange than all the range of ambassador's car- 
 riages which at Rome are specially absolved from regula- 
 tion, and free to move in whatever line, and halt in what- 
 ever spot they will had taken up a position near the win- 
 ning post, and best adapted to view the race. From this 
 position they were driven without any ceremony, more than 
 
 * The owner, like all the great undertakers of land in the Campagna di Ro- 
 ma, a very rich man resident in the city contented himself with heavy 
 grumbling, particularly at Torlonia's the banker we English are unfortunately 
 compelled to nse of his loss, which he estimated, and in my judgment very 
 moderately, at fifty Louis. He added that the loss was no annoyance compared 
 with the rudeness which seized on his ground in this uncomplimentary style. 
 Law proceedings for the punishment of the outrage, or to obtain compensation 
 be altogether forebore. 
 
296 ROME. 
 
 was used to the very Italian throng, by the same jockey 
 force of these despot sons of liberty. Other strain of 
 thought than what stirred in Italian breasts must have min- 
 gled in the minds of the ambassadors : good temper and 
 good humour largely influenced both. 
 
 Wednesday. A remnant of Dioclesian's Baths had sug- 
 gested what remains of ancient wall in their vicinity largely 
 confirm that however these walls may have been clothed in 
 marble, (to say nothing of alabaster or jasper,) much must 
 have remained in proof that the conversion of Rome by 
 Augustus, from brick to marble, was rather a sweeping 
 boast. I admit the destruction by fires, to which the city 
 was submitted, not in the instance of Nero's fire alone, 
 but in various others of the Imperial times, of terrible vora- 
 city though not so notorious : their effect was not merely 
 the destruction, largely, of Augustus's substitutions of splen- 
 did architecture for sober building, but the almost banish- 
 ment, under the later Ccesars, of the memorials of republican 
 Rome that now are tantamount to non-existent. Of course, 
 much of the work of re-construction hastily made, and in a 
 baser age than Augustus's, must have been in meaner and 
 " lateritial" material. 
 
 To-day I have had ample proof that, even of this material, 
 noblest masses may have been constructed, at least when 
 converted into ruins. I speak of Caracalla's Baths, a treat 
 in the picturesque, such as I have often and vainly hungered 
 for in this city. Always the Colisseum quite out of ques- 
 tion, these are the finest ruins of Rome that exist disdaining 
 comparison with the lubbard heaviness of the Palatine 
 Mount, strut as it may when vamped up into picture with 
 intent to delusion and sale. Here is real grandeur, even in 
 destruction : three groupes particularly bold ; a detached 
 ruin especially imposing: the solidity of the fractured walls, 
 their loftiness, the airy lightness of the arches, the portions 
 of vaulted roofs which retain their stations on high, the vari- 
 
ROME. 297 
 
 ous combinations that, still as the point of view they form 
 is shifted, are magnificent at once and picturesque.* 
 
 At Four, in the Sistine Chapel, with the sublime, but, 
 till towards its close, rather heavy music of the Miserere. 
 The throng to obtain admission was immense, and danger- 
 ously so ; and the the ingress scandalously mismanaged. 
 In the anti-room, the press was in the first instance as it 
 were on purpose, though but through the blockheadism of 
 the Swiss Guards lured home to the entrance folding doors, 
 by these lubbers opening them from within for a few inches 
 and then closing them again. When they were next opened, 
 these savages, in the ancient costume of their country (our 
 Yeomen of the Royal Guard are somewhat like them in 
 dress and appointments) with their halberts pushed back 
 the foremost, and threatened, or for what I can say, struck 
 their feet with the heavily ferrated shafts of their wea- 
 pon. These front persons were thrown on those behind, 
 and the whole anti-room and the several hundreds it con- 
 tained, of both sexes, were in confusion. The Hibernian 
 blood boiled in my veins, and rose in fool-hardy resist- 
 ance to conduct like this : and though in the third rank be- 
 hind, I wrought onward, and to a brute who continued to 
 belabour with his pike, declared that as an Englishman such 
 treatment I must not suffer : in one way or other I was 
 about the sixth person who obtained entrance. But I saw 
 three gentlemen knocked down by these ruffians in office ; 
 and a British Lieutenant General in full uniform received, 
 very near me, a cut on the forehead from a halbert. 
 
 * Vasi's guide-book says : ',* We may judge of the quondam magnificence 
 ' of these baths by tie precious marbles that have been found on their site 
 ' the Torso del Belvedere, and the two basalt urns in the Vatican : the 
 ' celebrated Hercules of Glycon, the Flora, the groupe known under the 
 ' name of the Farnese Bull, and other rarities transported in the first instance 
 ' to the Farnese Palace, and thence to Naples, where they now are." All 
 this is but in average of the produce gleaned from numerous tracts of rain, 
 though mouldered into shapelessness, within Rome's purlieus. 
 
298 ROME. 
 
 Thursday morning. Avoiding the weariness of a long 
 function, as it is called, or service, commencing at nine in 
 the Sistine Chapel I was one of a vast concourse who were 
 in anxiety with tickets or without them detained without 
 doors till towards noon, to see the ceremony of washing the 
 pilgrims' feet performed, by a Cardinal officiating in the 
 Pope's absence. I must say that the courtesy of the Ro- 
 man soldiery on duty here was as perfect as their inflexibil- 
 ity, and in fine contrast to the atrocities of the barbarian 
 mercenaries whom I have commemorated.* Admittance 
 once had, the aparment was on the instant compactly close 
 filled. The pilgrims were there ranged on a bench close to the 
 wall, raised to a convenient height from the floor : they were 
 clothed in white vestments of uniform make. Thenapkins,with 
 basins and ewer, were quite enough to satisfy my curiosity, 
 without staying to see the absolute pouring out on each 
 man's foot of a half spoonful of water, and the pro-forma appli- 
 cation to the skin, so wetted, of a cloth, the more so that 
 by timely retiring by the door I had entered, and taking a 
 corridore to the right, of which 1 had received previous inti- 
 mation, I managed to get almost first, and to take my station, 
 in the room where the same pilgrims were to dine, with the 
 menial attendance on them of Cardinals and other high 
 clergy. This room also was of ample length : along one 
 side of it was placed the table, with a ballustrade in its 
 front and at its either end : against the opposite wall were 
 ranged benches, in tier above tier, for the accommodation 
 
 . At a ceremony Rome time ago, to which I wished for admission, without 
 having taken the precaution of procuring a ticket, I offered silver to a sentinel, 
 as supposing such an unsoldierly crowd as the Pope'* troops might be in the 
 permitted habit of taking fees like domestic servants : I shall never forget the 
 absolutely gentleman-like disdain with which my proffer was rejected by this 
 private : it had in it much of compassion as well as disapprobation. It is right 
 to notice that a military uniform is, in itself, a passport to the wearer as au- 
 thentic at any ticket of admission to whatever public ceremony. 
 
ROME. 299 
 
 of the ladies : the centre and one end of the room were 
 resigned to other ladies not so fortunate, and to gentlemen. 
 By the other termination of the room, paled off likewise, 
 was the passage for the pilgrims after the ceremony 
 of washing for the Cardinals and other persons of high 
 distinction, and, finally, for the different courses and re- 
 moves of the dinner. In the angle of two ballustrades 
 I had fixed myself, when a party of Swiss halberdiers were 
 marched in, and distributed through the room one of them 
 close to me. Less from a sense of propriety than from that 
 constitutional shyness which is my tyrant, I applied to him 
 to know if it was permitted to a stranger to remain where 
 I stood : to my horror I discovered that the fellow was ig- 
 norant of Italian, as I knew not a word of his German : 
 I say to my horror ; for as there was no medium of commu- 
 nication between us, I felt as if at the mercy of a machine, 
 and as in danger of being drawn in by the play of a wheel's 
 pinion, to the loss of a limb or the smash of bones, on some, 
 to me, unknown stop to its movement being withdrawn. 1 
 repaired, however, to an Italian domestic in livery, on duty 
 at the gangway, from whom I ascertained that my position was 
 altogether correct. Shortly after, some persons, coming 
 up, prevailed in their own way on this gross savage to lay 
 his hand on me, to induce my removal backward, to the loss 
 of my station's advantages. This I could not brook : and 
 if I could not make him comprehend by voice, which how- 
 ever I did not spare, I made him do so by counter-manual 
 action, holding myself ready, had he dared to repeat his 
 aggression, to cross over forthwith and claim the personal 
 interposition of Cardinal Gonsalvi, the highly respectable 
 Papal Prime Minister, who was back and forward, into and 
 out of the room, unwearied in superintending the detail of 
 the arrangments, and most courteous in doing all the honors. 
 My own motion however, had succeeded ; and the fellow 
 thenceforward kept his position, statue-like enough. 
 
300 
 
 ROME. 
 
 By the time the pilgrims had filed in and were seated 
 thirteen of them all on the same side of the table, and 
 facing the assemblage, we had as thick a crowd as had been 
 in the apartment we had left. The dinner was large, sub- 
 stantial, various, and comfortable: the subjects of it ate 
 well and drank as well, pocketing, in bags furnished to 
 them for the purpose, what was left that suited carrying 
 away. The repast lasted about forty minutes, nothing being 
 hurried : the attentions of several Cardinals were personal, 
 as well as of certain persons who appeared to be officers of 
 the household, besides upper servants : of every individual 
 of all these, (and they all passed most repeatedly by me, 
 and almost in contact, in going for removes and returning) 
 the demeanour was respectful to the guests, and without a 
 spark of grimace or hypocritical semblance, which I was on 
 the look-out to detect. In fact, the ceremony was to them a 
 strictly religious one ; and of observances -of one kind or 
 other is, by far too much, the sum of their religious duties 
 made up.* During about half the time of dinner, a priest, 
 standing at one end of the table, read slowly aloud a very 
 long passage from one of the Gospels, connected with the 
 subject of the Last Supper not in Latin, but in vernacular 
 Italian. 
 
 Six foreign ambassadors attended in that compartment of 
 the room towards its termination, and enfilading the long 
 dinner-table : of one half of these personages the presence 
 was not imposing in any way : but I own my delight at seeing 
 such a specimen left of ancient French noblesse as the Due 
 de Montmorency, premier Christian Baron, and ambassador 
 from the eldest son of the Church in all points of tall and 
 
 * At certain other places in Rome in Holy Week, particularly at the Church 
 of the Pellegrini, the feet of that description of foundered pilgrims, then <> 
 ronspicuously numerous are honestly and bona fide waihed by Roman nobles | 
 who also minister to their comfort* by a charitable repast. 
 
ROME. 301 
 
 fine person of countenance, air, intelligence and deport- 
 ment, such as a poet would delineate as fitting representative 
 of passed Gallic chivalry depurated, as I will hope, from 
 its impurities. 
 
 This is a week of moonlight : I have not failed, more than 
 in a preceding month, to pay obeisance to the Colisseum 
 under its influence. 1 suspect many of my countrymen, even 
 of those who know enough of Rome to be able to select the 
 best approach that by the Piazza Trajana and the Pantani 
 Arch encounter its broad extension athwart the desolation 
 of the Forum, instead of enjoying it from the street where 
 it discloses itself gradually into its utmost dimensions, and 
 from that quarter that is loftiest and where also the moon 
 throws the deepest shadow. Here, too, in approach, the 
 hills to the right the Aventine Mount particularly Constan- 
 tine's Arch and other noble objects strike with peculiar 
 force. Tuesday night, the moon, not being in its brightest 
 from cloud, and not being yet full, the imperfect light was 
 magnificent, and specially in that part on the right of the 
 grand exit. The " lux maligna " shed a beneficial influence 
 on the loftiest interior of the broken structure, and on its 
 various fragments, for into such, under this darksome illu- 
 mination, its members exquisitely resolved themselves. 
 Last night the moon was full : and I rounded the outside 
 which seemed uplifted to the zenith of the sky, and ex- 
 plored the interior, in three several visits, under aspects far 
 more numerous from the changefulness of the atmosphere, 
 and the changed position of the luminary. This night after 
 attendance at another Miserere, with the same bustle but 
 less actual mischief; and after fruitlessly trying to bring 
 myself to admire as the book-makers do, and I believe 
 most spectators the effect of the immense cross suspended 
 under the dome of St. Peter's, and most closely studded 
 with brilliant lights, what would pass for a cross of 
 glowing flame ; in which effect as respects myself, and 
 
302 ROME 
 
 equally in its result of light and shade on the structure's inte- 
 rior, that owes to the exclusive agency of that device its 
 illumination throughout, I confess myself disappointed : I 
 sought compensation by repeating my studies at the Colis- 
 seum. " Vails not to say" into how many most noble 
 combinations I saw it cast, of form and fracture. That 
 which remains with me most is when, with the interior of the 
 grand entrance for the point of view, with the moon bright, 
 not high its beams shaded by the hand from striking on 
 the eye the opposite extremity was in obscurity, the hither 
 parts so emerging from black into light that the side which 
 retains its original height was clothed in soft silver ; while 
 of the lower and more ruinous portion, (that on the right 
 breaking into two masses,) the illumination was of great irre- 
 gularity. In another disposition of the lustre, the light was 
 exquisitely thrown across the structure, so that not all the 
 lofty part was illuminated, and not all the lower part dark. 
 I am convinced that the light I coveted most that from a 
 moon low in the horizon, but effulgent would produce re- 
 sults more curious than beautiful, affording a violent and un- 
 pleasing contrast : and whatever might be the case with the 
 portion in black, that thrown into brilliancy would shew as 
 under fitfulness of the moon's radiance I have now and again 
 beheld the countless broken chambers in disordered retro- 
 cession, and range most high aloft above range in aghast- 
 liness worse, as the thought frequently struck me, than that 
 of a skeleton illuminated by a taper. Skeleton the mighty 
 pile is, in reference not merely to its present desolation, 
 but its first construction, which was at cost of scores of 
 thousands -of Jewish captives, the children of that identical 
 generation whose almost preternatural wickedness was proof 
 against repeated admonition, blind to instruction, and har- 
 dened against all warning ; and who, through the agency of 
 him that was the " Delight of Mankind " for his clemency 
 to the world beside, were here made hewers and builders, 
 
ROME. 303 
 
 and, in worse than Egyptian slavery (for here all hope was 
 spent) poured out their lives in erecting this stupendous pile, 
 the wonder of all subsequent ages, and the especial monument 
 of their nation's guilt and punishment. Other recollections 
 crowd too the population of Rome in all its gradations of 
 rank pulses that have long ceased to beat, and heads to 
 ache ! whom I could almost see tiered around me, row 
 above row, to the topmost round of an oval 620 feet by 513 
 in a circumference of 1796 feet, and to a height of 161 above 
 the area in which the poor actors strove, ardent in their 
 vocation, and all alive to approve themselves.* Fourteen 
 Popish altars with their appendages of picture, and effigy, 
 and legend inscription, and with their miserable realities in 
 horrible discrepancy break in and put to the route feelings 
 of even this potent excitement. 
 
 In farewell to the Colisseum, let me say, that I am no 
 exclusive votary of moonlight embellishment of ruins. Ever 
 during my stay at Rome it has been, in honest alternation 
 with St. Peter's, my lounge of whatever I could carve out 
 of almost each and every day's contemplation and amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 Good Friday. The Miserere this day finally, at half an 
 
 * " The Colisseum was in all its glory in the reign of the Emperor Probus ; 
 and the 700 wild beasts and the 600 gladiators, which he exhibited in it, 
 could not occupy one-twelfth of its area. It may not be exaggeration there- 
 fore, (as Suetonius says,) that Titus shewed the Roman people 5,000 wild 
 beasts in one day ; or that Probus exhibited, una missione, 4,000 ostriches, 
 boars, ibexes, wild sheep and other granivorous animals, amidst a forest which 
 had been transplanted into the amphitheatre." 
 
 I take this at second hand from Mr. Hobhouse, p. 265. I recoil from the 
 direct study of the beastly details of Suetonius and his brother chroniclers of 
 the maniac disports of the imperial monsters, as I detest the perusal of the New- 
 gate Calendar : indeed this latter course of reading is more sufferable, as exhi- 
 biting more, by comparison, puny atrocities. 
 
 Yet many a redeeming trace is to be met, even in Suetonius, of humanity ; 
 such as that in Vespasian, of predilection to the last for the farm-house near 
 Reate where he was born , and to which ne quid oculorum consuetudini depe- 
 riret he would never permit any alteration. 
 
304 ROME. 
 
 hour earlier, viz. half-past three : but I have excused my- 
 self from the insufferable oppression of crowd, at cost of 
 which I must have enjoyed this most noble music to say 
 nothing of the liability to personal injury, or at least high 
 probability of quarrel. Instances are in hourly detail of the 
 brutalities of these Swiss halberdiers, who seem to have 
 brought here the worst grossness of their own country, and 
 to have left at home the substance, as well as shew if that 
 they had ever put on of humanity. One gentleman this 
 afternoon returning into the crowd as it dispersed after the 
 service, in order to escort out his wife, who had been accom- 
 modated in a quarter where the benches are reserved exclu- 
 sively for ladies was attacked by one of these savages in 
 their usual bull-dog manner. The gentleman is, to a most 
 remarkable degree, of courteous, quiet disposition ; but, 
 with Hibernian spirit when excited he found himself en- 
 gaged with his antagonist to mutual collaring, the conse- 
 quences of which, as the assailant was armed and had the 
 authority of office, might have been abundantly serious, but 
 for theinterference of one of his countrymen in military 
 uniform to the authority of which the bully paid sulky sub- 
 mission ! 
 
 The whole business of the Holy Week is any thing other 
 than an impressive solemnity. At one time it is a raree- 
 shew, at another an opera, without any of the arrangements 
 that ought to reign at a place of public amusement with an 
 absence of attraction in the details of the exhibition and, 
 to crown all, with the uproar of a specially dangerous bear- 
 garden. There appears a feebleness of control in the gov- 
 erning power in thus yearly (for the disorder, 1 learn, is of 
 annual recurrence,) mismanaging the very best order of 
 educated strangers which entire Europe sends to Rome, 
 into mob : inviting them into concourse, and then trampling 
 down, with armed violence, and at charge step, all be- 
 fore them with tickets or without them old, young 
 
ROME. 305 
 
 ladies with as little compunction as men : of all which military 
 assault, a very little military previous arrangement, and even 
 the timely forming of a small cordon before a door, would have 
 dissipated the temptation and the pretext. Complaints have 
 been officially preferred to the Cardinal Prime Minister ; who 
 is, without question, with his brethren in office, as much shock- 
 ed at such atrocities as are the subjects of them. But it is pal- 
 pable, through all the courteous guise of official reply ground- 
 ed on technically regular reference to the officers of this band 
 of savages that these venerable dignitaries, advanced in 
 age, and with the habits through life of churchmen, are in- 
 competent to manage their ultramontane mercenaries. Even 
 their officers, I do them justice of conceiving, have not, (under 
 that same circumstance of the debility of the governing 
 power,) been able to subdue in their retainers the vicious 
 buffalo nature sour and savage as that of the absolute buf- 
 falo race of cattle, naturalized and numerous in Italy in 
 hideous diversity from Italy's noble ox, as well in gentle 
 and generous temper as in form : and by the way, the buf- 
 falo is in form as great a lampoon on the ox, as a base 
 donkey can be accounted in respect to the horse. 
 
 To me, in all this tissue of exhibitions purporting to be 
 religious, the most imposing has appeared that most simple 
 one of the military when under arms, bearing them, as for 
 these two or three days they have done reversed. Even 
 the centinel when on duty, wherever posted throughout 
 Rome, retains his musket in that position conforming to 
 the military observance in funeral processions. To such 
 mourning, the ceremonies in Passion Week affect to have 
 distinct reference. 
 
 Of quite another description of remarkables have been, 
 for the last two nights, the sausage and ham shops every 
 one of them set out with a glare of several scores of candles 
 placed in sockets on the surface of the cheeses and hams, 
 and ranged over the succession of shelves all round : in the 
 
 x 
 
30(3 ROME. 
 
 shop's back-ground is a machine, in wheel-work of horizon- 
 tal movement on its axis, displaying various gaudy devices 
 set off by circlets of lights in fanciful distribution. All the 
 remaining surface of the shop is bedizened with gold leaf, 
 artificial flowers, bay leaves, broad borderings of colored 
 paper, and hangings of such paper, or of shewily worked 
 cloth. This may be in contemplation of the impending con- 
 sumption after Lent : but the hams, cheeses and turkeys 
 must require much purification from the gold leaf and daub- 
 ed paper so largely overlaying their surface ; while they 
 must, from the multitude of sconces and lights that repose 
 on them, be comfortably coddled to half cookery for table 
 use. 
 
 Easter-eve : a dies-non in shews and ceremonies,* but 
 for the popping of fire-arms in clatter through the city, which 
 began about eleven and lasted in poor racket all the fore- 
 noon : with rare exception however, the discharges took 
 place in the back yards and inner courts, and not in the 
 streets, where it would have been physically intolerable. 
 In the streets indeed, was the fore-running uproar of smash- 
 ing into small all the broken crockery of the past year, 
 " wisely kept" for this purpose, and now arranged in heaps 
 as numerous as the stores of it admitted frequently at 
 intervals of eight or half-a score yards. The shatter into 
 smash of all these maimed matters of earthen furniture was 
 prelude to the response of the birding pieces. 
 
 As Easter week witnesses the almost utter desertion of 
 Rome by foreigners, I have, some days back, made provi- 
 sion for my departure having arranged for a two days stroll 
 
 * I ought to except a baptismal exhibition of Jews, Turks (actual or nom- v 
 inal I pretend not to tay) and other such unbeliever*, at the Church of St, 
 John Lateran, commencing at seven in the morning, and lasting many hours : 
 and a service according to the Armenian rite at some other Church in the af- 
 ternoon, at one or other of which shews my curiosity was too palled to incite 
 m to be present. 
 
ROME. 307 
 
 in the Latian mountains, and to be taken up by my vettura 
 at Albano which is on the great road to Naples. Previ- 
 ously let me not omit one or other general minute as to 
 Rome. 
 
 Of the distinctions of classes in society, I had, from the 
 first, been struck with the strange absence of feeling, in un- 
 favourable contrast to Florence. Authentic information cou- 
 firms the reality of what appearances disclose. But in 
 morals Rome has the advantage, as well of Florence as of 
 many other Italian cities ; and this with draw-backs of its 
 own, of which one is on the surface the compelled celibacy 
 ef some thousands of ecclesiastics, who of course form a 
 prominent portion of the population. I have heard much 
 conversation, and much assertion, on this topic : but all things 
 considered and Italy the country I have hope that, though 
 the positive impurity be considerable, in a comparative view 
 it is far from large. Another circumstance, unfavourable to 
 morals here, is the vast number greater far than in other 
 Italian capitals of establishments with the appendage of 
 equipage, and of shewy livery servants ; who very commonly 
 are married men, but residing under their master's roof, con- 
 tract separate interests, and indulge to their utmost in selfish 
 expenses apart from their wives that are left in comparative 
 desertion, and, with their own ambition of display, to carve 
 out their own subsistence and regulate their own conduct. 
 With all this, I learn that immorality is decidedly less gen- 
 eral at Rome than in the other great cities of Italy. 
 
 Most particularly it is substantiated to me, that among 
 the higher, and also the highest orders here, Cicisbeism is 
 not in such abominable prevalence. Still I speak but by 
 comparison. A friend, in whose unostentatious probity I 
 have implicit trust, had recently on the eve of his prepara- 
 tion for Naples, in leave-taking of a noble family, the pro- 
 position made to him, by its female head, a lady of estab- 
 lished respectability, that he should remain and arrange 
 
 x 2 
 
308 HOME. 
 
 himself with her daughter, a young woman of great loveli- 
 ness, not many months married, and, as time has disclosed, 
 to a husband who neglects her one poor consequence of 
 which, and yet a material one, is that without his company, 
 or the escort of a male friend, she cannot appear at public 
 resorts suitable to her station. The mother urged her de- 
 sire with all the argument in her power, and with all zeal, 
 when the young lady coming in the dame claimed her co- 
 operation for inducing my friend to forego, on her account, 
 his departure. The natural modesty of the sex was beauti- 
 fully and exquisitely proved in the unaffected confusion and 
 disapprobation of the daughter to whom the mother, rising 
 in vehemence of argument to anger, at length exclaimed, 
 ** What ! did I bestow my daugher in marriage that she 
 " should give herself up to be a nun !" Of course this matron 
 looked but to the comforts derivable to her daughter from 
 escort abroad, and the relief from ennui at home, to be af- 
 forded by the male friend linked with her in such a connex- 
 ion : beyond these solid advantages she must have contem- 
 plated nothing irregular, while fully aware that every thing 
 followed : and all that is in sanction of purity between hus- 
 band and wife, she must between wife and husband's dou- 
 ble have regarded as matter of course. Thus even at Rome 
 reigns this family crime horrible as incest permitted by 
 all parties in systematized practice national ! 
 
 Of society here the attractions are very moderate. The 
 ladies are pleasing in manners, but their minds usually un- 
 cultivated, and their conversation vapid on whatever provo- 
 cation of joke, repartee, or other stimulant. The men are 
 talkative about trifles and nothing else the weather, a 
 procession, a picture : on even these topics they exhibit 
 themselves as if in act to quarrel, with long and loud words 
 and angry gestures their irritability in grotesque contrast 
 with the bubbles that blow it into burst. 
 
 Something let me add as to the guides through the maze 
 
ROME. 309 
 
 of Rome's topography and ruins. On ray first approach to 
 the city, a cenotaph over the road was pointed to me by my 
 comrades in the journey cultivated men too and from the 
 authority of their books as being the tomb of Nero. Much 
 humility I felt when, on after instruction, I learned this sepul- 
 chre to be that of the family of the Naso's the poet's fami- 
 ly, as is fondly presumable ! But if in this instance so ex- 
 ecrably misled in common with ten thousand that similarly 
 take the misnomer on trust I can but say it is an emblem 
 of the puddle of blunder, in which Rome's visitants are or- 
 dinarily content to flounder and think themselves wise. 
 
 Every thing connected with Rome's local antiquities is 
 chaos. Scarcely a gleaning of fact after best diligence in 
 reading all the unreadable books of the obscure ages, down to 
 the researches and exact measurements of Nolli has been 
 realised. Very much is guess ; and exceedingly much is 
 erratic statement of impudent ignorance, that lives by the 
 trade of retailing its own impositions. 
 
 Vasi and Fea are the rival guide-books strangers' horn- 
 books. Vasi crowds, without puff or verbosity, in honest 
 heap of measure, whatever information he could obtain. 
 Fea's ambition is to run a tilt in exception, and to vilify 
 wherever a pretext can be created the details of Vasi. 
 
 In this poor little pursuit, schisms and intolerance rage 
 as virulently among the Ciceroni of Rome as among any 
 other conflicting armies of bigots. Each leader frames his 
 theory, and fits to it every remnant of end- wall and irregu- 
 larity of ground surface, christens vamped-up busts ; and 
 nicknames whatever rubbish of ruins. Each deems that the 
 giving up the meanest tittle of his ideal structure spun spi- 
 der-like from his own whims, would after the manner of 
 the loss of a link in nature's order work the destruction of 
 his system, 
 
 Where one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd : 
 From guess-formed chain whatever link you strike, 
 Tenth or ten thousandth breaks the chain alike. 
 
310 ROME. 
 
 \Vho will may refer to Pope's Essay on Man, (or the fright- 
 ful universal ruin that is then in store for us. 
 
 There is a professor of this order, Nibbi that has put 
 forth several expensive and heavy books, and gives ambu- 
 latory lectures, which he who pays for may try to profit by. 
 My fixed judgment is, that wherever is intolerance, there 
 (besides other bad ingredients) is ignorance. Nibbi had 
 the evil fortune to be retained by an English lady of sense 
 and spirit, to make with her the usual round of sight-seeing. 
 On one occasion, a question of the lady, suggested by some 
 assertion of the professor, excited on his part a testiness 
 which he managed to suppress : a second question, propound- 
 ed some time after, induced a more decided grimace of 
 displeasure: but on a third occasion, in the course of the 
 drive, of a wish expressed for information as to some object 
 which excited her curiosity, Mr. Nibbi desired her " not to 
 " interrupt the lecture." " Pardon me," was the lady's reply, 
 " I have merely taken you out to use you as a moveabte 
 " direction-post." 
 
 Easter Day. Day-break was ushered in by a grand salute 
 of firing, in which the cannon on the Castle of St. Angelo 
 played a conspicuous part. 
 
 Unexpectedly, the Pope found himself well enough to 
 gratify our world of visitants, as well as the fixed population 
 of his States that breathe, in all ways they can shew 
 it, an affectionate attachment to his virtues and person with 
 the Benediction. The station of his appearance was not thu 
 front of St. Peter's, where, from the vast space afforded for 
 tin; display as well as the structure's accompaniments, the 
 magnificence of the solemnity would have been complete ;~- 
 but from the balcony of the Quirinal palace, his usual resi- 
 dence. Here, too, is a large though irregular open, which 
 was filled, in far greater part, by the peasants and pilgrims 
 by whose aggregate crowds, in fantastic even while they 
 are in sober costume, the streets have been for the hist week 
 
ROME. 311 
 
 inundated, with an effect inexpressibly picturesque. Many 
 of the Romans, and many of the upper order of strangers, 
 were absent, from having been without intimation that this 
 solemnity disused on account of the Pope's infirmities, for 
 the last three years at least would take place. Still, 
 crowds of both had been on the alert, and were present. 
 All the military force of Rome was drawn up in all martial 
 circumstance : and from computing the number of the bat- 
 talions and the probable strength of each perhaps 1 ,700 in 
 the entire and an inference from the space they occupied 
 on one occasion when massed together, to the surface eo- 
 vered by the spectators, I conclude the concourse to have 
 been 25,000 fully fifteen times the troops. The peasants 
 near me, swarming up the steps and over the terrace, and 
 occupying the ballustrade and parapet of a structure in face 
 of the balcony, and commanding the whole spectacle were 
 most deeply struck with the military array. Beautiful ! oh ! 
 how beautiful ! was repeated and reiterated as the several 
 battalions and the cavalry came on the ground and wheeled 
 into line. But the sight of the body-guard, of about sixty 
 horse all young Roman nobles, and in gorgeous, though 
 soldier-like dress (scarlet color) the sweeping plumes in 
 ornament of their hats, let me honestly, though not to their 
 honor, particularize ; and the rapid evolutions which, in 
 much vanity, and with perfect confidence and steadiness, 
 they displayed in occupying their ground, in deploying, and 
 once and again changing their front steeped their rustic ad- 
 mirers in sovereign delight. " Most beautiful ! bellissima 
 " guardia!" in the superlative of tone, as well as inflection, 
 was their absolutely extatic ejaculation. These people are 
 materials for any thing and every thing manly. 
 
 The fine old gentleman * was borne forward to the open 
 
 A Prussian Count, that happened also to be Chamberlain to his Sovereign, 
 with whom I was in habits of society for some weeks in Swisserland, felt 
 disquieted at my use to him of thi term, in expressing my opinion of his king, 
 
312 ROME. 
 
 balcony in and round which were his high dignitaries, in 
 a grand chair from which I observed he had, as through 
 bodily feebleness, a narrow escape from falling.* On his 
 either side was raised an immense fan of peacock feathers- 
 rich as a spread pinion, and graceful as a plume the union 
 of which circukrly over his head was magnificence which, 
 unless 1 had seen it, I could not have believed that plumage 
 under any disposition could possibly have induced. The 
 Benediction was received with uncovered heads and with re- 
 verence by, I hope, all the assemblage. For my part I felt 
 indisposed to criticise even the two little bundles of Indul- 
 gences, which his Holiness let go from the balcony among 
 the crowds beneath. Protestant as I am, yet with feelings 
 such as I thus confess, the accompaniments to the ceremo- 
 ny, of military honors and military music in obeisance to a 
 temporal Sovereign, and the peal of St. Angelo's cannon 
 joining in ; all this was to me minor and small circum- 
 stance in reference to the impression which it was the main 
 purpose of this solemnity to create. 
 
 The fire-works this night were incomparably finer than 
 the very finest I had ever seen ; a very short time in play, 
 perhaps twenty minutes. The Castle of St. Angelo, which 
 
 who has, I believe, truly gentleman-like qualities. It was in Tain to say to 
 him that I applied the same term to my own Sovereign, and to claim the privi- 
 lege of English manners and the English language from him, who had been in 
 England, and speaks English. The word "gentleman" is a foreigner on the con- 
 tinent, without synonime rather too much without prototype in currency and 
 therefore untranslateable. I would in all ways naturalize it there. " Ren- 
 " tier" is an execrable term, by which, however, many English designate them- 
 selves in passport affairs. "Gentleman," in French, " Gentilhomme," is as 
 fair a borrowing as " Milord," which borrowed word has been so long used 
 abroad as a native one, where English are the subject. 
 
 It was through the same feebleness that that fall happened to him on his 
 chamber floor, a few weeks after, the consequence of which was fracture of the 
 thigh, and the close of a mildly pious life of unostentatious patronage of the 
 arts, of the utmost unselfishness, of simplest personal habits, and of morals and 
 conduct dUtinguithedly pure. 
 
ROME. 313 
 
 stands over the Tiber computed at 1 80 feet in diameter, 
 was the nucleus which, at least frontwise, they invested. 
 At the outset was the appearance as of a robing of black 
 velvet, of which the concluding folds spread wide and man- 
 tle-like from the base of the structure : over this seeming 
 black velvet a master festoon, with, besides, various minor, 
 but closely wrought and richly radiating festoons, of diamond 
 lights, was superb. Omitting the mention of Congreve rock- 
 ets and different other exhibitions, the exuberant cataract of 
 fire, in torrent as of a river seeking headlong the base of a 
 precipice, was a masterly sport with Vulcan's element. Ve- 
 suvio, or any other volcano, in the storm of eruption, was 
 also given. Then the reduplication of all this in the eddy- 
 ing waves of the Tiber, from the hither parapet of which all 
 was in close view, gave zest and strange variety to the bla- 
 zing illusions. From this station also was commanded the 
 dome of St. Peter's, begirt in illumination by circles of lights, 
 in most numerous tier above tier, to its topmost ornament's 
 height ; one arranged and sublime blaze to the sky. With 
 the same arranged ornature of fire, the fa9ade was so no- 
 ble as to defy all criticism. A later, and, as it were, com- 
 pact spread of lamps, in continuous diffusion of light 
 though disconnection of luminous points, over the whole ele- 
 vation, communicated with the instantaneousness of scene- 
 shifting or of electricity, though more gorgeous far, was in 
 abatement of the architectural embellishment. 
 
 On entrance of the Place, where the fa9ade and all its 
 stupendous accompaniments of colonnade were in a blaze 
 of thousands of lamps, which also invested the summit ball 
 and cross almost in zenith of the sky ; the effect became 
 beyond any attempt of mine to describe. 
 
 Certainly the sciences of Fire-works and Illuminations 
 have here reached their ne plus ultra. Of the former I 
 learn from friends competent to judge, that no Parisian ex- 
 hibition can match, and that our London ones on the occa- 
 
314 ROME. 
 
 sion of the presence of the Continental Sovereigns, fell far 
 beneath these. In respect to illumination, were all else on 
 a par, there is not in the world such a subject for its prac- 
 tice as St. Peter's, with its mighty Rotunda hung aloft and 
 backed by the sky, the whole attired in blazing diamonds, 
 whose disposition most thickly set as they shone would 
 defy the coldest critic to detect in it an aberration from the 
 chastest architectural science. 
 
 END OF FIRST VOLUME. 
 
WITHDRAWN FROM 
 SION COLLEGE LIBRARY