mm aa-aaA/uAa^aaMAA 'A^mj^. Mm$M«Mf' "w^^mm A.mhmM^famfaA^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Shelf _^| w «^3 UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. ^^m;m a-.a^a^.«.^ .A.'A'A a - '> ^^i«# ^MV^ MtoM; A'AHH a^AA: AaaaA A^RAaaA'^aA^ AAa . a Aa^Aa *NUfiftfl*- AA.AHaA' WaaAaa. a a«^ aA^^a^ ;; : ai«.a. ^*a%^a^«»a^%^w A - n :• » a *, ? a ■ -. ' - •: - > * a ou a ' a - ^AA^A/V aAa^AAaaAaAa.AA, MaXAMa v;^^^ '^A^^im^h aAaAOAaaAaAaAAa *. A A ■ A ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ .a . ■ - • » r>. A A _ , n , A- » » ' A . lA-AAA.* 5m,a^,aaa; At ^m^^^^ m ^ ^O, 234 CENTS,/ 2ggESaHKSfi2K3EE3EEiBSSS!E2 A.1U1LV HuBlI^ T Ioij 5 1 - !te Mb* ^HK^ ' W T l^lAMM^l'T^WruREi Vol. 5, No. 234. Oct. 5 1883. Annual Subscription, $50 M PICTURES FROM ITALY. BY. ¥ *v ruKTv: NS~. r EnterVi(fi)hut there, in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as it should recede in our path, when it was quickly shut out from my view. Before I knew by what, or how, I found that we were gliding up a street — a phantom street ; the houses rising on both sides, from the water, and the black boat glid- ing on beneath their windows. Lights were shining from some of these casements, plumbing the depth of the black stream with their reflected rays, but all was profoundly silent. So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our course through narrow streets and lanes,- all filled and flowing with water. Some of the corners where our way branched off, were so acute and narrow, that it seemed impos- sible for the long slender boat to turn them ; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of warning, sent it skimming on without a pause. Sometimes, the rowers of another black boat like our own, echoed the cry, and slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours) would come flitting past us like a dark shadow. Other boats, of the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near to dark mys- terious doors that opened straight upon the water. Some of these were empty ; in some, the rowers lay asleep ; towards one, I saw some figures coming down a gloomy archway from the interior of a palace : gayly dressed, and attended by torch- PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 4 8 1 bearers. It was but a glimpse I had of them ; for a bridge, so low and close upon the boat that it seemed ready to fall down and crush us : one of the many bridges that perplexed the Dream : blotted them out, instantly. On we went, floating towards the heart of this strange place — with water all about us where never water was elsewhere — clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately buildings growing out of it — and, everywhere, the same extraordinary silence. Presently, we shot across a broad and open stream ; and passing, as I thought, before a spacious paved quay, where the bright lamps with which if was illuminated showed long rows of arches and pillars, of ponderous construction and great strength, but as light to the eye as garlands of hoar-frost or gossamer — and where, for the first time, I saw people walking — arrived at a flight of steps leading from the water to a large mansion, where, having passed through corridors and galleries innum- erable, I lay down to rest ; listening to the black boats stealing up and down below the window on the rippling water, till I fell asleep. The glory of the day that broke upon me in this Dream ; its freshness, motion, buoyancy ; its sparkles of the sun in water ; its clear blue sky and rustling air • no waking words can tell. But, from my window, I looked clown on boats and barks ; on masts, sails, cordage, flags ; on groups of busy sailors, working at the cargoes of these vessels ; on wide quays, strewn with bales, casks, merchandise of many kinds ; on great ships,' lying near at hand in stately indolence ; on islands, crowned with gorgeous domes and turrets : and where golden crosses glittered in the light, atop of wondrous churches, springing from the sea ! Going down upon the margin of the green sea, rolling on before the door, and filling all the streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that all the rest was poor and faded, in comparison with its absorbing loveliness. It was a great Piazza, as I thought ; anchored, like all the rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was a Palace, more majestic and magnificent in its old age, than all the buildings of the earth, in the high prime and fulness of their youth. Cloisters and galleries : so light, they might have been the work of fairy hands : so strong that centuries had battered them in vain : wound round and round this palace, and en- folded it with a Cathedral, gorgeous in the wild luxuriant fancies of the East. At no great distance from its porch, a 4 82 PICTURES FROM ITALY. lofty tower, standing by itself, and rearing its proud head, alone, into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea. Near to the margin of the stream, were two ill-omened pillars of red granite ; one having on its top, a figure with a sword and shield ; the other, a winged lion. Not far from these again, a second tower : richest of the rich in all its decorations : even here, where all was rich : sustained aloft, a great orb, gleaming with gold and deepest blue : the Twelve Signs painted on it, and a mimic sun revolving in its course around them : while above, two bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell. An oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a light and beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene ; and, here and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering, from the pavement of the un- substantial ground. I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and out among its many arches : traversing its whole extent. A grand and dreamy structure, of immense proportions ; golden with old mosaics ; redolent of perfumes ; dim with the smoke of incense ; costly in treasure of precious stones and metals, glittering through iron bars ; holy with the bodies of deceased saints ; rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass ; dark with carved woods and colored marbles ; obscure in its vast heights, and lengthened distances ; shining with silver lamps and winking lights ; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable throughout. I thought I entered the old palace ; pacing silent galleries and council-chambers, where the old rulers of this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in pictures, from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as of old. I thought I wan- dered through its halls of state and triumph — bare and empty now ! — and musing on its pride and might, extinct : for that was past i all past • heard a voice say, " Some tokens of its ancient rule, and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may be traced here, yet ! " I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms, communicating with a prison near the palace ; separated from it by a lofty bridge crossing a narrow street ; and called, I dreamed, The Bridge of Sighs. . But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall ; the lions' mouths — now toothless — where, in the distempered horror of my sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent men to the old wicked Council, had been dropped through, many a PICTURES FROM ITALY. 483 time, when the night was dark. So, when I saw the council- room to which such prisoners were taken for examination, and '.he door by which they passed out, when they were con- demned — a door that never closed upon a man with life and hope before him — my heart appeared to die within me. It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I de- scended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite dark. Each* had a loop-hole in its massive wall, where, in the old time, every day, a torch was placed — I dreamed — to light the prisoner within, for half an hour. The captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays, had scratched and cut inscriptions in the blackened vaults. I saw them. For their labor with a rusty nail's point, had outlived their agony and them, through many generations. One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more than four and twenty hours ; being marked for dead before he entered it. Hard by, another, and a dismal one, whereto, at midnight, the confessor came — a monk brown-robed, and hooded — ghastly in the day, and free bright air, but in the midnight of that murky prison, Hope's extinguisher, and Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the spot, where, at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled; and struck my hand upon the guilty door — low browed and steal- thy — through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to cast a net. Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it • licking the rough walls without, and smearing them with clamp and slime within : stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks and crevices, as if the very stones and bars had mouths to stop : furnishing a smooth road for the removal of the bodies of the secret victims of the State — a road so ready that it went along with them, and- ran before them, like a cruel officer — flowed the same water that filled this Dream of mine, and made it seem one, even at the time. Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought," the Giant's — I had some imaginary recollection of an old man abdicating, coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, when he heard the bell, proclaiming his successor — I glided off, in one of the dark boats, until we came to an old arsenal guarded by four marble lions. To make my Dream more monstrous and unlikely, one of these had words and 48 4 PIC TUR ES FR( KM I TA L \ '. sentences upon its body, inscribed there, at an unknown time, and in an unknown language ; so that their purport was a mys- tery to all men. There was little sound of hammers in this place for build- ing ships, and little work in progress ; for the greatness of the city was no more, as I have said. Indeed, it seemed a very wreck found drifting on the sea ; a strange flag hoisted in its honorable stations, and strangers standing at its helm. A splendid barge in which its ancient chief had gone forth, pompously, at certain periods, to wed the ocean, lay here, I thought, no more ; but in its place, there was a tiny model, made from recollection like the city's greatness ; and it told of what had been (so are the strong and weak confounded in the dust) almost as eloquently as the massive pillars, arches, roofs, reared to overshadow stately ships that had no other shadow now, upon the water or the earth. An armory was there yet. Plundered and despoiled ; but an armory. With a fierce standard taken from the Turks, drooping in the dull air of its cage. Rich suits of mail worn by great warriors were hoarded there ; crossbows and bolts ; quivers full of arrows ; spears ; swords, daggers, maces, shields, and heavy-headed axes. Plates of wrought steel and iron, to make the gallant horse a monster cased in metal scales ; and one spring-weapon (easy to be carried in the breast) designed to do its office noiselessly, and made for shooting men with poisoned darts. One press or case I saw, full of accursed instruments of torture : horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind and crush men's bones, and tear and twist them with the tor- ment of a thousand deaths. Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces : made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads of living sufferers ; and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil, where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease, and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions of the wretch within. There was that grim resemblance in them to the human shape — they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained and cramped — ■ that it was difficult to think them empty ; and terrible distor- tions lingering within them, seemed to follow me, when, taking to my boat again, I row off to a kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees. But I for- got them when I stood upon its farthest brink — I stood there in my dream — and looked, along the ripple, to the setting PIC TURKS IR OM IT A L F. 48 5 sun ; before me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush ; and behind me the whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple, on the water. In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there were days and nights in it ; and when the sun was high and when the rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, I thought : plashing the slip- pery walls and houses with cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the streets. Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast palaces, I wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle, through labyrinths of rich altars, ancient monuments ; decayed apartments where the furniture, half awful, half gro- tesque, was mouldering away. Pictures were there, replete with such enduring beauty and expression : with such passion, truth and power : that they seemed so many young and fresh realities among a host of spectres. I thought these, often intermingled with the old days of "the city : with its beauties, tyrants^ captains, patriots, merchants, courtiers, priests : nay, with its very stones, and bricks, and public places ; all of which lived again, about me, on the walls. Then, coming down some marble staircase where the water lapped and oozed against the lower steps, I passed into my boat again, and went on in my dream. Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with plain and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving straight upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away before me in a. tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and rotten from long steeping in the wet, through which some scanty patch of vine shone green and bright, making unusual shad- ows on the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past quays and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing and repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sun- shine, on flagstones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, where there were idlers too ; loitering and looking over. Below stone balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the loftiest windows of the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden, theatres, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture — Gothic — Saracenic — fanciful with all the fancies of all times and countries. Past buildings that were high, and low, and Hack, and white, and straight, and crooked • mean and grand, crazy and strong. Twining among a tangled lot of boats and i$C PICTURES FROM ITALY. barges, and shooting out at last into a Grand Canal ! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I saw old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all" built upon with shops and hum- ming with the tongues of men ; a form I seemed to know for Desdemona's, leaned down through a latticed blind to pluck a flower. And, in the dream, I thought that Shakspeare's spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere : stealing through the city. At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an image of the Virgin, in a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the roof 7 I fancied that the great piazza of the Winged Lion was a blaze of cheerful light, and that its whole arcade was thronged with people; while crowds were diverting themselves in splendid coffee-houses opening from it — which were never >hut, I thought, but open all night long. When the bronze giants struck the hour of midnight on the bell, I thought the life and animation of the city were all centred here ; and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I only saw them dotted, here and there, with sleeping boatmen wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at full length upon the stones. But close about the quays and churches, palaces and pris- ons : sucking at their walls, and welling up into the secret places of the town : crept the water always. Noiseless and watchful : coiled round and round it, in its many folds, like an old serpent: waiting for the time, I thought, when people .should look down into its depths for any stone of the old city that had claimed to be its mistress. Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market- place at Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought since, of this strange Dream upon the water : half-wondering if it lie there yet, and if its name be Venice. BY VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE PASS OF THE SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND. I had been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all put me out of conceit with Romeo and Juliet. But, I was no; sooner come into the old- market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place. PICTURES FROM ITALY 487 formed by such an extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there could be nothing better at the core of even this romantic town : scene of one of the most romantic and beautiful of stories. It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market- place, to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most miserable little inn. Noisy vetturini and muddy market- carts were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle- deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered geese ; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a door-way, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in those times. The orchard fell into other hands, and was parted off many years ago ; but there used to \>e one attached to the house — or at all events there may have been, — and the hat (Cappello) the ancient cognizance of 1 he family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the gate- way of the yard. The geese, the market-carts, their drivers, r,nd the dog, were somewhat in the way of the story, it must be confessed ; and it would have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, and to have been able to walk vhrough the disused rooms. But the hat was unspeakably 1 comfortable ; and the place where the garden used to be, !/iardly less so. Besides, the house is a distrustful, jealous- I ooking house as one would desire to see, though of a very moderate size. So I was quite satisfied with it, as the veri- table mansion of old Capulet, and was correspondingly grate- ful in my acknowledgments to an extremely unsentimental middle-aged lady, the Padrona of the Hotel, who was loung- ing on the threshold looking at the geese • and who at least resembled the Capulets in the one particular of being very great indeed in the " Family " way. From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as natural to the visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the proud- est Juliet that ever has taught the torches to burn bright in any time. So, I went off, with a guide, to an old, old garden, once belonging to an old, old convent, I suppose • and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a bright-eyed woman who was washing clothes, went down some walks where fresh plants and young flowers were prettily growing among frag- ments of old wall, and ivy-covered mounds ; and was shown a little tank, or water-trough, which the bright-eyed woman- drying her arms upon her 'kerchief, called " La tomba di ^SS PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. Giulietta las fortunata." With the best disposition m the world to believe, I could do no more than believe that the bright-eyed woman believed ; so I gave her that much credit, and her customary fee in ready money. It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that Juliet's resting-place was forgotten. However consolatory it may have been to Yorick\s Ghost, to hear the feet upon the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a day, the repetition of his name, it is better for Juliet to lie out of the track of tourists, and to have no visit- ors but such as come to graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine. Pleasant Verona ! With its beautiful old palaces, and charming country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and stately, ballustraded galleries. With its Roman gates, still spanning the fair street, and casting on the sunlight of to-day, the shade of fifteen hundred years ago. With its marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich architecture, and quaint old quiet thoroughfares, where shouts of Montagues and Capulets once resounded, And made Verona's ancient citizens Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments, To wield old partizans. With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great castle, waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so cheerful ! Pleasant Verona ! In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Bra — a spirit of eld time among the familiar realities of the passing hour — is the great Roman Amphitheatre. So well preserved, and carefully maintained, that every row of seats is there, unbroken. Over certain cf the arches, the old Roman numerals may yet be seen ; and there are corridors, and staircases, and subterra- nean passages for beasts, and winding ways, above ground and below, as when the fierce thousands hurried in and out, in- tent upon the bloody shows of the arena. Nestling in some of the shadows and hollow places of the walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small dealers of one kind or other ; and there are green weeds, and leaves, and grass, upon the parapet. But little else is greatly changed. When I had traversed ail about it, with great interest, and had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the lovely: '^panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into the building, it seemed to lie before me like the in- side of a prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously FJC TURKS FROM I TA L Y 489 broad brim and a shallow crown ; the plaits being represented by the four-and-forty rows of seats. The comparison is a homely and fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but it was irresistibly suggested at the moment, never- theless. An equestrian troop had been there, a short time before — ■ the same troop, I dare say, that appeared to the old lady in the church at Modena — and had scooped out a little ring at one end of the arena ; where their performances had taken place, and where the marks of their horses' feet were still fresh. I could not but picture to myself, a handful of specta- tors gathered together on one or two of the old stone seats, and a spangled Cavalier being gallant, or a Policinello funny, with the grim walls looking on. Above all, I thought how strangely those Roman mutes would gaze upon the favorite comic scene of the travelling English, where a British noble- man (Lord John), with a very loose stomach : dressed in a blue tailed coat down to his heels, bright yellow breeches, and a white hat : comes abroad, riding double on a rearing horse, with an English lady (Lady Betsy) in a straw bonnet and green veil, and a red spencer ; and who always carries a gi- gantic reticule, and a put-up parasol. I walked through and through the town all the rest of the day, and could have walked there until now, I think. In one place, there was a very pretty modern theatre, where they had just performed the opera (always popular in Verona) of Romeo and Juliet. In another there was a collection, under a colonnade, of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan remains, pre- sided over by an ancient man who might have been an Etruscan relic himself; for he was not strong enough to open the iron gate, when he had unlocked it, and had neither voice enough to be audible when he described the curiosities, nor sight enough to see them ; he was so very old. In another place, there was a gallery of pictures : so abominably bad, that it was quite delightful to see them mouldering away. But any- where : in the churches, among the palaces, in the streets, on the bridge, or down beside the river : it was always pleasant Verona, and in my remembrance always will be. I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn that night — of course, no Englishman had ever read it there, be- fore — and set out for Mantua next day at sunrise, repeating to myself (in the coupe of an omnibus, and next to the con- ductor, who was reading the Mysteries pf Paris), 49 o PIC 7T RES FROM ITAL Y. There is no world without Verona's walls But purgatory, torture, hell itself. Hence-banished is banished from the world, And world's exile is death — — which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five-and twenty miles after all, and rather disturbed my confidence in his energy and boldness. Was the way to Mantua as beautiful, in his time, I won- der ! Did it wind through pasture land as green, bright with the same glancing streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees ! Those purple mountains lay on the horizon, then, for certain : and the dresses of these peasant girls, who wear a great, knobbed, silver pin like an English '"life-pre- server " through their hair behind, can hardly be much changed. The hopeful feeling of so bright a morning, and so exquisite a sunrise, can have been no stranger, even to an exiled lover's breast ■ and Mantua itself, must have broken on him in the prospect, with its towers, and walls, and water, pretty much as on a common-place and matrimonial omnibus. He made the same sharp twists and turns, perhaps, over two rumbling drawbridges ; passed through the like long, covered, wooden bridge ; and leaving the marshy water behind, approached the rusty gate of stagnant Mantua. If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, and his place of residence to him, the lean Apothecary and Mantua came together in a perfect fitness of things. It may have been more stirring then, perhaps. If so, the Apothecary was a man in advance of his time, and knew what Mantua would be, in eighteen hundred and forty-four. He fasted much, and that assisted him in his foreknowledge. I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my own room arranging plans with the brave Courier, when there came a modest little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery surrounding a court-yard • and an intensely shabby little man looked in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to show the town. His face was so very wistful and anxious, in the half-opened doorway, and there was so much poverty expressed in his faded suit and little pinched hat, and in the thread-bare worsted glove with which he held it — not expressed the less, because these were evidently his genteel clothes, hastily slipped on — that I would as soon have trodden on him as dismissed him. I engaged him on the instant, and he stepped in directly. While I finished the discussion in which I was engaged, PIC TURES FR OM ITAL V. 49 1 he stood, beaming by himself in a corner, making a feint of brushing my hat with his arm. If his fee had been as many napoleons as it was francs, there could not have shotoverthe twilight of his shabbiness such a gleam of sun, as lighted up the whole man, now that he was hired. " Well ! " said I, when I was ready, " shall we go out now?" " If the gentleman pleases. It is a beautiful day. A little fresh, but charming • altogether charming. The gentleman will allow me to open the door. This is the Inn Yard. The court-yard of the Golden Lion ! The gentleman will please to mind his footing on the stairs." We were now in the street. . " This is the street of the Golden Lion. This, the outside of the Golden Lion. The interesting window up there, on the first Piano, where the pane of glass is broken, is the window of the gentleman's chamber ! " Having viewed all these remarkable objects, I inquired if there were much to see in Mantua. "Well ! Truly, no. Not much ! So, so," he said, shrug- ging his shoulders apologetically. " Many churches? " " No. Nearly all sujDpressed by the French." " Monasteries or convents ? " " No. The French again ! Nearly all suppressed by Napoleon." " Much business ? " " Very little business.' " Many strangers ? " " Ah Heaven ! " I thought he would have fainted. " Then, when we have seen the two large churches yonder, what shall we do next ? " said I. He looked up the street, and down the street, and rubbed his chin timidly ; and then said, glancing in my face as if a light had broken on his mind, yet with an humble appeal to my forbearance that was perfectly irresistible : " We can take a little turn about the town, Signore ! " (Si pu6 far 'un piccolo giro della citta.) " It was impossible to be anything but delighted with the proposal, so we set off together in great good-humor. In the relief of his mind, he opened his heart, and gave up as much of Mantua as a Cicerone could. 49 2 PIC TURKS FROM I TA L Y. " One must eat," he said ; " but, bah ! it was a dull place, without doubt ! " He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa Andrea — a noble church — and of an inclosed portion of the pavement, about which tapers were burning, and a few people kneeling, and under which is said to be preserved the Sang- real of the old Romances. This church disposed of, and an- other after it (the cathedral of San Pietro), we went to tlie Museum, which was shut up. " It was all the same," he said ; " Bah ! There was not much inside ! " Then, we went to see the Piazza del Diavolo, built by the Devil (for no particular purpose) in a single night ; then, the Piazza Virgiliana ; then, the statue of Virgil — our Poet, my little friend said, plucking up a spirit, for a moment, and putting his hat a little on one side. Then we went to a dismal sort of farm-yard, by which a picture gallery was approached. The moment the gate of this retreat was opened, some five hundred geese came wad- dling round us, stretching out their necks, and clamoring in the most hideous manner, as if they were ejaculating, " Oh ! here's somebody come to see the Pictures ! Don't go up ! Don't go up ! " While we went up, they waited very quietly about the door in a crowd, cackling to one another occasion- ally, in a subdued tone ; but the instant we appeared again, their necks came out like telescopes, and setting up a great noise, which meant, I have no doubt, "What, you would go, would you ! What do you think of it ! How do you like it ! '* they attended us to the outer gate, and cast us forth, deri- sively, into Mantua. The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared to these, Pork to -the learned Pig. What a gallery it was ! I would take their opinion on a question of art, in preference to the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus ignominiously escorted thither, my little friend was plainly re- duced to the " piccolo giro," or little circuit of the town, he had formerly proposed. But my suggestion that we should visit the Palazzo Te (of which I had heard a great deal, as a strange wild place) imparted new life to him, and away we went. The secret of the length of Midas's ears, would have been more extensively known, if that servant of his, who whispered it to the reeds, had lived in Mantua, where there are reeds and rushes enough to have published it to all the world. The PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 493 Palazzo Te stands in a swamp, among this sort of vegetation ; and is, indeed, as singular a place as I ever saw. Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Not for its dampness, though it is very damp. Not for its desolate condition, though it is as desolate and neglected as house can be. But chiefly for the unaccountable nightmares with which its interior has been decorated (among other subjects of more delicate execution), by Giulio Romano. There is a leering Giant over a certain chimney-piece, and there are dozens of Giants (Titans warring with Jove) on the walls of another room, so inconceivably ugly and grotesque, that it is marvel- lous how any man can have imagined such creatures. In the chamber in which they abound, these monsters, with swollen faces and cracked cheeks, and every kind of distortion of look and limb, are depicted as staggering under the weight of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the ruins ; up heaving masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath ; vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple down upon their heads ; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every kind of mad and demoniacal destruction. The figures are immensely large, and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness ; the coloring is harsh and disagreeable ; and the whole effect most like (I should imagine) a vio- lent rush of blood to the head of the spectator, than any real picture set before him by the hand of an artist. This apoplectic performance was shown by a sickly-looking woman, whose appearance was referable, I dare say, to the bad air of the marshes ; but it was difficult to help feeling as if she were too much haunted by the Giants, and they were frightening her to death, all alone in that exhausted cistern of a Palace, among the reeds and rushes, with the mist hovering about outside, and stalking round and round it continually. Our walk through Mantua showed us, in almost every street, some suppressed church : now used for a warehouse, now for nothing at all : all as crazy and dismantled as they could be, short of tumbling down bodily. The marshy town was so intensely dull and flat, that the dirt upon it seemed not to have come there in the ordinary course, but to have settled and mantled on its surface as on standing water. And yet there were some business dealings going on, and some profits realizing ; for there were arcades full of Jews, where those extraordinary people were sitting outside their shops, contemplating their stores of stuffs, and woollens, and bright 494 PICTURES FROM ITALY, handkerchiefs, and trinkets ; and looking, in all respects, as war}' and business-like, as their brethren in Houndsditch, London. Having selected a Vetturino from among the neighboring Christians, who agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a half, and to start, next morning, as soon as the gates were opened, I returned to the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously in my own room, in a narrow passage between two bedsteads ; confronted by a smoky fire, and backed up by a chest of drawers. At six o'clock next morning, we were jingling in the dark through the wet cold mist that enshrouded the town ; and, before noon, the driver (a native of Mantua, and sixty years of age or thereabouts) began to ask the way to Milan. It lay through Bozzolo ; formerly a little republic, and now one of the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns : where the landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him ! it was his weekly custom) was distributing infinitesimal coins among a clamorous herd of women and children, whose rags were fluttering in the wind and rain outside his door, where they were gathered to receive his charity. It lay through mist, and mud, and rain, and vines trained low upon the ground, all that day and the next ; the first sleep- ing-place being Cremona, memorable for its dark brick churches, and immensely high tower, the Torrazzo — to say nothing of its violins, of which it certainly produces none in these degenerate days ; and the second, Lodi. Then we went on, through more mud, mist, and rain, and marshy ground : and through such a fog, as Englishmen, strong in the faith of their own grievances, are apt to believe is nowhere to be found but in their own country, until we entered the paved streets of Milan. The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that could be seen of it at that time. But as we halted to re- fresh, for a few days then, and returned to Milan again next summer, I had ample opportunities of seeing the glorious structure in all its majesty and beauty. All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it ! There are many good and true saints in the calendar, but San Carlo Borromeo has — if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a sub- ject — " my warm heart." A charitable doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to the poor, and this, not in any spirit of PIC Tt RES FR OM ITALY 495 blind bigotry, but as the bold opponent of enormous abuses in the Romish church, I honor his memory. I honor it none the less, because he was nearly slain by a priest, suborned, by priests, to murder him at the altar : in acknowledgment of his endeavors to reform a false and hypocritical brotherhood of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of San Carlo Borromeo as it shielded him ! A reforming Pope would need a little shielding, even now. The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo Borromeo is preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a contrast, perhaps, as any place can show. The tapers which are lighted down there, flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold and silver, delicately wrought by skilful hands, and represent- ing the principal events in the life of the saint. Jewels, and precious metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A wind- lass slowly removes the front of the altar ; and, within it, in a gorgeous shrine of gold and silver, is seen, through alabaster, the shrivelled mummy of a man : the pontifical robes with which it is adorned, radiant with diamonds, emeralds, rubies ; every costly and magnificent gem. The shrunken heap of poor earth in the midst of this great glitter, is more pitiful than if it lay upon a dunghill. There is not a ray of imprisoned light in all the flash and fire of jewels, but seems to mock the dusty holes where eyes were, once. Every thread of silk in the rich vestments seems only a provision from the worms that spin, for the behoof of worms that propagate in sepul- chres. In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps, better known than any other in the world : the Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci — with a door cut through it by the intelligent Do- mincan friars, to facilitate their operations at dinner time. I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of painting, and have no other means of judging of a picture than as I see it resembling and refining upon nature, and presenting graceful combinations of forms and colors. I am, therefore no authority whatever, in reference to the " touch " of this or that master; though I know very well (as anybody may, who chooses to think about the matter) that few very great mas- ters can possibly have painted, in the compass of their lives, one-half of the pictures that bear their names, and that are recognized by many aspirantsto a reputation, for taste, as un- doubted originals. But this, by the- way. Of the Last Sup 49 6 PICTURES FROM ITALY. per, I would simply observe, that in its beautiful composition and arrangement, there it is, at Milan, a wonderful picture, and that, in its original coloring, or in its original expression of any single face or feature, there it is not. Apart from the damage it has sustained from damp, decay, or neglect, it has been (as Barry shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, and that so clumsily, that many of the heads are, now, positive deformities, with patches of paint and plaster sticking upon them like wens, and utterly distorting the expression. Where the original artist set that impress of his genius on a face, which, almost in a line or touch, separated him from meaner painters ana! made him what he was, succeeding bunglers, filling up, or painting across seams and cracks, have been quite unable to imitate his hand ; and putting in some scowls, or frowns, or wrinkles, of their own, have blotched and spoiled the work. This is so well established as an historical fact, that I should not repeat it, at the risk of being tedious, but for having observed an English gentleman before the picture, who was at great pains to fall into what I may describe as mild convulsions, at certain minute details of expression which are not left in it. Whereas, it would be comfortable and rational for travellers and critics to arrive at a general under- standing that it cannot fail to have been a work of extraor- dinary merit, once : when, with so few of its original beauties remaining, the grandeur of the general design is yet sufficient to sustain it, as a piece replete with interest and dignity. We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due course, and a fine city it is, though not so unmistakably Italian as to possess the characteristic qualities of many towns far less im- portant in themselves. The Corso, where the Milanese gen- try ride up and down in carriages, and rather than not do which, they would half starve themselves at home, is a most noble public promenade, shaded by long avenues of trees. In the splendid theatre of La Scala, there was a ballet of action performed after the opera, under the title of Prome- theus : in the beginning of which, some hundred or two of men and women represented our mortal race before the re- finements of the arts and sciences, and loves and graces, came on earth to soften them. I never saw anything more effec- tive. Generally speaking, the Pantomimic action of the Italians is more remarkable for its sudden and impetuous character than for its delicate expression ; but, in this case, the drooping monotony : the weary, miserable, listless, moping PICTURES FROM ITALY. 4 q 7 life : the sordid passions and desires of human creatures, destitute of those elevating influences to which we owe so much, and to whose promoters we render so little ; were ex- pressed in a manner really powerful and affecting. I should have thought it almost impossible to present such an idea so strongly on the stage, without the aid of speech, Milan soon lay behind us, at five o'clock in the morning ; and before the golden statue on the summit of the cathedral spire, was lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stupendously con- fused in lofty peaks and ridges, clouds and snow, were tower- ing in our path. Still, we continued to advance toward them until night- fall ; and, all day long, the mountain tops presented strangely shifting shapes, as the road displayed them in different points of view. The beautiful day was just declining, when we came upon the Lago Maggiore, with its lovely islands. For how- ever fanciful and fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it sjtill is beautiful. Anything springing out of that blue water, with that scenery around it, must be. It was ten o'clock at night when we got to Domo d'Ossola, at the foot of the Pass of the Simplon. But as the moon was shining brightly, and there was not a cloud in the starlit sky, it was no time for going to bed, or going anywhere but on. So, we got a little carriage, after some delay, and began the ascent. It was late in November ; and the snow lying four or five feet thick in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts i;he new drift was already deep), the air was piercing cold. But, the serenity of the night, and the grandeur of the road, with its impenetrable shadows, and deep glooms, and its sud- den turns into the shining of the moon, and its incessant roar of falling water, rendered the journey more and more sublime at every step. Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us, sleeping in the moonlight, the road began to wind among dark trees, and after a time emerged upon a barer region, very steep and toilsome, where the moon shone bright and high. By degrees the roar of water grew louder ; and the stupendous track, after crossing the torrent by a bridge, struck in between two massive perpendicular walls of rock that quite shut out the moonlight, and only left a few stars shining in the narrow strip of sky above. Then, even this was lost, in the thick darkness of a cavern in the rock, through which the way was 498 PICTURES FROM ITALY. pierced ; the terrible cataract thundering and roaring close below it, and its foam and spray hanging, in a mist, about the entrance. Emerging from this cave, and coming again into the moonlight, and across a dizzy bridge, it crept and twisted up- ward, through the Gorge of Gondo, savage and grand beyond description, with smooth-fronted precipices, rising up on either hand, and almost meeting overhead. Thus we went, climbing on our rugged way, higher and higher all night, without a moment's weariness : lost in the contemplation of the black rocks, the tremendous heights and depths, the fields of smooth snow lying, in the clefts and hollows, and the fierce torrents thundering headlong down the deep abyss. Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where a keen wind was blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened the inmates of a wooden house in this solitude ; round which the wind was howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths and hurling it away : we got some breakfast in a room built of rough timbers, but well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it had need to be) for keeping out the bitter storms. A sledge being then made ready, and four horses harnessed to it, we went, ploughing, through the snow. Still upward, but now in the cold light of morning, and with the great white desert on which we travelled, plain and clear. We were well upon the summit of the mountain : and had before us the rude cross of wood, denoting its greatest alti- tude above the sea : when the light of the rising sun, struck, all at once, upon the waste of snow, and turned it a deep red. The lonely grandeur of the scene, was then at its height. As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hospice founded by Napoleon, a group of Peasant travellers, with staves and knapsacks, who had rested there last night: at- tended by a Monk or two, their hospitable entertainers, trudging slowly forward with them, for company's sake. It was pleasant to give them good-morning, and pretty, looking back a long way after them, to see them looking back at us, and hesitating presently, when one of our horses stumbled and fell, whether or no they should return and help us. But he was soon up again, with the assistance of a rough wag- oner whose team had stuck fast there too ; and When we had helped him out of his difficulty, in return, we left him slowly ploughing towards them, and went softly and swiftly forward, on the brink of a steep precipice, among the mountains pines. PIC TURES FR OM ITALY '. 49 g Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we began rapidly to descend • passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of arched galleries, hung with clusters of dripping ici- cles ; under and over foaming waterfalls ; near places of refuge, and galleries of shelter against sudden danger ; through caverns over whose arched roofs the avalanches slide, in spring, and bury themselves in the unknown gulf beneath. Down, over lofty bridges, and through horrible ravines : a little shifting speck in the vast desolation of ice and snow, and monstrous granite rocks ; down through the deep Gorge of the Saltine, and deafened by the torrent plunging madly down, among the riven blocks of rock, into the level country, far below. Gradually down, by zig-zag roads, lying between an upward and a downward precipice, into warmer weather, calmer air, and softer scenery, until there lay before us, glittering liki gold or silver in the thaw and sunshine, the metal-covered, red, green, yellow, domes and church-spires of a Swiss town. The business of these recollections being with Italy, and my business, consequently, being to scamper back thither as fast as possible, I will not recall (though I am sorely tempted) how the Swiss villages, clustered at the feet of Giant moun- tains, looked like playthings ; or how confusedly the houses were heaped and piled together ; or how there were very narrow streets to shut the howling winds out in the winter time ; and broken bridges, which the impetuous torrents, suddenly released in spring, had swept away. Or how there were peasant women here, with great round fur caps : looking, when they peeped out of casements and only their heads were seen, like a population of Sword-bearers to the Lord Mayor of London • or how the town of Vevay, lying on the smooth lake of Geneva, was beautiful to see ; or how the statue of Saint Peter in the street at Fribourg, grasps the largest key that ever was beheld ; or how Fribourg is illustri- ous for its two suspension bridges, and its grand cathedral organ. Or how, between that town and Bale, the road meandered among thriving villages of wooden cottages, with overhanging thatched roofs, and low protruding windows, glazed with small round panes of glass like crown-pieces ; or how, in every little Swiss homestead, with its cart or wagon carefully stowed away beside the house, its little garden, stock of poultry, and groups of red-cheeked children, there was an air of comfort, very new and very pleasant after Italy ; or how 5 o o PIC TURES FK QM ITALY. the dresses of the women changed again, and there were no more sword-bearers to be seen ; and fair white stomachers, and great black, fan-shaped, gauzy-looking caps, prevailed instead. Or how the country by the Jura mountains, sprinkled with snow, and lighted by the moon, and musical with falling water, was delightful ; or how, below the windows of the great hotel of the Three Kings at Bale, the swollen Rhine ran fast and green ■ or how, at Strasbourg, it was quite as. fast but not as green : and was said to be foggy lower down : and, at that late time of the year, was a far less certain means of progress, than the highway road to Paris. Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic Cathedral, and its ancient houses with their peaked roofs and gables, made a little gallery of quaint and interesting views ; or how a crowd was gathered inside the cathedral at noon, to see the famous mechanical clock in motion, striking twelve. How, when it struck twelve, a whole army of puppets went through man) 7 ingenious evolutions ; and, among them, a huge puppet-cock, perched on the top, crowed twelve times, loud and clear. Or how it was wonderful to see this cock at great pains to clap its wings, and strain its throat ; but obviously having no connection whatever with its own voice ; which was deep within the clock, a long way down. Or how the road to Paris was one sea of mud, and thence to the coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or how the cliffs of Dover were a pleasant sight, and England was so wonder- fully neat — though dark, and lacking color on a winter's clay, it must be conceded. Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, recrossing the channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow 7 lying pretty deep in France. Or how the Malle Poste scrambled through the snow, headlong, drawn in the hilly parts by any number of stout horses at a canter ; or how there were, outside the Post- office Yard in Paris, before daybreak, extraordinary adven- turers in heaps of rags, groping in the snowy streets with little rakes, in search of odds and ends. Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being then exceeding deep, a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather than rolled for the next three hundred miles or so ; breaking springs on Sunday nights, and putting out its two passengers to warm and refresh themselves pending the re- pairs, in miserable billiard-rooms, where hairy company, col- PIC TURKS FR 0. 1/ ITA LY. 5 o I lected about stoves, were playing cards ; the cards being very like themselves — extremely limp and dirty. Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress of weather ; and steamers were advertised to go, which did not go ; or how the good Steam-packet Charlemagne at length put out, and met such weather that now she threatened to run into Toulon, and now into Nice, but, the wind moderating, did neither, but ran on into Genoa harbor instead, where the fa- miliar Bells rang sweetly in my ear. Or how there was a travelling party on board, of whom one member was very ill in the cabin next to mine, and being ill was cross, and there- fore declined to give up the Dictionary, which he kept under his pillow ; thereby obliging his companions to come down to him, constantly, to ask what was the Italian for a lump of s ugar — a glass of brandy and water — what's o'clock ? and so iorth : which he always insisted on looking out, with' his own sea-sick eyes, declining to entrust the book to any man alive. Like Grumio, I might have told you, in detail, all this and something more — but to as little purpose — were I not deterred by the remembrance that my business is with Italy. There- fore, like Grumio's story, "it shall die in oblivion." TO ROME BY PISA AND SIENA. There is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than the coast-road between Genoa and Spezzia. On one side : some- times far below, sometimes nearly on a level with the road, and often skirted by broken rocks of many shapes : there is the free blue sea, with here and there a picturesque felucca gliding slowly on ; on the other side are lofty hills, ravines be- sprinkled with white cottages, patches of dark olive woods, country churches with their light open towers, and country houses gayly painted. On every bank and knoll by the way- side, the wild cactus and aloe flourish in exuberant profusion ; and the gardens of the bright villages along the road, are seen all blushing in the summer-time with clusters of the Bella- donna, and are fragrant in the autumn and winter with golden oranges and lemons. Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively, by 22 j^02 PICTURES FROM ITALY. fishermen ; and it is pleasant to see their great boats hauled up on the beach, making little patches' -of shade, where they lie asleep, or where the women and children sit romping and looking out to sea, while they mend their nets upon the shore. There is one town, Camoglia, with its little harbor A on the sea, hundreds of feet below the road ; where families of mariners live, who, time out of mind, have owned coasting-vessels in that place, and have traded to Spain and elsewhere. Seen from the road above, it is like a tiny model on the margin of the dimpled water, shining in the sun. Descended into, by the winding mule-tracks, it is a perfect miniature of a primi- tive seafaring town ; the saltest, roughest, most piratical little place that ever was seen. Great rusty iron rings and mooring- chains, capstans, and fragments of old masts and spars, choke up the way ; hardy rough-weather boats, and seamen's cloth- ing, flutter in the little harbor or are drawn out on the sunny- stones to dry ; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few amphib- ious-looking fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling over the wall, as though earth or water were all one to them, and if they slipped in, they would float away, dozing comfortably among the fishes ; the church is bright with trophies of the sea, and votive offerings, in commemoration of escape from storm and shipwreck. The dwellings not immediately abut- ting on the harbor are approached by blind low archways, and by crooked steps, as if in darkness and in difficulty of access they should be like holds of ships, or inconvenient cabins under water ; and everywhere, there is a smell of fish, and sea- weed, and old rope. The coast-road whence Camoglia is descried so far below, is famous, in the warm season, especially in some parts near Genoa, for fire-flies. Walking there on a dark night, I have seen it made one sparkling firmament by these beautiful in- sects : so that the distant stars were pale against the flash and glitter that spangled every olive wood and hill-side, and per- vaded the whole air. It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed this road on our way to Rome. The middle of January was only just past, and it was very gloomy and dark weather ; very wet besides. In crossing the fine pass of Bracco, we en- countered such a storm of mist and rain, that we travelled in a cloud the whole way. There might have been no Medi- terranean in the world, for anything that we saw of it there, except when a sudden gust of wind, clearing the mist before PICTURES FROM ITALY. - «. it, for a moment, showed the agitated sea at a great depth below, lashing the distant rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously. The rain was incessant ; every brook and torrent was greatly swollen • and such a deafening leaping, and roar- ing, and thundering of water, I never heard the like of in my life. Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the Magra, an unbridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was too high to be safely crossed in the Ferry Boat, and were fain to wait until the afternoon of next day, when it had, in some degree, subsided. Spezzia, however, is a good place to tarry at • by reason, firstly, of its beautiful bay ; secondly, of its ghostly Inn ; thirdly, of the head-dress of the women, who wear, on one side of their head, a small doll's straw hat, stuck on to the hair ; which is certainly the oddest and most roguish head-gear that ever was invented. The Magra safely crossed in the Ferry Boat — the passage, is not by any means agreeable, when the current is swollen and strong — we arrived at Carrara, within a few hours. In good time next morning, we got some ponies, and went out to seii the marble quarries. They are four or five great glens, running up into a range of lofty hills, until they can run no longer, and are stopped by being abruptly strangled by Nature. The quarries, " or caves," as they call them there, are so many openings, high up in the hills, on either side of these passes, where they blast and excavate for marble : which may turn out good or bad " may make a man's fortune very quickly, or ruin him by thu great expense of working what is worth nothing. Some of these caves were opened by the ancient Romans, and remain as they left them to this hour. Many others are being worked at this moment ; others are to be begun to-morrow, next week, next month ; others are unbought, unthought of • and marble enough for more ages than have passed since the place was resorted to, lies hidden everywhere : patiently awaiting its time of discovery. As you toil and clamber up one of these steep gorges (having left your pony soddening his girths in water, a mile or two lower down) you hear, every now and then, echoing among the hills, in a low tone, more silent than the previous silence, a melancholy warning bugle, — a signal to the miners to withdraw. Then, there is a thundering, and echoing from hill to hill, and perhaps a splashing up of great fragments of 5 04 PfCT&J&SS /■'A'O.V ri'AI.Y. rock into the air ; and on you toil again until some othei bugle sounds, in a new direction, and you stop directly, lest you should come within the range of the new explosion. There were numbers of men, working high up in these hills — on the sides — clearing away, and sending down the broken masses of stone and earth, to make way for the blocks of marble that had been discovered. As these came rolling down from unseen hands into the narrow valley, I could not help thinking of the deep glen (just the same sort of glen ) where the Roc left Sinbad the Sailor ; and where the mer chants from the heights above, flung clown great pieces of meat for the diamonds to stick to. There were no eagles here to darken the sun in their swoop, and pounce upon them ; but it was as wild and fierce as if there had been hundreds. But the road, the road down which the marble comes, how- ever immense the blocks ! The genius of the country, and the •jpirit of its institutions, pave that road : repair it, watch it, keep it going ! Conceive a channel of water running over a rocky bed, beset with great heaps of stone of all shapes and ,'?izes, winding down the middle of this valley ; and that being the road — because it was the road five hundred years ago ! Imagine the clumsy carts of five hundred years ago, being used to this hour, and drawn, as they used to be, five hundred years ago, by oxen, whose ancestors were worn to death five hundred years ago, as their unhappy descendants are now, in twelve months, by the suffering and agony of this cruel work ! Two pair, four pair, ten pair, twenty pair, to one block, accord- ing to its size ; down it must come, this way. In their strug- gling from stone to stone, with their enormous loads behind them, they die frequently upon the spot ; and not they alone ; for their passionate drivers, sometimes tumbling down in their energy, are crushed to death beneath the wheels. But it was good five hundred years ago, and it must be good now : and a railroad down one of these steeps (the easiest thing in the world) would be flat blasphemy. When we stood aside, to see one of these cars drawn by only a pair of oxen (for it had but one small block of marble on it), coming down, I hailed, in my heart, the man who sat upon the heavy yoke, to keep it on the neck of the poor beasts — and who faced backwards : not before him — as the very Devil of true despotism. He had a great rod in his hand, with an iron point ; and when they could plough and force their way through the loose bed of the torrent no longer, and PICTURES FROM ITAL V. 505 came to a stop, he poked it into their bodies, beat it on their heads, screwed it round and round in their nostrils, got them on a yard or two, in the madness of intense pain • repeated all these persuasions, with increased intensity of purpose, when they stopped again ; got them on, once more • forced and goaded them to an abrupter point of the descent ; and when their writhing and smarting, and the weight behind them, bore them plunging down the precipice in a cloud of scattered water, whirled his rod above his head, and gave a great whoop and halio, as if he had achieved something, and had no idea that they might shake him off, and blindly mash his brains upon the road, in the noon-tide of his triumph. Standing in one of the many studii of Carrara, that after- noon — for it is a great workshop, full of beautifully-finished copies in marble, of almost every figure, group, and bust, we know — it seemed, at first, so strange to me that those exquisite shapes, replete with grace, and thought, and delicate repose, should grow out of all this toil, and sweat, and torture ! But I soon found a parallel to it, and an explanation of it, in every virtue that springs up in miserable ground, and every good thing that has its birth in sorrow and distress. And, looking out of the sculptor's great window, upon the marble mountains, all red and glowing in the decline of day, but stern and solemn to the last, I thought, my God ! how many quarries of human hearts and souls, capable of far more beautiful results, are left shut up and mouldering away : while pleasure-travellers through life, avert their faces, as they pass, and shudder at the gloom and ruggedness that conceal them ! The then reigning Duke of Modena, to whom this territory in part belonged, claimed the proud distinction of being the only sovereign in Europe who had not recognized Louis- Philippe as King of the French ! He was not a wag, but quite in earnest. He was also much opposed to railroads ; and if certain lines in contemplation by other potentates, on either side of him, had been executed, would have probably enjoyed the satisfaction of having an omnibus plying to and fro across his not very vast dominions, to forward travellers f r om one terminus to another. Carrara, shut in by great hills, is very picturesque and bold. Few tourists stay there ; and the people are nearly all connected, in one way or other, with the working of marble. There are also villages among the caves, where the workmen live. It contains a beautiful little Theatre, newly built ; and 5 06 PIC TURKS FR OM II AL Y. it is an interesting custom there, to form the chorus of labor ers in the marble quarries, who are self-taught and sing by ear. I heard them in a comic opera, and in an act of " Norma ; " and they acquitted themselves very well ; unlike the common people of Italy generally, who (with some exceptions among the Neapolitans) sing vilely out of tune, and have very dis- agreeable singing voices. From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the first view of the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa lies — with Leghorn, a purple spot in the flat distance — is enchanting. Nor is it only distance that lends enchantment to the view ; for the fruitful country, and rich woods of olive-trees through which the road subsequently passes, render it delightful. The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and for a long time we could see, behind the wall, the leaning Tower, all awry in the uncertain light ; the shadowy original of the old pictures in school-books, setting forth " The Wonders of the World." Like most things connected in their first asso- ciations with school-books and school-times, it was too small. I felt it keenly. It was nothing like so high above the wall as I had hoped. It was another of the many deceptions practised by Mr. Harris, Bookseller, at the corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, London. His Tower w r as a fiction, but this was a reality — and, by comparison, a short reality. Still, it looked very well, and very strange, and was quite as much out of the perpendicular as Harris had represented it to be. The quiet air of Pisa too ; the big guard-house at the gate, with only two little soldiers in it ; the streets with scarcely any show of people in them ; and the Arno, flowing quaintly through the centre of the town ; were excellent. So, I bore no malice in my heart against Mr. Harris (remembering his good intentions), but for- gave him before dinner, and went out, full of confidence, to see the Tower next morning. I might have known better ; but, somehow, I had expected to see it, casting its long shadow on a public street where peo- ple came and went all day. It was a surprise to me to find it in a grave retired place, apart from the general resort, and carpeted with smooth green turf. But, the group of buildings, clustered on and about this verdant carpet : comprising the Tower, the Baptistery, the Cathedral, and the Church of the Campo Santo : is perhaps the most remarkable and beautiful in the whole world ; and from being clustered there, together, away from the ordinary transactions and details of the town, PICTURES FROM ITAL Y 507 they have a singularly venerable and impressive character. It is the architectural essence of a rich old city, with all its common life and common habitations pressed out, and filtered away. Simond compares the Tower to the usual pictorial repre- sentations in children's books of the Tower of Babel. It is a happy simile, and conveys a better idea of the building than chapters of labored description. Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of the structure ; nothing can be more re- markable than its general appearance. In the course of the ascent to the top (which is by an easy staircase), the inclina- tion is not very apparent ; but, at the summit, it becomes so, and gives one the sensation of being in a ship that has heeled over, through the' action of an ebb-tide. The effect upon the low side, so to speak — looking over from the gallery, and see- ing the shaft recede to its base — is very startling • and I saw a nervous traveller hold on to the Tower involuntarily, after glancing down, as if he had some idea of propping it up. The view within, from the ground — looking up, as through a slanted tube — is also very curious. It certainly inclines as much as the most sanguine tourist could desire. The natural impulse of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, who were about to recline upon the grass below it, to rest, and contem- plate the adjacent buildings, would probably be, not to take up their position under the leaning side ; it is so very much aslant. The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Baptistery need no recapitulation from me ; though in this case, as in a hundred others, I find it difficult to separate my own delight in recalling them, from your weariness in having them re- called. There is a picture of St. Agnes, by Andrea del Sarto, in the former, and there are a variety of rich columns in the latter, that tempt me strongly. It is, I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be tempted into elaborate descriptions, to remember the Campo Santo ; where grass-grown graves are dug in earth brought more than six hundred years ago, from the Holy Land • and where there are, surrounding them, such cloisters, with such playing lights and shadows falling through their delicate tracery on the stone pavement, as surely the dullest memory could never forget. On the- Walls of this solemn and lovely place, are ancient frescoes, very much obliterated and decayed, but very curious. As usually happens in almost any collection of 5 o8 PICTURES FROM ITALY. paintings, of any sort, in Italy, where*, there are many heads, there is, in one of them, a striking accidental likeness of Na- poleon. At one time, I used to please my fancy with the speculation whether these old painters, at their work, had a foreboding knowledge of the man who would one day arise to wreak such destruction upon art : whose soldiers would make targets of great pictures, and stable their horses among tri- umphs of architecture. But the same Corsican face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at this day, that a more com- monplace solution of the coincidence is unavoidable. If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its Tower, it may claim to be, at least, the second or , third in right of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy visitor at every turn, escort him to every door he enters at, and lie in wait for him, with strong reinforcements, at every door by which they know he must come out. The grating of the por- tal on its hinges is the signal for a general shout, and the mo- ment he appears, he is hemmed in, and fallen on, by heaps of rags and personal distortions. The beggars seem to embody all the trade and enterprise of Pisa. Nothing else is stirring, but warm air. Going through the streets, the fronts of the sleepy houses look like backs. They are all so still and quiet, and unlike houses with people in them, that the greater part of the city has the appearance of a city at daybreak, or during a general siesta of the population. Or it is yet more like those backgrounds of houses in common prints, or old engravings, where windows and doors are squarely indicated, and one figure (a beggar of course) is seen walking off by it- self into illimitable perspective. Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by Smollett's grave), which is thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where idleness is shouldered out of the way by commerce. The regulations observed there, in reference to trade and mer- chants, are very liberal and free ■ and the town, of course, benefits by them. Leghorn has a bad name in connection with stabbers, and with some justice it must be allowed ; for, not many years ago, there was an assassination club there, the members of which bore no ill-will to anybody in particular, but stabbed people (quite strangers to them) in the streets at night, for the pleasure and excitement of the recreation. I think the president of this amiable society, was a shoemaker. He was taken, however, and the club was broken up. It would, probably, have disappeared in the natural course of events PICTURES, FROM. I'fALY. ~ oC) before the railroad between Leghorn and Pisa, which is a good one, and has already begun to astonish Italy with a pre- cedent of punctuality, order, plain dealing, and improvement — the most dangerous and heretical astonisher of all. There must have been a slight sensation, as of earthquake, surely, in the Vatican, when the first Italian railroad was thrown ODen. Returning to Pisa, and hiring a good-tempered Vetturinc, and his four horses, to take us on to Rome, we travelled through pleasant Tuscan villages and cheerful scenery all day. The road-side crosses in this part of Italy are numerous and curious. There is seldom a figure on the cross, though there is some- times a face; but they are remarkable for being garnished with little models in wood, of every possible object that can be connected with the Saviour's death. The cock that crowed when Peter had denied his Master thrice, is usually perched on the tip-top ; and an ornithological phenomenon he gener- ally is. Under him. is the inscription. Then, hung on to the cross-beam, are the spear, the reed with the sponge of vin- egar and water at the end, the coat without seam for which the soldiers cast lots, the dice-box with which they threw for it, the hammer that drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled them out, the ladder Which was set against the cross, the crown of thorns, the instrument of flagellation, the lanthorn with which Mary went to the tomb (I suppose), and the sword with which Peter smote the servant of the high priest, — a per- fect toy-shop of little objects, repeated at every four or five miles, all along the highway. On the evening of the second day from Pisa, we reached the beautiful old city of Siena. There was what they called a Carnival, in progress ; but, as its secret lay in a score or two of melancholy people walking up and down the principal street in common toy-shop masks, and being more melan- choly, if possible, than the same sort of people in England, I say no more of it. We went off, betimes next morning, to see the Cathedral, which is wonderfully picturesque inside and out, especially the latter — also the market-place, or great Pi- azza, which is a large square, with a great broken-nosed foun- tain in it : some quaint Gothic houses : and a high square brick tower ; outside the top of which — a curious feature in such views in Italy — hangs an enormous bell. It is like a bit of Venice, without the water. There are some curious old Palazzi in the town, which is very ancient ; and without hav - 1 JVC 7 UKES Fli th tf J PAL Y ing (for me) the interest of Verona, or Genoa- it is vei*jj dreamy and fantastic, and most interesting. We went on again, as soon as we had seen these things, and going over a rather bleak country (there had been noth- ing but vines until now : mere walking-sticks at that season of the year), stopped, as usual, between one and two hours in the middle of the day, to rest the horses ; that being a part of every Vetturino contract. We then went on again, through a region gradually becoming bleaker and wilder, until it be- came as bare and desolate as any Scottish moors. Soon after dark, we halted for the night,, at the osteria of La Scala : a perfectly lone house, where the family were sitting round a great fire in the kitchen,, raised on a stone platform three or four feet high, and big enough for the roasting of an ox. On 'he upper, and only other floor of this hotel, there was a great , irild rambling sala, with one very little window in a by-corner, and four black doors opening into four black bedrooms in va- rious directions. To say nothing of another large jplack door, opening into another large black sala, with the staircase com- ing abruptly through a kind of trap-door in the floor, and the i afters of the roof looming above : a suspicious little press skulking in one obscure corner ; and all the knives in the house lying about in various directions. The fire-place was \\1 the purest Italian architecture, so that it was perfectly im- possible to see it for the smoke. The waitress was like a dramatic brigand's wife, and wore the same style of dress upon her head. The dogs barked like mad • the echoes re- lumed the compliments bestowed upon them; there was not another house within twelve miles ; and things had a dreary, and rather a cut-throat, appearance. They were not improved by rumors of robbers having come out, strong and boldly, within a few nights ; and of their having stopped the mail very near that place. They were known to have waylaid some travellers not long before, on Mount Vesuvius itself, and were the talk at all the roadside inns. As they were no business of ours, however (for we had very little with us to lose), we made ourselves merry on the subject, and were very soon as comfortable as need be. We had the usual dinner in this solitary house ; and. a very good dinner it is, when you are used . to it. There is something with a vegetable or some rice in it, which is a sort of short- hand or arbitraiy character for soup, and which tastes very well, when you have flavored it with plenty of grated cheese, PICTURES FROM ITAL K 5 r T lots of salt, and abundance of pepper. There is the half fowl of which this soup has been made. There is a stewed pigeon. with the gizzards and livers of himself and other birds stuck all round him. There is a bit of roast beef, the size of a small French roll. ' There are a scrap of Parmesan cheese, and five little withered apples, all huddled together on a small plate, and crowding one upon the other, as if each were try- ing to save itself from the chance of being eaten. Then there is coffee ; and then there is bed. You don't mind brick floors ; you don't mind yawning doors, nor banging windows ; you don't mind your own horses being stabled under the bed ; and so close, that every time a horse coughs or sneezes, he wakes you. If you are good-humored to the people about you, and speak pleasantly, and look cheerful, take my word for it you may be well entertained in the very worst Italian Inn, and always in the most obliging manner, and may go from one end of the country to the other (despite all stories to the contrary) without any great trial of your patience any- where. Especially, when you get such wine in flasks, as the Orvieto, and the Monte Pulciano. It was a bad morning when we left this place ; and we went, for twelve miles, over a country as barren, as stony, and as wild, as Cornwall in England, until we came to Radicofani, where there is a ghostly, goblin inn : once a hunting-seat, be- longing to the Dukes of Tuscany. It is full of such rambling corridors, and gaunt rooms, that all the murdering and phan- tom tales that ever were written might have originated in that one house. There are some horrible old Palazzi in Genoa : one in particular, not unlike it, outside : but there is a wind- ing, creaking, wormy, rustling, door-opening, foot-on-staircase- falling character about this Radicofani Hotel, such as I never saw, anywhere else. The town, such as it is, hangs on a hill- side above the house, and in front of it. The inhabitants are all beggars ; and as soon as they see a carriage coming, they swoop down upon it, like so many birds of prey. When we got on the mountain pass, which lies beyond this place, the wind (as they had forewarned us at the inn) was so terrific, that we were obliged to take my other half out of the carriage, lest she should be blown over, carriage and all, and to hang to it, on the windy side (as well as we could for laugh- ing), to prevent its going, Heaven knows where. For mere force of wind, this land-storm might have competed w T ith an Atlantic gale, and had a reasonable chance of coming off vie 5 j 2 PIC TURES FK OM 1 TA L Y. torious. The blast came sweeping down great gullies In a range of mountains on the right : so that we looked with posi- tive awe at a great morass on the left, and saw that there was not a bush or twig to hold by. It seemed as if, once blowr, from our feet, we must be swept out to sea, or away into space. There was snow, and hail, and rain, and lightning and thunder ; and there were rolling mists, travelling with in- credible velocity. It was dark, awful, and solitary to the last degree ; there were mountains above mountains, veiled in angry clouds ; and there was such a wrathful, rapid, violent, tumultuous hurry, everywhere, as rendered the scene un- speakably exciting and grand. It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding; and to cross even the dismal dirty Papal Frontier. After passing through two little towns ; in one of which, Acquapendente, there was also a " Carnival " in progress : consisting of one man dressed and masked as a woman, and one woman dressed and masked as a man, walking ankle-deep, through the muddy streets, in a very melancholy manner: we came, at dusk, within sight of the Lake of Bolsena, on whose bank there is a little town of the same name, much celebrated for malaria. With the exception of this poor place, there is not a cottage on the banks of the lake, or near it (for nobody dare sleep there) ; not a boat upon its waters : not a stick or stake to break the dismal monotony of seven-and-twenty watery miles. We were late in getting in, the roads being very bad from heavy rains ; and, after dark, the dulness of the scene wa $ quite intolerable. We entered on a very different, and a finer scene of deso- lation, next night, at sunset. We had passed through Mon- tefiaschone (famous for its wine) and Viterbo (for its foun- tains) : and after climbing up a long hill of eight or ten miles'" extent, came suddenly upon the margin of a solitary lake : in one part very beautiful, with a luxuriant wood ; in another, very barren, and shut in by bleak volcanic hills. Where this lake flows, there stood, of old, a city. It was swallowed up one day ; and in its stead, this water rose. There are ancient traditions (common to many parts of the world) of the ruined city having been seen below, when the water was clear ; but however that may be, from this spot of earth it vanished. The ground came bubbling up above it ; and the water too ; and here they stand, like ghosts on whom the other world closed suddenly, and who have no means of getting back PICTURES FROM ITALY 5*3 again. They seem to be waiting the course of ages, for the next earthquake in that place ; when they will plunge below the ground, at its first yawning, and be seen no more. The unhappy city below, is not more lost and dreary, than these fire-charred hills and the stagnant water, above. The red sun looked strangely on them, as with the knowledge that they were made for caverns and darkness ; and the melan- choly water oozed and sucked the mud, and crept quietly among the marshy grass and reeds, as if the overthrow of all the ancient towers and house-tops, and the death of all the ancient people born and bred there, were yet heavy on its conscience. A short ride from this lake, brought us to Ronciglione ; a little town like a large pig-sty, where we passed the night Next morning at seven o'clock, Ave started for Rome. As soon as we were out of the pig-sty, we entered on the Campagna Romana ; an undulating flat (as you know), where few people can live ; and where, for miles and miles, there if> nothing to relieve the terrible monotony and gloom. Of all kinds of country that could, by possibility, lie outside tin*. gates of Rome, this is the aptest and fittest burial-ground for the. Dead City. So sad, so quiet, so sullen ; so secret in its covering up of great masses of ruin, and hiding them; so likfc the waste places into which the men possessed with devils used to go and howl, and rend themselves, in the old days of. Jerusalem. .We had to traverse thirty miles of this Campagna ; and for two-ancl-twenty we went on and on, seeing nothing but now and then a lonely house, or a villanous-looking shepherd : with matted hair all over his face, and himself wrapped to the chin in a frowsy brown mantle, tending his sheep. At the end of that distance, we stopped to refresh the. horses, and to get some lunch, in a common malaria-shaken despondent little public-house, whose every inch of wall and beam, inside, was (according to custom) painted and deco- rated in a way so miserable that every room looked like the wrong side of another room, and with its wretched imitation of drapery, and lop-sided little daubs of lyres, seemed to have been plundered from behind the scenes of some travelling circus. When we were fairly going off again, we began, in a perfect fever, to strain our eyes for Rome ; and when, after another mile or two, the Eternal City appeared, at length, in- the dis- tance ; it looked like — I am half afraid to write the word— « 33 5 J 4 PICTURES FROM ITALY like LONDON ! ! ! There it lay, under a thick cloud., with innumerable towers, and steeples, and roofs of houses, rising up into the sky, and high above them all, one Dome. I swear, that keenly as I felt the seeming absurdity of the com- parison, it was so like London, at that distance, that if you could have shown it me, in a glass, I should have taken it for nothing else. ROME. We entered the Eternal City, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del Po- polo, and came immediately — it was a dark, muddy day, and there had been heavy rain — on the skirts of the Carnival. We did not, then, know that we were only looking at the fag end of the masks, who were driving slowly round and round the Piazza until they could find a promising opportunity for falling into the stream of carriages, and getting, in good time, into the thick of the festivity ; and coming among them so ab- ruptly, all travel-stained and weary, was not coming very well prepared to enjoy the scene. We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte Molle two or three miles before. It had looked as yellow as it ought to look, and hurrying on between its worn-away and miry banks, had a promising aspect of desolation and ruin. The masquerade dresses on the fringe of the Carnival, did great violence to this promise. There were no great ruins, no solemn tokens of antiquity, to be seen ; — they all lie on the other side of the city. There seemed to be long streets of common-place shops and houses, such as are to be found in any European town ; there were busy people, equipages, ordinary walkers to and fro ; a multitude of chattering strangers. It was no more my Rome ; the Rome of anybody's fancy, man or boy ; de- graded and fallen and lying asleep in the sun among a heap of ruins : than the Place de la Concorde in Paris is. A cloudy sky, a dull cold rain, and muddy streets, I was prepared for, but not for this : and I confess to having gone to bed, that night, in a very indifferent humor, and with a very considerable quenched enthusiasm. PIC Tl TR'ES FR OM JTAL Y. $ i 5 Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to St. Peter's. It looked immense in the distance, but distinctly and decidedly small, by comparison, on a near approach. The beauty of the Piazza, on which it stands, with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing fountains — so fresh, so broad and free, and beautiful — nothing can exaggerate. The first burst of the interior, in all its expansive majesty and glory : and, most of all, the looking up into the Dome : is a sensation never to be forgotten. But, there were preparations for a Festa ; the pillars of stately marble were swathed in some impertinent frippery of red and yellow ; the altar, and entrance to the subterranean chapel : which is before it : in the centre of the church : were like a goldsmith's shop, or one of the opening scenes in a very lavish pantomine. And though I had as high a sense of the beauty of the building (I hope) as it is possible to entertain, I felt no very strong emotion. I have been infinitely more affected in many English cathe- drals when the organ has been playing, and in many English country churches when the congregation have been singing. I had a much greater sense of mystery and wonder, in the Ca- thedral of San Mark at Venice. When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly sin hour staring up into the dome : and would not have " gone over " the Cathedral then, for any money), we said to the coachman, " Go to the Coliseum." In a quarter of an hour or so, he stopped at the gate, and we went in. It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say : so suggestive and distinct is it at this hour : that, for a moment — actually in passing in — they who will, may have the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, with thousands of eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust going on there, as no language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desola- tion, strike upon the stranger the next moment, like a softened sorrow ; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately connected with his own affections and afflictions. To see it crumbling" there, an inch a year; its walls and arches overgrown with green ; its corridors open to the day ; the long grass growing in its porches ; young trees of yester- day, springing up on its ragged parapets, and bearing fruit : chance produce of the seeds dropped there by the birds who build their nests within its chinks and crannies ; to see its qjfj PICTURES FROM /7'ALY. Pit of Fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in the centre • to climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it ; the triumphal arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus ; the Roman Forum ; the Palace of the Caesars ; the temples of the old religion, fallen down and gone ; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked wonderful old city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, mournful sight, con- ceivable. Never, in its bloodiest crime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the lustiest life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin. God be thanked : a ruin. As it tops the other ruins : standing there, a mountain among graves : so do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants of the old mythology and old butchery of Rome, in the nature of the fierce and cruel Roman people. The Italian face changes as the visitor approaches the city ; its beauty becomes devilish ; and there is scarcely one countenance in a hundred, among the common people in the streets, that would not be at home and happy in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow. Here was Rome indeed at last : and such a Rome as no one can imagine in its full and awful grandeur ! We wandered out upon the Appian Wat 7 , and then went on, through miles of ruined tombs and broken walls, with here and there a desolate and uninhabited house ; past the Circus of Romulus, where the course of the chariots, the stations of the judges, competitors, and spectators, are yet as plainly to be seen af in old time : past the tomb of Cecilia Metella : past all in- closure, hedge, or stake, wall or fence : away upon the open Campagna, where on that side of Rome, nothing is to be beheld but Ruin. Except where the distant Apennines bound the view upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one field of ruin, Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque and beautiful clusters of arches ; broken temples ; broken tombs. A desert of decay, sombre and desolate bevontl all expression ; and with a history in every stone that strews the ground. On Sunday, the Pope assisted in the performance of High Mass at St. Peter's. The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, on that second visit, was exactly what it was at first, and what it remains after many visits. It is not religiously impressive PICTURES FROM ITAL Y ^ 1 7 or affecting. It is an immense edifice, with no one point for the mind to rest upon ; and it tires itself with wandering roving! and round. The very purpose of the place, is not ex- pressed in anything you see there, unless you examine its details — and all examination of details is incompatible with the place itself. It might be a Pantheon, or a Senate House, or a great architectural trophy, having no other object than an architectural triumph. There is a black statue of St. Peter, to be sure, under a red canopy ; which is larger than life, and which is constantly having its great toe kissed by good Catho- lics. You cannot help seeing that : it is so very prominent and popular. But it does not heighten the effect of the temple, as a work of art ; and it is not expressive — to me at least — of its high purpose. A large space behind the altar, was fitted up with boxes, shaped like those at the Italian Opera in England, but in their decoration much more gaudy. In the centre gf the kind of theatre thus railed off, was a canopied dais with the Pope's chair upon it. The pavement was covered with a carpet of the brightest green ; and what with this green, and the intoler- able reds and crimsons, and gold borders of the hangings, the whole concern looked like a stupendous Bonbon. On either side of the altar, was a large box for lady strangers. These were filled with ladies in black dresses and black veils. The gentlemen of the Pope's guard, in red coats, leather breeches, and jackboots, guarded all this reserved space, with drawn swords that were very flashy in every sense : and from the altar all down the nave, a broad lane was kept clear by the Pope's Swiss guard, who wear a quaint striped surcoat, and striped tight legs, and carry halberds like those which are usually shouldered by those theatrical supernumeraries, who never can get off the stage fast enough, and who may be generally observed to linger in the enemy's camp after the open country, held by the opposite forces, has been split up the middle by a convulsion of Nature. I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company with a great many other gentlemen, attired in black (no other passport is necessary), and stood there at my ease, during the performance of Mass. The singers were in a crib of wirework (like a large meat-safe or bird-cage) in one corner \ and sang most atrociously. All about the green carpet, there was a slowly moving crowd of people : talking to each other : star- ing at the Pope through eye-glasses : defrauding one another, 5 x8 PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. in moments of partial curiosity, out of precarious seats on the bases of pillars : and grinning hideously at the ladies. Dotted here and there, were little knots of friars (Francescani, or Cappuccfni, in their coarse brown dresses and peaked hoods) making a strange contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of higher degree, and having their humility gratified to the utmost, by being shouldered about, and elbowed right and left, on all sides. Some of these had muddy sandals and umbrellas, and stained garments ; having trudged in from the country. The faces of the greater part were as coarse and heavy as their dress ; their dogged, stupid, monotonous stare at all the glory and splendor, having something in it, half miserable, and half ridiculous. Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the altar, was a perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red, gold, pur- ple, violet, white, and fine linen. Stragglers from these, went to and fro among the crowd, conversing, two and two, or giv- ing and receiving introductions, and exchanging salutations ; other functionaries in black gowns, and other functionaries in ^ourt-dresses, were similarly engaged. In the midst of all ' iiese, and stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out, and the ex- treme restlessness of the Youth of England, who were perpet- ually wandering about, some few steady persons in black cassocks, who had knelt down with their faces to the wall, and were poring over their missals, became, unintentionally, a sort of human man-traps, and with their own devout legs, tripped up other people's by the dozen. There was a great pile of candles lying down on the floor near me, which a very old man in a rusty black gown with an open work tippet, like a summer ornament for a fireplace in tissue-paper, made himself very busy in dispensing to all the ecclesiastics : one a-piece. They loitered about with these for some time, under their arms like walking-sticks, or in their hands like truncheons. At a certain period of the ceremony, however, each carried his canrJle up to the Pope, laid it across his two knees to be blessed, took it back again, and filed off. This was done in a very attenuated procession, as you may suppose, and occupied a long time. Not because it takes long to bless a candle through and through, but because there were so many candles to be blessed. At last they were all blessed ; and then they were all lighted ; and then the Pope was taken up, chair and all, and carried round the church. I must say, that I never saw anything, out of November, PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 5 X 9 so like the popular English commemoration of the fifth of that month. A bundle of matches and a lantern, would have made it perfect. Nor did the Pope, himself, at all mar the resemblance, though he has a pleasant and venerable face ; for, as this part of the ceremony makes him giddy and sick 7 he shuts his eyes when it is performed : and having his eyes shut and a great mitre on his head, and his head itself wag- ging to and fro as they shook him in carrying, he looked as if his mask were going to tumble off. The two immense fans which are always borne, one on either side of him, accom- panied him, of course, on this occasion. As they carried him along he blessed the people with the mystic sign; and as he passed them, they kneeled down. When he had made the round of the church, he was brought back again, and if I am not mistaken, this performance was repeated, in the whole three times. There was, certainly, nothing solemn or effective in it ; and certainly very much that was droll and tawdry. But this remark applies to the whole ceremony, except the raising of the Host, when every man in the guard dropped on one knee instantly, and dashed his naked sword on the ground ; which had a fine effect. The next time I saw the cathedral, was, some two or three weeks afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball ; and then, the hangings being taken down, and the carpet taken up, but all the framework left, the remnants of these decorations looked like an exploded cracker.* The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festal days, and Sunday being always a dies non in carnival proceedings, we had looked forward, with some impatience and curiosity, to the beginning of the new week : Monday and Tuesday being the two last and best days of the Carnival. On the Monday afternoon at one or two o'clock, there be- gan to be a great rattling of carriages into the court-yard of the hotel ; a hurrying to and fro of all the servants in it ; and, now and then, a swift shooting across some doorway or bal- cony, of a straggling stranger in a fancy dress : not yet suffi- ciently well used to the same, to wear it with confidence, and defy public opinion. All the carriages were open, and had the linings carefully covered with white cotton or calico, to prevent their proper decorations from being spoiled by the incessant pelting of sugar-plums ; and people were packing and cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its occupants. 5 2 o PIC TURES FR OM IT A L Y. enormous sacks and baskets full of these confetti, together with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally run- ning over : scattering, at every shake and jerk of the springs, some of their abundance on the ground. Not to be behind- hand in these essential particulars, we caused two very respect- able sacks of sugar-plums (each about three feet high) and a large clothes-basket full of flowers to be conveyed into Our hired barouche, with all speed. And from our place of ob- servation, In one of the upper balconies of the hotel, we con- templated these arrangements with the liveliest satisfaction. The carriages now beginning to take up their company, and move away, we got into ours, and drove off too, armed with little wire masks for our faces ; the sugar-plums, like FalstafFs adulterated sack, having lime in their composition. The Corso is a street a mile long ; a street of shops, and palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad piazza. There are verandas and balconies, of all shapes and sizes, to almost every house — not on one story alone, but often to one room or another on every story — put there in general with so little order or regularity, that if, year after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner. This is the great fountain-head and focus of the Carnival. But all the streets in which the Carnival is held, being vigi- lantly kept by dragoons, it is necessary for carriages, in the first instance, to pass, in line, down another thoroughfare, and so come into the Corso at the end remote from the Piazza del Popolo ; which is one of its terminations. Accordingly, we fell into the string of coaches, and, for some time, jogged on quietly enough ; now crawling on at a very slow walk ; now trotting half-a-dozen yards ; now backing fifty ; and now stop- ping altogether ; as the pressure in front obliged us. If any impetuous carriage dashed out of the rank and clattered for- ward, with the wild idea of getting on faster, it was suddenly met, or overtaken, by a trooper on horseback, who, deaf as his own drawn sword to all remonstrances, immediately escort- ed it back to the very end of the row, and made it a dim speck in the remotest perspective. Occasionally, we interchanged a volley of confetti with the carriage next in front, or the car riage next behind 5 but as yet, this capturing of stray and errant coaches bv the military, was the chief amusement. PIC TL 'RES FR Oi M ITALY. s 2 J Presently, we came into a narrow street, where, besides one line of carriages going, there was another line of carriages returning. Here the sugar-plums and the nosegays began to fly about, pretty smartly ; and I was fortunate enough to observe one gentleman attired as a Greek warrior, catch a light-whiskered brigand on the nose (he was in the very act of tossing up a bouquet to a young lady in a first -floor window) with a precision that was much applauded by the bystanders. As this victorious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark with a stout gentleman in a door-way — one-half black and one- half white, as if he had been peeled up the middle — who had offered him his congratulations on this achievement, he re- ceived on orange from a house-top, full on his left ear, and was much surprised, not to say discomfited. Especially, as he was standing up at the time ; and in consequence of the car- riage moving on suddenly, at the same moment, staggered ignominiously, and buried himself among his flowers. Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress, brought us to the Corso ; and any thing so gay, so bright, and lively as the whole scene there, it would be difficult to imagine. From all the innumerable balconies : from the remotest and highest, no less than from the lowest and nearest : hangings of bright red, bright green, bright blue, white and gold, were fluttering in the brilliant sunlight. From windows, and from parapets, and tops of houses, streamers of the richest colors, and dra- peries of the gaudiest and most sparkling hues, were floating out upon the street. The buildings seemed to have been liter- ally turned inside out, and to have all their gayety towards the highway. Shop-fronts were taken down, and the windows filled with company, like boxes at a shining theatre ; doors were carried off their hinges, and long tapestried groves, hung with garlands of flowers and evergreens, displayed within; builders' scaffoldings were gorgeous temples, radiant in silver, - gold, and crimson ; and in every nook and corner, from the pavement to the chimney-tops, where women's eyes coula: glisten, there they danced, and laughed, and sparkled, like the light in water. Every sort of bewitching madness of dress was there. Little preposterous scarlet jackets ; quaint old stomachers, more wicked than the smartest bodices ; Polish pelisses, strained and tight as ripe gooseberries ; tiny Greek . caps, all awry, and clinging to the dark hair, Heaven knows how ; every wild, quaint, bold, shy, pettish, madcap fancy had its illustration in a dress ; and every fancy was as dead forgot- 5 2 2 iVC TURES FROM ITA L Y. ten by its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as if the three old aqueducts that still remain entire had brought Lethe into .Rome, upon their sturdy arches, that morning. The carriages were now three abreast • in broader places four ; often stationary for a long time together ; always one close mass of variegated brightness ; showing, the whole street- ful, through the storm of flowers, like flowers of a larger growth themselves. In some, the horses were richly caparisoned in magnificent trappings ; in others they were decked from head to tail, with flowing ribbons. Some were driven by coachmen with enormous double faces : one face leering at the horses': the other cocking its extraordinary eyes into the carriage : and both rattling again, under the hail of sugar- plums. Other drivers were attired as women, wearing long ringlets and no bonnets, and looking more ridiculous in any real difficulty with the horses (of which, in such a concourse, there were a great many) than tongue can tell, or pen de- scribe. Instead of sitting in the carriages, upon the seats, the handsome Roman women, to see and to be seen the better, sit in the heads of the barouches, at this time of general license, with their feet upon the cushions — and oh the flowing skirts and dainty waists, the blessed shapes and laughing faces, the free, good-humored, gallant figures that they make ! There were great vans, too, full of handsome girls — thirty, or more together, perhaps — and the broadsides that were poured into, and poured out of, these fairy fire-shops, splashed the air with flowers and bon-bons for ten minutes at a time. Carriages, delayed long in one place, would begin a deliberate engage- ment with other carriages, or with people at the lower win- dows ; and the spectators at some upper balcony or window, joining in the fray, and attacking both parties, would empty down great bags of confetti that descended like a cloud, and in an instant made them white as millers. Still, carriages on ^carriages, dresses on dresses, colors on colors, crowds upon crowds, without end.. Men and boys clinging to the wheels of coaches, and holding on behind, and following in their wake, and diving in among the horses' feet to pick up scat- tered flowers to sell again ; maskers on foot (the drollest gen- erally) in fantastic exaggerations of court-dresses, surveying the throng through enormous eye-glasses, and always trans- ported with an ecstasy of love, on the discovery of any partic- ularly old lady at a window ; long strings of Policinelli, laying about them with blown bladders at the ends of sticks : a PICTURES FROM ITALY. 5 2 3 wagonful of madmen, screaming and tearing to the life ; a coachful of grave mamelukes, with their horse-tail standard set up in the midst ; a party of gipsy-women engaged in ter- rific conflict with a shipful of sailors; a man-monkey on a pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs' faces, and lions' tails, carried under their arms, or worn gracefully over their shoulders ; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colors on colors, crowds upon crowds, without end. Not many ac- tual characters sustained, or represented, perhaps, consider- ing the number dressed, but the main pleasure of the scene Consisting in its entire good temper ; in its bright, and in- finite, and flashing variety; and in its entire abandonment to the mad humor of the time — an abandonment so perfect, so contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest Roman of them all, and thinks of nothing else till half-past four o'clock, when he is suddenly reminded (to his; great regret) that this is not the whole business of his exist ence t by hearing the trumpets sound, and seeing the dragoonr, begin to clear the street. How it ever is cleared for the race that takes place at five , or how the horses ever go through the race, without going over the people, is more than I can say. But the carriages get out into the by-streets, or up into the Piazza del Popolo, and some people sit in temporary galleries in the latter place, and tens of thousands line the Corso on both sides, when th<> horses are brought out into the Piazza — to the foot of that same column which, for centuries, looked down upon the games and chariot-races in the Circus Maximus. At a given signal they are started off. Down the live lane, the whole length of the Corso, they fly like the wind : rider- less, as all the world knows : with shining ornaments upon their backs, and twisted in their plaited manes : and with heavy little balls stuck full of spikes, dangling at their sides, to goad them on. The jingling of these trappings, and the rattling of their hoofs upon the hard stones ; the dash and fury of their speed along the echoing street ; nay, the very cannon that are fired — these noises are nothing to the roaring of the multitude : their shouts - the clapping of their hands. But it is soon over — almost instantaneously. More cannon shake the town. The horses have plunged into the carpets put across the street to stop them ; the goal is reached ; the prizes are won (they are given, in part, by the poor Jewsj as a 524 PICTURES FROM ITALY. compromise for not running foot-races themselves) ; and there is an end to that day's sport. But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on the last day but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a height of glittering color, swarming life, and frolicsome up- roar, that the bare recollection of it makes me giddy at this moment. The same diversions, greatly heightened and inten- sified in the ardor with which they are pursued, go on until the same hour. The race is repeated ; the cannon are fired \ the shouting and clapping of hands are renewed ; the cannon are fired again ; the race is over ; and the prizes are won. But the carriages : ankle-deep with sugar-plums within, and so be-flowered and dusty without, as to be hardly recognizable for the same vehicles that they were, three hours ago : instead of scampering off in all directions, throng into the Corso, where they are soon wedged together in a scarcely moving mass'. For the diversion of the Moccoletti, the last gay mad- ness of the Carnival, is now at hand ; and sellers of little ta- pers like what are called Christmas candles in England, are shouting lustily on every side, " Moccoli, Moccoli ! Ecco Moccoli ! " — a new item in the tumult ; quite abolishing that other item of " Ecco Fiori ! Ecco Fior — r — r ! " which has been making itself audible, over all the rest, at intervals, the whole day through. As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one dull, heavy, uniform color in the decline of the day, lights be- gin flashing, here and there : in the windows, on the house- tops, in the balconies, in the carriages, in the hands of the foot-passengers : little by little : gradually, gradually : more and more : until the whole long street is one great glare and blaze of fire. Then, everybody present has but one engross- ing object ; that is, to extinguish other people's candles, and to keep his own alight ; and everybody : man, woman, or child, gentleman or lady, prince or peasant, native or foreigner: yells and screams, and roars incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued, " Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo ! " (Without a light ! Without a light !) until nothing is heard but a gigan- tic chorus of those two words, mingled with peals of laughter, The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extraordr nary that can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with everybody standing on the seats or on the box, holding up their lights at arms' length, for greater safety ; some in paper shades ; some with a bunch of undefended little 'tapers, kin- PICTURES FROM ITALY. 525 died together ; some with blazing torches ; some with feeble little candles ; men on foot, creeping along, among the wheels, watching their opportunity, to make a spring at some particular light, and dash it out ; other people climbing up into carriages, to get hold of them by main force ; others, chasing some un- lucky wanderer, round and round his own coach, to blow out the light he has begged or stolen somewhere, before he can ascend to his own company, and enable them to light their extinguished tapers ; others, with their hats off, at a carriage- door, humbly beseeching some kind-hearted lady to oblige them with a light for a cigar, and when she is in the fulness of doubt whether to comply or no, blowing out the candle she is guarding so tenderly with her little hand • other people at the windows, fishing for candles with lines and hooks, or letting down long willow-wands with handkerchiefs at the end, and flapping them out, dexterously, when the bearer is at the height of his triumph ; others, biding their time in corners, with im- mense extinguishers like halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches ; others, gathered round one coach, and sticking to it; others, raining oranges and nosegays at an ob- durate little lantern, or regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding up one man among them, who carries one feeble little wick above his head, with which he ' defies them all ! Senza Moccolo ! Senza Moccolo ! Beautiful women, standing up in coaches, pointing in derision at extinguished lights, and clapping their hands, as they pass on, crying, " Senza Moc- colo ! Senza Moccolo ! " ; low balconies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets ; some repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning over, some shrinking back — delicate arms and bosoms — graceful figures — glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-0-0 ! — when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry, and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an instant — put out like a tapen with a breath ! There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as dull and senseless as a London one, and only remarkable for the summary way in which the house was cleared at eleven o'clock : which was done by a line of soldiers forming along the wall, at the back of the stage, and sweeping the whole company out before them, like a broad broom. The game of the Moccoletti (the word, in the singular, Moccoletto, is the 23 526 PICTURES FROM ITAL V. diminutive of Moccolo, and means a little lamp or candle- snuff) is supposed by some to be a ceremony of burlesque mourning for the death of the Carnival : candles being indis- pensable to Catholic grief. But whether it be so, or be a remnant of the ancient Saturnalia, or an incorporation of both, or have its origin in any thing else, I shall always re- member it, and the frolic, as a brilliant and most captivating sight : no less remarkable for the unbroken good-humor of all concerned, down to the very lowest (and among those who scaled the carriages, were many of the commonest men and boys), than for its innocent vivacity. For, odd as it may seem to say so, of a sport so full of thoughtlessness and per- sonal display, it is as free from any taint of immodesty as any general mingling of the two sexes can possibly be ; and there seems to prevail, during its progress, a feeling of general, almost childish, simplicity and confidence, which one thinks of with a pang, when the Ave Maria has rung it away, for a whole year. Availing ourselves of a part of the quiet interval between the termination of the Carnival and the beginning of the Holy Week : when everybody had run away from the one, and few people had yet begun to run back again for the other : we went conscientiously to work, to see Rome. And, by the dint of going out early every morning, and coming back late every evening, and laboring hard all day, I believe we made acquaintance with every post and pillar in the city, and the country round ; and in particular, explored so many churches, that I abandoned that part of the enterprise at last, before it was half finished, lest I should never, of my own accord,- go to church again, as long as I lived. But, I managed, almost every day, at one time or other, to get back to the Coliseum, and out upon the open Campagna, beyond the Tomb of Cecilia Metella. We often encountered, in these expeditions, a company of English Tourists, with whom I had an ardent, but ungratified longing, to establish a speaking acquaintance. They were one Mr- Davis, and a small circle of friends. It was impos- sible not to know Mrs. Davis's name, from her being always in great request among her party, and her party being every- where- During the Holy Week, they were in every part of every scene of every ceremony. For a fortnight or three weeks- before it, thev were in everv tomb, and everv church. PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 527 and every ruin, and every Picture Gallery ± and I hardly ever observed Mrs. Davis to be silent for a moment. Deep under- ground, high up in St. Peter's, out on the Campagna, and stifling in the Jews' quarter, Mrs. Davis turned up, all the same. I don't think she ever saw anything, or ever looked at anything ; and she had always lost something out of a straw hand-basket, and was trying to find it, with all her might and main, among an immense quantity of English halfpence, which lay, like sands upon the sea-shore, at the bottom of it There was a professional Cicerone always attached to the party ( which had been brought over from London, fifteen or twenty strong, by contract), and if he so much as looked at Mrs. Davis, she invariably cut him short by saying, " There, God bless the man, don't worrit me ! I don't understand a word you say, and shouldn't if you was to talk till you was black in the face ! " Mr. Davis always had a snuff-colored great-coat on, and carried a great green umbrella in his hand, and had a slow curiosity constantly devouring him, which prompted him to do extraordinary things, such as taking the covers off urns in tombs, and looking in at the ashes as if they were pickles — and tracing out inscriptions with the fer- rule of his umbrella, and saying, with intense thoughtfulness, " Here's a B you see, and there's a R, and this is the way we goes on in ; is it ! " His antiquarian habits occasioned his being frequently in the rear of the rest ; and one of the ago- nies of Mrs. Davis, and the party in general, was an ever- present fear that Davis would be lost. This caused them to scream for him, in the strangest places, and at the most im- proper seasons. And when he came, slowly emerging out of some sepulchre or other, like a peaceful Ghoule, saying, "Here I am!" Mrs. Davis invariably replied, "You'll be buried alive in a foreign country, Davis, and it's no use trying to prevent you ! " Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had,' probably, been brought from London in about nine or ten days. Eighteen hundred years ago, the Roman legions under Claudius, pro- tested against being led into Mr. and Mrs. Davis's country,, urging that it lay beyond the limits of the world. Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions of Rome, there was one that amused me mightily. It is always to be found there ; and its den is on the great flight of steps that lead from the Piazza di Spagna, to the Church of Trinita del Monte. In plainer words, these steps are the great place S^ PICTURES FROM ITAL V. of resort for the artists' f Models," and there they are con- stantly waiting to be hired. The first time I went up there, I could not conceive why the faces seemed familiar to me ; why they appeared to have beset me, for years, in every possible variety of action and costume ; and how it came to pass that they started up before me, in Rome, in the broad day, like so many saddled and bridled nightmares. I soon found that we had made acquaintance, and improved it, for several years, on the walls of various Exhibition Galleries. There is one old gentleman, with long white hair and an immense beard, who, to my knowledge, has gone half through the catalogue of the Royal Academy. This is the venerable, or patriarchal model. He carries a long staff; and every knot and twist in that staff I have seen, faithfully delineated, innumerable times. There is another man in a blue cloak, who always pretends to be asleep in the sun (when there is any), and who, I need not say, is always very wide awake, and very attentive to the disposition of his legs. This is the dolcefar 1 niente model. There is another man in a brown cloak, who leans against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and looks out of the corners of his eyes : which are just visible beneath his broad slouched hat. This is the assassin model. There is another man, who constantly looks over his own shoulder, and is always going away, but never does. This is the haughty, or scornful model. As to Domestic Happiness, and Holy Fam- ilies, they should come very cheap, for* there are lumps of them, all up the steps • and the cream of the thing, is, that they are all the falsest vagabonds in the world, especially made up for the purpose, and having no counterparts in Rome or any other part of the habitable globe. My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of its being said to be a mock mourning (in the ceremony with which it closes), for the gayeties and merry-makings before Lent; ; and this again reminds me of the real funerals and mourning processions of Rome, which, like those in most other parts of Italy, are rendered chiefly remarkable to a For- eigner, by the indifference with which the mere clay is univer- sally regarded, after life has left it. And this is not from the survivors having had time to dissociate the memory of the dead from their well-remembered appearance and form on earth ; for the interment follows too speedily after death, for that : almost always taking place within four-and-twenty hours, and sometimes, within twelve. PICTURES FROM ITALY. 529 At Rome, there is the same arrangement or Pits in a great, bleak, open, dreary space, that I have already described as existing in Genoa. When I visited it, at noonday, I saw a solitary coffin of plain deal : uncovered by any shroud or pall, and so slightly made, that the hoof of any wandering mule would have crushed it in ; carelessly tumbled down, all on one. side, on the door of one of the pits — and there left, by itself, in the wind and sunshine. " How does it come to be left here ? " I asked the man who showed me the place. " It was brought here half an hour ago, Signore," he said. I remembered to have met the procession on its return \ strag- gling "away at a good round pace. " When will it be put in the pit?" I asked him. "When the cart comes, and it is opened to-night," he said. " How much does it cost to be brought here in this way, instead of coining in the cart ? " I asked him. " Ten scudi," he said (about two pounds, two- and-sixpence, English). " The other bodies, for whom noth- ing is paid, are taken to the church of the Santa Maria della Consolazione," he continued, " and brought here altogether, in the cart at night." I stood, a moment, looking at the coffin, which had two initial letters scrawled upon the top • and turned away, with an expression in my face, I suppose, of not much liking its exposure in that manner : for he said, shrugging his shoulders with great vivacity, and giving a pleasant smile, " But he's dead, Signore, he's dead. Why not ? " Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must select for separate mention. It is the church of the Ara Cceli, supposed to be built on the site of the old Temple of Jupiter Feretrius ; and approached, on one side, by a long steep flight of steps, which seem incomplete without some group of bearded soothsayers on the top. It is remarkable for the possession of a miraculous Bambino, or wooden doll," representing the Infant Saviour • and I first saw this miracu- lous Bambino, in legal phrase, in manner following, that jS to say : We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were looking down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these ancient churches built upon the ruins of old temples, are dark and sad), when the Brave came running in, with a grin upon his face that stretched it from ear to ear, and implored us to follow him, without a moment's delay, as they were going to show the Bambino to a select party. We accordingly hurried t'3o PICTURES FKOJtf / I'ALY. off to a sort of chapel, or sacrist), hard by the chief altar, but not in the church itself, where the select party, consisting- of two or three Catholic gentlemen and ladies (not Italians), were already assembled : and where one hollow-cheeked young- monk was lighting up divers candles, while another was putting on some clerical robes over his coarse brown habit. The candles were on a kind of altar, and above it were two delectable figures, such as you would sec at any English fair, representing the Holy Virgin, and Saint Joseph, as I suppose, bending in devotion over a wooden box, or coffer ; which was shut. The hollow-cheeked monk, number One, having finished lighting the candles, went down on his knees, in a corner, before this set-piece ; and the monk number Two, having put on a pair of highly ornamented and gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the coffer with great reverence, and set it on the altar. Then, with many genuflexions, and muttering certain prayers, he opened* it, and let down the front, and took off sundry coverings of satin and lace from the inside.. The ladies had been on their knees from the commencement ; and the gentlemen now dropped down devoutly, as he exposed to view a little wooden doll, in face very like General Tom Thumb, the American Dwarf: gorgeously dressed in satin and gold lace, and actually blazing with rich jewels. There was scarcely a spot upon its little breast, or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling with the costly offerings of the Faithful. Presently, he lifted it out of the box, and carrying it round among the kneelers, set its face against the forehead of every one, and tendered its clumsy foot to them to kiss — a cere- mony which they all performed down to a dirty little raga- muffin of a boy who had walked in from the street. When this was done, he laid it in the box again : and the company, rising, drew near, and commended the jew r els in whispers, in good time, he replaced the coverings, shut up the box, put it back in its place, locked up the whole concern (Holy Family and all) behind a pair of folding-doors ; took off his priestly vestments : and received the customary "small charge," while his companion, by means of an extinguisher fastened to the end of a long stick, put out the lighl cue after another. The candles being all extinguished, and the money all col- lected, they retired, and so did the spectators. I met this same Bambino, in the street a short time after- wards, going, in great state, to the house of some sick person. PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 53 x It is taken to all parts ot Rome for this purpose, constantly ; but, I understand that it is not always as successful as could be wished ; for, making its appearance at the bedside of weak and nervous people in extremity, accompanied by a numerous escort, it not unfrequently frightens them to death. It is most popular in cases of child-birth, where it has done such wonders, that if a lady be longer than usual in getting through her difficulties, a messenger is despatched, with all speed, to solicit the immediate attendance of the Bambino. It is a very valuable property, and much confided in — especially by the religious body to whom it belongs. I am happy to know that it is not considered immaculate, by some who are good Catholics, and who are behind the scenes, from what was told me by the near relation of a Priest, himself a Catholic, and a gentleman of learning and intelli- gence. This Priest made my informant promise that he would, on no account, allow the Bambino to be borne into the bedroom of a sick lady, in whom they were both interested. " For,'" said he, " if they (the monks) trouble her with it, and intrude themselves into her room, it will certainly kill her." My informant accordingly looked out of the window when it came ; and, with many thanks, declined to open the door. He endeavored, in another case, of which he had no other knowledge than such as he gained as a passer-by at the mo- ment, to prevent its being carried into a small unwholesome chamber, where a poor girl was dying. But, he strove against it unsuccessfully, and she expired while the crowd were press- ing round her bed. Among the people who drop into St. Peter's at their leisure, to kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there are certain schools and seminaries, priestly and other- • wise, that come in, twenty or thirty strong. These boys always kneel down in single file, one behind the other, with a tall grim master in a black gown, bringing up the rear : like a pack of cards arranged to be tumbled down at a touch, with a disproportionately large Knave of clubs at the end, When they have had a minute or so at the chief altar, they scramble up, and filing off to the chapel of the Madonna, or the sacrament, flop down again in the same order ; so that if anybody did stumble against the master, a general and sudden overthrow of the whole line must inevitably ensue. The scene in all the churches is the strangest possible. The same monotonous, heartless, drowsy chaunting, always 532 PICTURES FROM ITALY. going on ; the same dark building, darker from the brightness of the street without ; the same lamps dimly burning ; the self-same people kneeling here and there; turned towards you, from one altar or other, the same priest's back, with the same large cross embroidered on it ; however different in size, in shape, in wealth, in architecture, this church is from that, it is the same thing still. There are the same dirty beggars stopping in their muttered prayers to beg ; the same miserable cripples exhibiting their deformity at the doors ; the same blind men, rattling little pots like kitchen pepper-castors : their depositories for alms ; the same preposterous crowns of silver stuck upon the painted heads of single saints and Virgins in crowded pictures, so that a little figure on a moun- tain has a head-dress bigger than the temple in the foreground,, or adjacent miles of landscape ; the same favorite shrine or figure, smothered with little silver hearts and crosses, and the like : the staple trade and show of all the jewellers ; the same odd mixture of respect and indecorum, faith and phlegm : kneeling on the stones, and spittng ©n them, loudly ; getting up from prayers to beg a little, or to pursue some other worldly matter : and then kneeling down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the point where it was interrupted. In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her prayer, for a moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music ; and in another, a sedate gentleman, with a very thick walking-staff, arose from his devotions to belabor his dog, who was growling at another dog : and whose yelps and howls resounded through the church, as his master quietly relapsed into his former train of meditation — keeping his eye upon the dog, at the same time, nevertheless. Above all, there is always a receptacle, for the contribu- tions of the Faithful, in some form or other. Sometimes, it is a money-box, set up between the worshipper, and the wooden life-size figure of the Redeemer ; sometimes, it is a little chest for the maintenance of the Virgin ; sometimes, an appeal on behalf of a popular Bambino ; sometimes, a bag at the end of a long stick, thrust among the people here and there, and vigi- lantly jingled by an active Sacristan ■ but there it always is, and, very often, in many shapes in the same church, and doing pretty well in all. Nor, is it wanting in the open air — the streets and roads — for, often as you are walking along, think- ing about anything rather than a tin-canister, that object pounces out upon you from a little house by the wayside ; and P1CTUR.ES FROM ITALY. r^ on its top is painted, " For the Souls in Purgatory ; " an appeal which the bearer repeats a great many times, as he rattles it before you, much as Punch rattles the cracked bell which his sanguine disposition makes an organ of. And "this reminds me that some Roman altars of peculiar sanctity, bear the inscription, " Every Mass performed at this altar frees a soul from Purgatory." I have never been able to find out the charge for one of these services, but they should needs be expensive. There are several Crosses in Rome too, the kissing of which, confers indulgences for vary- ing terms. That in the centre of the Coliseum, is worth ? hundred days : and people may be seen kissing it from morn- ing to night. It is curious that some of these crosses seem. to acquire an arbitrary popularity : this very one among them. In another part of the Coliseum there is a cross upon a marble slab, with the inscription, " Who kisses this cross shall be en titled to Two hundred and forty days' indulgence." But I saw no one person kiss it, though day after day, I sat in the arena, and saw scores upon scores of peasants pass it, on their way to kiss the other. To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches, would be the wildest occupation in the world. But St. Stefano Rotondo, a damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of Rome, will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous paintings with which its walls are covered. These represent the martyrdoms of saints and early Christians ; and such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Gray-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with hatchets : women having their breasts torn with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire : these are among the mildest subjects. So insisted on, and labored at, besides, that every sufferer gives you the same occa- sion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so much blood in him. There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, over what is said to have been — and very possible may have been — the dungeon of St. Peter. This chamber is now fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to that saint ; and it lives, as a dis- 534 PICTURES FROM TTAL Y, timet and separate place, in my recollection, too. It is vei y small and Low-roofed ; and the dread and gloom of the pon- derous, obdurate old prison are on it, as if they had come up in a dark mist through the floor. Hanging on the walls, among the clustered votive offerings, are objects at once strangely in keeping, and strangely at variance, with the place ■ — rusty daggers, knives, pistols, clubs, divers instruments of violence and murder, brought here, fresh from use, and hung up to propitiate offended Heaven : as if the blood upon them would drain off in consecrated air, and have no voice to cry with. It is all so silent and so close, and tomb-like ; and the dungeons below are so black and stealth) 7 , and stagnant, and naked; that this little dark spot becomes a dream within a dream : and in the vision of great churches which come roll- jng past me like a sea, it is a small wave by itself, that melts into no other wave, and does not flow on with the rest. It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are entered from some Roman churches, and undermine the city. Many churches have crypts and subterranean chapels of great size, which, in the ancient time, were baths, and se- cret chambers of temples, and what not : but I do not speak of them. Beneath the church* of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, there are the jaws of a terrific range of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and said to have another outlet underneath the Coli- seum — tremendous darknesses of vast extent, half-buried in the earth and unexplorable, where the dull torches, flashed by the attendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant vaults branch- ing to the right and left, like streets in a city of the dead ; and show the cold clamp stealing down the walls, drip-drop, drip-drop to join the pools of water that lie here and there, and never saw, and never will see, one ray of the sun. Some accounts make these the prisons of the wild beasts destined for the amphithe- atre :'some the prisons of the condemned gladiators ; some, both. But the legend most appalling to the fancy is, that in the up- per range (for there are two stories of these caves) the Early Christians destined to be eaten at the Coliseum Shows, heard the wild beasts, hungry for them, roaring clown below ; until, upon the night and solitude of their captivity, there burst the sudden noon and life of the vast theatre crowded to the para- pet, and of these, their dreaded neighbors, bounding in ! Below the church of San Sebastiano, two miles beyond the gate of San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, is the entrance to the catacombs of Rome — quarries in the old time, but after' PICTURED FROM ITALY. 535 wards the hiding-places of the Christians. These ghastly passages have been explored for twenty miles ; and form a chain of labyrinths, sixty miles in circumference. A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, Mas our only guide clown into 'his profound and dreadful place. The narrow ways and openings hither and thither, coupled with the dead and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any re- collection of the track by which we had come ; and I could not help thinking, " Good Heaven, if, in a sudden fit of mad- ness, he should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a fit, what would become of us ! " On we wandered, among martyr's graves : passing great subterranean vaulted roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps of stones, that thieves and murderers may not take refuge there, and form a population under Rome, even worse than that which lives between it and the sun. Graves, graves, graves ; Graves of men, of women, of their little children, who ran crying to the persecutors, " We are Christians ! We are Christians ! " that they might be murdered with their parents; Graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their stone boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the martyrs' blood ; Graves of some who lived down here, for years together, ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, that bear witness to their fortitude at this hour ; more roomy graves, but far more terrible, where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed in and walled up : buried before Death, and killed by slow starvation. " The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in our splendid churches," said the friar, looking round upon us, as we stopped to rest in one of the low passages, with bones and dust surrounding us on every side. " They are here ! Among the Martyrs' Graves ! " He was a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart ; but when I thought how Christian men have dealt with one another ; how, perverting our most merci- ful religion, they have hunted down and tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each other ; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, and how these great and constant hearts would have been shaken — ■ how they would have quailed and drooped — if a fore-knowl- edge of the deeds that professing Christians would commit in the Great Name for which they died, could have rent them 536 PI CTC RES FROM ITALY. with its own unutterable anguish, on the cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful lire. Such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches., that remain apart, and keep their separate identity. I have a fainter recollection, sometimes of the relics ; of the frag- ments of the pillar of the Temple that was rem in twain ; of the portion of the table that was spread for the Last Supper ; of the well at which the woman of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour : of two columns from the house of Pontius Pilate • of the stone to which the Sacred hands were bound, when the scourging was performed ; of the gridiron of Saint Lawrence, and the stone below it, marked with the frying of his fat and blood ; these set a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as an old story, or a fable might, and stop them for an instant, as they flit before me. The rest is a vast wilderness of conse- crated buildings of all shapes and fancies, blending one with another; of battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from the ground, and forced, like giant captives, to support the roofs of Christian churches; of pictures, bad, and wonder- ful, and impious, and ridiculous ; of kneeling people, curling incense, tinkling bells, and sometimes (but not often) of a swelling organ ; of Madonne, with their breasts stuck full cf swords, arranged in a half-circle like a modern fan ; of actual skeletons of dead saints, hideously attired in gaudy satins, silks, and velvets trimmed with gold : their withered crust of skull adorned with precious jewels, or with chaplets of crushed flowers ; sometimes, of people gathered round the pulpit, and a monk within it stretching out the crucifix, and preaching fiercely : the sun just streaming down through some high win- dow on the sail-cloth stretched above him and across the church, to keep his high-pitched voice from being lost among the echoes of the roof. Then my tired memory comes out upon a night of steps, where knots of people are asleep, or basking in the light ; and strolls away, among the rags, and smells, and palaces, and hovels, of an old Italian street. On one Saturday morning (the eighth of March), a man was beheaded here. Nine or ten months before, he had way- laid a Bavarian countess, travelling as a pilgrim to Rome- alone and on foot, of course — and performing, it is said, that act of piety for the fourth time. He saw her change a piece of gold at Viterbo, where he lived ; followed her ; bore her company on her journey for some forty miles or more, on the PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 537 treacherous pretext of protecting her ; attacked her, in the fulfilment of his unrelenting purpose, on the Campagna, within a very short distance of Rome, near to what is called (but what is iTot) the Tomb of Nero ; robbed her ; and beat her to death with her own pilgrim's staff. He was newly married, and gave some of her apparel to his wife : saying that he had bought it at a fair. She, however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess passing through their town, recognized some trifle as having belonged to her. Her husband then told her what he had done. She, in confession, told a priest • and the man was taken, within four days after the commission of the murder. There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or its execution, in this unaccountable country ; and he had been in prison ever since. On the Friday, as he was dining with the other prisoners, they came and told him he was to be beheaded next morning, and took him away. It is very unusual to execute in Lent ; but his crime being a very bad one, it was deemed advisable to make an example of him at that time, when great numbers of pilgrims were coming towards Rome, from all parts, for the Holy Week. I heard of this on the Friday evening, and saw the bills up at the churches, calling on the people to pray for the criminal's soul. So, I determined to go, and see him executed. The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a-half o'clock, Roman time : or a quarter before nine in the fore- noon. I had two friends with me ; and as we did not know but that the crowd might be very great, we were on the spot by half-past seven. The place of execution was near the church of San Giovanni decollate (a doubtful compliment to Saint John the Baptist) in one of the impassable back streets without any footway, of which a great part of Rome is com- posed — a street of rotten houses, which do not seem to belong to anybody, and do not seem to have ever been inhabited, and certainly were never built on any plan, or for any parti- cular purpose, and have no window-sashes, and are a -Jittle like deserted breweries, and might be warehouses but for having nothing in them. Opposite to one of these, a white house, the scaffold was built. An untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course : some seven feet high, perhaps ; with a tall, gallows shaped frame rising above it, in which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of iron, all ready to descend, and glittering brightly in the morning-sun, whenever it looked out, now and then, from behind a cloud. c 3 8 PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. There were not many people lingering about ; and these were kept" at a considerable distance from the scaffold, by parties of the Pope's dragoons. Two or three hundred foot- soldiers were under arms, standing at ease in* clusters here and there • and the officers were walking up and down in twos and threes, chatting together, and smoking cigars. At the end of the street, was an open space, where there would be a dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and mounds of vegetable refuse, but for such things being thrown anywhere and everywhere, in Rome, and favoring no parti- cular sort of locality. We got into a kind of wash-house, be- longing to a dwelling-house on this spot ; and standing there in an old cart, and on a heap of cart-wheels piled against the wall, looked, through a large grated window, at the scaffold, and straight down the street beyond it, until, in consequence of its turning off abruptly to the left, our perspective was brought to a sudden termination, and had a corpulent officer, in a cocked hat, for its crowning feature. Nine o'clock struck, and ten o'clock struck, and nothing happened. All the bells of all the churches rang as usual. A little parliament of dogs assembled in the open space, and chased each other, in and out among the soldiers. Fierce- looking Romans of the lowest class, in blue cloaks, russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked, came and went, and talked to- gether. Women and children fluttered, on the skirts of the scanty crowd. One large muddy spot was left quite bare, like a bald place on a man's head. A cigar-merchant, with an earthern pot of charcoal ashes in one hand, went up and down, crying his wares. A pastry-merchant divided his at- tention between the scaffold and his customers. Boys tried to climb up walls, and tumbled down again. Priests and monks elbowed a passage for themselves among the people, and stood on tiptoe for a sight of the knife ; then went away. Artists, in inconceivable hats of the middle-ages, and beards (thank Heaven ! ) of no age at all, flashed picturesque scowls about them from their stations in the throng. One gentleman (connected with the fine arts, I presume) went up and down in a pair of Hessian-boots, with a red beard hanging down on his breast, and his long and bright red hair, plaited into two tails, one on either side of his head, which fell over his shoulders in front of him, very nearly to his waist, and were carefully entwined and braided ! Eleven o'clock struck ; and still nothing happened., A ru« PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 539 mor got about, among the crowd, that the criminal would not confess ; in which case, the priests would keep him until the Ave Maria (sunset) ; for it is their merciful custom never finally to turn the crucifix away from a man at that pass, as one refusing to be shriven, and consequently a sinner aban- doned of the Saviour, until then. People began to drop off. The officers shrugged their shoulders and looked doubtful. The dragoons, who came riding up below our window, every now and then, to order an unlucky hackney-coach or cart away, as soon as it had comfortably established itself, and was covered with exulting people (but never before), became imperious and quick-tempered. The bald place hadn't a strag- gling hair upon it ; and the corpulent officer, crowning the perspective, took a world of snuff. Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets. " Attention ! '"' w r as among the foot-soldiers instantly. They were marched up to the scaffold and formed round it. The dragoons gal- loped to their nearer stations too. The guillotine became the centre of a wood of bristling bayonets and shining sabres. The people closed round nearer, on the flank of the soldiery. A long straggling stream of men and boys, who had accom- panied the procession from the prison, came pouring into the open space. The bald spot w r as scarcely distinguishable from the rest. The cigar and pastry-merchants resigned all thoughts of business, for the moment, and abandoning them- selves wholly to pleasure, got good situations in the crowd. The perspective ended, now, in a troop of dragoons. And the corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at a church close to him, which he could see, but we, the crowd, could not. After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to the scaffold from this church ; and above their heads, com irig on slowly and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon the cross, canopied with black. This was carried round the foot of the scaffold, to the front, and turned towards the criminal, that he might see it to the last. It was hardly in its place, when he appeared on the platform, bare-footed ; his hands bound ; and with the collar and neck of his shirt cut away, almost to the shoulder. A young man — six-and-twenty — vigorously made, and well-shaped. Face pale ; small dark mustache ; and dark brown hair. He had refused to confess, it seemed, without first having his wife brought to see him ; and they had sent an escort for her, which had occasioned the delay. - [0 /'/< ■ I'i Kl-.S IKOM ITAL V. lie immediately kneeled down, below ilie knife. His !>«•< k fluting inio a hole, made for the purpose, in ;i I Toss plank, w;is slni! down, by another plank above ; exactly like the pillory. Immediately below him was a leathern ba^. And into it his head rolled instantly. The executioner was holding it by the hair, and walking with it round the sealTold, showing it to the people, before one quite knew that the knife had fallen heavily, and with a rattlini;' sound. When it had travelled round the four sides of the scaffold, it was set upon a pole in front -a. little patch of black and white, for the lon«>; street to stare at, and the flies to settle on. The eyes were turned upward, as if he had avoided the sight Of the leathern bag, and looked to the crucifix. Kvery CitogB and line ol life had it left in (hat instant. 1 1 was dull, cold, livid, wax. The bod}' also. There was a great deal of blood. When we left the win- dow, and went close up to the scaffold, it was very dirty ; one ol the two men who were t browing water over it, turning to help the other lift the body into a shell, picked his way as through mire. A strange appearance was the apparent an- nihilation of the neek. The head was taken off so close, that it seemed as if the knife had narrowly escaped crushing the jaw, or shaving off the ear ; and the body looked as if there were nothing left above the shoulder. Nobody bated', or was at all affected. Then' was no mani- festation of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or sorrow. My empty pockets were tried, several times, in the crowd imme- diately below the scaffold, as the corpse was being put into its coffin. It. was an Ugly, filthy] careless, sickening spec- tacle ; meatting nothing but butchery beyond the momentary interest, to the One wretched actor. Ytsl Such a su>;ht has oik- meaning; and One warning,. bet me not forget it. The speculators in the lottery station themselves at favoraiwe joints for counting the gOUtS of blood that Stoirt out, hen' or there; and buy that number. It is pretty sure to have a, run upon it. The body was carted away indue time, the knife cleansed, the scaffold taken down, and all tin- hideous apparatus re- moved. The executioner : an outlaw, '.v officio ( what a satire on the Punishment ! | who dare not, for his life, cross the Bridge ol Si. \na,elo but to do his yyoik : retreated to his lair, and the show was over. PICTURES FROM ITALY. 54* At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, the Vatican, of course, with its treasures of art, its enormous gal- leries, and staircases, and suites upon suites of immense cham- bers, ranks highest and stands foremost. Many most noble statues, and wonderful pictures, are there ; nor is it heresy to say that there is a considerable amount of rubbish there, too. When any old piece of sculpture dug out of the ground, finds a place in a gallery because it is old, and without any reference to its intrinsic merits : and finds admirers by the hundred, because it is there, and for no other reason on earth : there will be no lack of objects, very indifferent in the plain eyesight of any one who employs so vulgar a property, when he may wear the spectacles of Cant for less than nothing, and establish himself as a man of taste for the mere trouble of putting them on. I unreservedly confess, for myself, that 1 cannot leave my natural perception of what is natural and true, at a palace- door, in Italy or elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I were travelling in the East. I cannot forget that there are certain expressions of face, natural to certain passions, and as unchangeable in their nature as the gait of a lion, or the flight of an eagle. 1 cannot dismiss from my certain knowledge, such common-place facts as the ordinary proportion of men's arms, and legs, and heads ; and when I meet with performances that do violence to these experiences and recollections, no matter where they may be, I cannot honestly admire them, and think it best to say so ; in spite of high critical advice that we should sometimes feign an admiration, though we have it not. Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a Jolly young Waterman representing a cherubim, or a Barclay and Perkins's J)rayman depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing to commend or admire in the performance, however great its re- puted Painter. Neither am 1 partial to libellous Angels, who play on fiddles and bassoons, for the edification of sprawling monks apparently in liquor. Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons of galleries, Saint Francis and Saint Sebastian ; both of whom 1 submit should have very uncommon and rare merits, as works of art, to justify their compound multiplication by Ital- ian Painters. It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and deter- mined raptures in which some critics indulge, is incompatible with the true appreciation of the really great and transcendent works. f cannot imagine, for example, how the resolute 542 PICTURES FROM ITAL K champion of undeserving pictures can soar to the amazing beauty of Titian's great picture of the Assumption of the Vir- gin at Venice ; or how the man who is truly affected by the sublimity of that exquisite production, or who is truly sensi- ble of the beauty of Tintoretto's great picture of the Assem- bly of the Blessed in the same place, can discern in Michael Angelos Last Judgment, in the Sistine chapel, any general idea, or one pervading thought, in harmony with the stupen- dous subject. He who will contemplate Raphael's masterpiece, the Transfiguration, and will go away into another chamber of that same Vatican, and contemplate another design of Ra- phael, representing (in incredible caricature) the miraculous stopping of a great fire by Leo the Fourth— and who will say that he admires them both, as works of extraordinary genius — must, as I think, be wanting in his powers of perception in one of the two instances, and, probably, in the high and lofty one. It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great doubt whether, sometimes, the rules of art are not too strictly observed, and whether it is quite well or agreeable that we should know beforehand, where this figure will be turning round, and where that figure will be lying down, and where there will be drapery in folds, and so forth. When I observe heads inferior to the subject, in pictures of merit, in Italian galleries, I do not attach that reproach to the Painter, for I have a suspicion that these great men, who were, of necessity, very much in the hands of monks and priests, painted monks and priests a great deal too often. I frequently see* in pic- tures of real power, heads quite below the story and the painter : and I invariably observe that those heads are of the Convent stamp, and have their counterparts among the Con- vent inmates of this hour ■ so, I have settled with myself that, in such cases, the lameness was not with the painter, but with the vanity and ignorance of certain of his employers, who would be apostles — on canvas, at all events. The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's statues ; the wonderful gravity and repose of many of the ancient works in sculpture, both in the Capitol and the Vatican ; and the strength and fire of many others ; are, in their different ways, beyond all reach of words. They are especially impressive and delightful, after the works of Bernini and his disciples, in which the churches of Rome, from St. Peter's downward, abound ; and which are, I verily believe, the most detestable PICTURES FROM ITALY. ^3 class of productions in the wide world. I would infinitely rather (as mere works of art) look upon the three deities of the Fast, the Present, and the Future, in the Chinese Collection, than upon the best of these breezy maniacs ; whose every fold of drapery is blown inside-our ; whose smallest vein, or artery, is as big as an ordinary forefinger ; whose hair is like a nest of lively snakes ; and whose attitudes put all other extrav- agance to shame. Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no place in the world, where such intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor's chisel, are to be found in such pro- fusion, as in Rome. There is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities in the Vatican ; and the ceilings of the rooms in which they are arranged, are painted to represent a starlight sky in the Desert. It may seem an odd idea, but it is very effective. The grim, half-human monsters from the temples, look more grim and monstrous underneath the deep dark blue ; it sheds a strange uncertain gloomy air on everything — a mystery- adapted to the objects; and you leave them, as you find them, shrouded in a solemn night. In the private palaces, pictures are seen to the best advan- tage. There are seldom so many in one place that the atten- tion need become distracted, or the eye confused. You see them very leisurely ; and are rarely interrupted by a crowd of people. There are portraits innumerable, by Titian, and Rembrandt, and Vandyke ; heads by Guido, and Domenichino, and Carlo Dolci ; various subjects by Correggio, and Murillo, and Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and Spagnoletto — many of which it would be difficult, indeed, to praise too highly, or to praise enough ; such is their tenderness and grace ; their noble elevation, purity, and beauty. The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo Berberini, is a picture almost impossible to be forgotten. Through the transcendent sweetness and beauty of the face, there is a something shining out, that haunts me. I see it now, as I see this paper, or my pen. The head is loosely draped in white ; the light hair falling down below the linen folds. She has turned suddenly towards you ; and there is an expression in the eyes — although they are very tender and gentle — as if the wildness of a momentary terror, or distraction, had been struggled with and overcome, that instant; and nothing but a celestial hope, and a beautiful sorrow, and a desolate earthly helplessness remained. Some stories say that Guido painted ;44 PICTURES FROM ITALV it, the night before her execution ; some other stories, that he painted it from memory, after having seen her, on her way to the scaffold. I am willing to believe that, as you see her on his canvas, so she turned towards him, in the crowd, from the first sight of the axe, and stamped upon his mind a look which he has stamped on mine as though I had stood beside him in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci : blighting a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering away by grains : had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch, and at its black blind windows, and flitting up and down its dreary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of the ghostly galleries. The History is written in the Painting ; written, in the dying girl's face, by Nature's own hand. And oh ! how in that one touch she puts to flight (instead of making kin) the puny world that claim to be related to her, in right of poor, conventional forgeries ! I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey ; the statue at whose base Caesar fell. A stern, tremendous figure ! I imagined one of greater finish : of the last refinement : full of delicate touches : losing its distinctness, in the giddy eyes of one whose blood was ebbing before it, and settling into some such rigid majesty as this, as Death came creeping over the upturned face. The excursions in the neighborhood of Rome are charm- ing, and would be full of interest were it only for the changing views they afford, of the wild Campagna. But, every inch of ground, in every direction, is rich in associations, and in natural beauties. There is Albano, with its lovely lake and wooded shore, and with its wine, that certainly has not im- proved since the days of Horace, and in these times hardly justifies his panegyric. There is squalid Tivoli, with the river Anio, diverted from its course, and plunging down, headlong, some eighty feet in search of it. With its picturesque Temple of the Sibyl, perched high on a crag ; its minor waterfalls glancing and sparkling in the sun ; and one good cavern yawning darkly, where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots on, low down under beetling rocks. There, too, is the Villa d'Este, deserted ■ and decaying among groves of melan- choly pine and cypress-trees, where it seems to lie in state. Then, there is Frascati, and, on the steep above it, the ruins of Tusculum, where Cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his favorite house (some fragments of it may yet be seen there), and where Cato was born. We saw its ruined amphitheatre PICTURES FROM tTAh V. ^ on a gray dull day, when a sh'riH March wind was blowing, and when the scattered stones of the old city lay strewn about the lonely eminence, as desolate and dead as the ashes of a long extinguished fire. One day we walked out, a little party of three, to Albano, fourteen miles distant ; possessed by a great desire to go there by the ancient Appian way, long since ruined and over- grown. We started at half-past seven in the morning, and within ah hour or so were out upon the open Campagna. For twelve miles we went climbing on, over an unbroken succes- sion of mounds, and heaps, and hills, of ruin. Tombs and temples, overthrown and prostrate ; small fragments of columns, friezes, pediments ; great blocks of granite and marble ; mouldering arches, grass-grown and decayed ; ruin enough to build a spacious city from ; lay strewn about us. Sometimes, loose wails, built up from these fragments by the shepherds, came across our path ; sometimes, a ditch between two mounds of broken stones, obstructed our piogress ; some- times, the fragments themselves, rolling from beneath our feet, made it a toilsome matter to advance ;- but it was always ruin. Now, we tracked a piece of the old road, above the ground; now traced it, underneath a grassy covering, as if that were its grave ; but all the way was ruin. In the distance, ruined aqueducts went stalking on their giant course along the plain ; and every breath of wind that swept towards us, stirred early flowers and grasses, springing up, spontaneously, on miles of ruin The unseen larks above us, who alone dis- turbed the awful silence, had their nests in ruin ; and the fierce herdsmen, clad in sheepskins, who now and then scowled out upon us from their sleeping nooks, were housed in ruin. The aspect of the desolate Campagna in one direc- tion, where it was most level, reminded me of an American prairie ; but what is the solitude of a- region where men have never dwelt, to that of a Desert, where a mighty race have left their foot-prints in the earth from which they have van- ished • where the resting-places of their Dead, have fallen like their Dead ; and the broken hour glass of Time is but a heap of idle dust ! Returning, by the road, at sunset ! and looking, from the distance, on the course we had taken in the morning, I almost felt (as I had felt when I first saw it, at that hour) as if the sun would never rise again, but looked its last, that night, upon a ruined world. To come again on Rome, by moonlight, after such an -ex- r.4& PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. peart-it ion, is a fitting close to such a day". The narrow streets, devoid of footways, and choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps of dunghill-rubbish, contrast so strongly, in theii cramped dimensions, and their filth, and darkness, with the broad square before some haughty church : in the centre of which, a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of the Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it ; or perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honored statue overthrown, supports a Christian saint : Marcus Aure- lius giving place to Paul, and Trajan to St. Peter. Then, there are the ponderous buildings reared from the spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like mountains : while here and there, are broken arches and rent walls, through which it gushes freely, as the life comes pouring from a wound. The little town of miserable houses, walled, and shut in by barred gates, is the quarter where the Jews are locked up nightly, when the clock strikes eight — a miserable place, densely populated, and reeking with bad odors, but where the people are industrious and money-getting. In the day- time, as you make your way along the narrow streets, you see them all at work : upon the pavement, oftener than in their dark and frouzy shops : furbishing old clothes, and driving bargains. Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the moon once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and ear. In the narrow little throat of street, beyond, a booth, dressed out with flaring lamps, and boughs of trees, attracts a group of sulky Romans round its smoky coppers of hot broth, and cauliflower stew ; its trays of fried fish, and its flasks of wine. As you rattle round the sharply-twisting corner, a lumbering sound is heard. The coachman stops abruptly, and uncovers, as a van conies slowly by, preceded by a man who bears a large cross ; by a torch-bearer; and a priest: the latter chaunting as he goes. It is the Dead Cart, with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the Sacred Field outside the walls, where they will be thrown into the pit that will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed up for a year. But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or col. umns : ancient temples, theatres, houses, porticoes, or forums : it is strange to see, how every fragment, whenever it is possi- ble, has been blended into some modern structure, and made PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. t; 47 to serve some modern purpose — a wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a stable — some use for which it never was designed, and associated with which it cannot otherwise than lamely assort. It is stranger still, to see how many ruins of the old mythology : how many fragments of obsolete legend and ob- servance : have been incorporated into the w r orship of Chris- tian altars here ; and how, in numberless respects, the false faith and the true are fused into a monstrous union. From one part of the city, looking out beyond the walls, a squat and stunted pyramid (the burial-place of Caius Cestius) makes an opaque triangle in the moonlight. But, to an Eng- lish traveller, it serves to mark the grave of Shelley too, whose ashes lie beneath a little garden near it. Nearer still, almost within its shadow, lie the bones of Keats, " whose name is writ in water," that shines brightly in the landscape of a calm Italian night. The Holy Week in Rome is supposed to offer great at- tractions to all visitors ; but, saving for the sights of Easter Sunday, I would counsel those who go to Rome for its own interest, to avoid it at that time. The ceremonies, in gen- eral, are of the most tedious and wearisome kind ; the heat and crowd at every one of them, painfully oppressive ; the noise, hubbub, and confusion, quite distracting. We abandoned the pursuit of these shows, very early in the proceedings, and betook ourselves to the Ruins again. But, we plunged into the crowd for a share of the best of the sights \ and what we saw, I will describe to you. At the Sistine chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very lit- tle, for by the time we reached it (though we were early) the besieging crowd had filled it to the door, and overflowed into the adjoining hall, where they were struggling, and squeez- ing, and mutually expostulating, and making great rushes every time a lady was brought out faint, as if at least fifty people could be accommodated in her vacant standing-room. Hanging in the doorway of the chapel, was a heavy curtain, and this curtain, some twenty people nearest to it, in then- anxiety to hear the chaunting of the Miserere, were continu- ally plucking at, in opposition to each other, that it might not fall down and stifle the sound of the voices. The conse- quence was, that it occasioned the most extraordinary confu- sion, and seemed to wind itself about the unwary, like a Serpent. Now, a lady was wrapped up in it, and couldn't be 3 4 S PTC TURKS FR OM J TA L V. unwound. Now, the voice of a stifling gentleman was heard inside it, beseeching to be let out. Now, two muffled arms, no man could say of which sex, struggled in it as in a sack. Now, it was carried by a rush, bodily overhead into the Chapel, like an awning. Now, it came out the other way, and blinded one of the Pope's Swiss Guard, who had arrived, that moment, to set things to rights. Being seated at a little distance, among two or three of the Pope's gentlemen, who were very weary and counting the minutes— as perhaps his Holiness was too — we had better opportunities of observing this eccentric entertainment, than of hearing the Miserere. 'Sometimes, there was a swell of mournful voices that sounded very pathetic and sad, and died away, into a low strain again • but that, was all we heard. At another time, there was the Exhibition of the Relics in Saint Peter's, which took place at between six and seven o'clock in the evening, and was striking from the cathedral being dark and gloomy, and having a great many people in it. The place into which the relics were brought, one by one, by a party of three priests, was a high balcony near the chief altar. This was the only lighted part of the church. There are always a hundred and twelve lamps burning near the altar, and there were two tall tapers, besides, near the black Statue of St. Peter ; but these were nothing in such an im- mense edifice. The gloom and the general up-turning of faces to the balcony, and the prostration of true believers on the pavement, as shining objects, like pictures or looking- glasses, were brought out and shown, had something effec- tive in it, despite the very preposterous manner in which they were held up for the general edification, and the great eleva- tion at which they were displayed ; which one would think rather calculated to diminish the comfort derivable from a full conviction of their being genuine. On the Thursday, we went to see the Pope convey the Sacrament from the Sistine chapel, to deposit it in the Ca- peila Paolina, another chapel in the Vatican ; — a ceremony emblematical of the entombment of the Saviour before His Resurrection. We waited in a great gallery with a great crowd of people (three-fourths of them English) for an hour or so, while they were chaunting the Miserere, in the Sistine chapel again. Both chapels opened out of the gallery ; and the general attention was concentrated on the occasional opening and shutting of the door of the one for which the PICTURES FROM ITALY. 54 § Pope was ultimately bound. None of these openings disclosed anything more tremendous than a man on a ladder, lighting a great quantity of candles ; but at each and every opening, there was a terrific rush made at this ladder and this man, some- thing like (I should think) a charge of the heavy British cav- alry at Waterloo. The man was never brought down, how- ever, nor the ladder ; for it performed the strangest antics in the world among the crowd — where it was carried by the man when the candles were all lighted ; and finally it was stuck up against the gallery wall, in a very disorderly manner, just be- fore the opening, of the other chapel, and the commencement of a new chaunt, announced the approach of his Holiness. At this crisis, the soldiers of the guard, who had been poking the crowd into all sorts of shapes, formed down the gallery : and the procession came up, between the two .lines they macle. The~e were a few choristers, and then a great many priests, walking nvo and two, and carrying — the good-looking priests at least— their lighted tapers, so as to throw the light with a good effect upon their faces: for the room was darkened. Those who were not handsome, or who had not long beards, carried their tapers anyhow, and abandoned themselves to spiritual contemplation. Meanwhile the chaunting was very monotonous and dreary. The procession passed on, slowly, into the chapel, and the drone of voices went on, and came on, with it, until the Pope himself appeared, walking under a white satin canopy, and bearing the covered Sacrament in both hands ; cardinals and canons clustered round him, making a brilliant show. The soldiers of the guard knelt down as he passed; all the bystanders bowed; and so he passed on into the chapel : the white satin canopy being removed from over him at the door, and a white satin parasol hoisted over his poor old head, in place of it. A few more couples brought up the rear, and passed into the chapel also. Then, the chapel door was shut ; and it was all over ; and everybody hurried off headlong, as for life or death, to see something else, and say it wasn't worth the trouble. I think the most popular and most crowded sight (except- ing those of Easter Sunday and Monday, -which are open to all classes of people) was the Pope washing the feet of Thir- teen men, representing the twelve apostles, and Judas Iscariot. The place in which this pious office is performed, is one of the chapels of St. Peter's, which is gayly decorated for the occasion j the thirteen sitting, " all of a row," on a very high 55° PICTURES FROM ITAL V. bench, and looking particularly uncomfortable, with the eyes of Heaven knows how many English, French, American, Swiss, Germans, Russians, Swedes, Norwegians, and other foreigners, nailed to their faces all the time. They are robed in white • and on their heads they wear a stiff white cap, like a large English porter-pot, without a handle. Each carries in his hand, a nosegay, of the size of a fine cauliflower; and two of them, on this occasion, wore spectacles : which, remem- bering the characters they sustained, I thought a droll appen dage to their costume. There was a great eye to character. St. John was represented by a good-looking young man. St. Peter, by a grave-looking old gentleman, with a flowing brown beard ; and Judas Iscariot by such an enormous hypocrite (I could not make out, though, whether the expression of his face was real or assumed) that if he had acted the part to the death and had gone away and hanged himself, he would have left nothing to be desired. As the two large boxes, appropriated to ladies at this sight, were full to the throat, and getting near was hopeless, we posted off, along with a great crowd, to be in time at the Table, where the Pope, in person, waits on these Thirteen • and after a prodigious struggle at the Vatican staircase, and several personal conflicts with the Swiss guard, the whole crowd swept into the room. It was a long gallery hung with drapery of white and red, with another great box for ladies (who are obliged to dress in black at these ceremonies, and to wear black veils), a royal box for the King of Naples and his party ; and the table itself, which, set out like a ball supper, and orna- mented with golden figures of the real apostles, was arranged on an elevated platform on one side of the gallery. The counterfeit apostles' knives and forks were laid out on that side of the table which was nearest to the wall, so that they might be stared at again, without let or hindrance. The body of the room was full of male strangers ; the crowd immense ; the heat ye,ry great ; and the pressure some- times frightful. It was at its height, when the stream came pouring in, from the feet-washing ; and then there were such shrieks and outcries, that a party of Piedmontese dra- goons went to the rescue of the Swiss guard, and helped them to calm the tumult. The ladies were particularly ferocious, in their struggles for places. One lady of my acquaintance was seized round the waist, in the ladies' box, by a strong matron, and hoisted PICTURES FROM ITALY. 55* out of her place ■ and there was another lady (in a back row in the same box) who improved her position by sticking a large pin into the ladies before her. The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to see what was on the table ; and one Englishman seemed to have embarked the whole energy of his nature in the determination to discover Whether there was any mustard. " By Jupiter there's vinegar ! " I heard him say to his friend, after he had stood on tiptoe an immense time, and had been crushed and beaten on all sides. " And there's oil ! I saw them distinctly, in cruets ! Can any gentleman in front there see mustard or the table ? Sir, will you oblige me 1 Do you see a Mustard Pot ? " The apostles and Judas appearing on the platform, after much expectation, were marshalled in line, in front of the table with Peter at the top ; and a good long stare was taken at them by the company, while twelve of them took a long smell at their nosegays, and Judas — moving his lips very ob- trusively — engaged in inward prayer. Then the Pope, clad in a scarlet robe, and wearing on his head a skull-cap of white satin, appeared in the midst of a crowd of Cardinals and other dignitaries, and took in his hand a little golden ewer, from which he poured a little water over one of Peter's hands while one attendant held a golden basin ; a second a line cloth ; a third, Peter's nosegay, which was taken from him during the operation. This his Holiness performed with con- siderable expedition, on every man in the line (Judas, I ob- served, to be particularly overcome by his condescension); and then the whole Thirteen sat down to dinner. Grace said by the Pope. Peter in the chair. There was white wine, and red wine : and the dinner looked very good. The courses appeared in portions, one for each apostle : and these being presented to the Pope, by Cardinals upon their knees, were by him handed to the Thir- teen. The manner in which Judas grew more white-livered over his victuals, and languished, with his head on one side, as if he had no appetite, defies all description. Peter was a good, sound, old man, and went in, as the saying is, " to win : " eating everything that was given him (he got the best : being first in the row) and saying nothing to anybody. The dishes appeared to be chiefly composed of fish and vegetables. The Pope helped the Thirteen to wine also ; and, during the whole dinner, somebody read something aloud, out of a large S52 PICTURES FROM ITALY. book — the Bible, I presume— which nobody could hear, and to which nobody paid the least attention. The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled to each other, from time to time, as if the thing were a great farce ; and if they thought so, there is little doubt they were perfectly right. His Holiness did what he had to do, as a sensible man gets through- a troublesome ceremony, and seemed very glad when it was all over. The Pilgrims' Suppers ; where lords and ladies waited on the Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried their feet when they had been well washed by deputy, were very attractive. But, of all the many spectacles of dangerous reliance on out- ward observances, in themselves mere empty forms, none struck me half so much as the Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw several times, but to the greatest advantage, or disadvantage, on Good Friday. This holy staircase is composed of eight-ancl-twenty steps,, said to have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house, and to be the identical stairs on which Our Saviour trod, in coming down from the judgment-seat. Pilgrims ascend it only on their knees. It is steep ; and, at the summit is a chapel, reported to be full of relics - into which they peep through some iron bars, and then come down again, by one of two side stair- cases, which are not sacred, and may be walked on. On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate computation, a. hundred people, slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees, at one time • while others, who were going up, or had come down — and a few who had done both, and were going up again for the second time — stood loitering in the porch be- Low, where an old gentleman in a sort of watch-box, rattled a tin canister, with a slit in the top, incessantly, to remind them that he took the money. The majority were country-people, male and female. There were four or five Jesuit priests, however, and some half-dozen well dressed women. A whole school of boys, twenty at least, were about half-way up— evidently enjoying it very much. They were all wedged to- gether, pretty closely ; but the rest of the company gave the boys as wide a berth as possible, in consequence of their be- traying some recklessness in the management of their boots. I never in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, and so unpleasant, as this sight — ridiculous in the absurd inci- dents inseparable from it j and unpleasant in its senseless and unmeaning degradation, There are two steps to begin with, PICTURES FROM ITALY 553 and then a rather broad landing. The more rigid climbers went along this landing on their knees, as well as up the stairs j and the figures they cut, in their shuffling progress . over the level surface, no description can paint. Then, to see them watch their opportunity from the porch, and cut in where there was a place next the wall ! And to see one man with an umbrella (brought on purpose, for it was a fine day) hoisting himself, unlawfully, from stair to stair ! And to ob- serve a demure lady of fifty-five or so, . looking back, every now and then, to assure herself that her legs were properly disposed ! There were such odd differences in the speed of different people, too. Some got on as if they were doing a match against time ; others stopped to say a prayer on every step. This man touched every stair with his forehead, and kissed it -; that man scratched his head all the way. The boys got on brilliantly, and were up and down again before the old lady had accomplished her half-dozen stairs. But most of the jDenitents came down, very sprightly and fresh, as having done a real good substantial deed which it would take a good deal of sin to counterbalance ; and the old gentleman in the watch-box was down upon them with his canister while they were in this humor, I promise yon. As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably droll enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden figure. on a crucifix, resting on a sort of great iron saucer: so rickety and unsteady, that whenever an enthusiastic person kissed the figure, with more than usual devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer, with more than common readiness (for it served in this respect as a second or supplementary canis- ter), it gave a great leap and rattle, and nearly shook the at- tendant lamp out : horribly frightening the people further down, and throwing the guilty party into unspeakable embar- rassment. On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, the Pope bestows his benediction on the people, from the balcony in front of St. Peter's. This Easter Sunday was a day so bright and blue : so cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright : that all the previous bad weather vanished from the recollection in a moment. I had seen the Thursday's Bene- diction dropping damply on some hundreds of umbrellas, but there was not a sparkle then, in all the hundred fountains -of Rome— such fountains as they are .'-—and on this Sunday S54. PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. morning they were running diamonds. The miles of misera* ble streets through which we drove (compelled to a certain course by the Pope's dragoons : the Roman police on such occasions) were so full of color, that nothing in them was capable of wearing a faded aspect. The common peo- ple came out in their gayest dresses ; the richer people in their smartest vehicles ; Cardinals rattled to the church of the Poor Fishermen in their state carriages ; shabby magnifi- cence flaunted its thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked hats, in the sun ; and every coach in Rome was put in requi- sition for the Great Piazza of St. Peter's. One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at least ! Yet there was ample room. How many carriages were there I don't know ; yet there was room for them too, and to spare. The great steps of the church were densely crowded. There were many of the Contadini, from Albano (who delight in red), in that part of the square, and the mingling of bright colors in the crowd was beautiful. 'Below the steps the troops were ranged. In the magnificent proportions of the place they looked like a bed of flowers. Sulky Romans, lively peasants from the neighboring country, groups of pilgrims from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of all na- tions, made a murmur in the clear air, like so many insects; and high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and making rainbow colors in the light, the two delicious fountains welled and tumbled bountifully. A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the balcony ; and the sides of the great window were bedecked with crimson drapery. An awning was stretched, too, over the top, to screen the old man from the hot rays of the sun. As noon approached, all eyes were turned up to this window. In due time, the chair was seen approaching to the front, with the gigantic fans of peacock's feathers, close behind. The doll within it (for the balcony is very high) then rose up, and stretched out its tiny arms, while all the male spectators in the square uncovered, and some, but not by any means the greater part, kneeled down. The guns upon the ramparts of the Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that the benediction was given ; drums beat • trumpets sounded ; arms clashed \ and the great mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller heaps, and scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like particolored sand. What a bright noon it was, as we rode awav ! The Tiber PIC TURES FR OM IT A LY. 555 was no longer yellow, but blue. There was a blush on the old bridges, that made them fresh and hale again. The Pan- theon, with its majestic front, all seamed and furrowed like an old face, had summer light upon its battered walls. Every squalid and desolate hut in the Eternal City (bear witness every grim old palace, to the filth and misery of the plebeian neighbor that elbows it, as certain as Time has laid its grip on its patrician head !) was fresh and new with some ray of the sun. The very prison in the crowded street, a whirl of carriages and people, had some stray sense of the day, drop- ping through its chinks and crevices : and dismal prisoners who could not wind their faces round the barricading of the blocked-tip windows, stretched out their hands, and clinging to the rusty bars, turned them towards the overflowing street : as if it were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in, that way. But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the full moon, what a sight it was to see the Great Square full once more, and the whole church, from the cioss to the ground, lighted with innumerable lanterns, tracing out the architecture, and winking and shining all round the colonnade of the piazza ! And what a sense of exultation, joy, delight, it was, when the great bell struck half-past seven — on the in- stant — to behold one bright red mass of fire, soar gallantly from the top of the cupola to the extremest summit of the cross, and the moment it leaped into its place, become the signal of a bursting out of countless lights, as great, and red, and blazing as itself, from every part of the gigantic church ; so that every cornice, capital, and smallest ornament of stone, expressed itself in fire : and the black solid groundwork of the enormous dome seemed to grow transparent as an eggshell ! A train of gunpowder, an electric chain — nothing could be fired, more suddenly and swiftly, than this second illumin- ation; and when we had got away, and gone upon a distant height, and looked towards it two hours afterwards, there it still stood, shining and glittering in the calm night like a jewel ! Not a line of its proportions wanting ; not an angle blunted ; not an atom of its radiance lost. The next night — Easter Monday — there was a great dis- play of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room in an opposite house, and made our way, to our places, in good time, through a dense mob of people choking up the square in front, and all the avenues, leading to it : and so loading the bridge by which the castle is approached, thaf e 5 6 PlC Tl T KES FROM 1 7 A L V. it seemed ready to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are statues on this bridge (execrable works) and, among them, great vessels full of burning tow were placed : glaring strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on the stone counterfeits above them. The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon ; and then, for twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blaz^ ing wheels of every color, size, and speed : while rockets streamed into the sky, not by ones or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a time. The concluding burst— the Girandola — was like the blowing up into the air of the whole' mas- sive castle, without smoke or dust. In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had dispersed ; the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled image in the river ; and half-a-dozen men and boys, with bits of lighted candle in their hands : moving here and there, in search of anything worth having, that might have been dropped in the press : had the whole scene to them- selves. By way of contrast we rode out into old ruined Rome, after all this firing and booming, to take our leave of the Coliseum. I had seen it by moonlight before (I could never get through a day without going back to it), but its tremen- dous solitude that night is past all telling. The ghostly pillars in the Forum ; the Triumphal Arches of Old Em- perors ; those enormous masses of ruins which were once their palaces ; the grass grown mounds, that mark the graves of ruined temples ; the stones of the Via Sacra, smooth with the tread of feet in ancient Rome - even these were dimmed, in their transcendent melancholy, by the dark ghost of its bloody holidays, erect and grim ; haunting the old scene ; despoiled by pillaging Popes and fighting Princes, but not laid ; wringing wild hands of weed, and grass, and bramble ; and lamenting to the night in every gap and broken arch— the shadow of its awful self, immovable ! As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next day, on our way to' Florence, hearing the larks sing, we saw that a little wooden cross had been erected on the spot where the poor .Pilgrim Countess was murdered. So, we piled some loose stones about it, as the beginning of a mound to her memory, and wondered if we should ever rest there again, and look back at Rome. ♦ PICTURES FROM ITALY. 557 A RAPID DIORAMA. We are bound for Naples ! And we cross the threshold of- the Eternal City at yonder gate, the Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, where the two last objects that attract the notice of a departing visitor, and the two first objects that attract the notice of an arriving one, are a proud church and a decaying ruin — good emblems of Rome. Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more solemn on a bright blue day like this, than beneath a darker sky ; the great extent of ruin being plainer to the eye: and the sunshine through the arches of the broken aqueducts, showing other broken arches shining through them in the melancholy distance. When we have traversed it, and look back from Albano, its dark undulating surface lies below us like a stagnant lake, or like a broad dull Lethe flowing round 1 the walls of Rome, and separating it from all the world \ How often have the Legions, in triumphant march, gone glit - tering across that purple waste, so silent and unpeopled now ! How often has the train of captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distant city, and beheld its population pour- ing out, to hail the return of their conqueror ! What riot, sensuality and murder, have run mad in the vast palaces now heaps of brick and shattered marble! What glare of fires, and the roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence and famine, have come sweeping over the . wild plain where noth- ing is now heard but the wind, and where the solitary lizards gambol unmolested in the sun ! The train of wine-carts going into Rome, each driven by a shaggy peasant reclining beneath a little gipsy-fashioned can- opy of sheepskin, is ended now, and we go toiling up into a higher country where there are trees. The next day brings us on the Pontine Marshes, wearily flat and lonesome, and overgrown with brushwood, and swamped with water, but with a fine road made across them, shaded by a long, long avenue. Here and there, we pass a solitary guard-house ; here and there a hovel, deserted, and walled up. Some herdsmen loiter on the banks of the stream beside the road, and sometimes a flat-bottomed boat, towed bv a man. comes 553 PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. rippling idly along it. A horseman passes occasionally, carry- ing a long gun cross-wise on the saddle before him, and at- tended by fierce dogs ; but there is nothing else astir save the wind and the shadows, until we come in sight of Ter- racina. How blue and bright the sea, rolling below the windows of the-inn so famous in robber stories ! How picturesque the great crags and points of rock overhanging to-morrow's narrow road, where galley-slaves are working in the quarries above, and the sentinels who guard them lounge on the sea- shore ! All night there is the murmur of the sea beneath the stars j and, in the morning, just at daybreak, the prospect sud- denly- becoming expanded, as if by a miracle, reveals — in the far distance, across the sea there ! — Naples with its islands, and Vesuvius spouting fire ! Within a quarter of an hour, the whole is gone as if it were a vision in the clouds, and there is nothing but the sea and sky. The Neapolitan frontier crossed, after two hours' travel- ling ; and the hungriest of soldiers and custom-house officers with difficulty appeased ; we enter, by a gateless portal, into the first Neapolitan town — Fondi. Take note of Fondi, in the name of all that is wretched and beggarly. A filthy channel of mud and refuse meanders down the centre of the miserable streets, fed by obscene rivulets that trickle from the abject houses. . There is not a door, a win- dow, or a shutter ; not a roof, a wall, a post, or a pillar, in all Fondi, but is decayed, and crazy, and rotting away. The wretched history of the town, with all its sieges and pillages by Barbarossa and the rest, might havf been acted last year. How the gaunt dogs that sneak about the miserable streets, come to be alive, and undevoiired by the people, is one of the enigmas of the world. A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they are ! All beggars ; but that's nothing. Look at them as they gather round. Some, are too indolent to come downstairs, or are too wisely mistrustful of the stairs, perhaps, to venture : so stretch out their lean hands from upper windows, and howl • others, come flocking about us, fighting and jostling one an- other, and demanding, incessantly, charity for the love of God, charity for the love of the Blessed Virgin, charity for the love of all the Saints. A group of miserable children, almost naked, screaming forth the same petition, discover that they can see themselves reflected in the varnish of the PICTURES FROM IT ALT. 559 carriage, and begin to dance and make grimaces, that they may have the pleasure of seeing their antics repeated in this mirror. A crippled idiot, in the act of striking one of ihem who drowns his clamorous demand for charity, observes his angry counterpart in the panel, stops short, and thrusting out his tongue, begins to wag his head and chatter. The shrill cry raised a! this awakens half-a-dozen wild creatures wrapped in frowsy brown cloaks, who are lying on the church steps with pots and pans for sale. These, scrambling up, approach, and beg defiantly. " I am hungry. Give me some- thing. Listen to me me, Signor. 1 am hungry ! " Then, a ghastly old woman, fearful of being too late, comes hobbling down the street, stretching out one hand, and scratching her- self all the way with the other, and screaming, long before she can be heard, " Charity, charity ! I'll go and pray for you directly, beautiful lady, if you'll give me charity ! " Lastly, the members of a brotherhood for burying the dead : hideously masked, and attired in shabby black robes, white at the skirts, with the splashes of many muddy winters : escorted by a dirty priest, and a congenial cross-bearer : come hurry- ing past. Surrounded by this motley concourse, we move out of Fondi : bad bright eyes glaring at us, out of the darkness of every crazy tenement, like glistening fragments of its filth, and putrefaction. A noble-mountain-pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo ; the old town of Itri, like a device in pastry, built up, almost per- pendicularly, on a hill, and approached by long steep flights of steps ; beautiful Mola di Gaeta, whose wines, likes those of Albano, have degenerated since the days of Horace, or his taste for wine was bad: which is not likely of one who enjoyed it so much, and extolled it so well ; another night upon the road at St. Agata ; a rest next day at Capua, which is pictur- esque, but hardly so seductive to a traveller now, as the sol- diers of Praetorian Rome were wont to find the ancient city of that name ; a flat road among vines festooned and looped from tree to tree ; and Mount Vesuvius close at hand at last i — its cone and summit whitened with snow • and its smoke hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the day, like a dense cloud. So we go, rattling down hill, into Naples. A funeral is coming up the street, towards us. The body, on an open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, covered with a gray cloth of crimson and gold. The mourners, in white 5 6 ° PIC TURES FR OM 1 TAL \ . i^owns and masks. If there be death abroad, life is we'll re- presented too; for all Naples would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to and fro in carriages. Some of these, the com- mon Vetturino vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast. decked with smart trappings and great abundance of brazen ornament, and always going very fast. Not that their loads are light ; for the smallest of them has at least six people in- side; four in front, four or five more hanging on behind, and two or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie half-suffocated with mud and dust. Exhibitors of Punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry, reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and show- men, drums, and trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist the whirl and bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels ; the gentry, gayly dressed, are clashing up and down in carriages on the Chiaja, or walk- ing in the Public Gardens ; and quiet letter-writers, perched be- hind their little desks and inkstands under the Portico of the Great Theatre of San Carlo, in the public street, are waiting •for clients. Here is a galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter written to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has ob- tained permission of the sentinel who guards him : who stands near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he desires to say ; and as he can't read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully what he is told. After a time, the galley-slave becomes discursive —incoherent. The secretary pauses and rubs his chin. The galley-slave is voluble and energetic. The secretary, at length, catches the idea, and with the air of a man who knows how- to word it, sets it down ; stopping, now and then, to glance back at his text admiringly. The galley-slave is silent. The soldier stoically cracks his nuts. Is there anything more to say ? inquires the letter-writer. No more. Then listen, friend of mine. He reads it through. The galley-slave is quite en chanted. It is folded, and addressed, and given to him, and he pays the fee, The . secretary falls back indolently in his chair, and takes a book. The galley-slave gathers up an empty sack. The sentinel throws away a handful of nut- shells, shoulders his muskei, and away they go together. PICTURKS FROM ITAL Y. 56 , Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right hands, when you look at them ? Everything is done in pantomime in Naples, and that is the conventional sign for hunger. A man who is quarrelling with another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand on the back of his left, and shakes the two thumbs — expressive of a donkey's ears — whereat his adversary is goaded to desperation. Two people bargaining for fish, the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is told the price, and walks away without a word : having thoroughly conveyed to the seller that he considers it too dear. Two people in carriages, meeting, one touches his lips, twice or thrice, holding up the five fingers of his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the palm. The other nods briskly, and goes his way. He has been in- vited to a friendly dinner at half-past five o'clock, and will certainly come. All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist, with the fore-finger stretched out, expresses a negative — the only negative beggars will ever understand. But, in Naples, those five fingers are a copious language. All this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, and maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long, and begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon the bright sea-shore, where the waves of the bay sparkle merrily. But, lovers and hunters of the picturesque;, let us not keep too studiously out of view the miserable de- pravity, degradation, and wretchedness, with which this ga f Neapolitan life is inseparably associated ! It is not well t:> find Saint Giles's so repulsive, and the Porta Capuana so at- tractive. A pair of naked legs and a ragged red scarf, do not make all the difference between what is interesting and what is coarse and odious ? Painting and poetizing for ever, if you will, the beauties of this most beautiful and lovely spot of earth, let us, as our duty, try to associate a new picturesque with some faint recognition of man's destiny and capabilities ; more hopeful, I believe, among the ice and snow of the North Pole, than in the sun and bloom of Naples. Capri — once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius— Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the Bay, lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and sunshine twenty times a-day: now close at hand, now far off, now un- seen. The fairest < country in the world, is spread about us Whether we turn "towards the Miseno shore of tire splendid 5 6 2 PIC TURES FROM IT A L V. watery amphitheatre, and go by the Giotto of Posilipo to the Grotto del Cane and away to Baise : or take the other way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of delights. In the last-named direction, where, over doors and archways, there are countless little images of San Gennaro, with his Canute's hand stretched out, to check the fury of the Burning Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on the beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built upon the ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius, within a hundred years ; and past the flat-roofed houses, granaries, and maccaroni manufactories ; to Castel-a- Mare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, the railroad terminates ; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken suc- cession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the highest summit of Saint Angelo, the highest neigh- boring mountain, down to the water's edge — among vineyards, olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped up rocks, green gorges in the hills — and by the bases of snow- covered heights, and through small towns with handsome, dark-haired women at the doors — and pass delicious summer villas— to Sorrento, where the Poet Tasso drew his inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we may climb heights above Castel-a-Mare, and looking down among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp water glistening in the sun ; and clusters of white houses^ in distant Naples, dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to dice. The coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset : with the glowing sea on one side, and the darkening mountain, with its smoke and flame, upon the other : is a sublime conclusion to the glory of the day. That church by the Porta Capuana — near the old fisher- market in the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the revolt of Massaniello began — is memorable for having been the scene of one of his earliest proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing else,, unless it be its waxen and bejewelled Saint in a glass case, with two odd hands ; or the enormous number of beggars who are constant- ly rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral with the beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian granite that once ornamented the temple of Apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of San Gennaro or Januarius : which is preserved in two phials in a silver tabe.r« PICTURES FROM ITAL V. 5 6 3 nacle, and miraculously liquifies three times a-year, to the great admiration of the people. At the same moment, the stone (distant some miles) where the Saint suffered martyr- dom, becomes faintly red. It is said that the officiating priests turn faintly red also,- sometimes, when these miracles occur. The old. old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these old spectres totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death — as unconcerned as if they were immortal. They were used as burying-places for three hundred years ; and, in one part, is a large pit full of skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a great mortality occasioned by a plague. In the rest there is nothing but dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide corridors and labyrinths, hewn out of the rock. At the end of some of these long passages, are unexpected glimpses of the daylight, shining down from above. It looks as ghastly and as strange : among the torches, and the dust, and the dark vaults : as if it, too, were dead and buried. The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between the city and Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo with its three hundred and sixty-five pits, is only used for those who die in hospitals, and prisons, and are unclaimed by their friends. The graceful new cemetery, at no great distance from it, though yet unfinished, has already many graves among its shrubs and flowers, and airy colonnades. It might be rea- sonably objected elsewhere, that some of the tombs are mere- tricious and too fanciful ; but the general brightness seems to justify it here ; and Mount Vesuvius, separated from them by a lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens the scene. If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, with its dark smoke hanging in the clear skv, how much more awful and impressive is it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii ! Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter and Isis, over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries open to the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the peaceful distance ; and lose all count of time, and heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy sensation of .seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making 5 6 4 PICTURES FROM ITALY. this quiet picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the little familiar tokens of human habitation and every-day pursuits ; the chafing of the bucket-rope in the stone rim of the exhausted well ; the track of carriage-wheels in the pavement of the street ; the marks of drinking-vessels on the stone counter of the wine-shop ; the amphorae in pri- vate cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago,- and un- disturbed to this hour — all rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the place, ten thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury, had swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea. After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the eruption, workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, new ornaments for temples and other buildings that had suffered. Here lies their work, outside the city gate, as if they would return to-morrow. In the cellar of Diomede's house, where certain skeletons were found huddled together, close to the door, the impression of their bodies on the ashes, hardened with the ashes, and became stamped and fixed there, after they had shrunk, in- side, to scanty bones. So, in the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on the stream when it was hot and liquid, stamped its mimic features in it as it hardened into stone ; and now, it turns upon the stranger the fantastic look it turned upon the audiences in that same theatre two thousand yeais ago. Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in and out of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the temples of a religion that has vanished from the earth, and finding so many fresh traces of remote antiquity : as if the co'urse of Time had been stopped after this desolation, and there had been no nights and days, months, years, and centuries, since : nothing is more impressive and terrible than the many evidences of the searching nature of the ashes, as bespeaking their irresistible power, and the impossibility of escaping them. In the wine-cellars, they forced their way into the earthen vessels ; displacing the wine and choking them, to the brim, with dust. In the tombs, they forced the ashes of the dead from the funeral urns, and rained new ruin even into them. The mouths, and eyes, and skulls of all the skeletons, were stuffed with this terrible hail. In Herculaneum where the flood was of a different and a heavier kind, it rolled in, like a sea. Imagine a deluge of ~water turned to marble at its height— and that is what is called " the lava " here. PIC TURES FROM ITAL Y. 565 Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of which we now stand, looking down when they came on some of the stone benches of the theatre— those steps (for such they seem) at the bottom of the excavation — and found the buried city of Herculaneum. Presently going down, with lighted torches, we are perplexed by great walls of monstrous thickness, rising up between the benches, shutting out the stage, obtruding their shapeless forms in absurd places, con- fusing the whole plan, and making it a disordered dream. We cannot, at first, believe, or picture to ourselves, that This came rolling in, and drowned the city ; and that all that is not here, has been cut away, by the axe, like solid stone. But this per ceived and understood, the horror and oppression of its pres- ence are indescribable. " . Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless cham- bers of both cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, are as fresh and plain, as if they had been executed yesterday. Here are subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses, and the like; familiar classical stories, or mythological fables, always forcibly and plainly told ; con- ceits of cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working at trades; theatrical rehearsals ; poets reading their productions to their friends ; inscriptions chalked upon the walls ; political squibs, advertisements, rough drawings by schoolboys ; everything to people and restore the ancient cities, in the fancy of their won dering visitor. Furniture, too, you see, of every kind — lamps, tables, couches; vessels for eating, drinking, and cooking; workmen's tools, surgical instruments, tickets for the theatre, pieces of money, personal ornaments, bunches of keys found clenched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets of guards and warriors; little household bells, yet musical with their old do- mestic tones. The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the interest of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The looking, from either ruined city, into the neighboring grounds overgrown with beautiful vines and luxuriant tree:; . and remembering that house upon house, temple on temple, building after building, and street after street are still lying underneath the roots of all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the light of day ; is something so wonderful, so full of mystery, so captivating to the imagination, that one would think it would be paramount, and yield to nothing else. To nothing but Vesuvius; but the mountain is the genius of the ^66 PICTURES FROM ITALY. scene. From every indication of the ruin it has worked, we look, again, with an absorbing interest to where its smoke is rising up into the sky. It is beyond us, as we tread the ruined streets : above us, as we stand upon the ruined walls ; we fol- low it through every vista of broken columns, as we wander through the empty court-yards of the houses • and through the garlanclings and interfacings of every wanton vine. Turn- ing away to Passtum yonder, to see the awful structures built, the least aged of them, hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, and standing yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild, malaria-blighted plain — we watch Vesuvius as it disap- pears from the prospect, and watch for it again, on our return, with the same thrill of interest : as the doom and destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its terrible time. It is very warm in the sun, on this earl)* spring-day, when we return from Paestum, but very cold in the shade : insomuch, that although we may lunch, pleasantly, at noon, in the open air, by the gate of Pompeii, the neighboring rivulet supplies thick ice for our wine. But, the sun is shining brightly ; there is not a cloud or speck of vapor in the whole blue sky, look- ing down upon the bay of Naples \ and the moon will be at rhe full to-night. No matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon the summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been on foot Ult day at Pompeii, or that croakers maintain that strangers should not be on the mountain by night, in such an unusual season. Let us take advantage of the fine weather ; make the best of our way to Resina. the little village at the foot of the mountain; prepare ourselves, as well as we can, on so short a notice, at the guide's house ) ascend at once, and have sun- set half-way up, noon-light at the top, and midnight to come down in ! At four o'clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible uproar in the little stable-yard of Signior Salvatore, the recognized head-guide, with the gold band round his cap ; and thirty under-guides who are all scuffling and screaming at once, are preparing half-a-dozen saddled ponies, three litters, and some stout staves, for the journey. Even* one of the thirty, quar- rels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens the six ponies ; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze itself into the little stable-yard, participates in the tumult, and gets trod^ den on by the cattle. After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would suffice for the storming of Naples, the procession starts. The PICTURES FROM ITALY. S 6 7 head-guide, who is liberally paid for all the attendants, rides a little in advance of the party ; the other thirty guides pro- ceed on foot. Eight go forward with the litters that are to be used by and by ; and the remaining two-and-twenty beg. We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, a id the vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak bare region where the lava lies confusedly, in enormous rusty masses: as if the earth had been ploughed up by burn- ing thunderbolts. And now we halt to see the sun set. Ijhe change that falls upon the dreary region, and on the whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes on — and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign around, who that has witnessed it, can ever forget ! It was dark, when after winding, for some time, over the broken ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone : which is extremely steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot where we dismount. The only light is reflected from the snow, deep, hard, and white, with which the cone is covered. It is now intensely cold, and the air is piercing. The thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing that the moon will rise before we reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted to the two ladies ; the third, to a rather heavy gentleman from Naples, whose hospitality and good-nature have attached him to the expedition, and determined him to assist in doing the honors of the mountain. The rather heavy gentleman is carried by fifteen men ; each of the ladies by half-a-dozen. We who walk, make the best use of our staves ; and so the whole party begin to labor upward over the snow, — as if they were toiling to the summit of an antediluvian Twefth-cake. We are a long time toiling up ; and the head-guide looks oddly about him when one of the company — not an Italian though an habitue' of the mountain for many years : whom we will call, for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici — suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing of ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting up and down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers com tinually slip and tumble, diverts our attention ; more especi- ally as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman, is, at that moment, presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his head downwards. 5 68 PICTURES FROM ITALY. The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the flag- ging spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their usual watchword, " Courage, friend ! It is to eatmaccaroni !" they press on, gallantly, for the summit. From tinging the top of the snow above us, with a band of light, and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while we have been ascending in the dark,, the moon soon lights the whole white mountain side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny Naples in the distance, and every village in the country round. The whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we come upon the platform on the mountain-top— the region of Fire — an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous water-fall, burnt up ; from every chink and crevice of which, hot, sulphurous smoke is pouring out: while, from another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth : reddening the night with flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the air like feathers, and fall down like lead. What words can paint the gloom and grandeur of this scene ! The broken ground ; the smoke ; the sense of suffocation from the sulphur • the fear of falling down through the crevices in the yawnlirg ground; the stopping, every now and then, for somebody who is missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the moon) ; the intolerable noise of the thirty ; and the hoarse roaring of the mountain ; make it a scene of such confusion, at the same time, that we reel again. But, dragging the ladies through it. and across another exhausted crater to the foot of the present Volcano, we approach close to it on the windy side, and then sit down among the hot ashes at its foot, and look up in silence ; faintly estimating the action that is going on within, from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this minute, than it was six weeks ago. There is something in the fire and roar, that generates an irresistible desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest long, without starting off, two of us, on our hands and knees, acom- panied by the head guide, to climb to the brim of the flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile, the thirty yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding, and call to us to Come back : frightening the rest of the party out of their wits. What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin crust of ground, that seems about to open underneath our PICTURES FROM ITAL V. 569 feet and plunge us in the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if there be any) ; and what with the flashing oi the fire in our faces, and the shower of red-hot ashes that 1- raining down, and the choking smoke and sulphur; we may well feel giddy and irrational, like drunken men. But, we contrive to - climb up to. the brim, and look down, for a, moment, into the Hell oi boiling fire below. Then, we all three come ■roll- ing: down ; blackened and singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy : and each with his dress alight in half-a-dozen places. You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of de- scending, is, by sliding down the ashes : which, forming a gradually-increasing ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a descent. But, when we have crossed the two exhausted craters on our way back, and are come to this precipitous place, there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of ashes to be seen ; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice. In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously Join hands, and make a chain of men ; of whom the foremost "beat, as well as they can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we prepare to follow. The way being fearfully steep, and none of the party: even of the thirty: being able to keep their feet for six paces together, the ladies are taken out of their litters, and placed, each between two careful persons; -while others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their falling forward— a necessary precaution, tending to the im- mediate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel. The rather heavy gentleman is abjured to leave his litter too, and be es- corted in a similar manner ; but he resolves to be brought down as he was brought up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers are not likely to tumble all at once, and that he. is safer so, than trusting to his own legs. 1 In this order, we begin the descent : sometimes on foot, sometimes shuffling on the ice : always proceeding much more quietly and slowly, than on our upward way : and constantly alarmed by the falling among us of somebody from behind, who endangers the footing of the whole party, and clings per- tinaciously to anybody's ankles. It is impossible for the litter to be in advance, too, as the track has to be made ; and its appearance behind us, overhead — with some one or other of the bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman with his legs always in the air — is very threatening and frightful. We have gone on thus, a very little way. painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and regarding it as a great success — and 67 o PICTURES FROM ITALY. have all fallen several times, and have all been stopped, some now or other, as we were sliding away — when Mr. Pickle ot Portici, in the act of remarking on these uncommon circum- stances as quite beyond his experience, stumbles, falls, disen- gages himself, with quick presence of mind, from those about him, plunges away head foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the whole surface of the cone ! Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help him, I see him there, in the moonlight — I have had such a dream often — skimming over the white ice, like a cannon-ball. Almost at the same moment, there is a cry from behind ; and a man who has carried a light basket of spare cloaks on his head, comes rolling past, at the same frightful speed, closely followed by a boy. At this climax of the chapter of accidents, the remaining eight-and-twenty vociferate to that degree, that a pack of wolves would be music to them ! Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of Portici when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where the horses are waiting ; but, thank God, sound in limb ! And never are we likely to be more glad to see a man alive and on his feet, than to see him now — making light of it too, though sorely bruised and in great pain. The boy is brought into the Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are at supper, with his head tied up ; and the man is heard of some hours afterwards. He too is bruised and stunned, but has broken no bones ; the snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger blocks of rock and stones, and rendered them harmless. After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire, we again take horse, and continue our descent to Salva- tore's house — very slowly, by reason of our bruised friend being hardly able to keep the saddle, or endure the pain of motion. Though it is so late at night, or early in the morning, all the people of the village are waiting about the little stable-yard when we arrive, and looking up the road by which we are expected. Our appearance is hailed with a great clamor o f tongues, and a general sensation for which in our modesty we are somewhat at a loss to account, until turning into the yard, we find that one of a party of French gentlemen who were or the mountain at the same time is lying on some straw in the stable, with a broken limb : looking like Death, and suffering great torture • and that we were confidently supposed to have encountered some worse accident. So " well returned, and Heaven be praised ! " as the cheer- PIC TURES FR OM ITALY. 57* ful Vetturmo, who has borne us company all the way from Pisa, says, with all his heart ! And away with his ready horses, into sleeping Naples ! It wakes again to Policmelli and pickpockets, buffo sing- ers and beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and universal degradation ; airing its Harlequin suit in the sun- shine, next day and every day; singing, starving, dancing, g iming, on the sea-shore ; and leaving all labor to the burning mountain, which is ever at its work. Our. English dilettanti would be very pathetic on the sub- ject of the national taste, if they could hear an Italian opera half as badly sung in England as we may hear the Foscari performed, to-night, in the splendid theatre of San Carlo. But, for astonishing truth and spirit in seizing and embodying the real life about it, the shabby little San Carlino Theatre — the rickety house one story high, with a staring picture outside : down among the drums and trumpets, and the tumblers, and the lady conjurer — is without a rival anywhere. There is one extraordinary feature in the real life of Naples, at which we may take a glance before we go— -the Lotteries. They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particularly obvious, in their effects and influences, here. They are drawn every Saturday. They bring an immense revenue to the Government ; and diffuse a taste for gambling among the poorest of the poor, which is very comfortable to the coffeis of the State, and very ruinous to themselves. The lowest stake is one grain; less than a farthing. One hundred num- bers — from one to a hundred, inclusive — are put into a box. Five are drawn. Those are the prizes. I buy three numbers. If one of them come up, I win a small prize. If two, some hundreds of times my stake. If three, three thousand five hundred times my stake. I stake (or play as they call it) vvhat I can upon my numbers, and buy what numbers I please. The amount I play, I pay at the lottery office, where I pur- chase the ticket ; and it is stated on the ticket itself. Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Universal Lottery Diviner, where every possible accident and circum- stance is provided for, and has a number against it. For in stance, let us take two carlini — about sevenpence. On our way to the lottery office, we run against a black man. When we get there, we say gravely, " The Diviner." It is handed over the counter, as a serious matter of business. We look at tfi 2 PICTURES FROM ITALY. black man. Such a number. " Give us that" We look at running against a person in the street. " Give us that." We look at the name of the street itself. " Give us that." Now, we have our three numbers. If the roof of the theatre of San Carlo were to fall in, so many people would play upon the numbers attached to such an accident in the Diviner, that the Government would soon close those numbers, and decline to run the risk of losing any more upon them. This often happens. Not long ago, when there was a fire in the King's Palace, there was such a des- perate run on fire, and king, and palace, that further stakes on the numbers attached to those words in the Golden Book weie forbidden Every accident or event, is supposed, by the ignorant populace, to be a revelation to the beholder, or party concerned, in connection with the lottery. Certain people who have a talent for dreaming fortunately, are much sought after ; and there are some priests who are constantly favored with visions of the lucky numbers. I heard of a horse running away with a man, and dashing him down, dead, at the corner of a street Pursuing the horse with incredible speed, was another man, who ran so fast, that he came up, immediately after the accident He threw him- self upon his knees beside the unfortunate rider, and clasped his hand with an expression of the wildest grief. " If you have life," he said, " speak one word to me ! If you have one gasp of breath left, mention your age for Heaven's saka, that I may play that number in the lottery." It is four o'clock in the afternoon, and we may go to see our lottery drawn. The ceremony takes place every Satur- day, in the Tribunale, or Court of Justice — this singular, earthy-smelling room, or gallery, as mouldy as an old cellar, and as damp as a dungeon. At the upper end is a platform, with a large horse-shoe table upon it ; and a President and Council sitting round — all Judges of the Law. The man on the little stool behind the President, is the Capo Lazzarone, a kind of tribune of the people, appointed on their behalf to see that all is fairly conducted : attended by a tew personal friends. A ragged, swarthy fellow he is ; with long matted hair hanging down all over his face : and covered, from head to foot, with most unquestionably genuine dirt. All the body of the room is filled with the commonest of the Neapolitan people : and between them and the platform, guarding the steps leading to the ,'atter, is a small body of soldiers. PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 5 73 There is some delay in the arrival of the necessary num- ber of judges ; during which, the box, in which the numbers are being placed, is a source of the deepest interest. When the box is full, the boy who is to draw the numbers out of it becomes the prominent feature of the proceedings. He is al- ready dressed for his part, in a tight brown Holland coat, with only one (the left) sleeve to it, which leaves his right arm bared to the shoulder, ready for plunging down into the mysterious chest. During the hush and whisper that pervade the room, all eyes are turned on this young minister of fortune. People begin to inquire his age, with a view to the next lottery ; and the number of his brothers and sisters ; and the age of his father and mother ; and whether he has any moles or pimples upon him ; and where, and how many ; when the arrival of the last judge but one (a little old man, universally dreaded as possessing the Evil Eye) makes a slight diversion, and would occasion a greater one, but that he is immediately de- posed, as a source of interest, by the officiating priest, who ad- vances gravely to his place, followed by a very dirty little boy, carrying his sacred vestments, and a pot of Holy Water. Here is the last judge come at last, and now he takes his place at the horse-shoe table. There is a murmur of irrepressible agitation. In the midst of it, the priest puts his head into the sacred vestments, and pulls the same over his shoulders. Then he says a silent prayer ; and dipping a brush into the pot of Holy Water, sprinkles it over the box and over the boy. and gives them a double-barrelled blessing, which the box and the boy are both hoisted on the table to receive. The boy remaining on the table, the box is now carried round the front of the platform, by an attendant, who holds it up and shakes it lustily all the time ; seeming to say, like the conjurer, " There is no decep- tion, ladies and gentlemen ; keep your eyes upon me, if you please \ " At last, the box is set before the boy ; and the boy, first holding up his naked arm and open hand, dives down into the hole (it is made like a ballot-box) and pulls out a number, which is rolled up, round something hard, like a bonbon. This he hands to the judge next him, who unrolls a little bit, and hands it to the President, next to whom he sits. The President unrolls it, very slowly. The Capo Lazzarone leans over his shoulder. The President holds it up, unrolled, to the 25 5 j 4 PIC TURES FRO. 7/ / TA L K Capo Lazzarone. The Capo Lazzarone, looking at it eagerly, cries out, in a shrill loud voice, " Sessanta-due ! " (sixty-two), expressing the two upon his fingers, as he calls it out. Alas ! the Capo Lazzarone himself has not staked on sixty-two. His face is very long, and his eyes roll wildly. As it happens to be a favorite number, however, it is pretty well received, which is not always the case. They are all drawn with the same ceremony, omitting the blessing. One blessing is enough for the whole multiplication-table. The only new incident in the proceedings, is the gradually deepen- ing intensity of the change in the Capo Lazzarone, who has, evidently, speculated to the very utmost extent of his means ; and who, when he sees the last number, and finds that it is not one of his, clasps his hands, and raises his eyes to the ceil- ing before proclaiming it, as though remonstrating, in a secret agony, with his patron saint, for having committed so gross a breach of confidence. I hope the Capo Lazzarone may not desert him for some other member of the Calendar, but he seems to threaten it. Where the winners may be, nobody knows. They certainly are not present ; the general disappointment filling one with pity for the poor people. They look : when we stand aside, observing them, in their passage through the court-yard down below : as miserable as the prisoners in the gaol (it forms a part of the building), who are peeping down upon them, from between their bars ; or, as the fragments of human heads which are still dangling in chains outside, in memory of the good old times, when their owners were strung up there, for the popu- lar edification. Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the road to Capua, and then on a three days' journey along by-roads, that we may see, on the way, the monastery of Monte Cassino, which is perched on the steep and lofty hill above the little town of San Germano, and is lost on a misty morning in the clouds. So much the better, for the deep sounding of its bell, which, as we go winding up, on mules, towards the convent, is heard mysteriously in the still air, while nothing is seen but the gray mist, moving solemnly and slowly, like a funeral procession. Behold, at length the shadowy pile of building close before us : its gray walls and towers dimly seen, though so near and so vast : and the raw vapor rolling through its cloisters heavily. PIC TURES FR OM ITAL Y. 575 There are two black shadows walking to and fro in the quadrangle, near the statues of the Patron Saint and his sis- ter • and hopping on behind them, in and out of the old arches, is a raven, croaking in answer to the bell, and uttering, at in* tervals, the purest Tuscan. How like a Jesuit he looks ! There never was a sly and stealthy fellow so at home as is this raven, standing now at the refectory door, with his head on one side, and pretending to glance another way, while he is scrutinizing the visitors keenly, and listening with fixed at- tention. What a dull-headed monk the porter becomes in comparison ! " He speaks like us ! " says the porter : " quite as plainly." Quite as plainly, Porter. Nothing could be more expressive than his reception of the peasants who are entering the gate with baskets and burdens. There is a roll in his eye, and i\ chuckle in his throat, which should qualify him to be choset i Superior of an Order of Ravens. He knows all about it - "It's all right," he says. "We know what we know. Corm along, good people. Glad to see you ! " How was this extraordinary structure ever built in such a situation, where the labor of conveying the stone, and ironi, and marble, so great a height, must have been prodigious ? " Caw ! " says the raven, welcoming the peasants. Hour, being despoiled by plunder, fire and earthquake, has it risen from its ruins, and been again made what we now see it, with its church so sumptuous and magnificent ? " Caw ! " says the raven, welcoming the peasants. These people have a misera- ble appearance, and (as usual) are densely ignorant, and a.'l beg, while the monks are chaunting in the chapel. " Caw ! " says the raven, " Cuckoo ! " So we leave him, chuckling and rolling his eye at the con- vent gate, and wind slowly down again through the cloud. At last emerging from it, we come in sight of the village far below, and the flat green country intersected by rivulets ; which is pleasant and fresh to see after the obscurity and haze of the convent — no disrespect to the raven, or the holy friars. Away we go again, by muddy roads, and through the most shattered and tattered of villages, where there is not a whole window among all the houses, or a whole garment among all the peasants, or the least appearance of anything to eat, in any of the wretched hucksters' shops. The women wear a bright red bodice laced before and behind, a white skirt and the Neapolitan head-dress of square folds of linen, primitively 576 PICTURES FROM TTAL Y. meant to ca*.ry loads on. The men and children weal anything they can get. The soldiers are as dirty and ra- pacious as the dogs. The inns are such hobgoblin places, that they are infinitely more attractive and amusing than the best hotels in Paris. Here is one near Valmontone (that is Valmontone, the round, walled town on the mount opposite), which is approached by a quagmire almost knee-deep. There is a wild colonnade below, and a dark yard full of empty sta- bles and lofts, and a great long kitchen with a great long bench and a great long form, where a party of travellers, with two priests among them, are crowding round the fire while their supper is cooking. Above stairs, is a rough brick gal- lery to sit in, with very little windows with very small patches of knotty glass in them, and all the doors that open from it (a dozen or two) off their hinges, and a bare board on tressels t/D.r a table, at which thirty people might dine easily, and a fire- place large enough in itself for a breakfast-parlor, where, as the faggots blaze and crackle, they illuminate the ugliest and grimmest of faces, drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed chimney-sides by previous travellers. There is a flaring country lamp on the table ; and, hovering about it, scratching her thick black hair continually, a yellow dwarf of a woman, \rho stands on tiptoe to arrange the hatchet knives; and takes a flying leap to look into the water-jug. The beds in the aidjoining rooms are of the liveliest kind. There is not a soli- tary scrap of looking-glass in the house, and the washing appa- ratus is identical with the cooking utensils. But the yellow dwarf sets on the table a good flask of excellent wine, holding u quart at least ; and produces, among half-a-dozen other dishes, two-thirds of a roasted kid, smoking hot. She is as good-humored, too, as dirty, which is saying a great deal. So here's long life to her, in the flask of wine, and prosperity to the establishment. Rome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims who are now repairing to their own homes again — each with his scallop shell and staff, and soliciting alms for the love of God — we come, by a fair country, to the Falls of Terni, where the whole Velino river dashes, headlong, from a rocky height, amidst shining spray and rainbows. Perugia, strongly forti- fied by art and nature, on a lofty eminence, rising abruptly from the plain where purple mountains mingle with the distant sky, is glowing, on its market day, with radiant colors. They • set off its sombre but rich Gothic buildings admirably. The % \ PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 577 pavement of its market-place is strewn with country goods. AH along the steep hill leading from the town, under the town wall, there is a noisy fair of calves, lambs, pigs, horses, mules and oxen. Fowls, geese, and turkeys, flutter vigorously among their very hoofs ; and buyers, sellers, and spectators, cluster- ing everywhere, block up the road as we come shouting down upon them. Suddenly there is a ringing sound among our horses. The driver stops them. Sinking in his saddle, and casting up his eyes to Heaven, he delivers this apostrophe, " Oh Jove Om- nipotent ! here is a horse has lost his shoe ! " Notwithstanding the tremendous nature of this accident, and the utterly forlorn look and gesture (impossible in any one but an Italian Vetturino) with which it is announced, it is not long in being repaired by a mortal Farrier, by whose as- sistance we reach Castiglione the same night, and Arezzo next day. Mass is, of course, performing in its fine cathedral, where the sun shines in among the clustered pillars, through rich stained-glass windows : half revealing, half concealing the kneeling figures on the pavement, and striking out paths of spotted light in the long aisles. But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, on a fair clear morning, we look, from the summit of . a hill, on Florence ! See where it lies before us in a sun-lighted valley, bright with the winding Arno, and shut in by swelling hills ; its domes and towers, and palaces, rising from the rich coun- try in a glittering heap, and shining in the sun like gold ! Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of beauti- ful Florence ; and the strong old piles of building make such heaps of shadow, on the ground and in the river, that there is another and a different city of rich forms and fancies, always lying at our feet. Prodigious palaces, constructed for defence, with small distrustful windows heavily barred, and walls of great thickness formed of huge masses of rough stone, frown, in their old sulky state, on every street. In the midst of the city — in the Piazza of the Grand Duke, adorned with beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune — rises the Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging battlements, and the Great Tower that watches over the whole town. In its court-yard — worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponder- ous goom — is a massive staircase that the heaviest waggon and the stoutest team of horses might be driven up. Within it, is a Great Saloon, faded and tarnished in its stately deco* 5 7'3 PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. rations, and mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in pie tures on its walls, the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in an adjacent court-yard of the building — a foul and dismal place, where some men are shut up close, in small cells like ovens ; and where others look through bars and beg ; where some are playing draughts, and some are talking to their friends, who smoke, the while, to purify the air ; and some are buying wine and fruit of women-vendors ; and all are squalid, dirty, and vile, to look at. "They are merry enough, Signore," says the Jailer. " They are all blood-stained here," he adds, indicating, with his hand, three-fourths of the whole building. Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty years of age, quar- relling over a bargain with a young girl of seventeen, stabs her dead, in the market-place full of bright flowers ; and is 'brought in prisoner, to swell the number. Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte Vecchio — that bridge which is covered with the shops of Jewellers and Goldsmiths — is a most enchanting feature in the scene. The space of one house, in the centre, being left open, the view beyond, is shown as in a frame ; and that pre- cious glimpse of sky, and water, and rich buildings, shining so quietly among the huddled roofs and gables on the bridge, is exquisite. Above it, the Gallery of the Grand Duke crosses the river. It was built to connect the two Great Palaces by a secret passage ; and it takes its jealous course among the streets and houses, with true despotism : going where it list?, and spurning every obstacle away, before it. The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage through the streets, in his black robe and hood, as a member of the Compagnia della Misericordia, which brotherhood includes all ranks of men. If an accident take place, their office is, to raise the sufferer, and bear him tenderly to the Hospital. If a fire break out, it is one of their functions to repair to the spot, and render their assistance and protection. It is, also, among their commonest offices, to attend and console the sickj and they neither receive money, nor eat, nor drink, in any house they visit for this purpose. Those who are on duty for the time, are all called together, on a moment's notice, by the tolling of the great bell of the Tower ; and it is said that the Grand Duke has been seen, at this sound, to rise from his seat at table, and quietly withdraw to attend the summons. In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of PICTURES FROM ITAL Y. 5 7 9 market is held, and stores of old iron and other small mer- chandise are set out on stalls, or scattered on the pavement, are grouped together, the Cathedral with its great Dome, the beautiful Italian Gothic Tower the Campanile, and the Bap- tistery with its wrought bronze doors. And here, a small un- trodden square in the pavement, is "the Stone of Dante," where (so runs the story) he was used to bring his stool, and sit in contemplation. I wonder was he ever, in his bitter exile, withheld from cursing the very stones in the streets of Florence the ungrateful, by any kind remembrance of this old musing-place, and its association with gentle thoughts of little Beatrice ! The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels, of Florence ; the church of Santa Croce where Michael Angelo lies buried, and where every stone in the cloisters is eloquent on great men's deaths ; innumerable churches, often masses of unfinished heavy brickwork externally, but solemn and serene within ; arrest our lingering steps, in strolling through the city. In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the Museum of Natural History, famous through the world for its preparations in wax ; beginning with models of leaves, seeds, plants, inferior animals ; and gradually ascending, through separate organs of the human frame, up to the whole structure of that wonderful creation, exquisitely presented, as in recent death. Few admonitions of our frail mortality can be more solemn and more sad, or strike so home upon the heart, as the counterfeits of Youth and Beauty that are lying there, upon their beds, in their last sleep. Beyond the walls, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, the convent at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, Boccaccio's house, old villas and retreats ; innumerable spots of interest, all glowing in a landscape of surpassing beauty steeped in the richest light ; are spread before us. Returning from so much brightness, how solemn and how grand the streets again, with their great, dark, mournful palaces, and many legends : not of siege, and war, and might, and Iron Hand alone, but of the triumphant growth of peaceful Arts and Sciences. What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from amidst these rugged Palaces of Florence ! Here, open to all comers, in their beautiful and calm retreats, the ancient Sculp- tors are immortal, side by side with Michael Angelo, Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Poets, Historians, Philosophers 5 8o PICTURES FROM ITALY. — those illustrious men of history, beside whom its crowned heads and harnessed warriors show so poor and small, and are so soon forgotten. Here, the imperishable part of noble minds survives, placid and equal, when strongholds of assault and defence are overthrown ; when the tyranny of the many, or the few, or both, is but a tale ; when Pride and Power are so much cloistered dust. The fire within the stern streets, and among the massive Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays from Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the flickering of war is extinguished and the household fires of generations have decayed ; as thousands upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife and passion of the hour, have faded out of the old Squares and public haunts, while the nameless Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion by a Painter's hand, yet lives on, in enduring grace and youth. Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its shining Dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheer- ful Tuscany, with a bright remembrance of it ; for Italy will be the fairer for the recollection. The summer time being come : and Genoa, and Milan, and the Lake of Como lying far behind us : and we resting at Faido, a Swiss village, near the awful rocks and mountains, the everlasting snows and roaring cataracts, of the Great Saint Gothard : hearing the Italian tongue for the last time on this journey: let us part from Italy, with all its miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our admiration of the beauties, natural and artificial, of which it is full to overflowing, and in our tenderness towards a peo- ple, naturally well-disposed, and patient, and sweet-tempered. Years of neglect, oppression, and misrule, have been at work, to change their nature and reduce their spirit ; miserable jealousies, fomented by petty Princes to whom union was destruction, and division strength, have been a canker at their root of nationality, and have barbarized their language ; but the good that was in them ever, is in them yet, and a noble people may be, one day, raised up from these ashes. Let us entertain that hope ! And let us not remember Italy the less regardfully, because, in every fragment of her fallen Temples, and every stone of her deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the lesson that the wheel of Time is rolling for an end, and that the world is, in all great essentials, better, gen< tier, more forbearing, and more hopeful, as it rolls ! ENOCH MORGAN'S SONS' SAPOLIO CLEANS WINDOWS, MARBLE, NIVE&. TIN-WA , JLBON,STEEL s &<7. a SOEMER W GHRjaL^BTD., SQ-TXAJRIQ ./LIEOD T3TEIGHT FT A TTOS. The demands now made by an educated musical public are so exacting, that very few pi .. no-forte manufacturers can produce instru- ments that will stand the test which merit requires. Sohmer & Co., as manufacturers, rank among- this chosen few, who are acknowledged to be makers of standard instruments. In these days when many manufacturers urge the low price of their wares, rather than their superior quality, as an inducement to pur- chase, it may not be amiss to suggest that, in a piano, quality and price are toe inseparably joined, to expect the one without the other. Every piano ought to be judged as to the quality of its tone, its touch and its workmanship ; if any one of these is wanting in excel- lence, however good the others may be, the instrument will be imper- fect. It is the combination of all th se qualities in the highest degree that constitutes the perfect piano, and it is such a combination, as has given the S OHMER its hon o rable posit ion with the trade and public. Prices as reasonableas consistent with the Highest Standard. MANUFACTURERS, 148 to 155 East I4tt St., I.Y. jiven the SOHMEFS its honorable positioi SOHMER STANDARD PUBLICATIONS. Chas. Dickens' Complete "Works, 15 Vols., 12mo, cloth, gilt, $22.50. "W. M. Thackeray's Complete Works, 11 Vols,, 12mo, cloth, gilt, $16.50. George Eliot's Complete Works, 8 Vols., 12mo, cloth, gilt, $10.00. Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Men. 3 Vols., 12mo. cloth, gilt, $4.50/ JOHN "W. LOVELL CO., Publishers, , 14 and 16 Vesex Street, New York^ STANDARD PUBLICATIONS. Rollins' Ancient History, 4 Vols., 12mo, cloth, gilt, $6.00. Charles Knight's Popular His- tory of England, 8 Veis., l2mo, cloth, gilt top, $l}i.0U. / Lovell's Series of Red Line Poets, HO Volumes of all the best works of the world's great Poets, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Milton, Mere- dith, Ingelow, Proctor, Scott, Byron, Dante, &c, $1.25 per volume. JOHN W\ LOVELL CO., Publishers. 14 anjj 16 Vesex Street, New York* JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY'S CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR WORKS- The following are all 12mo. size, printed from large, clear type., on good paper, attractively bound in illuminated paper covers. Hand- somely stamped cloth bindings for any volume, furnished for 10 cents extra. Library Editions of those books marked with a * are also published large 12mo. size, handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.00 a volume. By EDMOND ABOUT. A New Lease of Life. 20 Bt Mrs. ALEXANDER *The Wooing O't, Part 1 15 " " " Part II 15 *The Admiral's Ward 20 Bt P. ANSTEY. *Vice Versa; or, a Lesson to Fathers 80 By SIR SAMUEL BAKER. *Cast up by the Sea 20 *Eigr\t Years Wandering in Ceylon. .20 *Rifle and Hound in Ceylon 20 By HONORE DE BALZAC. The Vendetta, Tales of Love and Pas- sion '. 20 By WALTER BESANT AND JAMES RICE. They Were Married 10 Let Nothing You Dismay 10 By BJORNSTJERNE BJORNSON. The Happy Boy 10 Arne 10 By WILHELM BERGSOE. Pillone 15 By LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE. Woman's Place To-day 20 By Miss M. E. BRADDON. ♦The Golden Calf 20 *Lady Audleys Secret ^0 By WILLIAM BLACK. An Adventure in Thule and Marriage of Moira Fergus 10 *A Princess of Thule 20 *A Daughter of Heth 20 *Shandon Bells '. 50 *Macleod or Dare 20 *Madcap Violet 20 *Strange Adventures of a Phaeton . .20 * v* hite Wings 20 *Kilmeny 20 *Sunrise 20 *That Beautiful Wretch 20 *In Silk Attire 20 *The Three Feathers 20 *Green Pastures and Piccadilly 20 *Yolande 20 By CHARLOTTE BROftTE. *Jane Eyre 20 By RHODA BROUGHTON. *Second Thoughts 20 ♦Belinda 20 By JAMES S. BUSH. More Words About the Bible 2© By E. LASSETER BYNNER. Nimport, Part 1 15 Partll 15 Tritons, Part 1 15 " Partll 15 By Mrs. CHAMPNEY Bourbon Lilies By WILKIE COLLINS. *The Moonstone, Part 1 10 Part II r 10 *The New Magdalen 20 *Heart and Science 20 By J. FENIMORE COOPER. *The Last of the Mohicans 20 *i'ue Spy 20 By THOMAS DE QUINCEY. The Spanish Nun 10 By CARL DETLEF. Irene, or the Lonely Manor 20 By CHARLES DICKENS. *0 iver Twist 20 I\o.:v\ ick Papers, Part 1 20 '.* Part II 20 *A Tale of Two Cities 20 *c'tuld's History of England 20 By "THE DUCHESS." * Portia, or by Passions Rocked 20 * Molly Bawn 20 *Phyllis 20 M mica 10 :;: .Mrs. Geoffrey 20 * : Airy Fairy Lilian 20 •' Beauty's Daughters 20 * f'aith and Unfaith 20 *Loys. Lord Beresford 20 Moonshine and Marguerites 10 By Lord DUFF-ERIN. Letters from High Latitudes 20 By GEORGE ELIOT. *Adam Bede, Part 1 15 " Part II 15 Amos Barton 10 silas iUarner 10 *Romola Parti 15 Part II 15 By F. W. FARRAR, D.D. * ^pekers After God 20 *j£arly Days of Christianity, Part I. . .20 Part II.. 20 By JOHN FRANKLIN. Ameline du Bourg 15 By OCTAVE FEUILLET. A Marriage in High Life 20 By EMILE GABORIAU. ''The Lerouge Case. ^Monsieur Lecoq, Part 1 2C Part II 20 *The Mystery of Orcival 20 *OLher People's M< * n Peril of his L'f* *The Gilded Clique.. Promises of Marriage uey . .20 .20 .20 ■ 10 1 By HENRY GEORGE. Progress and Poverty &C By CHARLES GIBBON. *The Golden Shaft 20 By OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Vicar of Wakefield 10 By Mrs. GORE. The Dean's Daughter 20 By JAMES GRANT. *The Secret Despatch 20 By THOMAS HARDY. Two on a Tower 20 By PAXTON HOOD. Life of Cromwell 15 By LEONARD HENLEY *Life of Washington 20 By JOSEPH HATTON. *Clytie 20 *Cruel London !a) By LUDOVIC HALEVY. L'Abbe Constantin 20 By ROBERT HOUDIN. The Tricks of tLe Greeks Unveiled. ..20 By HORRY AND WEEMS. *Life of Marion £0 By Miss HARRIET JAY. The Dd,rk Colleen 20 By MARION HARLAND. Housekeeping and Homemaking 15 By STANLEY HUNTLEY. *Spoopendyke Papers 20 By WASHINGTON IRVING. *The Sketch Book 20 By SAMUEL JOHNSON. Rasselas 10 By JOHN P. KENNEDY. *Horse Shoe Robinson, Part 1 15 " " '■' Part II 15 By EDWARD KELLOGG. Labor and Capital 20 By GRACE KENNEDY. Dunallen, Part 1 15 " Part II 15 By CHAS. KINGSLEY. *The Hermits 20 *Hypatia, Parti 15 " Part II 15 By Miss MARGARET LEE. ♦Divorce 20 By HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. ♦Hyperion 20 *Outre-Mer 20 By SAMUEL LOVER. The Happy Man 10 By LORD LTTTON. The Coming Race 10 Leila, or the Siege of Granada 10 Earnest Maltravers 20 The Haunted House, and Calderon the Courtier 10 Alice; a sequel to Earnest Maltravers. 20 A Strange S'ory 20 *Last Days of Pompeii 20 Zanoni 20 Night and Morning, Part 1 15 " Part II 15 Paul Clifford 20 Lady of Lyons 10 Money 10 Richelieu 10 By H. C. LUKENS, *Jets and Flashes 20 By Mrs. E. LYNN LINTON. lone Stewart 20 By W. E. MAYO. The Berber 20 By A. MATHEY. Duke of Kandos 20 The Two Duchesses 20 By JUSTIN H. MCCARTHY. An Outline of Irish History 10 By EDWARD MOTT. *Pike County Folks 20 By MAX MULLER. *India, what can she teach us? 20 By Miss MULOCK. *John Halifax 20 By R. HEBER NEWTON The Rig it and Wrong Uses of the Bible 20 By W. E. NORRIS. *No New Thing 20 By OUIDA. ♦Wanda, Part 1 15 Part II 15 ♦Under Two Flags, Part 1 20 Part II 20 By Mrs. OLIPHANT. ♦The Ladies Lindores 20 By LOUISA PARR. Robin 20 By JAMES PAYN. ♦Thicker than Water 20 By CHARLES READE. Single Heart and Double Face 10 By REBECCA FERGUS REDCLIFF. Freckles t 20 By Sir RANDALL H. ROBERTS. Harry Holbrooke. 20 By Mrs. ROWSON. Charlotte Temple. 10 By W. CLARK RUSSELL. *A Sea Queen 20 By GEORGE SAND. The Tower of Percemont 2q By Mrs. W. A. SAVILLE. Sooial Etiquette 15 By MICHAEL SCOTT. ♦Torn Cringle's Log .20 By EUGENE SCRIBE. Fleurette ?0 By J. PALGRAVE SIMPSON. Haunted Hearts 10 By GOLD WIN SMITH, D.C.L. False Hopes 15 By DEA.N SWIFT Gulliver's Travels 20 By W. M. THACKERAY. *Vanity Fair, Part 1 15 II. 15 By Judge D. P. THOMPSON. ♦The Green Mountain Boys 20 By THEODORE TILTON. Tempest Tossed, Part i 20 Par til. . 20 By JULES VERNE. ♦800 Leagues on the Amazon 10 ♦The Cryptogram IT By GEORGE WALKER. ♦The Three Spaniards 20 By W. M. WILLIAMS. Science in Short Chapters 20 By Mrs. HENRY WOOD. ♦East Lynne 20 MISCELLANEOUS. Paul ar.d Virginia 10 Margaret and her Bridesmaids 20 Th \ Queen of the County 20 Baron Munchausen 10 LOVELL'S LIBRARY ADVERTISER. POPULAR NO VELS RECENTL Y PUBLISHED. Mr. William Black's New Novel, YOLANDE, The Story of a Daughter, By William Black, Author of "Shandon Bells," "A Princess of Thule," "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," etc.; 1 vol., 12mo., cloth, gilt, $1.00; 1 vol., 12mo., paper,. 50 cents; also in Lovell's Library, No. 136, 20 cents. "A thoroughly pleasant, readable book, showing all Mr. Black's best qualities as a novelist."— Pall Mall Gazette. "The novel will satisfy Mr. Black's numerous admirers that his right hand has lost none of its cunning." —St. James' Gazette. " 'Yolande' will please and interest many."— Whitehall . The LADIES LINDQRES. By Mrs. Oliphant. Originally published in Blackwood's Magazine, lvol., 12rao., cloth, gilt, $1. laird John Erskine, and of the most modern of marquises, Lord Mille- fleurs."— Spectator, "She is always readable, but never so entertaining as when she lays the scene in Scotland . . . It is impossible to imagine sketches more lifelike than those of old Bolls, the pragmatic but- ler ...of Miss Barbara Erskine, the high-spirited, punctilious, but sensi- ble old aunt; of Lord Rintoul, the weakly yet coolly selfish and sensible young lord of the ordinary young " 'The Ladies Lindores' is in every respect excellent There are two girls at least in this book who might make the fortune :>f any novel, being deliciously feminine and natural." — Saturday Review. LOYS, LORD BERESFOBX), and other Tales. By the Author of "Phyllis," "Molly Bawn," "Mrs. Geoffrey," etc. 1 vol. , 12rao., cloth, gilt, $1.00; also in Lovell's Library, No. 126, 1 vol., 12mo.. paper cover, 20 cents. "Tbat delightful writer the author i ular. There is something good in all of 'Phyllis, has given us a collection of them, and one or two are especially of stories which cannot fail to be pon- I racy ar-d piquant. '•'— The Academy. NO NEW THING. By W. E. N orris, Author of "Matri- mony," "Mademoiselle de Mersac," etc. 1 vol.. 12mo., cloth, gilt, $1.00; also in Lovell's Library, No. 108, 20 cents. " MSTc New Thing' is bright, readable and clever, and in every sense of the word a thoroughly interesting book." Whitehall Review. 'Mr. Norris has succeeded. His story, 'No New Thing,' is a very curi ous one There is unmistakable capacity in his work."— Spectator. AKDEN. By A. Mary F. Robinson. Library, No. 134, 15 cents. 1 vci., 12mo., m Lovell's "Miss Robinson must certainly be congratulated on having scored a suc- cess at the very beginning of her ca- reer. 'Arden' is an extremely clever acter. Brought up in Borne, on the death of her father, Acden returns to his native village in Warwickshire, there to make acquaintance with the story, and though it is one merely of I truest and freshest country people w every-day life, yet the incidents are so clothed as to appear fresh and new, and the scent of the hay throughout is invigorating and refreshing. The heroine, who gives her name to the book, is a wild, impulsive creature whom one cannot help liking, in spite of various weaknesses in her char- have ever met on paper. The story is simply that of Arden s life and marriage, but it is never wearisome because of the sharpness of the writ- ing, and we have to thank Miss Robin- eon for a very good novel indeed . "— Whitehall Review. New York s JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY. KEYSTONE ORGAN. The finest organ in the Market. Price reduced from $175 to $125. Acclimatized case. Anti-Shoddy and Anti-Monopoly. Not all case, stops, top and advertisement. Warranted for 6 years. Has the Excelsior 18-Stop Combination, embracing: Diapason, Flute, Melodia-Forte, Violina, Aeolma, \ io a, Flute-Forte, Celeste, Dulcet, Echo, Melodia, Celestina, Octave Coupler, Tremelo, Sub-Bass, Cello, Grand-Organ Air Brake, Grand-Organ Swell. Two Knee- Stops. This is a Walnut case, with Music Balcony, Sliding Desk, Side Handles *c Dimensions : Height, 75 inches; Length, 48 inches; Depth, 24 inches. This 5-Octave Organ, with Stool, Eook and.Music, we will box and deliver at dock in New Yoric,r»* $125* Send by express, prepaid, check, or registered letter to DICKINSON & C: Pianos and Organs, 19 West llth Street, New York* LOVELL'S LIBRARY-CATALOGUE. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. \V2. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. ( 10, 141. 142. 143 144. 145. 146. 147. 14>?. 149. 150. 1"4. 1V3. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 160. 161. 162. MoreWords About the Bible, by Rev. Jas. S. Bush Monsieur Leooq, Gaboriau Pt. I. Monsieur Lecoq, ' Pt. II An Outline of Irish History, by Justin II. McCarthy TheLerougeCase, byGaboriau. Paul Clifford, by Lord Lytton. . A New Lease of Life, by About. . Bourbon Lilies Other People's Money, Gaboriau The Lady of Lyons, Lytton.. Ameline de Bourg A Sea Queen, by W. Russell The Ladies Lindores, by Mrs. Oliphant Haunted Hearts, by Simpson.... Loys, I ord Beresford, by The Duchess Under Two Flags, Ouida, Pt. I. . Under Two Flags. Pt. II Money, by Lord Lytton In Peril of His Life, byGaboriau. India, by Max Miiller Jets and Flashes Moonshine and Marguerites, by The Duchess Mr Scarborough's Family, by Anthony Trollope, Part I Mr ScarboroughsPamily, PtII Arden, by A. Mary F. Robinson. The Tower of Percemont Yolaude, by Wm. Black Cruel London, by Joseph ITattou. The Gilded Cl ; qne, by Gaboriau. Pike County Folks, E. H. Mott. . Cricket on the Hearth Henry Esmond, by Thackeray.. Strange Adventures of a Phae- ton, by Wm. Black Denis Duval, by Thackeray Old Curiosity Shop,Dickens,PtI. Old Curiosity Shop, Part II. . . . Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part I Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part II White Wings, by Wm. Black.. The Sketch Book, by Irving Catherine, by W M. Thackeray. Janet's Bepentance, by Eliot.... Barnaby Rudge, Dickens, Pt I. . BarnaHv Rudge, Part II Felix Holt, b / George Eliot R'chelieu, by Lord Lrtton Sunrise, by Wm. Black, Part I. . Sunrise, by Wm. Black. Part II. Tour of the World in 80 Days. . Mystery of Orcival Gaboriau Lovel, the Widower, by W. M. Thackeray Romantic Adventures of a Milk maid, by Thomas Hardv David C^pperfield, Dickens, Pt I. David Copperfield, r art II Rienzi, by Lord Lytton, Part I. . Rtnzi, by Lord Lytton, Partll. Pio nise of Marriage, Gaboriau. Faith and Unfaith, by The Duchess ' 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 107. 198. 199. 200. 201. The Happy Man, by Lover... 10 Barry Lyndon, by Thackeray.... 20 Eyre's Acquittal 10 Twenty Thousand Leagues Un- der the Sea, by Jules Verne 20 Anti-Slavery Days, by James Freeman Clarke.. 20 Beauty's Daughters, by The Duchess. 20 Beyond the Sunrise.. 20 Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. 20 Tom Cringle's Log, by M.Scott.. 20 Vanity Fair, by W.M.Thackeray.20 Underground Russia, Stepniak..20 Middlerharch, by Elliot, Pt I... .20 M iddlemarch. Part II 20 Sir Tom, by Mrs. Oliphant 20 Pelham, by Lord Lytton 20 The Story of Ida 10 Madcap Violet, by Wm. Black. .20 The Little Pilgrim 10 Kilmeny, by Wm. Black 20 Whist, or Bumblepnppy? 10 The Beautiful Wretch, Black .... 20 Her Mother's Sin, by B. M. Clay. 20 Green Pastures and Piccadilly," by Wm. Black 20 The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne, Part 1 15 The Mysterious Island, Part II. .15 The Mysterious Island, Part III. 15 Tom Brown at Oxford, Part I ... 15 Tom Brown at Oxford, Part II . . 1 '. Thicker than Water, by J. Payn.2) In Silk Attire, by Wm. Black. . .20 Scottish Chiefs.Jane Porter,Pt,I.20 Scottish Chiefs, Part II 20 Willy Reilly, by Will Carleton. .20 The Nautz Family, by Shelley .20 Great Expectations, by Dickens. -"0 Pendennis.by Thackeray, Part 1.20 Pendennis.by Thackeray,Part 21.20 Widow Bedott Papers 20 Daniel Deronda,Geo. Eliot,Pt. 1.20 Daniel Deronda, Part II 20 Altiora Peto, by Oliphan" 20 By the Gate of the Sea, by David Christie Murray 15 Tales of a Traveller, by Irving. . .20 Life and Voyages of Columbus, by Washington Irving, Part I. .20 Life and Voyages of Columbus, by Washington Irving, Part 11.20 The Pilgrim's Progress 20 Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens, Part 1 20 Martm Chuzzlewit, Part II 20 Theophrastus Such. Geo. Eliot. . .20 Disarmed, M. Betham-Edwards..l5 Eugene Aram by Lord Lytton. 20 The Spanish Gypsy and Other Poems, by George Eliot 20 Cast Up by the Sea Baker 20 Mill on the Floss, Eliot. Pt. I. . . 15 Mill on the Floss, Part II 15 Brother Jacob, and Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, by George Eliot. . .10 Wrecks in the Sea of Life .20 ERAET AND NERVE FOOD. Vitalized Phos-phites, COMPOSED OF THE NERVE-GIVING PRINCIPLES OP «^£HE OX-BRAIN AND WHEAT-GERM. It r«»tip^S3fe^yjto|ta}y Nervousness or Indigestion ; relieves Lassitude and^WumaBEcetf^Ws the nerves tired by worry, excite- ment, or exceWve' brtinv|^H3*|4|Sengthens a failing memory, and J lives renewed vigor in alhdiseases ox Nervous Exhaustion or Debility, tit the only PREVENTIVE FOR CONSUMPTION. It aid* wonderfully in the mental and bodily growth of infants and children. Under its use the teeth wine easier. Hit bones grow better, the skin jAumper and smoother; the brain acquires more readily, and rests and sleeps more sweetly. . An ill-fed brain learns no lessons, and is excusable if peevish. It gives a happier and better childhood. "It is with tne utmos.t eonjfidenee that I recommend this excellent pre- paration for the relief of indigestion and for general debility; nay, I do more than recommend, 1 really urge all invalids to put it to the test, for in sev- eral cases personally known to me signal benefits have been derived from its use. 1 have recently watched its effects on a young friend who has suffered from indigestion all her life. After taking the Vitalized Phos- phites for a fortnight she said to me; ' I feel another person; it is a pleas- ure to live.' Many hard-working men and women — especially those engaged in brain work— would be saved from the fatal resort to chloral and other destructive stimulants, if they would have recourse to a remedy so simple and so efficacious. " Emily Faithfuix. Physicians have prescribed oyer ©00,000 Pace ages because they enow its Composition, that it is not a secret remedy, amd that the formula is printed on every label For Sale toy DrugfUti or toy stall, •*. F. CEOSBY CO., 664 and 666 Sixth Ayenut, New York, «*M* iWV» tmhi )mibM*f(h(\f\!\J: mmmmtmM mmMmmm W""^W-r^ ■ k "A Jlto tow/m MkmkL * ^a * AAfcAAAAAAsAA^AMftftAftl »MA»AA ^MWAMfl'fiS -A*A A * WOT*U A A : 'AA i»»^^^#IS^i^ \AAAf\A ^aAaAAaA \!\mm^m wmm &$.*m&mmmN, ff^N\^N\^ Ww>foto' Ah. '■". .A ;aAA:AAaAAAA 0Mmm, WMmmB^m wmmam S^Wa'aA .ft.VA»fififiSeSS MMiMMWmSmk. AaMAa2» ww^mfikfc *a*aM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS^ 020 129 315 7 H I