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WILEY & PUTNAM'S 
 
 LIBRARY OF 
 
 AMERICAN BOOKS 
 
 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE 
 
 BY AN AMERICAN. 
 
^Cf. 
 
 SCENES AND THOUGHTS 
 
 E U E O P E. 
 
 BY AN AMERICAN 
 
 U.et YX- 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 WILEY AND PUTNAM. 
 
 1846. , ^ 
 
 ^^rt^i^^ y^j!j/M^o^^ ^6^-^4/,^^ *-<^J^"y27./^ 
 
V 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 
 
 GEORGE H. CALVERT, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. 
 
 ^ ] S s 
 
 ^^'•\ 
 
 B. Craighead's Power Press, T. B. Smith, Stereotyper, 
 
 112 Fulton Street. 216 William Street. 
 
 0' 
 
 u 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Certain classes of books are such favorites, that nearly 
 the whole responsibility of publishing them should be borne 
 by the public. The eagerness with which they are read 
 is a premium on their production. The traveller in foreign 
 lands finds the privacy of his letters and journal encroached 
 upon while writing them, by the thought that they may be 
 turned into " copy " for the printer. To so many others 
 has this happened, that the possibility of its happening to 
 himself cannot be kept out of his mind, spotting, it may 
 be, the candor of his statements. Afterwards, when he 
 has been at home long enough for the incidents of his jour- 
 ney to grow by distance of time into reminiscences, what 
 he wrote on the spot comes upon him with unexpected 
 freshness and distinctness. Himself gets information and 
 entertainment from the perusal of his notes, letters and 
 diary. In this state of semi- self-complacency, the public 
 urgently invites him to its broad tables — invites him 
 through the kindness wherewith it has loaded so many of 
 his book-blazoned fellow-travellers. He begins to criticise 
 his manuscript ; to shape it by excisions, by additions ; to 
 calculate quantity ; to confer with a popular publisher, — 
 who is of course in close league with the public, — until at 
 last, he finds that his manuscript has been made away with 
 and in its stead he has proof sheets. His private doings, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 and seeings, and thinkings, and feelings, are about to cease 
 to be private and to become public, and himself is to be 
 thrust in every page personally before the world by the 
 printers, notw^ithstanding his constant endeavor to merge 
 his individuality, and, like modest editors, to multiply and 
 disperse himself by means of the indefinite we. He is in 
 the case to claim the favor that is show^n at a feast to a 
 guest especially summoned for the entertainment of the 
 company. The host is the pubHc, w^hose part it is to bear 
 with his waywardness, to be indulgent towards his short- 
 comings, to overlook his deficiencies. The author of the 
 following little volume scarcely need add, that this claim 
 of the author-guest is strong in proportion as he possesses 
 the one virtue, the rare virtue, of brevity. 
 
 March, 1846. 
 
SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE 
 
 Ambleside, Westmoreland County, England, 
 July 29th, 1840, Wednesday Evening. 
 
 My Dear : 
 
 Three weeks since, I was in America : I am now writing to 
 you from an English village, distant but a mile from the dwelling 
 of Wordsworth. Between noon and evening we have come to-day 
 ninety miles; first by railroad from Liverpool to Lancaster, 
 where we took outside seats on a coach to Kendall, and thence 
 by postchaise fourteen miles to Ambleside. An American just 
 landed in England wants more than his two eyes to look at the 
 beautiful, green "old country." For several miles the road lay 
 along the bank of Lake Windermere, sleeping in the evening 
 shadows at the feet of its mountains, whose peaks were shrouded 
 in mist, except that of Nabscar, on whose southern side near its 
 base stands the Poet's house. 
 
 So soon as we were established in the clean little inn, I walked 
 out, about eight o'clock, on the road that passes Wordsworth's 
 door. Meeting a countryman, when I had been afoot ten or fifteen 
 minutes, I asked him, — " How far is it to Mr. Wordsworth's ?" 
 " Only a quarter of a mile." The wood-skirted road wound 
 among gentle hills, that on one side ran quickly up into mountains, 
 so that the house was not in view ; and having resolved not to 
 seek him till to-morrow, I turned back with the tall laborer, who 
 told me he was working at Wordsworth's. W^e passed a lady 
 and gentleman on foot, who both gave a friendly salutation to my 
 companion. " That," said he, " is Mr. Wordsworth's daughter." 
 
 2 
 
SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Thursday Eveuing. 
 
 This morning, at ten, Nabscar still wore his nightcap of mist, 
 but as the wind then hauled, in sailor's phrase, to the north from 
 the southwest, which is the rainy quarter here, he was robed 
 before noon in sunshine, to welcome on his breast a far-travelled 
 homager. 
 
 I spent an hour to-day with Wordsworth. His look, talk, and 
 bearing, are just what a lover of his works would wish to find 
 them. His manner is simple, earnest, manly. The noble head, 
 large Roman nose, deep voice, and tall spare figure, make up an 
 exterior that well befits him. He talked freely on topics that natu- 
 rally came up on the occasion. He proposed that we should 
 walk out into his grounds. What a site for a poet's abode ! One 
 more beautiful the earth could scarcely ofier. A few acres give 
 shifting views of the Paradise about him, embracino: the two lakes 
 of Windermere and Grasmere. Would that you could have 
 heard him sum up in hearty English the characteristics of the 
 bounteous scene ! We passed a small field of newly-cut hay, 
 which laborers were turning ; — " I have been at work there this 
 morning," said Wordsworth, " and heated myself more than was 
 prudent." In the garden a blackbird ran across our path : " I 
 like birds better than fruit," said he ; " they eat up my fruit, but 
 repay me with their songs." By those who, like you, appreciate 
 Wordsworth, these trifles will be prized as significant of his 
 habits. I would not record them, did I believe that himself, — 
 with knowledge of the feelings which to us make them valuable, — 
 would regard the record as a violation of the sacred privacy of 
 his home. A literary caterer might have seized upon much that 
 would better have served a gossiping hireling's purpose. 
 
 Saturday, August 1st, 1840. 
 
 Yesterday evening we spent three hours at Rydal Mount, the 
 name not of the mountain near whose base is Wordsworth's 
 
WORDSWORTH. 
 
 dwelling, but of the dwelling itself. We went, by invitation, 
 early. Wordsworth, soon after we arrived, familiarly took me 
 through the back gate of his enclosure, to point out the path by 
 which I might ascend to the top of Nabscar, — a feat I purposed 
 attempting the next day. On our return, he proposed a visit to 
 Rydal Fall, a few hundred yards from his door in Rydal Park. 
 On learning that five weeks since we had stood before Niagara, 
 an exclamation burst from his lips, as if the sublime spectacle 
 were suddenly brought near to him. " But, come," said he, after 
 a moment, " I am not afraid to show you Rydal Fall, though you 
 have so lately seen Niagara." As for part of the way he walked 
 before us in his tliick shoes, his large head somewhat inclined 
 forward, occasionally calling our looks to tree or shrub, I had 
 him, as he doubtless is in his solitary rambles for hours daily, in 
 habitual meditation, greeting as he passes many a flower and 
 sounding bough, and pausing at times from self-communion, to 
 bare his mind to the glories of sky and earth which ennoble his 
 chosen abode. 
 
 At the end of our walk a short descent brought us to the door 
 of a small, stone, wood-embowered structure, the vestibule, as it 
 were, to the temple. Entering, the waterfall was before us, 
 beheld through a large regular oblong opening or window which 
 made a frame to the natural picture. The fall was not of more 
 than twenty-five feet, and the stream only a large brook, but from 
 the happiest conjunction of water, rock and foliage ; of color, 
 form, sound and silvan still life ; resulted a scene, decked by 
 nature so choicely, and with such delicate harmony, that you felt 
 yourself in one of Beauty's m.ost perfect abiding-places. The 
 deep voice of Wordsworth mingled at intervals with the sound of 
 the fall. We left the spot to return to his house. The evening 
 was calm and sunny ; we were in an English Park in the bosom 
 of mountains j we had come from a spot sanctified by Beauty, 
 and Wordsworth walked beside us. 
 
SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 The walls of the drawing-room and library, connected by a 
 door, in which, with the affable kindness of a refined gentlewo- 
 man, Mrs. Wordsworth received ourselves and a few other guests, 
 were covered with books and pictures. Wordsworth showed me 
 many editions of the British Poets. He put into my hands a copy 
 of the first edition of Paradise Lost, given him by Charles Lamb. 
 He spoke copiously, and in terms of admiration, of Alston, whom 
 he had known well. In connection with Alston, he mentioned 
 his " friend Coleridge." The opportunity thus offered of leading 
 him to speak of his great compeer, was marred by one of the 
 company giving another turn to the conversation. Wordsworth, 
 throughout the evening, was in a fine mood. His talk was clear 
 and animated ; at times humorous or narrative. He narrated 
 several lively incidents with excellent effect. We sat in the 
 long English twilight till past nine o'clock. 
 
 Sunday Morning, August 2d, 1840. 
 
 Yesterday was pleasantly filled in making an excursion to 
 Colistone Lake, in rowing on Windermere, and in strolling in the 
 evening through the meadows around Ambleside. At every 
 pause in our walk, the aspect of the landscape varied, under the 
 control of the chief feature of the scenery, the encircling moun- 
 tains with their vast company of shadows, which, as unconsciously 
 changing your position you shift the point of view, open or close 
 gorges and valleys, and hide or reveal their own tops, producing 
 the effect of a moving panorama. 
 
 But a week since, we were on the ocean, — a month since, in 
 the new world, — now, on the beaten sod of the old, young Ameri- 
 cans enjoying old England. Every object within sight, raised by 
 the hand of man, looks touched with antiquity ; the grey stone wall 
 with its coping of moss, the cottage ivy-screened, the Saxon 
 church tower. Even what is new, hasn't a new look. The modern 
 mansion is mellowed by architecture and tint into keeping with its 
 
RYDAL CHURCH. 
 
 older neighbors. To be old here, is to be respectable, and time- 
 honored is the epithet most coveted. You see no sign of the 
 doings of yesterday or yesteryear : the new is careful of obtruding 
 itself, and comes into the world under matronage of the old. But 
 the footprint of age is not traced in rust and decay. We are in 
 free and thriving England, where Time's accumulations are 
 shaped by a busy, confident, sagacious hand, man co-working 
 with Nature at the " ceaseless loom of Time," so that little be 
 wasted and little misspent. The English have a strong sympathy 
 with rural nature. The capabilities of the landscape are de- 
 veloped and assisted with a loving and judicious eye, and the 
 beautiful effects are visible not merely in the lordly domain or 
 secluded pleasure-ground, where a single mind brings about a 
 pre-determined end, but in the general aspect of the land. The 
 thatched cottage, the broad castle, the simple lawn, the luxurious 
 park, the scattered hamlet, the compact borough, all the features 
 which make up the physiognomy of woody, mossy, rain-washed, 
 England, harmonize with nature and with one another. 
 
 Sunday Afternoon, 2 o'clock. 
 
 We walked this morning to Rydal Church, which is within 
 almost a stone's throw of Wordsworth's dwelling. Through a 
 cloudless sky and the Sabbath stillness, the green landscape 
 looked like a corner of Eden. In the small simple church there 
 were not more than sixty persons, the congregation, as Words- 
 worth told us afterwards, consisting of fourteen families. When 
 the service was over, Wordsworth, taking us one under each arm, 
 led us up to his house. After a short visit we took our final leave. 
 
 In these three days, I have spent several hours at difierent 
 times with Wordsworth. I have listened to his free and cordial 
 talk, walked with him, beheld the beautiful landscape of West- 
 moreland with the aidance of his familiar eye, and have been the 
 object of his hospitality, more grateful to me than would be that 
 
SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 of his sovereign. The purpose of our visit to Ambleside being 
 accomplished, we leave this in half an hour. 
 
 Oxford, Wednesday Mornino, August 5th, 1840. 
 
 A glance at the map of England will show you what a flight 
 we 've made since Sunday^ For most of the way 't was literally 
 a flight, being chiefly by steam. Yet have we had time to tarry 
 on the road, and give ourselves up tranquilly without hurry to 
 deep and gentle impressions. 
 
 Leaving Ambleside on Sunday afternoon, our road ran for ten 
 miles along the eastern shore of Lake Windermere, which lay 
 shining at our side, or sparkling through the foliage that shades 
 the neat dwellings on its border. From the mountains of the 
 lake region we passed suddenly into the flats of Lancashire, and 
 at dark reached Lancaster, too late to get a good view of, what 
 we had however seen as we went up from Liverpool, the castle, 
 founded by 
 
 " Old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster." 
 
 Between nine and three o'clock on Monday, a railroad bore us 
 from Lancaster, on the north-west coast, to Coventry (which Fal- 
 staff" marched through) in Warwickshire, the very heart of Eng- 
 land. We passed through, but did not stop at Birmingham. The 
 sight and thought of these great overworked underfed workshops 
 are oppressive. An invalid has not the nerves to confront the 
 gaunt monster, Poverty, that dragging along its ghastly offspring, 
 Squalor and Hunger, stalks so strangely through this abundant 
 land. 
 
 There is nothing like a " locomotive " for giving one a first 
 vivid view of a country. Those few hours left on my brain a 
 clear full image of the face of England, such as can be had by 
 no other means. Town, river, village, cottage, castle, set all in 
 their native verdure, are so approximated by rapidity of move- 
 
WARWICK CASTLE. 
 
 nlent. as to be easily enclosed by the memory in one. frame. The 
 ten miles between Coventry and Warwick, a stage-coach carried 
 us on its top, passing through Kenilworth village, and giving us 
 a glimpse of the famous ruins. 
 
 Beautiful to behold is England on a suimy summer's day ; so 
 clean, so verdant, so full of quiet life, so fresh, wearing so lightly 
 the garland of age. What a tree ; — that cottage, how fragrant 
 it looks through its flowers ; — the turf about that church has been 
 green for ages. Here is a thatched hamlet, its open doors lighted 
 with rosy faces at the sound of our wheels ; — this avenue of oaks 
 sets the imagination to building a mansion at the end of it. What 
 town is that clustered around yon huge square tower ? and the 
 ear welcomes a familiar name, endeared by genius to the Ame- 
 rican heart. Such is a half hour of one's progress through time- 
 enriched England, the mother of Shakspeare and Cromwell, of 
 Milton and Newton. 
 
 Yesterday morning we walked to Warwick Castle, which lies 
 just without the town. There stands the magnificent feudal 
 giant, shorn of its terrors ; its high embattled turrets dis- 
 armed by Time's transmuting inventions ; its grim frowns 
 converted to graceful lineaments ; its hoarse challenges to gentle 
 greetings ; there it stands, grand and venerable, on the soft green 
 bank of Avon, guarded by man's protecting arm against the level- 
 ling blasts of antiquity, not less a token of present grandeur than 
 a monument of former glories. As slowly as the impatient 
 attendant would let us, we loitered through the broad lofty halls 
 and comfortable apartments, from whose walls flash the bright 
 heads of Vandyke. Through the deep windows you look down 
 into the Avon, which flows by the castle and through the noble 
 park. We lingered on the green lawn, enclosed within the castle 
 walls, and in the smooth grounds without them, and we hung about 
 the towers of the dark old pile until noon, when we walked back 
 to the inn, having enjoyed without drawback, and with more than 
 
SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 fulfilment of cherished expectations, one of the grandest specta- 
 cles old Europe has to offer. 
 
 At one we were approaching Stratford on Avon, distant eight 
 miles from Warwick. Fifteen years since I was on the same 
 ground. But Shakspeare was to me then but a man, to whom 
 greatness had been decreed by the world's judgment. I was not 
 of an age to have verified for myself his titles : I had not real- 
 ized by contemplation the immensity of his power : my soul had 
 not been fortified by direct sympathy with his mighty nature. 
 But now I felt that I was near the most sacred spot in Europe, 
 and I was disappointed at the absence of emotion in my mind. 
 Here Shakspeare was born, and here he lies buried. We stood 
 above his bones : on the marble slab at our feet, we read the 
 lines touching their rest, invoking a curse on him who should 
 disturb them. We sat down on a bench within a few feet of the 
 sacred dust. We walked out by a near door past tomb-stones 
 to the edge of the Avon. The day was serene and bright. We 
 returned, and gazed again on the simple slab. 'Twas not till 
 we had quitted the church, and were about to pass out of the 
 yard, that a full consciousness of the holiness of the place arose 
 in me. For an instant I seemed to feel the presence of Shak- 
 speare. We walked slowly back towards the inn. In this path 
 he has walked ; at that sunny corner he has lounged ; — but 
 'twas like clutching at corporeal substance in a dream, to try to 
 call up a familiar image of Shakspeare. Objects around looked 
 unsubstantial ; what the senses beheld wore the aspect of a vision ; 
 the only reality was the thought of Shakspeare, which wrapped 
 the mind in a vague maorical sensation. 
 
 o o 
 
 Between three and four o'clock we were on the way to Oxford, 
 smoothly rolling over an undulating road, under a cloudless sky, 
 tlirough the teeming, tree-studded fields. We passed through 
 Woodstock, and for several miles skirted the Park of Blenheim. 
 'Twas dark ere we entered Oxford. The coach whirled us past 
 
OXFORD. 
 
 square upon square of majestic piles and imposing shapes, and 
 we alighted at the inn, suddenly and strongly impressed with the 
 architectural magnificence of Oxford. We are going out to get 
 a view by sunlight ere we set off for London, which we are to 
 reach before night. 
 
 London, Augmt 10th, 1840. 
 
 From the top of the coach, which carried us eight miles to the 
 Great Western Railroad, I looked back upon the majestic crown 
 of towers and spires, wherewith, — as if to honor by a unique prodi- 
 gality of its gifts, the high, long enduring seat of learning, — the 
 genius of architecture has encircled the brow of Oxford. At a 
 speed of thirty to forty-five miles an hour, we shot down to 
 Windsor, where we again quitted the railroad for a post-chaise, 
 wishing to enter London more tranquilly than by steam. 
 
 By the road from Windsor it is hard to say when you do enter 
 London, being encased by houses miles before you reach Picca- 
 dilly. Some cities are begirt with walls, some with public walks, 
 some merely with water ; but London, it may be said without 
 solecism, is surrounded by houses. At last the " West End " 
 opens grandly to view through Hyde Park. What a look of 
 vastness, of wealth, of solid grandeur ! We are passing the 
 house of Wellington, and there to the right, across the Green 
 Park and St. James's, are the towers of Westminster Abbey. We 
 are in the largest and wealthiest city of the world, the capital of 
 the most vast and powerful empire the earth has ever known. 
 
 We can now give but a few days to London, barely enough to 
 get a notion of its material dimensions and outward aspects. 
 Size, activity, power, opulence, fill with confused images the 
 wearied brain when the stranger's laborious day is over. The 
 streets of London seem interminable ; its private palaces are 
 countless ; its population consists of many multitudes. Through 
 its avenues flow in counter-currents, from morn till midnight, 
 2* 
 
10 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 the streams which send and receive from the ends of the earth, 
 the life-blood of a commerce, which all climes and continents 
 nourish. From within its precincts issue words, that, sped to the 
 four quarters of the globe, are laws to more than one hundred 
 millions of men. Thither are the ears of states directed ; and 
 when in the Senate, that for ages has had its seat in this still 
 growing capital, the prime minister of England speaks, all the 
 nations hearken. Of the wealth, strength, bulk, grandeur of the 
 realm, London is the centre and palpable evidence. See the 
 docks in the morning, and drive round the Parks in the afternoon, 
 and you behold the might and magnificence of Britain. 
 
 From this endless throng I was withdrawn yesterday to a scene, 
 a sketch of which will, I know, have for you especial interest. 
 1 drove to Highgate Hill, and alighted at the house of Mr. Gil- 
 man. From the servant who opened the door I learnt that he 
 had been dead several months. Mrs. Oilman was at home. I 
 was shown into a neat back drawing-room, where sat an elderly 
 lady in deep mourning. I apologized for having come to her 
 house : it was my only means of getting tidings of one I had 
 known well many years before in Gottingen, and who, I was 
 aware, had been a friend and pupil of Mr. Coleridge during his 
 stay under her roof. She made a sign to the servant to withdraw, 
 and then gave way to her emotion. " All gone, all gone !" were 
 the only words she could at first utter. My friend had been dead 
 many years, then Coleridge, and lastly her husband. I was much 
 
 moved. Mr. had been a son to her: to have been intimate 
 
 with him was a favorable introduction to herself. She showed 
 me several of Mr. Oilman's books, filled with notes in Coleridge's 
 handwriting, from which are taken many passages of the " Re- 
 mains." In another room was his bust ; and in another a fine 
 picture by Alston, given by him to his great friend. She put 
 into my hands a sonnet in manuscript, written and sent to her by 
 
COLERIDGE. 11 
 
 Alston, on the death of Coleridge, — the most beautiful thing of 
 the kind 1 ever read. 
 
 In the third story is the chamber opened by the most cordial 
 and honorable friendship to the illustrious sufferer, and by him 
 occupied for many years. There was the bed whereon he died. 
 From the window I looked out over a valley upon Caen Wood. 
 Here, his lustrous eyes fixed in devout meditation, Coleridge was 
 wont to behold the sunset. Mrs. Gilman tired not of talking of 
 him, nor I of listening. I thought, how happy, with all his cha- 
 grins and disappointments, he had been in finding such friends. 
 You recollect with what affection and hearty thankfulness he 
 speaks of them. They could sympathize with the philosopher and 
 the poet, as well as with the man. Mrs. Oilman's talk told of 
 converse with one of England's richest minds. To me it was a 
 bright hour, and with feelings of more than esteem for its lonely 
 inmate, I quitted the roof where, in his afflicted old age, the author 
 of Christabel had found a loving shelter. In a few moments I 
 was again in the whirl of the vast metropolis. I shall bear away 
 from it no more vivid or grateful recollection than that of yester- 
 day's visit. Few men have had more genius than Coleridge, 
 more learning, or more uprightness, and in the writings of none 
 is there more soul. His poetry will live with his language. As 
 a prose writer, he is a conscientious seeker of truth, a luminous 
 expounder of the mysteries of life ; and the earnest student of 
 his pages, without accepting in full either his Theology, or his 
 Philosophy, or his Politics, finds himself warmed, instructed and 
 exalted. 
 
 Leamington, September, 1840. 
 
 The day after the date of my last, we left London for Leam- 
 ington in Warwickshire, where we have been for a month. 
 There are times when one can neither write nor even read. I 
 begin to fear that I shall not have many moods for work in Eu- 
 
12 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 rope. To say nothing of health, one's mind is constantly beset 
 by superficial temptations. All kinds of trifling novelties impor- 
 tune the attention. And even when settled for weeks in the same 
 lodging, one is ever possessed by the feeling of instability. 
 
 My reading at Leamington has been chiefly of newspapers. 
 From them, however, something may be learnt by a stranger. 
 They reflect the surface of society ; and as surfaces mostly take 
 their shape and hue from depths beneath them, one may read in 
 newspapers somewhat more than they are paid for printing. Even 
 the London " Satirist," that rankest sewer of licentiousness, has 
 asocial aiid political significance. It could only live in the shade 
 of an Aristocracy. The stomach of omnivorous scandal were 
 alone insufficient to digest its gross facts and fabrications. The 
 Peer is dragged through a horse-pond for the sport of the ple- 
 beian. The artisan chuckles to see Princes and Nobles wallow- 
 ing in dirt, in print. The high are brought so low that the low- 
 est can laugh at them : the proud, who live on contempt, are 
 pulled down to where themselves can be scorned by the basest. 
 The wit consists chiefly in the contrast between the elevation of 
 the game and the filthiness of the ammunition wherewith it is 
 assailed ; between the brilliancy of the mark and the obscurity 
 of the marksman. A register is kept of Bishops, Peeresses, Dukes, 
 Ambassadors, charged with being swindlers, adulterers, buffoons, 
 panders, sycophants ; and this is one way of keeping Englishmen 
 in mind that all men are brothers. It is a weekly sermon, suited 
 to some of the circumstances of the times and people, on the text — 
 " But many that are first shall be last." 
 
 England looks everywhere aristocratical. A dominant idea in 
 English life is possession by inheritance. Property and privilege 
 are nailed by law to names. A man, by force of mind, rises 
 from lowliness to a Dukedom : the man dies, but the Dukedom 
 lives, and lifts into eminence a dullard perhaps, or a reprobate. 
 The soul has departed, and the body is unburied. Counter to the 
 
ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. 13 
 
 order of nature, the external confers instead of receiving life ; 
 and whereas at first a man made the Dukedom,, afterwards 'tis 
 the Dukedom that makes the man. Merit rises, but leaves be- 
 hind it generations of the unmeritorious not only to feed on its 
 gains, but to possess places that should never be filled but by the 
 deserving. In an hereditary aristocracy the noble families form 
 knots on the trunk of a nation, drawing to themselves sap which, 
 for the public health, should be equally distributed. Law and 
 custom attach power and influence to names and lands : whoso 
 own these, govern, and so rigid and cherished are primogeniture 
 and entail, that much of them is possessed without an efibrt or 
 a natural claim. The possessor's whole right is arbitrary and 
 artificial. 
 
 To ascribe the short-comings of England to the aristocratic 
 principle, were as shallow as to claim for it her many glories. 
 In her development it has played its part according to her consti- 
 tutional temperament ; but her development has been richer and 
 healthier than that of her neighbors, because her aristocracy has 
 had its roots in the people, or rather because (a false aristocracy 
 having been hitherto in Europe unavoidable) her people have been 
 manly and democratic enough not to sufier one distinct in blood 
 to rear itself among them. Compare English with any other aris- 
 tocracy, and this in it is notable and unique ; it does not form a 
 caste. It is not, like the German, or Russian, or Italian, a distinct 
 breed from that of the rest of the nation ; nay, its blood is ever 
 renewed from the veins of the people. This is the spring of its 
 life ; this has kept it in vigor ; this strengthens it against degene- 
 racy. It sucks at the breast of the mighty multitude. Hence at 
 bottom it is, that the English Peer is in any part of the world a 
 higher personage than the German Count or Italian Prince. He 
 cannot show pedigrees with them, and this, a cause of mortification 
 to his pride, is the very source of his superiority. 
 
 From this cause, English Aristocracy is less far removed than 
 
14 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 any other in Europe from a genuine Aristocracy, or government 
 of the Best, of which, however, it is still but a mockery. It is 
 not true that all the talent in the realm gravitates towards the 
 House of Lords, but some of it does ; and as such talent is, of 
 course, in alliance with worldly ambition, the novi homines in 
 Parliament are apt not to be so eminent for principle as for intellect. 
 Until men shall be much purer than they have yet been, no na- 
 tion will, under any form of polity, throw up its best men into 
 high places. The working of the representative system with us 
 has revealed the fact, that with free choice a community chooses 
 in the long run men who accurately represent itself Should 
 therefore Utopia lie embosomed in our future, instead of the pre- 
 sent very mixed assemblage, our remote posterity may look for a 
 Congress that will present a shining level of various excellence. 
 Only, that should so blessed an era be in store, Congresses and 
 all other cunning contrivances called governments will be super- 
 fluous. In England, in legislation and in social life, most of the 
 best places are filled by men whose ancestors earned them, and 
 not themselves. These block the way to those who, like their 
 ancestors, are capable in a fair field of winning eminence. By 
 inheritance are enjoyed posts demanding talent, liberality, refine- 
 ment — qualities not transmissible. It is subjecting the spiritual 
 to the corporeal. It is setting the work of man. Earls and Bish- 
 ops, over the work of God, men. The world is ever prone to put 
 itself in bondage to the external : laws should aim to counteract 
 the tendency. Here this bondage is methodized and legalized. 
 The body politic has got to be but feebly organic. Men are 
 obliged in every direction to conform rigidly to old forms ; to reach 
 their end by mechanical routine. A man on entering life finds 
 himself fenced in between ancient walls. Every Englishman is 
 free relatively to every other living Englishman, but is a slave to 
 his forefathers. He must put his neck under the yoke of pre- 
 scription. The life of every child in England is too rigorously 
 
CARLYLE. 15 
 
 predestined. To him may be addressed the words of Goethe, in 
 Faust : — 
 
 Es erben sich Gesets' und Rechte 
 
 Wie eine ew'ge Krankheit fort ; 
 
 Sie schleppen von Geschlecht sich zum Geschlechte, 
 
 Und riicken sacht von Ort zu Ort. 
 
 Vernimft wird Unsinn, Wohlthat Plage ; 
 
 Weh dir dass du ein Enkel bist ! 
 
 Vom Rechte, das mit uns geboren ist, 
 
 Von dem ist leider ! nie die Frage.* 
 
 This is a rich theme, which I have merely touched. It is 
 pregnant too with comfort to us with our unbridled democracy. 
 May it ever remain unbridled. 
 
 Paris, November, 1840. 
 
 On the way from Leamington to France we were again two 
 days in London, where I then saw at his house one of the master 
 spirits of the age, Mr. Carlyle. His countenance is fresh, his 
 bearing simple, and his frequent laugh most hearty. He has a 
 wealth of talk, and is shrewd in speech as in print in detecting 
 the truth in spite of concealments, and letting the air out of a 
 windbeutel. Like the first meeting across the seas with a bounti- 
 ful worldly benefactor, — except that the feeling is much finer, 
 and admits of no gross admixture, — is that with a man to whom 
 you have long been under intellectual obligations. It is one of 
 the heartiest moments a stranger can have abroad. The spirit 
 that has been so much with him, has taken flesh and voice. He 
 grasps for the first time the hand of an old friend. When in 
 
 * Laws and rights are inherited like an everlasting disease ; they drag 
 themselves along from generation to generation, and quietly move from 
 place to place. Reason becomes nonsense, blessings become curses ; woe to 
 thee that thou art a grandchild ! Of the right that is born with us, of this, 
 alas ! there is no thought. 
 
16 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 London before, I had a good view of the Duke of Wellington, as 
 he rode up to his house, at the corner of Hyde Park, and dis- 
 mounted ; so that I have seen England's three foremost living 
 men, Wordsworth, Wellington, Carlyle. 
 
 On Friday afternoon September 11th, at three o'clock, we left 
 London by railroad for Southampton, which we reached at six, 
 and crossing the channel by steamboat in the night, entered the 
 port of Havre at ten the next morning. The town looked dirty 
 at a distance, and is dirtier than it looked. The small craft we 
 passed in the harbor were unclean and unwieldy. The streets 
 ran filth to a degree that offended both eyes and nose. Knots of 
 idle shabby men were standing at corners, gossipping, and look- 
 ing at parrots and monkeys exposed for sale. The inn we got 
 into, commended as one of the best, was so dirty, that we could 
 not bear to face the prospect of a night in it. We hired a 
 carriage and started at four with post-horses for Rouen, which 
 we reached at midnight. Here we spent Sunday. Rouen is 
 finely placed, on the Seine, with lofty hills about it. In the 
 Diligence, in which we started early on Monday, to overtake 
 fifteen miles up the river, the steamboat to St. Germain, I heard 
 a Frenchman say to a Frenchwoman, " Rouen est le pot-de-cham- 
 bre de la Normandie." You know of the Cathedral at Rouen 
 and of the Maid of Orleans' execution, but this is probably in all 
 respects new to you. To me it was also new and satisfactory, 
 being an indication that some of the dwellers in this region have 
 a consciousness of the presence of stenches. We entered Paris 
 in a hard rain at ten o'clock on Monday night. 
 
 The French claim for Paris that it is the most beautiful city in 
 the world. From a point on the right bank of the Seine, near the 
 bridge leading from the Place de la Concorde, is the finest, and truly 
 a noble panoramic view. Standing with your back to the river, 
 right before you is the Place itself, with its glittering fountains 
 and Egyptian Obelisk. Directly across it, the eye rests on two 
 
PARIS. 17 
 
 imposing fagades, which form a grand portal to the Rue Roy ale , 
 at the end whereof, less than half a mile distant, the Church of the 
 Madeleine presents its majestic front of Corinthian columns. On 
 the right the eye runs down the long facade of the Rue Rivoli, 
 cut at right angles by the Palace of the Tuileries, peering above 
 the trees of the Tuileries garden which, with its deep shade and 
 wide walks, lies between you and the Palace. To the right now of 
 the garden the view sweeps up the river, with its bridges and miles 
 of broad quais, and ends in a distant labyrinth of building, out 
 of which rises the dark head of Notre Dame de Paris. Near 
 you on the opposite, that is, the left bank of the Seine, and face to 
 face to the Madeleine, is the imposing Palais des Elisees Bourbons, 
 now the Hall of the Deputies. To the right the gardens attached 
 to the Elisees Bourbons and the grounds of the Hotel des Invalides 
 fill the space near the river on the left bank, and the Champs 
 Elisees, at one corner of which you stand, press upon its shore 
 on this side, while the view directly down the stream stretches 
 into the country. Back now through a full circle to your first 
 position, and with the Madeleine again in front, on your left are 
 the Champs Elisees, at the other extremity of which, more than a 
 mile off, just out of the Neuilly Gate, towers the gigantic Imperial 
 Arch of Triumph built by Napoleon. But to get the best view of 
 this magnificent Colossus, you must advance to the centre of the 
 Place de la Concorde, where, from the foot of the Obelisk, with 
 your back to the Tuileries, you behold it closing the chief 
 Avenue of the Champs Elisees, and, by the elevation of the 
 ground and its own loftiness, standing alone, the grandest monu- 
 ment of the French Capital. 
 
 A rare and most effective combination this, of objects and 
 aspects. From no other city can there be embraced from a sin- 
 gle point an equal extent, variety and grandeur. There are 
 similar but less striking views from several other open spots. 
 . From the general deficiency of good architecture, large cities 
 
18 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 show best when, from the banks of a river or broad open squares, 
 they can be beheld in long distant masses. Paris gains hereby 
 especially, as, from the habits of the people, not only are the 
 streets dirtier than need be, but the basements are mostly un- 
 sightly and often disgusting ; and the faces generally, even of 
 massive buildings, with architectural pretensions, have an un- 
 washed and ragged look. 
 
 Paris, March, 1841. 
 
 A Frenchman, more than other men, is dependent upon things 
 without himself. Nature and his own mind, with domestic inte- 
 rests and recreations, are not enough to complete his daily circle. 
 For his best enjoyment he must have a succession of factitious 
 excitements. Out of this want Paris has grown to be the capital 
 of the world for superficial amusements. Here are the appli- 
 ances, — multiplied and diversified with the keenest refinement of 
 sensual ingenuity, — for keeping the mind busy without labor and 
 fascinated without sensibility. The senses are beset with piquant 
 baits. Whoever has money in his purse, and can satisfy through 
 gold his chief wants, need have little thought of the day or the 
 year. He finds a life all prepared for him, and selects it, as he 
 does his dinner from the voluminous carte of the Restaurant. 
 To live, is for him as easy as to make music on a hand-organ : 
 with but slight physical effort from himself, he is borne along from 
 week to week and from season to season on an unresting current 
 of diversions. Here the sensual can pass years without satiety, 
 and the slothful without ennui. Paris is the Elysium of the idler, 
 and for barren minds a Paradise. 
 
 When I first arrived, I went almost nightly to some one of the 
 many theatres. I soon tired of the smaller where, mostly, licen- 
 tious intrigue and fabulous liberality alternate with farce to keep 
 the attention awake through two or three acts of commonplace. 
 At the Theatre Frangais, I saw Moliere and Rachel. It is no 
 
RACHEL. 19 
 
 disparagement of Moliere to call him a truncated Shakspeare. 
 The naturalness, vigor, comic sense, practical insight and scenic 
 life of Shakspeare he has ; without Shakspeare's purple glow, 
 his reach of imagination and ample intellectual grasp, which 
 latter supreme qualities shoot light down into the former subordi- 
 nate ones, and thus impart to Shakspeare's comic and lowest per- 
 sonages a poetic soul, which raises and refines them, the want 
 whereof in Moliere makes his low characters border on farce 
 and his highest prosaic. 
 
 Rachel is wonderful. She is on the stage an embodied radi- 
 ance. Her body seems inwardly illuminated. Conceive a Greek 
 statue endued with speech and mobility, for the purpose of giving 
 utterance to a profound soul stirred to its depths, and you have an 
 image of the magic union in her personations of fervor and grace. 
 Till I heard her, I never fully valued the might of elocution. She 
 goes right to the heart by dint of intonation ; just as, with his arm 
 ever steady, the fencer deals or parries death by the mere motion 
 of his wrist. Phrases, words, syllables, grow plastic, swell or 
 contract, come pulsing with life, as they issue from her lips. Her 
 head is superb ; oval, full, large, compact, powerful. She cannot 
 be said to have beauty of face or figure ; yet the most beautiful 
 woman were powerless to divert from her the eyes of the specta- 
 tor. Her spiritual beauty is there more bewitching than can be 
 the corporeal. When in the Horaces she utters the curse, it is as 
 though the whole electricity of a tempest played through her 
 arteries. It is not Corneille's Camille, or Racine's Hennione, 
 solely that you behold, it is a dazzling incarnation of a human 
 soul. 
 
 Through Rachel I have seen the chefs-d'oeuvre of Corneille 
 and Racine, reproduced by her on the French stage, whence, since 
 the death of Talma, they had been banished. 
 
 Without creation of character, there is no genuine drama. So 
 vivid and individual should be the personages, that out of their 
 
20 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 feelings and acts the drama evolves itself, under the guidance of 
 judgment and the purification of poetry. Without such individu- 
 ality and productive vitality in the characters, poetry, sentiment, 
 action, fail of their effect in the dramatic form. The personages 
 of the French Theatre are not creations, they are transplantations. 
 Corneille and Racine took in hand the tragic subjects of antiquity, 
 but they did not re-animate them. Agamemnon and Augustus 
 owe nothing to their Gallic parents : their souls are not swelled 
 with thoughts beyond a Greek or Roman age. Measure them 
 with Shakspeare's Coriolanus, or Anthony, or Brutus, and they 
 are marrowless. Shakspeare has so vivified his Romans, that the 
 pages of history, whence they are taken, pale by the side of them. 
 The French appear not to have had depth enough to produce 
 an original tragic Drama. The tragic material, — whereof senti- 
 ment is as essential an element as passion, — is meagre in them, 
 compared with the Germans or English ; hence the possibility 
 and even necessity of a simpler plot and a measured regularity. 
 Corneille or Racine could not have wrought a tragedy out of a 
 tradition or a modern fable : they require a familiarized historical 
 subject. The nature of French Tragedy, compared with Eng- 
 lish, is happily illustrated by the Hamlet of Ducis, which I 
 have seen played at the Theatre Frangais. The title of the piece 
 is, " Hamlet, Tragedie en 5 acts, imitee de I'Anglais par Ducis." 
 A fitter title were, " Hamlet, with the part of Hamlet left out, by 
 particular desire of French taste." It is as much an imitation 
 of Shakspeare, as straight walks and parallel lines of trees are an 
 imitation of Nature. Hamlet is resolved into a tender-hearted 
 affectionate son. He has not been put aside, but is king. Ophe- 
 lia does anything but go mad. The mother is overwhelmed with 
 remorse for the murder, which she confesses to a confidant. The 
 heart of Hamlet's mystery is plucked out. The poetry is flat- 
 tened into phrases. The billowy sea of Shakspeare is belittled to 
 
FRENCH TRAGEDY. 21 
 
 a smooth pond, in every part whereof you can touch bottom. It 
 is not deep enough to dive in. 
 
 It is the nature of high poetry to bind the individual to 
 the universal. Corneille and Racine live in a middle atmo- 
 sphere between the two. They have not the rich sensibility, 
 which, united on the one hand to high reason, reveals to the poet 
 the primal laws of being, and on the other with powers of minute 
 observation, imparts liveliness to his embodiments. They are 
 neither minute nor comprehensive ; hence their personages are 
 vague and prosaic. The highest quality of their tragedies is a 
 refined and skilful rhetoric. Their verse is like bas-relief; the 
 parts follow one another in a graceful well-joined sequence ; but 
 there is no perspective, no deep vistas, breeding as you pass them 
 suggestions and subtle sensations. Their personages leave nothing 
 to your imagination ; they are terrible egotists ; they do most 
 thoroughly "unpack their souls with words;" they give measured 
 speech to feelings which at most should find but broken utter- 
 ance. 
 
 French Tragedy is not primitive. With .laborious skill their 
 tragic writers re-cast old materials. In Polyeucte Corneille throws 
 a deeper line, but attains to no greater individuality of charac- 
 terization, nor is he less declamatory than in his Roman pieces. 
 Both he and Racine are more epic than dramatic. The French 
 language, moulded by the mental character of a nation wanting 
 in depth of sensibility, is not a medium for the highest species of 
 poetry, and had Corneille and Racine been poets of the first order, 
 they would either have re-fused the language, so that it would have 
 flowed readily into all the forms forged by the concurrent action 
 of sensibility and thought, or, failing in that, they would, like 
 Rabelais, have betaken themselves to more obedient prose. Mo- 
 liere had not a highly poetic mind, and he wrote verse evidently 
 with uncommon ease ; and, nevertheless, 1 doubt not that even to 
 him the Alexandrine was a shackle ; and although Corneille and 
 
22 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Racine cannot be rated among the first class of poets, I think too 
 well of them not to believe, that by it their flight was greatly 
 circumscribed. French verse, which requires a delicate attention 
 to metre or the mechanical constituent, affords little scope for 
 rhythm, and is therefore a hindrance rather than a furtherance 
 to the true poet. In other cultivated languages the form meets 
 the substance half-way — is, as it were, on the watch for it ; so 
 that the English, or Italian, or German poet, far from being im- 
 peded by the versification of his thoughts as they rise, finds him- 
 self thereby facilitated, the metre embracing the poetic matter 
 with such closeness and alacrity as to encourage and accelerate 
 its production and utterance. Hence in French literature the 
 poets are not the highest names. Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, 
 Goethe, are supreme in their respective lands ; not so Corneille 
 or Racine. 
 
 The Frenchman who, as thinker and creator, may best claim 
 to rank with the poet-thinkers of other nations, did not write in 
 verse. Rabelais was a master-mind. His buffoonery and smut 
 are justified by Coleridge, as being a necessary vehicle in his age 
 for the conveyance of truth. As it was, he is said to have owed 
 his liberty and even life to the favor of Francis I. I suspect that 
 he was naturally so constructed as to wear willingly such a mask. 
 His great work presents a whole of the most grotesque humor, 
 which may be defined, the shadow caused by the light of the spiritual 
 fallino; on the animal through the medium of the comic. Rabelais's 
 full animal nature and broad understanding presented a solid and 
 variegated mass of the low and corporeal for the sun of his 
 searching reason and high spirituality to shine upon, and the 
 shadows resulting are broad and deep. The two natures of beast 
 and man seem in him to measure their strength, for the entertain- 
 ment of the Comic, which stands by and sets them on. 
 
 Pascal is the only French writer I know in whom there is the 
 greatness that results from purity and depth, the contact where- 
 
VOLTAIRE. 23 
 
 with lifts one up and kindles emotions which possess the soul like 
 a heavenly visitation, banishing for a time whatever there is in one 
 of little or unworthy. 
 
 Carlyle calls Voltaire the most French of Frenchmen. I will 
 not do the French the injustice to call him the greatest, though 
 doubtless most of his contemporaries so esteemed him. He was 
 the leader of a generation whose necessary calling was to deny 
 and destroy. His country panted under a monstrous accumulation 
 of spiritual and civil usurpations : he wielded the sharpest axe in 
 the humane work of demolition. His powers were great and his 
 labors immense ; and yet there were in him such deficiencies, as 
 to defeat the attainment of completeness in any one of his various 
 literary undertakings. Voltaire had not soul enough to put him 
 in direct communication with the heart of the Universe. What- 
 ever implied emotion, came to him at second-hand, through his 
 intellect. He was not a great poet, a creator ; he was a great 
 demolisher. Let him have thanks for much that he did in that 
 capacity. 
 
 I record with diffidence these brief judgments, for I have made 
 no wide and thorough study of French Literature. It does not 
 take hold of me : it lacks soul. Of the present generation of 
 writers I am still less qualified to speak, having read but par- 
 tially of any one of them. They don't draw me into intimacy. 
 It is a peculiarly grateful state of mind when, on laying down a 
 fresh volume, you resolve to possess yourself of all that its author 
 has written. You feel like one who has found a new friend. I 
 have not yet met with the French writer who gives me assurance 
 of this permanent enjoyment. I refer more particularly to works 
 belonging to the provinces of creation and criticism, else I should 
 mention Thierry ^ whose volume entitled Leitres sur VHistoire de la 
 France seems to me a masterpiece of historical research and 
 political acuteness. The authors whose liames have lately most 
 sounded abroad, Guizot, Cousin, Villemain, want vitality. Their 
 
24 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 writings, to use a phrase of Dr. Johnson, come from reservoirs, 
 not springs. Thierry is of a higher order. In La Mennais is the 
 will and noble aim, without the power and accomplishment. The 
 romantic dramas of Hugo and others, simmering with black law- 
 less passion, are opaque as well as shallow, and empty of poetry. 
 They have much more sound than substance, more fury than 
 force. The new French Literature is yet to come into being. 
 
 The French beat the world in milliners, in tailors, in porcelain, 
 in upholstery, in furniture ; their or molu is unrivalled, so are 
 their mousselines and silks ; but not so is their painting, or their 
 sculpture, or their music, or their poetry. In the ornamental 
 they are unequalled, but not in the creative. Their sphere is the 
 artificial and conventional : their sympathy with nature is not 
 direct and intense. Their Ideal in Art is not the result of a warm 
 embrace with nature, but of a methodical study of established 
 masters. With their poets and artists the aim and motive in 
 labor is too much the approval of Paris, where humanity is so 
 bedizened by artifice, that the smile and melody of nature are 
 scarce discernible. 
 
 I saw Napoleon's funeral, a showy martial pageant, befitting 
 the Imperial soldier. The escort was a hundred thousand armed 
 men ; the followers, half a million of both sexes. For hours, 
 the broad long avenue of the Champs Elisees was choked with 
 the moving throng. It was a solemn moment when the funeral 
 car came slowly by. There, within a few feet, lay the body of 
 the man, the tramp of whose legions had been mournfully heard 
 in every great capital of the continent ; whose words had been 
 more than the breath of a dozen kings. His shrivelled dust passed 
 through triumphal arches and columns, emblazoned with the re- 
 cord of his hundred conquests. Of them, there was nothing left 
 to France but the name, — of him, nothing but those cold remains. 
 Not even a living member of his line was present, sadly to share 
 in this tardy show of honor. The day was cold and so were the 
 
NAPOLEON. 25 
 
 hearts of the multitude. Those bones, let out of their ocean 
 prison, brought with them no hope for the nation. When they 
 are buried, there will be an end of Napoleon. His name will 
 hereafter be but a gorgeous emptiness : his memory is not vitalized 
 by a principle. In his aims there lay no deep hope, whence his 
 fellow men, battling for rights, might for ever draw courage and 
 strength. While he still lived, his schemes were baffled, and 
 what he founded had already passed away. His plans were all 
 for himself, and hence with himself they fell, and left scarce a 
 trace behind. He gave birth to no great Ideas, that, fructifying 
 among men, would have built for him in their souls an everlasting 
 home. He saw not into the depths of truth, and he knew not its 
 unequalled might. Therefore, with all his power he was weak : 
 naught of what he wished came to pass, and what he did with 
 such fiery vehemence, with still more startling swiftness was 
 undone. His thoughts were not in harmony with the counsels 
 of God, and so they perished with himself. The Emperor will 
 have his conspicuous place in History, but the man will not live 
 in the minds of men. For the most potent king of the Earth, 
 what is he, if he be a false man ? That one so false could so rule, 
 is a token of the confusion of the times. 
 
 One looks almost in vain for the spots that were the centres of 
 the terrific doings of the Revolution. They are mostly so trans- 
 formed as to have lost their identity. Time has been quick in 
 wiping out the bloody stains. Whoever wishes to bring before 
 his mind, on the ground itself, the place of execution, will need 
 an imajTination intense enouo-h to close the avenues of his senses 
 against the garish sights and sounds of the most brilliant public 
 square of this gayest of capitals ; for what is now the Place de 
 la Concorde, with its lively gilt fountains and rattling equipages, 
 was once the Place de la Revolution, where blood streamed daily 
 under the axe of the headsman. If, then, he can succeed in call- 
 ing up the Guillotine, with its pale victims and exulting throng 
 
 3 
 
26 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 of savage spectators, it will be easier for the timid to shudder at 
 its butcheries, than for the thinker to solve the problem of their 
 permission. Through the tears and woes of man, the deep laws 
 of Providence march on to their mysterious fulfilment. One may- 
 believe, that to a people so brutified by tyranny, so despoiled of 
 natural rights, was needed the swiftest sweep of authority, the 
 broadest exhibition of power, the grossest verification of escape 
 from bondage, in order to vindicate at last and for ever their hu- 
 man claim to a will. 
 
 The French people, according to report of those who have 
 known them in both periods, are more earnest and substantial 
 than they were two generations back. They think and feel more, 
 and talk less. There must be hope for a nation that could erect 
 itself as this did, scatter with a tempest the rooted rubbish of 
 ages, overturn half the thrones of Europe, and though re-con- 
 quered through the very spirit of freedom that at first had made 
 itself invincible, once more at the end of a half century, rend 
 the old re-imposed fetters and stand firmly on a blood-purchased 
 ground of liberty, — liberty, in comparison with its civil and so- 
 cial condition sixty years ago. For neither was the second Revo- 
 lution any more than the first the beginning of popular rule : it 
 was the end of unpopular misrule. The mass of the French 
 people have still no direct agency in the government. One of 
 the two legislative bodies, as you are aware, the Chamber of 
 Deputies, is chosen by about two hundred thousand electors out 
 of a population that numbers five millions of male adults ; the 
 other, the Chamber of Peers, is created by the king, — a monstrous 
 anomaly, and an insulting mockery. If the revolution of the 
 three days was a protest against monarchical predominance and 
 military coercion, Louis Philippe misrepresents it most flagrantly. 
 By the army is he upheld, not by the nation. I have seen him, 
 going to open the session of the legislature, closely guarded by 
 twenty thousand bayonets. What the purpose is of the fortifica- 
 
PRESENT GOVERNMENT. 27 
 
 tion of Paris, will become palpable in some future revolution. 
 If the tens of millions buried under this vast cincture, destined to 
 be levelled by popular wrath, had been expended upon railroads 
 radiating from the capital (not to mention higher national wants), 
 Paris would have been rendered impregnable, and France greatly 
 forwarded in wealth and civilisation. The " throne surrounded 
 by republican institutions," promised by Lafayette when he made 
 Louis Philippe king, was the groundless hope of a veteran pa- 
 triot, too single-minded to have forgotten the dream of his youth, 
 and too short-sighted to discern how far it was then from realiza- 
 tion. The fulfilment of the promise he confided to one, whose 
 mental construction was the very opposite of his own, as well in- 
 tellectually as morally. 
 
 The present is a government of bayonets tempered by the 
 Press. The Press, though not quite free, is an immense power, 
 and its growth is a measure of French progress in sixty years. 
 The people, though far yet from that maturity which self-govern- 
 ment implies, do not require the semi-military rule of the Orleans 
 Dynasty. Yet are their bonds not so heavy and tight but that 
 they have in some directions quite a wide range of movement. 
 And they have a healthful abiding consciousness of their power 
 to pull down the state, if ever again it should become grossly 
 oppressive. It is utterly incalculable, what, by two such tri- 
 umphant efforts as their two revolutions, a people gains in self- 
 respect, and self-reliance, and hopeful self-trust, the basis of all 
 moral superstructure, and therefore of all permanent self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Antwerp, June, 1841. 
 
 In France there is little rural beauty. The country looks 
 bald and meagre and lifeless. No clumps of trees, nor rose- 
 sweetened • cottages, nor shady hamlets, betokening snug fire- 
 sides and a quiet sympathy with nature. 'Twas cheering to get 
 
SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 into Belgium. Here were the marks of a deeper order and more 
 intelligent labor. On all sides cleanliness and thrift. The 
 sightly, compact towns looked full of well-husbanded resources. 
 From Courtrai, near the borders of France, to Antwerp, we 
 passed, by railroad, for sixty miles through what seemed a fair 
 rich garden, so smooth and minute is the tillage. The soil looked 
 grateful to its working. 
 
 It would almost appear that there had been a defeat of Nature's 
 intent in this quarter of Europe ; a territory has been split, 
 which was so naturally adapted for unity. One cannot help 
 thinking it a pity the Burgundian sovereignty had not lasted. 
 Where there are now discordant French, Belgians, and Dutch, 
 there might have been one homogeneous people of eight or ten 
 millions, with breadth of territory, and strength and variety of 
 resources, sufficient for an ample national development. Just at 
 the period, towards the end of the fifteenth century, when a nation 
 was forming and about to be knit together by Literature and the 
 j^i'ts, — for which it exhibited such aptitude, — the whole country, 
 by the marriage of the heiress of the last of the Burgundians, 
 passed into the hands of Austria, and thence by Charles V. was 
 left to his son, Philip II. of Spain. The high spirit of the people 
 would not brook the cruelties of this tyrant and his creature 
 Alba, who wished to establish among them the Inquisition, that 
 masterpiece of Satan's most inventive mood. In the famous 
 revolt, only the northern provinces were successful. Belgium 
 remained under the dominion of Spain a century longer, when it 
 was re-transferred to Austria, from which it was finally wrested 
 in the French Revolution, to be first incorporated into France, and 
 then by the Congress of Vienna reunited, after a divorce of more 
 than two centuries, to Holland. But during that long separation, 
 the two, living under totally different influences, had. naturally 
 contracted habits that were reciprocally hostile. Holland was 
 Protestant, Belgium, Catholic; and the language, which, under a 
 
ANTWERP. 29 
 
 permanent union, might have been unfolded by the wants of a 
 vigorous nation to take rank by the side of the cognate German, 
 was broken into dialects, that of Holland becoming cultivated 
 enough to be the medium of some literature, that of Belgium 
 remaining the half-grown speech of the peasants and Bourgeois, 
 and giving place in salons and palaces to the more refined tongue 
 of its overshadowing Southern neighbor. It was now too late to 
 make one nation of the Netherlands, and so, the marriage, 
 brought about by neighbors through persuasions too well backed 
 by power to be withstood, was soon dissolved, and Belgium was 
 erected into an independent monarchy, under a new king, by the 
 side of Holland, or, I should say, a separate monarchy; for when 
 united, they had not the strength for independence, and now of 
 course will even the more readily fall victims of greedy neigh- 
 bors, whenever the beam of that very unsteady fixture called the 
 balance of power shall be kicked. 
 
 Antwerp has still much of the wealth and beauty it inherited 
 from the olden time, when, with its two hundred thousand inha- 
 bitants, it was, in commerce and opulence, the first among the 
 cities of Europe ', and its merchant princes built up cathedrals 
 and squares and palaces, for Rubens and Vandyke to people out 
 of their procreative brains. The population is reduced now to 
 seventy or eighty thousand, the port is content with a hundred 
 vessels at a time instead of two thousand ; but the broad clean 
 streets bordered with stately mansions are still here, and the 
 cathedral, whose spire alone is a dower for a province ; and the 
 inhabitants, yet rich in fat lands and well-filled coffers, are still 
 richer in the possession of some of the fairest offspring of their 
 great fellow-townsman's genius. The potency of genius and art 
 is here most forcibly exemplified. Take away Rubens and the 
 Cathedral, and Antwerp would not be Antwerp. This tower, 
 steadfast, light, fretted with delicate tracery, springing nearly four 
 hundred feet from the ground, which it seems to touch no more 
 
30 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 heavily than a swan about to take flight, is an unfading beauty- 
 shining daily on the hearts of the people, while the memory of 
 Rubens and his presence in his gigantic handiwork are a perpe- 
 tual image of greatness. To the passing stranger they are an 
 adornment to the land, but to the natives a stay and brace to the 
 very mind itself, keeping ever before them the reality of beauty 
 and power, and fortifying them with the consciousness of kindred 
 with o-enius and o;reatness. 
 
 Antwerp has at this time high artists, Jacobs, Keyser, Waep- 
 pers, who sit under the transparent shadow of this marvellous 
 tower, and whose art attains a more juicy maturity in the sun of 
 Rubens's genius. Their works sell at high prices as fast as they 
 produce them. Love of art, blended in the hearts of the people 
 with religion, is an element of their nature. The creations of 
 their great painters illuminate the churches, and through the 
 incense that ascends from the altar, beam upon the upturned 
 countenance of the worshipper. In the public Museum are pre- 
 served some of the best works of Rubens and Vandyke ; and in 
 private dwellings are seen family portraits from their hands, fresh 
 from the embalming touch of genius, twice-prized, — by personal 
 and by national pride. 
 
 In a rich private collection of old books and pictures, I have 
 seen a set of engravings, bound up into several huge tomes of the 
 greater part of Rubens's works. To behold thus at a single 
 view, the collected product of such a spirit's life, is to have in 
 one's hand a key to much of the mystery of the painter's art. 
 This man's mind was an ever-teeming womb of light-dyed forms. 
 These were the spontaneous absorbing growth of his brain. With 
 him, existence could only be enjoyed, fulfilled, by delivering him- 
 self of this urgent brood of brain-engendered pictures. What a 
 wealth of invention and inexhaustible vigor ! What fertility, and 
 boldness, and breadth and fire ! What opulence and grandeur of 
 imagination ! What skill in the marshalling of his legions ! 
 
CONTRASTS. 31 
 
 What life in each head, in each figure, in each group ! And 
 what a flood of beauty in his coloring ! 'Tis as if, for his great 
 pictures, he had gathered into his brain the hues of a gorgeous 
 sunset, and poured them upon the canvas. 
 
 Among the features wherein old Europe differs from young 
 America, none is more prominent than the large number of idlers 
 in Europe. Capital being wanting in the United States, almost 
 the universal energy is busied in supplying it ; in Europe it is 
 abundant, and many live in industrial unproductiveness upon its 
 moderate dividends. With us, it is hardly respectable to be idle ; 
 here, only they who are so, enjoy the highest consideration. 
 With us, gentility is confined to those who addict themselves to 
 certain kinds of labor ; in Europe it excludes all who labor at all, 
 except in the highest offices of the State. In " good society" 
 here, you meet with neither lawyer, nor merchant, nor physician, 
 not even with the clergy, for in Belgium, priests are drawn from 
 the peasant and bourgeois classes, and their consecration is not 
 believed to confer upon them nobility. Birth has hitherto been 
 an almost indispensable passport into the highest circles, but 
 money, aided by the stealthy progress of democratic ideas, is 
 making breaches in the aristocratic entrenchments, and ere many 
 generations, " good society" in Europe will present somethinglike 
 the motley concourse that it does with us, where, the social ar- 
 rangements having no support from the political, old families 
 go down and new ones come up, and the power of a man on 
 'Change is often the measure of his position in fashionable draw- 
 ing-rooms. This is but the chaos of transition ; the soul will in 
 time assert its transcendant privileges. 
 
 In Europe, notwithstanding occasional intermarriages, the aris- 
 tocratic prestige still prevails against plebeian merit. In social 
 longer than in political life, the nobility naturally retain a pre- 
 dominance, that is of course exercised despotically. Although, 
 since the invention of printing, the expansion of commerce, and 
 
32 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 the rapid development of industry and science, knowledge and 
 wealth, the sources of the highest power in communities, have 
 been passing out of the hands of the privileged few, still, social 
 advantages, depending upon deep-rooted ideas, are the last to be 
 forfeited, and the nobility throughout Europe, long after their ex- 
 clusion from the high posts in the State, will look down upon the 
 herd of plebeian aspirants to ton, just as the ancienne noblesse of 
 France did upon the military upstarts of Napoleon, and do still 
 upon the Court of Louis Philippe. And this fi'om a real superi- 
 ority of position. 
 
 The nobility of Europe, — the early, and at first the rightful sole 
 possessors of power as the originally strong men ; the acknow- 
 ledged monopolists of social elevations ; the dispensers of place 
 and patronage ; the recipients and in turn the fountains of honor ; 
 in short, the controllers with kings of all high interests and lords 
 of etiquette and manners, — acquired, by the cultivation of the 
 stateliness growing out of courtly usages and the tone contracted 
 from conscious superiority, an easy commanding style of bearing 
 and intercourse, which was of a natural inward growth, the un- 
 forced expression of their social rank and being. Now, as this 
 social rank and being is no longer attainable by others, so neither 
 are the modes of life, the style of manners, the segregation from 
 the people, which were its natural products. All attempts there- 
 fore on the part of those, who, since the breaking up of the mono- 
 polies of knowledge and wealth, are now sharing their possession 
 with the old nobility, to assume too their bearing and style, are and 
 must be a bare assumption, a hollow imitation ; and not merely 
 as such an inevitable failure, but one tainted with vulgarity, the 
 essence of which is false pretension. So long as another standard 
 than the feudal aristocratic is not set up as the measure of social 
 position, there will be war between the old regime, which in its 
 sphere was a genuine true thing, and the new, which being an 
 apery of it, is a false thing. In the end, the old, no longer upheld 
 
ARISTOCRACY. 33 
 
 by law, impoverished by idleness and debilitated by generations 
 of luxurious inactivity, will have to succumb, and become socially 
 extinct, or absorbed into the triumphant new, and pedigrees will 
 grow confused, and the imagination cease to invest birth with 
 virtue. 
 
 In this conflict will for a time be aggravated the most repulsive 
 quality of aristocratic life. The feeling of superiority over one's 
 fellows, mere personal pride, will be still more cherished. Their 
 children are already bred up to look upon themselves as better than 
 all other children. Towards their fellow-men a sentiment rather 
 of repulsion than sympathy is generated in the members of a 
 privileged class. Instead of keeping their hearts open with liberal 
 susceptibility to worth and excellence, they are ever on the alert 
 to fend oft' all others from contact with themselves. They form a 
 narrow circle, living to themselves on sympathies of selfishness. 
 These feelings, latent while their rank was undisputed, become 
 active against plebeian encroachment ; while their plebeian rivals 
 and imitators cultivate the same feeling as well from imitation, 
 as to strengthen their new state against the aspiring multitude 
 still below them. An offspring too of this conflict is Fashion, 
 which is an effort to outvie exclusiveness, to be more tonish than 
 haul ton itself. Fashion is a wingless aspiration after elegance ; 
 a brazen usurpation ; a baseless pretension kept alive by quick 
 changes of aspect ; an impertinent substitution of personality for 
 principle ; an imposition of effrontery upon weakness ; a carica- 
 ture of beauty ; a restless prosaic straining for an ideal ; a mock 
 flower, bloomless, odorless and seedless. 
 
 Although, in the large cities, the mimicry of European ways 
 evolves out of our prosaic citizens an unavoidable portion of vul- 
 garity, the corrective of republican self-respect is ever active ; 
 and amidst much false aim and shallow endeavor, there is percep- 
 tible a growing appreciation of the genuine and true. Already 
 the aspiring nouveau riche feels that culture and taste are the 
 3* 
 
34 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 essence of social excellence, and hastens to give his children the 
 advantages himself has missed. Where there is natural suscep- 
 tibility of polish, education and republican self-reliance tell at 
 once upon the second generation, and at times, — such is the rich- 
 ness of nature, — a man springs up from the workshop, and while 
 by talent he attains to affluence, attains to grace and courteous 
 propriety by native refinement and generosity ; and totally devoid 
 of the grimaces, the sleek well-tailored outside, the money-jingling 
 vulgarity of the parvenu, he takes his place as a gentleman with- 
 out the English ordeal of three generations. We apply a practi- 
 cal test to know what is good blood, and soon recognize him for 
 what he is. Evidence is constantly thrown out of a tendency to- 
 wards higher things. The intellectual lift up the tastes, and the 
 spiritual the desires, for other wants than for furniture and equipages. 
 As inequality in mental faculties among men is a law of nature, 
 the idea of a " best society " is real, and will go on manifesting 
 itself more and more distinctly, working constantly upward through 
 impure materials. The mind will by degrees straighten itself 
 into better proportions. Factitious and grossly-bottomed distinc- 
 tions will be effaced. In our country we have compassed a vantage- 
 ground of liberty, whence to ascend to higher platforms of social 
 condition. Grossly do they underrate the worth of liberty, who 
 regard security of person and property, equality before the law, 
 freedom of speech and of printing, as its ripe fruit. These are 
 but the foundation for a broader and more beautiful structure. 
 Through them the mind will brace its wings and sharpen its vision 
 for wider sweeps into the domain of the possible ; and expanding 
 with unrestricted inter-communion, grow in brightness and benefi- 
 cence. Proofs of this progress are discernible in the easier eman- 
 cipation from soul-smothering customs, and in the longings and 
 hopes of the freest minds. In this higher organization the gentle- 
 man will of course not be wanting ; for no well-developed society 
 could be without him, in whom, as Spenser sings, 
 
BRUSSELS. 35 
 
 " The gentle mind by gentle deed is known." 
 
 Let those who regret the decay of the old-fashioned gentleman, 
 because the new-fashioned one, being a coarse imitation of him, 
 is, like all imitations, a failure, take hope, that there is one of a 
 higher fashion possible and already forming, in whom polite- 
 ness, being the offspring of love and beauty, shall cease borrow- 
 ing of falsehood ; in whom refinement shall not be the superficial 
 show of conventional discipline, but a spontaneous emanation 
 from the purified mind ; courtesy be free from pride, and elevation 
 be enjoyed by right neither of pedigree nor Plutus, but solely by 
 natural endowment, be acknowledged as ungrudgingly as differ- 
 ence of stature, and sit on the possessor as unconsciously as flow- 
 ers on stalks, and like them dispense beauty all around. 
 
 BoppART, on the Rhine, July, 1841. 
 
 After spending six weeks most pleasantly at Antwerp, we 
 turned our steps towards the Rhine, stopping but a day in Brus- 
 sels, to get a glimpse of the pictures in the Museum, a look at 
 the painted windows of the Church of St. Gudule, and some 
 insight into the manufacture of Brussels lace. We didn't care 
 to see Palaces. We had been paced through those of Paris and 
 its neighborhood, and Palaces are all alike ; on the outside, huge, 
 overgrown, depopulated-looking edifices, and in the inside, suite 
 upon suite of lofty rooms and halls, where upholstery, with its 
 glittering gildings and silks, keeps repeating its short circle of 
 adornment. Brussels is a cheerful, sunny city, but it is always 
 associated in my mind with its little ambition of being a little 
 Paris, and with its sub-population of questionable and vulgar 
 English, that taint its atmosphere. I was told at Antwerp of an 
 Englishman and his family, who came there to live, although a 
 dull town compared with Brussels, because, as he said, he had a 
 good name at home, and he wouldn't have it blasted by a resi- 
 dence at Brussels. 
 
36 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 From Brussels steam carried us in a few hours through the 
 fat, well-tilled land to Liege, the Sheffield of Belgium. The 
 railroad not being finished beyond Liege, we there took post-horses. 
 The country all about Liege lifts itself briskly up into hills, and 
 the road thence to Aix-la-Chapelle offers lively landscapes to 
 the traveller's eye. Before reaching Aix we passed the Prussian 
 frontier. After fifteen years I found myself again in Germany : 
 the strong, rich tones of the language came back familiarly to 
 my ears. They came laden with memories of kindness, and 
 enjoyments, and profit. My re-entrance into Germany was one 
 of the happiest hours of the journey ; nor was it marred by vexa- 
 tions at the Prussian custom-house, through which we were 
 allowed to pass after a nominal search. It is one of the import- 
 ant events in a traveller's career, the crossing of a boundary. 
 Another variety of the species man, with new fixtures and envi- 
 ronments. Another people, another language, another look to 
 the land and everything on it. Other sights and other sounds to 
 the freshly busied senses ; and to the interior mind, — alive in 
 each region with its peculiar heroes and benefactors, — other 
 inmates. History unrolls another leaf of her illuminated testa- 
 ment, and we tell over again another treasure she has bequeathed 
 us. 
 
 In Aix-la-Chapelle, the birth and burial place of Charlemagne, 
 famous since the Romans for its sulphur baths, we spent but a 
 night, and continued our way to strike the Rhine at Cologne. 
 Thence to Gottingen was, by the nearest route through West- 
 phalia, hardly more than a two days' journey. It would have 
 been but a melancholy pleasure to re-visit the noble old Univer- 
 sity, now made ignoble by the base-mindedness of her rulers. 
 What a fall, with her seven hundred students, from her palmy 
 state in 1 824-25, when she counted over fifteen hundred ; 
 and when, drawn from all quarters of the globe by her high 
 renown, we sometimes assembled together under the Cathedra of 
 
GOTTINGEN AND WEIMAR. 37 
 
 a single Professor, listeners from North America and from South 
 America, from England and from Italy, from France and from 
 Sweden, from Russia and from Switzerland, from Poland and 
 from every State in Germany. The galaxy of teachers she then 
 had, the successors of others as eminent, the cowardly policy 
 since pursued towards her, has prevented from being renewed. 
 Gottingen has ceased to be what Napoleon called her, "■ I'Univer- 
 site de I'Europe." She has dwindled into provincialism. — And 
 beyond was Weimar, enwreathed to all cultivated imaginations 
 with a unique glory. In his youth, the Grand Duke Charles 
 Augustus, — a natural leader among men, for fifty years the com- 
 panion of Goethe, — belted his little Capital round with the bright- 
 est stars of German genius. During his long life they illuminated 
 and refined his court, and were a blessing to his people ; and 
 since his death, their sparkling names form a diadem round his, 
 that outshines the crowns of haughty Kings. At the time of my 
 visit in 1825, the Grand Duke and his congenial Duchess, and 
 the greatest of his poetic band, Goethe, were still alive ; and over 
 the hospitalities of the Palace, the remarkable beauty of the ladies 
 of his court threw a fascination ^that made it like a fairy castle. — 
 Still further was Dresden, with its natural charms and its treasures 
 of Art. But I was not now to behold those well remembered spots. 
 Our destiny rules us most despotically when our will seems freest. 
 We arrived at Cologne early enough in the afternoon to go out 
 and look at the Cathedral, which, finished, would have been, as 
 well from its size as its beauty, the foremost among Gothic 
 Churches. Most of the Gothic Cathedrals are, like this, unfin- 
 ished. The conceptions of their artists were loftier than the 
 power or will of those who supplied the means for their execution. 
 Their incompleteness is symbolical of the short-comings of the 
 noblest minds in their aspirations. Our road now lay up the 
 Rhine, but the river only enjoys the embrace of its hills, and the 
 animating company of the old castles that crown them, between 
 
SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Bonn and Mayence. Bonn is twelve miles above Cologne. Here, 
 on my way from Gottingen fifteen years before, coming down the 
 Rhine, partly on foot, before the day of steamboats in Germany, 
 I had stopped, with an English fellow-traveller and student, to see 
 Niebuhr and A. W. Schlegel, who were Professors in the Uni- 
 versity of Bonn. Schlegel kept us waiting some time in a neat 
 drawing-room, where hung a portrait of Madame de Stael. He 
 then came in hurriedly, adjusting the tie of his cravat. He was 
 affable and lively, and in his dress, bearing and conversation, 
 seemed anxious to sink the Professor and appear the man of 
 the world. Niebuhr was out, but came in an hour to the 
 Hotel to see us. He was a tall, striking, man and spoke English 
 perfectly. The sight of an American seemed to excite his mind. 
 He plied me with questions about our institutions and customs. 
 Doubtless his thoughts were often busied and puzzled with the 
 new historical phenomenon of the great Republic, whose huge 
 bulk was heaving itself up portentously in the far west. But 
 Niebuhr was not the man to seize its significance or embrace its 
 grandeur. His mind was exegetical and critical, rather than 
 constructive and prophetic. 
 
 We are now in the heart of Rhenish Prussia. The civil 
 government of Prussia is after the military model. The king is 
 the commander-in-chief of the nation, and the schoolmaster is his 
 drill-sergeant. The boys are taught in such a way that the men 
 shall fall readily into the ranks of obedience. A uniform is put 
 upon their minds, and, as with the rank and file of a regiment, 
 the uniformity is more looked to than the fitness. The govern- 
 ment does all it can to save men the pain of thought and choice, 
 and if it could would do everything. The officers of administra- 
 tion having the intelligence and industry of the cultivated German 
 mind, and these being everywhere the German solidity and hon- 
 esty, the system bears some good fruit, such virtue is there in 
 order and method, though only of the mechanical sort. Prussia 
 
 
THE GERMANS. 39 
 
 is a well-managed estate, not a well-governed country ; for good 
 government implies a recognition of the high nature of humanity, 
 the first want of which is freedom. The only basis whereon the 
 moral being of man can be built up is individual independence. 
 To reach that higher condition of freedom, where he shall be 
 emancipated from the tyranny of self, of his own passions, he 
 needs first of all to be free from that of his fellows. The one 
 freedom is only possible through the other. 
 
 That the Germans are a breed that can keep pace with the 
 best in the development of civilisation, they have given manifold 
 proof in achievements by word and deed. They are a strong- 
 brained, deep-hearted race. What creative power have they not 
 exhibited in letters, in science, in Art ! With what soul and 
 steadfastness they backed their mighty Luther, in his great strife 
 for mental independence ! How they rose, like a giant from his 
 sleep, against French usurpation, and with Leipzic paid Napoleon 
 for Jena ! The conditions were reversed. At Jena, Napoleon, 
 though with dementing egotism he had set a crown upon his head, 
 was still the leader of a freshly emancipated people warring 
 against old tyrannies : at Leipzic he was the hardened despot, 
 with no instruments but his legions, and no props to his vulgar 
 throne but force and fear ; while the monarchs of Germany and 
 Russia were upborne on the hearts of the liberty-seeking people. 
 The sceptred weaklings, whose capitals had been a prey to the 
 conqueror, became suddenly strong with the strength of wrath- 
 swollen multitudes. This wrath is ever ready to be rekindled. 
 Its next outburst will not be against foreign oppressors. 
 
 At Bonn we stopped but to change horses. Now it is that the 
 Rhine discloses its treasures. Two or three miles above Bonn, 
 we passed under the ancient Castle of Godesberg ; a little further 
 that of Rolandseck ; opposite, on the other side of the water, the 
 Drachenfels gives life to the "Seven Mountains;" and midway 
 between them, lying softly in the low river, is the Island with the 
 
40 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 old Convent of Nounenwerth. Around are green valleys, and 
 plentiful fields, and grape-mantled steeps, and frequent villages 
 and compact towns. And thus, the whole way from Bonn to 
 Mayence, you drive through a double population. Above, the 
 sides of the castle-crowned hills are alive with mailed cavalcades, 
 bugles are winding from the turrets, fair ladies are leaning over 
 parapets waving their sweet welcomes and farewells ; while be- 
 low, through the tranquil movements of a secure industry, the 
 noiseless labors of tillage, the hum of busy towns, you roll smoothly 
 forward on a macadamized road, and try to stir up your phleg- 
 matic postillion to a race with a steamboat abreast of you on the 
 river. To eyes at all open to natural beauty, this region, un- 
 peopled, rude and naked, were a feast ; but twice-touched as it 
 is by the productive hand of man, the broken shadows of ancient 
 strongholds checkering the turfed flanks of the cannon-guarded 
 fortress ; the images of spires, of cottages, of wooded heights, of 
 ruins, of rocky precipices, of palaces, all playing together in the 
 ripple of the sinuous stream ; the old river, fresh and lively as in 
 the days of Arminius, with its legends, its history, and its warm 
 present life ; senses, thought, imagination, all addressed at once 
 amid scenes steeped in beauty ; — 'tis a region unmatched, and 
 worth a long journey to behold. 
 
 As we approached Coblentz, Ehrenbreitstein, the Gibraltar of 
 Germany, lifted high its armed head, frowning towards France. 
 The next morning we were again on the enchanted road, and in 
 two hours reached Boppart. Turning up hill to the right, just on 
 entering the town, we ascended to a large substantial old pile 
 directly behind and above it. This was formerly the convent of 
 Marienberg, for noble ladies, most solidly and commodiously 
 built for a household of two hundred ; seated in a valley between 
 hills, with shady walks, and springs, and fountains, and broad 
 terraces, whence you look over the old town, founded by Drusus, 
 into the river, now enlivened almost hourly with sociable steam- 
 
 
THE WATER-CURE. 41 
 
 boats. The convent has been converted into a water-cure esta- 
 blishment. While at Antwerp several small works on the water- 
 cure had fallen into my hands, and impressed my mind at once 
 almost to conviction with the truth of its principles. I will en- 
 deavor to give you a sketch of what it is and what it does. I 
 cannot better begin than with an account of my own daily pro- 
 ceeding. 
 
 At five in the morning I am waked up by a bath-attendant. 
 Having stripped the narrow bed, he lays on the bare mattress 
 a thick blanket, wherein he wraps me closely from neck to heels; 
 then another blanket doubled is laid on and tightly tucked in, and 
 then another, and then a light feather bed. This is fitly called 
 being packed up. In about an hour I begin to perspire ; where- 
 upon the window is opened to let in fresh air, and half a tumbler 
 of cold water is administered, which draught, repeated every 
 quarter of an hour, promotes perspiration. After perspiring for 
 forty or fifty minutes, I am unpacked, get streaming out of the 
 blankets into an empty bath-tub at the bed-side, when instantly a 
 couple of large buckets of cold water are poured over my head 
 and shoulders. For a minute or two my hands and the attend- 
 ant's are swiftly plied all over the surface, as if to rub in the 
 water. Then comes a thorough dry rubbing with a coarse linen 
 sheet, and after dressing quickly, a walk abroad for half an hour 
 or more to support and hasten re-action, drinking the while from 
 the fountain two or three glasses of water. On the breakfast- 
 table are wheat and rye bread, butter, milk, and water, and fruit 
 for those who choose it ; no tea, nor coffee, nor anything warm. 
 Between eleven and twelve 1 take a sitting-bath of from fifteen to 
 twenty minutes' duration, on coming out of which I go up to the 
 top of the hills as if the muscles that had been immersed were 
 turned into wings. Two or three more tumblers of water are 
 drunk during the exercise. Dinner, at one, is never smoking 
 hot, and consists for the most part of beef, mutton, and fowls, 
 
42 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 roasted or boiled, with vegetables, followed by a simple dessert. 
 No spices are used in cooking, and water is the only beverage. 
 Bathing re-commences about four, a long interval being prescribed 
 after each meal. My afternoon bath is generally what is called 
 a staub-bad, literally, a dust-bath, which is in fact a shower-bath, 
 except that the shower, instead of falling from above, comes late- 
 rally from circular tubes in the midst of which you stand, and 
 which, the moment the water is let on, pour upon you a thousand 
 fine streams. Resolution must be well seconded by quick 
 friction with the hands, to keep you within this refrigerating circle 
 two or three minutes. After this is the best time for a long stroll 
 over the hills or along the shores of the Rhine. Supper, between 
 six and seven, is much the same as breakfast ; nothing hot, nothing 
 stimulating. All meals are alike in the voracity of appetite with 
 which they are eaten. I wear all day over the stomach a water- 
 band or compress, — a double fold of coarse linen, six or seven 
 inches wide and about twenty long, half wrung out in cold water, 
 over which is tied a dry one of the same material and thickness, 
 a little broader and meeting round the body. This, excluding the 
 air, prevents evaporation from the wet bandage, and keeps it 
 always warm. The compress is re-wet every two or three hours. 
 Its effect is, to draw more life into the weakened stomach. 
 
 A similar course is daily followed by the rest of the inmates. 
 Instead of the affusion from buckets, most plunge directly into the 
 full-bath after the sweating in the morning. Some are wrapt in 
 a wet sheet, within the blankets, in which they lie about an hour. 
 Then there is the potent douclie, a stream of two to four inches 
 diameter, falling from ten to twenty feet perpendicularly, which is 
 taken when the body has become invigorated and the skin open- 
 ened by the other applications. There are, moreover, local baths ; 
 foot-baths, head-baths, eye-baths. 
 
 The number of patients in this establishment at present is about 
 eighty, with all kinds of chronic maladies, — gout, rheumatism, 
 
THE WATER-CURE. 43 
 
 neuralgia, dyspepsia, deafness, lameness, paralysis, &c. Fill up 
 the &c. with every name that has been coined to express the 
 bodily afflictions of man, and not one that is curable, but can be 
 cured by means of water. By means of ivater, note that ; for 
 water can cure no disease ; it can but help or force the body itself 
 to cure it. What more does medical Art profess ,to do ? No 
 intelligent physician aims at aught but so to rouse or direct the 
 vis medicatrix naturcE, the curative force of nature, that it may 
 throw off disease. To his lancet, his purgatives, his emetics, his 
 narcotics, his stimulants, he ascribes a purely secondary agency, 
 that of touching the spring of life in a way that it shall rebound 
 against the evil that presses it. All his appliances and efforts and 
 doses have but one single aim, namely, to act on the vital force. 
 In awakening, seconding, guiding this, consists his whole skill. 
 Herein, then, the water and drug systems are alike. Most unlike 
 are they in the innocence and efficacy of their means, and in the 
 success of their endeavors. 
 
 Patients are here, as at mineral watering places, on account 
 of chronic diseases, that is, diseases that have taken up their abode 
 in the body, because the body has not vigor left to eject them. 
 These complaints the Faculty hardly ever profess to eradicate. In 
 most patients so afflicted, disease and the Doctor have a joint life- 
 estate. Change of air, temperance, quiet, diet, are the alleviating 
 prescriptions to some. Permanent restoration is seldom promised 
 by the upright physician. Priesnitz and his disciples undertake 
 to cure, and do cure, many such ; and by means of water nearly 
 all are curable, where there is constitutional vitality enough for 
 re-action, and no organic lesion. The process is as simple as 
 nature's laws. The world will soon wonder, as it has done at 
 other revelations of genius, why it was so long undiscovered. 
 Priesnitz has revealed the power there is in water. With this 
 one agent he can co-work with all the processes and movements 
 of nature in the human organism. He can draw the vital stream 
 
44 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 from one part to another ; he can unload the congested blood- 
 vessels ; he can quicken or slacken the action of the heart ; he 
 can elevate or depress the nervous energy. And his agent, in this 
 at once subtle and powerful co-operation, is not a poison, as is 
 almost every drug, never weakens, as does every bleeding, but is 
 a pure nourishing element, as precious to the body as the vital air 
 itself, and having with its eveiy texture such sympathy, that four 
 parts out of five of the constituents of the blood are water. In 
 this consists much of its virtue as a curative means. It is not 
 enough that it be cold": Priesnitz rejects all mineral waters, and 
 even salt sea-water. 
 
 The first step towards a restoration of health is a re-subjection 
 of the body to natural laws, as regards food, drink, air, and exer- 
 cise. Further ; as the vital energy is the final source of restora- 
 tion, it is necessary, when disease has become fixed in the body, 
 that this energy be directed against it with undivided aim. Hence, 
 there must be withdrawal from business and care and serious 
 mental occupation ; and therefore it is, that the cure of chronic 
 complaints can, in most cases, only be undertaken with hope of 
 success at a water-cure establishment. These first conditions 
 being satisfied, under which the body begins at once to feel fresh 
 vigor, the next step is, to accelerate this invigoration. The forti- 
 fying effects of cold bathing are universally known. Without 
 considering now the various forms of its application, devised by 
 the sagacity of Priesnitz, the mere loss of caloric in a cold bath 
 necessarily stimulates the appetite. More food is called for to 
 supply the lost heat. The quickened respiration in the bath and 
 during the rapid exercise it provokes, supply a correspondent in- 
 crease of oxygen. As Liebig simply and beautifully explains, 
 animal heat is the result of the combination within the body be- 
 tween the oxygen brought in through the lungs, and the carbon 
 and hydrogen in the food. The oxygen consumes, literally burns 
 up, the waste of the body, the dead particles that have served their 
 
THE WATER-CURE. 45 
 
 purpose of nourishing the vital activity. The fire burns more 
 briskly. By the increase of food, fresh material is furnished more 
 rapidly ; the burning of the old keeps pace through the increased 
 influx of oxygen ; and thus the transformations in the body, the 
 source and index of health, go on with increased quickness, and 
 the strength grows in proportion. A man with a good fund of 
 vitality left, who takes three or four cold baths and drinks a dozen 
 glasses of cold water daily, will eat just double his usual quantity, 
 and that of the plainest fare, and with a relish that he never felt 
 at the costliest banquet, and a sweetness and fulness of flavor, that 
 recall the time of his fast-growing boyhood. 
 
 'Tis a familiar fact, that if a fragment of bone, for instance, in 
 case of fracture, be left loose and unknit up when the fracture 
 heals, it will be thrown out to the surface by the vital force. 
 Where there is life enough, the same self-purifying, self-protect- 
 ing effort will be made against whatever arrests or disturbs the 
 vital process, against every form of disease therefore. The third 
 step in the proceeding of Priesnitz is, to encourage and assist this 
 tendency by more specific means than the mere addition of strength 
 by cold bathing. 
 
 How is the determination from the centre to the surface to be 
 promoted ? 
 
 By action on the skin through the sweating in blankets, and the 
 soaking in the wet sheet inclosed by blankets. The power ot 
 these applications cannot be conceived but by one who has seen 
 them, I may add, felt them. An activity is awakened in the skin 
 unknown to it before, and this without any foreign or hostile appli- 
 ances. Under the air-tight blankets softly oozes out the perspira- 
 tion ; the wet sheet sucks at the whole surface, like a gentle all- 
 embracing poultice. The skin is in a glow — a glow which it 
 owes to no heat but that beneath it. The lifa of the whole body 
 is drawn to and towards it. In this state of heightened animation 
 it re-acts against the cold bath with alacrity. One or other of 
 
46 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 
 these processes — according to the disease, condition or tempera- 
 ment of the patient — repeated daily, keeps the currents, so to 
 speak, always setting outwardly. The skin, that great auxiliary 
 of the lungs, grows elastic, regains its functions, that had become 
 lamed by the destructive practice of swathing in flannel, and the 
 neglect of cold ablutions, needed daily for the whole surface as 
 much as for the face. Chronic congestions and inflammations are 
 thus gradually relieved ; the system feels lightened. Morbific 
 matter is expelled. That it is morbific, is often known by its 
 odor and color. Frequently, too, what medicines have been taken, 
 sometimes years before, is discovered by the odor of the perspira- 
 tion ; as valerian, iodine, assafsetida, sulphur, mercury. 
 
 The sitting bath performs the important part of drawing the 
 blood from the brain, and of invigorating the great nerves of the 
 stomach and bowels, which in nearly all chronic complaints have 
 become weakened by drugs, heating food and drinks, and seden- 
 tary habits. When, by the sweating or the wet sheet, the sitting 
 bath, and copious daily draughts of cold water, the skin has been 
 opened and animated, the internal skin — the lining membrane of 
 the lungs and digestive organs — stimulated, and all the functions 
 invigorated, so that the system is restored in a degree to its pris- 
 tine power of resistance, then is applied the most vigorous of all 
 the water agents, the douche, which rouses to the utmost the ner- 
 vous energy, and thus contributes much towards putting the body 
 in a state to cope with its foe. 
 
 Now the aim of all these purifying energizing processes is, to 
 bring on a crisis, that is, an effort of the system to rid itself of the 
 disease which obstructs and oppresses it. The crisis is, in fact, 
 in strong cases, an acute attack, taking the form of diarrhoea, more 
 or less active or prolonged, or of vomiting, or cutaneous eruption, 
 or fever. Sometimes these symptoms come one after the other, 
 or even several at once. With knowledge and judgment, the 
 crisis is guided surely to a cure. When the disease is not of long 
 
THE WATER-CURE. 47 
 
 standing, the functional derangement not being firmly established, 
 the cure is effected of course much more quickly and often with- 
 out apparent crisis. On the other hand, in aggravated cases, 
 when the body, in the phrase of Priesnitz, is very full of bad stuff, 
 the patient may have to go through two or three crises, before his 
 system is perfectly purged of disease. Once through the crisis, 
 the patient is cured, cured effectually, radically, not apparently 
 and temporarily, but permanently and absolutely. The nervous 
 energy is renovated, the skin is restored to the full performance 
 of its important functions, the digestive apparatus works perfectly, 
 the blood flows actively and impartially, no morbid condition lurks 
 in any of the tissues, the transformations go on briskly and smooth- 
 ly, life plays lightly and evenly through the whole organism ; the 
 man is well. With healthy habits he can keep so all his days, 
 and end them with an easy natural death, not the hard unnatural 
 one that most are doomed to, dying of disease and the Doctor. 
 
 Visitors are astonished at the cheerfulness of the inmates. A 
 merrier company is not to be found on the joyous Rhine. Such 
 a happy Hospital is a phenomenon. No brilliant balls, nor luxu- 
 rious lounges, nor dainty viands, nor fragrant wines, nor gambling 
 saloons, are needed here as at the neighboring Ems and Wiesba- 
 den, to charm away ennui and make the day endurable. Noon 
 drives away morning, and evening noon, ere we have done with 
 them ; and when we lay our heads down at night, so quick and 
 dream-tight is sleep, that morning is upon us again as if he had 
 but waited for the closing of our lids, and nature had compressed 
 hours into moments that they might lie weightless on our brains. 
 Such is the virtue of water, which at once soothes and exhilarates. 
 It must be remembered, too, theit the invalids here are all outcasts, 
 unfortunates sentenced by Doctors' edicts to perpetual banishment 
 from the realm of health. Hence the slowness of the cure, which 
 few who have the time have the perseverance to complete. Most 
 of us are impatient if complaints of years' standing are not washed 
 
48 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 out in a few weeks. Thus, but a small number earn the full 
 benefit of a radical cure ; more are partially relieved of their 
 pains; the rest, and largest proportion, only get strength and 
 habits wherewith the better to bear them. 
 
 But it is in acute diseases, that the triumphs of the water-cure 
 are most signal and astoundinof. Here its results look like mira- 
 cles, so rapid are they, so regenerative, so complete. 
 
 I have said, that the crisis is an acute attack. On the other 
 hand, an acute disease is but a crisis brought about by the vital 
 force of nature, unexalted by the water-processes. Priesnitz 
 cures all such, rapidly, with ease, with certainty. What he is 
 always striving to produce, is here brought to his hand. An acute 
 disease being a strenuous effort that the organism makes to throw 
 out the enemy, Priesnitz comes in helpfully, by cooling the skin 
 and opening its pores. This sounds very simple and easy. Is 
 there in Christendom a physician who can cool the skin and 'open 
 the pores at will in a burning fever ? Not all the schools and 
 systems of all countries through long ages of experiment and woe, 
 have discovered the nature of fevers and the art of treating them. 
 In spite of his tonics, his diaphoretics, his antiphlogistics, his 
 lancet. Death strides past the Doctor, and seizes upon the young 
 and the robust, as boldly and surely now as a thousand years 
 ago. Let the world, then, rejoice. Glad tidings have come from 
 Graeffenberg. Some of the scourges of mankind are stayed. The 
 cholera, the scarlet-fever, the small-pox, are shorn of their terrors. 
 At this proclamation some will smile, some will chide, the most 
 will ejaculate incredulous. Facts upon facts are there, and thou- 
 sands have witnessed them and spread afar the news of the bless- 
 ing, and those who have looked at them studiously, know why 
 they are and that they must be. Inflammations and fevers are 
 perfectly manageable by Priesnitz and his pupils. What is the 
 glory of Harvey and Jenner to that of the German peasant ? 
 
 From the times of Hippocrates and Galen, down to those of 
 
THE WATER-CURE. 49 
 
 Currie and Hoffman, many are the Doctors, as set forth in the 
 books brought out by Priesnitz's doings, who have cured diseases 
 with water. But the shrewdest of them had only glimpses of its 
 power. Nature, as is her way, has constantly thrown out hints 
 to them, and temptations with facts ; but not in one of them be- 
 fore Priesnitz did the facts inbreed thoughts, that, wrought upon 
 by the awakened spirit of research, led it on to the detection of 
 the laws, whereby this one element becomes a curative means of 
 an efficacy beyond the liveliest hopes of medical enthusiasts. 
 Still, " the Faculty " say, forsooth, there is nothing new in 
 Priesnitz's pretended discoveries. Is there nothing new in put- 
 ting a patient daily for months through four or five cold baths, 
 one or two of them while his skin is dripping with perspiration 
 produced by his own warmth, and thereby curing him radically 
 of the gout ? Is it not new to thrust a man delirious into a cold 
 shallow bath, and there keep him for nine hours with constant 
 friction on his legs and pouring of cold water on his head, and 
 thus to restore him in twenty-four hours ? Who ever before put 
 a child with a brain fever through forty wet sheets in as many 
 successive half hours, and by so doing completely subdued in 
 three days a disease, whose cure would have been doubtful with 
 drugs, in three weeks. This magical wet-sheet itself, what a 
 discovery ! Is it not a stupendous novelty to regard fevers as, in 
 all cases, but the manifestation of the struggle going on within 
 between the vital principle and a disease which threatens it ? 
 And is it not a new feeling, in the summoned healer, to approach 
 the fever-heated patient with clearest confidence, looking on the 
 fever as a sign of vital activity, which with a single agent he can 
 uphold and helpfully direct to a rapid and safe issue ? instead of 
 going to work against the vital principle with his drugs, — which 
 draw it off from its struggle with the disease to fight themselves, — 
 and with his life-tapping lancet, inwardly trembling, — if he be 
 clear-headed and conscientious, — for the slow result, doubting of 
 
 4 
 
50 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 his whole procedure, coming back daily for weeks with the tre- 
 pidation of one who is tussling in the dark with Death for a human 
 being, and often overwhelmed at the sudden victory of his foe, 
 by the conviction, that himself has opened to him the path. I 
 refer now to the best of the medical guild, the few men of thought, 
 feeling, and integrity. Such will feel, how sadly true is the self- 
 reproach of Faust, who, on being hailed with honor and thanks 
 by the peasants for having, a young assistant to his medical 
 father, saved so many of them from the plague, exclaims that 
 their praise sounds like scorn, and relates to his companion the 
 blind, desperate nature of their treatment, concluding as 
 
 follows : — 
 
 And thus with most infernal pills, 
 Among these valleys and these hills. 
 
 Far worse than did the Pest we blazed. 
 Thousands did I the poison give ; 
 They withered off, and I must live 
 
 To hear th' audacious murderers praised.* 
 
 The common crowd of legalized botchers walk through their 
 daily mischievous routine, partly in ignorant thoughtlessness, 
 partly in insensibility. 
 
 " The whole baseless calamitous system of drug-poisoning," 
 says a German expounder of Priesnitz's practice, " which has 
 already snatched away many millions, had its origin in the mis- 
 conception of primary or acute diseases. Because people did not 
 perceive that these abnormal feverish conditions are only efforts 
 at healing which the organism makes, they mistook these fever- 
 symptoms for the disease itself, and finding that they could be 
 
 * So haben wir mit hollischen Latwergen 
 In diesen Thalern, diesen Bergen, 
 Weit schlimmer als die Pest getobt. 
 Ich habe selbst den Gift an tausende gegeben ; ■ 
 Sie welkten hin, ich muss erleben, 
 Dass man die frechen Morder lobt. 
 
 I 
 
THE WATER-CURE. 51 
 
 allayed by blood-letting and drugging, they prized this fatal dis- 
 covery. Then sprang up from this poisonous seeding a whole 
 host of terrible deadly maladies. But because the afflictions did 
 not show themselves immediately, within a few weeks after the 
 medicinal suppression of the acute disease, no one had a thought 
 that the drugs and bleeding were the cause of them." The same 
 author thus writes of inflammation in case of wounds ! — " In order 
 to heal a wound, the organism must form on the part where the 
 wound is, new flesh, new vessels for the new capillaries, &c. To 
 be able to form this flesh, it is necessary that the material for it, — 
 the forming sap, which is the blood, — be led to the part in abnor- 
 mal quantity. Thus, too, plants heal an injury by sending to the 
 injured spot sap in unusual abundance. Through this abnormal 
 blood-life, increased warmth is produced in the part to be healed, 
 which warmth, however, only then gets to real inflammation when 
 the instinct of the wounded person for cold water inwardly and 
 outwardly is not satisfled. Allopathy, in its stolidity, looks upon 
 this streaming of the blood to the wounded part, and the exalta- 
 tion of life therein to the point of heat, as disease, as something 
 which must be removed, and lets blood. Hereupon, notwithstand- 
 ing, the organism continues to send blood to the injured part, 
 where it is needed, and the Doctor continues to let blood, some- 
 limes until the extremities become bloodless and cold, and the 
 patient often dies of weakness, — as is also the case with internal, 
 so called, inflammations." 
 
 These views of fever and inflammation have been deduced 
 from the facts observed and brought to light by Priesnitz. Jf any 
 like them were ever before entertained, it was but in a partial, 
 feeble way. They have never formed part of the medical creed ; 
 they have not been made the foundation of a school. As great as 
 between the momentary illumination of lightning and the light of 
 the day-long sun, is the difference between having a thought pass 
 through the mind, and having it planted there till it grow to a 
 
52 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 fruitful conviction. Hereby is the Healing Art become, for the 
 first time, what all Art ought to be, the handmaid of Nature, and 
 thus, at last, what it never before was, a genuine healing art, and 
 a blessing to humanity. 
 
 This broad, absolute condemnation of the drug and lancet prac- 
 tice, is at any rate not new. Hear some of the most famous 
 physicians speak of their Art. 
 
 Van Helmont says : — " A murder-loving devil has taken pos- 
 session of the medical chairs ; for none but a devil could recom- 
 mend to physicians blood-letting as a necessary means." 
 
 Boerhave : — " When one compares the good performed on the 
 earth by half a dozen true sons of iEsculapius since the rise of 
 the Art, with the evil done among men by the countless number 
 of Doctors of this trade, one will doubtless think, that it were 
 much better if there never had been a physician in the world." 
 
 Jleil : — " It is perfectly clear that we do not know the nature 
 of fever, and that the treatment thereof is nothing more than 
 naked empiricism. — The variety of opinions is a proof that the 
 nature of the subject is not yet clear ; for when the truth is once 
 found, certainty takes the place of hypothesis in every sound 
 mind." 
 
 B.ush : — " We have not only multiplied diseases, but have 
 made them more fatal." 
 
 Majendie : — " In the actual condition of medical science, the 
 physician mostly plays but the part of simple spectator of the sad 
 episodes which his profession furnishes him." 
 
 Billing : — " I visited the different schools, and the students of 
 each hinted, if they did not assert, that the other sects killed their 
 patients." 
 
 Water too can kill, or it could not cure. Yet may it fearlessly 
 be affirmed, that where one will be hurt or killed by the water- 
 treatment, one hundred will be by drugs. Relatively, the water- 
 cure is without danger ; nay, it is so absolutely. Knowledge is 
 
 
THE WATER-CURE. 53 
 
 needed to do anything, even to grow cabbages. An idiot may- 
 break his neck falling down steps safely used by thousands daily. 
 But conceive knowledge with poisons for its instrument, and the 
 same knowledge with one pure agent, and able with that one to 
 bring out any and all the effects aimed at by the lancet and whole 
 pharmacopoeia. In the skilfullest hands, arsenic, prussic acid, 
 copperas, oil of vitriol, mercury, iodine, strychnine, all medical 
 poisons in constant use, suddenly cause death at times, to the con- 
 founding of the practitioner. Their remote effects in shortening 
 and embittering life, are incalculable, unimaginable. In short, 
 the water-cure, at once simple and philosophical, is dangerous only 
 where there is clumsiness, rashness, or stupidity : drugs, virulent 
 and treacherous, are full of immediate danger in the most pru- 
 dent and sagacious hands, and are besides charged with evils dis- 
 tant and insidious. 
 
 By means of water, then, whose energizing and healing power 
 has been to the full revealed by Priesnitz, chronic diseases, till 
 now deemed hopeless, are eradicable, and acute ones cease to be 
 alarming. By the thorough cure of acute attacks, chronic com- 
 plaints, — mostly the consequence of suppressed or half-cured acute 
 ones, — will be much fewer. Through the same influence, acute 
 will become less frequent. Were this discovery to cause no other 
 change of habits, the substitution of cold for warm baths and the 
 general practice of cold bathing, will alone produce such bodily 
 fortification as to ward off an immense amount of disease. But 
 the change cannot stop there. Wedded as men are to routine, 
 hugging custom as if life itself were intertwined with its plaits, 
 still they do by degrees let in the light of new truths. When one 
 of her great laws is discovered. Nature smiles joyfully and benig- 
 nantly, as a mother on the unfolding of her infant's mind, and in 
 man's heart is reflected the smile, the harbinger of new blessings. 
 This discovery is already hailed by tens of thousands as pregnant 
 with immeasurable good. It is so simple, so intelligible, so ac- 
 
54 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 cessible, that it must spread its blessings in spite of prejudice, 
 interest, and ignorance. 
 
 Health is nearly banished from Christendom. Even among 
 those who lead an outdoor life of healthful labor, there is the de- 
 bilitating counteraction of stimulants, in drink, in food, in tobacco. 
 The wealthier classes are more the victims of drugs, the poor of 
 alcohol. These two curses, poisoning the sources of life, have 
 diminished the stature and strength of the race, far more even than 
 vice and poverty, of which too alcohol is a prolific parent. That 
 there is this diminution is proved, among other evidence, by the 
 falling off in the standard of stature for soldiers in the principal 
 countries of Europe, in England, in France, in Germany. 
 Through these poisons, the natural instincts of appetite have been 
 depraved. There is a general vitiation of the palate through the 
 perverted nerves, brought about by the universal use of all kinds 
 of foreign stimulants, medicinal, spirituous, and spicy. Water is 
 deemed good to mix with spirits and wine, and milk with tea and 
 coffee. Pure, they are insipid, and so deep has reached the cor- 
 ruption, that it is quite a common belief, that water is unwhole- 
 some ! There is a general craving for stimulants. They are 
 esteemed temperate who use them only at meals ! Their hurtful 
 effects upon the health, temper, strength and morals, cannot be 
 estimated. Against all this. Nature protests by the sighs of 
 weakness, the groans of disease, the pangs of conscience, and the 
 agonies of premature death. Priesnitz would vseem to be commis- 
 sioned to re-utter the commands of Nature, to rouse mankind to 
 a sense of it§ growing physical degeneracy, and to open the path 
 towards health, refreshed life and enjoyment. Priesnitz has de- 
 monstrated, that for the preseiTation of health and restoration from 
 disease there is an efficacy, a virtue in Water, hitherto undreamt 
 of; that all kinds of stimulants, under all circumstances whether 
 in disease or in health, are always falsehoods, disguised like worse 
 moral lies under cajoling flatteries ; and this he enforces with the 
 
FRANKFORT. 55 
 
 eloquence of cheerfullest, sweetest sensations, renovating, I might 
 almost say, re-creating, the nervous system, and thus putting 
 literally new life into the body. 
 
 Geneva, September, 1841. 
 
 The last of July, after a six weeks' experiment of the water- 
 cure, we left Boppart. These few weeks have made, I may say, 
 an epoch in my life. It is not the bodily strength I gained, — and 
 the time was much too short for a full restoration to health, — but 
 the gain of new truths and convictions, which give me in a de- 
 gree command over my bodily condition ; the gain of insight and 
 knowledge, whereby 1 can ward off attacks against which I, like 
 others, before felt myself powerless. I have learnt to know the 
 effects of stimulants, and am emancipated from their tyranny. 
 As on the morning of our departure from Marienberg, we drove 
 along the beautiful shores of the Rhine, I felt, that new and bene- 
 ficent laws had been divulged to me, and that I was closer under 
 the protection of Nature. 
 
 At Bingen, after exploring the Niederwald on donkeys, and 
 visiting the Rheinstein, — a turretted old castle perched among 
 rocks and woods high above the river, fitted up and inhabited by 
 a Prince of Prussia, — we quitted the Rhine to take the road to 
 Wiesbaden, where, as at other fashionable watering-places. Idle- 
 ness holds an annual festival ; for the proportion is small of those 
 who are here solely for the business of cure. Thence a short 
 railroad carried us to Frankfort, famous for its biennial fairs, 
 where merchants thickly congregate ; for the election and coro- 
 nation in past centuries of the Emperors of Germany ; and most 
 famous of all as the birth-place of Goethe, who as boy, among the 
 other sights and sounds that were teaching his young mind its 
 powers, witnessed with greedy delight one of the imperial corona- 
 tions, himself already appointed to a throne and a sway, firmer 
 and wider than that of Emperors. Here were laid the founda- 
 
56 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 tions of a nature, the richest the earth has borne since Shak- 
 speare. 
 
 Sir Egerton Brydges, that genial old man, says : — " A large 
 part of the existence of a human being consists in thought and 
 sentiment." Most true. Like air through the lungs, thought 
 and emotion are curling unceasingly round the brain ; they are 
 the atmosphere of the soul, as impalpable, yet as real and vital, 
 as that we breathe. Without this lively presence of feeling and 
 thought, we cannot be as soul-endowed beings ; it is the state of 
 mental life. Our friends, our neighbors, our children, are far 
 off from us, in comparison with this sleepless inward offspring of 
 the mind. Is it well-limbed, healthy, clean, we live the erect, 
 loving, steadfast life of a genuine man ; is it deformed, crabbed ; 
 our life is narrow, suspicious, timid. What a task, then, how 
 high, how deep, to feed, to purify, to enlarge, to enrich this spring 
 of every human movement, endeavor, purpose, deed. Such is 
 the Poet's function, the noblest, the most useful. Through his 
 sensibility to the beautiful, he sees furthest into the nature of 
 things, goes down to the root of the matter, discerns in each class 
 of being the original type, wherein Beauty has its perfect dwelling. 
 Embodying the visions thus had, in moulds which each creates 
 for itself, he brings before his fellow-men mirrors, wherein they 
 behold themselves, their thoughts and feelings, subtilized, exalted 
 — magic mirrors, whose images, glowing with almost supernatu- 
 ral effulgence, are yet felt to be true. For poetry is a distillation 
 of Beauty out of the feelings and doings of daily life, and a poem 
 is but the finest, maturest fruit of impulses, which exist in, and 
 openly or secretly control, the most prosaic worker in a trading 
 community. Who so base or dull, but has had moments of spi- 
 ritual abstraction, when his whole being was penetrated with un- 
 earthly light, whereby all things, as it were transfigured, looked 
 calm and joyful ? Breathes there a man, not blasted with idiocy 
 in whom at times a gorgeous sunset would not awaken emotion, 
 
GOETHE. 57 
 
 whose heart would not open to the mystic beauty of the midnight 
 sky, who has not felt, though but for an instant, a quickening 
 impulse towards perfection ? Such moods the poet fosters, awa- 
 kens, confirms. He teaches the mind to use its wings : he peoples 
 it with richer possibilities. The Poet is the highest of educators. 
 With the gushings of the young untainted heart, mingle his warm 
 expansive thoughts, and as years ripen, we embrace more closely 
 the truths he has melodiously unfolded, unconscious often whence 
 they have com.e. 
 
 The fortune of worldly position and of length of years, favored 
 the pre-eminent genius of Goethe, in performing the great task 
 of the poet in a way unparalleled in these latter times. No 
 man of the age has so widened the intellectual horizon of his 
 country, so deepened and freshened the common sea of thought, 
 so enriched the minds of his contemporaries with images of beauty 
 and power. Among the heartless, senseless complaints against 
 Goethe, — as such will be made against the greatest, — that of his 
 want of patriotism is the most vapid. Let the man be pointed to 
 who has done so much to enlighten, to elevate Germany. He 
 has thus contributed more towards the liberty of his country than 
 any score of " Liberals," even though they be genuine ones. 
 There is a fitness in his being born at Frankfort, at once the 
 capital of Germany and a free town. Saving Luther, there is 
 none other who better deserves the title of Father of his country. 
 
 His fellow citizens are about to raise to him a colossal statue in 
 Frankfort. In the neighboring town of Mayence, a noble one, 
 designed by Thorwaldsen, has been lately erected to Gutemberg. 
 Goethe and Gutemberg will be side by side. They belong 
 together; the one, the German who invented types, the other, 
 the German who has made the best use of them. 
 
 A day sufficed for Frankfort. The most beautiful thing they 
 have to show, is Dannecker's statue of Ariadne. For our route 
 towards Switzerland we chose what is called the mountain road, 
 
 4* 
 
58 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 which traverses one of the most fertile plains of Europe, bounded 
 on the East by a range of hills, sloping up into soft valleys and 
 wooded heights, with here and there a ruined castle to connect 
 the fresh-looking landscape with the olden time. Our first night 
 was at Weinheim, an ancient town begirt with towers, and snugly 
 seated, amidst orchards and vineyards, at the foot of the hills. 
 Early before breakfast, I walked up to the old castle of Windeck. 
 I met people going out to work; they looked mostly hunger- 
 pinched and toil-bent. To how many is the earth a cold prison, 
 instead of the fair warm garden Nature offers it. To none, even 
 the most favored, is life what it might be. When will men's 
 aims be truer, and their means juster, and existence cease to be 
 a harrying scramble ? The earth is yet shadowed by the scowl 
 of man upon his fellow. Nature is most rich and bountiful, 
 would we but live after her law. The resources are within and 
 about us ; and a Christian must believe that they will be awakened 
 and improved, till man at last smiles upon man. 
 
 A night rain had sweetened the air and land for our morning 
 drive to Heidelberg, which was the next stage. We spent an 
 hour amonor the broad ruins of the famed castle, saw the streets 
 lively with students, joyous intelligent looking youths, sought out 
 two or three young Americans at their lodgings, and then went 
 again rolling smoothly on our journey, to end the day at Carlsruhe 
 (Charles' rest), the capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden. The 
 next day we dined at Baden — Baden, the celebrated watering, 
 place, lying beautifully in a stream-enlivened valley, between 
 gentle hills, overrun for miles with shady walks and drives. 
 
 The Cursaal, containing the spacious public saloons and ball- 
 rooms, and furnished like a palace, is the general resort in the 
 evening. Here are the gambling-tables, three or four of them, 
 all plying at the same time their silent gloomy trade. Round 
 each large oval table, with its wheel of destiny in the centre, and 
 its fine green cloth covered with figures and mystic divisions, was 
 
GAMBLING-TABLES. 59 
 
 a crowd of spectators and players, standing or seated. To par- 
 take of the scene actively and from its midst, I joined one of them, 
 throwing down occasionally among the twinkling gold pieces and 
 fat piastres a pale florin, the lowest stake allowed. The players 
 were of various conditions and ages and aspects ; a few of them 
 mere players, to whom it was an arithmetical trial, a sportful 
 excitement, like one young Englishman who gaily scattered a 
 handful of Napoleons at a throw, choosing, as though he could 
 choose, the numbers to stake on, dallying carelessly with Fortune. 
 But out of the fixed serious countenances of most, stared the 
 Demon of gain. He must have laughed one of his bitterest 
 laughs at his dupes. The scene would have adorned Spenser's 
 cave of Mammon. In the glare of a large overhanging light, a 
 circle of human beings intent upon gold, and all the features of 
 Avarice concentrated in haggard unity on one little spot. A 
 circle, but without bond of union ; each pursuing his end in sel- 
 fish isolation, unmindful of his neighbor, except when Envy 
 stirred at his good fortune ; absorbed, possessed by the one feel- 
 ing ; his whole nature quenched under its cold tyranny ; his 
 visage half petrified by the banishment of all other thought. — It 
 had too its poetic side ; the hope ever renewed ; the mysterious 
 source of the decree, coming out of unfathomable depths ; its 
 absoluteness, representing perfectly the inexorableness of Fate. 
 
 Before entering on our route through the Black Forest to 
 Schaffhausen in Switzerland, we made a circuit of half a day by 
 Strasburg, to see the Cathedral, one of the most beautiful of 
 Gothic churches, the pinnacle of whose spire is the highest point 
 ever reached in an edifice of human hands, being twenty- 
 four feet higher than the great Pyramid of Egypt. These airy 
 Gothic structures, rising lightly from the earth, as if they were a 
 growth out of it, look, amidst the common houses about them, like 
 products of another race. They have an air of inspiration. 
 Their moulds were thoughts made musical by deep feeling. 
 
60 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 They are the Poems of an age when Religion yearned for 
 glorious embodiment. They declare the beauty and grandeur 
 of the human mind, that it could conceive and give birth to a thing 
 so majestic. Those high-springing vaults ; those far-stretching 
 aisles, solemnized by hues from deeply colored windows ; those 
 magnificent vistas, under roof; those outward walls, so gigantic, and 
 yet so light with flying buttresses and the relief of delicate tracery ; 
 that feathery spire, which carries the eyes far away from the earth ; 
 to think, that the whole wondrous fabric, so huge and graceful, so 
 solid and airy, so complex and harmonious, as it stands there before 
 you, stood first, in its large beautiful completeness, in the brain 
 of its architect, Erwin von Steinbach. Those great builders of 
 the middle ages have not been duly known ; their names are not 
 familiar, as they should be, like those of the great painters. 
 
 Strasburg, and Alsace, of which it was formerly the capital, 
 though long in the possession of France, are German still in lan- 
 guage and customs. The original character of a people clings to 
 it through all kinds of outward vicissitudes. This is strongly 
 exemplified in the French themselves. The exact similarity 
 between certain prominent features in the ancient Gauls and 
 the modern French, shows with what fidelity mental qualities 
 are transmitted through advancing stages of civilisation, and 
 what permanent unfailing effects, soil, atmosphere and climate 
 exert upon the character of a people. The Gauls were as noted 
 for the fury of their first onset in their battles with Csesar, as the 
 French were at Agincourt and in the Spanish Peninsula, and 
 seem to have been discomfited by the steadfastness of the Romans 
 precisely in the way their descendants were by the cooler cou- 
 rage of the British. Winkelman, endeavoring to show the effects 
 of air and nourishment on national character, states, that accord- 
 ing to the Emperor Julian there were in his day more dancers in 
 Paris than citizens, and I have somewhere seen this quotation 
 from Cato j — Duas res Gens Gallica industriosissime persequitur, 
 
 I 
 
ZURICH, GOLDAU. 61 
 
 rem militarem et argute loqui : — Two things the Gallic people cul- 
 tivate most diligently, military affairs and glibness of speech. 
 
 In a day and a half we reached Schaffhausen by Romberg and 
 Donauschingen. At Schaffhausen we had to resign the comfort of 
 post-horses. The inn-keepers of Switzerland, a numerous and 
 wealthy class, have influence enough, it is said, to prevent the 
 introduction of the posting-system, it being of course their interest 
 to have travellers move slowly. On the way to Zurich, we stopped 
 an hour a few miles below Schaffhausen, to see the Falls of the 
 Rhine, the finest in Europe, and well deserving their fame. In 
 the afternoon we had the first view of the snow-capt mountains. 
 Far before us, fifty or sixty miles off, they lay along the horizon 
 like a bank of silver. We approached Zurich, descending among 
 gardens, and vineyards, and villas, with the lake and town in view. 
 The evening hour of arrival is always a cheerful one to the 
 traveller, and it is trebly so, when the smiling welcome of " mine 
 host " is preceded by such a greeting as this from Nature. We 
 had time before dark to enjoy the wide prospect from the top of 
 the Hotel. The sublimities of Switzerland were still remote, but 
 we were already encompassed by its beauties. 
 
 The next morning we started early, intending to sleep that 
 night on the top of the Righi. Crossing before breakfast Mount 
 Albis, from whose southern side the mountains about the Lake of 
 the four Cantons came grandly into view, we descended upon 
 Zug, passing through which and along the northern shore of its 
 lake, we reached Arth at one ; whence, at half-past two, we com- 
 menced the journey up the Righi on horseback with a guide. The 
 ascent begins a mile east of Goldau, one of the villages destroyed 
 by the fall of the Rossberg in 1806. Conceive of a slip of rock 
 and earth two miles long, one-fifth of a mile wide, and one hun- 
 dred feet thick, loosened from the summit of a mountain five 
 thousand feet high, rushing down its side into the valley below. 
 It overwhelmed three villages with five hundred of their inhabit- 
 
62 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 ants, and spread desolation over several miles of the valley. We 
 passed through the terrific scene, a chaos of rock and rubbish, 
 where Goldau had been. Huge blocks of stone, as large some of 
 them as a small house, were forced up the Righi far above the 
 site of Goldau. There are traditions of similar slides from this 
 same mountain in past ages, and still higher up were scattered 
 other blocks which the guide said had come on one of those oc- 
 casions from the Rossberg, three or four miles distant. We were 
 more than three hours ascending, and went up into a cloud, which 
 enveloped the top of the mountain, so that we had no sunset. The 
 cloud passed away in the night. 
 
 The next morning before dawn, with cloaks about us, we were 
 out. From the top of this isolated peak, a mile above the lakes 
 at its base, we saw light break slowly over the earth, as yet with- 
 out-form in the darkness. We had almost a glimpse of the creative 
 mystery. We were up in the heavens, and beheld the Spirit of 
 God move upon the face of the earth. We witnessed with mag- 
 nificent accompaniment the execution of the mandate, — Let there 
 be Light. The peaks in the sun's path rose first out of darkness 
 to meet the coming dawn, their jagged outline fringed with grey, 
 then with gold. Day had hardly broke about us, when off to the 
 south fifty miles a rosy tint shone on the snowy heads of the 
 Bernese Alps, the first to answer the salutation of the Sun. Soon, 
 the summits of all the mountains rose up in the growing day, a 
 world of peaks, the giant offspring of the Earth awakened by the 
 Morning. Below was still twilight. Gradually light came down 
 the mountains and rolled away the veil of night from the plain. 
 The Sun grew strong enough to send his rays into the valleys, 
 and opened the whole sublime spectacle, — a spectacle affluent in 
 sublimities, that lifted the Thoughts out of their habits, and swelled 
 them to untried dimensions. The eye embraced an horizon of 
 three hundred miles circuit; the Mind could not embrace the 
 wealth of grandeur and beauty disclosed. Towards the west, 
 
THE RIGHI. 63 
 
 the view ranged over what from such a height seemed an immense 
 plain, bounded by the far dim Jura ; an indistinct landscape, with 
 woods, and rivers, and lakes ; or, rather, a hundred landscapes 
 melted into one, that took in several of the largest, most fertile 
 cantons, covering thousands of square miles. Turning round, we 
 stood amazed before the stupendous piles of mountain. From 
 five to fifty miles away, in a vast semicircle, rose in wondrous 
 throng their wild bulks — rugged granite or glittering snow, tower- 
 ing in silent grandeur, an upper kingdom, their heads in the sky. 
 They looked alive as with a spectral life, brought from the 
 mysterious womb of the Earth. You gaze, awed, bafiled, in 
 their majestic presence, overwhelmed by the very sublimity of 
 size. 
 
 We had come up by the north path, we went down by the south. 
 What a walk on a sunny morning ! Down we went, nearer and 
 nearer to tlie beautiful lake right under us, plunging deeper and 
 deeper into the magical scenery of its shores. We reached Weggis 
 in two hours and a half. The perpendicular height from the level 
 of the lake to the pinnacle of the Righi is about a mile ; in the 
 descent I nmst have walked seven or eight. By steamboat we 
 reached Lucerne at one. From Lucerne we looked back down 
 the lake at the throng of mountains that rose out of its waters and 
 crowded the eastern horizon. A slight haze made the sun shine 
 on them more warmly. The scene was like a vision, so strange 
 was it and beautiful. 
 
 The same afternoon we left Lucerne and slept at Entlebuch, 
 whence the next day we came to Berne, traversing the broad 
 cantons of Lucerne and Berne, through a country abundant in 
 crops and landscapes. Our attempt to see some of the splendors 
 of the Bernese Oberland was frustrated by the weather ; so that, 
 after going from Thun to Brienz, through their two lakes, we 
 turned back in the rain, having merely got a momentary glimpse 
 at Interlaachen of the Yungfrau. We made a long day from 
 
&4 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Berne to Lausanne, passing through Freyburg, the stronghold of 
 Romanism in Switzerland, remarkable for the singularity and 
 picturesqueness of its position, high up in one of the bends of the 
 river Saane ; for its suspension bridge — the longest in the world — 
 one hundred and seventy feet above the river which it spans ; for 
 its Convents and Jesuits' College, and for the dirtiness of its 
 streets. A transparent morning for the drive from Lausanne 
 along the shore of Lake Leman to Geneva, gave us a clear view 
 of Mont Blanc, more than sixty miles off. We reached Geneva 
 on the 17th of August. 
 
 Calvin, Rousseau. An old town that hasn't its great men is 
 tasteless to the traveller. These two give the flavor to Geneva. 
 Of necessity far apart in time, for one would think the spirit of 
 Calvin must have been well-nigh worn-out or dormant ere the little 
 Republic could have engendered a Rousseau. I figure Calvin as 
 gaunt, fleshless ; a man of a gritty substance, on whom flesh couldn't 
 grow. A nature tough as steel, unbending as granite — as was 
 needed for his task. With what a bold biting lash he scourged 
 the sensualities of his time ! How he defied the principalities 
 of the earth ! How he scorned the tempests of papal, and regal, 
 and popular, wrath ! They did but invigorate his will, sublimate 
 his genius, for the building up of a power that was to stretch over 
 many nations and endure for ages. He would not have been Cal- 
 vin had he not burned Servetus. This crime was the correlative 
 of his virtue. It condensed with the heartiness and earnestness, 
 the austerity and narrowness of Calvinism. His followers con- 
 tinued and continue to burn Servetuses after a different fashion. 
 Honor to the patriarch of the Puritans. 
 
 Calvin, who v/as not born in Geneva, became there a ruler ; 
 Rousseau, who was, doesn't seem to have been held of much ac- 
 count by his townsmen, until lately, when they have erected to 
 him a statue, more out of pride probably than love. Rousseau 
 was made of anything but granite j an unstable tremulous nature, 
 
VALLEY CF THE RHONE. 65 
 
 devoured by passions which yet hadn't life enough to energize him. 
 His life-long sorrows were of the Werterian kind, but he had'nt 
 the strength to shoot himself. He was a Werter manque. Yet 
 he too did a large share of good. In a time of coldness and mis- 
 belief, he helped to bring men to the knowledge of the truths and 
 beauties of Nature, and of the resou-rces of tiieir hearts, through 
 which knowledge alone can there be fruitful love of God. And 
 this indeed, in different moods, is the office of all tliinkers. Even 
 Rousseau's sentimentality, insipid or sickening now, was savory 
 and healing to his sophisticated generation. Had his writings 
 had no other effect than to re-awaken in the hearts of so mamy 
 mothers the duty of nursing their own infants, he would deserve 
 well of the Christian world. 
 
 Florence, October, 1841. 
 
 We remained at Geneva a fortnight, preparing for Italy. On 
 the third of September we set out by the route of the Simplon, 
 along the southern shore of the Lake and up the valley of the 
 Rhone, sleeping the first night in Martigny, the second in Brigg, 
 at the foot of the pass. The valley of the Rhone is generally 
 level, barren, and subject to inundation. The long day's drive 
 from Martigny to Brigg was of less interest than any we had had 
 in Switzerland. The valley, almost unpeopled, without deep 
 verdure or the softness of tillage, desolate without being wild, 
 offers no pictures to the eye ; and the mountains that enclose it, 
 are bare and cold without elevation enough for grandeur. This 
 is one of the worst regions for goitre and cretinism. Before noon 
 we stopped to change horses in the public square of Sion, the 
 capital of the canton of Valais. Happening to be a market day, 
 there was a throng of people in the square. An assemblage of 
 such unsightly human beings I never beheld. Nearly all looked 
 as if they were more or less under the blight, whose extreme 
 effect is the idiocy called cretinism. Mostly of a pallid Indian 
 hue, with lank black hair, they had a strange weird look. 
 
6G SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 At Brigg, whilst we were getting ready to start in the morning, 
 the master of the hotel, whose son or son-in-law had the furnish- 
 ing of iiorses, came to inform me that I should have to take six 
 for the ascent. I represented to him that for a carriage like mine 
 four would be as sufficient as six, and that it would be unreason- 
 able, unjust, and contrary to his own printed regulations to 
 impose the additional two upon me. The man insisting, I objected, 
 then remonstrated, then protested. All to no purpose. I then 
 sought out the burgomaster of the town, to whom with suitable 
 emphasis I represented the case. He could not deny that the 
 letter of the law was on my side. Whether or not he had the 
 power to over-rule the post-master I don't know, but at all events 
 my appeal to him had no practical result ; the carriage came to 
 the door with six horses. I had the poor satisfaction of letting 
 the inn-keeper hear his conduct worded in strong terms, and of 
 threatening him with public exposure in the guide-books as an 
 extortioner, which threat acted most unpleasantly upon his feel- 
 ings, and I hoped, kept him uncomfortable for some hours. 
 
 What a contrast between the irritations and indignations of the 
 morning, and the calm awed feelings of the day ! 'Twould be 
 worth while for an army to be put into a towering passion at the 
 base of the Simplon, just to have all anger quelled by the sub- 
 duing sublimities of its sides and summit. As we went up the 
 broad smooth road of Napoleon, the gigantic mountains opened 
 wider and wider their grandeurs, heaving up their mighty 
 shoulders out of the abysses, at first dark with firs, and later, as 
 we neared the top of the pass, shining far, far above us in snow 
 that the sun had been bleaching for thousands of years. We 
 crossed the path of an avalanche, a hundred feet wide, that had 
 come down in the spring, making as clean a swarth through the 
 big trees as a mower's scythe does in a wheatfield. We passed 
 under solid arches, built, or cut through the rock, to shield 
 travellers against these opake whirlwinds, these congealed hurri- 
 
THE SIMPLON. 67 
 
 canes, this bounding brood of the white giantess, begotten on her 
 vast icy flanks by the near sun. On the summit of the pass, the 
 snowy peaks still high above us, we came to the Hospice, and 
 then descending quietly on the southern side a couple of miles, 
 reached about sunset the village of Simplon. At the quiet inn 
 we were greeted by two huge dogs of the St. Bernard breed, who, 
 with waggings of tail and canine smiles, seemed doing the 
 hospitalities of the mountain. Here we met two English travellers, 
 and spent a cheerful evening as the close to such a day. After 
 a sound sleep under thick blankets we set off early the next 
 morning. What a starting point, and what a morning's drive ! 
 Ere noon we were to be in Italy, and the way to it was through 
 the gorges of the Simplon. 
 
 With wheel locked, we went off at a brisk trot. The road on 
 the Italian side is much more confined than on the northern. 
 Yesterday, we had the broad splendors, the expanded grandeurs, 
 of the scene ; to day its condensed intenser sublimities. We soon 
 found ourselves in a tunnel cut through a rock ; then sweeping 
 down deeper and deeper into what seemed an endless abyss ; 
 close on one side of us a black wall of rock, overhanging hundreds, 
 thousands, of feet, and darkening the narrow path ; as close on 
 the other a foaming torrent, leaping down as it were a wild 
 creature rushing by us to head our track. Over dark chasms, 
 under beetling precipices, across the deafening rush of waters, 
 the smooth road carried us without a suggestion of dangei', the 
 wonders of the sublime pass all exhibited as freely as to the 
 winged eagle's gaze ; as though Nature rejoiced in being thus 
 mastered by Art. On we went, downward, downward. At last 
 the descent slackens, the stream that had bounded and leapt beside 
 us, runs among the huge rocky fragments, the gorge expands to 
 a valley, the fresh foliage of chestnut trees shadows the road, the 
 valley widens, the mountain is behind us, a broad even landscape 
 before us, the air is soft, the sun shines hotly on fields where 
 
68 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 swarthy men are at work, — we are in Italy ! It was a passage 
 from sublimity to beauty. We were soon among vines and strong 
 vegetation. This then is Italy. How rich and warm it looks ! 
 We entered Duomo d'Ossola, the first town : it looked solid and 
 time-beaten. In a public square hard by where we stopped for 
 a few minutes, was a plentiful show of vegetables and fruit, juicy 
 peaches and heavy bunches of grapes. At a rapid pace we went 
 forward towards Lake Maggiore. These are the " twice-glorified 
 fields of Italy." This is beautiful, passionate Italy, the land of so 
 much genius, and so much vice, and so much glory. This is the 
 land, for centuries the centre of the world, that in boyhood and in 
 manhood is so mixed in our thoughts, with its double column of 
 shining names familiar to Christendom. It was late in the after- 
 noon when at Fariolo we came upon the beautiful Lake. For 
 ten or twelve miles the road ran on a terrace, whose wall was 
 washed by its waters. About sunset we passed the Borromean 
 Islands, the evening clear and bland. 'Twas after nightfall 
 when we entered Arona. 
 
 We had to-day an incident, which gave assurance that we 
 were arrived in Italy, as convincing as did the beaut)'- and fruit- 
 fulness lavished upon this chosen land. Opposite in character to 
 them, that have their source in bounty and love ; this, in penury of 
 spirit and hate. It came too from one of " God's Vicegerents on 
 Earth," although its nature smacked of paternity in the Prince of 
 Darkness. God floods his creation with liberty and light, the 
 which his vicegerents. Kings and Popes, are ever busy to smother, 
 lest men be maddened and blinded by the too free use of Heaven's 
 best gifts. God's vicegerents ! his counterworkers rather. They 
 are oftenest the very antidotes of light. Their God is Power, 
 whom they worship with human sacrifices. Monarchies and 
 Hierarchies are the tokens of man's weakness. The stronger 
 they, the weaker he. As men strengthen, they dwindle. They 
 are like props planted beside a young tree, that having insidiously 
 
VEXATIONS. 69 
 
 taken root, divert into themselves nourishment due to it, so that 
 the tree languishes and perishes, while they thrive and wax 
 strong. They are the bridle put into the horse's mouth in the 
 fable, for his help, as he foolishly thought, which became the 
 instrument of his enslavement. They are the stewards of Custom, 
 which is the tyranny of the lower human faculties over the higher. 
 I once heard when a boy a stump-speaker at a " barbecue " 
 declare, that a visit to Europe had made him a democrat. The 
 process whereby this effect was wrought will be clear to most 
 Americans who sojourn here for a time. As counterpoise to this, 
 it will be but fair to mention that German Prince, who, becoming 
 tainted with republicanism, was sent to the United States to be 
 cured thereof, — and was cured. That man deserved a throne. 
 But to the incident. 
 
 At the Piedmontese frontier, the custom-house officer, who as 
 usual examined but one of our trunks, hit upon the one that con- 
 tained books. " Ah ! Books," said he ; "I must make a list of 
 them." Hereupon he ordered his assistant to take them all out, 
 my representations that they were solely for my own use, and 
 that I was merely passing through Piedmont, having no effect. 
 On first alighting, I heard one say to the other, " II Signore 6 
 militare ;" a conclusion which was probably dispelled by the 
 sight of the contents of the trunk, and not, I think, to my advan- 
 tage. The making of the list was a long process, the officer 
 having to write the titles that were not Italian letter by letter. 
 The task seemed to him a hard and unaccustomed one. The 
 subordinate displayed the title of each volume beside his princi- 
 pal, I superintending the orthography. The assistant handled 
 the books carefully and even tenderly, as though in his eyes they 
 were things precious. The poor man, I fancied, looked at me 
 with an expression of deferential regard, as one who possessed 
 and had free access to such a treasure. Among them was Sil- 
 vio Pellico's story of his imprisonment, in Italian. He turned it in 
 
70 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 his hands, looked into it, gently shuffling over the leaves, and 
 quietly glancing from the volume to me, not at all as if he would 
 beo- it, but as if he transferred towards me some of the feeling 
 the book awakened in him. He probably had heard vaguely of 
 Pellico's martyrdom. The list finished, the books were repacked, 
 and the trunk was leaded, that is, tied round with stout twine, 
 over whose knot was pressed, with long pincers, a small leaden 
 seal. The trunk was replaced on the carriage, and a paper was 
 given me certifying its contents and the operation it had under- 
 gone. This overhauling and list-taking was but the commence- 
 ment of the vexation. The next day, — to make an end of the 
 story, — on passing out of Piedmont, an officer was sent with us to 
 see the sealed trunk delivered unbroken at the custom-house of 
 Lombardy, some distance off. It was just as if I had had a 
 criminal in company, and Piedmont warned Austria of his dan- 
 ger. Books, in truth, are criminals in both countries. On 
 arriving at Milan I was obliged, before driving to the hotel, to go 
 first to the custom-house, to leave in safe keeping the mysterious 
 trunk, as big with mischief as the Grecian Horse to the Trojans, 
 but luckily by the vigilance of Piedmont its diabolical purport 
 was revealed to Austria. Quitting Milan I had to call for it, to 
 leave it again at the Piedmontese custom-house on re-entering 
 Piedmont on the road to Genoa ; for I found that otherwise, owing 
 to a press of business there, I should be delayed two or three 
 hours. It came after me the next day to Genoa, where, not to 
 have any more frontier troubles, I left it, to be sent to Florence, 
 which it reached several days later, bringing with it a bill against 
 me, for separate travelling charges, of ten dollars. This affair, 
 trifling as it appears, marred the enjoyment of our first days in 
 Italy. It makes a man, too, feel little, to find himself utterly de- 
 fenceless against such pitiful abuses from low officials. 
 
 Through the bountiful plains of Lombardy, we had a short 
 day's drive from Arona to Milan, passing near the first battle-field 
 
MILAN. 71 
 
 between Scipio and Hannibal. Entering Milan by the arch of the 
 Simplon, we came first upon the broad Parade, or Pkice (VArmes, 
 where the cannon are kept always loaded, Milan being the capi- 
 tal of the Austrian Lombardo- Venetian Provinces, and residence 
 of the Imperial Viceroy. The two principal objects of Milan 
 are, Leonardo da Vinci's great picture of the last supper, and the 
 cathedral, a vast, beautiful, gothic structure of white marble, 
 from whose roof ascends a forest of light pinnacles and marble 
 needles, surmounted by statues. Around, upon and within the 
 church are two or three thousand statues, numbers of them the 
 effigies of benefactors. Conspicuous on a pinnacle was one of 
 Napoleon. A gift of cash to the church will obtain for the donor 
 the honor of a statue, its prominence and elevation being measured 
 by the amount bestowed. What inventive genius these solemn 
 gentlemen of the robe have always shown in unloosing the clasp 
 of money-clutching man ! What a scent they have for the trail 
 of gold ! A traveller relates, that passing through " the noble 
 little state of Connecticut," and stopping to bait in one of its 
 dreariest townships, he asked a tall raw-boned man, who was 
 measuring him keenly with his eye, what the people did in so 
 barren a country for a living : " When we can catch a strail^er, 
 we skin him, and when we cant, we skin one another." I defy, 
 the leanest native in the stoniest part of Connecticut, to devise the 
 means more shrewdly for compassing a given dollar, than these 
 ghostly bachelors. From the roof of the cathedral we looked down 
 into the opulent city beneath, and far away over the rich plain 
 of Lombardy. To the west, as distant as the pass of the Simplon, 
 was visible the snowy head of Mount Rosa. 
 
 We left Milan after forty-eight hours, and were a day and a 
 half on the road to Genoa, sleeping the first night in a clean good 
 inn at Novi. Some miles out of Milan, not far from Pavia, we 
 stopped to see the famous Chartreuse, with its beautiful church 
 and dozen little chapels, each one enriched with precious mar- 
 
72 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 bles exquisitely wrought and inlaid, whereon millions have been 
 spent in work and materials. Madame de Stael said, that Genoa 
 has the air of having been built by a Congress of Kings. We 
 walked through i-ts streets of palaces, searching the palaces them- 
 selves for pictures, which is the chief and pleasantest occupation 
 of the stranger passing through Italian cities. From the best 
 points we had a survey of the town and harbor. The port is 
 very active, and Genoa is growing in population, commerce and 
 wealth. What a country this beautiful Italy would be, if it could 
 drive out the foreigner, if it could shake off ecclesiastical domi- 
 nation, if it could bind itself up into a single nation, if — but there 
 are too many ifs. 
 
 We were glad to find ourselves on the third day out of Genoa 
 on the road along the shore of the Mediterranean. It takes some 
 time to get accustomed to Italian cities and ways. One has too a 
 feeling of loneliness, which custom never entirely overcomes, in 
 a large crowded town, where you know not a soul, and have 
 speech with none but hirelings ; so that, after having " seen all 
 the sights," you are cheered by departure, and smile upon the 
 Cerberus at the gate, who stops your carriage to learn from your 
 passport that you have the right to go. Starting from Genoa in 
 the afternoon, we slept the first night at Chiavari, the second at 
 Massa. The Mediterranean on the right, valleys and hills on 
 the left ; the road winding, mounting, descending with the move- 
 ments of the shore, where land and sea are gently interlocked ; 
 compact towns nestled in the green bosom of valleys, the moun- 
 tains behind, the sea before them ; vines gracefully heavy with 
 purple grapes, festooned from tree to tree ; — these are the chief 
 features of the day-long picture. From Massa, seated by the 
 water, with a shield of marble mountains against the north, we 
 started early on the sunny morning of the 16th of September, 
 wishing to reach Florence before dark. We soon left the sea, 
 and crossing the mountain range, went down on the other side 
 
 I 
 
LUCCA. 73 
 
 into the territory of Lucca, among hills clothed with chestnut and 
 olive, and fields the gardens of Plenty, the sun shining warmly, 
 the earth breathing fragrantly through its leafy abundance. 
 Valery, in his excellent guide-book, recommended to me by 
 Wordsworth (Murray's wasn't yet published) says of Lucca ; — 
 " Un certain perfectionnement social et philosophique parait avoir 
 prevalu pendant long temps dans ce petit etat, qui n 'eut jamais 
 de Jesuites. L'Encyclopedie y fut re-imprimee en 28 vol. folio, 
 1758-71." Surely the Lucchese were wise to keep out the 
 Jesuits ; for priestly venom, which so poisons in Italy the cup of 
 life, festers nowhere to bitterer virulence than in that dehuman- 
 ized corporation. But the letting in of such a flood of French 
 philosophy, as is implied by a reprint of the renowned Encyclopt- 
 die, that was a questionable proceeding. Yet after all, Voltaire, 
 Diderot and their associates sharpened and helped to disenthral 
 the intellect of the Christian world ; they opened the eyes of men, 
 though they could not tell them what it was best to look at. Va- 
 lery, whose book is that of a man of letters, and is a mine of 
 minute historical, biographical and miscellaneous information, lets 
 go no opportunity of bringing France and Frenchmen before his 
 readers. Always cheerful and polished, he is a thorough zealous 
 Frenchman, who neither disturbs nor is himself disturbed by the 
 stifFest nationalism of another. 
 
 While changing horses in Lucca, we were tempted by voluble 
 domestiques de place with enumeration of the sights of the town ; 
 but our eyes and hearts were set upon Florence. The post- 
 master questioned us eagerly, how many carriages were behind. 
 Now is his autumnal harvest. The English, to whom all other 
 travellers are so much indebted for the cleanliness and comfort 
 of the inns on the Continent, are swarming southward. Soon 
 after quitting Lucca we entered Tuscany, — proud Tuscany, in 
 bygone times, the intellectual centre of Italy, the home of her 
 language, the warm nest of genius, the cradle of her giants, of 
 5 
 
74 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Dante, of Michael Angelo, of Bocaccio, of Petrarca, of Leonardo 
 da Vinci, of Machiavelli, of Galileo. By Pistora and Prato, we 
 drove along the south-western base of the Appenines, and through 
 fields closely tilled up to the trunks of the olive, the mulberry, 
 and the vine, and among white villas glistening in the western 
 sun, we approached the high walls of Florence. 
 
 Nature and Art contend the one with the other in beautifying 
 Florence. Except westward, where the Arno flows towards the 
 sea, all about her are gentle hills that have come down from 
 mountains, visible here and there in the distance. The Appenines 
 and the Arno have scooped out a site, which man has made much 
 of. The moment you pass out of almost any one of the gates, 
 smooth gentle paths tempt you up heights, as if eager to exhibit 
 some of the^airest landscapes even of Italy. In twenty or thirty 
 minutes, you turn round to a view embracing the dome-crowned 
 town, with its spacious leafy gardens, and far-stretching valley, 
 and the countless heights and mountains which, bestudded with 
 white villas, churches, convents, and clothed with the vine and 
 olive, lie all round " the most beautiful daughter of Rome." 
 Towards sunset, seen through that purple haze, which gives it a 
 voluptuous, sleepy aspect, the landscape, so beautiful from its 
 forms and combinations, looks almost like an illusion, a magical 
 diorama. Carefully guarded within the walls, are many of the 
 loveliest offspring of the Arts, ever fresh with the grace of genius; 
 without them. Nature unrolls her indestructible beauties, height- 
 ened by Art and the associations of creative thought. Within 
 the same hour, you may stand before the Venus of Cleomenes 
 and on the tower of Galileo, which overlooks Florence and the 
 vale of the Arno ; before the Madonna of Raphael, and on the 
 "top of Fiesole." 
 
 Even where the accumulations of Time are the most choice, 
 the curiosities outnumber by much the beauties ; so that the 
 sight-seer has some weary and almost profitless hours, and re 
 
FLORENCE. 75 
 
 joices occasionally like Sterne, when the keys could not be found 
 of a church he went to see. It is true, sight-showing has become 
 so lucrative, that he seldom has that pleasant disappointment. 
 Neither, on the other hand, does one like to miss anything, nor to 
 do by halves what one has come so far to do. There are things 
 too that are not much in the seeing, but that it is well to carry 
 away the memory of having seen. The rapid traveller through 
 crowded Italy, must therefore work nimbly with body and mind, 
 from morn till night, to accomplish his labor of love. As we 
 have the winter before us in Florence, we proceed here in a more 
 idle and gentlemanly way. 'We can lounge among the marvels 
 of the Pitti and the Uffizii, and let the mood of the moment prompt 
 us what to sit before, without self-reproach, postponing the rest 
 till to-morrow, or next week, or next month ; or we can even let 
 a whole day go over, without setting eyes on a picture or a statue 
 or a church. Some of our first and pleasantest hours were spent 
 in the studios and company of our own sculptors. It is much 
 for a stranger, to have here fellow-countrymen of character and 
 intelligence, who rank with the best as artists. 
 
 The first fortnight after our arrival, the town was enlivened by 
 the presence of a Scientific Congress, numbering nearly nine 
 hundred members, mostly Italians, to whom the amiable Grand 
 Duke did the honors of his capital in graceful and munificent 
 style. Among his hospitalities, was a dinner given at the Poggio 
 Imperiale, one of his villas a mile out of the Roman Gate. Nine 
 hundred guests were received in the suite of elegant drawing- 
 rooms on the first floor, and sat down in the second to tables sup- 
 plied with as much taste as luxury. 'Twas a brilliant animated 
 scene. After dinner, toasts were drank, and short sprightly 
 speeches made amidst vivas and bravos. The guests were all 
 carried to and from the villa in carriages furnished by the host. 
 As we drove back in the evening, my three Italian chance-com- 
 panions vied in commendation of the courtesy and liberality of 
 
76 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 the Grand Duke. At last, one of them, a tall, stout, comfortable 
 shrewd-looking man of about fifty, a priest too, 1 think, informed 
 us, that he had come against orders, for he lived in the dominions 
 of the Pope (who, with the arch-priestly dread of light, prohibits 
 his subjects from attending these Congresses), and that he was 
 the only representative from the papal states. To this disclosure 
 the other two said not a word, and I dare say, what in me rose 
 as a suspicion, mounted in them to pretty nearly a brimming con- 
 viction, namely, that our portly papal fellow-passenger was there 
 for the purpose of taking notes quite other than scientific. 
 
 The crowning scene to the proceedings of the Congress was 
 its last meeting in full session, in the large hall of the old Palace. 
 Seven or eight hundred Italians, educated men, numbers of them 
 men of thought, a noble-looking assemblage of heads. The pur- 
 pose of their meeting I overlooked in the bare fact of such a con- 
 vocation in that hall, where in the olden times of popular so- 
 vereignty were heard the stirring accents of free deliberation. 
 May it be an omen of better days, when an assemblage as large 
 and enlightened shall meet on the same spot for even higher ob- 
 jects, and with the new vivifying feeling, that at last they have 
 become once more thoroughly men ! 
 
 Florence, May, 1842. 
 
 One can lead here for a season an intellectual life without 
 much mental effort, with enough of activity to keep it in a re- 
 ceptive state ; and the mind will lay up stores of impressions, to 
 ripen hereafter into thought. The Past opens to the stranger 
 rich pastures, wherein if he can but feed with healthy instincts, 
 he will assimilate into himself abundantly of the old. The crea- 
 tive spirits of bygone periods invite him to communion ; all they 
 ask of him, is sympathy with their labor. Even the Poets exact 
 not for the enjoyment of them, that vigorous co-operation in the 
 reader, which Wordsworth justly intimates is necessary from 
 
CLIMATE. 77 
 
 his. The best Italian poetry is more superficial than the best 
 English. It is based upon, not also impregnated throughout with 
 thought. It has more of music and sentiment, of form and grace. 
 Only Dante obliges you to gather yourself up as for a fraternal 
 wrestle. Alfieri at first somewhat, until you have found the key 
 to his mind, which has not many wards. 
 
 A scale of the occupations, pastimes, idleness, of a semi-pas- 
 sive half year in Florence, would have at its basis the walks and 
 drives in the Cascine and environs. But first, a word about the 
 climate. It is much like ours of the middle states, except that 
 our winter is colder and drier. An American is surprised at this 
 similarity on arriving in Italy, having got his notions from English 
 writers, who, coming from their cloudy northern island, are en- 
 chanted with the sunny temperance of an Italian winter, and op- 
 pressed by the heats of summer. The heat is not greater than 
 it is in Maryland, and our winter is finer, certainly than that of 
 Florence, being drier, and though colder, at the same time sun- 
 nier. As with us, the autumn, so gloomy in England, is cheer- 
 ful, clear, and calm, holding on till Christmas. They have 
 hardly more than two cold months. Already in March the spring 
 is awake, and soon drives back Winter, first into the highest 
 Appenines, where he clings for a brief space, and thence retreats 
 up to the topmost Alps, not to reappear for nine or ten months. 
 Nor is that beautiful child of the light and air, the Italian sunset, 
 more beautiful than the American. 
 
 Walking or driving ; — the opera, theatre, and company ; — the 
 galleries of painting and sculpture, and the studios of artists ; — 
 reading and study at home. Thus and in this gradation would I 
 divide the hours of a man of leisure in Florence, especially if he 
 be one whose nerves oblige him to lead a life of much more gen- 
 tlemanly idleness, than with a perfectly eupeptic stomach he 
 would choose. I put walking and driving first, as being, although 
 the most innocent, the most absolute forms of idleness. The 
 
78 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Caserne, a public promenade, just out of the western gate of the 
 town, stretching a couple of miles down the right bank of the 
 Arno, cannot be surpassed in situation and resources by anything 
 similar in Europe. In warm weather, you have close shade, and 
 in cold, the sun all along the margin of the stream, with a hedge 
 and groves of pine and ilex as a cover against the tramontana or 
 north wind. Thither on Sundays and other holidays resort the 
 people at large, and every day in fine weather, the free and the 
 fashionable, including among the former, monks, white and 
 brown, whom I see here almost daily in shoals, with a sigh at the 
 waste of so much fine muscle. 
 
 On the Continent, not a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, — 
 nay, of fifteen or ten, but has its theatre, for operas or comedies 
 at stated seasons. Music and the theatre are not, as with us, an 
 occasional accidental amusement, but an habitual resource : they 
 have an honorable place in the annual domestic budget, even of 
 families of small means. Music is part of the mental food of the 
 Italians. It is to them a substitute for the stronger aliment of 
 freer countries. May it not be, that the bounds set to mental 
 development in other spheres, are in part the cause of the fuller 
 cultivation of this ? Nature always strives to compensate herself 
 for losses and lesions. Life, if ccamped on one side, will often 
 swell proportionably in another. Music has been to Italy a solace 
 and a vent in her long imprisonment. This is not, of course, an 
 endeavor to account for the origin of musical genius in Italy : 
 original aptitudes lie far deeper than human reason can ever 
 sound : but, that the people has musical habits, is probably in a 
 measure owing to such influences, I don't remember ever to 
 have heard an Italian whistle. They are too musical, the empti- 
 est of them, for that arid futility. They sing as they go for want 
 of thought ; and late at night 'tis most cheerful to hear, moving 
 through the street, laden with airs from operas, mellow voices 
 that die sweetly away in the stillness, to be followed by others, 
 
 
MUSIC. 79 
 
 sometimes several in chorus. To me there is always something 
 soothing and hopeful in this spontaneous buoyant melody, the final 
 sounds of the Italian's day. 
 
 As nothing in Art is more marketable than musical talent, 
 London and Paris take, and keep, to themselves the first adepts. 
 To the gifted songsters of the South, — whose warmth seems essen- 
 tial to the perfecting of the human musical organ, — showers of 
 gold make amends for showers of orange-blossoms ; and the daz- 
 zling illumination of palaces and sumptuous theatres, for the bril- 
 liancy of their native sky. Italy scarcely hears, in the fulness 
 of their powers, her Pastas, Malibrans, Grisis, Lablaches, Rubinis. 
 Their gifts once discerned, they are wafted across the Alps, to 
 share the caresses, the triumphs, the largesses of the great 
 northern capitals. When their career is run, the most of them 
 come back to their never- forgotten home. The dear, beautiful, 
 sorrow-stricken mother, who gave them their cradles, — and who 
 alone could give them, — gives them too a tomb. Florence there- 
 fore has no richly equipt opera. In Italy itself, Naples and Milan 
 have choice before her. 
 
 The Opera is not a perfectly pure form of Art. It is a forced 
 marriage between language and action on the one side, and music. 
 The poetry of the language is smothered by the music, while on 
 the other hand words often clog the wings of melody. Language 
 and action are definite, music is vague. In their union, the 
 indefiniteness of music is resisted, the distinctness of words is 
 obliterated by a haze, albeit a golden haze. In the compromise, 
 whereby the union is brought about, some violence is done to the 
 nature of each. The effect of music is best when its source is 
 invisible. This mode of presentation accords with its nature ; 
 for music is a voice from the depths of the infinite, — a disembodied 
 spirit, delivering its message through the least substantial medium 
 of access, — sound. The glaring showiness, the pomp and cor- 
 poreal effort of the stage, are an obstruction to its airy aspirations. 
 
80 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 While to the dramatic reality the music imparts a lightness and 
 poetic transparence, by these coarse material forms some of its 
 own life is absorbed. Of all Art the genuine effect is, to exalt 
 the tone of the mind, to refine its temper. Even the knowledge 
 communicated is but incidental, altogether subsidiary to a fruit- 
 fuller gain. Facts, history. Art uses merely as vehicles, to con- 
 vey to the mind its offerings of beauty. The results of Art are 
 not, like scientific acquirements, tangible, measureable ; they 
 are chiefly in the mood awakened. The deepest, grandest truths, 
 which it is the function of Art to reveal and illustrate, are pre. 
 sented in an indirect way. A noble poem leaves the mind of the 
 reader in an expanded state. He feels a higher, clearer con- 
 sciousness of life, a broader hope, a refreshed content. Available 
 facts have not been piled away in his memory ; but his best sus- 
 ceptibilities have been stimulated ; his nature has been attuned 
 on a higher key than common ; he has a quickened sensation of 
 freedom, of nobility. He is lifted into a higher state of being, 
 and in that state is apter for the performance of all practical 
 duties. Herein consists the noble usefulness of poetry, of Art. 
 This mental exaltation, this disenthralment of the spirit from all 
 gross bonds, good music especially never fails to produce. Its 
 opening voice is a grateful summons to the spiritual part of our 
 nature. The glare, bustle and complex movements of the stage, 
 make a confusion of effects. The spectacle, busying the senses, 
 unstrings the rapt intentness of the spirit. The joyful calm 
 and solemnity of the religious mood, always created by the best 
 music, is ruffled. 
 
 For a really good society, two things are requisite ; a high state 
 of culture, and the habitual re-union of the most cultivated through 
 genial and intellectual sympathies. But as social distinctions, in 
 part factitious, prevail even in republican countries, this fusion 
 into unity under high Influences, is nowhere more than partially 
 practicable. Gross and accidental advantages are still prized, — 
 
SOCIETY. 81 
 
 and that even by the intellectual, — above those that are inherent 
 and refined. They who possess, watch them jealously. Instead 
 of the salve, printed in large letters on Goethe's threshold, they 
 would like to inscribe on theirs, " No admittance to strangers;" 
 that is, to those who hav'n't the same interests to guard. Against 
 a partition of their power, they in various ways protest ; and now 
 with the more emphasis, from a perception of the growing disre- 
 gard of them. The land of Promise, where men and things shall 
 be valued at their just worth, is much too remote for its remote- 
 ness to be measured ; and we can only discover that we are less 
 far from it, by a comparison of where we are with where we have 
 been, — a comparison which, if made broadly and with a free 
 spirit, will, in other domains of life as well as in this, induce 
 hopefulness and trust. 
 
 The second requisite, therefore, is found, from general causes, 
 as little in Florence as elsewhere, and less than in the great capi- 
 tals. As to the first, Florence has its creditable circle of men 
 of Letters, Science, and Art. But while with those to whom rank 
 and affluence give opportunities of education, they are but slen- 
 derly connected, they are at the same time sundered from the 
 masses ; they and the multitude cannot duly co-operate ; their 
 light scarcely pierces the blighting shade cast upon the people by 
 the tangled brambles of priestly abuse. A community under 
 Roman ecclesiastical dominion, cannot attain to the highest state 
 of culture possible in its age. By the growth and diffusion of 
 knowledge, through the long peace and the intercommunication 
 among nations, the bonds of episcopal tyranny have been some- 
 what loosened in the Italian states. The body of the scientific 
 and literary men have of course always lived in secret protest 
 against this curse. But though they hate the tyrants and con- 
 temn their impostures, they cannot escape from them. The mind 
 is stinted and thwarted in its wants and aspirations. Thought 
 itself, free in the dungeon and on the rack, languishes where it 
 5* 
 
82 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 has not free utterance by speech and pen. That under this long 
 double load of political and religious despotism, the Italians have 
 still kept alive the sacred fire of knowledge ; have, through the 
 thickest atmosphere, shot up into the sky, high enough for all 
 Europe to see them, lights, poetic and scientific, proves, what deep 
 sources of life, what elasticity and tenacity of nature there are in 
 this oppressed people. Let those who for their abject state would 
 despise them, think of this, and they will perhaps wonder that the 
 Italians are not even more prostrate. 
 
 The political despotism to which Tuscany was subjected by the 
 first Medici, has been, since the extinction of that bad breed, a 
 paternal one, under a branch of the house of Austria. Still, 
 though mild and forbearing in the hands of the present worthy 
 Grand Duke, and his father, so justly beloved by the Tuscans, it 
 is a despotism (and nothing else would be permitted by the other 
 states of Italy), and as such, crushes in the people some of the 
 richest elements of life. Florence, therefore, cannot be in advance 
 of its sisters in social organization and spirit. Like other cities 
 of its compass, it has nothing better than what, by a combination 
 of the figures Amplification and Hyperbole, is termed " Good 
 Society," composed here, as elsewhere, by those who have inherit- 
 ed, or by wealth acquired, social rank ; embracing in Florence, 
 besides the native noblesse and diplomatic corps, a large body of 
 " nobility and gentry," — in the phrase of the English newspa- 
 pers, — from other lands, who for a season take up their abode in 
 the Tuscan capital. The occupation of this circle is idleness. 
 Start not at the apparent solecism. It is but apparent ; for, to 
 people who are not urged to exertion either by body or spirit ; 
 whose infinite natures are in a measure circumscribed within the 
 animal bounds of the ephemera of the fields, their whole life 
 revolving in a quick diurnal orbit ; whose minds, left void by 
 exemption, — not, however, entirely wilful, — from active duties 
 and labors, are obliged, in order to oppose the pressure of time, 
 
THE GALLERIES. 83 
 
 literally to make something out of nothing ; to people thus dislo- 
 cated from the busy- order of nature, it becomes an occupation, 
 requiring method and forethought, to resist the weight of their 
 waking hours, and maintain the daily fight with ennui. Their 
 insipidity of life is seasoned by a piquant ingredient, supplied by 
 clouds of little cupids, — imps that, with their inborn perverseness, 
 choose here to hover over nuptial couches, assaulting the hymeneal 
 citadel with such vigor, that all, says dame Gossip, have not 
 strength to withstand them. Their chief public performances 
 are, to support the opera, and adorn the Cascine with their 
 equipages and toilettes. 
 
 The Galleries of Painting and Sculpture come next in the scale, 
 on which I have subdivided the hours of a stranger's Florentine 
 sojourn. They might, without inaccuracy, take their place under 
 the head of company. Genuine works of Art speak to you more 
 clearly than most tongue-wagging speakers. In them is a soul 
 which puts itself at once in connexion with yours. When at 
 Antwerp, I never walked on the ramparts without feeling what 
 companionship there was in the spire of the Cathedral : the mind 
 felt its presence constantly and cordially. A shot-tower, you 
 will say, of equal height, that met the eyes whenever they were 
 turned towards the town, would have been just as much company. 
 With this difference : that the one would be the company of a 
 ponderous bore, the other, that of a buoyant poet. 
 
 Whenever your mood is that way bent, you betake yourself to 
 the Grand Duke's residence, the Pitti Palace. Passing through 
 its wide portal, you ascend, under the guidance of civil guards, 
 by broad flights of steps, to a suite of spacious apartments, where 
 are lodged Raphael, and Titian, and Claude, and Rubens, and 
 Leonardo da Vinci, and Guido. From room to room, through a 
 long series, you converse with these great spirits for hours together 
 if you choose. Every day in the year, except Sundays and holi- 
 days, these refulgent rooms are thus courteously thrown open. 
 
84 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 The servant at the door, who takes charge of your cane or 
 umbrella, is not permitted even to accept anything for the service. 
 A noble hospitality is this, to which strangers are so accustomed that 
 they do not always duly value it. The Gallery attached to the 
 old Palace over the Uffizii, where is the Tribune with its priceless 
 treasures, daily invites the stranger in the same liberal way. 
 
 Among the studios of living Artists, the most attractive natu- 
 rally to an American, are those of his fellow countrymen. Nor 
 do they need national partiality to make them attractive. The 
 first American who gained a reputation in the severest of the 
 Fine Arts was Greenough. For some years he was the only 
 sculptor we had, and worthily did he lead the van in a field 
 where triumphs awaited us. I happened, five or six years ago, to 
 travel from Boston southward with him and Powers, and heard 
 Greenough then warmly second Powers' inclination, and urge 
 him to hasten to Italy. Powers was soon followed by Clevinger, 
 who, in turn, received from him encouraging words. The three 
 are now working here harmoniously together. 
 
 Artists of merit have seldom much to show at their rooms ; for 
 their works are either made to order, and sent to their destina- 
 tions as fast as finished, or they are sold almost as soon as seen. 
 Sculptors have an advantage over painters, inasmuch as they 
 retain the plaster casts after which each work is chiselled in marble. 
 As Greenough does not always finish the clay model up to the 
 full design in his mind, but leaves the final touches to the chisel 
 itself, he is not forward to exhibit his casts taken from the clay, 
 the prototypes of the forms that have been distributed to different 
 quarters of the world. He has just now in his studio, recently 
 finished in marble for a Hungarian nobleman, an exquisite figure 
 of a child, seated on a bank gazing at a butterfly, that has just 
 lighted on the back of its upraised hand. In the conception there 
 is that union of simplicity and significance, so requisite to make 
 a work of plastic Art, especially of sculpture, effective, and 
 
GREENOUGH. 85 
 
 which denotes the genial Artist. The attitude of the figure 
 has the pliable grace of unconscious childhood ; the limbs are 
 nicely wrought ; and the intelligence, curiosity, delight, implied 
 and expressed in its gaze at the beautiful little winged wonder 
 before it, impart vividly to the work the moral element ; wanting 
 the which, a production, otherwise commendable, is not lifted 
 up to one of the high platforms of Art. The mind of the specta- 
 tor is drawn into that of the beautiful child, whose inmost facul- 
 ties are visibly budding in the effort to take in the phenomenon 
 before it. The perfect bodily stillness of the little flexible figure, 
 under the control of its mental intentness, is denoted by the 
 coming forth of a lizard from the side of the bank. This is one 
 of those delicate touches whereby the artist knows how to beautify 
 and heighten the chief effect. 
 
 Another work of high character, which Greenough is just 
 about to finish in marble, is a head of Lucifer, of colossal size. 
 The countenance has the beauty of an archangel, with the hard, 
 uncertain look of an archangel fallen. Here is a noble mould 
 not filled up with the expression commensurate to it. There is 
 no exaggeration to impress the beholder at once with the malevo- 
 lence of the original which the sculptor had in his imagination. 
 The sinister nature lies concealed, as it were, in the features, 
 and comes out gradually, after they have been some time contem- 
 plated. The beauty of the countenance is not yet blasted by the 
 deformity of the mind. 
 
 Greenough's Washington had left Italy before my arrival in 
 Florence. By those best qualified to judge, it was here esteemed 
 a fine work. Let me say a few words about the nudity of this 
 statue, for which it has been much censured in America. 
 
 Washington exemplifies the might of principle. He was a 
 great man without ambition, and the absence of ambition was a 
 chief source of his greatness. The grandeur of his character is 
 infinitely amplified by its abstract quality j that is, by its clean- 
 
86 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 ness from all personality. Patriotism, resting on integrity of soul 
 and broad massive intellect, is in him uniquely embodied. The 
 purity and elevation of his nature were the basis of his success. 
 Had his rare military and civil genius been united to the selfish- 
 ness of a Cromwell, they would have lost much of their effective- 
 ness upon a generation warring for the rights of man. Not these, 
 but the unexampled union of these with uprightness, with stain- 
 less disinterestedness, made him Washington. If the Artist 
 clothes him with the toga of civil authority, he represents the 
 great statesman ; if with uniform and spurs, the great General. 
 Representing him in either of these characters, he gives prefer, 
 ence to the one over the other, and his image of Washington is 
 incomplete, for he was both. But he was more than either or 
 both ; he was a truly great man, in whom statesmanship and 
 generalship were subordinate to supreme nobleness of mind and 
 moral power. The majesty of his nature, the immortality of his 
 name, as of one combining the morally sublime with commanding 
 practical genius, demand the purest form of artistic represehta- 
 tion, — the nude. To invest the colossal marble image of so tow- 
 ering, so everlasting a man, with the insignia of temporary office, 
 is to fail in presenting a complete image of him. Washington, 
 to be best seen, ought to be beheld, not as he came from the hand 
 of the tailor, but as he came from the hand of God. Thus, the 
 image of him will be at once real and ideal. 
 
 That Greenough's fellow-countrymen, by whose order this 
 statue was made, would have preferred it draped, ought to be of 
 no weight, even if such a wish had accompanied the order. To 
 the true Artist, the laws of Art are supreme against all wishes 
 or commands. He is the servant of Art only. If, bending to 
 the uninformed will of his employers, he executes commissions in 
 a way that is counter to the requirements of Art, he sinks from 
 the Artist into the artisan. Nor can he, by stooping to unculti- 
 vated tastes, popularize Art; he deadens it, and so makes it 
 
GREENOUGH. 87 
 
 ineffective. But by presenting it to the general gaze in its severe 
 simplicity, and thus, through grandeur and beauty of form, lifting 
 the beholder up into the ideal region of Art, — by this means he 
 can popularize it. He gradually awakens and creates a love 
 for it, and thus he gains a wide substantial support to Art in the 
 sympathy for it engendered, the which is the only true further- 
 ance from without that the Artist can receive. 
 
 A statue which is a genuine work of Art, cannot be appreci- 
 ated, — nay, cannot be seen, without thought. The imagination 
 must be active in the beholder, must work with the perception. 
 Otherwise, what he looks at, is to him only a superficial piece 
 of handicraft. The form before him should breed in him con- 
 jecture of its inward nature and capacity, and by its beauty or 
 stamp of intellect and soul, lead him up into the domain of human 
 possibilities. The majestic head and figure of Washington will 
 reveal and confirm the greatness of his character, for the body 
 is the physiognomy of the mind. That broad mould of limbs, 
 that stern calmness, that dignity of brow, will carry the mind 
 beyond the scenes of the revolution, and swell the heart with 
 thoughts and hopes of the nobleness and destiny of man. Let 
 the beholder contemplate this great statue calmly and thoughtfully; 
 let him, by dint of contemplation, raise himself up to the point 
 of view of the artist, and it will have on him something of this 
 high effect. He will forget that Washington ever wore a coat, 
 and will turn away from this noble colossal form in a mood that 
 will be wholesome to his mental state. 
 
 This attempt to justify Greenough's work by no means implies 
 a condemnation of other conceptions for a statue of Washington. 
 A colossal figure, — but partially draped, — seated, the posture of 
 repose and authority, — Greenough's conception, seems to me the 
 most elevated and appropriate. Artists have still scope for a 
 figure, entirely draped in military or civil costume, on horse- 
 
SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 back or standing. Only, this representation of Washington will 
 not be so high and complete as the other. 
 
 Powers left America with a goodly cargo of busts in plaister, 
 carrying them to Italy, there to execute them in marble. With 
 these he opened his studio in Florence. The first that were 
 finished he sent to the public exhibition. All eyes were at once 
 drawn to them. Here was something totally new. Here was 
 a completeness of imitation, a fidelity to nature never before ap- 
 proached, never aimed at by modern sculptors. Even the most 
 delicate blood-vessels, the finest wrinkles, were traceable in the 
 clear marble. Nor did the effect of the whole seem to be there- 
 by marred. People knew not whether their astonishment ought 
 to pass into admiration or censure. The Italian sculptors gath- 
 ered themselves up. This man's Art and theirs were irreconcile- 
 able. They felt, — we must crush him, or he will overmaster 
 us. They crowded the next exhibition with their best busts. 
 Powers too was there. In the Tuscan capital, a young American 
 sculptor not merely contended publicly with a host of artists for 
 superiority ; he defied to mortal combat the Italian school in this 
 department of Art as taught by Canova. It was a conflict not 
 for victory solely, but for life. Where would be the triumph, 
 was not long doubtful. Powers' busts grew more and more upon 
 the public eye. The longer they were looked at, the stronger 
 they grew. By the light they shed upon the art of sculpture, 
 the deficiencies of their rivals became for the first time fully 
 apparent. Connoisseurs discovered, that they had hitherto been 
 content with what was flat and lifeless. 
 
 The principle of the academic style of bust-making, thus sud- 
 denly supplanted, was, to merge the minor details into the larger 
 traits, and to attempt to elevate, — to idealize was the phrase, — 
 the subject, by preserving only the general form and outline. 
 The result was, that busts were mostly faithless and insipid, their 
 insipidity being generally in proportion to their unfaithfulness. 
 
POWERS. 89 
 
 Powers made evident, that the finest traits contribute to the indi- 
 viduality of character ; that the slightest divergence from the 
 particularities of form vitiates the expression ; that the only good 
 basis of a bust is the closest adherence to the material form, as 
 well in detail as in gross. So much for the groundwork. Hand 
 in hand with this physical fidelity, must go the vital fidelity ; 
 that is, a power to seize life as it plays on that beautiful marvel, 
 the human countenance. From the depth of the soul comes 
 the expression on the countenance ; only from the depth of a soul 
 flooded with sensibility, can come the power to reproduce this 
 tremulous mystical surface. Nay, this susceptibility is needed 
 for the achievement of the physical fidelity itself. Without it, 
 the lines harden and stiffen under the most acute and precise per- 
 ception. Finally, to this union of accuracy in copying the very 
 mould and shape of the features, with sympathy for the various 
 life that animates them, must be added the sense of the Beauti- 
 ful. This is the decisive gift, that turns the other rich faculties 
 into endowments for Art. 
 
 The Beautiful underlies the roughest as well as the fairest 
 products of Nature. It is the seed of creation. In all living 
 things this seed bears fruit. In the embryo of each there is a 
 potentiality, so to speak, to be beautiful, not entirely fulfilled in 
 the most perfect developments, not entirely defaced in the most 
 deformed. This spirit of beauty, resplendent at times to the 
 dullest senses, lambent or latent in all living forms, pervading 
 creation, this spirit is the vitality of the Artist. In it he has his 
 being. His inward life is a perpetual yearning for the Beauti- 
 ful ; his outward, an endeavor to grasp and embody its forms ; 
 his happiness is, to minister in its service ; his ecstasy, the 
 glimpses he is vouchsafed of its divine splendors. 
 
 As sympathy with the motions of life is needed, to copy physi- 
 cal forms, so this loving intimacy with the Beautiful is needed, 
 to refine and to guide this sympathy. In short, a lively sense of 
 
90 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 the Beautiful is requisite, not merely to produce out of the mind 
 an ideal head, — an act so seldom really performed, — but likewise, 
 to reproduce a living head. He who would copy a countenance 
 must know it. To know a human face, — what a multiplex pro- 
 found knowledge ! Not enough is it, to have a shrewd discrimi- 
 nating eye for forms ; not enough, to peer beneath the surface 
 through the shifting expression. To get knowledge of any in- 
 dividual thing, we must start with a general standard. You 
 cannot judge of a man's height, unless you bring with you a 
 generic idea of measures and a notion of manly stature. So of 
 a man's mind, — though the process be so much deeper, — and so 
 too of his head and face. A preconceived idea of the human 
 countenance in its fullest capability of form and expression, an 
 aboriginal standard must illuminate the vision that aims to take 
 in a complete image of any face. What mind can compass this 
 deep-lying idea, except one made piercing, transparent, " vision- 
 ary," by an intense inborn love of beauty ? Each face is, so to 
 speak, an offshoot from a type ; each is a partial incarnation of 
 an ideal, all ideals springing of course out of the domain of 
 Beauty. It is only by being able to go back to this ideal, which 
 stands again closely linked with the one, final, primeval, perfect 
 idea of the human countenance ; it is only by thus mastering, I 
 may say, the original possibility of each face, that you can fully 
 discern its characteristics, its essential difference from other 
 faces — learn why it is as it is and not otherwise. A vivid, elec- 
 tric sensibility to the Beautiful, in active co-operation with the 
 other powers, is the penetrating, magnifying telescope wherewith 
 alone the vision is carried into the primitive fields of being. 
 Thus is every face, even the most mis-shapen, brought within 
 the circle of the Beautiful ; cannot be fully seen, cannot be 
 thoroughly known, until it is brought within that circle. Under 
 the homeliest, commonest countenance, there is an inner lamp 
 of unrevealed beauty, casting up at times into the features 
 
POWERS. 91 
 
 gleams of its light. These translucent moments, — its truest and 
 best states, — the Artist must seize, in order to effect a full like- 
 ness. This is the genuine idealisation. And these states he 
 cannot even perceive without the subtle expansive sense of the 
 Beautiful. 
 
 The unexampled excellence of Powers's busts was soon ac- 
 knowledged. In this department of Art, the Italian sculptors 
 yielded to him the first place. Thorwaldsen, on comino-, 
 astonished, out of Powers's studio, declared that he could not 
 make such busts, that there were none superior to them, ancient 
 or Qiodern. The cry now rose, that Powers could make busts, 
 he could copy nature, but nothing more. This false inference 
 sprang not wholly from jealousy, but in part from the false school 
 of Art long dominant in Italy, where students were taught to 
 study the antique more than Nature ; whereby the perceptions 
 and mental powers became so weakened and sophisticated, that it 
 was no longer felt, what a task, how high and intense it is, truly 
 and vitally to copy Nature. Conceive what is a human counte- 
 nance, — the most wonderful work of God that our eyes can come 
 close to ! What an harmonious blending of diverse forms, what 
 a compact constellation of beaming features, what concentrated 
 life, what power, what variety, what unfathomable significance, 
 in that jewelled crown of the body, that transparent earthly tem- 
 ple of the soul ! Adequately to represent this masterpiece of 
 divine workmanship, what a deed ! He who can reproduce it in 
 its full life and truth and character, must be a great Artist ; that 
 is, a re-maker, in a degree, of God's works, — a poet, a creator. 
 To copy Nature, forsooth ; the words are very simple : the act is 
 one of deep insight, of noble labor, anything but a superficial work. 
 He who performs it well, co- works with Nature, his mind exalted 
 the while by poetic fervor. Hence none but Artists of the first 
 class have left good portraits. 
 
 The faculty for the Ideal is then indispensable to the execution 
 
92 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 of a good bust. It is the key-stone which binds the other endow- 
 ments into the beautiful arch, whereby works of human hands 
 grow stronger with time. The basis in plastic Art is always, 
 unerring accuracy in rendering physical forms. Sense of beauty 
 and correctness of drawing, are thus the two extremes of the 
 Artist's means. Between them, — and needed to link them in 
 effective union, — is fullness of sensibility, to sympathize with and 
 seize the expression of, all the passions and emotions of the soul. 
 These, with imitative talent and manual dexterity, embrace the 
 powers needed as well in the portrait- artist as in him whose sub- 
 jects are inventions. I speak of the plastic Artist without distin- 
 guishing the sculptor from the painter. The difference between 
 them is in the inequality of their endowment with the faculties of 
 form and color ; the sculptor requiring a severer eye for form 
 than the painter, and dispensing with an eye for color. The mo- 
 ment the Artist begins, by the working of his imagination, to 
 compose a subject, then comes into active play the Reason ; the 
 faculty whereby, in every department of work, prosaic as well as 
 poetic, the mind selects and adapts, — the faculty whereby the 
 means within reach are picked and arranged for the completest 
 attainment of the end in view. This, it seems to me, is the only 
 power needed in larger measure for the artist who composes 
 groups, than for him who would make the best portrait. 
 
 It is the completeness of his endowment with all the requisites 
 for sculpture, that stamps Powers with greatness. In the circle 
 of his genial gifts there is no chasm. They are compactly knit 
 together. To his ends they all co-operate smoothly, through that 
 marvellous instrument, the human hand. Such is the precision 
 of his eye, that he who exacts of himself the most faithful con- 
 formity to Nature's measurements, never needs the help of com- 
 passes to attain it. Such his sense of the Beautiful, that he does 
 justice to the most beautiful countenance, and has given a new 
 grace even to draperies. Such his sympathy with life, that with 
 
POWERS 93 
 
 equal ease he seizes the expressions of all kinds of physiognomies, 
 so that you cannot say that he does men better than women, old 
 better than young ; and hereby, in conjunction with his mimetic 
 talent, he imparls such an elastic look to his marble flesh, that the 
 spiritual essence, wherewith all Nature's living forms are vivified, 
 may be imagined to stream from his finger-ends while he works. 
 Such his manual dexterity, that in twenty hours he can turn out 
 one of these great busts in its unparalleled completeness. And 
 as if nothing should be wanting which could serve in his calling. 
 Nature has bestowed on him a talent, I may call it a genius, for 
 Mechanics, which, — had it not been overborne by superior facul- 
 ties, destined to lift him up into the highest field of human labor, 
 — would have gained for him a name and living as an inventive 
 and practical machinist. It is now the pliant servant of nobler 
 qualities ; helping him to modelling tools, to facilities and secu- 
 rities for the elevation or removal of clay models, and to other 
 contrivances in the economy of his studio. 
 
 Powers had not been long established in Floi'ence, ere he set 
 about his first statue, the Eve. This work was planned before he 
 came to Italy. Almost precisely as it stands now embodied in 
 attitude and character, he described to me in America the image 
 he had there evolved in his mind. The figure is above the ave- 
 rage height, undraped and nearly erect. The only support it has 
 from without is a broken stem by the side of the left leg, repre- 
 senting the tree whence the fruit has just been plucked. On this 
 leg is thrown the weight, the other being slightly bent at the knee. 
 The head, inclined to the right, follows the eyes, which are fixed 
 upon the apple, held in the right hand, raised to the level of the 
 breast. The left arm hangs by the side, the left hand holding a 
 twig of the tree with two apples and leaves attached. The hair, 
 parted in the middle and thrown behind the ears, falls in a com- 
 pact mass on the back. Round the outer edge of the circular 
 plot of grass and flowers, which is the sole basis of the statue, 
 
94 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 coils the serpent, who rears his head within a few inches of the 
 right leg, looking up towards the face of Eve. 
 
 Here, without a fold of drapery to weaken or conceal any of 
 Nature's lineaments, is the mature figure of a woman ; nearly 
 erect, the posture most favorable to beauty and perfectness of 
 proportion ; the body unconsciously arrested in this upright atti- 
 tude by the mind's intentness ; while the deed over which she 
 broods, without disturbing the complete bodily repose, gives occu- 
 pation to each hand and arm, throwing thereby more life as well 
 into them as into the whole figure. Thus intent and tranquil, 
 she stands within the coil of the serpent, whose smooth but fiery 
 folds and crest depict animal fierceness, and contrast deeply with 
 the female humanity above him. Both for moral and physical 
 effect the best moment is chosen, the awful pause between obedi- 
 ence and disobedience. Her fresh feet pressing the flowers of 
 Eden, Eve, still in her innocent nakedness, is fascinated against 
 her purer will, — the mother and type of mankind, within whose 
 bosom is ever waging the conflict between good and evil. What 
 fullness combined with what simplicity in this conception, which 
 bespeaks the richest resources of imagination under guidance 
 of the severest purity of taste. 
 
 How shall I describe the execution ? Knowledge and skill far 
 exceeding mine, would fall short of transmitting through words 
 an image of this marvel of beauty. The most that the pen can 
 do before a master-piece of the pencil or chisel, is, to give a vivid 
 impression of the effect it makes on the beholder, and a faint one 
 of the master-piece itself. 
 
 In executing his Eve, Powers has had twenty or thirty models. 
 From one he took an ankle, from another a shoulder, a fragment 
 from the flank of a third ; and so on throughout, extracting his 
 own preconceived image piece by piece out of Nature. From 
 such a labor even a good Artist would recoil, baffled, disheartened. 
 To none but a supreme genius does Nature accord such familiari- 
 
POWERS. 95 
 
 ty. With instantaneous discernment his eyes detect where she 
 comes short, and where her subtle spirit of beauty has wrought 
 itself out. He seizes each scrap of perfection, rejects all the 
 rest, and so, out of a score of models, re-compounds one of Na- 
 ture's own originals. Such is the movement on the surface, that 
 the statue has the look of having been wrought from within out- 
 ward. With such truth is rendered the flexible expression im- 
 parted to flesh and blood by the vital workings, that the great 
 internal processes might be inferred from such an exterior. The 
 organs of animal life are at play within that elastic trunk ; there 
 is smooth pulsation beneath that healthy rotundity of limb. The 
 capacity and wonderful nature of the human form fill the mind 
 as you gaze at this union of force, lightness, and buoyant grace. 
 In spite of that smooth feminine roundness of mould, such visible 
 power and springiness are in the frame and limbs, that, though 
 now so still, the figure makes you think of Eve as bounding over 
 shrub and rivulet, a dazzling picture of joyous beauty. Then, 
 again, as the eye passes up to the countenance, with its dim ex- 
 pression of mingled thought dnd emotion, the current of feeling 
 changes, and the human mind, with its wondrous endowments, 
 absorbs for awhile the beholder. But mark ; it is by the power 
 of Beauty that he is wrought upon. Through this, humanity 
 stands ennobled before him. By this, the human form and capa- 
 bility are dilated. This awakens delight, breeds suggestion. By 
 means of this, the effect of the statue is full, various ; its signifi- 
 cance infinite. Take away its beauty, and all is a blank. The 
 statue ceases to be. 
 
 The head of Eve is a new head. As it is beautiful, it is Gre- 
 cian ; but it recalls no Greek model. Nor Venus, nor Juno, nor 
 Niobe, can claim that she helped to nurse it. Not back to any 
 known form does it carry the mind ; it summons it to compass a 
 new one. It is a fresh emanation from the deep bosom of Art. 
 In form and expression, in feature and contour, in the blending of 
 
96 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 beauties into a radiant unity, it is a new Ideal, as pure as it is 
 inexhaustible. Lightly it springs into its place from the bosom 
 and shoulders. These flow into the trunk and arms, and these 
 again into the lower limbs, with such graceful strength, that the 
 wholeness of the work is the idea that establishes itself among 
 the first upon the mind of the beholder. To the hollow of a foot, 
 to the nail of a finger, every part is finished with the most labo- 
 rious minuteness. Yet, nowhere hardness. From her scattered 
 stores of beauty Nature supplied the details ; with an infallible 
 eye, the Artist culled them, and transferred them with a hand 
 whose firm precision was ever guided by grace. The Natural 
 and the Ideal here blend into one act, their essences interfused for 
 the unfolding of a full blossom of beauty. 
 
 What terms are left to speak of the Venus of the Tribune ? 
 None stronger are needed than such as are used in speaking of 
 the Eve of Powers. Let who will cry presumption at him who 
 places them side by side. Art always in the end vindicates her 
 favorite children. The Eve need fear comparison with none of 
 them. 
 
 The clay model of Eve being finished, Powers's mind is busy 
 with another work, also a single female figure, which he will set 
 about immediately. It will represent a modern Greek captive, 
 exposed in the slave-market of Constantinople. Like Eve, the 
 figure will be without drapery ; like her, it will not fail to be a 
 model of female beauty, though in frame, size, age, character 
 and expression, altogether different. 
 
 Clevinger has been here but a short time, and is zealously at 
 work upon the crowd of busts which he brought with him from 
 America, and several that he has modelled in Florence. Among 
 the former is a fine one of Allston ; among the latter, one of 
 Louis Bonaparte, ex-king of Holland, so admirably executed, that 
 it awakens regret that there is none of equal fidelity extant of the 
 Emperor Napoleon. 
 
BROWN AND KELLOGG. 97 
 
 Two American painters are established here, who give promise 
 of reaching a high exeellence ; Brown and Kellogg. Brown 
 devotes himself chiefly to landscapes, for which he displays rare 
 aptitude. He has just finished a view of Florence, admirable in 
 all respects, but chiefly for the truth with which it gives the rich 
 hue of the Italian evening sky. An evidence of his gifts for this 
 department, is the style in which he copies Claude Lorraine, repro- 
 ducing the character, tone, and magical coloring of that great 
 Artist with a fidelity that might impose upon a practised connois- 
 seur. 
 
 Kellogg, by the progress he has made since he came to Flo- 
 rence, has shown that his ability is equal to his zeal. With an 
 empty purse, and a spirit devoted to Art, he landed in Italy 
 eighteen months since. In that period his genius, through indus- 
 try and judicious study, has developed itself in a way that gives 
 assurance that he will reach a high rank. 
 
 I will conclude this Florentine chapter with a few chips of 
 " fragments" picked up in that division, which the despotism of 
 nerves over the intellectual as well as the physical man, obliged 
 me to put last in my scale of occupations and pastimes. 
 
 Among my disappointments are Petrarca and Macchiavelli. I 
 am disappointed in Petrarca that his sonnets are written more out 
 of the head than the heart. They sparkle with poetic fancy, but 
 do not throb with sensibility. In his pleasant little autobiographical 
 memoir, Petrarca ascribes to his love for Laura all that he was 
 and did. For twenty years, it was the breath of mental life to 
 him. Happily he was not of an energetic, glowing nature (his 
 portrait might be taken for that of a woman), or his love would 
 have consumed instead of animating him, or, worse still, would 
 have had perhaps a quick close in success. I am sorry to con- 
 clude, that he was very far from being the most miserable man 
 of his generation. 
 
 Macchiavelli is not the searching thinker that one unacquainted 
 6 
 
98 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 with his works might infer him to be, from his so long sustained 
 reputation. He is a vigorous, accomplished writer ; a clear, 
 nervous narrator. Subtlety in the discussion of points of political 
 expediency, seems to me his highest power. Princes, nobles, and 
 populace, are to him the ultimate elements of humanity. The 
 deep relations of man to man, and of man to God, do not come 
 vividly within his view. He has no thorough insight into the 
 moral resources of man ; he does not transpierce the surface of 
 human selfishness. There is in him no ray of divine illumina- 
 tion, whereby he might discern the absolute. But it is unjust to 
 reproach him with a Vv'ant which he has in common with most of 
 his brother historians. 
 
 A just reproach against him is, that in his History he flattered 
 the Medici, and has handed down a misrepresentation of them. 
 From his pages no one would learn that the first Medici were 
 usurpers, successful demagogues. Sismondi and Alfieri counter- 
 act the false report of Macchiavelli, and disclose the long-con- 
 cealed ugliness of these vulgar tyrants. Describing the state of 
 Italy at the death of Lorenzo, and the loss of independence with that 
 of liberty, Sismondi says : — " Florence, mastered for three gene- 
 rations by the family of Medici, depraved by their licentiousness, 
 made venal by their wealth, had learnt from them to fear and to 
 obey." The hoUowness and worthlessness of Pope Leo X., his 
 prodigality, dissoluteness, and incapacity, are exposed by Sismon- 
 di, who describes as follows Pope Clement VII., another Medici, 
 and the one to whom Macchiavelli, in a fulsome address, dedicated 
 his History of Florence : — " Under the pontificate of Leo X., his 
 cousin, when times were prosperous, he acquired the reputation 
 of ability ; but when he came to confront distress not brought 
 about by himself, then his unskilfulness in m^atters of finance and 
 government, his sordid avarice, his pusillanimity and imprudence, 
 his sudden resolutions and prolonged indecision, rendered him not 
 less odious than ridiculous." Sismondi relates, that Lorenzo dei 
 
THE MEDICI. 99 
 
 Medici, being on his death-bed, sent for Savonarola, the celebrated 
 preacher of ecclesiastical reform and devotee to liberty, who had 
 hitherto refused to see Lorenzo, or to show him any respect. 
 Nevertheless, Lorenzo, moved by the fame of Savonarola's elo- 
 quence and sanctity, desired to receive absolution from him. Sa- 
 vonarola did not refuse to him consolations and exhortations, but 
 declared, that absolve him from his sins he could not, unless he 
 gave proof of penitence by repairing as much as in him lay his 
 errors. That he must pardon his enemies, make restitution of his 
 ill-gotten wealth, and restore to his country its liberty. Lorenzo, 
 not consenting, was denied absolution, and died, says Sismondi, in 
 the possession of despotic power, " mori in possesso della tiran- 
 nide." 
 
 Lorenzo dei Medici, — whose portrait in the gallery here is that 
 of an intellectual sensualist, whose largesses, pecuniary liberali- 
 ties and sensual sumptuosities won for him the equivocal title of 
 " il magnifico," — Lorenzo and Leo X. have the fame of being 
 the munificent patrons of Poets and Artists. All the fame they 
 deserve on this score is, that they had taste to appreciate the men 
 of merit who lived in their day. These men were the last off- 
 spring of the antecedent energetic times of liberty. By the re- 
 ceding waves of freedom they had been left upon the barren shore 
 of despotism. What had Leo X. to do with the forming of the emi- 
 nent writers and artists who adorned the age to which the servil- 
 ity of men has given his name ? Patrons of Poets and Artists ! A 
 curse upon patronage. Let it be bestowed upon upholsterers and 
 barbers. Poets and Artists don't want patronage : what they do 
 want is sympathy. Patronage is narrow, is blind ; its eyes are 
 egotistical ; it is prone to uphold mere talent, mediocrity. Sym- 
 pathy is expansive, keen-sighted, and discerns and confirms 
 genius. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca. men too great 
 to be patronised, were the children of republican Florence. By 
 
100 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Democracy, turbulent Democracy, were they nursed into heroic 
 stature. When the basis of her government was the sovereignty 
 of the people, when nobles had to put away their nobility to be 
 admitted to a share in the administration of affairs, then it was 
 that the bosom of Florence was fertile and wide enough to give 
 birth to the men who are the chief glory of modern Italy. Com- 
 pare Florence as she then was, vigorous, manly, erect, produc- 
 tive, with her abject, effeminate, barren state under the Medici. 
 Or contrast the genius generated by democratic Florence with 
 that of aristocratic Venice. 
 
 Alfieri tells, that he betook himself to writing, because in his 
 miserable age and land he had no scope for action ; and that he 
 remained single because he would not be a breeder of slaves. 
 He utters the despair, to passionate tears, which he felt, when 
 young and deeply moved by the traits of greatness related by 
 Plutarch, to find himself in times and in a country where no 
 great thing could be either said or acted. The feelings here im- 
 plied are the breath of his dramas. In them, a clear nervous 
 understanding gives rapid utterance to wrath, pride, and impetu- 
 ous passion. Though great within his sphere, his nature was not 
 ample and complex enough for the highest tragedy. In his com- 
 position there was too much of passion and too little of high emo- 
 tion. Fully to feel and perceive the awful and pathetic in human 
 conjunctions, a deep fund of sentiment is needed. A condensed 
 tale of passion is not of itself a Tragedy. To dark feelings, re- 
 solves, deeds, emotion must give breadth, and depth, and relief. 
 Passion furnishes crimes, but cannot furnish the kind and degree 
 of horror which should accompany their commission. To give 
 Tragedy the grand compass and sublime significance whereof it is 
 susceptible, it is not enough, that through the storm is visible the 
 majestic figure of Justice : the blackest clouds must be fringed 
 with the light of Hope and Pity ; while through them Religion 
 gives vistas into the Infinite, Beauty keeping watch to repel what 
 
ALFIERI. 101 
 
 is partial or deformed. In Alfieri, these great gifts are not com- 
 mensurate with his power of intellect and passion. Hence, like 
 the French classic dramatists, he is obliged to bind his personages 
 into too narrow a circle. They have not enough of moral liberty. 
 They are not swayed merely, they are tyrannized over by the 
 passions. Hence, they want elasticity and color. They are like 
 hard engravings. 
 
 Alfieri does not cut deep into character : he gives a clean out- 
 line, but broad flat surfaces without finish of parts. It is this 
 throbbing movement in details, which imparts buoyancy and 
 expression. Wanting it, Alfieri is mostly hard. The effect 
 of the whole is imposing, but does not invite or bear close 
 inspection. Hence, though he is clear and rapid, and tells a 
 story vividly, his tragedies are not life-like. In Alfieri there 
 is vigorous rhetoric, sustained vivacity, fervent passion; but 
 no depth of sentiment, no play of a fleet rejoicing imagination, 
 nothing " visionary," and none of the " golden cadence of poe- 
 try." But his heart was full of nobleness. He was a proud, 
 lofty man, severe, but truth-loving and scornful of littleness. He 
 delighted to depict characters that are manly and energetic. He 
 makes them wrathful against tyranny, hardy, urgent for freedom, 
 reclaiming with burning words the lost rights of man, protesting 
 fiercely against oppression. There is in Alfieri a stern virility 
 that contrasts strongly with Italian efleminateness. An indignant 
 frown sits ever on his brow, as if rebuking the passivity of his 
 countrymen. His verse is swollen with wrath. It has the clan- 
 gor of a trumpet that would shame the soft piping of flutes. 
 
 Above Alfieri, far above him and all other Italian greatness, 
 solitary in the earliness of his rise, ere the modern mind had 
 worked itself open, and still as solitary amidst the after splendors 
 of Italy's fruitfulness, is Dante. Take away any other great 
 Poet or Artist, and in the broad shining rampart wherewith genius 
 has beautified and fortified Italy, there would be a mournful 
 
102 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 chasm. Take away Dante, and you level the Citadel itself, under 
 whose shelter the whole compact cincture has grown into strength 
 and beauty. 
 
 Three hundred years before Shakspeare, in 1265, was Dante 
 born. His social position secured to him the best schooling. He 
 was taught and eagerly learnt all the crude knowledge of his 
 day. Through the precocious susceptibility of the poetic tempe- 
 rament, he was in love at the age of nine years. This love, as 
 will be with such natures, was wrought into his heart, expanding 
 his young being with beautiful visions and hopes, and making 
 tuneful the poetry within him. It endured with his life, and spi- 
 ritualized his latest inspirations. Soberly he afterwards married 
 another, and was the father of a numerous family. In the stir- 
 ring days of Guelfs and Ghibellines, he became a public leader, 
 made a campaign, was for a while one of the chief magistrates of 
 Florence, her ambassador abroad more than once, and at the age 
 of thirty-six closed his public career in the common Florentine 
 way at that period, namely, by exile. Refusing to be recalled on 
 condition of unmanly concessions, he never again saw his home. 
 For twenty years he was an impoverished, wandering exile, and 
 in his fifty-sixth year breathed his last at Ravenna. 
 
 But Dante's life is his poem. Therein is the spirit of the mighty 
 man incarnated. The life after earthly death is his theme. What 
 a mould for the thoughts and sympathies of a poet, and what a 
 poet, to fill all the chambers of such a mould ! Man's whole na- 
 ture claims interpretation ; his powers, wants, vices, aspirations, 
 basenesses, grandeurs. The imagination of semi-Christian Italy 
 had strained itself to bring before the sensuous mind of the South 
 an image of the future home of the soul. The supermundane 
 thoughts, fears, hopes of his time, Dante condensed into one vast 
 picture — a picture cut as upon adamant with diamond To en- 
 rich Hell, and Purgatory, and Paradise, he coined his own soul. 
 His very body became transfigured, purged of its flesh, by the 
 
DANTE. 103 
 
 intensity of fiery thought. Gaunt, pale, stem, rapt, his " vi- 
 sionary" eyes glaring under his deep furrowed brow, as he walked 
 the streets of Verona, he heard people whisper, " That is he who 
 has been down into Hell." Down into the depths of his fervent 
 nature he had been, and kept himself lean by brooding over his 
 passions, emotions, hopes, and transmuting the essence of them 
 into everlasting song. 
 
 . Conceive the statuesque grand imagination of Michael Angelo 
 united to the vivid homely particularity of Defoe, making pic- 
 tures out of materials drawn from a heart whose rapturous sym- 
 pathies ranged with Orphean power through the whole gamut of 
 human feeling, from the blackest hate up to the brightest love, 
 and you will understand what is meant by the term Dantesque. 
 In the epitaph for himself, written by Dante and inscribed on his 
 tomb at Ravenna, he says: — "I have sung, while traversing 
 them, the abode of God, Phlegethon and the foul pits." Traversing 
 must be taken literally. Dante almost believed that he had tra- 
 versed them, and so does his reader too, such is the control the 
 Poet gains over the reader through his burning intensity and gra- 
 phic picturesqueness. Like the mark of the fierce jagged light- 
 ning upon the black night-cloud are some of his touches, as 
 awful, as fearfully distinct, but not as momentary. 
 
 In the face of the contrary judgment of such critics as Shelley 
 and Carlyle, I concur in the common opinion, which gives pre- 
 ference to the Inferno over the Purgatorio and Paradiso. Dante's 
 rich nature included the highest and lowest in humanity. With 
 the pure, the calm, the tender, the ethereal, his sympathy was as 
 lively as with the turbulent, the passionate, the gross. But the 
 hot contentions of the time, and especially their effect upon him- 
 self, — through them an outcast and proud mendicant, — forced the 
 latter upon his heart as its unavoidable familiars. All about and 
 within him were plots, ambitions, wraths, chagrins, jealousies, 
 miseries. The times and his own distresses darkened his mood 
 
104 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 to the lurid hue of Hell. Moreover, the happiness of Heaven, 
 the rewards of the spirit, its empyreal joys, can be but faintly 
 pictured by visual corporeal images, the only ones the earthly 
 poet possesses. The thwarted imagination loses itself in a vague, 
 dazzling, golden mist. On the contrary, the trials and agonies 
 of the spirit in Purgatory and Hell, are by such images suitably, 
 forcibly, definitely set forth. The sufferings of the wicked while 
 in the flesh are thereby typified. And this suggests to me, that 
 one bent, as many are, upon detecting Allegory in Dante, might 
 regard the whole poem as one grand Allegory, wherein, under 
 the guise of a picture of the future world, the poet has represented 
 the effect of the feelings in this ; the pangs, for example, of the 
 murderer and glutton in Hell, being but a portraiture, poetically 
 colored, of the actual torments on earth of those who commit 
 murder and gluttony. Finally, in this there is evidence, — and 
 is it not conclusive ? — of the superiority of the Book of Hell, that 
 in that Book occur the two most celebrated passages in the poem, 
 — passages, in which with unsurpassed felicity of diction and 
 versification, the pathetic and terrible are rounded by the spirit 
 of Poetry into pictures, where simplicity, expression, beauty, com- 
 bine to produce effects unrivalled in this kind in the pages of Lite- 
 rature. I refer of course to the stories of Francesca and Ugolino. 
 Dante's work is untranslateable. Not merely because the 
 style, form, and rhythm of every great Poem, being the incarna- 
 tion of inspired thought, you cannot but lacerate the thought in 
 disembodying it ; but because, moreover, much of the elements 
 of its body, the words namely in which the spirit made itself 
 visible, have passed away. To get a faithful English transcript 
 of the great Florentine, we should need a diction of the fourteenth 
 century, moulded by a more fiery and potent genius than Chaucer. 
 Not the thoughts solely, as in every true poem, are so often virgin 
 thoughts ; the words, too, many of them, are virgin words. Their 
 freshness and unworn vigor are there alone in Dante's Italian. 
 
DANTE. 105 
 
 Of the modern intellectual movement, Dante was the majestic 
 Herald. In his poem, are the mysterious shadows, the glow, the 
 fragrance, the young life-promising splendors of the dawn. The 
 broad day has its strength and its blessings ; but it can give only 
 a faint image of the glories of its birth. 
 
 The bitter woes of Dante, hard and bitter to the shortening of 
 his life, cannot but give a pang to the reader whom his genius has 
 exalted and delighted. He was a life-long sufferer. Early dis- 
 appointed in love ; not blest, it would seem, in his marriage ; 
 foiled as a statesman ; misjudged and relentlessly proscribed by 
 the Florentines, upon whom from the pits of Hell his wrath wreaked 
 itself in a damning line, calling them, " Gente avara, invida, e 
 superba;" a homeless wanderer ; a dependant at courts where, 
 though honored, he could not be valued ; obliged to consort there 
 with buffoons and parasites, he whose great heart was full of 
 honor, and nobleness, and tenderness ; and at last, all his political 
 plans and hopes baffled, closing his mournful days far, far away 
 from home and kin, wasted, sorrow-stricken, broken-hearted. 
 Most sharp, most cruel were his woes. Yet to them perhaps we 
 owe his poem. Had he not been discomfited and exiled, who 
 can say that the mood or the leisure would have been found for 
 such poetry ? His vicissitudes and woes were the soil to feed and 
 ripen his conceptions. They steeped him in dark experiences, 
 intensified his passions, enriching the imagination that was tasked 
 to people Hell and Purgatory ; while from his own pains he turned 
 with keener joy and lightened pen to the beatitudes of Heaven. 
 But for his sorrows, in his soul would not have been kindled so 
 fierce a fire. Out of the seething gloom of his sublime heart shot 
 forth forked lightnings which still glow, a perennial illumination, 
 — to the eyes of men, a beauty, a marvel, a terror. Poor indeed 
 he was in purse ; but what wealth had he not in his bosom ! True, 
 he was a father parted from his children, a proud warm man, 
 eating the bread of cold strangers ; but had he not his genius and 
 6* 
 
106 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 its bounding offspring for company, and would not a day of sucti 
 heavenly labor as his outweigh a month, aye, a year of crushed 
 pride ? What though by the world he was misused, received 
 from it little, his own even wrested from him ; was he not the 
 giver, the conscious giver, to the world of riches fineless ? Not 
 six men, since men were, have been blest with such a power of 
 giving. 
 
 Pisa, February, 1843. 
 
 Here is a wide chasm of time. A goodly space of ground, too, 
 has been gone over. Without much stretching, a volume might 
 be put in between this date and the last. That trouble, however, 
 shall be spared the writer and the reader. Let us see whether in 
 a few pages we cannot whisk ourselves through Switzerland into 
 Germany, and back to Italy. 
 
 Starting northward from Florence, in the afternoon of June 7th, 
 1842, in less than an hour we were among the Appenines, over 
 whose barren, billowy surface we rolled on a good road to within 
 a few miles of Bologna, where we arrived the next day at three. 
 
 The Italian intellect is quick at expedients. With freedom the 
 Italians would be eminently practical. Free people are always 
 practical ; hence, the superiority of the English and Americans 
 in the useful and commodious. From Necessity and self-defence, 
 the acute Italians are adepts in the art of deception. Hypocrisy 
 they are taught by their masters, temporal and spiritual ; a sub- 
 stitution of the semblance for the substance being the foundation 
 of civil and religious rule in Italy. 
 
 The fictions of the Catholic Church are mostly unsuitable to 
 the Arts. Martyrs and emaciated anchorites cannot be subjected 
 to the laws of beauty. The Greek divinities were incarnations 
 of powers, qualities, truths, which, though not the deepest, were 
 shaped by beauty. The Romish saints, with their miracles and 
 macerations, want capability of beauty together with dignity and 
 
LEONARDO DA VINCI. 107 
 
 respectability, and are thence doubly unfit for the handling of 
 Art. The highest genius cannot make them thoroughly effective. 
 In the gallery of Bologna one is often repelled even from the best 
 execution by the offensiveness of the subject. The geniality of 
 Art is shown as much in the selection of subjects as in the treat- 
 ment. One tires of heavy virgins that would be thought to float, 
 and old men on their knees to them, trying to look extasies; and 
 more still, of the distortions of mental and bodily agony. 
 
 Leaving Bologna at noon, by Modena and Reggio, we arrived 
 at Parma after dusk, through a country, level, fertile and well 
 tilled. Along the road vines hung in graceful festoons from tree 
 to tree, and peasants were gathering mulberry leaves for silk- 
 worms. 
 
 After running to the Gallery, just to have a momentary look 
 at the two famous Correggios, we started from Parma at nine in 
 the morning, and coming on rapidly through Piacenza and Lodi, 
 entered Milan just before dark. 
 
 By the grandeur of the Cathedral we were even more moved 
 than when we first beheld it. Then we -explored its populous 
 roof; now we descended into its vaults, peopled too with statues 
 and busts, some of silver to the value of more than a million of 
 francs. About the tomb of St. Charles Borromeo there is gold 
 and silver to the amount of four million francs. Guard it well, 
 Priests. 'Twill be a treasure on that day, which will come, 
 when this people's deep, smothered cry shall end at last in a tri- 
 umphant shout. From the Cathedral we betook ourselves to the 
 barn-like place, which contains Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of the 
 Last Supper. Here is the inspiration of genius. To produce 
 that head of Jesus, what a conception must have been long nursed 
 in the great painter's brain, and with what intense force of will 
 must he have embodied it, to stamp upon human features such 
 pre-eminence, such benignity, such majesty ! With this, the 
 vigor and variety in the superb heads of the apostles, the grace 
 
108 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 and spirit of the grouping, bring the scene before you with such 
 speaking presence, that one sees how pictures can strengthen and 
 keep alive religious belief. By its vivid reality, its beauty and 
 character, this sublime picture proclaims the truth of what it 
 sets forth, and takes the mind captive with its power and its 
 fascination. 
 
 As we approached Como, we enjoyed much the contact again 
 with mountains. After an early breakfast, June 12th, we were 
 on board the steamboat at seven, to explore the beautiful lake. 
 At nine, about midway, we landed, in order to see and have the 
 views from the Villas Serbelloni, Melzi, and Somariva. 
 
 The villa Somariva has some fine sculpture by Thorwaldsen 
 and Canova, and a number of Italian and French pictures. The 
 French Ideal is a medium of the human form taken from mea- 
 surement of the antique. The genuine Ideal is attainable only 
 through an earnest loving study of nature, directed by a sure eye 
 and a warm sense of the beautiful. Modern French art has an 
 eccentric look ; whereas, Art should always be concentric, seek- 
 ing, that is, the centre of all forms and expressions, the concen- 
 tration into an individual of the best qualities of many. Hence, 
 high Art looks always tranquil and modest. French Art is apt 
 to have an excited, conceited air. 
 
 Stopping as we did where the Lake branches, we had followed 
 the advice of a Milanese gentleman, who accosted us in the boat. 
 Had we gone on, we should not have made by a good deal so 
 much of our morning ; for the upper end of the lake has less 
 interest and beauty than the middle. On re-embarking, as the 
 boat returned, between one and two, we renewed conversation 
 with the friendly giver of such good counsel. He had spent his 
 Sunday in a passive enjoyment of the rich soft beauties of the 
 Lake. This was the easy and highest form of worship for a 
 nature like his. He was a man past forty, of rather more Jhan 
 middle stature, with a well made, somewhat stout frame, inclined 
 
AN EPICUREAN. 109 
 
 to fullness. His complexion was of that rich creamy tint, seen 
 oftener in Italy than elsewhere, with blue-black hair and smooth 
 whiskers ; a handsome man, with regular, bold features, that 
 didn't look bold, from the gentleness of his expression ; for his 
 graceful mouth and large white teeth were formed for smiling, 
 and his black eyes were not those glowing Italian orbs, in whose 
 depths so much of good or evil lies sleeping, — you know not 
 which, — they were shallow, handsome, happy eyes. He ordered 
 coffee, and pressed me to take a cup. After this, he offered me 
 a cigar from his case, and upon my declining that too, he seemed 
 to conclude that I lived a very poor life. For himself, he let not 
 an hour in the day go by, he said, without regaling his body with 
 some or other fragrant stimulant. He urged us, should we revisit 
 Milan, to stop at the hotel where he lodged, whose cuisine and 
 wines he praised with thankful animation. Yet, he was not one 
 of those who spend their mornings in expectation of their dinner. 
 He was too subtle an epicurean for such a dead diurnal vacuity. 
 Though his dinner was the chief circumstance of his being, still, 
 afler his mode, he valued time, and knew how to bridge over the 
 wide gulfs between meals upon pillars constructed of minor enjoy- 
 ments, including among them easy acts of kindness and courtesy. 
 
 We got back to Como at four, and started immediately for 
 Lugano, our resting-place that night. The Lake of Lugano 
 pleased us even more than that of Como. There is greater 
 variety in the forms of the mountains. These fairy Lakes, uniting 
 Italy to Switzerland, combine the beauties of both. 
 
 As you advance from Lugano, the mountains close in upon you, 
 the scenery growing bolder and grander. Through an opening not 
 far from Lugano, we had a clear distant view down into Lake 
 Maggiore, and then we came upon the picturesque old town of 
 Belinzona, flanked with turrets, the turrets flanked with moun- 
 tains. Towards evening we approached the southern sublimity 
 of this pass, a rent in the mountain nearly a mile long, where the 
 
no SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 river Ticino, — which till now had this deep gorge all to himself, — • 
 has been forced by the engineer to make room for a road, the 
 angry, headlong torrent being thrice crossed and recrossed in ihe 
 course of the mile. As we emerged from this magnificent pas- 
 sage, the mountains stretched up into Swiss stature, their sides 
 clothed with firs as with a plumage. 'Twas dark when we drove 
 into Airolo, at the foot of the St. Gothard, where good beds 
 awaited us. 
 
 First through green fields and firs, then rugged wastes, and 
 finally, torrents, snow, and bare rock, up, up, up we went for three 
 or four hours, the steep road making its way zigzag on terraces. 
 The summit of the pass, a scene of cold dreary sterility, is a great 
 geographical centre ; for within a circuit of ten miles are the 
 sources of four of the chief rivers of Europe, the Rhine, the 
 Rhone, the Reuss, and the Ticino. 
 
 Now we set ofi* in a race with the Reuss, who bounds five 
 thousand feet down the mountain in a series of cataracts, to rush 
 into the Lake of the Four Cantons at Fluellen. We crossed the 
 Devil's Bridge, the northern sublimity of the St. Gothard pass ; 
 and the Pfaffensprung, so called from the tradition of a monk hav- 
 ing leapt from rock to rock, across the torrent, with a maiden in 
 his arms. That's a fine tradition. One cannot but have a 
 kind of respect for the bold amorous monk. He deserved the 
 maiden — better than any other monk. The beautiful maiden, — 
 for beautiful she could not but be, to inspire a feat so daring, — 
 must have been still and passive in the arms of her monastic 
 Hercules ; for had she made herself heavy by scratching and 
 kicking, whilst in mid air over that fearful chasm, I fancy the 
 tradition would have been more tragical. Never was maiden 
 more honorably won — by a monk. We passed through Altdorf, 
 Tell's Altdorf, and taking the steamboat at Fluellen, traversed 
 under a serene sky the Lake of the Four Cantons, with its sublime 
 scenery, landing in Lucerne after sun-down. Thus, from dawn to 
 
SWISS SCENERY. Ill 
 
 twilight WB had crossed one of the grand Alpine passes, and the 
 whole length of the most magnificent Lake in Europe. This was 
 a rich day. 
 
 The next morning, before starting for Thun, we took time to 
 walk a few steps beyond one of the gates to see the colossal lion, 
 cut in the side of a rock, as designed by Thorwaldsen, in com- 
 memoration of the faithful Swiss, who fell defending the royal 
 family of France in the Tuileries in 1792. By the Emmendale 
 we reached Thun the following day. Here, in this beautiful 
 portal to the sublime scenery of the Bernese Alps, we sat our- 
 selves down in quiet lodgings, by the water's edge, near where 
 the river issues from the lake. 
 
 In the grandeurs, sublimities, movements of Nature in Switzer- 
 land, the creative energy reveals itself in doings and voices that 
 astound the imagination. Nature seems here more than else- 
 where vivified by the breath of God. Those gigantic piles of 
 riven rock, fixed in sublime ruggedness, proclaim with unwonted 
 emphasis, the awful hand that arrested their upheaving. Those 
 terrific fields of eternal ice, the nourishing mothers of great 
 rivers, tempt the imagination towards the mysterious source of 
 Nature's processes. The common forms and elements of our 
 globe are here exaggerated. Hills and valleys become moun- 
 tains and gorges ; winter dwells on the peaks throughout sum- 
 mer ; streams are obliged to be torrents. Walking in a meadow, 
 you come suddenly on a streamlet, that looks in the grass like a 
 transparent serpent at full speed, it runs with such startling velo- 
 city, as though it had a momentous mysterious mission. The 
 Rivers rush out of the Lakes, as if they had twice the work to do 
 of other rivers. 
 
 At the end of a month, we quitted Thun, about the middle of 
 July, to return, for the rest of the summer, to the water-cure 
 establishment at Boppart. 'Tvvould have been wiser had we 
 gone to GraefTenberg. Priesnitz understands his own discovery 
 
112 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 better than any one else, and inspires his own patients with a 
 deeper confidence. At GraefFenberg, moreover, there is moun- 
 tain air and the coldest water. Through the secluded Munster 
 valley we reached Basle, whence by railroad, post, and steamboat 
 we rapidly descended the Rhine to Boppart. The Rhine suffers 
 at first by being seen when one's vision has just been enlarged and 
 sublimated by Switzerland. 
 
 The left, the wooded, shore of the Rhine was golden with au- 
 tumnal foliage, the right pale with fading vineyards, when in ihe 
 middle of October we again turned our faces southward. 'Twas 
 eleven o'clock, a chilly moonlight night, when, at the gate of 
 Frankfort, the officer questioned us, " Are you the Duke 1 " — 
 " No, I am an American." — " Oh, then," to the postillion, " drive 
 on." 
 
 Our former admiration of Dannecker's statue of Ariadne was 
 somewhat qualified, for since we first saw it, our eyes had been 
 strengthened in Italy. The composition is admirable, the attitude 
 graceful ; but the limbs want rounding and expressive finish, and 
 the head is stiff, as mimicry of the antique always is. 
 
 It being too late to re-enter Italy by the Splugen pass, we bent 
 our course more eastward towards Munich and the Tyrol, through 
 the fine old German towns of Wiirzburg and Augsburg. We 
 might have been present at the festival held to celebrate the com- 
 pletion of the Walhalla, a magnificent temple on the shore of the 
 Danube, erected by the King of Bavaria, in honor of German 
 worth and genius, to be adorned with the statues and busts of 
 Germany's great men, from Arminius to Schiller. When I learnt 
 afterwards that from this temple Luther is to be excluded, I was 
 glad that we had not gone out of our way to see it. Figure to 
 yourself the Apollo of the Vatican with the head purposely taken 
 off, or the Cathedral of Strasburg with the spire demolished, and 
 you will have some notion of the grossness of this outrage. A 
 German Pantheon without Luther ! The grandest national temple 
 
MUNICH; THE TYROL. 113 
 
 that Architecture could devise, and sculpture adorn with the effi- 
 gies of German greatness, yet left bare of that of Luther, could 
 never be but a fragment. The impertinence of this petty, tran- 
 sitory King, to try to put an affront on the mighty, undying Sove- 
 reign, Lutlier ! 
 
 In Munich there is a noble collection of pictures ; but the city, 
 with its fresh new palaces, and churches, and theatres, has a made 
 up look. It seems the work of Dilettantism : it is not a warm 
 growth out of the wants and aspirations of the time. It is as if 
 it had been said : Architecture and Painting are fine things ; 
 therefore we will have them. The King of Bavaria, the builder 
 and collector of all this, has been a great " Patron " of the Arts. 
 Latterly his patronage is said to have taken another direction, and 
 he has become a patron of Religion. The one is as proper a 
 subject for patronage as the other. 
 
 We entered the Tyrol on the 22d of October, after a light fall 
 of snow, which weighed just enough on the fir trees to add a grace 
 to their shapes, and on their dark green foliage sparkled in the 
 sun, like a transparent silver canopy. Tyrolese scenery we saw 
 in its most picturesque aspect. Our road went through Innspruck, 
 the Capital of the Tyrol, lying in a capacious valley encompassed 
 by mountains ; thence over the Bremer through Botzen, historical 
 Trent, and Roveredo. Coming down from the chilly mountains, 
 the sun of Italywas luxurious. What a fascination there is in 
 this warm beautiful land ! 
 
 We stopped half a day at Verona. Dante and Shakspeare 
 have both been here ; Dante in person, as guest of the Scaligers, 
 Shakspeare in Juliet, that resplendent diamond exhibited by the 
 lightning of a tropical night-storm. Just out of the town they 
 show a huge, rough, open stone coffer, as Juliet's tomb ; and in 
 one of the principal streets, our cicerone pointed to a house which 
 he said was that of the Capulets. Preferring to believe, we made 
 no further inquiries. So, we have seen Juliet's tomb, and the 
 
114 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 house of the Capulets. We saw too the palace of the Scaligers, 
 wherein, at the table of Can-graride, Dante hurled at his host that 
 celebrated sarcasm. One can readily figure the sublime, thought- 
 ful, sorrowful man, sitting silent as was his wont, scornful of the 
 levities and follies of speech around him, and not keeping his scorn 
 out of his great countenance, when, after some coarse sally from 
 a favorite buffoon, the prince, turning to the poet, said, " I wonder 
 that this man, who is a fool, can make himself so agreeable to us 
 all, while you, M^ho are called wise, have not been able to do so." 
 — " You would not wonder," answered Dante, " if you knew 
 that friendship comes of similarity of habits and sympathy of 
 souls." 
 
 At Verona we turned from our southward course, and went off 
 due east to Venice, without halting in Vicensa and Padua, that 
 lay in our path. We rowed in Gondolas, saw Titian's picture of 
 the Assumption, walked over the Rialto, inspected the Arsenal, 
 stood near the Bridge of Sighs, took chocolate in the place of St. 
 Mark, and rowed back in the Lagune to Mestre, whence by Padua 
 and Rovigo we came to Ferrara. From the people a traveller has 
 to do with on the highways of Europe, he gets much of the 
 caricature of what in the world is called politeness, namely, a 
 smooth lie varnished. 
 
 A scarcity of post-horses detained us a day in Ferrara, and the 
 bridge over the Po having been swept away by late floods, we had 
 to make a circuit to reach Bologna. The Manuscripts of Tasso 
 and Ariosto in the Library, Ariosto's house and Tasso's prison, 
 beguiled the time in the desolate old town of Ferrara. 
 
 Off the beaten highways, from which the floods forced us, the 
 people looked fresh and innocent. Wherever strangers throng, 
 there knavery thrives. Hence, on the great routes of Europe, 
 the traveller is constantly vexed and soured by impositions, from 
 the most brazen to the most subtle. From the obsequious inn- 
 keeper to the coarse postillion, he is the victim of the whole class 
 
POWERS'S SLAVE 115 
 
 with whom he has to deal. Yet he would be very unjust who 
 should thence infer that cheating and lying are habitual with the 
 people among whom by these classes he is so often plagued and 
 wronged. The country between Ferrara and Bologna overflows 
 with population. Under this warm sun, the fertile valley of 
 the Po yields meat, drink and clothing all at once ; silk, vine 
 and grain growing in plenteous crops at the same time in one 
 field. 
 
 At Florence we found Powers with his model of the Greek 
 Slave nearly finished. What easy power there is in genius ! 
 Here is one of the most difficult tasks of sculpture, — a nude fe- 
 male figure, — conceived and executed with a perfectness that 
 completely conceals all the labor of thought and hand bestowed 
 upon it. Most worthy to be a daughter of the Eve, this figure is 
 altogether of another type, slender and maidenly. Like Eve, it 
 is a revelation of the symmetry, the inexhaustible grace, the in- 
 finite power tmd beauty of the human form. What an attitude, 
 — how naturally brought about, — what a wonderful management 
 of the resources of such limbs for expression ! It is a figure 
 
 "To radiate beauty everlastingly." 
 
 From it one learns what a marvellous work is the human body. 
 One feels himself elevated and purified, while contemplating a 
 creation so touching and beautiful. Of this statue a distinguished 
 American clergyman, whom we had the pleasure to meet in Italy, 
 said, that were a hundred libertines to collect round it, attracted 
 by its nudity, they would stand abashed and rebuked in its 
 presence. 
 
 This is the fourth ideal female head that Powers has produced, 
 and yet there is not between any two of them the slightest re- 
 semblance. Each one is a fresh independent creation. Not to 
 imitate himself evinces in a sculptor even a still greater depth of 
 
116 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 resource than not to imitate the antique. It is proof of a mastery 
 over the human countenance. Its elements and constituents 
 Powers carries in his brain. This is the genuine creative 
 energy. 
 
 Greenough was absent in America, and his studio was closed. 
 Clevinger was at work at the model of his Indian, his first ideal 
 effort.* 
 
 Pisa, famous for its leaning tower and its University, which has 
 able professors, is, for one who wants quiet, a pleasant place to 
 spend three months . of winter. The Arno, flowing through it 
 from east to west, for nearly a mile in a gentle curve, cuts 
 the town into two parts, united by three bridges. Our front 
 windows look out upon the river and its western bridge, and from 
 one in the rear there is a view of the long jagged outline of the 
 distant Appenines running towards Genoa, the highest peaks 
 covered with snow. Our walks along the Lung-Arno carry us 
 daily by the palace of Byron, the memory of whom does not seem 
 to be much cherished by the Italians here. 
 
 On the 22d of February we found ourselves in lively, dirty, 
 commercial Leghorn, which vulgar cacophonous dissyllable is in- 
 tended to be a rendering into English of the melodious Italian 
 name of this town, which is Livorno. That the Mediterranean 
 well deserves its reputation of being a very ugly sea in winter 
 we had sickening proof. In a stout French steamboat we were 
 two nights and a day, instead of one night, in getting from Leg- 
 horn to Civita Vecchia. 
 
 Friday, February 24th, 1843. 
 
 We cast anchor in the small harbor of Civita Vecchia at seven, 
 
 * The last time I saw Clevinger, he was standing before this work, with 
 his frank, manly countenance animated by the pleasure and intentness of 
 the labor. In the budding of his fame, he -was cut off, a loss to his family, 
 his friends, his country. 
 
APPROACH TO ROME. 117 
 
 landed at eight, and at ten set off for Rome. For several miles 
 the road ran along the sea shore, through a desolate but not barren 
 country, with scarce a sign of population. A few massive frag- 
 ments of a bridge from the hands of the Romans, gave a sudden 
 interest to the deserted region, and kept our minds awake until 
 three o'clock, when, still eleven miles distant from Rome, we 
 came in sight of St. Peter's, which drew us towards it with such 
 force, that we wondered at the languor of the postillion, who 
 drove his dull hacks as if at the end of our journey there were 
 nothing but a supper and a snug hostelrie. We soon lost sight 
 of St. Peter's. The fields, — and this is not strictly part of the 
 Cmnpagna, — still looked dreary and abandoned. Up to the very 
 walls of the ancient mistress of the world, and the present 
 spiritual mistress of many millions more than the Csesars ever 
 swayed, the land seems as if it had long lain under a maledic- 
 tion. At last, towards sundown, after an ascent, whence we 
 overlooked the " Eternal City," the Cupola of St. Peter's filled 
 our eyes of a sudden, and seemingly within a stone's throw of 
 us. Descending again, we entered Rome by a gate near the 
 Church, and, escorted by a horseman, whose casque led one to 
 imagine him a mimic knight of Pharsalia, we drove close by the 
 gigantic colonnade that encloses the court of St. Peter's, crossed 
 the Tiber by the Bridge of Adrian, and after several turns through 
 narrow streets, drove up to the temple of Marcus Aurelius An- 
 toninus, with its front of fluted marble columns, under which we 
 passed into the interior and there halted. 'Twas the Custom 
 House, whence a dollar having quickly obtained for us release 
 from the delay and vexation of search, we drove at dusk through 
 the Corso to the Hotel de F Europe in the Piazza di Spagna. Here 
 we spent the evening in planning, and in trying to think ourselves 
 into a full consciousness that we were in Rome. 
 
 Saturday, Feb. 25th. 
 
 Before breakfast I took my first walk in Rome up the broad 
 
118 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 stairway from the Piazza di Spagna to the Pincian Hill ; but the 
 atmosphere was hazy. Later, I walked down the Corso, whose 
 Palaces look wealth and luxury. A Palace without political 
 power, what is it but a gilded Prison, where refined sensuality 
 strives to beguile the intellect in its servitude ! A scarlet gilt 
 coach rolled by, with gojgeous trappings and three footmen in 
 flaunting liveries crowded together on the foot-board behind ; an 
 exhibition, which shows manhood most disgustingly bemasked, 
 and is an unchristian ostentation of the mastery of man over man. 
 'Twas the coach of a Cardinal ! of one who assumes to be the 
 pre-elect interpreter of the invisible God ! of one whom millions 
 believe to be among the most divinely-enlightened expositors of the 
 self-denying Jesus' words ! Truly, God rights the wrong in our 
 little world by general laws and stoops not to an individual ; else, 
 it were neither unreasonable nor profane to expect that the sleek 
 horses of this silken-robed priest might refuse to carry him to the 
 altar, raised to him, who declared it to be hard for a rich man to 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven. Possibly he is self-deluded ; 
 for so great is the power of man upon man, that the world-wide 
 and time-heaped belief in his sanctity may have persuaded even 
 himself, that between his life and his doctrine there is no wide- 
 gaping inconsistency. Some too, being stronger in religious 
 sentiment than in intellect, are blinded, under the bandage of 
 .custom, to the monstrous imposture. But many a one, having 
 capacity for and opportunities of culture, must be the conscious 
 worshipper of ambition and the knowing defder of the Holy, and 
 his life therefore — what I leave each reader to name for himself. 
 This is a gala-day in Rome, being one of the last of the Car- 
 nival. At two we drove to the Corso, where we fell into a double 
 file of carriages going in opposite directions. The Corso is the 
 principal street of modern Rome, about a mile long, proud with 
 palaces, columns, and open squares. Out of most of the nume- 
 rous windows streamed long crimson silk hangings. At short 
 
THE FORUM. 119 
 
 intervals were dragoons as a mounted police. The street was 
 thronged with people, many in masks and fantastic costumes ; 
 the windows were crowded with gaily dressed spectators. But 
 the chief source of animation to the gay scene, is the practice of 
 throwing bonbons and boquets from carriage to carriage, or in 
 or out of the windows, or from or at the pedestrians, a general 
 interchange in short of missile greetings. Most of the bonbons 
 are of clay, or paste and flowers, and hence can be dealt out pro- 
 fusely without much cost. You assail whom you please, and 
 wire masks are worn by those who are careful of their eyes. 
 'Tis an occasion when the adult lay aside their maturity and put 
 on childhood again, and, as among children, there is the fullest 
 freedom and equality. We knew not a soul in the throng, and 
 dealt our handfuls of powdered pills into carriages and windows, 
 and received them in turn, with as much glee as if we had been 
 harlequins in a pantomime. We came in towards six. 
 
 Sunday, Feb. 26th. 
 
 We drove first to the Forum. Here then had been the centre 
 of the Roman world ! There before you is a door of the ancient 
 Capitol ! A few straggling columns and arches stand up still 
 manfully against time. You think 'tis something to find your- 
 self face to face with what has heard the voice of Cicero and the 
 Gracchi, to shake hands, as it were, across a gulf of twenty cen- 
 turies, with the cotemporaries of the Scipios ; when you learn 
 that all that you behold are relics of the Imperial epoch. They 
 showed us too the walls and two columns of a temple of Romulus 
 with a door of well-wrought bronze. Although one likes to be- 
 lieve on such occasions, we had to turn incredulous from these, 
 and settled our minds again into positive faith before the arch of 
 Titus, which stands at the end of the Forum opposite the Capitol, 
 and is enriched with sculpture illustrating the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, in commemoration of which it was erected to the 
 
120 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Emperor Titus. Passing under this, which Jews to this day 
 will not do, we drove down the Via Sacra to the Colosseum, near 
 which is the arch of Constantino. Conceive of an elliptical 
 Theatre with stone seats all round rising row back of row, to 
 hold one hundred thousand spectators, who came in and out with- 
 out delay or confusion through seventy inlets. Here in this vast 
 arena may be said to have been represented the conflict between 
 paganism and Christianity. Here were slaughtered tens of thou- 
 sands of Christians, thrown to wild beasts as the most grateful 
 spectacle to the Roman populace. The arena itself is now a 
 Christian temple, sanctified by the blood of the faith-sustained 
 victims. 
 
 From the Colosseum we went to the Church of St. John of the 
 Lateran, where, if what they tell you were true, are preserved 
 the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul. We were shown too what 
 the exhibiting priest said is the table on which Jesus took the last 
 supper with the apostles. This with other relics is declared to 
 have been brought from Jerusalem by Helen, the mother of Con- 
 stantino. This is the oldest church in Europe, and is called the 
 mother of all others. 
 
 In the afternoon we drove to St. Peter's. I had not imagined 
 the entrance to be so colossal. Before passing the immense por- 
 tal, I was filled with wonder, which was not diminished by the 
 view within. It is a symbol of the power and hopes of man. 
 What a majestic work of human hands ! All its magnificent 
 details are swallowed in its immensity. The one all-absorbing 
 idea is vastness. 
 
 Monday, Feb. 27th. 
 
 Our first visit to-day was to Crawford's studio. His Orpheus 
 is here reputed a statue of high merit. The conception is at 
 once simple and rich. The attitude is well adapted to display 
 life and grace, the long line from the hindmost foot to the end of 
 
THE CENCI. 121 
 
 the curved arm, being one of the finest sweeps the human body- 
 can present. The act of protecting the eyes with the hand, im- 
 parts life as well by the shadow it casts on the countenance as 
 by its characteristic propriety. The large fabulous-looking heads 
 of the music-subdued Cerberus sleep well, and the group takes 
 at once such hold of the imagination, that their expression seems 
 that of involuntary sleep. 'Tis in itself a great merit in a work 
 of art to make the mind of the beholder assist its effect. The 
 selection of the subject and the execution are equally happy, and 
 denote the genial Artist. We went next to Thorwaldsen's studio. 
 Here I was somewhat disappointed,* 
 
 At the Barberini Palace we saw the Beatrice Cenci of Guido. 
 People go to see it on account of her most awful story ; and the 
 story is not fully lold to one who has not seen the picture. Guido 
 was wrought up to his highest power of execution. The face is 
 of the most beautiful, and through this beauty streams the bewil- 
 dered soul, telling the terrific tale. It looks like a picture after 
 which the artist had taken a long rest. It is wonderful. We 
 next went hastily through the Doria Gallery, one of the richest 
 private collections in the world. 
 
 Tuesday, Feb. 28th. 
 
 After breakfast I walked to the Minerva church to see the 
 funeral ceremony for a Cardinal. In the square before the 
 church was the Pope's carriage with six horses, and a score of 
 the scarlet carriages of the Cardinals. The interior of the church 
 was hung with black and gold. The body of the deceased Car- 
 dinal lay in state, in the centre of the nave, on a broad bulky 
 couch raised about ten feet. Around it at some distance were 
 burning purple candles. The music of the service was solemn 
 and well executed, in part by castrati. The Pope descended from 
 his throne, and, supported on either side by a Cardinal, and at- 
 
 * It will be seen that this first impression was afterwards reiLoved. 
 
 7 
 
122 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 tended by other ecclesiastical dignitaries, went to the front of the 
 couch and pronounced absolution upon the deceased. He then 
 walked twice round the body, throwing up incense towards it out 
 of a golden censer. His pontifical robe was crimson and gold. 
 He evidently performed the service with emotion. The whole 
 spectacle was imposing and luxurious. The gorgeous couch and 
 habiliments of the deceased, the rich and various robes, the pur- 
 ple candles, the sumptuous solemn hangings, the incense and the 
 mellow music, compounded a refined feast for the senses. Such 
 ceremonies can speak but feebly to the soul. In the crowd that 
 filled the large church, there was observable some curiosity, and 
 a quiet air of enjoyment, but very little devotion. After the ser- 
 vice, as the Pope's carriage on leaving the square passed close 
 by me, an elderly man at my side dropped suddenly on his knees, 
 shouting " Santo Padre, la benedizione," which the Pope gave as 
 his horses went off in a trot, and of which I too, from my position, 
 had a share. 
 
 In the afternoon we hired seats in the Corso, to see the last day 
 of the Carnival. The Italians, disciplined by Church, and State, 
 know how to run wild on such an occasion without grossness or 
 disorder. People all shouting and fooling, and no coarse extrava- 
 gances or interruptions of good humor. At sunset the street was 
 cleared in the centre, and half a dozen horses started at one end, 
 without riders, to race to the other. After this, the evening 
 ended with the entertainment of the mocolo, which is a thin wax 
 lighted taper, wherewith one half the crowd provide themselves, 
 while the others, with handkerchiefs and similar weapons, strike 
 at them to put them out. This makes an illumination of the 
 whole street, and keeps up a constant noisy combat. Thousands 
 of people in masks and fantastic costumes. 
 
 Wednesday, March 1st, 1843 
 
 If priests were raised nearer to God by distinguishing them- 
 
ASH-WEDNESDAY. 123 
 
 selves from their fellow-men through the means of gorgeous gar- 
 niture and pompous ceremony, the exhibition we this morning 
 witnessed at the Sistine Chapel would have been solemn and 
 inspiring. Up flight after flight of the broad gently ascending 
 stairway of St. Peter's, we reached the celebrated Chapel. Seated 
 on the pontifical throne, on one side of the altar at the further 
 extremity of the Chapel, under Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, 
 was the Pope. On his head was a lofty mitre of silver tissue, 
 and his stole was of crimson and gold. To his right, on an ele- 
 vated broad ottoman that ran along the wall of the Chapel and 
 crossed it about the middle, were ranged more than twenty Car- 
 dinals in robes of light purple silk and gold. Around the Pope 
 was a crowd of ministering Prelates, and at the foot of each Car- 
 dinal sat, in a picturesque dress, an attendant, apparently a priest, 
 who aided him to change his robe, an operation that was performed 
 more than once during the long service. The folio missal, out 
 of which the Pope read, was held before him ; when he approached 
 the altar from his throne his robe was held up ; and in the same 
 way one of the attendant prelates removed and replaced several 
 times his mitre. Part of the service consisted in kissing his foot, 
 a ceremony which was performed by about a hundred bishops 
 and prelates in various ecclesiastical costumes. This being the 
 first day of Lent, Ash- Wednesday, the benediction of the ashes is 
 given always by the Pope, and on the heads of those who have 
 the privilege of kissing his toe (Cardinals don't go lower than 
 the knee) he lays a pinch of the consecrated ashes. 
 
 When I look back to the whole spectacle, though only after the 
 lapse of a few hours, I seem to have been present at some bar- 
 baric pageant. The character of the exhibition overbears my 
 knowledge of its purport, and I could doubt that I have witnessed 
 a Christian ritual. 
 
 Afterwards in passing over Monte Cavallo, we came suddenly 
 upon the colossal statues by Phidias and Praxiteles. 'Twas a 
 
124 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 rich surprise. Like St. Peter's and the Colosseum they sur- 
 passed my expectation. Their heroic forms stood out against the 
 sky like majestic apparitions come to testify to the glories of old 
 Greece. 
 
 In the afternoon we went to Gibson's studio, where we were 
 pleased both with the artist and his works. 
 
 Thursday, March 2d. 
 
 First to the Capitol, built, under the direction of Michael 
 Angelo, on the foundation of the ancient. Innumerable fragments 
 and statues. In the Colossal River-God in the Court, the grace 
 and slumbering power of the large recumbent figure are remark- 
 able. According to our custom at the first visit, we went hastily 
 through the gallery, only pausing before the dying Gladiator. 
 Here, as in all master-pieces of Art, is the intense infusion of the 
 will of the Artist into his work. This is the inscrutable power 
 of genius. 
 
 Thence to the Church of Santa Maria Majore, the nave of 
 which is supported by thirty-six beautiful columns, taken from a 
 temple of Juno. Modern Rome is doubly enriched out of the 
 spoils of ancient. 
 
 In the afternoon we drove to the Vatican. What a wilderness 
 of marble ! You walk, I was about to say, for miles through 
 avenues of sculpture. Of the Apollo, Laocoon, and Antinous, I 
 can say nothing to-day, except that great statues lose much in 
 casts. What an edifice ! Drove to the Villa Borghese. 
 
 Friday, March 3d. 
 
 Our first stage to-day in our daily travel over Rome was at the 
 baths of Caracalla, one of the most emphatic testimonials of Roman 
 magnificence. The ruins, consisting now of little else than the 
 outer and dividing walls, cover several acres. Sixteen hundred 
 persons could bathe at a time. Besides the baths, there were 
 
CHURCHES OF ROME. 125 
 
 halls for games and for sculpture, and here have been dug up 
 several masterpieces. Here and there a piece of the lofty roof is 
 preserved, and we ascended to the top of one of the halls, whence 
 there is a good view of a large section of the region of ruins. 
 Except in the Fora and Arches, one sees nowhere columns among 
 the ruins. These, as well as nearly all marble in whatever 
 shape, being too precious to be left to adorn the massive remnants 
 of Pagan Rome, have been taken to beautify the Churches and 
 Palaces of her Christian heir. 
 
 From the baths of Caracalla we went along the Appian way, 
 passing the tomb of the Scipios, and under the arch of Drusus, 
 to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, a large massive round tower, 
 the largest monument ever raised to a woman. Thence to the 
 Columbarium or tomb of the household of the Csesars. The 
 name is derived from the resemblance of the structure to a 
 pigeon-house, as well in its general form as in that of the little 
 semi-circular receptacles for the ashes. 
 
 In the afternoon we visited among other churches that of 
 Santa Maria Degli Angeli, formerly the Baths of Diocletian, 
 which was adapted to the shape and purpose of a church by 
 Michael Angelo. A grand one it is with its immense pillars of 
 Egyptian granite. 
 
 As according to Roman Catholic usage, several masses are 
 performed in one morning to as many different congregations, 
 a given number of inhabitants would require as Catholics a much 
 smaller number of churches than it would being Protestant. But 
 were the whole people of Rome to assemble at worship, at the 
 same hour, in as many churches as would be needed for easy 
 accommodation, even then, nine tenths* of them would be empty. 
 For three or four centuries the population has been at no time 
 more numerous than it is now, and seldom so numerous ; and 
 owing to civil and foreign wars previous to the fifteenth century, 
 and to the seventy years' absence of the Papal Court, it has 
 
126 SCENES .AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 probably not been greater than at present since the downfall of 
 the Empire. So that there always have been ten times as many 
 churches as are needed. Rome has a population of about one 
 hundred and sixty thousand souls, and counts over three hundred 
 churches. With thirty, all her people would have ample room 
 for worship. Had half of the thought, labor, and money, wasted 
 in building, adorning and preserving the others, been bestowed 
 upon schools and seminaries, there would have been not less re- 
 ligion, and far more mental culture and morality ; and Rome 
 might now be really the intellectual and spiritual capital of the 
 world, instead of being the centre of a decrepid form of Chris- 
 tianity, to which she clings chiefly by the material ties that bind 
 men to an ecclesiastical system which embosoms high places of 
 worldly eminence. 
 
 Nothing is shallower than carpingly to point out how commu- 
 nities or individuals might be better than they are. The above 
 estimate is not made in a spirit of barren detraction ; it shows 
 into what extravagant abuses of God's best gifts man is prone to 
 run. There is at any rate comfort in the evidence here pre- 
 sented, — if such were wanting, — of great spiritual vitality in 
 human nature. Part of the gross misdirection thereof may be 
 ascribed to the mental darkness during many of the first ages 
 of Christian Europe, and part to the selfishness necessarily inhe- 
 rent in a body constituted like the Roman Catholic priesthood. 
 The darkness has been greatly diminished, and individual inde- 
 pendence has been sufficiently developed not to abide much 
 longer corporate usurpations, civil or ecclesiastical. There may 
 be hope, that through this natural fund of spirituality, under 
 healthier development and clearer guidance, humanity will go on 
 righting itself more and more, and that under its influence even 
 Rome shall be rejuvenated, and cease to be the hoary juggler, 
 that out of the spiritual wants of man wheedles raiment of gold 
 for her own body and mansions of marble. 
 
M. ANGELO-S MOSES. 127 
 
 Drove out to Mount Sacer, and afterwards to the Pincian. 
 
 Saturday, March 4th. 
 
 Rain every day. Among the curiosities we this morning 
 inspected in the library of the Vatican, were a collection 
 of cameos and other small antiques dug up in Rome ; 
 several of the bronze plates whereon were inscribed the de- 
 crees of the Senate, but of the fallen Senate under the Empe- 
 rors ; specimens of Giotto and Cimabue ; manuscript of Cicero's 
 Treatise on the Republic, made in the fifth century, and written 
 over by St. Augustine, with a treatise on the Psalms ; manuscript 
 of Petrarch ; illuminated edition of the Divina Comedia ; papy- 
 rus. To us as well as to the Pope it is a convenience that St. 
 Peter's and the Vatican are cheek by cheek. On coming out 
 of the library we entered the great church to enjoy its beautiful 
 vastness. 
 
 In the afternoon we went to see Michael Angelo's colossal 
 statue of Moses in the church of St. Peter in chains, a beautiful 
 church (the interior I mean) with twenty fluted Parian columns. 
 Here are preserved, 'tis said, the chains of St. Peter. The 
 Moses is a great masterpiece. It justifies the sublime lines of 
 the sonnet it inspired to Zappi : 
 
 Questi e Mose quando scendea del monte, 
 E gran parte del Nume avea nel Volto.* 
 
 Power and thought are stamped on the brow ; the nose breathes 
 the breath of a concentrated giant ; an intellectual smile sits on 
 the large oriental mouth, which looks apt to utter words of com- 
 fort or command ; the long, thick, folded beard bespeaks vigor, 
 and gives grandeur to the countenance ; and the eyes, of which, 
 contrary to the usage of high sculpture, the pupils are marked, 
 
 * This is Moses when he came down from the mountain, 
 And had in his countenance a great part of the Deity. 
 
128 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 absolutely sparkle. The figure is seated, with however one foot 
 drawn back, as if ready to rise, an attitude correspondent to the 
 life and fire of the countenance. From this grand work one 
 learns what a mighty soul was in Michael Angelo. 
 
 In the sacristy is a beautiful head by Guido, representing 
 Hope, as rapt and still as an angel listening to the music of 
 Heaven. In this church was held under the Emperor Constan- 
 tino, as says an inscription in it, a council, which condemned 
 Arian and other schismatics, and burnt their books. We next 
 visited St. Martin on the Hill, also constructed with columns 
 from an ancient temple. Through the church we descended into 
 a vault below where had been Imperial baths, and afterwards a 
 church of the early Christians before Constantine. Adjoining 
 this venerable spot was an opening that led into the catacombs, 
 where the persecuted Christians used to conceal themselves. 
 On slabs in the upper church were inscribed the names of many 
 martyrs whose tombs had been found below ; among them those 
 of several Popes. Thence towards sunset, we went to the 
 church of the Jesuits, laden, like so many others, with pictures 
 and marbles and sparkling altars, and sepulchral monuments. 
 The grand altar just finished cost upwards of one hundred 
 thousand dollars. On one side of the church a thin sallow Jesuit 
 in a dark robe and cap was preaching to about a hundred per- 
 sons, chiefly of the poorer class. I regretted that I had not come 
 in time to hear more of his sermon, for a purer pronunciation 
 and sweeter voice I never listened to. His elocution too was 
 good and his gesticulation graceful, and his matter and manner 
 were naif and unjesuitlike. He told his auditors that what the 
 holy Virgin required of them, especially now during Lent, was 
 to examine their souls, and if they found them spotted with sins 
 to free themselves therefrom by a full confession, and if not, to 
 betake themselves more and more to the zealous cultivation of 
 the virtues. There was a sincerity, simplicity and sweetness 
 
ST. PETER'S. 129 
 
 in the feeling and utterance of this young man, that were most 
 fascinating. When he had finished, he glided away into the 
 recesses of the dim church like an apparition. 
 
 Sunday, March 5th. 
 
 To-day we remitted our labors. Late in the morning I 
 walked up the stairway of the Trinity of the Mount to the gar- 
 den of the Villa Medici ; and afterwards to Monte Cavallo to 
 behold again the two colossal Greek Statues. They must be 
 seen early or late, for at other hours the sky dazzles the sight 
 as you attempt to look up at them. 
 
 In the afternoon we drove to St. Peter's. Its immensity enlarges 
 at each repeated beholding. 'Tis so light, — the interior I mean, 
 — so illuminated, that it looks as though it had been poised from 
 above, and not built upward from an earthly foundation. In one 
 section of it is a series of confessionals, dedicated to the various 
 languages of Europe. In each sat a priest ready to listen to and 
 shrive in the tongue inscribed over his portal. Vespers at four. 
 The voices were fine, but the music, not being sacred, was not 
 effective in a church. One hears at times in music cadences of 
 such expression, that they seem about to utter a revelation ; and 
 then they fade of a sudden into common melody, as though the 
 earthly medium were incompetent to transmit the heavenly voice. 
 
 We drove afterward to the Pincian Hill in a cold north wind. 
 
 Monday, March 6th. 
 
 Walked before breakfast to Monte Cavallo. Our first stage 
 after breakfast was to the house of Nero, over which were built, 
 in part, the Baths of Titus. This is one of the best preserved 
 bits of old Rome. The walls of brick are from three to five feet 
 thick, the rooms nearly forty high. On some of the ceilings and 
 walls are distinct specimens of Arabesque. Thence to look at 
 the holy staircase of the Lateran, said to be of the house of 
 Pontius Pilate. The feelings that would arise on standing before 
 7* 
 
130 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 such an object is checked by doubt that will come up as to its 
 authenticity. No one is permitted to mount the stairs except on 
 his knees ; and being of stone, they are kept covered with wood 
 to preserve them from being worn out. In the Church of Santa 
 Croce in Gerusalemme, founded by St. Helen, the mother of Con- 
 stantino, is preserved, 'tis said, the cross of one of the thieves 
 crucified with Jesus. 
 
 In the Gallery of the Colonna Palace we saw this morning 
 several fine portraits and a beautiful St. Agnes, by Guido, with 
 that heavenward look he delighted to paint, and painted so well. 
 In the magnificent Hall of the Palace we were shown the por- 
 trait of the Colonna who commanded at Lepanto. In the after- 
 noon we went for the second time to the Vatican. How the most 
 beautiful things teach you to admire them ! Genius, which is by 
 its essence original, embodies its idea, the totality whereof even 
 the most genial sympathy cannot at first take in. By repetition the 
 whole spirit of the creation is imbibed, and only then does the mind 
 receive the full image of what it beholds, learning thus, by a 
 necessary process, from beauty itself to appreciate its quality. 
 Thus the Apollo will go on growing into our vision until we 
 can, if not entirely, yet deeply enjoy its inexhaustible beauty. 
 On coming out of the Vatican we walked again into St. Peter's. 
 Are its proportions perfect and its colors all in unison, or is it its 
 vastness that tones down all the constituents to harmony ? It 
 fills me always with delight and wonder. 
 
 Towards sunset we drove to the church of St. Peter, in Monto- 
 rio, whence, from the terrace, is a sweeping view of Rome. We 
 looked down over the " Eternal City." Directly in front, and 
 east of us about a mile, was the majestic Colosseum. Between 
 us and the Tiber was the Camp of Porsenna. To the left, 
 beyond the Tiber, was once the Campus Martins, now the most 
 thickly peopled quarter of modern Rome. An epitome of a large 
 portion of the world's history lay at our feet. There stood the 
 
THE PANTHEON. I'M 
 
 Capitol of the Republic, and beyond, the ruins of the Palace of 
 the Caesars, and all about us were the Palaces and Churches of 
 their papal heir. Back of the Church is the Fontana Paolina, 
 built of stone from the Forum of Nerva, by Pope Paul V., a 
 Borghese. The water gushes out through five apertures in 
 volume enough for a Swiss cascade. 
 
 Tuesday, March 7th. 
 
 We drove out this morning to the Villa Pamphili, the grounds 
 of which, having a circumference of four miles, are the most 
 extensive of the Roman villas. Here are stately umbrella-shaped 
 {fines. Fields of grass, thickly studded with flowers, verified what 
 had hitherto been to me a poetic fiction. From the top of the house 
 is a wide noble prospect. Returning, we drove through part of 
 the Jews' quarter to the Square of Navona, the largest in Rome, 
 in ancient times a race-course, now a vegetable market. In the 
 afternoon we went to the Pantheon, the best preserved remnant of 
 ancient Rome, built by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, as 
 the great Hall of the public baths by him established, afterwards 
 converted into a temple to Jupiter, then to all the Gods, whence 
 its name, and as early as the seventh century consecrated a 
 Christian Church, under the name of St. Mary of the Martyrs, 
 by Pope Boniface IV., who buried under the chief altar twenty- 
 eight wagon loads of relics of the martyrs. The light (and rain) 
 comes in through a wide circle left open at the top of the dome. 
 The pavement is of porphyry. Here Raphael is buried. We 
 drove afterwards to the villa Borghese, crowded with ancient 
 marble, among which is a long series of busts of Roman Empe- 
 rors in " antique red." The heads are nearly all of one type, and 
 denote the energetic, practical character of the Romans. The 
 statue of Pauline, one of the treasures of the villa, is the most beau- 
 tiful work I have seen of Canova. Returning, we saw near the 
 gate some rich Italian faces. Italy reminds one at times of a 
 
132 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 beautiful Guido Magdalen, her tearful countenance upturned 
 towards heaven, so lovely in her affliction, such subdued passion 
 in her luxurious features, such hope in her lucent eyes. 
 
 Wednesday, March 8lh. 
 
 We spent most of the morning in the studios of sculptors, and 
 the afternoon in churches. What a multiplication of the human 
 form in marble ! The Churches are peopled with statues brown 
 with age, and in the studios they dazzle you with youthful white- 
 ness. 
 
 To describe in verse the surface of a man's mind is not to 
 write poetry ; nor is the imitation of the human body the exercise 
 of a fine Art. The Sculptor's function is to concentrate in one 
 body the beauty and character of many. When he does this he 
 creates, and until he creates, he is not up to his vocation. Nature 
 is not always beautiful, but at the bottom of all her phenomena 
 is the spirit of beauty. Her essence is beauty, and this essence 
 the worker with the chisel must extract and then embody, else is 
 he a barren Artist. 
 
 We saw this morning Guide's Aurora. Here is a subject most 
 apt for pictorial representation. The idea has sufficient intensity 
 to irradiate the whole body. In few large compositions is there 
 soul enough in the thought to animate the members ; or if there 
 be fire, there is lack of beauty. Here the idea, the parent of the 
 whole work, is both strong and beautiful, and the execution being 
 correspondent, the effect is complete. Afterwards, in the Minerva 
 Church, we saw a statue of Christ, by Michael Angelo. It wants 
 character and beauty. The subject is not suited to Michael 
 Angelo's genius. 
 
 Thursday, March 9th. 
 
 We visited this morning the studio of Wolf, a German sculptor 
 of reputation. A sweet dancing girl and a graceful Diana 
 attracted us most. The foreign Artists in Italy seem well nigh 
 
AN ENGLISH SERMON 133 
 
 to take the lead of the native, owing, probably, to the enjoyment 
 of greater liberty, the Italians being more under the chilling sway 
 of academical rules, and the influence of the by no means pure 
 example of Canova. We walked afterwards in the garden of the 
 Villa Medici, the prison of Galileo during his trial, now the French 
 Academy ; and into its hall of plaster casts, where is a collection 
 of the best antiques. This is going into the highest company. 
 These are genuine aristocrats, choice specimens of manhood and 
 womanhood. With many of them, time and ignorance have 
 dealt roughly. Some are without arms, others without legs, 
 and some without heads, but still they live. In their mythology, 
 what a Poem the ancient Greeks gave birth to and bequeathed 
 to the world. We next went to one of the Churches, to hear a 
 sermon from an English Catholic Prelate. During Lent, there 
 is daily preaching in many of the Churches. Chairs were set for 
 two hundred persons, but there were present not more than fifty. 
 The preacher was evidently a man of intellect, but dry and argu- 
 mentative. The drift of his discourse was to show that priests 
 are essential to salvation. 
 
 Men, with all their selfishness, and perhaps through a modifica- 
 tion thereof, have ever been prone to give up their affairs in trust 
 to others, the trustees dividing themselves into the three hitherto 
 inevitable classes, the legal, the medical, and the theological. 
 Some even avail themselves to the full of all these helps and sub- 
 stitutes, abandoning the conduct of their worldly possessions to 
 their man of business, their bodies passively to their physician, 
 and their souls as passively to their pastor. These languid nega- 
 tives are of course few. By degrees the axiom is getting to be 
 valued, that to thrive, whether secularly or spiritually, a man 
 must look to his own interests. People are beginning to discern, 
 that health is not a blessing in the gift of Doctors, that Religion 
 is independent of hierarchies, and that the first preachers of 
 Christianity were quite a different kind of men from most of the 
 
134 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 latest. Some men are pre-eminently endowed to develope and 
 feed the spiritual element of our nature, and most reverently do 
 I regard and cordially hearken to such wherever I meet with 
 them. As in the preacher before me, I perceived no marks 
 of such inspiration, and as there was neither eloquence nor art to 
 give his discourse the attraction of an intellectual entertainment, 
 we soon left the church, a movement which can be effected here 
 without notice. He handled his argument not without skill, and 
 doubtless the sermon was edifying to most of his auditors, their 
 minds having been drilled by him and his colleagues into the 
 habit of acquiescence. 
 
 The ordinary service was going on at the same time inde- 
 pendently in a side chapel, where a very aged ecclesiastic," in 
 a white satin embroidered robe, was saying mass, which to us, in 
 the outskirts of the English Company, was quite audible. He 
 was entirely alone, having no assistant at the altar and not a sin- 
 gle worshipper ; until just before he concluded, a bright-faced 
 boy, ten or twelve years of age, came in with a long staff, to put 
 out the tall candle. Ere the venerable father had ceased praying, 
 the little fellow had the extinguisher up, thrusting it now and then 
 half over the flame with playful impatience. The instant the 
 old man had finished, out went the candle, and the boy, taking 
 the large missal in his arms, walked off, looking over towards us 
 for notice, and restraining with difficulty his steps to the pace of 
 the aged priest, who tottered after him. 
 
 On leaving the church, we went for the first time to the 
 Borghese Gallery, freely open to strangers, and to artists, of 
 whom, in the different rooms, there were several taking copies. 
 Strangers in Rome owe much to the unexampled liberality of the 
 Italian nobles, in opening to them the treasures of their palaces 
 and villas. 
 
 In the afternoon to the Vatican, where again we had a cloudy 
 sky, and were therefore again disappointed before the great fres- 
 
SALVATOR ROSA. 135 
 
 coes of Raphael, which, from the darkness of the rooms wherein 
 they are painted, ha v 'n't light enough even on the sminiest days. 
 On coming out we took our accustomed walk up under the dome 
 of St. Peter's. 
 
 Friday, March 10th. 
 
 We visited this morning the Corsini Gallery, in which is the 
 bound Prometheus of Salvator Rosa, with his fiery stamp upon it. 
 The horror which a lesser genius could excite, cannot be subdued 
 by any mastery of art. The keeper of the rooms, with the hostile 
 feeling reciprocated among the inhabitants of the different sections 
 of Italy, remarked, that none but a Neapolitan would choose so 
 bloody a subject. Another remarkable picture in this collection, 
 is a head of Christ bound with thorns, by Guercino. The agony, 
 the fortitude, the purity are all there, and in the upcast translu- 
 cent eyes is an infinite depth of feeling, as of mingled expostula- 
 tion and resignation, that recalls vividly the touching words, " My 
 God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" 'Tis one of the 
 masterpieces of Rome. 
 
 At twelve we found ourselves in St. Peter's, to witness the 
 ceremony which takes place every Friday during Lent. The 
 Pope, attended by his household and a numerous body of Cardi- 
 nals and other prelates, says prayers successively at several dif- 
 ferent altars. The Swiss Guard, in the old-time costume with 
 pikes, formed a hollow oblong, within which the Pope and the 
 whole cortege of priests knelt. For the Pope and Cardinals a 
 cushion was provided ; the others knelt on the marble pavement. 
 The Pope prayed inaudibly, and seemed to do so with heart. 
 The strange uniform of the Guards, the numerous robed priests 
 kneeling behind their chief, the gorgeous towering vaults above 
 them, and the sacred silence, made a beautiful scene. 
 
 In the afternoon we drove to the Villa Mills, built above the 
 ruins of the House of Augustus, on Mount Palatine. Through a 
 
136 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 door in the garden, round which clustered lemons, roses, and 
 oranges, we descended to several of the rooms of Augustus, the 
 floor whereof is about thirty feet below the present surface. From 
 various points in the garden we had views of the majestic rem- 
 nants of imperial Rome, — the Colosseum, the baths of Caracalla, 
 the temple of Peace, part of the Forum, the temple of Vesta, the 
 Pyramid of Caius Cestius, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, inter- 
 spersed with convents and churches and scattered buildings. 
 Over the wall on the southern side of the Villa grounds, you look 
 directly down upon some remains of the Circus Maximus, which 
 occupied the valley between the Palatine and Aventine Hills, and 
 where took place the rape of the Sabines. It will take a long 
 while for Niebuhr to efface belief in the reality of those early 
 Roman doings. At last we ascended to a terrace built over a 
 spot where had once been a temple of Juno, whence was a pros- 
 pect of modern Rome with its throng of cupolas. We next 
 mounted the Capitol Hill, to go into the Church Aracseli. 
 
 Saturday, March 11th. 
 
 We visited this morning the Convent of the Sacre CoBur on the 
 Trinitd del Monte. This is a sisterhood of French ladies, some of 
 them noble, devoted to the education of the upper classes. The 
 establishment looked the model of neatness. The pupils, who 
 had a uniform dress, rose and curtsied to us as we entered the 
 rooms. They looked healthy and happy. The sisters had the 
 manner and tone of well-bred ladies, chastened by seclusion from 
 the rivalries of the world. It is one of the results of Catholic 
 organization and discipline, that in an institution like this, a field 
 of utility is opened to those whom disappointment, or distaste for 
 excitement, or a natural proneness to piety, disposes to withdraw 
 from the world. Through the principle of association, the various 
 resources of many are centred upon a high object, and much 
 activity, that would otherwise have lain dormant or have been 
 
CONVENT HYMN. 137 
 
 wasted, is turned to excellent account. From one of the lofty 
 dormitories, with its numerous clean white beds, we looked out 
 into a broad garden belonging to the convent, and beyond this to 
 the Ludovisi grounds and Villa. 
 
 Afterwards, at the room of Flatz, a Tyrolese painter, we were 
 charmed with the artist and his works. His subjects are all reli- 
 gious, and are executed with uncommon grace and feeling. A 
 pupil of his, too. Fink, is a young man of promise. 
 
 There are people with minds so exclusively religious, that 
 Religion does not, — as is its office, — sustain, temper, exalt their 
 being ; it fills, it is their being. When the character is upright 
 and simple, such persons become earnest and calm ; when other- 
 wise, they are officious and sentimental. If their intellect is 
 sensuous, they delight in the imagery and manipulating ceremo- 
 nies of the Catholic worship, and then, having of course, by their 
 original structure, no intellectual breadth or power, they will be 
 liable, under the assaults of a picture-loving mind and absorbing 
 devotional feeling, to become Romanists even in Rome itself! 
 
 Sunday, March 12th. 
 
 This afternoon we returned to the chapel of the Sacr^ Cceur, 
 to hear the music at the evening benediction. 'Twas a hymn 
 from the sisterhood, accompanied by the organ. The service 
 commenced silently at the altar, round which curled profuse in- 
 cense, that glowed before the lighted candles like silver dust. The 
 few persons present were kneeling, when the stillness was broken 
 by a gentle gush of sound from the invisible choir up behind us. 
 It came like a heavenly salutation. The soft tones seemed mes- 
 sengers out of the Infinite, that led the spirit up to whence they 
 had come. At the end of each verse, a brief response issued 
 from deep male voices at the opposite end of the church, near the 
 altar, sounding like an earthly answer to the heavenly call. Then 
 again were the ears possessed by the feminine harmony, that 
 poured itself down upon the dim chapel like an unasked blessing. 
 
138 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Monday, March 13th. 
 
 This morning, at the Spada Palace, we saw the statue of Pom- 
 pey, which " all the while ran blood " when Caesar fell under the 
 blows of the conspirators in the Capitol. 'Tis a colossal figure, 
 about ten feet in height, of fine character, dignified, vigorous, and 
 life-like. We drove afterwards out to the English burying-ground, 
 where lie the ashes of Shelley, " enriching even Rome," as his 
 wife had a right to say. I revere the character, and admire the 
 genius of Shelley, yet I was not moved by the presence of his 
 tomb. Emotion cannot be summoned at will, I have at times, 
 in a holy spot, found myself in a state of utter insensibility, and, 
 instead of turning my eyes inward under its spirit-moving influ- 
 ence, have caught my lips playing with the reminiscence of a 
 jest, as irrepressible as it was impertinent in such a place. For 
 all that, the visit was not barren ; the feeling would come after, 
 wards. . 
 
 In the afternoon, we visited the rooms of Overbeck, the distin- 
 guished German painter, a great master in drawing and composi- 
 tion. Like Flatz, his subjects are all scriptural. 
 
 Very few artists being able to achieve the highest triumph in 
 execution, which is the transparence and vivid beauty of healthiest 
 life, addict themselves naturally, in a critical age, to an emulous 
 cultivation of those qualities which through study are more attain- 
 able, and then attach to them a kind of importance which they do 
 not deserve. This seems to be the case just now with composi- 
 tion, an element which may shine in a picture unworthy of per- 
 manent regard, and which stands related to the genial quality in 
 Art as the narrative does to the poetical in a printed volume. 
 Under genuine inspiration, the parts of a work will always, when 
 Art is out of its first rudiments, put themselves together compe- 
 tently to the development of the idea, although the artist may not 
 excel in composition ; but from the most skilful combination of 
 the constituent parts, will never be generated that unfading charm 
 
COLOSSEUM BY MOONLIGHT. 13Q 
 
 of life and beauty, which genius alone can impart, and the produc- 
 tion whereof even genius cannot explain. In short, composition 
 is the intellectual department of painting, and will be ineffective 
 until vivified by the fire of feeling. 
 
 We walked afterwards through the gallery of the Capitol, and 
 then to the Tarpeian rock. 
 
 Tuesday, -March 14th. 
 
 We commenced the day, which was bright at last, with a walk 
 on the Pincian. Visited in the morning a second time the rooms 
 of the German painter Flatz, and his pupil. We drove after- 
 wards through the sunny air past the Forum and Colosseum out 
 to the grand church of St. John of the Lateran, where, in the 
 court, is the finest obelisk in Rome, brought, like the others, from 
 Egypt, the land of obelisks. It is a single shaft of red granite, 
 more than a hundred feet high. 
 
 In the afternoon, we walked again on the Pincian, amidst a 
 throng of people from all parts of the world, in carriages, on 
 horseback, and on foot. How seldom you meet a fine old coun- 
 tenance ; one that has been enriched by years, that has the au- 
 tumnal mellowness of joyous and benignant sensations. Oftener 
 you see on old shoulders a face corrugated and passion-ploughed, 
 that may be likened to a river-bed, which, deserted by the turbid 
 spring flood, shows a hard, parched surface, bestrewn with drift- 
 wood and unsightly fragments, that tell how high the muddy tor- 
 rent has revelled. At six, we went to see the Colosseum by 
 moonlight. The wondrous old pile grows more eloquent still at 
 night ; its vastness expands, its majesty grows more majestic ; the 
 dimness of the hour seems congenial to its antiquity. The patches 
 of moonlight glistening among its arches, look like half revela- 
 tions of a thousand mysteries that lie coiled up in its bosom. It 
 has the air of a mystic temple sprung out of the gloom, for a 
 Sybil to brood in and prophesy. 
 
140 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Wednesday, March 15th. 
 
 This morning, we drove out of the Porta del Popolo, the north- 
 ern gate, a mile and a half just over the bridge of Mole, and 
 returning along the right bank of the Tiber, with the Villa Ma- 
 dama and Monte Mario on the right, we re-entered Rome near St. 
 Peter's. Thence, passing through the busiest part of the modern 
 city, we drove between the Palatine and Aventine hills, round the 
 Colosseum, by the three columns that are left of the Forum of 
 Nerva, into the gay Corso, passing thus, suddenly, as we do 
 almost every day, from amidst the gigantic brown fragments that 
 silently tell of the might of ancient Rome, into the bustle and 
 ostentation of a modern capital. I spent an hour afterwards in 
 Thorwaldsen's studio, with a still growing enjoyment. Great 
 Poems are incarnations of a nation's mind, whence in weaker 
 times it may draw nourishment to help to renew its vigor. The 
 creations of Shakspeare and Milton rear themselves the steadfast 
 mountains of the mental world of England, up to which the peo- 
 ple can at all times ascend to inhale a bracing air. So, too, after- 
 sculptors will be able to refresh themselves at the clear fountain 
 of Thorwaldsen's purity and simplicity. 
 
 Thursday, March 16th. 
 
 We drove out to the new St. Paul's that they are building on the 
 site of the old one, more than a mile out of the St, Paul Gate. 
 This Church is one of the largest, and the Pope is rebuilding and 
 adorning it in a style of unmatched magnificence. Nations and 
 systems cannot, any more than individuals, pause in their career. 
 Each must fulfil its destiny. From the bosom of Eternity they 
 are launched forth, to perform a given circuit, and long after 
 they have culminated, they continue, though under relaxed mo- 
 mentum, to give out sparks of the original fire, and decline con- 
 sistently to their end. The Papal State is loaded with a growing 
 debt ; Rome has churches enough for ten times its actual popula- 
 
VIEW FROM THE CAPITOL. 141 
 
 tion ; advancing civilisation rejects more and more the sensuous 
 as an auxiliary to the spiritual. Yet, at an enormous cost, this 
 church is re-erected, dazzling with pillars and marble and gold, 
 capacious to hold tens of thousands, though distant from the city 
 in the blighted Campagna ; a token not only that the spirit of 
 Romanism is unchanged, but that it has yet the will and vigor, 
 in the face of material difficulties, and in defiance of civilisation, 
 to manifest itself in mediaeval pomp and unchristian magnificence. 
 On getting back within the walls of the city, we turned into 
 the Via Appia, and stopped at the tomb of the Scipios, down into 
 which I groped with a lighted candle twenty or thirty feet below 
 the present surface, in a labyrinth of low vaults, where I saw 
 several vertical slabs with inscriptions. After dinner, we drove 
 to the Villa Mattel, whence there is a fine view southward, of the 
 aqueducts and mountains. Late in the afternoon I ascended to 
 the top of the tower of the Capitol. The sky was cloudless, and 
 the unparalleled scene seemed to float in the purple light. Moun- 
 tain, plain, and city, the eye took in at a sweep. From fifteen to 
 forty miles in more than a semicircle ranged the Appenines, the 
 nearest clusters being the Alban and the Sabine Hills. Contract- 
 ing the view within these, the eye embraced the dim Campagna, 
 in the midst of which, right under me, lay the noisy city beside 
 its silent mother. Looking down from such an elevation, the 
 seven hills, unless you know well their position, are not traceable ; 
 and most of the ruins, not having, as when seen from the plain, 
 the relief of the sky, grow indistinct; only the Colosseum towers 
 broadly before you, a giant among dwarfs, challenging your 
 wonder always at the colossal grandeur of Imperial Rome. In 
 the west, St. Peter's broke the line of the horizon. From 
 countless towers, spires, cupolas, columns, obelisks, long shadows 
 fell upon the sea of tiled roof. The turbid Tiber showed itself 
 here and there, winding as of old through the throng. I gazed 
 until, the sun being set, the mountains began to fade, the ruins to 
 
142 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 be swallowed up in the brown earth, and the whole fascinating 
 scene wore that lifeless look which follows immediately the sink- 
 ing of the sun below the horizon, the earth seeming suddenly to 
 fall asleep. 
 
 Friday, March 17th. 
 
 Through the high walls that enclose the gardens and Villas in 
 Italy, we drove out to the Villa Albani, reputed the richest about 
 Rome in antique sculpture. There is a statue of Tiberius, which 
 makes him shine among several of his imperial colleagues in grace 
 and manly proportions, a distinction which he probably owes to the 
 superiority of his Artist ; a fragment from the bas-reliefs of the 
 Parthenon at Athens, and other esteemed antiques in half size and 
 miniature, amidst a legion of busts, among them one of Themisto- 
 cles, of much character. Unhappily, on these occasions you can- 
 not give yourself up to the pleasure of believing that you gaze on 
 the features of one of the great ancients ; for even the identity of 
 the bust is seldom unquestionable, and of course still less so is 
 the likeness. It were a goodly sight to behold an undoubted por- 
 trait of Plato, or Socrates, or Brutus. The villa is in a florid 
 style of architecture, and the grounds are laid out in straight 
 walks between walls of evergreen. The day was balmy, and 
 the parterre walls were alive with lizards darting about in the 
 sunshine. We next drove out of the St. John Gate to get a near 
 view of the aqueducts, which have been well likened to Giants 
 striding across the Campagna. On re-entering the Gate, the front 
 of St. John of the Lateran presented itself very grandly. It is 
 purer than the facade of St. Peter's, in which the perpendicular 
 continuity is broken, a fault almost universal in the fronts of Ita- 
 lian churches. The statues, too, on the St. John, from being co- 
 lossal and somewhat crowded, have a better effect than statues in 
 that position generally have. 
 
 In the afternoon we drove and walked in the grounds of the 
 
SCIARRA GALLERY. 143 
 
 Villa Borghese. The entire circuit is at least two miles, and the 
 grounds are varied both by art and nature. Strangers can hardly 
 be sufficiently grateful to the family that opens to them such a 
 resource. I should have stated, when speaking of the statuary in 
 tlie villa, that the original and celebrated Borghese collection of 
 antiques was sold to the Paris Museum, in the reign of Napoleon, 
 for thirteen millions of francs. The present collection has been 
 made since that period. 
 
 Saturday, March 18th. 
 
 This morning we began with the Sciarra Gallery, one of the 
 most choice in the world. In a single room, not more than 
 twenty-five feet square, were thirty or forty pictures, estimated to 
 be worth three hundred thousand dollars, comprising master- 
 pieces by Titian, Raphael, Guido, Leonardo da Vinci, and others. 
 For the celebrated Modesty and Charity of Leonardo, the size 
 of which is hardly four feet by three, the good-humored old keeper 
 told us an English nobleman offered fifty thousand dollars. These 
 marvels of the pencil teach with glowing emphasis, that the es- 
 sence of the Art is beauty. If this be a truism, the crowds of 
 prosaic works one daily passes justify its reiteration. Thence 
 we went to Mount Palatine, to explore the ruins of part of the 
 Palace of the Csesars, adjoining the house of Augustus which 
 we had already seen. Each of his successors for several ge- 
 nerations seems to have enlarged the imperial residence, until, 
 under Nero, it spread over the whole of the Palatine and Cselian 
 hills and part of the Esquiline. What we saw to-day covers se- 
 veral acres. The habitable part, of which there are only left 
 fragments of thick brick walls, was built on high arches. The 
 view from the top embraces the greater part of the ancient and 
 modern cities, extending over the Campagna to the mountains. 
 'Tis now a vegetable-garden, and where Emperors have dined, 
 grows a luxuriant crop of artichokes. A bright-looking woman, 
 
144 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 who was peeling onions, and who plucked for us a boquet of hya- 
 cinths, told us that she paid for it seventy dollars annual rent. 
 From the Palace we drove to the tomb of Augustus, where 
 among other bones we saw the half of a skull, which the keeper 
 protested was ancient Roman, and was ready to protest to be that 
 of Augustus. 
 
 In the afternoon we went to the rooms of Maes, a Belgian 
 Artist of talent, and then drove out to the church on Monte Mario, 
 whence the view is very fine. A lad, who had care of the church, 
 told us, that in the Convent adjoining lived two Dominican friars, 
 there not being means to support more. Each of them receives 
 five dollars a month, besides twenty cents a day for saying mass, 
 making about eleven dollars a month to each for clothing and 
 food. A man here can keep his body well covered with flesh for 
 ten cents a day. His meat will be chiefly maccaroni and his 
 drink water, a good fare for longevity. Be it as it may, there is 
 no class of people in Italy with fuller skins than the friars. 
 
 In the evening we saw, at about seven o'clock, the long bright 
 tail of a comet. 
 
 Sunday, March 19th. 
 
 This morning I heard a sermon at the Church of the Jesuits. 
 The subject was the perfections of Joseph as husband and father, 
 who, the preacher often repeated, had all the realities of the ma- 
 trimonial union without its chief function, and performed all the 
 functions of a father without having the reality. He enforced, 
 happily and with pure feeling, from the example of Joseph, the 
 sanctity of the marriage tie, and the supreme obligation of duty. 
 It was a practical, animated, sound discourse, which commanded 
 earnest attention from his audience, that consisted of the middle 
 and lower classes, and was very numerous, filling nearly the 
 whole area of the large church. 
 
 In the afternoon, we went to hear a celebrated French Jesuit 
 
FRENCH JESUIT. 145 
 
 preach, at the church called St. Louis of the French. In a dis- 
 course of more than an hour, to which a large, educated audi- 
 tory listened with unwearied attention, the preacher summed up 
 with skill and eloquence the chief arguments of the Roman Ca- 
 tholic Church against Protestantism. In an emphatic and adroit 
 manner he presented the best that can be said in favor of the unity 
 and infallibility of the Roman Church. He laid down, that Re- 
 ligion could be preserved but by one of three means ; either, first, 
 by God making a separate revelation thereof to each individual 
 man ; or secondly, by his having embodied it in a book, which 
 each was to interpret for himself; or thirdly, by instituting a 
 Church to whose guardianship he committed it. After endeavor- 
 ing to show, that the third was the only means consistent with the 
 simplicity of the divine government, he went on to set forth, that 
 Christ established one Church, that that Church was by its nature, 
 origin, and design, infallible ; and in a brilliant sophistical passage 
 he attempted to demonstrate the inherent necessity of intolerance 
 towards doctrine, concluding with the position, that without such 
 a church there would be no faith, no religion. 
 
 What a pitiful piece of work were man, if to his fellow-man he 
 owed the very enjoyment of his highest faculty. How ignoble 
 and parasitical must that Jesuit deem his brother men ! But it is 
 just and inevitable, that they who by men have been unduly ex- 
 alted, should look down upon those who have bowed the neck 
 under their yoke. Without any direct knowledge of the fact, it 
 might be inferred, that no class of men have a lower opinion of 
 mankind than the Romish priesthood. No I'eligion without the 
 Church ! Why, the Roman and all other churches that have ever 
 existed or will ever exist, are effects of religion, not its cause, — 
 the ci'eatures of man, not his masters — and, as such, obsequious 
 ever to his movements ; sucking blood when he has been cruel, 
 relentless when he has been intolerant, humane when he has be- 
 come humanized ; presumptuous towards his inactivity, humble 
 
 8 
 
146 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 towards his independence ; aristocratic in one country, demo- 
 cratic in another — here upholding slavery, there denouncing it ; 
 always a representative of the temporary condition of society. 
 Why were the Catholic priests more openly rapacious and lust- 
 ful before the Reformation than since ? Why is the priest in 
 Spain different from the priest in Sweden, or the Catholic priest 
 of the United States more true to his chief vow than his fellow 
 in Italy ? There is but one unity, and that is the universal in- 
 nateness in man of the religious sentiment.. The form wherein 
 it clothes, the creed wherein it embodies itself, depend upon civi- 
 lisation, temperament, climate, policy, and to these the priest ine- 
 vitably fashions himself. But as effects reflect often back upon 
 their causes, creeds and hierarchies re-act, with more or less 
 power, upon Religion itself; and it is a symptom of a baleful 
 influence, and of an unmanly passiveness in man, when so de- 
 grading a doctrine gets to be part of his creed, as that he owes 
 his religion to his priest. 
 
 To learn what priestcraft is, we need not however go so far as 
 Catholic Italy, although there its deformity is the most revolting 
 in Christendom. Some very unequivocal exhibitions of it may 
 be seen among the Protestant isms of our country, notwithstand- 
 ing that the mass of our population is in mental freedom and 
 strength raised above that of Europe, and that comparatively, 
 through the severance of Church and State, we enjoy religious 
 liberty. Priesthood, performing a necessary part in human soci- 
 eties, is, like the other institutions for the furtherance of man's 
 estate, subject under all forms and circumstances to corruptions. 
 The benefits resulting from a priesthood, like the benefits result- 
 ing from a magistracy, are purely those of organization. In the 
 earlier stages of culture, or when humanity is partially developed, 
 priests form a distinct authorized power, which, being men, it is 
 of course their tendency to abuse. As society through individual 
 culture developes itself, this organization becomes more and more 
 
THORWALDSEN'S ST. JOHN. 147 
 
 merged in the general social one. Priests are first dropped by 
 the state and then by individuals, and the religious element, re- 
 incorporated, as it were, into the whole nature, receives its culti- 
 vation along with the other nobler sentiments of man. Rituals 
 and Hierarchies are but the forms through which for a time it 
 suits Religion to express and cherish herself; they are transient, 
 only Religion is perennial. Forms, in their healthiest state, 
 waste somewhat of the substance they are designed to set forth. 
 At their birth, they are tainted with insincerity ; when mature, 
 they grow hypocritical ; and in their old age, they get to be bare- 
 faced falsehoods, and then they die. In religion, as in politics, 
 and in all things, man becomes weak in proportion as he surren- 
 ders himself to the power or guidance of others. This surrender 
 is totally different from helpful co-operation, as well as from re- 
 ciprocal subordination according to inborn superiorities. 
 
 Monday, March 20th. 
 
 At Thorwaldsen's studio, I stood again long before the St. John 
 preaching in the wilderness. This is a group of twelve parts, 
 ranged in a line declining on either side from the central figure, 
 to suit its destination, which is the tympanum of a church 
 in Copenhagen. St. John, in his left hand a cross, which 
 serves him too as a staff, and his right raised towards Heaven, 
 stands in the centre, with a countenance mild and earnest, his 
 look and attitude well expressing the solemnity of the tidings he 
 proclaims. 
 
 The first figure on his right is a man, apparently about thirty, 
 with the left foot on a high stone, and one elbow on his knee, his 
 chin resting in his hand. His fixed look is not turned up as if to 
 catch the falling words of the speaker, but is outward as though 
 his mind were busy with something that had gone before. — Next 
 to him is a group of two figures, the first a turbaned man of mid- 
 dle age, with hands crossed at his waist, in the simplest erect 
 
148 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 attitude of deep attention, his closely draped light body in the 
 most perfect repose, while his bearded countenance is intent upon 
 that of St. John with the animated expression of one accustomed 
 to thought, and whose mind is now deeply wrought upon by the 
 words he hears. Behind him, and gently resting on his shoul- 
 der, is a beardless youth, like the elder one before him, who may 
 be his father, attentive but passive. — The third figure is a mother, 
 half kneeling, behind her a boy seven or eight years of age, with 
 chin on his hands that are crossed on her right shoulder. — The 
 fourth, an old man seated, with long beard and turban, a tranquil 
 venerable figure. — The fifth, and last to the right of St. John, is 
 a youth recumbent, supporting his upturned head with his left 
 arm. 
 
 The first figure on the left of St. John is a boy about fifteen, 
 looking up into his face with half open mouth and a beaming 
 expression, as if the words he was listening to had unlocked his 
 soul. — Next to him is a middle-aged priest, with both hands 
 before his breast resting on a staff. His countenance is strong 
 and rugged, and his brows are knit as if his mind were in a state 
 of resistance to what he heard. — The third figure is a hunter. 
 He looks melted by the preacher, and has an aspect of devout 
 acquiescence. By a band he holds a fine dog, upon which is 
 fixed the attention of, — the fourth group, two bright children, a 
 boy and girl of nine and eight, their faces alive with childish 
 pleasure. — Behind them, the fifth figure, is a female seated, their 
 mother apparently, who is restraining before her a third younger 
 child. — The sixth and last figure is a shepherd, recumbent, with 
 open mouth and joyful look. 
 
 This subject is peculiarly fitted to sculpture, from the union of 
 perfect bodily repose with mental animation. The conception, 
 which is the happiest possible for such a group ; the ease, life, 
 correctness and grace of the figures ; the contrasts in their 
 postures, ages, conditions, sex, expression ; the calm power evi- 
 
TASSO'S HEAD. 149 
 
 dent in the fertility and purity of the invention ; the excellence 
 of the execution ; the distribution of the parts, and the vivid cha- 
 racter of each figure, make this work one of the noblest of modern 
 sculpture. 
 
 In the afternoon we went through the Gallery of the Vatican. 
 From an unnecessary and ungracious arrangement, in order to 
 see the pictures, you are obliged to walk nearly the whole length 
 of the range of galleries in the two stories, a distance of more 
 than a mile, so that you are fatigued when you come in front of 
 the pictures, where, moreover, there are no seats. — We went 
 afterwards to the church of St. Onofrio, not far from St. Peter's. 
 Here I saw a representation in wax of the head of Tasso, from a 
 mask taken after death. Were there any doubt as to the genu- 
 ineness of this head, the cranium were almost sufficient to dispel 
 it, being just such a one as is fitted to the shoulders of an excita- 
 ble poet. The monks keep it in their library. Another treasure 
 they possess is a Madonna and child in fresco, by Leonardo da 
 Vinci, which, notwithstanding the injury of time, breathes forth 
 the inspiration imparted to it by that wonderful genius. Neither 
 this, nor the mask of Tasso, both being in the convent to which 
 the church is attached, can be seen by women, except through 
 special permission from the Pope. Below in the church is Tas- 
 so's Tomb. 
 
 Tuesday, March 21st. 
 
 At the rooms of Vellati, an Italian painter of landscapes and 
 hunting pieces, we saw this morning the Magdalen of Correggio 
 recently brought to light, Vellati having discovered it under 
 another picture which had been painted over it, and which he 
 bought for fifteen dollars. With great labor, by means of the 
 point of a needle, the upper painting was removed without injur- 
 ing the gem beneath it. Its size is about fifteen inches by twelve, 
 and the price asked for it is five thousand pounds sterling ; but 
 
350 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 its value cannot be counted in money. It is the duplicate of the 
 celebrated picture at Dresden. In the same rooms was a fine 
 landscape by Rembrandt. 
 
 In the Piazza del Pojpolo is a meagre exhibition of pictures, the 
 best painters always drawing amateurs to their private rooms. 
 We went afterwards to the Farnesian gardens, which are entered 
 from the Forum, to see remains of the palaces of Nero and Cali- 
 gula and of the House of Augustus. We groped down into the 
 baths of Livia. We walked through the Forum to the Colosseum, 
 and afterwards in the Borghese Gardens. 
 
 Wednesday, March 22d. 
 
 This morning we saw the Cenci again. What a gift of genius, 
 to reproduce such a face in all its tremulous life ! With a deep, 
 awful, innocent look, it seems to peer into your soul and pray 
 you for sympathy. Doubt has been thrown upon its genuineness. 
 If it be a creation and not a portrait, it is the more wonderful. 
 Its character is so perfectly in unison with the mysterious heart- 
 rending story of Beatrice Cenci, that, had it been discovered long 
 years after her tragic end and without any clue to its origin, it 
 might and probably would have been appropriated to her. We 
 drove afterwards to the church of St. Peter in chains, to see for 
 the second time the Moses of Michael Angelo. I observed to-day, 
 that with the instinct of genius (in the heads of the antique the 
 ear is further forward) he has placed the ear far back, which 
 heightens the intellectual character of the head. In gazing at 
 this powerful statue again, I felt that in Art 'tis only beauty that 
 ensures constancy. The Moses is grand and imposing, but one 
 does not look forward to a third visit with that anticipation of 
 growing enjoyment, with which one goes back to the Apollo or 
 the Laocoon. Liberate the Laocoon from the constraints of force 
 and pain, and it would stand before you a body pre-eminent for 
 beauty and justness of proportion. On the other hand, suppose 
 
CARDINAL FESCH'S GALLERY. 151 
 
 the body a common one, and the work sinks to a revoking 
 mimicry of corporeal suffering. 
 
 One who resides long in Rome is liable to be sucked back into 
 the past. Behind him is an ocean of movement and thought, out 
 of which rise countless fragments and monuments, that daily 
 tempt him to exploration. A man might here lean his whole 
 being against antiquity and find it a life-long support. The pre- 
 sent becomes but a starting point whence he would set out on 
 voyages into the past. — Walked out at the Porta Pia. 
 
 Thursday, March 23d. 
 
 This morning we went to the Villa Negroni, the neglected 
 grounds of which are in great part occupied by a vegetable gar- 
 den. The sun was just enough veiled by thin clouds to make 
 walking agreeable, and although the Villa is far within the walls, 
 we strolled for half an hour over twenty or thirty acres of arti- 
 chokes, onions and peas, enjoying a wide sweep of the mountains. 
 — We then went to see Cardinal Fesch's gallery, containing alto- 
 gether twenty thousand pictures. Exempt from the officious 
 promptings of a Cicerone, we lounged from room to room, choosing 
 for ourselves, and appealing to the voluminous catalogue to back 
 our vision or resolve doubts. After one has obtained, by famili- 
 arity with galleries, some knowledge of the best masters, it is 
 delightful to be let loose in this way upon a new collection. This 
 one is celebrated for Flemish and Dutch pictures. 
 
 Great part of the afternoon we passed among the statues of the 
 Vatican. The Perseus looks as if Canova had studied the antique 
 more than nature. The one sole mistress in Art being Nature, 
 all that the artist can gain from the works of others is the best 
 mode of seizing the spirit of the one common model, of compassing 
 her beauties, so that he shall be able to reproduce what shall be 
 at once ideal and natural. Not to imitate their forms, but to ex- 
 tract from them how their authors imitated the best of nature so 
 
152 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 truly, should be the aim of the young sculptor in scanning the 
 Apollo or Laocoon. If he can make the wondrous work before 
 him reveal the process of the worker, then he can profit by the 
 example. If he cannot, then he has not the innate gifts of a high 
 artist. But this process of the great masters he will not only fail 
 to detect, by copying the forms that have come from human hands, 
 but by such servility (for it is servility, be the model Phidias 
 himself) he weakens his original powers, and gradually disables 
 himself from standing up face to face before his living mistress. 
 To the young sculptor, the antique should be an armory where 
 he can fortify his native powers for the loving conflict he has to 
 wage with vigorous beaming nature. In the Perseus, 'tis appa- 
 rent the free play of the artist's mind was under check. You 
 behold the result of fine powers in partial servitude. Neverthe- 
 less, both it and the boxers beside it are noble works. I went 
 next to the Capitol, whence, after gazing at the Gladiator, and 
 examining the busts of Brutus and Csesar, I walked down into 
 the Forum about the base of the Capitol, among piles of broken 
 columns. 
 
 Friday, March 34th. 
 
 This morning I paced St. Peter's to get for myself its dimen- 
 sions. Walking without effort, I counted two hundred and sixty 
 steps as the length of the great nave, thirty-seven as its width, 
 and one hundred and eighty as that of the transept. I counted 
 twenty-six altars. Its statues, mostly of gigantic size, and its 
 mosaic pictures, I did not undertake to count. It is reputed to 
 have cost about fifty millions of dollars. 
 
 Do not Painting and Sculpture require for their excellence a 
 predominance of the sensuous over the meditative ? The Catholic 
 religion, the parent, or, at least, the foster-mother of modern 
 painting, appeals largely to the senses; and the Grecian my- 
 thology, the nurse of ancient sculpture, still more so. The pre- 
 
THE POPE. 153 
 
 sent tendency is towards the spiritual and rational, and the fore- 
 most people of Europe, the English, possessing the richest written 
 poetry in the world, is poor in the plastic Arts. The great 
 features of the German, English and American mind, are deep 
 religious and moral emotions, the fruits of whose alliance with 
 reason are far-reaching ideas a^d wide-embracing principles, 
 which sway the thoughts and acts of men, but which can be but 
 faintly represented in bodily images. 
 
 This sounds well enough, but great modern names refute it. 
 Your fair-looking edifice of logic proves but a house of paper 
 before the breath of great facts. 
 
 Saturday, March 25th. 
 
 We went to look at the continuation of Cardinal Fesch's collec- 
 tion of pictures in a neighboring Palace, but all the best are in 
 the first which we saw a few days since. The keeper unlocked 
 a large room in which pictures were piled away in solid masses 
 one against the other. I noted No. 16,059 on one of them. 
 Fourteen hundred dollars a year rent is paid for the rooms the 
 whole collection occupies. — We then went to the Minerva Church 
 to witness a religious ceremony, in which the Pope is carried on 
 the shoulders of his attendants. We got into the church in time 
 to have a good view of him seated in a rich throne-like chair, 
 which rose just above the dense crowd, borne rocking along, as 
 on a disturbed sea of human heads. Carried on either side of him 
 were two large fans of peacock's feathers, which might be called 
 the sails of the golden vessel. We afterwards walked in the 
 Gregorian Gardens, a public walk near the Colosseum, between 
 the Cselian and Palatine Hills. — In the afternoon we drove out to 
 see the Torlonia Villa. 
 
 Canova's statuary wants what may be called the under move- 
 ment, which Thorwaldsen's has, and which is by no means given 
 by pronouncing tlie muscles, but by a union of sympathy for vital 
 
 8* 
 
154 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 forms with clean firm manipulation. In Powers this union is 
 more intimate than in any modern sculptor. 
 
 Sunday, March 26th. 
 
 We walked this morning on the Pincian Hill, and in the after- 
 noon drove three miles out of the Porta Pia to a Roman ruin, 
 whence there is a fine view of the mountains and over the Cam- 
 pagna all round. Behind us was Rome, and stretching out from 
 it over the plain towards the mountains were the aqueducts. 
 
 In Italy, the past is a load chained to the feet of the present. 
 The people drags after it, like a corpse, the thought, feeling, act 
 of by-gone generations. Tradition comes down like the current 
 through a narrow strait, behind which is an ocean. Here, 
 more than in most parts of old Europe, the health-giving trans- 
 formations go on languidly ; the old is not consumed to give place 
 to the hourly created new. The dead and effete is in the way 
 of the quick and refreshing. Hence, languor and irregularity in 
 the currents of life, causing in the body-politic, obstructions and 
 stoppages, and all sorts of social, religious, and political dyspep- 
 sias, congestions, rheumatisms, constipations. 
 
 Monday, March 27th. 
 
 Returned with renewed enjoyment to Thorwaldsen's studio. 
 Naturalness and ease are his characteristics. He has not a very 
 high ideal of beauty, and seems to avoid the nude, which is the 
 severest test of the artist. — Thence we went to the Church of St, 
 Lorenzo, in Lucina, where a fine voice was singing. To strive, 
 by such factitious ceremonies as those of the Romish worship, to 
 symbolize the divine, is a degradation of the holy that is in us. 
 It is summoning the solemn spirits of the soul to take part in a 
 fantastic pageant of the senses. — We walked afterwards in the 
 Gregorian Gardens, and on the ruins of the Palace of the Csesars. 
 Thence to look once more at the marvels of the Sciarra Gallery. 
 
FRASCATI. 155 
 
 — In the afternoon, on coming out of Crawford's studio, we drove 
 over the river to St. Peter's. 
 
 Tuesday, March 28th. 
 
 We set out at nine for Frascati. Three miles from the St. 
 John's Gate we passed under an aqueduct, still used, and near 
 the erect ruins of another. The Campagna, without trees or en- 
 closures, and almost without houses, is much less level than it 
 looks from the heights in Rome. We passed several shepherds 
 with their flocks, and parties of peasants ploughing, with large, 
 long-horned, long-legged, meek, white oxen. The plough had 
 one upright handle, and by this the men supported their weight 
 on it, for the purpose of turning up a deeper furrow of the dark 
 soil. As we drew near to Frascati, the Alban mountains, which 
 from Rome present themselves in a compact cluster, broke up 
 into separate peaks, the hill sides covered with olive trees, which 
 looked darker and more leafy than I ever saw them, and 
 Villas with their wooded grounds shining out distinctly. From 
 Frascati, which is not half way up the range of mountains, you 
 have a clear view of Rome, twelve miles distant, and of the Medi- 
 terranean. Immediately after arriving, we set out for Tusculum, 
 which lies almost two miles higher up, near the summit of one 
 of the peaks. Before we got half way rain began to fall, and the 
 sky was entirely overcast when we reached the ruins, consisting 
 of an amphitheatre and part of the walls of the ancient city of 
 Tusculum. Descending, we were glad to take shelter in Cicero's 
 house, which is on the other side of the ridge. What is left of it, 
 is six or eight deep arched rooms in a row, without direct com- 
 munication with one another, and all pointing south on a passage 
 way or portico. My imagination refused to bring Cicero before 
 me otherwise than as looking out from his arches impatiently on 
 a rainy day. In a hard shower we descended to the tavern, and 
 after dinner drove rapidly back to Rome. 
 
156 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 Wednesday, March 29th. 
 
 What is called the bust of young Augustus, in the Vatican, is 
 much like Napoleon when he was General, We walked round 
 the Rotunda, where are the Perseus of Canova, the Antinous, the 
 Laocoon, and the Apollo. What a company ! and what a privi- 
 lege it is to behold them. We drove afterwards to the Colosseum, 
 and for the first time ascended among the arches. Its vastness 
 and massive grandeur never cease to astonish me. 
 
 In the afternoon, when we had looked at the pictures in the 
 Academy of St. Luc, we drove to the Pincian Hill at five. The 
 whole Heaven was strewn with fragments of a thunderstorm. 
 Through them the hue of the sky was unusually brilliant, and 
 along the clear western horizon of a pearly green. Standing at 
 the northern extremity of the Hill, we had, to the south, the maze 
 of pinnacles, cupolas, towers, columns, obelisks, that strike up out 
 of the wide expanse of mellow building ; to the right, the sun and 
 St. Peter's ; and, to the left, a rural view into the grounds of the 
 Borghese Villa, where, over a clump of lofty pines, lay the darkest 
 remnants of the storm, seemingly resting on their broad flat sum- 
 mits. The gorgeous scene grew richer each moment that we 
 gazed, till the whole city and its fleecy canopy glowed in purple. 
 We walked slowly towards the great stairway, and paused on its 
 top as the sun was sinking below the horizon. 'Twas an Italian 
 sunset after a storm, with Rome for the foreground. 
 
 As, after returning to our lodging, I sat in the bland twilight, 
 full of the feeling produced by such a spectacle, in such a spot 
 and atmosphere, from the ante-room came the sound of a harp 
 from fingers that were moved by the soul for music, which is 
 almost as common here as speech. After playing two sweet airs, 
 it ceased : it had come unbidden and unannounced, and so it went. 
 This was wanted to complete the day, although before it began 1 
 did not feel the want of anything. There are rare moments of 
 Heaven on Earth, which, but for our perversity, might be frequent 
 
ST. MICHAEL. 157 
 
 hours, and sanctify and lighten each day, so full is Nature of 
 gifts and blessings, were the heart but kept open to them. But 
 we close our hearts with pride and ambition, and all kinds of 
 greeds and selfishness, and try to be content with postponing 
 Heaven to beyond the grave. 
 
 Thursday, March 30th. 
 
 We visited, this morning, the Hospital of St. Michael, an im- 
 mense establishment for the support and instruction of orphans, 
 and an asylum for aged poor. It is divided into four compart- 
 ments ; for aged men, of whom there are now one hundred and 
 twenty-five ; for aged women, one hundred and twenty-five ; for 
 boys, two hundred and twenty ; and for girls, two hundred and 
 seventy-five ; making altogether seven hundred and forty-five, as 
 the present number of its inmates. We saw a woman one hun- 
 dred and three years old, with health and faculties good. The 
 boys are taught trades and the liberal arts, and are entitled to the 
 half of the product of their work, which is laid up for them, and 
 serves as a capital to start with when they leave the institution at 
 the age of twenty ; besides which, each one receives on quitting 
 thirty dollars for the same purpose. The girls weave and work 
 with the needle, and, if they marry, receive one hundred dollars 
 dower, and two hundred if they go into a convent. They, as 
 well as the boys, are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and 
 vocal music. The superintendant, who was throughout exceed- 
 ingly obliging and afTable, let us hear several pieces of music, 
 admirably executed by a number of the boys. 
 
 The income of this Institution, from foundations made chiefly 
 by former Popes, is twenty-eight thousand dollars, to which is 
 added upwards of five thousand paid by some of those admitted 
 into its walls, or by their patrons. The arrangements and admi- 
 nistration seem to be judicious. Order, industry, and contentment, 
 were visible in all the compartments. It is a noble uistitution, 
 which does honor to Rome. 
 
158 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 In the afternoon, we visited the Villa Ludovisi, in olden time 
 the garden of Sallust. Among several fine antique statues, that 
 have been dug up in the grounds, is a magnificent colossal head 
 of Juno. I afterwards walked home frdm the Colosseum, in the 
 warm spring air, taking a look on the way at the Moses of Michael 
 Angelo. 
 
 Friday, March 31st. 
 
 Through narrow lanes, enclosed by high garden walls, we 
 walked this morning on Mount Aventine. In the afternoon, we 
 drove out to the grotto and grove of Egeria. At the grotto, 
 where is the fountain, they pretend to show the stump of a column 
 of the original portico, and the trunk of a statue of Numa Pom- 
 pilius, in whose day there were neither porticos nor statues. From 
 this spot there is a fine view towards Frascati and the hills. On 
 the way, we stopped at a church without the walls, where a friar 
 showed a marble slab, indented with two foot-prints, which he 
 said were made by Jesus Christ, when he quitted St. Peter, to 
 whom he appeared to rebuke St. Peter for deserting his post at 
 Rome. The impressions are rudely cut, and the toes of the feet 
 are all nearly square, but they nevertheless probably keep the 
 poor friar and some of his brethren in food and fuel the year round. 
 
 The ancient sculptors had an advantage over the modern, in 
 the profusion of poetical subjects ; for every deity of their pro- 
 lific mythology is poetical, that is, unites in itself all the perfec- 
 tions of a class, and stands as the ideal representative or symbol 
 of wants, desires, or ideas. The modern artist is tasked to find 
 individuals that have a generic character or significance. The 
 defect in sacred subjects is, that they must be draped, and thus 
 do not admit of the highest achievement in sculpture, which is, 
 to exhibit the human body in its fullest beauty of form and 
 expression. 
 
 Saturday, April 1st. 
 
 In the morning we visited the rooms of Mr. Rosseter and Mr. 
 
ST. PETER'S 159 
 
 Terry, two young American painters of promise, and walked 
 about the Colosseum. After taking a last look at the beautiful 
 resplendent St. Michael of Guide in the Chapel of the Capuchins, 
 we drove to see the drawing of the lottery, which takes place 
 every Saturday at noon in the square of Monte Citorio. Froixi a 
 balcony, where priests presided, the numbers were drawn to the 
 sound of music, the square well covered with people, mostly of 
 the working classes. In the afternoon, after taking another look 
 at Vallati's Correggio, we walked on the Pincian Hill. 
 
 Sunday, April 2d. 
 
 It is four o'clock in the afternoon. Seated against the huge 
 base of a pilaster, beneath the dome of St. Peter's, I have taken 
 out my pencil to note down what is passing around me. In front, 
 near by, directly under the cupola, in the centre of the church, 
 is the great Altar, beneath which in the vaults is the tomb of St. 
 Peter. The steps that lead down to it are enclosed by a marble 
 balustrade, round which burn unceasingly a row of brazen lamps. 
 At this altar service is performed only by the Pope himself or a 
 Cardinal. Round these lights is a favorite spot for worshippers ; 
 there is now kneeling a circle of various classes. People are 
 walking, lounging or chatting, or gazing at monuments and pic- 
 tures. Across the great nave nearly opposite to me, is a little 
 crowd about St, Peter's statue, kissing one after the other his 
 bronze toe. Yonder is a knot of soldiers. A group of three, 
 the middle one a priest, is passing me in lively chat. A few 
 yards to my left another priest is on his knees ; his lips move 
 rapidly, nor are his eyes idle, nor his nose, which he occupies 
 with snufF. Here come a couple of unkempt artisans, laugliing. 
 Yonder a white poodle is rolling himself on the marble floor, and 
 a black cur is trotting up to interrogate him. From under one 
 of the great arches is issuing a procession of boys, young acolytes. 
 They crowd up to St. Peter's statue, kiss the toe, pass on, kneel 
 
160 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 
 
 for a few moments before the illuminated sanctuary, and then 
 disappear in the distance. Not far off stand three priests in ani- 
 mated talk. Across the transept, shines down obliquely through 
 a lofty arch, an immense band of illuminated dust, denoting the 
 height of a western window. I raise my eyes towards the dome ; 
 the gigantic mosaic figures on its rich concave are dwarfed like 
 fir trees on a mountain. Half way down the great nave, people 
 are standing or kneeling a little closer, for service is going on in 
 one of the side altars, and vespers are about to be sung in a 
 chapel oppositeo Many hundreds of visitors and worshippers 
 mingled together are in the church, but merely dot thinly the 
 area whereon tens of thousands might stand at ease. 
 
 Monday, April 3d. 
 
 Mounted in the morning to the roof and to the top of the dome 
 of St. Peter's. What a pulpit whence to preach a sermon on 
 tne lusts of power and gold ! 
 
 In the afternoon we took farewell in the Vatican of the Apollo 
 and his inspired companions. In the evening we went to hear an 
 improvisatrice, Madame Taddei. When it is considered that this 
 class of performers study for years their business, and that the 
 Italian language runs so readily into verse, the performance loses 
 its wonder. Moreover, the imagination has such scope, that they 
 can and do spin off a subject very loosely. 
 
 Wednesday, April 5th, 1843. 
 
 We left Rome at ten in the forenoon. The day was fine and 
 our faces were turned homeward, whence, across the sea, blew a 
 fresh breeze as we approached Civita Vecchia. 
 
 THE END. 
 
*' Sundrt/ citizens of this good land, meaning well, and hoping well, 
 prompted by a certain something in their nature, have trained them- 
 selves to do service in various Essays, Poems, Histories, and hooks of 
 Art, Fancy, and Truth" 
 
 Address of the American Copt-right Club. 
 
 WILEY AND PUTNAM'S 
 
 LIBRAEY OF AMEEICAN BOOKS. 
 
 NO. XVI. 
 
 SCENES AND THOUGHTS 
 
 IN 
 
 E UEO P E. 
 
 BY AN AMERICAN. 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON. 
 
 WILEY AND PUTNAM, 161 BROADWAY : 6 WATERLOO PLACE. 
 
 Price, Fifty Cents. 
 
WILEY AND PUTNAM'S 
 LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BOOKS. 
 
 UNIFORM WITH THEIR 
 
 "LIBRARY OF CHOICE READING." 
 
 "BOOKS WHICH ARE BOOKS." 
 
 No. 1.— JOURNAL OF AN AFRICAN CRUISER 50 
 
 This is the first volume of Wiley and Putnam's " Library of American Books," a new 
 Series of Works by American authors. We have given it more than an editorial reading, 
 and find its sprightly and highly instructive sketches of travel possessed of uncommon in- 
 terest.— jBa^t. Lit. Observer. 
 
 This is a very clear, spirited sketch of what everybody likes,— nautical adventure,— 
 heightened by the interest our own Navy always inspires ; the scenes being laid in a part 
 of the world as yet free from the tread of tourists. This gives a freshness to the narrative, 
 which the unsophisticated style of the writer does not diminish. — C/^. S. Gazette. 
 
 2.— TALES BY EDGAR A. POE. 50 
 
 Our readers know him to be one of the most accomplished authors in America. In Eng- 
 land he is ranked among the classic writers of the mother tongue. In his narrative pieces 
 he exhibits qualities of mind deemed incompatible with each other— such as a talent for 
 *»»-ofound analysis, and a most brilliant fancy — a power of rigidly minute and exact detail 
 jn description, like testimony on oath ; and, contrasted with this, a skill in the " building" 
 of iharvelous and grotesque stories, which make the Arabian Tales seem tame in compari- 
 eoh. We are tired of being merely satisfied; and we like occasionally to be astonished. 
 Talent and learning can satisfy. It takes genius to astonish. This Poe possesses, and he 
 has exhibited some of its ihost decisive proofs in th6 volume before Ms.—Godetfs Ladi/s 
 Book. 
 
 3.— HEADLEY'S LETTERS FROM ITALY; 50 
 
 Mr. Headley is one of the most pleasant of modern travellers— of those, at least, who 
 venture to bestow the results of their travel on the public. He is not only a lively narrator, 
 like Stephens, but a sensible one, who knows just what to describe, and when the proper 
 business of description is over. He sees in the right places, and so agreeably reconciles us 
 to the disagreeables of his experience, as doubly to secure our gratjttide for having gone 
 before us in the discovery. His volume, which fernis one in the new Library of American 
 authors, by Wiley and Putnam, is not the least meritorious in their collection. He might 
 have made it twice as large with a corresponding increase of sslYmb.— Southern Patriot. 
 
 4.— THE WIGWAM AND THE CABIN. By W. Gilmore 
 
 Simms ^ •. 50 
 
 These tales are told in a vigorous, graceful manner, and evince man.'y feelings with a 
 happy eye for nature. The thoughts grow out of the subject in agreeable proportion; the 
 narrator is no lecturer but our intelligent companion by the way. This volume is a desira- 
 ble addition to the library of entertaining books, and gives us a lively acquaintance with 
 those parts of the country in which its subjects are located. To the lovers of books de- 
 scribing Indian life and manners, and the perilous adventures of settlers in the wilderness, 
 these collected tales of Mr. Simms will be acceptable.— Prot- Churchman. 
 
 5.— BIG ABEL AND THE LITTLE MANHATTAN. By C. 
 
 Mathews 25 
 
 'Big Abel and the Little Manhattan' presents, in a pleasant way, a magic lantern view 
 of New York, and will, by its substance and manner, attract many readers. — Tribune. 
 
 There is a life and spirit in this lively production that not only renders it attractive, but 
 evinces the power of true genius. Every page attests the great abilities of the young 
 author. — JV*. Y. Evangelist. 
 
Of a most original, highly entertaining, interesting and witty character. —Saturday Em- 
 porium. 
 
 The conception and execution of this book are both original. The principal object is 
 that of a suggestive parallel between the present and the primitive condition of the Island 
 ol Manhattan. — Broadway Journal. 
 
 The book evinces great powers of minute observation, and a fancy to shape the materials 
 of narration into strange forms. — boston Courier. 
 
 6.-. WANDERINGS OF A PILGRIM. By Rev. G. B. Cheever 37 
 
 This is a work which one may strongly commend, without any fear of disappointing those 
 whom he may induce to read it. It is eminently a book of thoughts — " thoughts as grand 
 as the mountains, and as sweet as the wild flowers." It is not simply a description of the 
 noble Alpine scenery which the author beheld, nor a mere recoid of tlie incidents which 
 enliven the traveller's wanderings; it is all this, and much more. The author writes as 
 one whose soul is in harmony with nature, and who has been well trained in the art of 
 interpreting her beautiful language. He has given us, therefore, a highly poetical'book ; 
 and we hazard the opinion that no person either of piety, taste, or good sense, will be satis- 
 fied with giving it a single perusal. It forms the sixth number of the Library of American 
 Books. — Christian Refiector. 
 
 7.— WESTERN CLEARINGS. By Mrs. C. M. Kirldand 50 
 
 The authoress of this very clever work, is already well known in literature under the 
 nom de guerre of Mary Clavers, and the work itself deserves the earnest attention of all 
 who are curious in manners, customs, and sectional peculiarities. In about fourteen chap- 
 ters she has laid before the world many curious facts, and incidents, illustrative of places 
 and people in the western regions ; and this she has done in a manner at once pleasing and 
 instructive. We consider her indeed, as a benefactress to her generation, and an ornament 
 to the Republic of Letters ; and the publishers in selecting this as one of their specimens of 
 "American Books," deserve the thanks of the reading public— >/3?t^/o .American. 
 
 8.— THE RAVEN AND OTHER POEMS. By E. A. Poe... 31 
 
 There is a great diversity of opinion respecting Mr. Poe's poetry— more so than respecting 
 his talent as a prose writer, or temper as a critic. But the reader of the Raven will never 
 deny him originality and great power, both of thought and Versification, it is an extraordi- 
 nary performance, and of itself is enough to establish the author's reputation as a poet. 
 The other poems are various in subject and merit; but usually evince great skill in versifi- 
 cation, and imcommon originality. The collection of these poems is a public favor, and 
 we doubt not it will be popular. — Evangelist. 
 
 9.-VIEWS AND REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY, LIT- 
 ERATURE AND FICTION. By W. G. Simms 50 
 
 Contents : / 
 
 Art. 1. Americanism in Literature. / 
 
 2. The Epochs and Events of American History, &:g. ) 
 ]. Introductory. True uses of History. Objects of Art. Its ductility and univer- I 
 
 salily, &c. 2. Benedict Arnold as a subject for Fictitious Story. 3. The four 
 periods of American History. 4. The Early Spanish Voyages. Hernando de 
 Soto a subject for Romance. 5. The Settlements of Coligny. 6. Pocahontas 
 a subject for the historical painter. 
 
 3. Literature and Art amcng the Aborigines. 
 
 4. Daniel Boon, the first hunter of Kentucky. 
 
 5. Cortes and the Conquest of Mexico. 
 
 6. The Writings of James Fenimore Cooper. 
 
 10.— THE ALPS AND THE RHINE. By J. T. Headlcy 50 
 
 Contents.- Pass of the Siniplon, Gorge of Gondo; Passes of the Forclaz and Col de 
 Balme ; Ascent of the Montanverte, Vale of Chamouni ; Pass of the Tete Noire ; Baths 
 of Leuk; The Castle of Chillon. Geneva. Junction of the Rhone and Arve ; Frey- 
 bourg Organ and Bridges. Swiss Peculiarities; Interlachen, Pass of the Wengern Alp, 
 Byron's Manfred; The Grand Scheideck: an Avalanche; Valley of Meyringen. Pass 
 of Brunig; Suvvarrow's Passage of the Pragel ; Macdonald's pass of the Splngen ; The 
 Righi Culm ; Goldau —Fall of the Rossberg ; Avalanches and Glaciers, then- Formation 
 and Movement; Pasturages, ChalPts, and Alpine Passes; A Farewell to Switzerland — 
 Basle; Strasbourg — The Rhine — Frankfort; A Day in Wiesbaden; Schwalbach and 
 Schlagenbad; Mayence — The Rhine; The Castellated Rhine ; The Rhine from Coblentz 
 to Cologne; Rhine Wines, Cologne Cathedral, Louvain, Brussels; Battle-field of Wa- 
 terloo. 
 
WILEY AND PUTNAM'S 
 
 LIEEAEY OF AMEEICAN BOOKS 
 
 No. I. Journal of an African Cruiser, edited by Natha- 
 niel Hatvthorne. 50 cents. 
 II. Tales by Edgar A. Poe. 50 cts. 
 III. Letters from Italy, by J. T. Headley. 50 cents. 
 
 IV., XII. The Wigwa3i and the Cabin, by W. Gilmore 
 Sddis. 3 parts, 50 cents each. 
 
 Y. Big Abel and the Little Manhattan", by Cornelius 
 Mathews. 25 cts. 
 
 YI. AYanderings of a Pilgrim under the Shadow of 
 Mont Blanc, by George B. Cheever, D.D.38 cts. 
 
 YII. Western Clearings, by Mary Clavers (Mrs. Kirk- 
 land), Author of " A New Home," " Who'll Follow?" 
 " Forest Life," &c. 50 cts. 
 YIII. Raven and other Poems, «y Edgar A. Poe. 31 cts. 
 
 IX. Views and Reviews in American History, Litera- 
 
 ture, & Fiction, by W. G. Simms. 50 cents. 
 
 X. The Alps and the Rhine, by J. T. Headley. 37J cts. 
 XI. The Pilgrim in the Shadow of the Jungfrau 
 
 Alp, by George B. Cheever, D.D. 50 cts. 
 
 XIII., XIY. Typee ; a Residence in the Marquesas, by 
 Herman ^Melville. 2 Parts, 37 1-2 cents each. 
 
 XV. The Wilderness and the War Path, by James 
 
 Hall. Price 50 cents. 
 XYI. Scenes and Thoughts in Europe, by George H. 
 Calvert. Price 50 Cents. 
 
 IN IMMEDIATE PREPARATION. 
 
 Papers on Literature and Art, by S. Margaret Fuller. 
 Mosses from an Old Manse, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 Supernaturalism in New England, by J. G. Whittier. 
 The Huguenots in Florida, by W. Gilmore Simms. 
 Spenser and the Faery Queen, by Mrs. C. M. Kirkland. 
 
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