MM <<8&; GIFT OF A. F. Morrison m ITALIAN HIGHWAYS ITALIAN HIGHWAYS BY E. AUGUSTA KING AUTHOR OF 'THE DIARY OF A CIVILIAN'S WIFE IN INDIA' ' It is certain that things take from us their colour, their taste and it is that of our own soul.'— Charron LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON ^publishers in dDrbmarg to Der Jtajest)? the CQtteeit 1896 [All rights reserved] « « « < € « « <« « « glefcuateb TO THOSE FIRESIDE TRAVELLERS WHO SEE FOREIGN LANDS ONLY THROUGH THE EYES OF OTHERS, AND WHO THEMSELVES HAVE NEVER TRAVERSED THE TOURIST-TRAMPLED HIGHWAYS HEREIN RETRODDEN. M94688 PREFACE. When I think of the host of writers who have travelled over the ground retrodden in these pages, and of the celebrity of many among them, I feel a strong sense of presumption in adding myself to their number. My apology is found in the endless variety of the human mind, and the fact that few people are interested in exactly the same things, or impressed by them in the same way. For this reason, it will be found that any traveller who records his own personal impressions will put things, more or less, in a fresh light. Cologne Cathedral and Pompeii, it is true, cannot vary, but the effect they produce on those who see them will vary precisely as the natures of the travellers vary. Vlll PREFACE The human mind has, I think, much resemblance to a prism, but with this difference — that the analysis by the spectrum will be that of the medium through which the rays have passed, and not that of the objects from which they have proceeded. Some minds are so alert and sensitive to all impressions that they show a spectrum perfect as the rainbow, though the colours in these will probably not be as strong as in others which are closed to all except certain influences, and show only strong lines of brilliancy here and there. Each will meet with kindred minds in sym- pathy with his individual spectrum, although the one that gives passage to the greater number of colours will naturally find the greater number of sympathizers. A true spectrum, however, is rarely presented to us. Travellers have as much of the sheep's instinct in them as the rest of their fellow-men, and this impels the vast majority to follow in the lead of their predecessors, and say what they have said. In this way deep grooves are worn, and are consecrated as paths of good taste and PREFACE ix orthodoxy from which a man strays at his personal risk ; the canons of criticism and admiration have long ago been crystallized into dogmas from which it is heresy to dissent. We therefore meet with dull repetitions from traveller after traveller of the type that is content to think as others think, and who would never have dared to remark that the King in the fairy-tale had nothing on, had they met His Majesty when promenading in his invisible robes. And that this attitude is the one approved and commended we may gather from Tom Hood's preface to the second edition of his Rhine Travels, where he says — ' One of my critics snubs my book for not being like others on the same subject, and blames me for not treading more exactly in the footprints of my predecessors. In reply to this serious charge, I can only say that the animals most inclined to pursue the follow-my-leader system are geese.' And in more modern days M. Taine, in reply to a very similar charge brought against him, implores his critics to allow every instru- x PREFACE ment to produce the sound natural to it — 1 n'exigez pas un air approuve\ verifie, pour la plus grande gloire de la tradition/ Liberty of opinion may be enjoyed in our day without fear of rack or stake, but not without some more or less unpleasant equivalent being still exacted as blackmail by Authority's self-constituted body-guard. A traveller who ventures to say, as not impossibly he may think, that the Farnese Hercules is in his opinion a greatly over-rated statue, and that it has the head of a microcephalous idiot, must be prepared for a storm of brickbats and abuse or the withering silence of contempt. Art critics are as ferocious in their disposi- tion, when roused, as those admirers of classic authors who, as Mr. Payn says, instead of pitying the poor wight who confesses himself unable to appreciate their excellence, fly upon him with bludgeons, and dance upon his prostrate body with clogs. But though I can see the weighty reasons that deter travellers from - expressing their genuine opinions, I none the less regret that it PREFACE should be so, for — unlike George Eliot — I hold with the dictum that it is the personal that interests mankind. She, on the contrary, regretted that writers should show so little scruple about mixing their own personality or flavour with that of every subject under the sun, more especially when the flavour is all they have to give, the knowledge and the facts having already been given by others. For my own part, I regard facts something in the light of beef and mutton, as so much raw material for the cook to exert his skill on. Only a very flavourless person can touch a subject without imparting to it his own flavour, and most literary cooks may undoubtedly be recognized by their flavouring. But should some new dish make its appearance without a sponsor known to fame, it can do no one any harm to try whether it be flavoured to his liking or not. Even though the cook be an inferior one, there may yet be persons to whom his sauces are sympathetic. For this reason I do not think it a good or sufficient reason to adduce for refraining from PREFACE writing on some well-worn subject to say that it has already been dealt with by far abler hands. The very ability of those hands may have placed their writings above the heads of many readers. ' Moreover, the failure of a literary cook can injure no one but himself, and I would say — pace George Eliot — let him in all humility try his power if he has a mind to do so, and leave it to others to pass judgment on the result. It is our privilege to be heirs of all the ages, and the knowledge and the facts of past times are a quarry common to all writers. Some will take therefrom a bit of marble and make of it a vulgar bust, others a dancing faun, others the statue of a god. So many men, so many minds, is an ancient saying, and on its truth I rest my hopes of finding some readers who may be interested in these wholly personal — often impertinent — notes of travel. E. A. KING. Ashcott Hill, Somerset, April, 1896 ITALIAN HIGHWAYS It was the end of October when we crossed in the mail-packet from Dover to Ostend on an absence of many months from England. Beyond an intention of visiting Munich, we had no very definite plans, and intended to drift with the tide of circumstances, expecting it, however, to carry us over the Alps some- where into Italy. Our first halt was at Ghent. Lying slightly, very slightly, as it does, out of the main route, it is not much overrun by tourists, whose headlong rush is diverted by the smallest obstacle, and at this season it was absolutely deserted, except, of course, by such unimportant people as its native inhabitants. Nor is it a town that at all lays itself out to attract visitors ; its streets are paved with cobble-stones, not kept in the best order, and to drive through them is to be deafened and x GHENT jolted to a surprising extent. There is very little wheeled traffic, and what, there is is chiefly slow and heavy ; the carts used are singularly long, arid ria^rrpwj resembling troughs, or ladders updn wlieels. : All the lighter ones — the milk afid '.the ' fruit and 'the soda-water carts, even the" 'scavengers' " carts — are drawn by dogs. Sometimes you see one large dog in the shafts, sometimes five, even six, all pulling with their might and main, and frequently barking loudly as they go. A few looked thin and overworked, but as a rule they were in good condition and seemed happy. When a halt was made the dogs would lie down, a habit that gives them an advantage over horses, enabling them to rest at every opportunity. They pull immense loads for their size, and we often saw a pair of dogs galloping hard in a cart with a man in it. Every breed may be seen in harness, but the one oftenest used is a kind of large mastiff. Ghent is greatly changed from the Ghent of Froissart's day, when its citizens lived in a chronic state of insurrection and turmoil, and the great bell Roland was for ever sounding the call to arms. We stood in the little balcony where Jacob van Arteveld used to stand and harangue the men of Ghent, and where one GHENT day, having gone too far in his autocracy to please them, he stood and spoke to them ' in fine and humble language,' trying to appease their anger. But in vain ; it was too late for apologies, so they dragged him out and killed him. Ghent is quiet enough now ; the grass grows in many of its streets, and the voice of Roland is no more heard. The town seems as if it were sleeping, exhausted with its five centuries of strife and struggle. Railway-stations are much alike all the world over, but the white blouses of the porters, and the odd-looking Flemish notices to travellers, sufficiently differentiate the one at Ghent from all English stations. We secured a carriage bearing the (to non-smokers) comforting legend 4 Niet rooken' and away we sped through the flat plains of Flanders on our way to Cologne ; past Liege with its hundred chimneys, where they are busy day and night forging arms of destruction, for use by man against his brother man ; past the beautiful Meuse, shining silver between its darkening banks, on into the dark- ness till we reached the frontier. There we changed from Greenwich time to Mid- European time, accepted by the railways of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, and Sweden, to the great simplification of time- COLOGNE tables and convenience of travellers. The countries not in this time - union take the meridians of their own capitals. We profited by the change, losing one hour at the frontier, and thus reducing our nominal seven hours' journey to one of six, being timed to reach Cologne at 8 p.m., which by our Ghent time of the morning would have been only 7 p.m. We paid, however, for this day of twenty - three hours by one of twenty-five hours some months later, when we returned by this same route. The lost hour was duly restored to us. At Cologne we took rooms nearly facing the great west front of the Cathedral, which loomed huge and mysterious in the semi-darkness, its towers vanishing out of sight into the November mists. Its history has been a chequered one. The building was within a measurable distance, just a century ago, of ceasing to exist, when Napoleon, that great eighteenth-century bar- barian, seriously contemplated pulling it down, and was only diverted from his intention by some other distraction that happily intervened. He had previously, with his usual reverence for things sacred and sublime, stripped the lead from its roof as well as the eold from its COLOGNE treasuries, leaving memories to rankle that have since borne bitter fruit. The score ran on for more than half a century, and the new Kaiser-glocke, the Emperor bell in the Cathedral, baptized in 1887, represents its pay- ment in part. It was cast from five hundred French guns captured at Sedan. The Cathedral has been of very slow growth, and, although begun more than six hundred years ago, has only been completed with the last twenty. It seemed to lie under a spell, and the great crane at the top of its unfinished tower, where it had remained idle for three hundred years, had come to be regarded with superstitious awe as a visible sign of the fulfil- ment of the curse on its architect. The legend ran that the architect, in his ambition to build a cathedral finer than any yet beheld, accepted the help of the devil on the usual conditions, and with this diabolical aid designed the plans of the Cathedral we now see. But when the day of reckoning came, the architect in some manner, I forget exactly how, contrived to balk his creditor and save his soul, which naturally angered his Satanic Majesty, who, according to Shakespeare, is at least a gentle- man. He therefore pronounced a great curse on the defaulting architect, and foretold that COLOGNE his name should be blotted out, and his cathedral never finished. The first part alone of this curse has been fulfilled. The architect's name is in truth unknown, although the original plans, looted by the French, have since been recovered in a curious manner : one half in an inn-loft at Darmstadt, and the other in Paris when the German army quartered itself in the city. We saw the plans in their marvellous delicacy of detail, drawn by a hand so long dead and for- gotten ; but no name is attached to them. As we stood and gazed at the noble shafts and magnificent detail of the Cathedral, I thought much of this unknown architect, and wondered if his ghost haunts the scene of his labours, or if it has rested in peace since it has seen the work accomplished. The Cathedral has not yet been finished twenty years, but six centuries ago the architect in mental vision saw it in its present beauty, and his is the glory of its stupendous grandeur. He saw it then com- plete and glorious as we now see it, but how little can he have seen in what different times and by what a different generation of men his work would be brought tq its fulfilment ; still less that he, the author of it, should not be even a name to those distant generations ! COLOGNE 7 We climbed up to the roof, and walked round the narrow outside gallery, enclosed by a high parapet, that surrounds the choir. From thence we looked down on a wilderness of airy flying- buttresses and fretted pinnacles and quaint gurgoyles, on to the streets strewn with human specks, and on to the outspread wings of some hawks that were sailing to and fro, thinking perhaps of an eligible site for their next years nest. They generally settle the question by waiting until a jackdaw has made a good selec- tion and completed a nest, and then stepping in and appropriating it. No doubt the proverb about fools building houses has its equivalent in their language. Re-entering by a small door, we found ourselves in the roof of the nave, or, as the Germans call it, the Schiff. The full significance of the name had never before struck me, but here we were in what appeared to be a huge man-of-war, keel upper- most, and beneath our feet was the ribbed vaulting of the nave. The enormous timbers must have absorbed a good-sized forest. From thence we clambered to the belfry, where in the centre hangs the gigantic Emperor bell, which it takes twenty-eight men to ring. It is only rung on the Emperor's birthday and the four chief Church festivals. Of the other four COLOGNE bells — Preciosa, Speciosa, Ursula, and Three Kings — two date from very ancient times. They differ in shape from our bells, and have such wide, curly lips that they resemble wide- awakes. There is some splendid fourteenth-century glass in the choir, almost Persian in the effect of its design and colouring. The modern glass looks miserably weak and gaudy by contrast. In the treasury is the shrine containing the skulls of the three Magi, brought from Milan in the year 1164 by Frederick Barbarossa ; it measures some four feet by three feet in height, and is partly of pure gold and partly of silver- gilt, and is richly studded with gems. On the sides are beautiful reliefs, and its artistic and intrinsic value is enormous. It was prudently concealed before the French entered Cologne, and so escaped their rapacity ; three centuries earlier, and the sacristan would have been put to the torture until he revealed its hiding-place, but this effective process was no longer avail- able even to Bonaparte. Cologne gives the impression of being a thoroughly prosperous and thriving city. Since the old town wall was thrown down, and the moat filled up, a new town has sprung up of large, fine houses, speaking of wealth and COLOGNE security. It is still girdled with fortifications, but they mask their grim and deadly nature beneath an appearance of verdant and lamb- like innocence. The smooth, grassy slopes would not strike terror into the most timid. I need not say that we visited the Church of St. Ursula, since we are not so wanting in patriotism as to neglect the shrine of a British Princess. The church is one vast charnel- house, its very walls being hollow, and filled with the bones of the hapless maidens whose Continental trip ended so disastrously. A mediaeval fresco depicts them in the act of being massacred by the Huns, curiously civilized and even genteel men, clad in the fashionable just-au-corps of the artist's time. In the treasure-chamber are the bones of St. Ursula herself in a gorgeous shrine, while the walls are adorned in what Tom Hood called a singttlarly chaste style, with assorted bones of the virgins arranged in ornamental patterns, and on the shelves are rows of silver busts enclosing each a skull, besides rows and rows of humbler skulls, each clad decently in an embroidered cover, leaving only the bald top visible. In this church, too, one of the most ancient and perfect examples of Romanesque in Germany, we saw the small stone sarco- io COLOGNE phagus of King Pepin's little daughter, a sister of Charlemagne, who died when a child ; as no one was worthy of being buried in the same ground that contained the bones of the martyrs, the child's sarcophagus was raised on four short pillars, and is there to this day. The church possesses a great treasure in an alabaster jar, said to be one of the firkins used at the marriage-feast in Cana. It was brought from Palestine about the year 300 by the Empress Helena, and afterwards given by the Pope to this church. Once before we had seen a jar with the same history at Angers, but it was of red porphyry, and much larger than the one at Cologne. We were privileged subsequently to see yet a third of these jars at Bologna. The Church of St. Gereon commemorates another of the great massacres which broke the monotony of life in ancient days. It is built on the spot where Gereon and his seven hundred Christian comrades of the Theban Legion were put to death by order of Diocletian, anxious to uphold orthodoxy; and it, too, is full of dead men's bones. A very fine antique wood-carving on its walls is so devised that each terminal foliated curve forms a cup, iji which lies a skull, looking like the bud of a great magnolia. Bones and skulls are here so numerous that they quite influence architecture and ornament. If the COLOGNE n blood of the martyrs at Cologne was the seed of the Church, its Cathedral may be regarded as the splendid flower that has sprung therefrom. It was at Cologne that St. Thomas Aquinas — the Angel of the Schools, as he was called — studied theology under Albertus Magnus, whose scientific pursuits gained him — Bishop though he afterwards became — the repute of doubtful orthodoxy. And Thomas, going unexpectedly one day into his master's laboratory here, saw the famous automaton on which Albertus had been working for thirty years, and had at length brought, so it is said, to the point of speaking. Thomas, in his horror at this unholy monster, seized a weapon, and, shrieking ' Salve ! salve !' smashed him to pieces. This scene took place about the time of the foundation of the Cathedral, when men believed with a lively faith in the personality of the Evil One, and in man's power of making unholy compacts with him. Thomas would give no quarter to a creature of so sus- picious a character. The railway to Frankfurt took us up the left or western bank of the Rhine, whose opposite bank was golden with the fading foliage of the vines which grow between the rocky buttresses. 12 THE RHINE Nothing is more curious or more significant than the totally opposite considerations that governed the ideas as to what were eligible building sites in the Middle Ages and that govern them in our own times. Accessibility is our chief desideratum ; inaccessibility was theirs. If there is a hill or rock of peculiar height and precipitousness in the Rhine country, it is certain to be crowned by an ancient castle. They must have been terribly dull residences for the women of the family ; but such a con- sideration did not count. They were admirably adapted to the men, who only descended to rob and oppress and murder, and found it convenient to have a safe pinnacle to retire to afterwards. Gunpowder has undoubtedly been the greatest of civilizers ; before its introduction these robber barons were masters of the situa- tion. Nothing but a formal and prolonged siege could dislodge each separate ruffian, and they were thus able to defy the very Emperor himself. Comines, writing in 1500, says: There are in Germany so many fortified places, and so many people in them ready for all manner of mischief, that 'tis a wonder they do no more. A private person, if he have but a castle on a rock, will keep twenty or thirty horse to scour up and down the country, and THE GERMANIA 13 plunder according to his directions. Robbers of this kind are seldom punished by the German princes, who employ them on all occasions.' The colossal bronze statue of Germania on the eastern bank of the Rhine is the subject of widely differing opinions. For my own part, I think it is a fine idea. Ger- mania looks with proud and watchful eyes across the Rhine, her right arm holding aloft the Imperial Crown, her left resting on her sword-hilt, and on the pedestal is a fine relief of what will ever be a great historical scene, the crowning of the German Emperor at Versailles. Below it are the stirring verses of the ' Wacht am Rhein,' with their fine refrain, ' Fest stent, und treu, die Wacht, die Wacht am Rhein !' I saw all these details when inspecting a large silver model of the statue in the town-hall at Frankfurt. When last we had seen the Ger- mania it was in the foundry at Munich, and the workmen hoisted our small son up on to her shoulder, the two reminding us of Gulliver and Glumdalclitch. Should a hostile French army ever find itself again on the eastern bank of the Rhine, Germania's fate will be sealed : she will be sent to join the river-nymphs and the Nibelungen hoard at the bottom of the Rhine. FRANKFURT Frankfurt - on - the - Main consists of two parts wholly distinct in character. The one is thoroughly modern, unfinished even, with broad straight streets swarming with tramways, bor- dered by handsome shops and palatial hotels, brilliantly lighted by gas and electricity, and dominated by a magnificent railway-station, lighted by twenty-four thousand electric lamps, and forming a great ganglionic centre, where eighteen different railway-lines meet. There is nothing to show we are not at Brussels or Paris. The other part of the town has a strongly- marked individuality, with its narrow, crooked streets, and its tall houses projecting further and further at each story, their beams and brackets of massive timber, and the fronts often gaily decorated with fresco-painting or hand- some wood-carving. This part is dominated by its old Cathedral of red stone, in which is the Wahl-kapelle, or Election Chapel, where for three hundred years the Electors of Germany met, and sat with closed doors, to choose the Roman Emperor or his next successor, the Roman King, according to the custom which dated from the day when Charlemagne received the Imperial Crown of Rome from the hands of Leo III. When their deliberations were pro- FRANKFURT 15 longed unduly, the heir-expectant occasionally found means to hasten them by suddenly marching an army into the neighbourhood of Frankfurt. This always helped materially to make the Electors of one mind. As soon as their choice was made known, the Emperor- elect was crowned and consecrated in the Cathedral, after which the successor of the Caesars went in state to the Romerburg — a quaint old building looking on a great square — where he feasted the Electors. The last Roman King crowned here, and nearly the last ever crowned, was Maria Theresa's son, afterwards Joseph II. of Austria. Goethe was at that time a boy, and had all a boy's insatiable curiosity, and more than a boy's intelligence ; and as his father was a Town Councillor, he contrived to see nearly all that could be seen, and has left us a graphic account of the whole proceedings. One of the chief features of the day was the roasting of an ox under a shed erected in the great square. The Hereditary Marshal then rode up in state and carried off the first slice on a silver dish for the Emperor's table, after which a general scrim- mage and riot ensued, chiefly between the guilds of the butchers and the vintners, each of them claiming the greater right to the flesh — 1 6 FRANKFURT the vintners' claim resting mainly on their having won the victory on the last occasion — but swelled and sustained by the entire populace, who fought heroically to obtain portions of the flesh, or of the cooking apparatus, or of the shed itself, all of which disappeared as a hare does when thrown to the hounds. From the old Romerburg we wandered through a labyrinth of quaint old streets, passing the house where Goethe was born ; and we noticed that here, as in Touraine, a green bush is the invariable distinction of a wine-shop. Presently we came to the stone bridge that for five centuries has spanned the river ; it rises steeply to the centre, and there on the parapet is an ancient iron crucifix, sur- mounted by a large cock, round which many legends have gathered. In old times criminals were here put to death by throwing them, bound hand and foot, into the swirling brown waters below, and the crucifix was charitably intended to improve their state of mind, and the cock to remind them of Peter's repentance. In theory the idea was good ; but there can have been little room in the criminal's mind for any emotion save dread and horror in sight of the rushing river which was to bear him, repentant or not, into eternity. The setting sun was FRANKFURT i 7 throwing a flood of golden light upon the river as we turned to leave, and every dingy riverside house and every church-tower was glorified in its splendour. On All Saints' Day we visited the Friedhof, as the Germans so beautifully call a cemetery. It is a poetically descriptive name, for there alone the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. The Friedhof at Frankfurt is one of the largest in Germany ; it is beauti- fully kept, and has long shady avenues bordered with shrubs and flowers. Both on All Saints' and on All Souls' Day the cemetery is crowded with people, who come to visit the graves of their loved ones, and the streets and the tram- cars were full of people laden with wreaths on their way thither. Many were heavily veiled, and the tear-stained faces told in many cases of what a grief the memory of their grief was. Some of the graves were heaped up with wreaths, while others had only a little pot of chrysanthemums placed upon them. The love of the rich was displayed by costly wreaths of cyclamen and tuberoses, lilies of the valley, and * great trumpet lilies, that scented the air far around, while the poor could only testify theirs by little humble wreaths of autumn leaves or coloured paper. 2 1 8 ROTHSCHILD MONUMENTS We learnt afterwards that, while we were lingering in this court of peace, Alexander III., Czar of All the Russias, passed away to join the great majority. Adjoining the Christian cemetery is the Jewish. It is wholly unlike the Jewish cemetery we once visited at Bayonne — there all the stones were flat, and the older ones level with the ground, the grave of a Rabbin alone being marked by a slight ridge-like elevation. Here all the monuments are upright, and resemble those in our English graveyards of former days, when a cross was regarded as a Popish emblem, and was rigidly excluded. Broken columns and urns are the designs favoured by the Frankfurt Jews — it is curious to find this fondness for cinerary urns in a people who regard with horror the practice of cremation. The tombs of the great Jewish families of Rothschild and Schwartzschild are frequently of white marble, decorated with garlands of roses exquisitely sculptured. On most of the tombs we noticed that stones had been placed from the size of a , pebble to that of a large turnip, and on asking the meaning of this, we were told that it is a Jewish custom to place a stone on the grave of a friend or kinsman when coming to visit it. Perhaps the size of the stone deposited is FRANKFURT TO MUNICH 19 considered typical of the weight of grief felt, in which case we should expect to find the largest left by those who felt least. It is certainly a more durable mark of remembrance than the wreaths we place on our graves, and places rich and poor on an equality. From Frankfurt to Munich the line runs now through great forests of beech, oak, and fir, now through vast open cultivated districts. The chief characteristic of these latter to an English eye is the total absence of any hedge or fence. There is not so much as one along the railway, and the question naturally arises, How do they prevent animals from straying on to the line ? The answer is found in the fact that there are very few animals to stray, and such as there may be are invariably herded, not always by a human guardian, but always by an efficient one. We happened to see an amusing instance of the triumph of law and authority. A pig had been turned into a stubble to graze, and in charge of him had been placed a large dog, with injunctions to keep the pig strictly to the stubble. Now, adjoining the stubble was an inviting field of cabbages, and the pig, with a swinish disregard for law or honesty, and a 2o MUNICH strong partiality for cabbages, had been trying to elude his guardian and attain a cabbage. But the dog was too quick for him, and, with much hustling and, no doubt, some admonitory nips, drove him back ignominiously to the despised stubble. No doubt the fact that cabbages were not an attractive delicacy to the dog made his adherence to duty all the more rigorous ; had it been a field of sausages, his sympathy with the pig might have been almost too strong for his sense of honour. It was quite dark when we reached Munich. We engaged two carriages, one of them a ramshackle old droschky, as a pair-horse fly is here called, with a half-witted, beer-befuddled driver, who tried to persuade us that five persons and a mountain of luggage could all be packed in or on to his vehicle. He was proof even against demonstration, and when the inside was crammed with our hand-luggage and two persons, he continued to grumble loudly that three more could easily get in. He was quite too stupid to have any perception of his stupidity. Munich possesses public buildings and art treasures out of all proportion to the import- ance and revenue of Bavaria if taken in com- parison with the capitals of wealthier and more MUNICH 21 powerful countries. Its street architecture and its public buildings, its palace, its opera-house, its college of music, its picture and sculpture galleries, are worthy of Paris, as are its English park and the Ludwigstrasse, with its fine triumphal arch, rivalling the Arc de Triomphe. Its collections of pictures and statuary are famous. So, too, are its painted-glass works and its bronze foundry. The latter gave birth to the Germania as well as to her yet more colossal sister the Bavaria, which stands on a slope outside the town in front of the Hall of Fame, a building consecrated to the statues and busts of those who have achieved fame in the arts either of war or of peace. Everyone in Munich, from an Ambassador to an artist, lives on a flat, and, owing to the con- struction of the houses and the method of numbering them, the difficulty of finding anyone is often incredible. A person gives you, perhaps, 17, Keinestrasse as his address, and you set out confidently to find it. Keine- strasse happens to be of enormous length, and none of the passers-by can tell you where No. 17 is, nor can you see many numbers to guide you. The houses have an immense frontage, frequently of over one hundred feet, and in the centre is an imposing porte-cochere, 22 MUNICH its folding doors usually standing open, and with a number existing probably somewhere, but far from easy to find. At last, after much wandering and many inquiries, you come to No. 1 6 ; your spirits rise, and you think you must be near your goal. You trudge on, cross a broad street, and come to a vast block of building, apparently some public office, and with no discoverable number to it at all. You walk up and down, and seeing people hurrying in and out of the great gateway, you ask one of them if he can tell you what number this is. He replies that it is i/A, but he cannot tell you where No. 17 is. After more wandering, you discover, far on, No. 17B, and there you lose the trail, for you come to a railing some two hundred yards in length, enclosing one of the great picture-galleries or museums with which Munich is so liberally supplied. To cut the matter short, you ultimately discover that there is a 17J, and then, just as you are about to despair, you find No. 17. You enter the great open gates, and find yourself in a paved entrance-hall, with not a creature in sight, and various doors, stairs, and passages opening off on either side. By this'time it is dusk, and selecting what seems to be the chief staircase, you stumble up it in the gathering gloom till MUNICH 23 you reach a landing ; here you find a bell, and, ringing it, you inquire if your friend lives here. If you are in luck, you will be told to go up to the third floor, perhaps, and you will find him ; but too often the servant does not know anyone of that name, or tells you to go down again and find some other staircase or passage. This account may seem overdrawn, but it is an experience we ourselves went through on several occasions, and sometimes, after spend- ing a great part of the morning in our quest, we failed altogether to find the person we were in search of. The aggregate time that must daily be wasted in this way is appalling to think of. With the exception of this one blot, and undoubtedly it is a blot that must sooner or later be removed, Munich is a charming town to live in. The houses are well built, with double windows and great porcelain stoves that give out an enormous volume of heat for the amount of fuel consumed. We had a large room, a cube of twenty feet, perhaps, and we found that, roughly speaking, every billet of wood put in the stove raised the temperature one degree, and that for many hours. The room had, say, gone down to 54 . We lighted the stove and put on four billets of wood, and in an hour's time another four. Very shortly 24 MUNICH the temperature would be up to 62°, and would so remain for several hours without anything more being done. The economy of fuel and its perfect translation into heat are admirable. In Italy you may burn a woodstack, and still sit and shiver. The streets of the newer portion of the town are straight and wide, and all are beautifully kept. A more quiet, respectable, well-behaved population I never saw. Young girls of good position can and do go to concerts, or operas, or elsewhere unattended, and with the most perfect confidence and decorum. To anyone acquainted only with London or Paris, or the cities of Italy, it is at first rather startling ; but it is obvious that a custom so general can only be founded on conditions differing radically from those in the other towns, and very shortly one falls in with it as naturally as the Bavarians themselves. Life in Bavaria is much simpler in all ways than in our own country, and the absence of show and ceremony are remarkable. The Royal carriages, always distinguishable by their being blue and with blue-liveried servants, are seen every day driving about without at- tracting any more notice than other carriages the occupants often nodding or waving their hands to someone they recognize in passing. MUNICH 25 But it is at the opera that the difference between German and English ways is most remarkable. Being a very cold night, we drove to the Opera House in a fly, but saw hardly any other carriage, though the house was crammed from pit to ceiling. It is the custom to be there ten minutes before the overture begins, in order to look over the libretto or talk to friends. At the first note of the overture the doors are shut, and no one is allowed to enter till the music ceases ; any late- comers stand out in the corridor till it is over. The instant the orchestra strikes up the electric light is turned off, and the audience sits in semi- darkness and total silence. Think of that, O Londoners, and marvel! If anyone ventured to speak in an audible tone he would be an object of the fiercest public indignation. A German audience is so simple that it goes to the opera to listen to the music, not to criticize dress or keep up a fatuous string of small-talk. Wagner's operas usually last five hours, and hundreds of musical enthusiasts cheerfully occupy standing-places in the pit the whole time, nor think it long. The stage is a very large one, and the operas are splendidly put on. The orchestra is sunk below the pit-level, a great improvement upon the old plan. 26 MUNICH On leaving the house everything is quiet, without any shouting, or crowding, or jostling. The contrast between that and the scene out- side the London Opera House is most extra- ordinary. No hired carriage is permitted to leave the stand, and a person wanting one must go to where they are drawn up on one side of the great square in front of the house. If this plan has its inconveniences on a wet night for the minority, it has very great conveniences for the immense majority, who, in their cloaks and galoshes, trudge off home without the slightest delay or unpleasantness ; young ladies under the escort of a servant-girl who has come to fetch them. There are immense cloak-rooms, where people leave their great-coats, fur cloaks, and hoods on arrival, for practically the whole audience arrives on foot. The Royalties them- selves, we were told, rarely do otherwise. The key to the whole arrangement is found in the fact that in London the opera is for the rich and fashionable, and their convenience alone is consulted, whereas in Munich it is for the lovers of music — the entire population — and is arranged with a view to the convenience of the great majority. It begins at six or half-past six, and is over between ten and eleven o'clock, so that no one is kept up to an unreasonable hour. MUNICH 27 The class that occupies the stalls is a curiously different one to that seen in England ; the price of the stalls is from five to ten shillings, according to the popularity of the opera, and the seats are taken chiefly by tradespeople and others of a similar position. Music amounts almost to a religion with them. Bavaria is unfortunate in having two mad Kings in succession. The tragic end of the last one by suicide will be remembered, though it is an article of faith with the Munich people, we were told, to disbelieve in its having been suicide, and to hint darkly at his having been a victim of political intrigue. His madness took the form of great eccentricity, and a morbid dislike of seeing, or being seen by, his people. He would have the opera performed for himself alone, and sit in the Royal box, the solitary occupant of the house. In his lifetime he was far from popular, but since his death he has been raised to the rank of a hero and martyr. His successor, the present King, is mad to a far higher degree ; he lives in a country place and in the strictest retirement. He will wear no clothes except the skins of wild beasts, and will take no food except what has been hidden in corners for him to find. He growls, and prowls about on all fours until he 28 MUNICH finds it, when he tears and devours it like a beast. His brother, the Regent, is de facto King, and reigns in his stead. During our stay at Munich we were told, by an eye-witness of it, the story of a tragedy that occurred many years ago in Spain, and forms the subject of a charming tale written by that romantic Queen known to literature as Carmen Sylva. As many of my readers will, like myself, never have met with it, I may here give an outline of the story. A certain Spanish soldier, whom we will call Rodrigo, was dis- tinguished for his bravery, talent, and amiability, which made him the idol of his comrades and a great favourite with the officers. In an evil hour for both, his Colonel took him as his private servant. This Don Pedro was well known for the violence of his temper, and Rodrigo was very reluctant to enter his service. He told the Colonel that his own temper was proud, and that he could not answer for the result if ever a hand should be laid on him. For awhile all went well, till one day Don Pedro, in a fit of savage temper, struck Rodrigo in the face in the presence of others. The man turned deadly white, but said never a word. He could not retaliate on his Colonel. For a day and a night he kept silence, eating BRENNER PASS 29 his heart out at the thought of the insult he could not avenge. Then he took his rifle, and as Don Pedro left the house he shot him dead, after which he instantly surrendered himself. It was not possible for a court-martial to do otherwise than sentence him to death, and this he knew. The only favour he begged was that he might not be blindfolded, and that he might be allowed to give the order to fire. The regi- ment was paraded in the presence of a large concourse of people, who had heard the sad story, and when the firing party had taken their places, Rodrigo called out in a loud, firm voice, 1 Fuego!' and fell dead at the first volley. Tears filled the eyes of all present, for Rodrigo had been as much beloved as the Colonel had been detested. The General then commanded the regiment to file past the body and salute it, as that of a gallant soldier whose death had been brought about by the cowardice of the man who had struck him, knowing he could not strike back. The last week of November had begun when we left Munich and crossed the Brenner Pass 30 BOZEN on our way South. Snow was lying on the heights, and all the larch forests were powdered with hoar-frost. The higher valleys were filled with clouds, which veiled from our eyes the well-remembered precipices along whose edges we were running. The carriages are warmed by steam from the engine, and, so far from finding the journey cold, we were nearly suffo- cated with heat. The heat, it is true, can be shut off or moderated at pleasure, but all our fellow-travellers were Germans, and the Germans enjoy a degree of heat which to English people seems stifling. Except in the carriage reserved for ladies, tobacco-smoke filled the air, and as men were smoking freely in the corridor, on to which all the doors opened, the smoke pene- trated even there. One old lady, a German herself, openly expressed her opinion that the time was ripe for a revolt of the women against the tyranny of tobacco, and that hitherto they had effaced themselves too submissively. She was quite ready to raise the standard of revolt. Bozen, where we made a halt, is situated in a broad valley entirely surrounded by hills. It is a characteristic Tyrolean town, with tall houses so thickly set with small-paned windows that there is often more window than wall. BOZEN 31 Many of the streets have low arcades, formed by the projection of the second story ten feet beyond the first. Between the thick square pillars of brick on which it rests are the stalls of small dealers, set out with pottery, basket- work, tinware, and the like. In the market- place, an open square set round with stalls, were piles of black grapes, chestnuts, pears, and small green figs. Large hares, with immensely thick, furry coats, were selling at half a crown each, and we were asked eighteen shillings for a fine chamois — it is said to be more plentiful in some parts of the mountains than roedeer. Against its dark hide was hanging a brilliant tuft of crimson, which on nearer approach we found to be a bunch of some two dozen bull- finches, and on other stalls were ruffled crimson heaps of a similar kind. Greenfinches and other still smaller birds lay in large mounds. Are not two sold for a farthing ? Near Bozen is the mediaeval Castle of Runkelstein, the road to it leading up a valley, with a noisy mountain stream rushing over its pebbly bed. The steep mountainsides are dotted with sunny white houses, and some singularly inaccessible churches perched on picturesque but inconvenient heights. Near the river are great stacks of fir-logs, their ends 32 BOZEN curiously frayed out, as if with long pounding ; the trees are felled and sawn into short lengths up in the mountains, and are then committed to the s,tream when in flood, which with much turbulent buffeting bears them down to this spot, where they are fished out and stacked to dry. The Castle of Runkelstein is built on the extreme verge of a precipitous rock, and dates from the thirteenth century, but owes much to recent repairs made to save it from crumbling into ruin. Its chief interest, beyond the great beauty of its situation, lies in some ancient and fast-fading frescoes depicting scenes from King Arthur's Court, as well as from the British legend of Tristan and Isolde, which is a counterpart of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. The mediaeval version differs materially from the operatic one, and would, in truth, be unsuitable for a modern stage. One of the frescoes shows Tristan in conflict with a dragon, an episode judiciously omitted by Wagner, dragons not being amenable char- acters, and never possessing good voices. Alas for the time-honoured costumes of the Tyrol ! they will soon only be found with the bones of the mastodon in a. museum. In the market and round the band-stand we looked in vain for a single specimen of the picturesque RIVA 33 and becoming costumes universal only fifty years ago. The sole survival — equivalent to the rudimentary tail of the human skeleton — is found in the green felt hat, with its feather stuck at the back, still worn by most of the men. No doubt that, too, will soon give place to the levelling billycock. As we again took our flight Southwards, we observed the official notices gradually appear in Italian as well as in German, and the station names developing into pure Italian. At Mori we left the great main-line and branched off by a steam-tram, anxious to be called a train, to Riva, at the head of Lake Garda. As we passed Arco, with its castle-crowned crag, we saw again, after many years, the gray, gnarled olive-trees and the hedges of oleander so asso- ciated in memory with warm, sunny days in the South. But the warm, sunny days were only in memory ; it was bitterly cold, and, as we tried in vain to warm ourselves at a wood-fire, we thought regretfully of our Munich stove. At Riva our hotel terrace looked down into the crystal- clear waters of the lake, where shoals of fish were cruising about of every size, from that of hay-seeds to a few respectable half-pounders. Beyond that size age gives wisdom, and they no longer show themselves 34 RIVA so innocently fearless, but retire to the safer depths of a lake that has been fathomed to a depth of a thousand feet. Riva is the frontier town, and we here first saw an Italian clock, with the hours on it numbered up to twenty- four. Up to noon they are read like our own ; after that they are read by an inner circle of figures from thirteen to twenty-four. It is a plan that has advantages in the matter of clear- ness, as 8 a.m. cannot be confused with 20, which answers to our 8 p.m., and it certainly makes a railway time-table far easier to under- stand. In olden times the hours were counted from sunset to sunset, but it is obvious that by this arrangement the hours varied in length according to the season of the year, and it was therefore doomed as soon as the introduction of railways made uniformity indispensable. But the peasantry detested the new-fangled system of counting from midnight. They said : \ In the old times the sun always set at twenty-four o'clock, but now we never know when it will set.' People of conservative tendencies will sympathize with them, but the shadow of Time is relentless ; it cannot move backwards, or even stand still. We were fortunate in having perfect weather the dav we steamed down the lake to Desen- VERONA 35 zano. Snow had fallen heavily on the heights, and lay in a well-defined line halfway down the mountains, whose white summits were cut delicately clear as a cameo against the pure blue sky, while their gaunt gray flanks dipped steeply down into the superb blue waters of the lake. Along the western shore men were busy boarding up the terraced arcades where lemon- trees are grown, in preparation for the coming winter, for the lemon is a tender subject, and must have its winter coat where the sturdier orange requires no protection. The orange- trees were laden with fruit, and at Gardone we saw good-sized palm-trees, besides bamboos, loquats, and standard magnolias, testifying to the mildness of the sheltered shore. At one of the villages the boat touched at, we noticed an inn with the very original dedication, ' A I tempo perduto! In its large suggestiveness it made one think of the altar to the unknown god. Verona is a city of contrasts, as, indeed, to a greater or lesser extent are all the cities of Italy. It combines in a high degree the traces 36 VERONA of bygone splendour and the evidences of modern poverty and squalor. Its monuments, its churches, its sculpture, and all that it owes to past times, are grand ; its streets, its pave- ments, its equipages, shops, and inhabitants — all such things, in fact, as belong to modern times — are dirty, dilapidated, squalid, and poor. The streets are filled with people of the poorest class, with a sprinkling of apparently well-to-do tradespeople, and, after a stay of some days, we came to the conclusion that the Two Gentle- men of Verona must have been the last of their class. Its Roman amphitheatre is one of the finest in existence, though, like all ancient buildings, it has suffered much in times past from having been used as a quarry of hewn stone. We climbed up to the highest tier of seats, and, sitting there, listened to the chimes of the church-bells, rung by the descendants of the men and women who had been torn in pieces on this very spot for professing the faith which has now so long been in a position to persecute instead of to suffer. A circus had lately been set up in the arena, and the ludicrous smallness of the ring left by the horses' hoofs showed the pettiness of a modern circus compared with those of the Romans. VERONA 37 The market at Verona is held in a large oblong piazza, surrounded by tall houses, gabled and balconied, their walls showing the remains of many a gay fresco painting. On one side rises, to a height of over three hundred feet, a slender square tower ; and at the end of the piazza stands a column bearing the winged lion of St. Mark, which for four centuries bore witness to the supremacy of Venice. Arthur Young called it a beast without merit, and its ubiquitous presence exasperated him. ' 'If the State were to build a pigsty, I believe they would decorate it with his figure.' The centre of the piazza is occupied by stalls of fruit, vegetables, poultry, and small wares, each stall shaded by a gigantic flat umbrella some eight feet across, with stout wooden ribs. Round about in the sun paced a crowd of idlers, smoking, laughing, chattering. At one corner a Cheap Jack was the centre of a shifting crowd, attracted by the extraordinary nature of his offers ; his words rushed out with the speed of a mountain torrent and the animation of an enraged bargee. On one stall lay, in fluffy, rumpled heaps, the poor little bodies of hundreds of tiny birds not much larger than wrens. They must have been migrating from some Northern climate, for a resident bird is a 38 VERONA rarity in Italy, where rich and poor alike look upon the slaughter of small birds as the most exquisite of sports. When at La Cava we were pointed out a little wood devoted to this amusement ; it was not much larger than a tennis-court, but for some mysterious reason small birds resorted to it, and convenient perches were prepared for their accommodation, and leafy huts built as hiding - places for the sportsmen, from whence they might pot some unsuspecting victim. . We watched one of these sportsmen sally out guri in hand, and presently a shot was heard, and he emerged excitedly from his ambush to search in the leaves and grass for his game. Unfortunately, the supply of birds is never exhausted, as Italy lies in the direct route of migration from the transalpine countries to the shores of Africa, and millions of the little tired wanderers are netted every spring and autumn, to be made into pies and stews. I happen to have a personal grudge against the Italians on this score, for once, when crossing the Mediter- ranean on an Italian liner in the month of April, our ship was boarded by numbers of little weary birds coming northwards, and exhausted almost to death, so that they let us catch them VERONA 39 in our hands. I caught all I could to save them from the sailors, and put them into a cage, to be freed on reaching land. But I reckoned without the Italian sailors, who betrayed their trust, and killed every one of the little prisoners to make merry over a big stew. An Italian can hardly look at a small bird without longing to crush its skull. If Italy were to have all her vines destroyed by insects and her crops by wireworms, she would only be receiving the wages she has doubly and trebly earned by her stupid rage for destroying every feathered thing. Close to the market-place is another fine piazza, with a statue of Dante in the centre, and a few paces distant is the group of tombs belonging to the Scaliger family. The eques- trian statue of Dante's friend and patron, the great Scaliger, has been battered by the tempests of five hundred years, but the poet's statue has only recently entered on its pro- bation — who can foretell what events it may have seen before it, too, has completed its five -hundredth anniversary ! The face is a stern and sarcastic one, and does not belie a story told of him and his patron : Scaliger asked him one day how it was that so many people found the company of a buffoon more 4o VERONA agreeable than that of him, who was so wise and so witty. Dante replied that it was very natural, since similarity of character and sym- pathy of taste always engendered liking. There are many churches at Verona rich in painting and sculpture. The figures support- ing the holy-water fonts at the Church of St. Anastasia are very curious : they are life-size, and represent two beggars in rags crouching beneath the weight of the basins. The face, hands, and knees, showing through the rents in their garments, are of white marble, while the rest is of dark marble, and the effect is curiously life-like. One of them is the work of Paul Veronese's father, who was a sculptor. Two of the side-chapels have lofty marble arches, exquisitely embellished with a broad border of sculpture, in which are introduced lizards, frogs, birds and their nests, cocks, tortoises, and other creatures, all beautifully modelled ; and in the centre of each deep-cut flower is a merry laughing face. There are numbers of splendid mediaeval tombs in this church in perfect preservation ; and among some highly quaint frescoes we saw one de- picting a miracle wrought by St. Egidius, or, as we call him, St. Giles. The saint is standing by an anvil, holding in his hand a horse's foot VERONA 41 that has been cut off at the fetlock, and the horse is being brought to him to be healed, which was miraculously effected. We after- wards saw a relief representing this same miracle on the west front of Or San Michele at Florence, below a statue of St. Giles, erected by the Guild of Farriers, whose patron saint he is. In the baptistery of St. Anastasia is shown a very ancient baptismal font, hewn out of one block of red marble ; it is about eight feet across and three feet deep, and has an inner circular division, in which the priest used to stand, while the candidate for baptism stood in the deep moat encircling it. Externally it is adorned by sculptured scenes from the life of Christ, but most of the figures are headless, their mutila- tion dating from the time when Bonaparte's soldiery were quartered in the baptistery. The Church of St. Zeno is a very interesting one. Like a vast number of other churches, it occupies the site of a temple belonging to the yet older pagan religion. On this spot Apollo had a shrine, and some of the present pillars were originally in his temple, as was also an enormous basin of Egyptian porphyry. St. Zeno was an African, born near Carthage, and obtained the distinction of becoming Bishop of 42 VERONA Verona, which led to his being put to death in the amphitheatre here under Julian the Apostate. The west doors are of cypress wood, covered with plates of brass, on which are rude and curious reliefs from the Old and the New Testa- ments ; one, representing the daughter of Hero- dias dancing, shows that the early mediaeval idea of dancing corresponded with what we call an acrobatic performance ; and we had observed the same thing in a thirteenth-century sculpture at Rouen Cathedral representing the same scene. She is shown in the attitude of a fish leaping, head and heels together, and the body in a hoop. Many of the capitals in this church are most grotesque : some are formed of four nude crouching figures, extending their arms as if clasping the pillar, while others are composed of wonderful beasts, with long necks and tails inextricably entangled. A group of four slender columns was, so to speak, knotted together at one point, as though they were of pliant material, an idea we afterwards saw repeated at the Church of St. Michele at Lucca. It is not artistic, to my mind, to give-a pillar the character of something yielding and supple, and even produces an unpleasant sensation. VERONA 43 As we were crossing the great piazza by the amphitheatre we heard a military band ap- proaching, and caught the wail of a funeral march. Presently a hearse came in sight, followed by a large contingent of officers in their long light-blue military cloaks, and attended by a company of soldiers. We followed the procession along the old battlemented wall, across the river Adige to the Campo Santo, which is approached by a wide double avenue of cypress-trees. Like others in Italy, it is built in the form of a vast quadrangle, having externally a high blank wall, and internally a cloistered arcade round the entire square, in which are the tombs and monuments of the richer classes, while the great enclosed square is used as the common burying-ground. The one at Verona has a long and imposing frontage ; above the lofty portal is a colossal sculptured group of veiled and weeping figures, above which, on the top of the fagade, stands a figure of the Angel of the Resurrection, with two figures in postures of expectant hope. At the foot of the great flight of steps leading up to the portal the coffin was taken from the hearse, and a brief service was performed in a side-chapel of the entrance loggia, after which the body was carried into the cemetery. Here 44 VERONA a great trench some fifty feet long, eight feet deep, and as many in width, was open ; the coffin, of plain unpainted deal, was hastily lowered in, and laid crosswise at the bottom, touching the side, still visible, of the coffin last interred, and earth was shovelled on to it, leaving, however, the one side exposed, ready for the next comer to be ranged alongside. Not a word was said during this part of the ceremony; and as soon as the sexton had with his pick loosened a mass of earth, that fell on the coffin, the few bystanders all dispersed. The thought of that long row of coffins lying cheek by jowl at the bottom of the trench im- pressed me more strongly than before with the advantages of cremation. I feel sure, without laying any claim to a spirit of prophecy, that the time will come, and in no very distant future, when our descendants will marvel at our so long refusing to see the wisdom of cremation. In the early centuries of our era it was different. The Christians were a small minority, an elect company, and they wished in all ways to differentiate themselves from the pagans around them. The Greeks and the Romans burnt their dead, and the Greeks and the Romans were pagans, therefore the Christians would have no burning, they would VERONA 45 bury their dead ; and after having done so for some centuries, they came to regard it as a rite essential to Christianity, so much so that to dream of burning a dead body was impious and unholy, deserving of having one's body burnt alive — a practice they had no objec- tion to. Burial, in fact, came to be a party badge, and as such invested with intrinsic sanctity. Something similar may be seen in our own day in heathen countries — heathen, as a rule, are not wearers of boots or trousers, Christians are, hence these garments come to be regarded as the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and their adoption is strenuously insisted on by our English missionaries. They do not stop to consider the intrinsic advantages of the one costume or the other in a hot climate, any more than the early Christians weighed the respective hygienic advantages of cremation and burial. Nor was the question one of pressing im- portance then. The Christians were a small community ; and what with the requirements of the amphitheatre, wild beasts, and massacres, there were many checks on their multiplying too fast. It would have been premature to provide then for the possible requirements of a 46 CREMATION shadowy future, when the temples of the twelve great gods should all have been overthrown, and, for lack of pagan adversaries, Christians should be slaughtering their brother Christians, and filling the burial-grounds in a quite whole- sale manner. Pierre Charron, the old divine and philosopher of the sixteenth century, wrote very strongly in favour of the practice of cremation, which he maintained to be a far nobler way of disposing of our dead than by burying them in the earth — ' the lowest of the elements, the mother of worms and corruption. Such a method should be reserved for infamous persons, and those who are put to ignominious deaths ; but the remains of men of honour should be treated more worthily. Religion itself teaches us that all things sacred are to be disposed of by fire — such as the remains of the Paschal Lamb that could not be eaten, the consecrated hosts, and the cloths dyed in sacred oil. 1 Dispose of your dead in a worse way, if you can, than by burying them in the ground. Assuredly, of all the different ways that have been practised in the disposal of the dead, the BOLOGNA 47 most vile and ignoble is to bury them, and the most honourable and noble is to burn them.' These were bold words to use at a time when the world was in no degree prepared to receive them ; and the three hundred years that have elapsed since they were written show us how slowly new ideas gain strength and prejudices are overcome. Between Verona and Bologna the train passes through an immense fertile plain of intermin- able vineyards, where the vines trail their festoons from tree to tree for scores and scores of miles. Heavy snow had lately fallen, and was still lying in the shadow of every tree and every furrow. Bologna is a city with a strongly-marked in- dividuality, and might well be called the City of a Thousand Arcades. Most of the streets have columned arcades on either side — miles of them — culminating in a continuous arcade of over six hundred arches outside the city gates, lead- ing to a famous pilgrimage church on a hill beyond. It is possible to perambulate almost the whole town under cover, and both in wet 48 BOLOGNA weather and in the heat of an Italian summer this is a great boon. One effect resulting from this prevalence of arcades is a very curious one — if you step out into the middle of a street, you might often think you were in a deserted city. The long vista between the colonnades is empty, save for an occasional figure that flits across it and is suddenly swallowed up on reaching the side. The wheeled traffic in all these cities is very small ; and though a brisk current of life is running under the arcades on either side, the thick columns seen in perspec- tive render it wholly invisible. This makes the town look very dull to anyone who drives about in an open carriage. In the few streets where there are no arcades the contrast is equally curious, for there the foot-passengers take entire possession of the whole street, and the trams and the carriages have, with infinite patience and much ringing of bells and cracking of whips, to forge their way slowly through the dense crowd, which immediately closes again behind them. Everyone is extremely good- tempered and patient, and we never saw any accident occur. It is a wonder to see the prodigality with which sculpture and painting and carving are ART FOR THE MASSES 49 everywhere lavished. Columns and capitals that would be the glory of any English church are here seen by the score in the streets. The public offices — post and telegraph, and so on — are in grand old palazzi with wide marble staircases, and great colonnaded courts, and long vaulted and frescoed corridors, once peopled by princes and nobles. Arches with beautiful stone or terra-cotta headings, cornices of rich and fanciful design, fountains of mag- nificent bronze, scagliuola pavements by the mile — these are the everyday surroundings of the people. And their influence is seen in the groups of children always gathered in front of the frames full of photographs outside the photographers' shops — photographs of altar- pieces by great masters, of carved and painted ceilings, of statues, of courts with sculptured fountains. You will hear the boys discussing the various paintings, pointing out the Madonnas in the different churches, and see them lifting up some very small brother to get a better view of them. The churches, too, stand always open, with their surprising wealth of paintings and sculpture, marble and gilding ; and the poorest can go in and sit as long as they choose amid surroundings that are in themselves a 4 5o BOLOGNA liberal education. They come in on their way to market, with their baskets of eggs or bundles of greens, their bright handkerchiefs over their heads, themselves subjects for i\ picture, with their free carriage and unconscious grace. One day while we were in the gorgeous Church of St. Pietro we witnessed a christening ceremony. The parents were of the peasant class, and in their everyday dress; and the young mother with her swaddled babe, listen- ing devoutly to the priest's exhortations, while the father stood by with earnest intelligence in every line of his fine, clean-cut features, would have served, with hardly an alteration, as models for a painting of the Holy Family. The priest elicited wails of protest by drawing his wet finger under the child's chin and behind its ears, after which he poured a saucer of water over the little red head in the name of the Trinity. The pilgrimage church previously referred to is famous for possessing one of the black Madonnas attributed to St. Luke. This one, however, is a painting, and not, like the famous Spanish black Madonna of Montserrat, a carved figure. It is, with the exception of the faces of the Mother and Child, entirely concealed behind MADONNA DI SAN LUCA 51 a covering of gold filigree work richly studded with jewels. The face of the Madonna — ex pecie Hercules ? — is by no means of a primitive style of art, the features being good and well drawn, as far as we could judge by the light of a taper which the priest very kindly held before it for our benefit ; the type was not unlike that of the Virgin of Montserrat, having the same long and pointed features. The painting is said to have been brought here from Con- stantinople in the twelfth century, but the present church is comparatively modern. It is built on one of the spurs of the Apennine chain that rises immediately beyond the walls of Bologna, and from its portico is seen a panorama of extreme beauty. All around the church are tumbled hills, rising confusedly higher and higher towards the south, and sloping abruptly down in front of the spectator to a perfectly level plain, stretching far as the eye can reach, with the silver curves of the river Reno shining from out of the blue shades of evening that were fast creeping over the country as we watched. At our feet lay Bologna, blurred by a white smoke-wreath that hung over the city, and beyond the vast plain the blue haze gathered such density that we could have vowed it was the sea that lay 52 BOLOGNA stretched to the north and east, as in times primaeval no doubt it did. As we descended the long covered colonnade, each arched opening appeared to be filled in with one of the intensely blue frescoes so delighted in by Italian scene-painters, and which to Northern eyes seem so exaggerated in colour. The congregation was hurrying downwards, and the arcades rang with the merry clatter of boys, who were racing down at breakneck speed with all the noise possible. The colonnade was built two hundred years ago with the offerings of the whole people — a rich person building one arch, and poorer ones clubbing together to build another, until money was collected to complete the entire colonnade of two miles in length. In the same way it is kept in repair. It is a splendid monument of piety, and a fitting appendage to the City of Arcades. We twice went to the Church of St. Petronio at noon to see the sun peer through the peep- hole in the roof on to the meridian line drawn on the pavement two hundred and fifty years ago by the astronomer Domenico Cassini. The sunlight falls in an oval patch on to the marble pavement, and moves in minute but visible pulse-like jerks. It was wonderful to remember that it was the pavement and the SAN PETRONIO 53 church itself that were thus moving round in these jerks, and curious to think that anyone who had dared to say so five hundred years ago would infallibly have been burnt for so impiously flouting the Word of God. Such little after-lights show us how very human our theology is. Some dozen other persons came like ourselves to watch the transit, and stood watch in hand to note the precise moment when the meridian was crossed. In the sacristy are preserved Cassini's original drawings and calculations, and the instruments he used in making them. There, too, we saw some fine illuminated choir-books of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ; the drawing and grouping of the figures are far in advance of French and English illuminated work of the same period, but the ornament and colouring by no means equal to the latter in delicacy of detail or beauty of colour- ing. It is heavy and florid, and much use is made of an ugly tint very similar to our modern ' magenta.' The Church of St. Petronio has suffered the fate which Cologne Cathedral so narrowly escaped ; it has never been completed. It was planned to eclipse in size and grandeur all the other churches in Italy, but when the west front 54 BOLOGNA and the nave were built, the work languished and then ceased, and, when all hope of com- pleting it had faded, an apse was built at the end of the nave ; and so it remains to this day, a grand unfinished fragment. Its length, west of where the transept was to have come, is 384 feet, and its breadth 156 feet Beneath the great marble canopy at the east end Charles V., that Colossus among monarchs, was crowned Emperor of Rome by the Pope, who had for months previously been his prisoner, and had only been released on pay- ment of a huge ransom. We may wonder what the Pope's private feelings on the occa- sion were ; but, whatever they may have been, he kept them to himself, and he and Charles lived in the greatest amity before the world. The coronation took place on Charles's thirtieth birthday, February 24, 1530, and it was the last time that a Roman Emperor was crowned by the Pope until the time of Bonaparte. The festivities on the occasion were magnificent, gold and silver being rained down among the people from the palace windows for two hours at a time, and the splendid gold and silver plate that was used for the coronation banquet being afterwards all thrown out of window to be scrambled for by the populace. LIDDRIO DELLE NOZZE 55 Charles is the most splendid and most melancholy figure that crosses the pages of history. In the midst of his unrivalled splen- dour and power he always saw Death on his pale horse riding beside him. Wherever he went, he carried a coffin and a shroud with him, and at times would lay himself down in his coffin and make believe to be dead. It was, indeed, this habit that ultimately caused his death ; he had insisted on having the full burial service performed for him, and it lasted so long that he got chilled in his coffin. Three weeks later he was laid in it stiff and stark, not again to leave it. In the Church of St. Maria ai Servi we saw another of the jars said to have been used at Cana in Galilee, and known as the Iddrio delle Nozze. It is about sixteen inches high, and is carved from a solid block of alabaster, having the outer surface entirely covered with a flowing design of branches and leaves. It is undoubtedly of interest to look at an object which has for centuries been accredited with such an origin, and only a very unsympathetic mind could fail to be moved by the thought of the reverence that must attach to it in the minds of those who are untroubled by any historic doubts. Bologna is well provided with tramways, 56 BOLOGNA which radiate from the central piazza to the twelve city gates, and as each carriage bears the name of the gate to which it runs, a perfect stranger can tell which one to get into. Beyond the Porta Sant Isaiah the tramway is continued for a mile, terminating at the Campo Santo, one of the finest cemeteries in Italy. Formerly a Carthusian monastery, it contains a labyrinth of courts, corridors, quadrangles, and cloisters, perfectly bewildering to the visitor. There are many fine monuments, but the realism of modern art is certainly not as suitable to a tomb as the more conventional recumbent figure represented as rigid in death, or even the kneel- ing figures of the mediaeval times. Many of the modern monuments are hideous in the too faithfully-rendered fashions of some twenty years past, and jar upon the sense of reverence and peace associated with the abode of the dead, as much as do the photographs of the dead that are framed and put on some of the tombs. Such things are too symbolic of all that is most ephemeral, most transient in our brief life, instead of symbolizing, however imper- fectly, the changeless eternity into which the dead have passed. It is that shadow of eternity that confers dignity on the dead form of the meanest of ART AND REALISM 57 mortals, and modern art misses this dignity when it represents the dead as if yet alive, and stamped with the passing fashion of a certain year. There are some very beautiful tombs of ecclesiastics and knights of the fifteenth century in the cloisters, and in their calm repose and solemnity they form a strong contrast to the painful realism and careless attitudes of the figures on modern tombs. In all art there must be a compromise be- tween the real, as represented by the photo- graphic camera, and the purely conventional and decorative, as represented in the early paintings and illuminations, where colour and effect alone were everything, and drawing and nature nothing. But an artist cannot serve faithfully two masters — art and reality. He must make his choice of the one, and let the other be wholly subordinate ; and, for my own part, I feel convinced that in painting, at any rate, and in sculpture to a lesser degree, Realism must be the handmaid, and Art the mistress. I do not mean that the drawing should not be faithful and good, for this is to me of the highest importance, and not incompatible with its being subordinate to other considerations ; but just as the drawing in a stained - glass window is a matter wholly secondary to its 58 BOLOGNA colour, so, in a modified degree, do I hold the drawing to be secondary in a painting. I think it is impossible to look at the paintings that delight one the most, and not see that colour and feeling, light and shade, are the factors on which their beauty depends, and that their faithfulness to nature is a wholly secondary consideration. The fact that in Domenichino's picture of the martyrdom of Sant' Agnes the martyr's face wears an expression of untroubled serenity while the sword is plunged into her bosom, cannot be defended as being true to nature ; but it was true to the artist's idea of what her frame of mind was, and it is the impress of the artist's mind that gives much of their beauty to similar subjects. So well did the old painters recognize this that one of them, famed above others for the saintly spirituality of his Madonnas, would never begin a painting without having fasted on the previous evening and fitted his mind for his w r ork by receiving the Holy Sacrament on the day itself. In sculpture, fidelity to nature is undoubtedly the first essential of beauty, but it is the sculptor's feeling for Art that must decide how this fidelity must be exercised. Vulgar realism, however perfect, will not produce a masterpiece. In the gallery at Bologna there are some ECCE HOMO' 59 magnificent examples of Raffaelle, Guido Reni, and other masters. I cannot myself believe that in their own line they will ever again be equalled, for the conditions that inspired them have passed away. Men nowadays do not see visions or dream dreams. They do not see the heavens opened, or feel the waft of angels' wings. They may surpass the old painters in all that requires faithful rendering of things upon earth — landscapes and genre painting and the manners and fashions of the day — but never again shall we see anything to equal those old masters in the subjects they excelled in. In the fifteenth century men painted saints and martyrs, heroes and Holy Families. In the nineteenth century the most popular paintings have been the ' Derby Day ' and the ' Railway Station.' There is a great gulf between the two. To my mind, the gem — the pearl of great price — in the Bologna Gallery is a small sketch in chalks — Guido Reni's original study for his 4 Ecce Homo.' The unutterable saintliness and resignation expressed in the great blue eyes surpass in beauty any print or painting I have ever seen of the finished picture, the original of which is at Dresden. 6o BOLOGNA The old University buildings at Bologna, abandoned now as the seat of the University, contain a magnificent library, magnificently lodged. The central passage has a vista of over two hundred yards in length, through a series of rooms devoted to the various branches of litera- ture. The lower half of the walls is occupied by books, while the upper portion is entirely covered by the armorial blazons of the most distinguished students of the University, which in past centuries was one of the most renowned in Europe. Every nation has its representatives among these blazonments that enrich the walls, and the librarian pointed out several bearing the superscription ' Anglorum.' Here, where once he was librarian, we saw the bust of that unrivalled possessor of the gift of tongues, Mezzofanti, who spoke forty-two languages. He was the son of a carpenter in Bologna, and rose ultimately to the dignity of a Cardinal. He died in 1849, at the age of seventy-three. Lord Byron once met him, and declared that he would have been invaluable at the Tower of Babel as universal interpreter. ' I tried him,' he says, ' in all the tongues of which I knew a single oath, and, egad ! he astounded me, even to my English !' MEZZOFANTI 61 Lady Morgan, too, made his acquaintance, and was greatly struck by the cordial admira- tion with which he spoke of Clotilda Tambroni — like himself a Professor at the University — without the faintest sneer at her for her learning, * which in England,' adds Lady Morgan, * is a greater female stigma than vice itself.' In the Theatre of Anatomy, among the busts of the most famous members of the University are those of several female Professors, in the hall where of old they gave their lectures. For the University of Bologna has from its founda- tion been a shining example of liberality and enlightenment, centuries in advance of those in our own country, and its motto — ' Bononia docet ' — has applied equally to all its sons and daughters. Women have always been admitted to its full privileges, and many have won for themselves fame, in which the University takes no less pride than in that achieved by its male students. Italy has always risen superior to the feeling of sex-jealousy so strongly felt in England and Germany. Possibly it has been owing to the latent influence of that Greek enlightenment and culture once so widely naturalized in the Italians' country ; whereas the Teutonic races had barbarians for their forefathers, and 62 BOLOGNA the love of culture is with them a recent acquirement, and not, as with the Italians, a glorious heritage. Goethe, writing a hundred years ago of his countrywomen, said : ' Learned women are turned into ridicule, and even the well-informed ones are disliked, probably be- cause it is thought impolite to put so many ignorant men to the blush. The doctrine is incessantly preached that a woman should hide her knowledge more carefully than a Calvin ist in a Roman Catholic country his creed.' This doctrine was never held in Italy. The Italians held with Plato 'that there is no em- ployment peculiar to women, as such, nor to men, as such, but that natural talents are in- discriminately diffused through both. . . . It is true that, as with men, one woman is fitted for being a physician, and another is not so, one fitted for gymnastics, another not so, one high- spirited, another timid. . . . But the nature of the man and the woman is the same.' We, descendants of barbarians, have by no means yet risen to this Platonic standpoint, but we are rising, and as our culture deepens it will also widen. The ignorance of the average man shall not always be taken- as the water-mark above which it is undesirable that any woman's knowledge shall rise. A woman's powers will THE UNIVERSITY 63 then, like a man's, be permitted to find their own level, and select their own line, without being hampered by any artificial restrictions imposed by sex-jealousy. The vulgar belief that a learned woman must be plain and unattractive meets with a brilliant refutation, if it needed any at all, in the fact that a celebrated female Professor of this University was so distractingly beautiful that when giving her lectures she had to be con- cealed by a curtain, out of regard for the peace of mind of her male hearers. Two women have been Professors of Jurisprudence here, another of Mathematics, a fourth of Anatomy, and a fifth of Greek. And in England, whose boast it should be to lead the van, the exten- sion of our Universities' privileges to women is even yet being opposed inch by inch, and by those who, of all others, should be generously ready to extend the benefits of knowledge — those who have themselves reaped all the advantages it has to confer. Alma Mater is but step-motherly to her daughters in our own country. Connected with the University is a museum, in which the objects of chief interest to us were a large collection of Umbrian and Etruscan re- mains, discovered at Bologna itself during the 64 BOLOGNA last fifty years while digging for foundations. They are of vast antiquity, but any date assigned to them must be largely conjectural, though it is thought that they are not less than a thousand years before our era. Many skeletons were found imbedded in hard clay, and were trans- ported in the block as they lay. Those of women have bracelets on their bare bones, and fibulas, and earrings. The men have weapons by their side, and all had vessels of bronze and pottery containing food and drink and such things as they were thought likely to want in the next world, generally placed on a small table by their side. That the Greek colonists in Italy had a precisely similar custom may be seen from the painting on a large Italo- Greek vase in the Naples Museum, where the corpse is laid out for burial, and two slaves are bringing small low tables bearing vases and dishes to be placed by it in the tomb. One noticeable feature in all the skeletons is the absolutely perfect state of their teeth. There could have been no room for dentists in those days. Nothing in Bologna leaves so strong an im- pression on the mind of a hurried tourist as its famous leaning towers, and with many, indeed, this is the only distinct recollection they carry 1 ) ) ■> "> ) THE LEANING TOWERS OF BOLOGNA. (To face p. 65.) THE LEANING TOWERS 65 away with them. Within twenty feet of each other, in a small open space where seven streets converge, rise these two remarkable brick towers — the one remarkable on account of its slenderness and its more than 300 feet of height, and the other on account of the perilous angle at which it stands, as though in the act of falling. The taller one ranks as the seventeenth tallest building in the civilized world, and is only a few feet less than St. Paul's. They were built nearly 800 years ago by two rival Bolognese families, whose names they still bear. For what purpose they were built is not clear, nor is it known if the leaning over of the shorter one is accidental or not. It is usually thought to be the result of an earthquake, an opinion I cannot share, as I think that had an earthquake upheaved it thus far, it would have toppled it over altogether. Goethe throws out the ingenious suggestion that a tower being in those times a mark of dis- tinction, so many towers were built by rival families that they defeated their own end by becoming too common to confer any distinction, and the Garisenda family hit upon the original expedient of differentiating their particular tower by building it crooked. However that maybe, crooked it is to a very remarkable degree, and 5 66 BOLOGNA Dante's comparison of the giant Antaeus, when he stooped, to the tower of Garisenda when a passing cloud sweeps across the sky from that quarter to which it leans, must be a lively and powerful image to those who have witnessed this effect. Even the straightest of spires, if very tall, will seem to bend towards the driving clouds when you watch it intently. The railway from Bologna to Lucca crosses the Apennine Range, following the valley of the river Reno. The Reno is a type of the mountain streams in southern lands, occupying a huge bed, and continually rolling its little restless stream from side to side of it. The scenery is wild and rugged until the highest point is passed, some 2,000 feet, soon after which beautiful glimpses of the plains to the south are seen, and presently we descend to the rich and lovely plain on which Pistoia is built. A more beautiful moment for seeing it would have been impossible ; the lower slopes of the Apennines were glowing in the setting sun with the gorgeous purples and blues of a pigeon's breast, and their snowy tops were LUCCA 67 flushed with tender rose-colour, while above the cold blue eastern hills, on which the shades of night had already sunk, rose the great silvery orb of a full moon, closely attended by a small crimson cloud of exquisite beauty. Darkness had fallen long before we reached Lucca, and the only impression we experienced that night was that the streets are much better paved than at Bologna, and the hotels — for we drove first to one and then to another — are singularly primitive and cheerless. Visitors were obviously not expected. The next morning was a cloudless one, and we drove to the Villa Marlia, famous for its gardens, laid out in imitation of those at Marly. But they must be seen in summer. The unhappy white statues shrank and shuddered in the east wind under the spray of the chilly fountains, and the tall walls of clipped yew looked grim and gloomy in the keen frosty air. The situation of Lucca is as beautiful as that of Pistoia, and fully bears out the description Montaigne gave of it when he visited it in 1580. He says, * C'est l'une des plus plesantes assietes de ville que je vis jamais, environnee de deus grands lieus de plaine, et puis de belles montaignes et collines, garnies de maisons plesantes, fort epais.' These pleasant 68 LUCCA houses are studded all over the wooded slopes that stretch themselves in the sun, and the plain is fertile with vine and fig, and watered by swift-running streams that turn numbers of great mill wheels. Along their banks grow reeds to a height of twenty feet or more, giving an almost tropical air of luxuriance. Many of the sunny white houses were brilliantly draped with festoons of what looked like orange- coloured tapestry, but which on nearer inspec- tion proved to be ropes and mats of Indian- corn cobs, thus hung up and harvested. Lucca affords a complete contrast to Bologna in having no tramways and no arcades. Neither has it the terrible cobble-stones of Bologna, that magnify the noise of a passing carriage into that of a battery of artillery. Its streets are beautifully paved with large flat squares of stone, and are used indifferently by pedestrians and vehicles. The male population is clad in the invariable long full cloak with fur collar, and the female in bright-coloured short skirts, dark bodice, and gay kerchief over the dark hair, and both alike wear a kind of slipper with a high wooden heel that makes a curious sharp tapping sound on the pavement. Lucca manu- factures large quantities of fez caps for export to Turkey, but during our stay there we only LUCCA 69 saw one solitary specimen being worn, by a very small, solemn-eyed boy among the crowd in front of Santa Lucia's shrine, whose fete was being celebrated. Lucca's great charm is in its ramparts. As in Montaigne's day, so now, they are planted with a double avenue of trees, and on their enormous bastions are perfect groves. There is no moat ; the walls rise direct from the plain, and, being immensely high, the view from the top is quite charming. A fine carriage-drive and broad, well-kept footways encircle the whole city, forming a most airy and delightful resort for the people. We paid many visits to the ramparts, one by the light of the full moon, when the city was wrapped in profound silence, and the tall campaniles stood like pale ghosts in the silvery light, with great Orion rising athwart the Cathedral tower. The Cathedral has a facade of amazing rich- ness of detail, tier above tier of sculptured arcades rising above the deep portico, though the outline of the building is of that severe plainness usual in the Tuscan style, and so striking to eyes accustomed to Gothic churches. The interior has a clerestory of beautiful tracery which is carried across the transepts ; the latter are also divided lengthways by a wall pierced 7o LUCCA in the upper part with large traceried windows, an arrangement I never saw elsewhere. There are many fine monuments, but one in particular will live in my memory, the recumbent effigy of a lady who died nearly 500 years ago. It is most beautiful in its execution and in its calm simplicity, equally devoid of the some- times grotesque stiffness of earlier times and of the more repulsive realism of modern times. If I were a sculptor, I should come here and sit humbly at the feet of the old master who carved a monument so beautiful, until he re- vealed to me his guiding star. At the lady's feet lies a pug dog — the prototype of all modern pugs, with every attribute of the breed well marked — turning his snub nose with wistful devotion towards the calm, sweet face of his mistress. The execution of the dog is faithful in every point, but not in the least obtrusive. The greatest treasure the Cathedral possesses is the famous crucifix known as the Volto Santo di Lucca. It has an altogether miraculous history. It was carved by Nicodemus, but he delayed in attempting the face, feeling himself incompetent to such a task. One day, how- ever, on returning to his wdrk, he found that the face had been carved by a messenger from heaven, and for this reason it is the face that IL VOL TO SANTO 71 is esteemed so peculiarly sacred. Some centuries passed, when a ship was seen cruising off the coast of Joppa without sails or crew, and, on being boarded by some Italians, was found to have on board the Crucifix of the Sacred Face, and was taken to Lerici, in the Gulf of Genoa. Here the crucifix resisted all attempts to convey it ashore, until the sailors, acquainted no doubt with the signs of super- natural power, summoned the Bishop of Lerici, who came in full episcopal pomp, and conducted it, no longer resisting, to Lucca, about the year 700. An ancient fresco in the Church of St. Frediano depicts this procession, and gives a faithful picture of the Volto Santo as it was borne in a cart drawn by wild cattle, who volun- teered their services for so great an occasion. It is said that William Rufus used to swear his greatest oaths by the Vultum de Lttcca ; and, indeed, he and his family may have con- sidered themselves to be more especially under its protection, since it was the Bishop of Lucca, when he came to be Pope Alexander II., who gave his benediction to William of Normandy on setting forth to try and conquer our country, and we all know what success attended him. Before the shrine hangs a lamp of solid gold, said to weigh twenty-four pounds, presented by 72 LUCCA the people of Lucca in the year 1836 in the hope of averting a threatened plague of cholera. Their conception of the Almighty as a poten- tate capable of being propitiated by bribes is truly pagan. Burnt-offerings and hecatombs of victims are no longer in favour with Him, they are told, but He is still open to the influence of gold and silver and precious stones. Hung from the centre of the vaulted nave is a curious old iron cresset, in shape like a hexa- gonal gridiron, which is used in accordance with very ancient custom when the Archbishop of Lucca celebrates the Mass himself. It is then filled with flax and set alight, and, as the flax flares and fades, the choir sings ' Sic transit gloria mundi, 1 a very impressive and poetic object-lesson, though unattended with much result, if we may judge by the universal eagerness shown in striving to grasp this passing glory. Another ancient custom practised at Lucca was the source of much perplexity to me. Our hotel was within sound of the great clock of St. Michele and of another, and when I woke the first morning, wondering what time it might be, I soon afterwards heard the four quarters chimed, and then the deep voice of the bell proclaiming the hour. But it struck only two, AN IRISH SAINT 73 and I was at a loss what to think, knowing by the light that the hour was tolerably late. The next moment another church clock began to strike, and I listened attentively. To my astonishment that also only struck two, and I began to think that I or the clocks must be bewitched, as on looking at my watch I found it was eight o'clock. So I made inquiries of our host, and learnt that in accordance with a most ancient Roman custom these clocks strike never more than six, dividing the day into quarters instead of halves. And, therefore, in the second and fourth quarters six has always to be added to what they strike — at eight o'clock they strike two, and at ten they strike four. It is simple enough when explained, but highly perplexing to a stranger. In Rome we after- wards saw more than one ancient clock with only six numbers on its meagre face. One of Lucca's oldest churches was built in honour of an Irishman, who in the sixth century found his way to Italy, and, with the usual success of Irishmen when not in Ireland, rose to be Bishop of Lucca, and was ultimately canonized as St. Frigidianus. The power of his sanctity must certainly have been very great, and capable almost of being translated with some accuracy into horse-power, for by it 74 LUCCA he is said to have lifted from its quarry an enormous block' of marble, about i6x 17 x \\ feet, which is to this day in his church, with a Latin inscription over it recording its history. It is admitted that he had the assistance of his canons in raising it, but that may, I think, be regarded as a negligible quantity. Another exercise of his power which obtained him great fame is the subject of an antique fresco. It seems that the river was in flood and threatening to inundate the city, when the Bishop went forth, armed only with his spiritual power and a rake, and — more successful than Dame Partington with her mop — succeeded in diverting the course of the raging torrent by simply drawing with his rake a track, in which the water thereupon began to flow. This is the river Serchio, described by Shelley as ' a torrent fierce,' 'Which, fervid from its mountain source, Shallow, smooth, and strong doth come ; Swift as fire, tempestuously It sweeps into the affrighted sea.' Like most of its brother streams it is capricious, and is sometimes a raging- torrent, sweeping everything before it, at others a paltry stream meandering through a vast bed of shingle. 57: ZITA 75 Once a year St. Frediano's church is visited by a throng so enormous that help from the military is necessary to prevent disaster. But the object of this pilgrimage is not the shrine of the saintly Bishop, but that of a poor servant maid who for nearly fifty years lived in the service of a family here, and by her fidelity and virtue won for herself a niche in the Temple of Fame, and a line in Dante's Divine Comedy. She too was canonized, and, as St. Zita, is the patron saint of all those that serve. From far and near they flock to do her reverence on her fete day, and bring flowers in such masses that her chapel is said to be heaped up with mounds and drifts of blossoms. Beneath the altar lies her body, which on that day is dragged out and dressed up in silk and lace, and exposed to view — the one dis- cordant note in an otherwise touching ceremony, but one eminently characteristic of Italian taste, which loves to mingle the gruesome with religious pomp and gaiety. Any appeal to their senses seems welcome to them, and a collection of mummified corpses or grinning skulls is a quite natural adjunct to the beauty of the paintings and marbles and sculpture that they lavish on their churches. After all, they are the descendants of the Romans, who liked 76 SPEZIA to have a skeleton at their banquets. It gave a piquancy to their enjoyment. From Lucca we went to Spezia ; but of the beauties or attractions of Spezia I cannot speak, having there fallen a victim to the influenza fiend, and never having left the hotel till the day when we left for Naples. Nevertheless, Spezia has left a very distinct impression upon me — an indelible one, I fancy. I shall never hear its name without hearing again the wail of a funeral march at night, and the monotonous nerve-wearing notes and hyena-like shrieks of a steam organ, that for twelve hours daily played one tune. It belonged to a travelling merry- go-round which, to my sorrow, selected Spezia for its Christmas quarters and was set up at a distance that prevented me from catching any but the deep, unvarying notes of the bass. They took such possession of me that they did not even cease when the music stopped, but went on thumping in my head. As to the funerals, there was one almost every night, and they could not be ignored, accompanied as they were by one or even two FUNERAL CUSTOMS 77 brass bands and a long procession of men carrying torches or candles. Our hotel lay on the route to the cemetery, and the first time that a funeral passed we supposed it to be that of some distinguished personage. After that we began to wonder at the surprising mortality among the great men of the place, and at last inquired into the matter. We then heard that any member of a Brotherhood is escorted to the grave with this pomp and publicity, and as almost every Italian belongs to one of these Brotherhoods the funeral processions are incessant. A man pays a small monthly subscription, and then at his death the Brotherhood of which he was a member takes the entire charge of his funeral, and conducts it in this elaborate manner. The hearse is drawn by four or more horses and surrounded by the members of the Brotherhood, ghastly figures clad from head to foot in long black dominoes with two holes cut for the eyes, and preceded, and often followed as well, by a large brass band playing wild and plaintive dirges. Why the funeral should always take place at night I do not know, though some writers say it is a survival of the pagan custom when funerals were celebrated at night because it was thought pollution for the priests of the temples to see 78 SPEZIA anything connected with death. It was even thought pollution to the sun to look upon a corpse, and I have seen a painting on an ancient Greek vase, showing a dead warrior laid out for burial, and a woman holding over him an umbrella to protect the sun from such a sight. Such jealous care for his purity seems a little superfluous ; but it is only a phase of that common and disastrous belief that the gods are unable to take care of themselves without human aid. As to the practice of following the corpse with torches, it is said to be a ceremony undoubtedly borrowed from heathen rites and retained from time immemorial by the Roman Catholic Church. Dean Ramsay's dissipated young man, who was always wasting his time at funerals, would have run riot altogether at Spezia. He could have belonged to a brotherhood and perpetually attended funerals, and could have worn a dismal black mask and carried a torch, or, if musically inclined, he could have joined a band and played nothing but funeral marches. He would have been an altogether happy man. THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA 79 It was New Year's Day, 1895, when we left Spezia by the night express, and dawn was creeping, pale and chilly, over the earth as we ran into Rome. We watched the sky redden behind the heights of ancient Tusculum as we waited, and before we again started on our way southward the sun peeped over the ridge. The Campagna looked unspeakably great and lonely in the low slanting rays that brought into re- lief every prominence, every inequality. The solitary deserted watch-towers and the gaunt gray arches of ancient aqueducts — the bones of former ages — threw across the desolate land- scape long shadows in which the hoar-frost lingered still. No sign of life was visible in all the plain save for a few black and brown sheep and some herds of ashen-gray, long-horned oxen. The Sabine mountains were covered with snow, and in their cold laps lay blue pools of shadow. When I again opened my eyes, which had unaccountably closed, the landscape and vege- tation had undergone a remarkable change. Oranges gleamed golden among the glossy foliage of their groves, and the blue gum-tree of Australia, with its un-European, wisp-like foliage, formed a novel feature in the scene. Across the country stretched long lines and 8o NAPLES groups of the umbrella-pines, with their stiff, symmetrical heads, and the land was covered with a deep network of trailing vines stretching from poplar to poplar. Among them were men on perilously high and rickety step-ladders of most rude construction, pruning and training the tangle of branches. Presently we came in sight of Vesuvius, whose smoking cone was covered with snow, and was a beautiful sight when night came, and the blood-red glow of Vulcan's forge shone with lurid light from the top of the white mountain, — an 1 Imperial mountain, crowned with cloud and snow and fire.' # The centre and eastern shores of the Bay of Naples slope gently upwards as in a vast amphitheatre ; but west of the Toledo, the main arterial street of the town, the rise is much steeper, and at a slight distance from the shore becomes almost precipitous. The present Government has constructed a magnificent winding road along the face of these heights, from every turn of which the panoramic view is extremely beautiful. Here are situated some of the newest and best hotels, 200 feet above CORSO VITTORIO EMANUELE 81 the sea and the beautiful shore where deadly- typhoid so often lurks. At your feet lies the huge expanse of closely- packed houses, painted, as it were, in pale, flat tones of brown, red, and white, streaming down the slopes that stretch from the double peak of Vesuvius, and getting more and more crowded as they near the shores of the bay, till at last they form apparently one solid surface. Through this you look down into deep, narrow, straight canons dividing the masses of the tall houses, and see a dark stream of human life trickling along deep at the bottom. The flat roofs of the houses and the cupolas of all the churches give an Oriental character to the town, still further increased by the gaudy-coloured tiles with which some of the domes are covered. Not one of the slender square towers or tall campaniles of Northern Italy is here to be seen. The precipitous rocks above and below this Cornice road are thickly covered with tall, half- ruinous-looking houses clinging on like some natural growth, and masses of brown rugged masonry face the cliffs here and there, either the supports of some present building or the relics of some bygone one. Over the parapets nod pale lemons and glowing oranges, and 6 82 NAPLES vine-branches cover every inch where foothold can be obtained. Where the houses rise on either side of the road you get glimpses of pre- cipitous, rugged flights of stone steps, the play- ground of hordes of young street Arabs, leading downwards between the tall, balconied houses to the lower part of the town, and upwards to the yet higher portion on the cliffs. Fowls and goats mingle with the children, and donkeys laden with charcoal and vegetables clamber up and down the steps. These vistas are extraordinarily picturesque, with their depth of shadow and infinity of detail and brilliant shafts of sunlight. Across the strip of deep blue sky that roofs them in wave bright-coloured clothes hung across ropes from balcony to balcony in a long perspective, show- ing that clothes are certainly washed, though one rarely happens to see them worn while clean. The women are greatly addicted to bright colours, and often wear a blue skirt, white apron, scarlet bodice, and rose-pink crossover. They all wear red or white stockings and heel- less slippers, which give a slipshod appearance to the wearers. Many of them dress in ex- cessively fine clothes, regardless of all incon- gruity ; and I have seen an apple-green velvet NEAPOLITAN CUSTOMS 83 gown trailing along a street so filthy that a Frenchwoman would gather up her skirts with a shudder if she set foot in it. Their hair is usually very fine and plentiful, as you may see when driving through the streets, as they are fond of sitting luxuriously in front of their houses with a friend brushing out their long black tresses. They have no bashfulness about performing in public many little duties which in other countries would be performed in private, and it is not necessary to enter their houses to see something of their domestic manners. One thing never seen is a Neapolitan in spectacles. It is obvious that they do not waste their substance in burning midnight oil, or their eyesight in poring over books. It is impossible not to be struck with the absence of good looks in the Neapolitans — men, women, and children. The fine earnest faces so commonly met with in the Northern cities are absolutely non-existent here. Now and again a tolerably handsome face when young and prosperous may be seen, but of a sallow, pudding-faced type, and the women are invari- ably open to Dick Swivellers objection of being * too crummy/ Those seen in private carriages are often prodigiously fat and squat, and their 84 NAPLES faces wear a cold, sullen look of dissatisfaction and boredom, that is apparently considered kaut ton, and is extremely repellent. Any nobility of type will be searched for in vain. Long centuries of ignoble traditions, ignoble aspirations, pursuit of pleasure, and love of ease, have stamped their unmistakable mark upon the Neapolitan physiognomy and char- acter. Nowhere have I been so much struck by the low-bred character of a type as I have here. Much allowance must be made for a people who have had no nationality of their own. By turns under the rule of Normans, Germans, French, Spaniards, and Austrians, they have rarely belonged for two hundred years together to the same country. This, no doubt, is suf- ficient to account in great measure for the mongrel nature of their type, as also for the low estimation in which they are held by their neighbours. It is said that not only are they despised by their brother Italians, but even by the population of the small islands off their coast. To us who look upon all the people of Italy as Italians, it was curious to find how sharp a distinction they- themselves draw between Neapolitans and Italians. Inquiring on one occasion if a certain official was an THE STREETS 85 Italian, we were told, ' No, not an Italian,' and were just going to ask if he was French, when the man added : ' He is a Neapolitan.' Now that Naples forms part of what should be a splendid nation, it may be that her char- acter will become ennobled by the influence of patriotism. But any such change must of necessity be very slow, and who can foresee what lies in the lap of the Future ? The streets of Naples are almost more dirty and untidy than those even in a Spanish provincial town. In front of the houses on either side is a wide belt of debris, cabbage- stalks, feathers, dirty paper, orange-peel, chickens' heads, and filth of all kinds, among which scratch and rout a number of fowls, and an occasional pig or goat. Yet the scavengers and their carts are to be seen at work at all hours of the day. Naples is for ever being cleaned, and yet is never clean. Twice a day the streets are pervaded by large flocks of goats as well as by cows and their calves, which here take the place of milkmen's carts. The cows are milked at the 86 NAPLES customers' doors, but the goats will ascend with the greatest affability to even the top floor if required, and be milked there. Nor is this custom at all confined to the poorer houses ; some ladies going to call on a friend who rented a flat for two hundred pounds in one of the best parts of Naples, nearly fell over a goat on its way down from the upper floor as it passed them on the dark staircase. It is a most amusing thing to see the self-possession of these creatures as they stalk through the crowded streets, with heads erect, and calm, sensible eyes, unembarrassed by the throng of carriages, trams, and foot-passengers, forging their own way quietly through the turmoil with the security of a London crossing-sweeper, but always appropriating the side-pavement when there is one. This custom has, of course, many obvious drawbacks, and it is sometimes exasperating when in a hurry to have to pull up and walk at a funeral pace behind some cows and calves who are leisurely sauntering along the crowded street. But every effort hitherto made to abolish it has proved futile. The Neapolitans are thoroughly acquainted with one another's honesty and reliability, and they will buy milk that they see milked from STREET LIFE 87 the cow, or they will buy none at all. A Neapolitan will try and cheat in every possible way, and if foiled in one direction will try another. When the sound of the cows' bells is heard, the family living in the top flat of one of the tall houses will let down a basket from the balcony, and the cowman fills a measure with milk, and it is drawn up. But it is promptly sent down again, the wary housewife having perceived that half of it is froth. A shrill remonstrance is heard from the sky. The milkman, protesting, adds some more milk, and the basket is again drawn up. If satisfied, the empty measure is then let down once more with the coppers in payment, and the cows go on to their next house of call. The street life of Naples is its most curious and amusing characteristic, but it is not a pleasure to perambulate the streets in the older parts of the town. Foot-pavements are often non-existent, and where there are any they are used by all persons as a convenient waste space; the roadmen pile up sand and stones on them ; women make use of them universally as drying- grounds, and you find them occupied by posts and festoons of damp flapping clothes ; the cobbler carries on his trade on the side- walk ; a carriage is brought on to it to be painted. 88 NAPLES Groups of men sit round small tables playing cards, and eager clusters of boys are playing knucklebones, a game as popular still as it seems to have been at Pompeii two thousand years ago. Family parties are occupied pluck- ing fowls on this useful walk, or brushing their hair, or washing clothes. The stalls of small traders habitually occupy it, and overflow at times into the carriage-way as well ; the side- walk is the people's front parlour. On one little stall will be set out inviting slices of octopus and strips of salt fish. On another is a little charcoal stove with a quaint repousse copper pot over it, bubbling with snail-soup, thick and nourishing, and a great heap of snails close by, wherewith to replenish it when wanted. The proprietor, seeing us stop, seized the ladle, and affably inquired if he might serve us. Englishmen before now have tasted the brew and have lived, but, in the words of an old writer, we ' felt a wambling in the stomach ' at the mere thought, and politely declined. As we turned away, we nearly ran against a man carrying huge bunches of pigs' trotters dangling from a pole over his shoulder. In even the best streets of Naptes it is common to see this, and to meet boys carrying a monstrous piece of raw meat on their filthy heads, as it is SMALL TRADESMEN 89 also to see the scavengers and small coster- mongers' carts at all hours of the day. It excites no comment ; it is the custom. In all but the principal streets a shop is merely a small room, usually the only one possessed by the tradesman. Its front is formed by two large doors like those of a coach-house ; they stand open all day, and when they are closed the room is in darkness. The chief piece of furniture is a vast bed, a small edition of the Bed of Ware ; in it sleeps the family, sometimes of three generations. They do not undress at night ; when a gown is put on it is worn till it drops off. This simpli- fies life very much, besides accounting for the appearance of the people. A friend of ours in Rome, whose window overlooked a family room of this kind, had full opportunity of studying the customs of the people, as the great doors were opened when the first of the family rose and left the house. The mother would presently get up, drag out a child, bundle up its hair into a knot, give the child a comprehensive shake — and there it was, dressed for the day. When the girls go further afield they generally put on a brilliant pink or scarlet woollen fichu, but that is the only addition required. In the daytime the mat- 90 NAPLES tresses are turned back, and the indispensable bed becomes a table. Seven or eight persons in one bed, however large, cannot lie very luxuriously, but the Neapolitans do not require to do so. You often see them lying sound asleep on the broad coping-stone of a wall. In every street is an image of the Madonna, with a lamp burning always before it. Our driver had his favourite ones, and to them he devoutly doffed his hat, taking no notice of the others. The different Madonnas — of Lourdes, of Loreto, and so on — are regarded as so many different personages, one more influential or benevolent than another, and if a mother is dissatisfied with the interest shown in her child by one of them, she will transfer it to the pro- tection of another. It is the old heathen superstition that represented the gods as being nearer to some spots on earth than others, and more readily propitiated in these favoured places. Mingling with the crowd that always throngs the streets are seen brown-frocked, hooded friars, their bare feet stuck into sandals, and each hugging a portentous umbrella, and sleek priests in wide-brimmed, furry, well-groomed beaver hats and black cloaks, hanging in full and ample folds. Funerals here take place by FUNERALS 91 day, and processions are often met, but are never attended by bands of music. The coffin is sometimes borne on men's shoulders, at others on an open hearse drawn by four or eight horses, covered with yellow fringed and bordered trappings, and followed by immense processions of Sisters of Mercy, friars, old bedesmen in their long blue cloaks, and priests carrying huge lighted candles. The hearse is usually surrounded by the members of the Brotherhood to which the deceased belonged, clothed in black or white dominoes, with nothing visible of their faces but the eyes gleaming through the holes. If the deceased was the head of some great family, there is also a long train of carriages, some empty, others containing priests or Sisters, holding burning candles ; and there is then also a large squad of liveried servants following the hearse, a survival, it is said, of the old Roman custom of a rich man being followed to the grave by all his freed men. We counted between twenty and thirty on one occasion. They are often hired for the day, I believe. If you stop in the street to look at anything, you are instantly surrounded by beggars of surpassing filth, who ostentatiously parade under your very nose any hideous deformity 92 NAPLES they may possess, and by the hawkers of lava, and coral, and tortoiseshell, who cannot be persuaded that a foreigner does not want a new comb several times a day. Then the babel of noise is terrific, swelled by the clatter of hoofs and wheels on the rough paved streets, the cries of the hawkers, the clang of the smiths' hammers, the braying of donkeys, and the general hubbub of a crowd. The Neapolitans all have brazen voices and leathern lungs, brought by constant cultivation to a terrific pitch of perfection ; even when you hear women talking peaceably together in the streets, you notice the metallic resonant quality of their voices, and tremble at the thought of the din they would be capable of producing. The carts and carriages are driven at a reckless pace, and the most watchful care is needed to avoid being knocked down. It is true the drivers crack their whips loudly by way of warning, but it only swells the general uproar, and makes it still more difficult to hear the approach of any individual carriage. Another serious pest is the importunity of the Naples cab-drivers. A man will turn out of the rank, drive up to you and ask if you want a carriage, and no refusal on your part has any effect. He keeps up with you, whistles CAB-DRIVERS 93 at you, cracks his whip to call your attention, hustles you into the gutter, and hampers you in every possible way, incessantly calling out, ! Want carridge ? Want go Posilipo ? Want go Cathedral ?' He will even leave his box, and come running backwards before you with a running fire of, ' Want go Pompeii ? Want go Baiae ?' I have seen it stated on official authority that the wheeled traffic of Naples is unequalled by that of any other city in Europe, London alone excepted, and this with a population of only half a million. It is accounted for by the fact that no Neapolitan who can get a lift will ever go on foot. In the stream of vehicles that throngs the Chiaja or the Toledo, you will see a smart barouche filled with fashionable women, followed by a costers cart crowded with ragged occupants ; and that again by an open fly, in which sit with placid dignity two washerwomen, with their big clothes-baskets on the back-seat. If a Neapolitan cannot pay for a lift, he will procure one in some other way, but walk he will not, if it can be avoided. Our determined preference for walking the third of a mile from our hotel to the town excited lively contempt and indignation on the 94 NAPLES cabstand near us. When the drivers had ex- hausted their arts of running us down, cracking their whips and whistling at us, without suc- ceeding in harrying us into taking a cab, they changed their tactics, and became scornful, calling out in accents of scathing contempt as we passed : 'Waa-k, waa-k, waa-k ! sempre waa-k !' You get no help from the police, whatever happens. They are far too magnificent, and, in their cocked hats and long cloaks, swagger about in pairs, smoking cigars with a superb air, and apparently regarding themselves as public ornaments. I never saw them interfere on any occasion whatever. People say it is because they are afraid of being knifed. It is very possible. During our stay at Naples, the English manager of the waterworks was murdered while walking down one of the most crowded streets of the town, and the assassin was never caught. We asked an Italian official if he was likely to be. He shrugged his shoulders expressively, and said : ' It would not be likely in any part of Italy — in Naples, certainly not/ That this difficulty has always existed we learn from the words of one of their own countrymen, who, writing in the middle of last century, said : ' Our people, from a mistaken POLICE 95 principle of humanity and still more mistaken point of honour, will not give the least assist- ance to the officers of justice in the execution of their duty, and you might sooner bring an Italian to surfer martyrdom than force him to stop any man pursued by them.' The paving of the streets is often very defective, and you have to keep a good look- out lest you step into a hole. Some of the worst man-traps were in the foot-pavement of a fine broad street which was originally in- tended to have a row of trees along it. For this purpose square holes had been left in the pavement ; but years passed and no trees were planted, and these holes are now muddy pools in wet weather and pits in dry weather, for the confusion of the unwary. It reminded us very much of the ways of Spain, and, I suppose, might be traced to the influence of the two hundred and fifty years of Spanish rule at Naples. Circumspection in walking is for many reasons necessary. An absent-minded person would be very likely to find himself decorated in an unwelcome manner with the collar of St. Anthony, having carried away round his neck one of the festoons of sausages which are hung invitingly far out over the pavement. 96 NAPLES You may also find yourself minus your purse if your attention should be too much engaged. One of the curious sights to be met with in the streets of Naples is that of the public letter-writers. Seated between the arches of a colonnade, each with his little table set out with pens, ink, and paper, they may be found from morning to night, ready to write a letter for anyone who may require their services. The existence of such a profession necessarily argues a widespread want of education, since otherwise its followers would starve. Their services, however, seem to be in pretty steady request, for we never passed without seeing two or three of them engaged. One old woman with a sad face had just finished dictating a letter, and, looking over the man's shoulder as he addressed the envelope in a good clear hand, we saw it was to Buenos Ayres. At another table sat a young woman, whose looks showed so much embarrassment at our approach that we passed on out of hearing of what, no doubt, was a love-letter being read to her. Steel pens are not in favour with these public scribes ; mighty feathered quills were all we saw. Old customs linger long in Italy. As you pass along the streets, you see charcoal and TREATMENT OF ANIMALS 97 potatoes and such things being weighed out with steelyards precisely like those found in numbers at Pompeii. Charcoal is burnt ex- tensively, to the exclusion, apparently, of all other fuel. The charcoal shops are here as common as tobacco shops in a German town, and the heavily laden charcoal carts are seen all day long with their poor, thin, gallant little horses harnessed three or four abreast, struggling up or skating down the steep flagged streets in piteous fashion. Beasts suffer griev- ously at Naples, but no native dreams of pitying them. It would seem ridiculous to them to do so. 'They are not Christians,' is a sufficient answer in their opinion to any remonstrance as to the cruel treatment of dumb beasts. Their clergy should have a heavy reckoning to pay when the Creator of all things takes account of His creatures. The love of smart horse -trappings so notice- able in Spain is almost equally so at Naples. The horses belonging to the hired carriages have most resplendent harness, studded with large brass bosses on the bridle, the breast- band, the breeching, the crupper, and wherever 7 9 8 NAPLES possible, polished to the most brilliant splendour; in addition to which they have a collar of jangling bells round their necks, and large scarlet rosettes, and a forelock combed up and bound round with scarlet ribbon, just as one sees on the bronze horses from Herculaneum. It gives a most classic and fiery look, some- times belied by the lack-lustre eye and shaking forelegs associated with it. On the saddle is some large and showy brass ornament, such as a rearing horse or a pig, or more often a closed hand, with the first and fourth fingers extended to defeat the evil-eye. For, as in the East, so here, the belief in the power of the evil-eye to work harm to man and beast is still strong and active. A little toddling child will have a ' charm ' or a whole bunch of charms hung round it to protect it from this malevolent influence, and the mules and horses are also well protected from that imaginary source of suffering, though, alas ! not from the real and every-day suffering inflicted by their owners. One of the com- monest charms is a boar's tusk, which may be seen dangling from any part of the harness. The bridle used at Naples is totally different from what is seen in other countries, and is said to be inherited from the Romans. It has no NEAPOLITAN HARNESS 99 bit in the horse's mouth, but has instead an iron noseband with a projecting bar on either side, six inches long or more, to the extremities of which the reins are fastened. It is capable of inflicting intense torture, and I have seen it used to cruelly bully an unhappy animal that had roused its driver's evil temper. The above sketch will give a good idea of it. The iron plate in the centre of the curb-chain is studded on the inside with sharp short spikes, and as a ioo NAPLES pull on the reins tightens this as well as the iron noseband to any required degree, it will be seen how ingenious an instrument of torture it may become in the hands of a bad-tempered driver. Collars are never used, the universal sub- stitute for them being a breast-band. The common Naples cart has prodigious wheels, about seven feet high, and the cart is loaded in such a way as to take the weight entirely off the horse's back. The animals in these native carts have most gorgeous and extraordinary ornamental erections of brass on their saddles, sometimes two feet in height, bedecked with twirling brass flags, and charms and ornaments of all kinds. A very fine breed of donkeys is used here, as fast and spirited as most ponies, and far hardier and more enduring. The Neapolitan horses are wonderfully game, and will trot at an amazing pace with eight or ten people crowded on to a one-horse cart. The drivers drive like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and it is terrific to see a private dog-cart dashing along at the pace it often does. Trotting-matches are a favourite amusement here, and at one we went to there was a horse that did eighteen miles an hour. PAGAN AND CHRIS 'f/Afr ; ,' ' > ,>> : h$\ The churches of Naples are very numerous, above three hundred, I believe ; but many of them are buried in narrow streets whose houses are flush with their facade, and, excepting for the size of their doorways, and perhaps a sculptured overdoor, there is nothing to dis- tinguish them. Architecturally, they have little or no interest, but they are rich in decoration, and full of splendid mediaeval monuments. Many of them occupy the sites of ancient heathen temples, and, having absorbed parts of them and of their fittings, present a most curious mixture of Christian and pagan emblems. In the Cathedral this is especially remarkable. Dozens of its columns belonged formerly to the Temple of Apollo, which it superseded, and they have been duly Christianized by having a rude cross cut into them. The bronze doors of St. January's Chapel are also from Apollo's Temple, and represent heathen gods and sacrifices, interspersed with two or three interpolated Christian saints. A very beautiful monument of a kneeling Cardinal has, for decoration, panels carved with sirens and satyrs. Against the wall is placed a heathen altar, and the font itself is a purely pagan basin, carved with Bacchanalian thyrsi and masks. In the words of Ranke : ' On those sites 102> ' , NAPLES where the gods of Olympus had been wor- shipped, on the very columns that had sup- ported their temples, were shrines erected to the memory of those who had rejected their divinity, and died for refusing to yield them worship.' This intermingling of the two forms of worship gives a special interest to the churches, which is increased by finding how many of the customs and beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church are directly borrowed from those of the pagans. The gorgeous vestments of the priests, the burning of incense, the lamp perpetually burning before a shrine — all these come from pagan times. So does the tonsure of the priests, which appears to have been borrowed from the priests of Anubis, whose worship had once flourished in Rome. The Emperor Commodus, it is said, had his head shaved expressly that he might carry the image of Anubis in procession. So with the use of holy-water, which was a practice in the pagan temples. Our very angels are borrowed from the winged genii we see in the heathen frescoes, and the aureole round the heads of our saints was an emblem of glory that belonged to Apollo and the deified Emperors. The votive images and gifts that are hung round any favourite shrine are identical with PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN 103 those found in the ancient cities of Etruria, and offered two thousand years ago] for the self-same purpose. In the Gregorian Museum at Rome numbers of them may be seen, taken from temples where they had been offered as thank-offerings to Neptune and Apollo. Instead of the statues of Diana and I sis, Jupiter and Saturn, the images of the Virgin and the saints are now in every house and every street. The belief of the people in the power of the saints to avert misfortune is precisely the same as the belief held formerly in the power of the gods to do the same. The Madonnas who wink and smile had their counterparts among the heathen deities. A friend of M. Taine's, on hearing that a lady of noble family was about to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of a Madonna who moved her eyes, imprudently allowed a smile to cross his face, whereupon a gentleman present very gravely assured him that he and a companion had visited this shrine, and that they both had witnessed the miracle. Similar evidence would undoubtedly have been given him could he have inter- viewed some of those who worshipped at Diana's shrine two thousand years ago. The custom of carrying lighted torches and io4 NAPLES candles at a funeral is admitted to have been a Roman custom, and it will astonish many to find that the practice of putting the words 1 Requiescat in pace ' on a tomb was in use among the Etruscans probably one thousand years before our era. The inscriptions on the tombs discovered at Castel d'Asso all ended with the words ' Rest in peace.' They are beautiful words, equally appropriate to the dead of every religion. The custom of offering the foot to be kissed is one for which the Popes are indebted to Caligula, who, like them, bore the title of Pontifex Maximus, and introduced this happy practice from Persia. Seneca resented it in- dignantly as being fit only for slaves, but the Christian Pontifex Maximus retained both title and custom, and found people pliant enough to adopt it without resentment. The burning of lights on the altar had been introduced in the worship of Saturn, and originally was a substitute for the sacrifice of human victims — a strange origin, assuredly, for a Christian custom. The idols of the heathens, like the Santo Bambino at Rome to-day, had their own attendants, and' were, like him, dressed out in costly robes and carried about in procession, as the images of the Madonna PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN 105 and saints are at the present day. Churches are now dedicated to Mary Mater Dei. Altars dedicated to Cybele Mater Deorum are like- wise seen, but now only in museums. The title was not transferred to the Madonna for more than four hundred years after she had gained a right to it ; the memory of Cybele's prior right to it had by that time faded some- what from people's minds. The Madonna's title of Queen of Heaven belonged originally to I sis, the deity to whom the Egyptians bowed with the most tender devotion ; and the depicting of the Virgin standing on the moon seems to have been borrowed from the Egyptian custom of depict- ing Isis in that fashion. Even the Pope's claim to hold the keys of Heaven and Hell had been anticipated by the Egyptian priests at Thebes two thousand years before our era, one of whom held the title of Appointed Keeper of the two Doors of Heaven. ' At every turn we are reminded in Italy that the Christian religion is a graft on the strong old pagan stock, and sometimes it is hard to say whether the graft or the stock predominates. * io6 NAPLES The Church of St. Domenico is especially associated with the memory of St. Thomas Aquinas, he who had once displayed his zeal at Cologne in the manner already mentioned. As a boy he had been so distinguished for his silence and meekness that his companions gave him the nickname of the Dumb Ox. His master, however, knew more of his character, and said : ' This ox will one day give a bellow that will astonish the world.' For many years St. Thomas resided in the convent adjoining the church, and his cell is still shown to visitors. But the convent has been turned into a Court of Assize, and the refectories and dormitories and corridors are now filled with the hum and noise of hurrying crowds thinking of nothing so little as meditation and prayer. And the quadrangle has been given up to carpenters and stonemasons, and is noisy with the clang of hammers and the grating of saws. In the church is shown the miraculous crucifix which once spoke to St. Thomas when he was rapt in adoration before it. In the sacristy of this church are the coffins of the Royal House of Aragon, dating from 1400 to 1500. They are placed on a balcony that runs round the upper part of the hall, and look like large wooden chests, ragged with SERMONS 107 fragments of the velvet that once covered them. Among them are piles of small boxes, such as you see at a milliner's, and these contain the remains of Royal children. It seems an extra- ordinary way of disposing of the dead. Perhaps it was thought that no harm could be caused to the living by the corruption of Royal clay. The coffins are not, however, confined strictly to Royalties, for that of the gallant Marquis of Pescara is there, and that of his celebrated wife, the poetess Vittoria Colonna, so beloved by Michael Angelo. In the Church of St. Lorenzo are some very fine tombs of the Royal House of Anjou, and of many a noble knight in full armour, with his sword and his shield by his side, and each mailed foot resting on a puppy dog, as was the fashion in Italy in that time. While we were in the church a priest was preaching a sermon of great eloquence, to judge from the fiery animation of his tone and gestures, but not any of it could we catch. M. Peter, a writer who lived many years at Naples, says that, next to the praises of the Madonna, the favourite subjects for sermons are Hell and Purgatory. He tells us of a sermon he once heard in which the priest detailed with great minuteness the sufferings then being io8 NAPLES endured by a girl whose spirit had appeared to warn those dear to her to avoid her fate. The preacher then continued : ' By the sufferings, then, of this sainted girl you can judge what are those of your deceased relatives. The Church can alleviate them, and it will alleviate them in proportion to your contributions to the offertory this evening. Fathers, your children cry to you from the flames ! Wives, your dead husbands implore you! Have pity, and alleviate their torments !' A shower of silver rained into the plates amid a tempest of sobs and tears. Another time the subject was Hell. The preacher showed infinite fertility of imagination in devising the most cruel torments for the damned ; he graphically described the agonies of burning, and imitated the shrieks of the tortured souls. The weaker members of his congregation were reduced to the verge of swooning with terror, and that evening, too, the collection was highly satisfactory. It is abundantly clear why the Church cannot afford to let the souls of its flock sleep until waked by the last trump. Such a belief would empty its exchequer too seriously ; so it takes upon itself the responsibility of anticipating the Judgment Day, and reaps therefrom no small advantage. A QUEEN'S DRAMATIC EXIT 109 Alexander Borgia showed himself wise in his generation when he officially declared that indulgences were capable of releasing souls from Purgatory. No doubt a special revelation was vouchsafed him on the subject. A traveller, writing from Naples in the year 1766, said that a Catholic lady of his acquaintance had gone to hear a famous Jesuit preacher, who related the following story regarding Queen Elizabeth, which I have never met with in any history of her reign, and think worth repeating. This Queen, so famous for her heresy, made a compact with the Devil, that if he would indulge her in all she desired, and suffer her to reign so many years, she would surrender her soul at the conclusion of that term. Accordingly, the day she died there was a great black cloud that was seen to ascend from the Thames and drew the atten- tion of an infinite number of spectators, who at last heard a voice from the cloud pronounce these words : 1 / am the soul of Queen Elizabeth, now going to the Devil for the sins I have committed. ' The Italian priests are adepts in the art of making their hearers' flesh creep. no NAPLES The Church of St. Chiara, outwardly rugged and plain, is, within, a marvel of magnificence. Its enormous floor, unmarred by any seats, is paved with marbles in bold and splendid design, with the Royal arms of Anjou on a colossal scale in the centre. The church indeed resembles a royal banqueting-hall, with its fat fluttering Cupids and its gorgeous paintings and heavy masses of florid gilding. But the gem of all the churches at Naples for richness of decoration is that of the ancient Convent of San Martino. Situated as it is on the heights close to the Fort of Sant Elmo, you would have, if you wished to walk thither from Santa Chiara, to toil up flight after flight of stone stairs till you had mounted hundreds of steps ; but a benevolent company has con- structed a wire-rope railw T ay from the lower part of the town to the upper, and by its help you mount the tremendous hill at an angle of forty-five degrees without so much as turning a hair. The Church of San Martino is of such amazing richness that it is positively bewilder- ing. Look where you will, the eye is met with the sheen of polished marble, the glitter of gold, the rich colours of splendid paintings. The floor, the walls, the cornice, the side- SAN MARTINO m chapels, all are of the finest marbles, one inlaid upon another in the most prodigal magnificence of design. Every panel of the walls and every one of the eight altars is a masterpiece of mosaic resembling a painting. The low altar- screen is of massive white marble, pierced and carved, and inlaid with immense pieces of lapis lazuli. In the choir is a Nativity by Guido Reni, the last painting of the master ; the brush fell from his dying hand before the picture was wholly finished. From the gilded ceiling the fluttering garments of saints and angels are seen floating, and fleecy white clouds supporting fat, happy cherubs, who kick their chubby legs in roguish gladness. All is cheer- ful, splendid, brilliant, more like a palace than a church — to us, that is to say, accustomed as we are to our Northern churches, with their stern gray stone and massive groups of columns, their long vistas and solemn shadows. The two styles are very characteristic of Northern and Southern temperaments. In the South all religion is an appeal to the senses, not to the reason. They could not be influenced by an abstract idea, an intellectual appeal. Without an image to which to address their prayers they could not pray ; without a stimulus to their fervour they would grow cold. The smooth 112 NAPLES marble and rich colour, the scent of incense, and the sight of the Virgin Mother, all help to kindle that sense of exaltation and emotion which is the religion of the South, sensuous and emotional. This splendid church is no longer used. The monastery was one of those suppressed during the early years of Victor Emmanuel's reign, and only two poor monks are left of the original sixty-five. As we passed through the beautiful cloisters, with their sixty marble columns, we saw the white-hooded figure of one of these monks slowly pacing to and fro in the sunshine, the only figure there in harmony with the sur- roundings. The centre of the quadrangle is enclosed by a low balustrade of white marble, having at intervals a sculptured skull, some- times adorned, in irony, with a wreath of laurel ; within this enclosure lie the monks who have passed away. From the cloisters we entered the Abbot's rooms, and found ourselves in the Belvedere, an octagonal corner room, commanding one of the most beautiful views " it is possible to imagine. The vast curve of the entire bay lay spread before us, the white houses of Sorrento distinctly visible at a distance of sixteen miles, and the magnificent outline of the island of PULCINELLO 113 Capri looking in the clear atmosphere as if it were ten rather than twenty miles distant. In one spot a large fleet of fishing-boats was crowded together, attracted probably by a shoal of sardines. Their pretty lateen sails looked like a flock of sea-gulls on the opaque blue surface of the sea. At our feet, but far, far below us, spread the huge expanse of the town, with its half-million of inhabitants. We could see nothing of its squalor, nothing of its wretchedness. In the profound quiet of the deserted convent the hum of the swarming hive below us was only heard as a faint, sustained, yet shrill note, in which the deep, rapid beat of Policinello's drums could be clearly distinguished. Some such faint sound, comprising, neverthe- less, the whole diapason of human misery and human happiness, can alone have reached the ears of the gods on Olympus. What wonder that the face of a god should be serene and untroubled ! The Italian Pulcinello is very different in appearance to his English cousin Punch, and though I had no opportunity of studying his 8 U4 NAPLES character myself, he is, I believe, equally different in disposition and humour, though in no way more meritorious than his kinsman. Reprobates both, and dear to the populace accordingly. Pulcinello's only points of like- ness are his monstrous hooked nose and his humped back. His dress consists invariably of a large white blouse, and he travels pick-a- back on the shoulders of a lean old woman, accompanied by two or three clowns with a fife and a big drum. The aged crone who carries him about is, in truth, only a make-believe or hobby-woman, and Pulcinello really depends on his own legs for locomotion. But the deception is perfect. The Catacombs of Naples, though not nearly so well known as those of Rome, are finer in point of architecture, and are well worth a visit. The entrance to them is in the perpendicular scarp of the tufa rock which rises into the hill of St. Elmo. They are said to have been originally excavated, as those of Rome were, as quarries by some prehistoric race of men, and afterwards used as burying-places in the THE CATACOMBS 115 far-back times before the custom of burning the dead became general. I cannot myself believe this explanation of their origin, since the stone is not found, like coal, in seams, and conse- quently it would be useless labour to bore long galleries under the hill instead of quarrying in the open. I think it far more likely that they should have been made originally for the purpose they undoubtedly were used for, though why any people should have adopted so laborious and gloomy a system of burying their dead must ever remain a mystery. For many centuries subsequent to the time of those prehistoric burials the Catacombs were in disuse, until they were made over for pur- poses of burial to the new sect that arose and called themselves Christians. These latter re- plastered the walls, painted them with Christian emblems, and no doubt turned out all such heathen bones as still remained, and thoroughly purified the spot from all pagan traces. Not so thoroughly, however, but what such traces remained beneath the fresh plaster they put on, and, where the latter has fallen off, have come again to light, preserved through these long centuries by the protection of the plaster that concealed them. The Catacombs consist of three floors or n6 NAPLES stories, the middle one alone of which is now shown to visitors. It is, like Herculaneum, a buried city, tenanted only by the dead. Its main streets are wide and lofty, with narrower ones branching from them, the walls honey- combed with niches and recesses of every size, all once tenanted by ghastly inmates, whose remains have of late years been ejected and stacked together in piles. It was a gruesome sight, as the light from the guide's lantern fell upon a neatly-piled heap of what might have been turnips, but were, in truth, the skulls of a once merry crowd of Neapolitans. The ground we walked on was full of dead men's bones, the lower story, our guide told us, being absolutely crammed with them, and now closed. In every direction we saw dark galleries ramifying, and the darker niches studding their walls. The full extent of the ramifications is not known, as the roof has fallen in and blocked many of the tunnels, but the guide told us that they honeycombed a stretch of some miles in extent. It would not be possible to conceive a more hideous night- mare than to be lost in this fearful city of dark- ness and death. On the walls and ceilings the marks of the masons' chisels are as fresh as when they were 57: JANUARIUS 117 cut two thousand years ago, and fragments of plaster yet remain with paintings on them in a wonderful state of preservation, testifying to the dryness of the atmosphere. But all the marble slabs bearing inscriptions have been removed, and are now in the Museum. One strange and interesting thing we saw : the huge, python-like root of a fig-tree that had found its way through a cleft in the rock, and spread for some sixty feet, its delicate fibres ex- tending like a net-work over the rocky vault and into the very tombs, and holding with the tenacity of death itself. It was a living type of the fabled Igdrasil, the Tree of Life, spreading its branches and leaves in the sunny upper air, but having its roots deep down in the kingdom of the Dead. The tomb of St. Januarius, the patron saint of Naples, is in a spacious vault used as a chapel in the early times when it was undesirable to ring bells or otherwise draw attention to the hours of Divine worship. The tomb is simply an oblong mass of the native rock left in situ, beneath which is an excavation wherein the body of the saint reposed after his martyrdom until such time as it was removed to the Cathedral. It was afterwards used as an altar, and behind it, also cut in the live rock, is the n8 NAPLES Bishop's chair or throne, not much more luxu- rious in point of size than a shooting-stool. St. Januarius was a native of Naples, and was born about the year 270 a.d. From his birth he was remarkable, says his biographer, for extraordinary piety. As a baby he refused to take the breast on Fridays, and after he was weaned he fasted twice a week. When only a few weeks old, he desired by signs that alms should be distributed to the poor ; and while yet in his teens he began to exorcise evil spirits, and even to bring the dead to life. The fame of his piety spreading, he was, in the year 302, much against his will, made Bishop of Benevento, a diocese not far from Naples. The persecutions of the Christians were then at their height under Diocletian, and two years later the Bishop and six devoted followers came to Naples to encourage and fortify the little band of Christians there. This resulted in their all being haled before the authorities, who — very rightly, from their thoroughly conservative point of view — told them they would have none of these new- fangled heresies, and that their choice lay between repenting and offering incense to the true gods, or being thrown to the beasts. The Bishop and his followers remaining obstinate, ST. JANUARIUS 119 the Roman Governor had them put in harness and made to draw his chariot, to the huge delight, no doubt, of the orthodox portion of the populace, after which they were thrown to the lions in the amphitheatre at Pozzuoli. But to the intense disappointment of the spectators, the beasts, on seeing the Bishop raise his hand in benediction, so far from eating him, crouched humbly before him, as we saw in an ancient fresco, and utterly refused to break their fast with such a saintly victim. Whereupon the Governor threw him into a fiery furnace ; but in vain — it rejected him un- harmed. And then, as a last resource, he ordered the Bishop's head to be cut off. This was never known to fail, and the Bishop won the martyr's crown. A Christian matron who was present filled two phials with his blood, and presented them later to the Bishop of Naples. These phials, together with the head of the Bishop, enclosed in a silver bust, are the most sacred relics of Naples, and are fanatically reverenced by the people. Three times a year the congealed blood miraculously liquefies, in the presence of vast throngs of spectators ani- mated by very different feelings. Formerly the saint withheld the miracle if any heretic were present, and though he is no longer so 120 NAPLES scrupulous in this respect, it is said that even at the present day, should the blood not liquefy- when expected, it would be highly unpleasant, if not positively dangerous, for any heretics present. The populace becomes frantic with excitement in the event of undue delay, and invokes curses on the saint as fervently as it had previously invoked blessings. An eye- witness of the scene heard one old hag abuse the sainted Bishop as ' a green-faced, bilious villain ' on one such occasion, though a few minutes later she was on her knees in tears and sobs on the miracle being accomplished. During the French occupation of Naples the saint once refused to perform the miracle, and an insurrection would undoubtedly have occurred had not the French General taken upon himself to make St. Januarius hear reason. He quietly told the officiating priest that unless the blood liquefied satisfactorily within five minutes he would have him shot. Within the specified limit the blood became liquid and scarlet, and the priest's sonorous voice proclaimed that ' // miracolo e fat to f As we have never been at Naples on one of the saint's festivals, I will quote an account of the miracle given by M. Peter, a French writer who resided here many years, and often A MIXACLE 121 witnessed if. After placing the saint's silver bust upon the altar, the priest brings the reliquary containing the blood, and after hold- ing it upside down to show that the contents are solid, he places it on the altar in contact with the bust. It remains in full view of the crowd during the whole ceremony. The blood when solid is nearly black, and according to the way in which it liquefies auguries or omens are taken ; if it becomes bright red, it augurs great and general prosperity ; very dark red betokens war ; frothing, an eruption of Vesu- vius ; blackish, an epidemic of cholera or other disease ; while should it refuse to liquefy, dire evils will result, only to be exceeded in the event of its liquefying during the preliminary procession, before being placed near the saint's head. When the two relics are placed in contact the liquefaction usually takes place shortly. It is awaited with breathless anxiety, and when the priest again holds up the reliquary, and shows the blood to be fluid, exclaiming ' E fat to /' the scene of wild enthusiasm and excitement is one never to be forgotten. It is needless to say that entirely opposite opinions are held regarding the undeniable fact of the liquefaction. Faithful Catholics naturally hold it to be a genuine exhibition of super- NAPLES natural power. Sceptics hold it to be the result of some jugglery, which, if proved, would place the priests on a level with the priests of Isis and of Diana. Who can say ? The priests alone could throw light upon it, and they, naturally, assert that it is miraculous and inex- plicable. The saint's history is so studded with miracles that they seem natural to him. After his death a cast is said to have been taken of his face, from which a marble bust was executed, which is now in his chapel at Solfatara. During one of the frequent Saracen invasions, the infidels in wantonness struck off its nose and pocketed it as a trophy ; but hardly had they re-embarked than a violent storm arose, and one of them suggested that it might be caused by this unlucky nose. So it was thrown into the sea, which at once became calm. Shortly afterwards some fishermen, drawing in their net, found it to contain nothing but a bit of marble, which they contemptuously threw back into the sea. Again they lowered their net, and again it brought up 'the identical bit ot marble. On this occurring yet a third time, their annoyance gave place to awe ; they per- ceived that here was something supernatural, and they went to relate their experience to the DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS 1.23 priest, who instantly guessed that they had found the saint's nose. They set off, therefore, to his chapel, followed by a great crowd, and no sooner had the fisherman who carried the bit of marble set foot in the chapel, than, O wonder ! it flew from his hand and fixed itself on to the mutilated face with such tenacity as surpassed any human skill to effect. And it may be seen to this day, with only the faintest mark to show where the sacrilegious break once was. St. Januarius' Chapel in the Cathedral is of exceeding richness, and his treasures of precious stones and metals are said to be valued at three millions of francs. Diana of the Ephesians would have cause for jealousy if she could see them. But she is ignominiously placed in a hall of the Museum, where no one pays her the least attention, and where she is ticketed as No. 6,278. Perhaps at midnight she comes down from her pedestal and pays a visit to the saint, holding up a warning finger, and saying : ' As thou art, I was ! As I am, thou shalt be!' But he keeps his own counsel, and never repeats this. 124 NAPLES Until the practice of cremation shall become general, the problem of disposing of the vast population, when dead, of our modern cities will always present great difficulties. The horrors and dangers of intermural burial have at last forced themselves on the attention of the civilized world, and have been abolished, it may be hoped, for ever. The nations of modern Europe have in this respect become, at last, as wise as the nations that flourished in Italy three thousand years ago. The care they took to separate the cities of the dead from the cities of the living was remarkable, and proves how high their civilization was. Later on, they too adopted the practice of cremation, and later on we shall do the same, I doubt not. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. For more than a hundred years Naples has dis- posed of the bodies of the poorest class of her citizens — the class which in all cities is the most numerous — in a manner at once economical, compendious, and revolting in the extreme. On a hill just outside the town is the Campo Santo Vecchio, the old cemetery. It is an immense quadrangle, enclosed on three sides by high blank walls, and on the fourth by a wall of equal height, in which is situated the CAMPO SANTO VECCHIO 125 entrance gateway, and inside of which is a wide flagged arcade. Beneath the pavement of this arcade are buried monks of the poorest class. The quadrangle itself is paved with enormous flags of lava, and no object of any sort breaks the smooth dark expanse of pavement and the blank whiteness of the enclosing wall. But if we look carefully, we see large iron rings at intervals of about twelve feet, and we find that they are let into square flagstones smaller than the rest. There are three hundred and sixty- six of them, and each one is the opening into a pit some twenty feet deep : one for every day of the year, all numbered. Every day at sunset for one hundred and thirty years the pit corresponding in number to the day of the year was opened, and into it were flung, unshrouded and uncoffined, all the corpses that had been brought for burial that day. Neck and crop they were pitched in by coarse, brutal men, to lie on the ghastly heap of bones and corruption left from previous years. The scene was so revolting that none of those who have witnessed it have dared to publish the full details. When all had been thrown in, the heavy stone was replaced, not to be moved again till that day year. This awful charnel-house is, to the credit of 126 NAPLES Naples be it said, no longer used. A new cemetery has been provided for the burial of the poorest class, on one of the most beautiful sites imaginable. Laid out on the southern slope of a steep hill, it commands a magnificent view of the bay and its shores, and the omni- present blue peaks of Vesuvius. A broad pathway leads upwards from the entrance- gate, between wide terraces on which are rows and rows of labels, all numbered, and resembling in their neatness and general aspect an immense nursery-garden. At the edge of each terrace is a large label ; the inscription on one was : ' Garden No. 16. For the Little Ones.' And here the little ones were gathered together, the little mounds carefully planted with chrysan- themums, the flower peculiarly consecrated by modern custom to the dead. Clumps of oleanders, palms, and cypresses are planted at intervals, and the whole cemetery is kept with the utmost care. Half-way up the hill is a fine statue in white marble of Charity gathering little children in her arms. A greater contrast than this cemetery pre- sents to the old one would not be possible. It must go far towards humanizing and civilizing the people, who are said to be curiously in- different to their dead. BURIAL CUSTOMS 127 A singular custom is practised here, as well as in the fashionable cemetery I will presently describe, and it probably owes its existence to the peculiar properties inherent in this volcanic soil. The bodies are buried for eighteen months in coffins of a very slight and perish- able nature. At the end of that time they are taken up, usually dried and shrivelled like mummies, though occasionally reduced to skeletons. Those whose friends are too poor to provide them with a permanent sepulchre are then put into a large common vault or pit. But a payment of four pounds will secure in perpetuity to any family one of the oblong niches in the thick boundary wall, capable of containing six bodies when mummified in the manner described. The niche is closed with a slab of marble, on which an inscription or epitaph is cut, and this slab can be opened by means of a key when required. As this cemetery is for the poorest class alone, the niches are filled in but slowly, and the wall extends for hundreds of yards, with its tiers of empty niches resembling berths in a steamboat. These niches are precisely like those in the Catacombs, and it is thought that probably there also it was the custom only to place the body in the niche after it had previously been NAPLES buried for a year or two in the earth. This theory certainly obviates the difficulty which strikes every visitor to the Catacombs — z.^., how it can have been possible to prevent the escape of gases, which would have poisoned such subterranean vaults to an intolerable degree. Between seven and eight thousand bodies are buried here annually. The name of each is entered on a register, and a counterfoil like a receipt is given to the relatives. The number on this counterfoil is also painted on the cruci- form iron label placed on the grave, by which easy identification is ensured should the day come when the relatives may wish to remove the remains to one of the niches. They are never disturbed within a less period than eighteen months, and often remain longer, until the grave is required for a new inmate. As we were about to leave, a closed carriage drove up, containing a little coffin and three mourners. What was our surprise, on the door being opened, to see these three laughing merrily. It seemed hardly credible. They tried to assume an expression more fitted to the occasion on observing our attention, but in vain ; their laughter burst out again irre- pressibly. And between them lay the little CAMPO SANTO NUOVO 129 white coffin, associated in most minds with such bitter grief. The Neapolitans are cer- tainly curious people. Exactly opposite this cemetery is the Campo Santo Nuovo, where all the rich, and all who belong to any Brotherhood, are buried. It was only opened between sixty and seventy years ago, but is already thickly crowded with tombs, monuments, and chapels, between which rise dark tapering cypresses, the tree sacred to the dead. We were taken into one of the chapels, the joint property of fifty different families, and, as all are built on nearly the same model, I will describe its arrangement. The entrance is closed only by iron gates, through which can be seen a small chapel, with the altar more or less elaborately decorated. From this chapel opens on either side a passage some nine feet wide that runs entirely round, between the outside of the chapel and the outer wall of the building, and is furnished with unglazed windows, closed only by gratings. This passage is flagged with marble, but on one half of its width every alternate flag is 9 130 NAPLES missing, and the pale, sandy pozzolana earth is visible instead, with an iron cross stuck into it, bearing a name and a date. This is where the dead are buried ; and here they rest for fifteen months, by which time the volcanic earth has dried them to mummies. They are then exhumed, and carried upstairs to their final resting-place in one of the niches constructed in the walls of the second story. The greater part of the niches in this chapel were already occupied, and the walls presented, therefore, a smooth surface panelled with horizontal marble slabs, all bearing inscriptions, and looking very much like the walls of a draper's shop, with their tiers of labelled drawers. Every slab had keyholes, besides being pierced with cruciform air-holes. Yet not the slightest odour of any kind was perceptible, though in one niche lay the shrouded form, unmistakable in its outline, of one who had only been exhumed within the last few days, and had not yet been shut in with a slab. This preservation of the body is a repulsive and ghastly custom, and makes one wish more than ever that, if any part of our mortal remains is to be preserved, it might be only the in- corruptible ashes, purified by fire. The burial customs of every nation incline one to think PROTESTANT CEMETERY 131 favourably of the practice of cremation, but none so strongly, and even vehemently, as those of Italy. Close to these two cemeteries is a third, also new, for the burial of Protestants. It has only been opened a few years, the old Protestant cemetery having become over-crowded. This century has seen wonderful advances in tolera- tion on the part of the Neapolitans. At its commencement a Protestant dying here had to be buried like a dog, without any religious ceremony, and in some remote spot by the side of a field or on some waste ground. Nor must we think too hardly of the Neapolitans in this matter, when we call to mind the disgraceful intolerance even now shown occasionally in our own country by clergy of the State Church to Nonconformists. The Roman Catholics are wholly and magnificently impartial, drawing no distinction whatever between High Church- men and Lutherans, Swiss Protestants and Wesleyans. All alike are without the pale, are heretics ; and all alike were in those days classed with dogs in the matter of burial. 132 NAPLES At length the British Government obtained the concession of a recognized cemetery for such of its subjects as might die in this foreign land. It was grudgingly given, and adjoined the burial-place of those who were outcasts in life and were placed apart by themselves in death. For the first few years the funeral procession of any Protestant was subject to insult from the orthodox vulgar, and the graves even were defiled by unclean things thrown over the wall. But this intolerance gradually died out, and has wholly ceased for very many years past. The beauty of the English cemetery and the reverence we paid to our dead produced in time a strong impression, and have un- doubtedly influenced public opinion at Naples, and helped to make their own new cemeteries what they are. The Aquarium at Naples is considered to be the most important in Europe, and is connected with a zoological station consisting of several resident naturalists and some twenty assistants, under the direction of Herr Dohrn, the guiding spirit of it all. Hundreds of foreign naturalists THE AQUARIUM 133 have studied here, and its published reports and its microscopic and other preparations find their way all over Europe. A perfect flotilla of boats is kept up by it for the purposes of dredging, including a steam-yacht and steam-launch. The Aquarium is a most fascinating place to spend a morning in, and fresh wonders strike the eye on successive visits. You quite forget that you are looking into tanks full of water, for there is nothing to remind you of the fact ; the ground within them looks dry, and even dusty, and the flat fish dust themselves just as fowls do. We looked into one of the large glass cases, and wondered to see it occupied by only a few mackerel ; while thus wondering, we observed an eye — yes, certainly an eye — two eyes, in what looked like a stone, and, looking narrowly, discovered that the apparent stone was all that w r as visible of a large fish whose body was entirely concealed in the sand. We then examined the tank very carefully, and discovered the existence of seven or eight similar fish, besides several soles, whose skins so precisely matched the colour of the ground as to be invisible except to the narrowest scrutiny. But see ! a sudden upheaval of the sand, and with an undulating horizontal move- ment a sole raised himself from the ground, and, 134 NAPLES with a movement so rapid as to be scarcely perceptible, seized a mackerel of nearly his own length, and entombed him as easily as the w T hale did Jonah, after which he sank to the bottom and became once more motionless and invisible. The mackerel, however, proved to be incon- veniently long, and its tail projected fan-like beyond his lips ; this phenomenon interested the remaining mackerel beyond measure. They gathered round, with their noses close to this perplexing tail, clearly discussing among them- selves where the rest of the body could be. They seemed to be in no degree distressed at their brother's disappearance, nor to connect it in any way with the sole. They evidently felt no emotion except lively surprise. Another case was full of fish and stones, but which was w r hich it was most difficult to tell. Many an apparent stone, rough and rugged, proved to be a fish, and we often remained in doubt to the end. Some very large cases con- taining zoophytes were like fairyland gardens, with groves of tall feathery palm-trees, and great tufts of pampas grass, and delicate ferns, and graceful larch-twigs, with banks of deep crimson moss, and beds of transparent white blossoms like those of a pitcher-plant, and others of brightest red. And among them all THE AQUARIUM 135 sailed slowly and gracefully the quaint little sea-horses, like the knights from a chess-board. They are called in Italian cavalli marini, which was once translated by an Englishman as ' horse marines/ Further on were some extraordinary eels, with skins embroidered and brocaded in the richest manner, as handsome as it is possible for such loathsome creatures to be ; but I shuddered, and passed on to the droll little hermit crabs, whose ways are most amusing. How they contrive to appear so light-hearted under the dreadful burdens they are often doomed to carry, I cannot think. Many a little fellow was staggering under the weight of two huge corpulent sea-anemones that had attached themselves to his borrowed house and far ex- ceeded him in size. And yet, handicapped as he was, the gallant little fellow swaggered gaily along on the tips of his toes, and even had the spirit to give a smart cuff to another who crossed his path. Next to the eels in repulsiveness come, to my mind, the huge sea-slugs ; but the lobsters run them hard, with their ever-fluttering fringes and their waving antennae. Some of them had horns that would not have disgraced an antelope. 36 NAPLES One of the most comical, no less than un- expected and astounding sights, was a cockle- shell that took to flying. I call it flying, because there is nothing to show that it is swimming ; we cannot see that the medium in which the creatures are moving is water. There were hundreds of these cockles, some piled up on the ground, others sticking to the rocks and plants, and I should just as soon have expected an oyster to fly as one of them. But it is the unexpected that happens, and, lo ! first one gave a hop upwards, and then another, and then, opening and shutting their shells rapidly as they went, like a pair of castanets, they rose in the air and took a wavering flight like that of a child's kite while being raised. I never was more astonished, and I can now enter into the feelings of a savage on first seeing a vessel move by steam-power. My own ignorance alone enabled me to feel this astonishment, and I confess I am glad it did — the sensation was quite worth experiencing. The creature of all others that haunts one's memory like a nightmare * is the octopus, wrapped in his ghastly black domino of elastic, pliant, waving indiarubber, with his fiendish eyes alone visible, and his supple, writhing, tenacious arms ever ready to draw his victims THE MUSEUM 137 into his embrace. To see him rouse himself when a crab is thrown in, and stealthily sidle towards it with an evil sliding motion, then unfurl his horrible black umbrella-covering, and swoop upon his victim, enveloping it in the thick leathery folds, and then subside once more into a shapeless thing of horror in some dark corner, is a thing never to be forgotten. The Museum at Naples is a magnificent one, and its collection of antique bronzes is un- rivalled in the world. Its neighbourhood to the places where such a vast number of its greatest treasures were found adds, too, im- mensely to the interest taken in them. One day you spend in seeing the statues and mosaics, the tools and the bedsteads, brought from the buried cities of the bay, and the next in visiting the temples and houses from whence they were taken. This gives them an interest infinitely greater than they could have if seen in London. The collection is splendidly housed in a building that has had a most varied career, if such a word may be applied to a thing that never moves. Three hundred years ago it was 138 NAPLES built by the Spanish Viceroy to serve as stables, and would surely have satisfied Caligula. After- wards it was turned into a University. Then into Law Courts. Later into Barracks, and lastly into a Museum. The Bourbon Kings enriched the collection with many splendid gifts, and then declared it to be their own private property, and called it the Royal Bourbon Museum. But another turn of Fortune's wheel brought them low, and raised Garibaldi the rebel into power, and during his Dictatorship he pro- claimed the Museum to be national property, and at present it is known as the National Museum. It would need a bold person to say what it will be called a hundred years hence. Its chief interest centres undoubtedly in the collections from the buried cities. But anyone expecting to find much beauty in the frescoes will be woefully disappointed. What they may have been when first discovered I cannot tell, and the excitement and enthusiasm of dis- coverers renders it necessary to discount their descriptions to some extent. But as they are now, they can only be described as faint and half effaced, with no beauty except that of graceful outline. Even that is entirely wanting in many, which are of the rudest description. THE MUSEUM 139 Nevertheless, they are of extremest interest, and have the charm of allowing full scope to the imagination in restoring them, mentally, to the brilliancy they must have possessed eighteen hundred years ago. The greater part are scenes from the sacred history of the ancients, equivalent to our paintings from the Old Testament, but which we, in the pride of our superior knowledge, contemptuously dub mythology. Just as our old painters used to dress the Israelites in mediaeval armour, and put crossbows into their hands, so did the Pompeian artists give Achilles Roman armour, and depict Hercules as bringing a curricle with the horses harnessed in Roman fashion to carry off Dejanira. Knucklebones was a favourite game with the Pompeians, and so they show us Medea's children playing with them while their mother is drawing a sword wherewith to slay them. Niobe's five daughters, too, are all depicted as playing at knucklebones. It makes one think it may have been played in the Ark. Rope-dancing was evidently an exhibition that delighted the ancients. There are many paintings of it. The dancers are all dressed in green or scarlet tights, and have a tail sprout- ing from the small of the back to make them 140 NAPLES . resemble fauns. A very famous painting is an insignificant and much-rubbed one representing a dealer in Cupids : Venus has come to buy, and has bought one, and is hesitating about another chubby little Amorino that has been taken from his cage and is being held up by the wings for inspection, while a third still pines in a cage. Another painting of gro- tesquely rude execution shows that corporal punishment was not forbidden in Pompeian schools, for we see a boy horsed on the back of another, while a companion holds his feet and the dominie prepares for action. All such scenes, however rude their artistic skill may be, have a powerful and unique interest from the mere fact — the stupendous fact — that they were painted eighteen centuries ago, and show us the every-day customs of the people who lived then. But if the frescoes depend mainly on this fact for their interest, it is not so with the mosaics. Their colours are as strong and bright as when Vesuvius first embalmed them for us. The art of painting in mosaic had only been introduced into Italy about one hundred and fifty years before the destruction of the cities, and its lavish use in both of them shows how wealthy and fashionable their inhabitants were. Birds, beasts, THE MUSEUM 141 and fishes were very favourite subjects, and the drawing of them is excellent. A cat that has just caught a partridge is admirable ; its eyes gleam with triumph and excitement. The famous chained dog with the words ' Cave canem ' is well known; but its drawing by no means warrants the praises usually bestowed on it. The most nervous person could not be alarmed by the vraisemblance of the dog, as many enthusiasts have declared he might be. The collection of the vases commonly called Etruscan is immensely valuable and interesting. Nearly all have been found either at Pactum, Cumae, or in Southern Italy, and they are therefore called Italo-Greek ; but an educated eye is required to distinguish them from others found in Etruscan tombs, and therefore justly called Etruscan. They have all been found in tombs. Not one has been found in the buried cities, for even at that time the making of them was an obsolete and almost forgotten art. It is said that the most modern of them cannot be less than two thousand years old. To visitors of non-antiquarian tastes the most interesting of the vases are perhaps those called the Pan-Athenaic vases, which were awarded as prizes at the Olympic games and bear inscriptions to that effect. The Greek colonists 142 NAPLES settled in Italy used to return to their mother- country to compete in these games, much as our Australian colonists come to England to match themselves against the mother-country at cricket. And so successful were the colonists of old that it is recorded that seven of them, from Southern Italy, won no less than twelve events between the years 580 and 480 B.C., thereby winning for themselves fame as nearly undying as can ever fall to the lot of mortals. We can imagine the wild enthusiasm of their fellow- colonists when the returning heroes landed, bringing with them the glorious news of their victory, — undiscounted by any previous telegrams, — and bearing with them the much- prized trophies, the vases we now are looking at. And then, when the heroes grew old and died, their precious vases were placed with them in the tomb, to serve as credentials to their prowess in the next world. Well, we are the inhabitants of what is almost another world, and we accept their credentials with sympathetic admiration. We cannot help wondering if the existence of these vases above ground will equal in duration the time they passed in the security of the tomb. Two thousand years is a long time, and much may happen in it. We were struck by the little originality shown THE MUSEUM 143 by the ancients in depicting many of the heathen deities, but especially Venus. The favourite attitude is that of the Venus de Medici and the Capitoline Venus, representing her as merely a beautiful woman, rather shamefaced, and with her hair elaborately dressed, usually with a great bow at the top, such as the Apollo Belvedere has. Two or three vary this by wringing their, presumedly, wet hair in their hands, and there is also the crouching Venus, these latter types having their finest examples in the Venus Aphrodite and the Venus Ana- dyomene of the Vatican. Among the Venuses a la Medici at Naples is an exceedingly elderly one with an unlovely and anxious face ludicrously at variance with her assumed character ; this is a likeness of the Emperor Trajan's sister Marciana, who, like Bonaparte's sister Pauline, felt no shame at sitting thus for her portrait. Poor old thing ! she is nervously full of the thought of the rheumatism she is sure to have ; one would like to throw a good fur cloak round her to make her look less wretched. The only Venus that comes up to my idea of a goddess is a glorious Venus Victrix from Capua. She is of the Venus di Milo type, widely differing from those just mentioned, and 144 NAPLES her calm, noble face is full of a godlike dignity, before which an ignoble mind would stand abashed. The Capuan Psyche has something of this same look of supreme purity and dignity, but she is so mutilated as to cause an almost painful impression. An Artemis from Herculaneum, which was an antique even in those days, has a constrained stereotyped smile on her face which has a ludicrous effect. She is as stiff as a lay figure, and has her hair dressed in a fashion that must have taken her maid hours to do, and, not being in accordance with our present fashion, looks rather comic. Goddesses should never adopt any passing fashion, but be content to clothe themselves in their divinity. Even with mortals, it is wiser to avoid the slippery heights of fashion if they have any ambition to stand well in the eyes of distant generations. Some of the patrician Roman women, notably the wives of Trajan and of Titus, had their statues and busts executed with the hair dressed in the extreme of fashion, frizzled and curled and built up in fearful and wonderful ways that move us to derision rather than admiration. The Roman type is a very strongly marked one, with its square, wide head, crisp curly hair, short, massive features, and thick, short THE MUSEUM 145 neck. It is animal rather than spiritual, strong and ruthless rather than refined, tending to cruelty, and not to humanity — a type well suited to pagans and conquerors. Three heads alone I noticed as differing wholly from this type — those of Marcus Aurelius, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius. The nose we call par excellence Roman is conspicuous only by its absence. A small but fine statue of a certain Titus Clemens found at Pompeii has an inscription on the pedestal showing that a despotic power, wielded beneficently, is a fine thing. It runs thus : ' By authority of the Emperor Caesar Vespasian Augustus, Titus Clemens, having heard the arguments and made the measure- ments, restored to the Republic of Pompeii the public places which had been taken possession of by private individuals/ How much wrangling and how many sessions would it require for our English Parliament to pass a similar measure, and restore to the public the land that has been gradually annexed by private individuals ? Vespasian's Imperial decree made short work of lawyers and vested interests. Among the antique bronzes is a magnificent head from Herculaneum, said in the catalogue 10 46 NAPLES to be that of Plato. If you look at the face only, it might well be Plato, for it is one of singular power and beauty. But I expressed my surprise that Plato should have had such a head, with the animal passions so remarkably developed that the thick bull neck forms a straight line with the back of the skull. It seemed to me wholly at variance with what we know of Plato's character, and subsequently I was glad to discover that the critics of the newer school consider this splendid head to be that of Neptune or an Indian Bacchus. Two other magnificent heads are those of Jupiter — discovered in his temple at Pompeii, and to my mind the finest I ever saw — and a very beautiful one of Homer, whose blindness is pathetically evident. As we passed through the marble mob, unable to do more than single out one here and there for special notice, I felt a sensa- tion of sympathy with the heroes, and gods, and Emperors, who once had each such a splendid individuality, and now are herded together and ticketed, like convicts, with a number. To think that Cicero should come to be known as No. 6,177, and looked up in a guide- book to be criticized by a man who speaks HERCULANEUM 147 English without any aitches ! And what degra- dation for the statues of these gods, each of which had of old his own temple, or, at least, his own niche — each of which was accredited with Divine power — to be herded together in this vulgar manner ! They, whose nostrils were accustomed to the scent of incense and of burnt offerings, whose ears were besieged with prayers, before whom high-priests offered sacrifices, and to whom the Emperors them- selves did homage ! How are the mighty fallen ! A museum is truly, like Death, a great leveller. From Naples it is a drive of six miles to Resina, a town built by the sea-shore, on the site of the ancient Herculaneum. Houses extend along the whole distance, mostly squalid suburbs swarming like an ant-heap with bare- footed children and ragged men and women. On the side-pavements are large groups, sorting oranges, picking wool, plucking fowls, winding flax, crowding round the little stalls of fish, fruit, and vegetables, washing, and hanging up 48 HERCULANEUM miles of clothes. You get fearful jolts as the wheels drop into a great hole in the paved road ; but you see a much deeper hole close by, and feel thankful it is no worse. Many of the houses on the southern side of this noisy, dirty, ill-kept street are large and fine, and through their great entrance archways you catch glimpses of charming alleys of orange and box, waving palm-trees, and the deep blue waters of the bay beyond. Presently your driver pulls up at a house and tells you this is the entrance to Hercu- laneum. This ? — this neat, commonplace new house ? We were entirely taken aback, having failed to realize that the city we had come to see was a buried one, and that another town was seated on the top of it, deep below whose streets, swarming with life, lay the dark and silent streets once trodden by a bygone race. We were shown into a small office, and begged to wait until the custodian came. On the walls was a notice in many languages, of which the English version ran : ' It is forbidden to enter the antiquities diggings before sunrise, or to remain in them after sunset.' I should never have suspected the existence of any widespread desire to do so. Having paid for our tickets, we followed the HERCULANEUM 149 custodian down some stairs to a room, where he provided each of us with a lighted candle, and then we went down, down, down a narrow flight of steps, cut through ninety feet of solid volcanic rock, till at last we found ourselves in the Theatre of Herculaneum. Here was the circular corridor along which hurried the merry- crowds, chattering of what they were about to see. Here were the windows which once lighted it, and through which the hot sunshine once poured, and through which one day bulged the boiling torrent of smooth stifling mud, pouring down the corridor, filling the pit and the orchestra, engulfing the bronze and marble statues in its tenacious ooze, and then gradually hardening into rock. As the candlelight showed us the tiers of seats, partially cleared from the horrible shape- less mass, then again lost in it, a feeling of horror and oppression came over us as in a nightmare. The soft bulging outlines seemed as if they might again grow fluid, and stifle us in their sluggish flow. A wild desire to flee took possession of me, and, hurrying up the long dark gallery, I welcomed with a breathless sense of relief the blessed light of the upper world. Some of the very finest bronzes were found 50 HERCULANEUM in the buried theatre, and countless treasures may still be there. But the work of hewing away the imbedding rock is tedious and costly, and nothing has been attempted for many years past. At the distance of a quarter of a mile, where the superincumbent lava is only forty feet in depth, and where no modern houses had been built on the surface, a portion of the buried city has been laid open to the sunlight, as Pompeii is. It lies at the bottom of a deep quarry, some hundred and fifty yards in length and forty yards wide — a very small portion of the busy and fashionable town of Herculaneum — surrounded by a rocky wall, draped with sheets of portulacas and studded with clumps of cactus. Here, on some sun- warmed steps, we ate our luncheon, the guide bringing us a bottle of delicious Lachrima Christi, made, as he repeatedly assured us, 'of very grapes,' grown on the slopes of Vesuvius, such as cannot be procured at Naples, where it is always adulterated. In truth, it was infinitely superior to wine of the same name at four times the price which we afterwards tried at the hotel. The volcanic soil suits the vine to perfection. The artistic wealth of Herculaneum was something extraordinary. In the small portion HERCULANEUM 151 uncovered there is hardly a house but what has yielded some fine busts or statues, while two of the finest equestrian statues known, those of the Balbi, were found here. It is the more extraordinary from the fact that no public buildings of importance are among those ex- cavated, and only one fine house. In the library of the latter were discovered three thousand rolls of papyrus, some of which have been deciphered. As we wandered through its deserted rooms, we shuddered as we found ourselves brought up suddenly in one of the columned corridors where the work of excava- tion had ceased, and where the last columns visible were only half freed from the hateful mud which entombed them in its smooth slab ooze. There is a strong fascination in the mystery of that wall of mud-rock. As you gaze at its impenetrable solid mass, it is as if you gazed into futurity. Close before you lie things of deepest interest — but of what nature, who can tell ? The longer you gaze, the more intense becomes the desire to know more, to raise the veil that conceals the unknown — the veil, not of the Future, but of the Past. To the north and the west it would possibly be unsafe to make many excavations, as the 52 POMPEII houses of Resina are built on the surface, and might be endangered. The chief portion, therefore, of the Greek city will probably retain its treasures to all eternity. But on the eastern side there are no houses on the surface, and it is merely a question of cost. With so much wealth as there now is, it seems a reproach to our generation that an international company is not formed to continue the work of excavation and bring to light the treasures of art that un- doubtedly yet lie hidden. Even from a mercenary point of view the speculation might not be a bad one, for the actual value of the finds would be immense. In the Naples Museum is a pottery vase that was valued to the Bourbon Government at one thousand six hundred pounds, and many of the bronzes are beyond all price. A visit to Pompeii is fatiguing both to mind and body. Its streets are paved with immense flat stones, as those of modern Naples are, and, like those of Naples, are in shocking want of repair. The Pompeian system of making each householder pave the piece of street in front of POMPEII 153 his house seems to have had nothing to recommend it. The continuity of a road is a thing essential to its being a road at all, and this continuity is practically wanting at Pompeii. For twenty yards the street is admirable, smooth and perfect ; but at either end of this excellent bit lies another twenty yards that would stir even the Neapolitan road officials into action : the stones are like the waves of a stormy sea, in ridges and troughs of exceeding depth. The municipal authorities of Pompeii must have been very incompetent or very indifferent, not to have insisted on a better state of things. The only kind of vehicle that appears to have been used was one resembling the Roman chariot, the biga, having two high and wide- apart wheels, and being invariably drawn by two horses in curricle harness. The ruts still visible, very painfully visible, in the pavement, show precisely what the length of the axle was, and the vast cushion-like blocks of stone placed in the narrow streets show precisely what the height of the axle must have been to clear them. The horses passed on either side of the stone block, or between two such blocks, in a track not more than a foot wide, which was 154 POMPEII also the wheel-track. These monstrous stones were the same height as the narrow foot- ways at the side of the street, nearly two feet, and were for the convenience of people on foot — namely, the entire population ; the carriages were only on sufferance, and must look out for themselves. The streets being sunk so low, acted as watercourses after rain, and this rendered the great stepping-stones doubly necessary. Crossing and recrossing these stony streets, and climbing perpetually up and down great steps, is physically fatiguing ; but the mental fatigue of a day at Pompeii is almost greater, and reduces one to the pulpy state of a zoophyte before the time comes for leaving. The mind is able, no doubt, to traverse vast distances of time and space in the twinkling of an eye, but when for some hours together it oscillates every moment between a past and present separated by eighteen hundred years, a con- sciousness of extreme exhaustion makes itself felt. The interest aroused is much akin to that of finding one's self face to face with a Rip van Winkle, who has just awaked from a trance of twenty centuries, and is very absorbing. Pompeii and Herculaneum differ from all other POMPEII 155 equally ancient cities in this, that they alone have never suffered gradual decay or change. They alone have slept while other nations and other cities have been spinning down the changing grooves of Time. Look at Rome. What do we find in Rome to show us how her citizens lived one thousand eight hundred years ago — what implements they used, what cooking utensils they had, what state they kept their streets in, how they built their houses ? Of all this nothing is left. Even their temples have been overthrown or altered into Christian churches, and with the exception of its glorious ruins there is nothing left of the Rome that flourished when Pompeii was wiped out. But at Pompeii nothing has changed since the awful day when Vesuvius waked from his immemorial stupor, and in one terrific outburst effaced the cities at his feet. This it is that so impresses the mind — the sight of a city paralyzed while in full health, of a city that fell asleep at a time when Jupiter and Mercury, I sis and Venus, were the deities to whom all addressed their prayers, to whom all turned for help, deities whose divinity it was blasphemy to doubt ; and that woke to find these deities passed by and gone, even as a generation of mortals passes by and vanishes — nay, more, for 156 POMPEII the mortals did at least once exist, and the gods (O blasphemy ! let it not reach the ears of those silent forms laid out yonder) are now- said never to have existed at all, save in the imagination of their worshippers. Can any parallel be found for a change so sudden and so stupendous as this ? That countless genera- tions of mortals should have come and gone, that is nothing ; it is their appointed lot. But that the Immortals, the great gods themselves, should have perished in the interval, that shakes the very foundations of all faith. And yet there must have been some men in Pompeii whom it could not greatly have surprised. Look at this bronze image of Diana, found in the Temple of Apollo, and observe her fine inspired expression ; she used to utter oracles, and worshippers vowed they even saw her eyes move ; the priests of the temple with pious fervour sang her praises, and the people shouted Great is Diana!' But let us look more closely, as we can, now that she is no longer standing on an altar ; did not the priests know of this speaking-tube leading from the back of her inspired head ? And were they unaware that her eyes were of glass, and could be moved by strings passed through these two small holes beneath the POMPEII 157 shoulders ? Were they really the hypocrites and impostors that these things seem to show ? and did they stoop so low as to teach the people as truth things they knew to be false ? See, too, this statue of Isis found in her temple; she also delivered oracles from her place on high at the back of the sanctuary. But what can be the object of these two holes, one at either end of the raised altar on which she stood, just large enough for a man to creep through and find space to stand upright in, with a small opening at the top close to the statue of the goddess ? Could the voice of the oracle have come from this opening, and not from the lips of the Immortal ? But the priests have passed away, and the gods, and their worshippers ; and perhaps they all know the truth now, and perhaps they don't. # Look at these men and women, suffocated with the sulphur and the rain of hot ashes, lying as they fell, in stiffened attitudes ex- pressive of extremest agony ; their bones and all that was mortal of them are here before us. 158 POMPEII But what would we give to know where their souls have been in these eighteen hundred years since they parted from the body! The veil of this mystery has never been lifted for us, not so much as its corner. Their clothes have nearly all been burnt off, but many a hand has still a ring upon it — such a tiny hand as one woman has ! — and nearly every man has a money-belt round him. Here is a dog, with a broad collar on, and two bronze rings to it, lying on his back in a convulsion of agony, his mouth open in its last howl. Poor fellow ! he belonged to a rich man, and no doubt was a family pet ; he only shared the same fate as his mistress and her whole family, who, when the storm of burning ashes was at its height, took refuge in an underground gallery where they often retired in the extreme heat of summer, as its thick vaulted roof kept it always cool. Sufficient light was afforded by the small four-inch apertures under the roof, and they took with them plenty of water and provisions, intending to remain there till the eruption of Vesuvius was over. They remained there while eighteen centuries rolled by, and were then found huddled together in a corner just as they were on that fatal day when the deadly ashes that darkened the very sun itself POMPEII 59 filtered through the little apertures and slowly stifled them ; after it had stifled them it gave them burial, drifting in until the gallery was filled to the very roof, and then falling to a depth that buried the corridor above and the house itself and all traces of human habi- tation. At the time of our visit, a house of great interest and beauty was being excavated, a work of tedious labour, the earth and pumice- stone above it being from thirty to forty feet in depth. Its inner court was already cleared, and some bright-coloured frescoes brought to light, and white marble fountains and beautifully carved basins and two slender columns, all of purest white marble. A small marble figure and some fine bronzes had also been found, and who can tell what other treasures, hidden during all these centuries, may not be awaiting discovery in that solid wall of earth which is being slowly, slowly removed, basket by basket full ? Vesuvius, the destroyer, keeps vigilant watch and ward over his victims ; at every turn, at the end of every street, your eye is caught by the smoking peak, splendid in its soft purple against the pale blue sky. It is the ever dominant note, and everything else harmonizes i6o POMPEII with and is subordinate to it. An active volcano can never be looked upon with in- difference. The tremendous unknown forces concealed within its womb, the utter uncertainty as to when they may burst into action, and what they will destroy when they do, invest it with a never-failing awe and interest. An eruption took place shortly after we left Naples, and a carriage-drive that existed while we were there was, three months later, buried under fifty feet of lava. One of the most striking points of view in Pompeii is, when standing in the Forum, you face the Temple of Jupiter and look through Caligula's Arch down the perspective of a long street, while beyond, and above the whole, rises the ever-present cone of Vesuvius. As you walk down the deserted streets you get glimpses of columned courts, and walls still gorgeous with the deep brilliant red to which Pompeii has given a name, with one here and there painted in delicate arabesques or with a classic scene from the history of their gods. Further on is an alcove for a fountain in mosaic, the colours bright and beautiful as when first buried; then a trough and drinking fountain the massive stone worn into a polished hollow where countless hands have rested while the POMPEII thirsty passers leant over to drink from the gushing stream. The small houses opening on the street are mostly those of retail dealers, and the shop counters of solid masonry faced and topped with marble are still in excellent condition, many of them having big jars sunk in them flush with the top, in which wine and oil were kept. In one shop was found a basket of eggs; they do not look very fresh, certainly, but there is nothing to show that the hen that laid them died eighteen hundred years ago. The public baths were very fine. Small as the town was, with not more than twenty-five thousand inhabitants, three splendid bathing establishments have already been discovered in the part at present excavated, which is about two-fifths of the whole. Their decoration, arrangements, and the lavish use of white marble, make them most sumptuous. No modern city has baths approaching in number and luxury to those of the ancients ; the taste for luxurious and constant bathing seems to have died out with the Romans. It seems to have been the custom to announce coming public events by notices scratched upon a freshly plastered surface. Numbers of these graffiti have been found, one of which ran thus : n 1 62 POMPEII Twenty pairs of gladiators, at the expense of Decimus Lucretius Valens, priest, in the Consulship of Nero, son of Caesar Augustus, will fight at Pompeii on the ioth, nth, and 12th of April. The awnings will be spread.' The gladiators' barracks are just behind the theatre, and there no less than sixty-seven skeletons were found, while in a chamber adjoining were the skeletons of four hapless prisoners, their legs fast in the stocks. Everything shows the awful suddenness of the calamity. We saw a saucepan full of meat, just as the cook left it when he fled for his life ; and, in proof that the ancients understood scientific cookery, the pan was a bain-marie pan that might have come from the Stores. In the baker's oven was a whole batch of bread and breadlets, of the exact pattern seen to this day at Naples ; and there also was found a pan containing a sucking-pig, intended as a bonne- boicche for some customer that evening. In one of the temples was a brasier full of charcoal, ready for the burnt-offering which was never to be offered. On the wall of a private house was scratched the memorandum : 'July 7. Hogs' lard, 200 lbs. Garlic, 200 bunches. ' 1 1 was probably the store- room, and the careful housewife had made due FUNERAL CUSTOMS 163 note of the stores taken in. On August 24 the house was buried with the city, and the hogs' lard was never finished. The sacrificial altar in the Temple of Mercury is of beautiful white marble, with reliefs on all four sides. One of these represents an ox being led up for sacrifice, and we see the instrument with which he was to be killed, a very efficient one, like a colossal hammer. In the Temple of I sis was an altar with a hieroglyphic inscription to the effect that it had been presented by the King of Hgypt, B.C. 750, for the preservation of the city. There are some touching proofs that human nature in those days was much the same as human nature to-day, and that family affection was strong, and grief keen, as it is now. An epitaph written by a Pompeian over his wife's tomb records that she had never caused him grief, except by her death ; a very touching tribute to the happiness of their married life. Another runs : ' Farewell, most happy soul of Caia Oppia ! We shall follow thee in such order as may be appointed by Nature. Fare- well, sweetest mother !' Even the customs required by etiquette strongly resembled our own. When a modern acquaintance dies, we send a wreath, or an 164 POMPEII empty carriage to follow the funeral, neither of which would leave any trace in the future. The Pompeian equivalent was more emblem- atical of regret, less ponderous, and is found in hundreds in the tombs. They sent tear- bottles — filled not always, we may presume, with tears, or it would argue a wide difference in the human nature of that day and the present — and these tear-bottles were deposited in the tomb with the urn containing the ashes of the deceased. The Pompeians were wiser than us moderns in their treatment of their dead. The advanced state of science at that time, medical, economic, and mechanical, has come as a surprise to the children of this nineteenth century, and has given something of a shock to their complacency. It was, perhaps, an unkind trick on the part of Vesuvius to conceal and guard these traces of the past so carefully and so long, and then give them up on purpose to upset the complacent theories of a remote generation as to the state of art and science in those far-back times ; for it is undoubtedly to Vesuvius that we owe the knowledge we possess on those matters. Where are the statues of bronze that were in Rome and Athens ? Not a trace of them remains, any BRONZES 165 more than of the bodies of the living men of that time. The living bodies have been trans- muted again and again in Nature's laboratory, and the bronze bodies have been transmuted into coin, into weapons, into cannon, into ornaments. For centuries there had been little or nothing to show what the Greeks and the Romans knew of the art of casting. Then came the day of resurrection for the two cities at the foot of Vesuvius, and they gave up the treasures so long entombed — and, lo ! they are found to surpass anything that has since been produced. It is hardly fair on modern artists to show them that no advance has been made in two thousand years, but it is doubtless a wholesome bitter for them. Look at the marvellous grace of this resting Mercury, dug from the dark depths of Hercu- laneum, nearly a hundred feet below the present surface, where the torrent of hot mud had en- gulfed it, together with the whole city and all that was in it. Look at the modelling of the supple body, the lassitude of the strong and beautiful limbs ; the messenger of the gods has travelled far, and is weary. Weariness and grace are expressed in every muscle, but nothing is exaggerated, nothing overdone ; it is absolutely simple and natural. Then look at 1 66 POMPEII the contrast presented by this dancing Faun from Pompeii ; every muscle is in vigorous action, and the tension and balance of the body, and the wild jollity and abandon of the figure, as he snaps his fingers in pure excess of animal spirits, are magnificent. The horses, too — what beautiful creatures they are ! Here is one about fifteen hands high, his delicate, spirited head, short, arched neck, strong, fine legs, and round, short barrel, making a perfect picture of what a horse should be. The eyes and nostrils are full of fire. So, too, they are in that colossal head, which seems to be champing and snorting with life and excite- ment. But the bronzes and the marble statues must be seen to be understood. At the best, I can only convey the impression they made on me, and that is a reflex and second-hand thing. I look upon it as certain that we shall never again have sculptors who will represent the human form with such fidelity and beauty as the Greeks did, unless sculptors should arise -in some Eastern land where from childhood their eyes will be familiar, as were those of the ancients, with the naked limbs and torso of men engaged in athletic toil or relaxed in natural repose. It is familiarity with the FARNESE HERCULES 167 natural undraped figure that alone could pro- duce such a result as we see in the bronze statues from Herculaneum. The artificial nudity assumed for a few hours in a studio by a man who naturally clothes himself in coat and trousers can never take the place of the open-air natural pose and gestures of a man who has never encased himself in any such garments. I do not know the supposed date of the famous Farnese Hercules, but I should judge it to belong to a very inferior period to that which produced the Herculaneum bronzes. Like the Mercury, it is the figure of a god, wearied and resting, and the two may therefore be placed in comparison. The Mercury is absolutely perfect in its natural simplicity, in its combination of graceful vigour, strength, and lassitude. But look at the Hercules — look at the exaggerated attempt to express strength, the huge swellings of the muscles, the flabby fleshiness of the hanging arm, the horrible smallness of the brainless head. Surely this is no god-like strength ? It gives me the idea of having been modelled from a half-witted, over- fed porter, undressed for the occasion, and not from an athlete of the finest type, the highest physical development of the perfect human 1 68 POMPEII animal. When we say the human animal, we surely imply something not bestial, not animal only. The Farnese Hercules is almost gorilla- like in its low animal brute strength. If art is found to have attained so high a position two thousand years ago, no less surprising has it been to see where science stood. The furnaces for heating water, with their hollow bars and hollow walls, are on the most scientific principles ; the wire ropes and safety-pins, the callipers and mathematical instru- ments, the heating-urns and the bain-marie pans, might belong to our present time ; while the surgical instruments are said to excite the wonder and admiration of modern surgeons, including, as they do, some very recent improve- ments in certain instruments. Among these is a quadrivalve speculum, and an instrument for raising a depressed portion of the skull, which in particular excite interest in the medical world, the former being pronounced to be equal to the most advanced improvements of modern invention. It is undoubtedly of intense interest to have POMPEII 169 this unique water-mark left to show us the level of art and science eighteen hundred years ago. It makes one wish that Babylon and Nineveh could in like manner have been destroyed and buried in one day, only to be discovered and brought to light now. It would be of such infinite interest to know what the high-water mark of that day was, and whether, or in what degree, the tide had risen or fallen in the year of our Lord 79, when Pompeii's existence was suddenly cut short. The early months of 1895 were remarkable for intense cold over the greater part of the world. In England the thermometer frequently fell below zero Fahrenheit. Trains were snowed up in Scotland, France, Spain, and North Italy. The orange crop in Florida was practically destroyed. Heavy snow fell in Algeria and in Sicily. Nor did Naples escape ; on the night of February 1 7 there was a frost — the only one of the season — of such severity that the con- sequences were disastrous. The thermometer registered eight degrees below freezing, and this was the death-warrant for thousands of 170 NAPLES lemon-trees. Within a week their leaves shrivelled and fell. It was a pitiful sight to pass grove after grove, whose glossy foliage had so lately attracted our admiration, and see nothing but bare boughs, thickly hung with their golden crop, now shrivelled and worthless. Some of the trees were killed outright, while others had only lost the year's crop, and would themselves recover. A lemon-grove does not begin to be remunerative until it is eight years old, so the disaster is very serious when trees in full bearing, many of them twenty to thirty years old, are killed. Such a frost spells ruin to many a struggling family, and one of its resulting consequences will be a large increase in the number of Italian fiddlers and organ- grinders seen in England, driven northwards in search of a livelihood as inexorably as the swallows are driven southwards. The statue of Orestes and Pylades in the public gardens presented a most singular and beautiful sight ; the north wind had all night driven the spray of the fountain over the statue and over the ilex-trees overhanging it, and had constructed the most beautiful ice-temple that ever was dreamt of. A semicircle of crystal columns of every size was ranged round the great basin, with an overhanging portico of AN ICE TEMPLE 171 thousands of sparkling lustres, as if all the chandeliers in the Tuileries had been massed and welded together in one colossal display. Beneath this crystal portico stood the statue, draped in glistening fringes and clinging folds of icy smoothness — an ice-god in an ice-temple not made with hands. Such a sight had probably never before been seen in Naples, and all too soon attracted the disastrous notice of the vulgar idlers, who thoroughly enjoyed themselves after their kind in wrecking and destroying this dream of beauty, smashing the crystal stalactites with exquisite delight, and rejoicing in that lowest exercise of power — destruction. The drive from Naples to the half-extinct volcano of Solfatara takes one through the new tunnel under the hill of Posilipo. It was opened in 1882, and is a decided improve- ment on the old Roman tunnel — attributed by popular superstition to the magic art of Virgil — which had up to that time been in use. The new one is perfectly straight, and is well lighted both day and night by gas ; it is broad enough 172 NAPLES for a carriage- road, a tramway, and a wide foot- pavement, and, being forty feet high, is suf- ficiently airy. The tunnel is eight hundred feet in length ; in the middle is a lift, by which people can ascend to the top of the hill above, a welcome short-cut to the alternative long and circuitous climb. Through this tunnel pass, twice a day, the countless flocks of goats which so largely supply Naples with milk, and the strength of the goat-bouquet they leave behind them must be smelt to be believed. It quite makes you catch your breath. On our way we visited the Dog Grotto, a small cave on the site of an extinct crater that has obtained its name from being the scene of suffering of innumerable dogs for centuries past. Its floor slopes steeply downwards, and on the level of the entrance may be seen a horizontal white line painted on its rocky walls. There is nothing visible to show the significance of this line, which, nevertheless, serves the purpose of a high-water mark, and defines the level to which rises the deadly carbonic acid gas that fills the lower parts of the cave. This gas, being peculiarly heavy, lies like water within its appointed boundaries, and lends itself to the most curious experiments. The ordinary one, made to gratify the tourist's THE DOG GROTTO 173 curiosity, is to throw in a wretched dog, kept for this purpose, who quickly becomes con- vulsed and suffocated, and is then brought up — dead, so far as having passed the bitterness of death. But if brought quickly into the fresh air his lungs begin to act convulsively, and he again comes to life, only to die once more when someone offers his humane master a franc to see him do it. Oddly enough, it does not shorten the animal's life to the degree one might suppose, and a dog has been known to go on for three or four years at the work, dying some two or three hundred times annually, and bringing in quite a handsome income to his master. It is undoubtedly a cruel practice, but, as Dumas observes, there are so few industries at Naples that we must not be too hard on such as exist. We refused to allow a dog to be put in on our account, and were fully content with other experiments. The guide lighted a torch, and on its being gently lowered into the cave it was instantly extinguished on passing the significant white line, just as though it had been put under water. It was then relighted and held down, wards in a large pitcher, where it flamed brightly. The pitcher was then dipped into the invisible pond, and again the torch was put 174 NAPLES into it, but instantly extinguished. The guide then poured back the invisible contents into the imperceptible pond, and once more the torch burnt brightly inside the pitcher. The experiments were at least as curious as those made on a dog, and did not involve a poor beast's distress and pain. It is said, and is certainly entirely credible, that in the days of the Romans, Saracen prisoners and refractory slaves took the place of the modern dog. We live in very degenerate times. Shortly after leaving the grotto, the road to Solfatara becomes very bad, full of holes and sprinkled with great squared stones, probably fallen from some cart, but which it seems no one's duty to remove. Hedges of bramble, prickly pear, and a chevaux-de-frise of aloe crown the banks ; beyond are rows of large fig- trees and miles of vines trained carefully from poplar to poplar, and forming a network, as if the whole country had been prepared for an obstacle race. The hills are many and steep, and it is pitiful to see the slender, gallant little horses pulling enormous loads with super- equine strength. Their owners know to a sack how much it is possible to make them draw without killing them at once, and this knowledge exactly regulates the load. LAKE LUCRINUS 175 Just before reaching the crater of Solfatara we passed the small chapel of San Gennaro, built on the spot where tradition says Januarius and his companions were beheaded, and there a most glorious view opens over the Bay of Baiae. On the shore beneath us lay the modern town of Pozzuoli, the black specks in the sea, beyond its promontory, being remains of the piers that supported the ancient Roman mole at which St. Paul landed when he arrived here in the ship Castor and Pollux as a prisoner on his way to Rome, on May 3, a.d. 59. Further along the shore we could see the small strip of water which now is all that is left of the Lake Lucrinus, once so famous for its oysters. The lake and the oysters were in their usual state of calm repose in the month of September, 1538, dreaming, it may be, of the past, but assuredly not of the future, when, on the night of the 30th, some imprisoned Titan below heaved his back with such violence that he forced the bed of the lake upwards as a mole does his heap, and, lo ! where yesterday had been a lake, the morrow dawned upon a hill some four hundred feet in height. Like many a human parvenu, the Monte Nuovo has now taken its place among its neighbours on terms of perfect equality, and 176 NAPLES there is nothing to show that it has a less venerable pedigree than theirs. Along the road that skirts this mountain, smooth and metalled, a friend of ours some years ago was driving, when the driver made a sudden swerve to the side and drew up. ' What is it ? inquired our friend. For answer the driver pointed to a large sized anthill in the road and said, ' Fuoco t Seeing that the hillock was smoking, he jumped out to investigate it, and found that the heat of the soil was too great to allow him to touch it. It was merely a playful demonstration on the part of the powers that be ; but it might as easily have been a second Monte Nuovo. The whole of this shore is classic ground, not only because it has been trodden by the Romans and Carthaginians, the Greeks and the Samnites, but chiefly because it was here that Virgil's imagination placed the Elysian Fields and the entrance to the Infernal Regions, here that Charon had his ferry and that the Sibyl led ^Eneas down to Hades. The Lake Avernus, so easy of descent, is still here, but the dense forests that once clothed its sides, in whose eternal shades dwelt the Cimmerians, have for ages past vanished, and with them the beliefs that once were so real. Beyond the shrunken CRATER OF SOLFATARA 177 Lucrine lake we could see Baiae, and the neck of land ending in the fine promontory of Misenum. whose bold rocks enclose the western side of the beautiful bay. Further still, the coast-line to Cumae and Gaeta, and out at sea the blue mountains of Procida and Ischia. The very names are so full of more or less vague traditions and associations that we feel half doubtful, as we look, whether we are in the flesh or not. ' A-ah !' said our driver to his horses at this moment, and with a jerk we started again, and in a few minutes reached the entrance to the crater we had come to see. We had climbed steadily uphill for a long time, and were now at the top of the volcano's walls. Passing on foot through the entrance-gate, we found ourselves in a vast shallow cup, some ten or twelve acres in extent, mainly covered with dwarf arbutus, bay, myrtle, and heath, but showing here and there a large barren surface of snowy white powder, the ashes of the volcanic fire, w r hich only require mixing with water to make the finest stucco. The powder is always being carted away for this purpose, but rain having fallen in the night, there was a large natural pond of stucco covering about an acre, which 12 i;8 NAPLES is not worked, probably on account of the risk of digging in that spot. The ground is honeycombed with holes from which steam and smoke perpetually issue, and at which a sound is heard like that of a pot boiling. Scientists have ascertained that the crust is only eighteen feet in thickness, and the hollow reverberation under your feet is un- pleasantly suggestive when you remember that below this crust is a vast boiling lake. From one cave issues a huge volume of scalding steam, while everywhere the earth in the neighbourhood of a hole is far too hot to bear in one's hand. The ground is yellow with sulphur, and the air strongly laden with the smell of sulphuretted hydrogen, extremely dis- agreeable, but not suffocating like burning sulphur. At some distance from the most active part of the crater are two caves, much resorted to by sufferers from rheumatism and kindred ills ; sulphureous steam rises within them, of such heat as to drive me ignominiously back when I attempted to enter ; but the others of our party crouched low, and so avoided the full power of the steam. If heat and sulphur are beneficial, these caves must undoubtedly be potent healing agents ; but to most persons the cure would seem worse than the evil, I think. CRATER OF SOLFATARA 179 The crater is certainly very interesting, but I prefer being on ground not quite so un- pleasantly hollow below one's feet. It is impossible to stifle the conviction that some day the volcano will again blow up, and it will not previously advertise its intention. Nothing is more interesting than the fact that in Strabo's time Vesuvius was believed to be so wholly extinct that it was even doubted whether it had ever been active. Writing about the year 10 a.d., he said : ' Vesuvius is well culti- vated, and inhabited all round except its top, which is for the most part level and entirely barren, displaying cavernous hollows which look as if they had been eaten by fire, so that we may suppose this spot to have been a volcano formerly, now extinguished for want of fuel.' About seventy years after this was written, the sleeping mountain awoke with a vengeance, and slew all the pigmies who had supposed him to be dead. After leaving Solfatara, we visited the amphitheatre of Pozzuoli, where the hungry lions refused to eat St. Januarius. The sub- 180 NAPLES terranean portion of it is in very good pre- servation, and we wandered through the great two-storied labyrinth below the arena, of chambers, colonnades, and corridors, bewilder- ing in their extent. It is recorded by con- temporary writers that the arena was sometimes flooded for the purpose of representing sea- fights, when crew after crew would come rowing in, and fight till the water was dyed with their blood, to the enthusiastic delight of holiday crowds. But nothing is more per- plexing to a modern visitor than to imagine how this was possible without at the same time drowning out every living thing in the under- ground regions. That it was done is beyond doubt, but I believe that the means by which it was accomplished baffle the ingenuity of every antiquary who has studied the subject on the spot. The amphitheatre is by far the most interest- ing and perfect of the ruins at Pozzuoli, but the eye is everywhere met by enormous masses of ancient brickwork, the remains of the former city that was built on the heights above the site of the modern town. It was built in such a way as to defy the attacks of Time unaided, and if it succumbed, it was to the united forces of men and gods. Devastated by Saracen CRATER OF ASTRONI 181 hordes, its ruin was only completed by earth- quakes. Not far from Pozzuoli is another extinct crater, that of Astroni. This neighbourhood positively bristles, like certain geological strata, with ' extinct craters,' and the soil of the whole district bordering the Bay of Naples is one mighty ash-heap left by Nature's fires. The crater of Astroni forms a Titanic amphi- theatre. After climbing for a mile or more up a steep zigzag, you arrive at the edge or lip of the cup, and, passing through the custodian's arched gateway, you find yourself in a vast circular enclosure like a funnel silted up at the bottom, and measuring about a mile across. The precipitous towering sides reminded us of Rasselas in the Happy Valley ; they are densely wooded, and it is in truth a happy valley for birds, who may here find sanctuary, for the crater has for the last century been a royal game preserve, and no net may be spread or shot be fired except by the royal sportsmen who come to hunt wild-boars. So the birds live in security, and it was delightful to hear a blackbird's note, and the twittering of many small birds. A cloud of wood-pigeons rose from the flat ground at the bottom of the deep funnel, where there is a good-sized lake and i82 NAPLES thick cover. It would be an ideal place in which to acclimatize any bird or beast, for it is so large, and the sides so precipitous and so immensely high that nothing would attempt to escape. A carriage-road has been made round the entire crater, and the drive is most delight- ful after a stay of some weeks at noisy Naples ; the silence and seclusion of the wooded hollow are unspeakably soothing. A drive of great interest can be taken beyond Pozzuoli, following the coast-line of the lovely Bay of Baiae. Modern history these shores have none, but they teem with the history and the myths of the past. Here, along the mole that separated Lake Lucrinus from the sea, Hercules drove the oxen of Geryon, after recovering them from that notorious cattle-lifter Cacus. Across this bay the imperial lunatic Caligula built his bridge of boats, impressing for the purpose every trading vessel along the coasts, and mooring them in a line three miles long. So Insanely delighted was he with his bridge that for two days together he did nothing but cross and recross BAI/E 183 it in chariots and on horseback. If he could revisit the scenes of his triumphs and orgies, what a sovereign contempt he would feel for our modern rulers, and their deference to 'His Majesty the People,' as an Italian inscription has it ! A pretty state of things, indeed, when an Emperor cannot appropriate to his own Imperial use the ships of any plebs he may choose, and pitch the owners into the sea as well, if it so please him. The Imperial Shade would gladly retire to Hades, and thank Jove that he had lived in better times. Along this entire coast masses of masonry are everywhere incorporated with the soil, projecting from the low tufa cliffs and showing below the surface of the sea, proving that once this barren shore teemed with life. Here the wealthy Romans had their splendid villas and celebrated their wildest orgies ; here crime and luxury reigned unbridled. The steep coast is mined with colossal vaults and chambers, dungeons, baths, and reservoirs, splendid proofs of the durability of Roman work, and of the magnificent scale on which things were done. They certainly had Imperial ideas regarding all things. In order to supply their fleet on this coast with good drinking water, they built an aqueduct fifty miles long, with a i8 4 NAPLES reservoir of gigantic size, at Misenum ; it is still in such perfect condition that it could now be used for its original purpose, if necessary ; its vast vaulted roof rests on four rows of columns, and it is known as the Piscina Mirabilis. Peter the Great of Russia also experienced the difficulty of supplying his fleet with drinking water, and attempted to solve it in a very different fashion. He gave orders that all the male children of sailors should from infancy be taught to drink salt water, to accustom them betimes to it. He was much annoyed at the failure of his experiment, and the disloyal obstinacy of his infant subjects, who defeated his project by all dying. The days of tyranny and oppression have still a topsy-turvy representative at Baiae in the form of a guide, who is a human gad-fly, and can only be permitted by Providence to live for the purpose of trying travellers' tempers to the utmost. On alighting at Baiae, you are pestered by him to engage his services, which you emphatically decline : you set out to walk ; this fiend sticks to your side, remorselessly interrupts all conversation, and plies you with information in broken English. In self-defence you jump into a carriage ; he instantly climbs BAIjE 185 up beside the driver ; you jump out and say that if he goes you won't ; the driver then forces him to get down ; you start ; he runs beside you ; you urge the driver to greater speed, and at last you lose sight of your tormentor ; you are recovering your temper, when, lo ! the fiend stands before you on a steep part of the hill, having come by a short- cut, and again presses his services on you. It really speaks well for the self-control of the average traveller that this man should yet be alive. The road being hilly, he kept up with us for more than a mile, and finally made a violent scene because we still refused to take him with us, or even pay him for the annoyance he had already caused us. It is comical, even when annoying, to see the devices resorted to both by men and children for establishing a claim to a copper. Whilst waiting once for a train at Pozzuoli, we observed a very small boy, not a yard high, enter the waiting-room, and presently, feeling something touch our feet, looked down, and espied this infant engaged in wiping our boots with an abnormally dirty rag, which just before had served to wipe his small nose. It was impossible to help laughing, but we bade him avaunt with what sternness we could command. 1 86 NAPLES Unfortunately for the moral of the affair, a French traveller who had noticed the incident was so tickled by it that he threw the child a penny ; so, no doubt, the boy and his rag will daily appear in the waiting-room. The railway officials take no notice beyond making an occasional raid on the ragged urchins and clearing the room for a few minutes. Passing by the foot of Misenum's rocky headland, we drove along the bank of the Lake Fusaro, with its lines of sticks showing where the famous oyster-beds lie, and following a road fenced with a screen of tall reeds, among which the wind murmured musically as if it swept the strings of an Eolian harp, came presently to the ruined amphitheatre of Cumae. It is strange to find a theatre, intended for the accommodation of forty or fifty thousand people, in a desolate country with no human habitation in sight save here and there the poor cottage of a vine-dresser. Much of the outer wall is still standing, and the deep arches of the massive masonry make convenient sties for the proprietor's pigs. The tiers of seats are all plainly visible, but are now covered with flourishing vines. We sat on one of the sunny terraces, once perhaps the dress circle, and listened to the profound wide silence around, CUMAL 187 unbroken save by the voices of the wind and the sea. It was difficult to picture a past so different, when every seat was crammed with spectators, and great shouts greeted the arrival of the Emperor or his proconsuls, while every eye was intent on the mortal fights going on in the arena. If ghosts hover round the scenes of their mortal incarnation, what a throng must have surrounded us that day ! The footpath to the Acropolis of Cumae passes through vineyards carpeted with dwarf marigolds and other pretty weeds, among which lie broken Ionic columns and a huge block of white marble ; the plough and the spade are constantly turning up these traces of a mighty city. We passed a vinedressers wretched cottage, which had for its corner- stone a fluted column and carved capital, while by the pigsty lay a beautiful Corinthian capital of white marble. At last our climb was finished, and we stood on the site of the Acropolis, commanding a magnificent view of the shore, northwards as far as Gaeta, and of the headland of Misenum and rocky Ischia to the south — a very abomina- tion of desolation, with no sign of life far as the eye could reach. Yet here stood a great city, immensely populous, whose history fades into 188 NAPLES mythical antiquity. This was the centre from which Greek culture and Greek forms of worship and Greek art spread over the entire peninsula. Here the Sibyl kept her books, and from hence she conducted ^Eneas to the shades of Avernus. And now the very traces of a city are wiped out. The Acropolis alone has left a few shape- less ruins of so rock-like a consistency and so vast a size that they will defy many a century yet, and remain to prove the site of ancient Cumse. Other cities as great and as powerful have vanished so utterly that their very site is matter for dispute. While standing here, the attention is arrested by an immense archway in a line of hills to the east, and on our homeward way we drove beneath the arch, and once more admired the grand scale of things Roman. Sixty-three feet in height, and of enormous massiveness, it spans a cutting made in the wall of the crater that encloses Lake Avernus — now a perfectly cheerful commonplace sheet of water, circular in shape, and giving no hint of its more than two hundred feet of depth, and enclosed by sloping banks wholly bare of wood. The whole country has been altered since Virgil's time by volcanic action, and Avernus has lost LAKE AVERNUS 189 all its mystery and terror. Even in the time of Augustus the waters of the lake are known to have been at a much lower level than the sea, and it is probable that the lake was once quite at the bottom of a deep crater whose precipitous sides were covered with dense primaeval forest. Very likely sulphureous vapours then came from the sides of the crater as they still do at Solfatara, and gave rise to the belief of its deadly influence on any bird that might fly over its infernal depths. It is certain that the myths connected with it could never have gained credence, or even have originated at all, had the lake of Avernus resembled in the smallest degree the lake that exists at the present day. On our return to Naples, we had to halt awhile at the octroi barrier, while the officers were busy investigating a cart loaded with green fodder that was just in front of us. They had steel skewers as long as swords, which they were thrusting through and through the load to make sure that no box or basket was concealed among the lucerne. This octroi duty on all eatables entering a town seems to us 9o NAPLES English a peculiarly irritating method of taxa- tion, and it is one that has the demoralizing effect of causing people to look leniently on attempts to evade it. That the tax is con- stantly evaded, and small quantities of eatables smuggled in, can be readily supposed, and those who know the Neapolitan character well say that a judicious application of palm-oil will always produce temporary blindness in the officials on duty. The most disastrous consequence ever resulting from a small attempt at smuggling was perhaps the famous insurrection of 1647. The young wife of a fisherman had been detected by the octroi officers in the heinous offence of trying to smuggle in three pounds of flour in a stocking, and with vindictive severity she had been fined a hundred ducats. This so infuriated Masaniello, her husband, that he roused the people to rebellion — an easy task, for their hatred to the tax had long smouldered, and now broke into fierce flame. The Spanish Governor had to fly for his life, and the detested toll-houses were burnt to the ground. If Masaniello had kept his head in the hour of triumph, the octroi tax would probably have been killed for ever. Even at the present day the people are THE OCTROI TAX 191 known to become restive at times ; while we were at Naples there was great excitement at Acerra, a small town in the neighbourhood, owing to the sudden increase of the octroi duty on hemp, which had till then been practically untaxed. The people destroyed the octroi building, and the riot was so serious that troops had to be sent to quell it. Thanks to foreign energy, enterprise, and capital, Naples has now a magnificent water- supply, such as it has not had for ten or fifteen centuries past. In the times before that, in those far-back centuries belonging to ancient history, the town was supplied with good water by Roman energy and wisdom, and supplied from the very same springs which now again supply it. The aqueduct then made to supply the Roman fleet at Misenum with water passed through Naples, Pozzuoli, and Baiae, on its way from the mountain reservoirs of Serino, and, as it passed, it supplied them all with water. It was a magnificent work, and the dense ignorance and stupidity of the barbarians, who in later times overran the country, showed itself in nothing more signally than in their 192 NAPLES failing to appreciate its benefits. Along with all the other splendid aqueducts of Roman times, it was allowed to go to ruin, if not wantonly destroyed. Extensive remains of it still exist, and when the question of a water- supply for modern Naples became an im- perative necessity, some of the plans were in favour of utilizing and restoring the ancient aqueduct. This idea was, however, abandoned, and though the modern works draw their supplies from the springs used by the Romans, they are carried at a much higher level than that of the former aqueduct. The springs of Serino are about fifty miles distant from Naples, and are situated at a height of over a thousand feet. Their supply is perennial and copious, amounting to a flow of nearly five hundred gallons a second in even the driest seasons, and the water is deliciously cold. It has a temperature of fifty-four degrees at the source, and being brought entirely in underground pipes, and stored in underground reservoirs, its temperature remains always the same, and no contamination of any kind what- ever is possible. We went to see the reservoirs at Naples, which are worthy of the Romans themselves. Hewn in the solid volcanic rock at a depth of THE WATER SUPPLY 193 one hundred and fifty feet below the surface, but three hundred feet above the sea-level, they have a capacity of one hundred thousand cubic metres, or over twenty-two million gallons. The descent to the reservoirs is down a winding stair cut in the rock, up the shaft of which comes a roar like that of Niagara, not a little trying to the nerves. Down in the deep cool rocky vaults the light of your lantern sparkles on a swirling stream that rushes along like a mill-race, and after filling to the brim the immense reservoirs, plunges headlong down the waste shaft in mad haste to join the sea. The population of Naples, the largest town in Italy, is half a million, and there is water enough available to allow them forty -four gallons a head daily. The stand-pipes in the streets pour forth their cold, delicious water all day and all night, beyond the power of contamination by even Naples slatterns and Naples filth. The Romans were wise and great in thinking that pure water was one of the chief blessings a people could have, and that it was the duty of a Government to supply them with it, without money and without price. These works were only opened in 1885, and were constructed at a cost of one million six 13 194 NAPLES hundred thousand pounds, the Municipality guaranteeing six per cent, on the outlay. Acting on the principle that it is well to do at Rome as the Romans do, we did at Naples as the Neapolitans do, and we took a ticket in the Government Lottery. Our hopes of gain were not unduly high, but I suppose no one can watch the numbers being drawn in any lottery in which he has ever so humble an interest without feeling some degree of excite- ment, either spontaneous or contagious in its nature. Naples is one of the eight cities of Italy where the lottery is drawn. It takes place every Saturday afternoon in the courtyard of a Government office opening off a narrow dirty street in the old part of the town. On the particular Saturday on which we were there, the rain was falling in a cold steady drizzle on the crowd assembled in the court. It was composed entirely of the great unwashed. They had taken up good, places for seeing the numbers drawn, and they waited in dumb patience on the wet pavement, regardless of THE LOTTERY 195 the rain and of the cold. Who can tell ? perhaps a turn of luck would come and make some of them rich to-day ; the sickness that comes of hope deferred was written in many a weary, anxious face. Every face was turned to a low balcony on which stood the Tombola, a kind of elliptical brass squirrel-cage, which can be turned by a handle. . Precisely at five o'clock a great roar of pent- up excitement was heard from the crowd as a door on to the balcony opened and three Government officials appeared, leading a small boy, dressed in white, in whose hands Dame Fortune places the fate of every gambler in the lottery. It is always some little boy from the Orphanage who is chosen to draw the fateful numbers. He was lifted up on to a stool behind the To7nbola, and stood with earnest and solemn gravity, conscious of the intense interest centred in his small person. An official then held up a paper with the number 1 on it for all to see, and so on through the numbers up to 90 ; each number, after being held up, was passed to the second officer, who enclosed it in a small brass ball about the size of an egg, screwing in the middle, and then passed it to the little boy, who put it into the Tombola. As every ten numbers were added, the Tombola i 9 6 NAPLES was vigorously twirled by the third officer, who was in charge of it. When the ninety brass balls had all been put in and had been thoroughly churned up together, the little boy was blindfolded ; amid breathless silence he put in his arm and with- drew a ball, handing it to the first officer, who opened it, and, smoothing out the folded paper, stuck it in a frame in front of the balcony. A low murmur ran through the crowd each time this was done — a murmur of present disappoint- ment and of unquenched hope. Five numbers were thus drawn, and then every gambler's fate for that week was decided. My modest franc had gone to swell the Royal revenue of over a million pounds sterling, the annual net profit of the lottery. The winning numbers are instantly telegraphed to every ticket-office throughout the Naples circle. There can hardly be two opinions as to the demoralizing effect of this national gambling, but any attempt to abolish it would be full of difficulties ; it is said to be the only tax levied without opposition. So deeply is the passion for gambling rooted in the people, that not only would they vehemently resent any interference with it, but, it is said by those qualified to form an opinion, the suppression of the State lottery THE LOTTERY 197 would mean the establishment of numbers of secret and illicit ones, and that thus the latter state of the people would be worse than the first. No doubt a strong Government would be able in time to deal effectively with the difficulty of secret lotteries, but to do so would require the support of a trustworthy and high- principled body of officials, and this is probably the true crux of the matter. A writer, who knows Naples and the Neapolitans intimately, says : ' The Neapolitan is the prince of cheats, and the Neapolitan official may be described as primus inter pares. The keynote of every transaction is bribery, and the only difficulty is to know how much or how little it is necessary to give, and the right person to whom to give it.' This being so — and all testimony confirms it — the lottery is likely to flourish for an indefinite time. It has existed nearly two hundred years, and was formerly under the patronage of the Church. Even this sanctifying influence is now removed, and it is a purely secular State monopoly. The gambling is on this wise : You may select any five figures of the series from 1 to 90.; we will suppose you to fix on 6, 18, 32, %% and 90. These are written on your ticket, and you have further to declare whether you will i 9 8 NAPLES stand to win on one figure only, or on a com- bination of two, or of three, or of four, and this declaration also is written on your ticket. If you play for only one figure of your five, and that is drawn, say 32, you get 10^- times your stake ; if you play for an Ambo, and the figures are both drawn, say 6 and %%, you get 250 times your stake ; if for Terno, three figures, you would get 4,250 times your stake ; and Quatemo, or four figures, would bring in 60,000 fold. You may hedge by playing for two chances, i.e., Ambo and Terno, in which case you win a Terno if three of your numbers turn up, but if only two you fall back on your Ambo. The lowest stake for which a ticket is issued is a penny, and this is a point it is thought prac- ticable to reform. If the minimum stake were raised to a franc, it would make it impossible for the very poorest classes to gamble. As it is now, a boy who can in any way extract a penny from you is able to buy a lottery ticket and enjoy the excitement of gambling ; and when his penny has gone the way of most pennies (think how many have to be swallowed up to make a million pounds sterling !), his first thought is how to scrape up another copper or two and to hope for better luck. Only to think ! if luck would favour him, his penny THE LOTTERY 199 might bring him in £21 — not to mention the gorgeous, dazzling possibility of its bringing him ^240 ! Surely the Virgin and the saints might do him a good turn for once ! and he goes to sleep to try and dream of a lucky number. The following extract from a Neapolitan paper of high character is quoted by Mr. Rolfe, and gives some interesting facts regarding the lottery. Mr. Rolfe — now Consul at Naples — has turned the Italian money into its English equivalent, and I may therefore omit the Italian reckoning : 4 As far as the produce of the lottery is con- cerned, the province of Naples heads the list with an annual average of 13s. 4d. per head of the population. From July 1, 1886, to June 30, 1887, 55,845,851 tickets were sold at Naples of the average value of 2f d. ; the number of winning tickets was 434,003, of the average value of 15s. .. . The net results to the National Treasury from 1871 to 1887 were ^18,459,163 — nearly eighteen and a half millions sterling — which shows that the lottery has been, and always will be, the most stable of Italian institutions.' It may be so ; a cancer, we know, is the most stable of diseases. 200 NAPLES TO CAPRI It was the middle of March when we left Naples, and our first move was to the island of Capri, whose grand outline had so long been the central feature of the view from our windows. The Italian mail-boat was lying in the harbour of Immacolatella, and backwards and forwards across her gangway were passing streams of people, like ants distracted. On the deck were some soldiers, heavily ironed and handcuffed, who were being taken to the military penal station at Capri under charge of two officers. They seemed in no wise dejected, and managed to convey cigars to their mouths and to borrow a light from a friendly bystander. In and out among the crowd was a jovial and buxom matron with a basket of melon-seeds, a delicacy which she sold for a penny a pint, the purchaser occasionally snatching an extra pinch by way of discount. At last all was ready, and we steamed out of the harbour, passing the fine British steamer Orient, just arrived on her way to Australia, and shortly afterwards her hapless sister, the Oroya, hard and fast on the sand, and beaten pitilessly by the waves. One short fortnight before she, too, had arrived on her way to Australia, and when leaving again had got on the sand, not to be got off again for many a CAPRI 20 1 long month. Meanwhile, her unfortunate passengers dispersed themselves among the Naples hotels while waiting for the next steamer. Some of them were of a class not usually met with in good hotels, and one who sat next to us, when complaining one day of the tedious bargaining necessary when buying anything at Naples, observed energetically, 1 I do 'ate 'aving to what / call 'aggie.' We ran merrily across the bay, escorted by a flock of black-headed gulls, and by a merry dolphin, who turned gaily head over heels in the most gladsome manner. Presently we lay to under the perpendicular rock wall of Sorrento, and watched the passengers embarking and disembarking in little boats that tossed up and down in wayward fashion and horrible. Then we turned our head to Capri, and by the time we lay to off the Grande Marina the wind had freshened yet more, and the boats that came out to us tossed more outrageously than the others had done, and kicked up their heels in very wantonness. It was a work of some difficulty, and even danger, getting the handcuffed men into a boat, and when our own turn came I was prepared to vow that never — no, never — again would I go to an island that had no pier. Somehow or 202 CAPRI other we were all tumbled into the boats, and, on reaching the landing-place, were seized by strong arms and lugged ashore ; and a host of nut-brown maids and matrons, bareheaded and barefooted, seized our luggage, and marched off with it on their heads, while the men looked on and smoked. But the men are not idle. This is only the division of labour. The men had probably been out all night fishing, and would go again when the wind fell. Still, it was a strange thing to see a big trunk on the head of a woman, who staggered under it, though she smiled gamely. We often saw them afterwards staggering even worse under loads of wood and barrels of wine. As soon as we and our luggage were stowed into a carriage, we started for the town of Capri, which is reached by a steep zigzag road, up which the gallant little horses trotted without once slackening pace for fifteen minutes. None of the Capriotes eat the bread or the corn of idleness. Considering that the island is nothing more than the top of a rocky mountain, just tall enough to keep its head above water, and that four miles by two is a fair estimate of its size, it is astonishing to find about thirty flys waiting for hire at the landing-place, and another dozen up in the Piazza of the little town. COOK'S TOURISTS 203 And what makes it even more surprising is the fact that besides the road up from the shore to the town there is only one other road, barely three miles in length, on the island — one newly constructed between Capri and Anacapri, the only other town. And yet I should suppose there were not less than sixty or seventy flys altogether. They are entirely supported by the visitors, who constitute the main revenue of the island, and whose annual numbers are estimated at thirty thousand. The flymen have a few red-letter days, of which one occurred during our stay. My donkey-woman had told me that a ' caravan ' of Cook's was expected, and the word seemed amusingly descriptive of the curious collection of animals with their drivers that occasionally overrun a foreign city. Come they did, by scores, and fifties, and hundreds, until the island was alive with them, hurrying, scurrying, eat- ing, drinking, driving, riding, staring, stalking. There was a babel of voices, and a tumult of wheels, and whips, and hoofs, and dust — a whirlwind that for three hours bore down every- thing in its course. Then the hoarse voice of the steamer, sweetest of sounds to our deafened ears, called them to make haste — they are always making 204 CAPRI haste — and down they hurried and scurried, obedient to their whipper-in, and presently three vanishing specks on the blue bay were all that remained of the tourist horde. Peace and quiet reigned once more, such peace and quiet as are to them undreamt of, since they vanish in dismay at their approach. The only creatures wholly unaffected by the flurry and bustle were the donkeys, who preserved their calm dignity throughout the turmoil, and refused to be ruffled or hurried. The donkeys of Capri are delightful — large and sensible, sure of foot, and stout of heart. The one I generally rode was named Michael Angelo. On learning that it was the mother of our other donkey, I expressed surprise at its bearing a masculine name. ' Oh, that matters nothing ; it wasn't given at baptism !' My donkey-woman asked if I knew about Michael Angelo — he was a great sculptor, a magnificent artist ! I thought how surprised we should be if a Margate donkey-driver asked us such a question, or knew anything about Michael Angelo or any other great artist. Yet this peasant of Capri had never in all her life left her native island. I asked her if she had never seen Naples. She shook her head, and said gaily : CAPRI 205 ' Anacapri I know, and the Villa di Tiberio, and the Grande Marina, and Monte Salaro — basta r Her name was Palomb, and she told me with some pride that she was the only person in all the island with that name. She was a barefooted, active matron, bright with intelli- gence and natural good manners. Her small daughter of five years old insisted on accom- panying us, and, though she tumbled often and grievously, got up again smiling, and toddled on gallantly. The paths are mostly very steep, and are roughly paved, being sometimes little better than rough flights of steps ; they are often extremely narrow, and enclosed between high stone walls that brought Balaam and his ass vividly before my mind. The air was laden with the scent of beans in flower, but we were too early for the wealth of wild-flowers, to be seen a month later. The cactus grows here to a great size, and is thoroughly at home on the island. Palomb told us that in September you can buy a dozen of its fig-like fruits for a halfpenny, but in March they were a penny apiece. They grow all round the edge of the fleshy battledore-like leaf, and are gathered leaf and all. She pointed out the villa of a French gentleman who married 2o6 CAPRI a Capri girl, for the love of her beaux yeux, and had since lived altogether on the island, and added that other foreigners have done the same. We asked her if the girls were as happy as if they had married handsome young fishermen of their own class. 1 Perche no ? They can eat white bread and macaroni, and they need not work. Certainly they are happy.' She said the visitors to the island were chiefly Germans, and next to them in number were English and Americans. I asked how she knew the English from the Americans. Oh, there was a great difference ! The Americans speak through the nose. She condoled with us for being natives of a country where there was no sun, and said it must be very melancholy. She was quite surprised, and, I think, a little incredulous, when we exalted the brilliancy of our sunshine. 1 Why, many, many English signoras have told me they came to Italy to get some sun !' She took us to the ruins of Tiberius's villa, colossal fragments and vaulted halls, with remains still showing of paint and smooth, firm stucco. The Emperors rooms are not without their uses, either, for cows are very comfortably stalled within them. Mosaic pave- VILLA OF TIBERIUS 207 ment in splendid condition still exists, bearing silent testimony to the excellence of Roman workmen. On the highest part of the ground occupied by the ruins, on the extreme eastern point of the island, is a small chapel with a resident priest, who came out to do the honours of the place. From the little terrace before his small dwelling is a most splendid view of sea, and earth, and sky ; from this height of nearly one thousand feet the sea looks absolutely smooth and solid, like a pavement of sapphire, from which rises the mainland opposite, with its white patches showing where Sorrento and- Massalubrense are, and the hill crowned with an ancient convent, and the cross where the monks offer prayer in times of storm for those in peril on the sea. Low and faint to the north are seen Naples and Vesuvius, and nearer at hand the Sirens' Island and the coast- line, stretching beyond Amalfi to Pactum's melancholy shore, where the Greek temples look from their solitude over the Gulf of Salerno. A glorious view for a hermit or for an Emperor ! But when the Emperor grew tired of it he had other diversions : the cliffs are so high and so sheer that it is interesting to watch a stone thrown down take a curve and then drop 2o8 CAPRI plumb into the sea. No doubt the Emperor did this until the amusement lost its interest, and then it struck him that it would be more exciting, and would really amuse him, to see a man thrown over instead. No sooner thought of than done. There were plenty of prisoners to experiment with. So Tiberius took up a position commanding a capital view — we stood there to try — and bade his guard hurl a few men over. It really was more exciting than he had expected, and no doubt was frequently repeated when the Emperor felt bored and out of spirits. The spot is called Tiberius's Leap, though, unfortunately, he never made it himself. Another curiously-named spot on the island is a ruin called Barbarossa's Castle, so named, not at all because it was ever that worthy's castle, but because he, in one of his piratical raids, destroyed it. It is perched on an incon- ceivably inaccessible spot, and can only be approached from one direction. In the per- pendicular face of the rock on which it is built is cut the road leading from Capri to Anacapri, finished in 1874. Previous to that time, the only communication between one half of the island and the other since the world began was by a flight of some eight hundred steps cut in sharp zigzags up the scarp of the rocky barrier CAPRI 209 that intersects the island. Many people affect to regret such an innovation as a carriage-road, but I never heard of their regret leading them to prefer ascending by the steps instead. The latter still exist as an alternative route. Half-way up the old zigzag, but some thirty feet only above the new road, is a famous shrine of the Madonna, to which formerly pious pilgrims ascended on their knees up the three or four hundred rocky steps from the sea-shore. They still ascend the portion above the new road in this fashion, but I do not know if any have such a superabundance of devotion as to begin their painful pilgrimage at the sea- level as formerly. It would depend, no doubt, on whether the Madonna of the grotto had expressed any wishes on the subject. There is some similarity between the gray limestone rocks of Capri and those of Mont- serrat, but the rocks of Capri appear to have been subjected to far greater pressure, and look as though they had been crushed by some mighty agency. The vegetation on both is very similar : arbutus, bay, rosemary, coronilla, Mediterranean heath, and asphodel. There is a refreshing absence of beggars and of dirt at Capri, very pleasant to those who have lately come from Naples, as are the silence 14 2io CAPRI and tranquillity of the island after the clamour and clatter of that noisiest of cities. The people, too, are of a quite different type. Not only are they far better-looking, but they have an honest, independent expression strikingly different from the rascally-looking physiognomy typical of the Neapolitans. No sooner do you land at Amain* than this rascally type is again prominent in an even exaggerated degree. It is perhaps the influence of the Saracen strain that was once so strong on the coast of Salerno. One calm sunny afternoon we took boat for a row along the southern shore of the island, where the marvellous green rollers were heaving lazily against the mighty rock wall that plunges sheer into the crystal- clear depths, and the gulls were standing motionless on the rocky outposts, meditating on the chances of a fish dinner. The sea, with its eternal chafing, has worn cavernous hollows in the cliffs, and in one of these, where the rock overhangs in a deep semicircle, the sunlight permeates the water in such a manner as to convert it into transparent emerald of the most heavenly colour, while the facets of every dancing wavelet are of the purest, most sunlit tint of lapis lazuli. This rocky arch is known as the Green Grotto, and is undoubtedly exquisitely beautiful ; but its THE BLUE GROTTO 211 beauty differs only in degree from the exceed- ing beauty of colour that may be seen on any calm sunny day along the whole coast. The Blue Grotto, on the contrary, differs from anything that it would be possible to see except under similar conditions to its own. No one, however, must suppose that he has any notion of its peculiar attributes unless he has seen it in favourable circumstances, that is to say, on a calm and cloudless day when the sun is at its meridian. The entrance to it is barely three feet high, and about the same in width, only just large enough to admit a very small boat. As we drew near we espied a boatman in an apparently empty boat rocking about near the entrance, and then vanishing into the black darkness of what looks no larger than a rat-hole in the tremendous cliff. At the bottom of his boat, hidden to sight, lay a passenger, for in that manner alone is it possible to enter. If there is any sea on, it is a dangerous experiment in more ways than one. A gentleman who tried it got drenched well-nigh to drowning by a wave that came over into his boat, and he, thinking they were swamped, incautiously lifted himself up, striking his head with disastrous violence against the rocky arch. 212 CAPRI Many stories also are told of people who have ventured in, but found themselves unable to get out again, and had to stay imprisoned for one or two nights, and depend for food on such provisions as could be floated through the entrance-hole in barrels. In no case is it a very pleasant experience, going under the low arch while lying helpless at the bottom of a boat. Once in, however, and the conditions favourable, you find yourself in a fairy cavern about forty feet high and one hundred and fifty feet long, entirely coloured with an azure light such as never was on sea or land, and may well have been a poet's dream. The vaulted roof is steeped in pale-blue, quivering light, and the water itself is of a metallic, exquisite, unnatural blue, unlike anything in the world ; it is blue light, not merely blue water. But the one peculiarity which makes this grotto differ in kind from all others is, that, whereas in all the world beside the light comes from above, here it all comes from below, through the eight fathoms of crystal water that fill the lofty submarine arch, whose top is only three feet above the sea-level. The effect of this is marvellous ; it completely upsets all your experience with regard to reflections and shadows. Look at that other boat now passing THE BLUE GROTTO 213 across the azure lake. Like the souls Dante met in Purgatory, it has no shadow. Not the faintest trace of any reflection or shadow does it give. Black in outline itself, it vanishes where it touches the liquid sapphire on which it floats ; its oars dip into the water, but they have lost all substance : they throw no reflec- tion, vivid as the light is. The rock walls, where not touched by the magic light, descend in blackness to the water's edge, and on meet- ing it they, too, vanish without a shadow or a reflection. Every object seems unreal and phantom-like, for this mysterious surface, calm and bright as a mirror, refuses to reflect any- thing whatever. It is most startling, for it is contrary to your lifelong experience, and you cannot at once adapt yourself to such extra- ordinary conditions. And now you can understand why a photo- graph of the Blue Grotto, however brilliantly painted in blue, not only does not convey a good impression of the scene, but conveys an absolutely false one. Brilliant as the blue light appears to the eye, it is not strong enough or not white enough for a camera to take a picture, and consequently artificial light has to be used ; and at once the unique peculiarity of the grotto — the peculiarity which in such a 214 CAPRI wonderful way distinguishes it from any other in the world — is lost. The light is now above the surface of the water, and every object instantly casts a reflection or a shadow as it does on any mill-pond in England. O foolishness ! No wonder that the tourists who have had the grotto lighted up for them say they can see no difference between it and any other water- cavern. In their affluent stupidity they have deliberately abolished all difference, and reduced the grotto to the commonplace so dear to their souls. The worst feature about Capri is that, unless you resolve to spend the rest of your natural life there, you have to embark once more in those terrible little boats to reach the steamer. And you cannot choose your weather. Should the sea be very rough indeed, no steamer calls, and the island is sometimes without letters for many days together. We were fortunate in getting off fairly well, but by the time we reached Amalfi there was a heavy swell on, and the little steamer rolled in a truly appalling manner while she lay to, half a mile from the AMALFI shore, for her passengers to disembark. It was horrible to see the little boat by her side, at one moment surging up above the ladder, and the next sinking into a trough so deep that we expected to see it sucked beneath her keel. With our hearts in our mouth, we scrambled in without accident ; but accidents are far from uncommon : we ourselves saw a luckless lady step into the sea up to her knee, a wave having suddenly substituted itself for the boat she had meant to step into. She was luckily held by strong arms, and lugged aboard by the sailors ; but some friends of ours saw a lady who, bolder than this one, made a jump into the boat, which at that moment swerved violently, and she disappeared under the sea, to be, however, safely dragged out again. The English Steamship Company is anxious to construct landing-piers at the most dangerous places along the coast, but is unable to obtain a concession from the Italian Government, on the ground that there would be insurrections if piers were built. So travellers continue to suffer and incur danger, and the boatmen flourish and eat macaroni. The ten-mile drive from Amalfi to Vietri is famous for the beauty of its scenery. The road follows the windings of the coast, curving 216 AMALF1 TO VIETRI inwards along the countless ravines, and curving outwards to round the rocky headlands, where often it is blasted out of the face of the lime- stone cliffs. The whole coast is terraced into gigantic steps, on which millions of orange and lemon trees are cultivated. Stone is certainly plentiful hereabouts, but the labour of building the stone walls that support every terrace must have been enormous. The trees are carefully protected by mats of reeds and boughs from the cold winds of winter, in spite of which the frosts of February had this year destroyed the entire crop. The rocks were now draped with masses of yellow coronilla and blue-gray rose- mary, and colonies of huge aloes, green and striped, bristled on the walls. Many remains of Saracen buildings still exist along the coast, dating from the times when it was peopled by flourishing colonies of these picturesque infidels. The Turks are the last remaining garrison in Europe of a once great Mussulman army of occupation, that possessed Spain and Sicily, and had offshoots on many of the neighbouring coasts ; they are an anomaly where they are this day ; may Allah blacken their faces ! The Barbary pirates were for centuries a grievous thorn in the orthodox side of the Christians, constantly swooping down on LA CAVA 217 their coasts, pillaging and murdering, and carrying off the inhabitants into slavery. His Holiness Leo X. himself had the narrowest escape once of falling into their hands, after which he retained all his life a lively dislike to the sea-coast ; the Holy Father had no wish to push his resemblance to the Apostles so far as to endure chains and slavery. It is curious to think that so late as the beginning of the present century this coast was occasionally raided by these infidels. Steam, electricity, and gunpowder, have done more than all the statesmanship and theology in the world to further the attainment of peace and security. At Vietri we left the shores of the beautiful gulf, and turned inland for three miles till we reached La Cava, deeply embosomed in woody hills, sheltered and sunny, but with its arcaded streets smelling aggressively, as the Southern Italians love to have them. Above the town is a hill of purely pyramidal form, crowned by a castle ; our drivers information that it was 1 molto antico ' was superfluous, for what man in his senses would choose such a spot nowadays to pitch his tent ? La Cava derives its name from a cave inhabited about the year 1000 by a hermit belonging to a noble Lombard family ; a more 2i8 LA CAVA hideously unpleasant place to live in than this particular cave he could hardly have found ; therein lay much of the merit, no doubt. It is not even a dry cave, for the water drips through the limestone rock, and makes it what Mr. Man- talini would call demn'd damp and unpleasant. Above this cave was built, in very early times indeed, a chapel and a monastery, over- hung by a huge mass of rock, capable of crush- ing them like a walnut-shell should it ever fall. The hermit's cave is in the crypt, untouched, and dripping as of old. There also are stacked large piles of bones and skulls, belonging once to noble Normans and Lombards, who were buried in the abbey, and have since been pulled out and arranged in this gruesome fashion. A damp and skully place altogether is the crypt, and we greatly preferred the more modern parts of the immense abbey. It is rich in manuscripts and archives, and the Abbot and eighteen monks are permitted to remain as custodians of the library and as educators of youth ; they have a large and flourishing school to help fill the huge pile. Among their treasures is the Codex Legum Longobardorum, dated 1004, and most quaintly illuminated ; also some beautiful missals, the work of Fra Angelico da Fiesole, and of LA CAVA 219 Giulio Clovio, both of cunning hand. Fra Angelico would paint nothing but sacred subjects, and it was told of him that he never took up his brush without previous prayer ; his whole life was a preparation for communion with the saints. ' Never was he seen in anger with the brethren,' says Vasari of him, adding — no doubt from his own experience of monks — 1 which appears to me a thing most marvellous, and all but incredible! We saw his tombstone when at Rome, and a kind, benevolent old face has the effigy of the gentle monk who died five hundred years ago, after spending his life in charity with the world and with his neighbour. Another manuscript, of nearly the same date as the Codex, is called a 7norgengabe, which was a deed by which, according to Lombard law, a husband settled a quarter of his posses- sions on his wife : a far more practical gift than an English husband's fictitious assurance to his bride, ' With all my worldly goods I thee endow ' — an assurance which really suffers no injury to its import when rendered by a country bumpkin as, * With all my worldly goods I thee and thou.' The abbey is a good hour's pull, up a road of great steepness, from the town of La Cava, and for a laden vehicle is a cruel pilgrimage. 22o P.ESTUM Little babbling rills run down between wooded banks that at the time of our visit were yellow with the blossom here known as St. Joseph's flower, and in England as St. Dizzy's. From La Cava it is an expedition of only two hours by rail to Paestum. The line, hedged with rosemary, runs partly through grassy or cultivated undulating country, sweet with the scent of bean-flowers and lovely with the rosy glory of the peach blossom, and partly through great tracts of waste land, covered with rushes and asphodel and the fragrant narcissus, now in full bloom. This is the home of deadliest malaria, which has for centuries dispeopled this coast. But draining and cultivation are pushing forward their outposts, and the land is slowly being wrested from the Spectre of Fever that has so long stalked unchallenged throughout the country. Large gangs of women in short skirts and bright kerchiefs were busy hoeing in the fields, and men ploughing with two yoke of large white oxen. On the marshy pasture- lands were great herds of evil-eyed buffaloes, short of limb, huge of carcass, ferocious of aspect, though inwardly meek and inoffensive. PJESTUM 221 There is no romance now about the journey- to Paestum, not the faintest spice of danger. And yet, five-and-twenty years ago it was a journey attended by so great risk that few ventured it ; for this district was the haunt of brigands, and they and the malaria together had it all to themselves. The only brigands that now haunt Paestum are small and young, and do not aspire to greater plunder than a few soldi and the remains of your luncheon ; we had three in close attendance on us, dark-eyed, wide-mouthed urchins, affably conversational, and not selfish. When Giuseppe received an orange, he begged us to give another to Giovanni, and his own he pocketed for his small sister. He told us the fever was often very bad ; his mother died of it last year, and he himself had had it badly. Salvatore said his mother had died of it too, and his father had gone to America, and no one had heard of him since. Letters are things that do not trouble the quiet of Paestum ; few could read one, and probably none could write one. If Salvatore's father should ever return, it will be casually, as he left. The walls of ancient Paestum still exist, a mass of stonework some twenty feet in thick- ness. Wild asparagus and ferns grow thick 222 P&STUM between the gaping blocks, and as you pass the dry leaves rustle with the swift retreat of innumerable green lizards, alarmed by your approach. Of the great and populous city not one stone remains upon another with the exception of the Basilica and the temples of Neptune and Ceres. Of these the two first stand close together, looking out over the level marsh and over the changeless sea, as they have done for twenty-four centuries ; in their solitude they are magnificent; they are deserted, and their desertion is total; they are not mocked by smart modern houses, and hotels, and brass bands, and Bengal lights. They wrap them- selves in the malaria like Caesar in his mantle, and stand in the dignity of isolation. They are of the most ancient period of Greek art, and their grand Doric columns shoot up from the floor of the temple like the trunks of noble pine-trees, tapering slightly like them, and sturdily bearing the mighty block of the abacus and the enormous stones of the archi- trave and the vast weight of two thousand centuries in faithful strength. The stones are set without mortar, and their immense weight is the best guarantee of their stability. The noble ranks of columns are perfect ; not one PJESTUM 223 has proved unstanch through the frosts and the storms of these long, long centuries. Of the skeleton of the buildings the roofs alone have perished, but all their splendid altars, and friezes, and sarcophagi, and sculpture, have been pillaged ages ago, and taken away to beautify other buildings. The Bishop of Salerno in the eleventh century was one of the worst robbers ; he carried off no less than twenty-eight columns to adorn his pet cathedral, besides a magnificent granite basin and some grand sarcophagi. This episcopal plunderer having set the fashion, it followed naturally enough that everyone felt he had a right to carry off anything he took a fancy to, and thus in process of time the ancient city was stripped to its very bones. The bare bones alone have come down to our day, but I do not think that any accessories, or any of their stolen trappings, could enhance the effect of their lonely, deserted grandeur. The waste ground around them is covered thickly with white asphodel, and starry allium, and acanthus, fit flowers for these temples of classic Greece ; and the dreary landscape and the lonely shore are fit surroundings for temples reared to gods that have been dethroned. A few modern dwellings there are within the 224 ROME old city walls, but they are those of the peasantry only, and the simple country people and their mild-eyed oxen are not out of keeping with these giants of the past. 1 On the heights above Baccano the postilions stopped, and, pointing to a pinnacle that appeared between two hills, exclaimed : \ "Roma!" ' That pinnacle was the cross of St. Peters. The Eternal City lay before us.' This dramatic experience, unhappily, was not ours. It was written by Mr. Eustace ninety-five years ago, when travelling lent itself to such dramatic episodes. Now the first sight in Rome, as elsewhere, is its railway- station of cosmopolitan architecture, outside of which is a bewildering array of hotel omni- buses and a horde of touting porters, all speak- ing English. It is impossible any longer to feel impressed with the first view of Rome. So long ago as Montaigne's days Rome was the resort of crowds of foreigners, so much so that we find Montaigne complaining of the number of his own countrymen, and declaring hat he hardly met anyone in the street that CONTRA STS IN ROME 22 1 did not salute him in French. What would he think of it now ? As we were going up in the hotel lift I heard a girl saying with a strong Yankee twang : ' I guess we shan't find all the rooms we want.' I ventured to ask if her party was a large one. Pretty large ; there are four hundred and twenty of us.' An entire shipload of American tourists had arrived, and were stowing them- selves away by fifties and by scores as best they could. The incongruity between ancient and modern Rome must be greater at the present day than it ever was before. The cleaner and smarter modern Rome becomes, the more this differ- ence is emphasized. The ancient buildings in their colossal ruin seem as much out of place among their neat and prosperous modern neighbours as a battered, crippled soldier, the hero of a hundred fights, would be in his poverty and old age among an assembly of gilded youths, whose small souls contain no nobler thought than how to kill time, no higher aspiration than to be known as men of fashion. They would stare with supercilious amusement at the cut of the old hero's clothes, and lan- guidly wonder ' que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere ? 15 226 ROME And something not unlike this is, I think, the first impression produced by the sight of the ruins in modern Rome. They are incon- gruous, the only ruinous things among their tidy, gas-lit surroundings, and are like a dead tree, lightning - scathed, left standing among trim lawns and gay flower-beds. The temples at Paestum produce a very different effect ; they may rather be likened to the masts, seen when the tide is low, which are all that is left to show where a brave ship has foundered. The ancient ruins at Rome have not even the natural grace and beauty with which Time would invest them, for, in its zeal to arrest their further destruction, the Government up- roots indiscriminately every herb and every climbing plant that tries to find a niche, and the huge fragments stand bald and bare, more like buildings that have never been finished than like ruins which have stood for eighteen centuries. In Mr. Eustace's time it was not so ; the ancient buildings were then neglected and pic- turesque in their natural ruin, and the modern ones were sufficiently dirty and tumble-down not to put them too conspicuously to the blush. Rome was filthy, but nowhere neat or common- place. As one writer said, its filth even had ROME OF TO-DA Y 227 the merit of being colossal, like all things Roman. There are many who unfeignedly regret those old days, and cherish bitter ani- mosity to all modern improvers and their improvements. But the shadow on the dial cannot be put back, and it is as useless to lament that the Rome of to-day is not like the Rome of fifty years ago as it would be to wish that the Romans of to-day should be like the Romans in the days of the Borgias. There are at least three distinct Romes — ancient classic Rome, mediaeval Rome, and modern Rome — though their histories are frequently so written the one over the other that the records have become almost illegible. Its buildings are like pudding-stone rock, com- posed of the debris of yet more ancient ones, which themselves had perhaps risen out of the destruction of others still older. The old Romans themselves incorporated in their buildings the debris of many an ancient Greek or Eastern temple, and these, again, in their turn furnished materials for fresh erections in later ages. In a letter to Leo X., Raffaelle mourned over the wanton destruction of ancient monuments, while entreating the Pope to * protect the few relics left to testify to the power and greatness of that antiquity whose 228 ROME memory was inspiration to all who are capable of better things/ He went on: 'Those who ought to have protected the remains of Rome, have instead themselves contributed towards their destruc- tion ; how many of your Holiness's predecessors have employed themselves in the demolition of ancient temples, arches, statues, and other glorious works ! How many antique sculptures have been made into building materials ! inso- much that I might venture to assert that the new Rome which we see — large as it may appear, so beautiful, and so ornamented with palaces and churches — is wholly composed of the remains of ancient marble.' It is indeed saddening to think of the master- pieces of statuary which were broken up and burnt into lime for the building of the great mediaeval palaces ; and of the temples over- thrown for the sake of obtaining their exquisite columns. Perhaps the chief wonder is that anything should be left. But ancient Rome was so vast, so colossal, that its materials could not be wholly assimilated by its pigmy plun- derers. Its size was sufficient to form ten Romes such as we see to-day. Its population is computed by all the greatest authorities to have equalled certainly, and exceeded probably, A ROMAN INVENTORY 229 that of London of to-day. And when we think of the scale of all its buildings, and of the in- credible number of its baths and its theatres, of its statues and its fountains, this computation appears to be the only one probable. Inventories are usually dull things, but a unique interest attaches to an inventory of the statues and buildings at Rome, written a.d. 540, as giving in a prosaic manner a graphic idea of what Rome must have been in the height of its glory. This inventory, be it remembered, was taken long after Rome had been sacked, first by the Goths and then by the Vandals, which latter devoted no less than fourteen days to the work of plunder and devastation, and in fourteen days much may be done in that way by a horde of brutal barbarians. Yet even at that time there existed, we are told, 31 theatres and 8 amphitheatres, 17,000 palaces, 2,000 prisons, 2,300 perfumers' shops, 9,000 baths, 13,000 fountains, 80 gilt statues of the gods (one alone of these still exists), 66 ivory statues of the gods, 2 colossi, 22 great eques- trian bronze statues (that of Marcus Aurelius alone remains), and 3,700 bronze statues of emperors and generals — a goodly number to have survived two such sacks as had taken 2~,o ROME place. Marble statues, be it observed, are not mentioned ; they were probably far too numer- ous even at that time to be inventoried. One writer, indeed, said that the statues formed a population equal in number to the living in- habitants of Rome, and specified 19 as being of gold, and 30 of solid silver ; those, no doubt, were the first to fall into the hands of the plundering soldiery. Of the eight amphitheatres and circuses, one alone, the Circus Maximus, held three hundred thousand spectators, and the Colosseum held one hundred thousand. A population at least equal to that of modern London would be required to make such buildings necessary. The same holds good of their baths ; there was accommo- dation for one hundred and twenty-five thousand bathers daily, and this notwithstanding the fact that every private house of any pretension had its own baths. The water-supply of Rome at the present day is the largest in the world, being at the rate of six hundred and seventy gallons a day for each inhabitant ; yet three aqueducts supply the whole of it, whereas in the city's palmy days fourteen aqueducts were required to supply the baths K the fountains, and the needs of the people. They were a wonderful people, those ancient PAGAN ROME 231 Romans, if only for the grand scale on which they did everything. Whether we look at their architecture, or their public policy, or their amusements, or their vices, we cannot but admit that they had large ideas. Their Imperial roads, their aqueducts, their circuses, were on the same colossal scale as their spectacles and their orgies. On an occasion of special public rejoicing as many as two thousand gladiators would be made to butcher each other, and five thousand wild beasts would be slaughtered in the arena to glut the barbaric love of sport in the Roman populace. Even the cold-blooded slaughter of six thousand helpless prisoners, actually within hearing of the Senate, was typical in its monstrous way of all they did. Whatever they did, whether for good or whether for evil, it was on a large scale — a scale that evinced power, and the mere exercise of power is apt to extort a feeling akin to admiration, even though it be the power of a devil. We are constrained to admire the forces of Nature, whether they are shown in raising a mountain or destroying a city, and pagan Rome in her ruthless strength and her boundless power resembled some irresponsible force of Nature. 232 ROME Of all the fragments remaining of ancient Rome, I think none impressed me more than the Baths of Caracalla — those ' mountainous ruins/ as Shelley called them, as large as the ruins of a dozen St. Paul's Cathedrals. They impress you by the enormous extent of ground they still cover, as well as by their Titanic, rock-like masses of brickwork. But it is no longer possible, as it was in Shelley's time, to climb on to the mighty vaulted roofs, and obtain some true idea of the size of the ruins. Vault after vault has succumbed, and those that remain are no longer safe to climb upon. Gigantic masses lie where they fell, still show- ing large surfaces of mosaic work uninjured by a fall that shook the city, and made the people think there was an earthquake. In their prime the baths must greatly have resembled St. Peter's — or, rather, half a dozen St. Peter's — with the walls faced with splendid marble, and the floors paved with mosaic, and sculpture and statuary lavished everywhere with true Imperial prodigality. In the frigid- arium alone there are said to have been three thousand statues, and of their magnificence we may judge by two which were found here, tolerably uninjured, the Farnese Bull and the great Flora of the Naples Museum. But its BATHS OF DIOCLETIAN 233 glory has departed ; the rugged core of red brickwork, stripped of its marble casing, is all that now is left, and for roof it has the deep- blue Roman sky. The Baths of Diocletian were even larger than those of Caracalla, but their ruins have been so utilized and so transmogrified that there is little left to appeal to the imagination. The great tepidarinm was converted three centuries ago into a church, in which eight colossal monolithic columns of Egyptian granite, forty-five feet in height, are left actually in situ. These monster columns make me shudder when I think of their cost in agony and death before they were placed where we see them. It is said that the marble quarries at Carrara alone cost an average of one human life daily, while the oxen employed in hauling the marble rarely live a year, and often, goaded by the madness of pain to a strain beyond their strength, they die on the spot, unpitied for suffering and cursed for dying. And Carrara is only a type of other quarries, nor does it furnish monoliths of any very large size. Rome is full of these colossal witnesses to the misery endured by God's creatures. The .swimming-bath was ages ago converted 534 ROME into cloisters, where two aged and decrepit cypresses may yet be seen, the last survivors of a group planted by the hand of Michael Angelo. A museum has been formed here for the reception of new discoveries, and already possesses two of the finest antique bronzes yet unearthed. They were found while making a new street five years ago : one is the figure of a boxer, larger than life, magnificently modelled, with the brutalized face characteristic of a pugilist, and is specially valuable for the minute fidelity with which every detail and every strap is given. Another recent find is that of a number of child's playthings in bronze : dolls' chairs, tables, and dishes — one of them with two fish on it — just as may be seen in tin at any toy- shop, and the figure of a slave bearing a tray. These small things seem to bring the Romans very near to us, and supply that touch of nature which no histories can ever do. In the Capitol Museum we saw the coffin of a Roman patrician lady, with beautiful jewels hanging to the skeleton, and by her side a little jointed wooden doll, the very prototype, the remote ancestor, of the Dutch dolls dear to our child- hood. Perhaps it had belonged to a little child that had gone before her, and was for THE CAPITOL MUSEUM 235 that reason so sacred that she could not part with it, even in the grave. Crowded as the Roman museums are with world-famed objects, it is often some small, insignificant thing that excites one's personal interest more especially. Till we visited the Capitol Museum, I had thought that shaking hands was a comparatively modern fashion, but there we saw a relief representing two men in the act of shaking hands exactly as we do, and afterwards we met with it elsewhere. Then, too, I had always heard that our four- pronged forks were a modern improvement on the more primitive two or three pronged fork ; and so, indeed, they may have been, for there had been a general lapse into barbarism over all Europe, and we had again to emerge from it ; but at the Capitol may be seen Roman or Etruscan forks, with four prongs exactly similar to our own. Even educational over-pressure is not a modern evil only, nor competitive examina- tions. These things, too, were known two thousand years ago, in proof of which is the tombstone of a promising young Roman, re- 236 ROME cording with touching accuracy his death at the age of eleven years five months and twelve days, after he had distinguished himself above fifty competitors in Greek verses. Poor little fellow ! when he ought to have been playing knucklebones and flying kites. What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own life ? How much better are stupidity and a sound digestion ! Among the bronzes at the Capitol is a large bull with a disproportionately large carcass, and I looked at it with awe and interest, wondering if it was the bull that figured in a horrible tragedy in the time of Hadrian. One of his Generals who had fought with Titus at Jerusalem became infected with the pestilent heresy of the Christians, and positively refused to sacrifice to the gods. Whereupon, to encourage others, he and his wife and their two little ones were crammed into the carcass of a bronze bull and roasted to death in front of the Colosseum, to the great honour and satisfaction of the insulted gods. What a glorious day will dawn for the world when we humans shall no longer feel called upon to avenge an insult to our gods, but shall leave all vengeance to them ! Our ofificiousness in the matter always implies, in THE LA TERAN MUSEUM 237 my eyes, a certain mistrust as to their own power of carrying out their wishes and of taking care of themselves, highly dishonouring to their omnipotence. For the creature to avenge an insult to the creator is surely a strange reversal of their positions. In this museum, too, is the famous Bronze Wolf, dating, it is supposed, from 500 B.C. ; and outside the museum are two live wolves, not so old, but with a far more ancient smell. There is also a cave in the rock, and seeing an inscription beside it, we thought it must surely be the identical cave in which Romulus and Remus were nursed by the wolf ; on going nearer, we read, to our disappointment, that this was the substructure of Michael Angelo's house ! We had already met with Michael Angelo in connection with every building and every subject we had hitherto inquired about, but we certainly had not expected to meet him in that cave. As the Spanish proverb has it, we shall soon expect to find him in our soup. In the Lateran Museum are glorious fragments of sculpture found in the Forum, with volutes of marvellous depth of cutting, and bits of 238 ROME cornice and broken frieze and fragments of colossal statuary. Here, too, is an unfinished statue, with the sculptor's marks left on it just as when the artist fled, perhaps on the day when Attila and his Huns were thundering at the gates of Rome. I do not know anything that causes a greater feeling of indefinite melancholy than the sight of these bits of wreckage cast up by the ocean of Time. It is the sadness inseparable from coming into contact with what once was, and never can be again. It is not that one would wish to bring it back ; it merely touches a chord that moves us all. ' Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,' are words of profound sadness. That which is immortal in us rebels against the proofs of our transient mortality. The words of the preacher echo in our ears as they never did before : ' What hath man of all his labour wherein he hath laboured ? There is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool, seeing that which now is, in the days to come shall all be forgotten. Behold, all is vanity.' Antiquity is, like everything else under the sun, comparative. In England we look upon THE VATICAN MUSEUM 239 mediaeval relics as things belonging to very far- back times, and upon anything before the Conquest as of almost antediluvian antiquity ; things and personages of that time loom mysteriously in the mists of barbarism, seen as they are across the whole history of our national civilization. In the clearer atmosphere of Rome we put back our ideas of what is very ancient a good thousand years, and take the statues and monuments of the first centuries B.C. or a.d. as our standard of antiquity. But after a visit to the Egyptian and Etruscan collections at the Vatican we again modify our views, and begin to realize the place in chronology occupied by things Roman. It is a curious feeling to stand before a statue of the lion-headed goddess Pasht and look at the inscription graven upon it, recording that it was executed in the year 1690 B.C. by order of Memnon, King of the seventeenth dynasty, at a time when the Olympian gods and the centaurs and the monsters of mythology were running about loose in Greece, centuries before Cadmus vexed the souls of future generations by his officiousness in giving the Greeks an alphabet. As to Rome, Rome was no more dreamt of than was Australia. 240 ROME The lion-headed one was wife of Ptah, creator of the sun and moon. There are many statues of her, and they were antiques when Moses led the children of Israel forth from Egypt. Moses himself may have stood before her and looked into her fathomless eyes as we did ; but she was then a divinity to be worshipped, not a curiosity to be stared at. Later in time by more than a thousand years are two grand basalt lions found in Rome, in the ruins of the Temple of I sis. They, too, have the interest attached to all things that bear names and dates belonging to a remote past, for the hieroglyphics on them tell us they were sculptured nearly four hundred years before the star shone above Bethlehem. The Etruscan antiquities rarely have any inscriptions, and the interpretation of such as there are must needs be largely conjectural until a second Rosetta stone shall be discovered. They are surrounded by a haze of mysterious antiquity, which leaves a fascinating margin for the exercise of imagination. Some of the cinerary urns' were discovered below deep strata of lava from a long-extinct volcano, a circumstance that justifies the wildest conjectures as to their age ; they still contain the ashes of men who once lived and loved and THE VATICAN 241 cared as little for those who might come after them as we do ourselves. Do their spirits sleep till the last trump shall sound ? Or are they still being purified in the fires of purgatory ? Or had their priests, too, the keys of heaven, and the power of anticipating the Day of Judgment ? The veil of the unseen world is as impenetrable as the more palpable wall of lava at Herculaneum, and in vain are our chafings and frettings to know what lies behind it. There are plenty, indeed, in every nation who profess themselves able to instruct us — Papists and Protestants, Jews and Pagans, Methodists and Mohammedans — but they show us no credentials by which we may know they have descended into Hades ; and when they, in their turn, pass through the gate of Death, into the void world — 1 The wide gray lampless deep unpeopled world ' — they never return. The huge confused pile of the Vatican is more like a town than a palace. It is said to contain eleven thousand halls, chapels, and chambers, and there is no obvious reason for doubting it ; there appear to be some miles of staircases and galleries. 16 242 ROME The collection of pictures and statues is royally lodged, the finest of them being placed apart, as is befitting, not crowded together in a mob. The Round Hall is built on the model of the Pantheon, and in its grand simplicity is the finest I ever saw ; over sixty feet in diameter, it is lighted by one glorious flood of light from above, after the manner of the Pantheon. Round the wall are eight large alcoves, coloured Pompeian red, in each of which is a master- piece of statuary. There stands the colossal Hercules of gilt-bronze, found thirty years ago below the pavement of the flower-market, the only one yet found of the eighty gilt statues of the gods mentioned, in the inventory already quoted, as still existing in the sixth century. In the centre of the hall is an enormous basin of porphyry, found in the Baths of Titus, forty- two feet in circumference, and hewn out of a single block ; it stands on a circular mosaic pavement, also found in some ruined thermce, the largest and most magnificent known, on which centaurs and sea-monsters disport them- selves with splendid effect. Further on, we come to the beautiful Belvedere Court, where, each in an apartment to himself, dwell the famous Apollo of the Belvedere, and the equally, if not more, beauti- MASS AT THE VAT/CAN 243 ful Mercury. For myself, I think this Mercury typifies the absolute perfection of beauty in the human form, a grave and god-like beauty before which anything mean or vulgar would shrink away. Here, too, are Laocoon and his sons struggling for ever in the serpents' folds — a nightmare statue, in which the sculptor gloried in his power of depicting violent action, and the agony of terror and of pain, just as Luca Signorelli gloried in his power of painting it. As an exercise of skill and power it is mag- nificent — but I shudder as I admire, and do not care to see it again. Very early one morning we climbed the mountainous stairs of the Vatican to hear his Holiness Leo XIII. celebrate Mass. He never celebrates it now in St. Peter's — never, never, as a priest told me with almost shocked emphasis — nor even in the Sistine Chapel. The Sala Ducale has been fitted up as his private chapel, and there occasionally, but rarely, he pontificates. The chapel contains, perhaps, three hundred people, and admission is only obtained by ticket. Gentlemen have to wear •244 ROME dress suits, and ladies must be entirely in black, with black lace over the head in place of hat or bonnet. Many of those present had half a shopful of rosaries hanging on their arm, brought to be blest by the Pope ; an American friend of mine was anxious to know if it was necessary to hold them up high for the blessing to take effect, but a young priest told her it mattered nothing at all ; that the benediction would take effect even if they were in her pocket at the time. The behaviour of the congregation would lead you to suppose that they were at a theatre rather than attending Mass ; opera-glasses were freely used, by priests quite as eagerly as by the laity, and it has been found necessary to put up notices requesting people not to stand up on the seats. They reminded me of an injunction I once saw in a mediaeval book of etiquette — not to throw bones under the table. It surprises one to find that either injunction should have been necessary. A loud buzz of conversation filled up the interval of waiting, but subsided temporarily when His Holiness entered, wearing his usual white skull-cap, and surrounded by his Swiss Guards, gentle, fair-haired giants, armed with halberds and wearing a harlequin costume of LEO XIII. 245 yellow, black, and red, designed by Michael Angelo. The Holy Father is very frail and bent, and was supported on either side by a Bishop. As you listen to his feeble voice and watch his feeble frame, you cannot but remember that, feeble as the voice is, it has power to make itself heard to the ends of the world, and that that feeble frame bears an office derived in unbroken succession from one who with his eyes saw Jesus taken up into heaven. As he raised his hand in benediction, every head was bowed, and a great hush fell on all present. But only for a moment ; then all tongues seemed loosened, and the buzz became even louder than before ; and above it rose the sweet voices of the choir, and the pure high soprano of the boy known as 'the Pope's Angel.' That the Holy Fathers of the Middle Ages differed marvellously in character and manners from their successors of the nineteenth century is sufficiently well known ; but the fact was never brought before me more graphically than by a passage in the autobiography of that amusing artist, and coxcomb, and swashbuckler, Ben- 246 ROME venuto Cellini. It seems that the Pope had given him some work to do, and was greatly- incensed at his being so long over it. ' " In God's truth, I tell thee," said his irate Holiness, " that were it not for decency and order, I would have thee and thy work chucked out of window!" Now, when I perceived,' continues Benvenuto, that the Pope had become no better than a vicious beast, my chief anxiety was how I should withdraw from his presence . . . and I was in two minds whether or not to dash at full speed down the staircase. Raising his voice still higher, the Pope shouted : " Come here ! What say st thou ?" Then I took my decision, and threw myself on my knees, shouting as loudly as I coitld, as he, too, did not cease from shouting! This lively picture of the enraged Pope and the angry artist shouting against each other is truly delightful. Benvenuto was fully able to hold his own with Pope or fiend. Rome is full of reminders that it is the battle- field on which the final and sharpest struggle between Jehovah and the gods of the heathen was fought out. The broken standards of the THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY 247 enemy are represented by the obelisks, which stand as lasting witnesses of the triumph of the Pontifex Maximus of the Christians over the impious Pontifex Maximus of the heathen. On every column and every obelisk erected by the Romans has been placed a cross, or the statue of a Christian saint, with sometimes an inscrip- tion recording triumphantly that it has been wrested from the false gods of the pagans, has been purged from its iniquity, and dedicated to the Cross. Wherever a temple to a false god existed, the Christian priests hastened to build one to the true God. Where Apollo filled a niche, they replaced him by a Sebastian. For Cybele they substituted the humble Mary, crowning her Queen of Heaven, and investing her with the dethroned goddess's title of Mater Dei. On the Colosseum they placed a marble slab with a cross, and the information that an indulgence of one year and forty days is conferred on anyone who kisses it ; the task of checking the pur- gatorial registers must be colossal. Strange to say, we never saw anyone kissing the cross. I should have thought that people who believed in the truth of the information would have kissed it for an hour or two daily. The Emperor Hadrian, in the same spirit of 248 ROME jealousy for the supremacy of his gods, placed a statue of Jupiter on the site of Christ's tomb, and one of Venus on Mount Calvary. Nor have the Mohammedans been any less zealous from their own point of view ; they destroyed twenty-five heathen temples, and sanctified the materials by building with them a great minaret in honour of Allah, the jealous and only God. Do the gods look on and smile ? They keep silence and make no sign. The lion-headed goddess shrouds herself in the same passive mystery now as she did when a nation trembled before her. She then had priests to interpret her wishes, and a great people trembled. The priests are gone, and no one now trembles at her displeasure ; but the goddess is unchanged. When Sixtus V. determined to Christianize the great obelisk brought from Egypt by Caligula, and to place it in the Piazza of St. Peter's, great engineering skill was required to carry out the project. For' fifteen hundred years it had stood undisturbed in the circus where it had been placed, an eloquent witness to the goodness of the workmen and the materials employed by Caligula. OBELISK IN ST PETER'S PIAZZA 249 A huge machine was constructed to lift the great monolith from its bed, and a force of nine hundred men was got ready to work it ; they prepared themselves by first hearing Mass, confessing, and receiving the Sacrament. All went well, and when the trumpet gave the signal, the huge stone, weighing over a million Roman pounds, was lifted from its base and swung free, while the cannon of St. Angelo thundered out their jubilant congratulations. Then came the task of transporting it to its new site and re-erecting it, and at this point a hitch arose. At the critical moment the ropes began to slacken ominously under the tremen- dous strain. A shudder ran through the crowd gathered to watch — an inaudible shiver, for it had been forbidden for anyone, on pain of death, to speak or shout — when the voice of a sailor standing by was heard to shout command- ingly, * Wet the ropes !' Water was poured on them, and the obelisk, instantly responding to the renewed strain, rose slowly, and was lowered in safety on to its new pedestal. In reward for the service the sailor had rendered, he and his family in perpetuity were granted the privilege of providing the palm- branches for St. Peter's at Easter, and this privilege is enjoyed by his descendants at the 250 ROME present day. I have strolled through their palm-groves at San Remo and seen the hearts of the trees tied up to blanch like lettuces ; and I have a branch from them blessed at St. Peter's. It was from the balcony overlooking this Piazza that in times past the Pope used annually to fulminate a terrible curse upon the few hundreds of millions of benighted people in the world who did not acknowledge his spiritual jurisdiction. An Englishman who was at Rome in 1590 has left us an account of this curious and characteristic scene : ' On Maunde-Thursday the Pope commeth into his gallery over St. Peter's, when as a cardinall on ech side of him, the one in Latin, the other in Italian, singeth the Pope's generall malediction. There he curseth the Turke, and her Majestie our most gracious princesse, and all the Calvinians, Lutherians, and all that are not according to his disposition ; when he hath cursed all that he can, saying, " Amen," he letteth the candle fall, when as the people will scramble for it and everyone catch a Tittle piece if they can.' ST. PETER'S 251 The Basilica of St. Peter's stands on a site imbued with many memories. When digging its foundations, stones were found bearing in- scriptions showing that once the worship of Cybele had here been celebrated. And here was the site of Nero's Circus, and here Christians — men and women of like flesh and blood with ourselves — were made into living torches, or thrown to ravening beasts. Christians were not at that time in a position to persecute others; when they were, they showed themselves no whit behind the pagans, thereby losing a grand opportunity of mark- ing the difference between Christianity and paganism. St. Peter's is on so colossal a scale, and every- thing about it is so proportionately colossal, that, like the Eiffel Tower, it is above all our accustomed rules of comparison, and un- doubtedly causes a sense of disappointment when first seen. We all have heard from childhood of its vast size, and we expect to be struck with it, whereas we are not. It is only by an effort of the mind, almost by a process of reasoning, that you slowly grasp the con- ception of its true size. The most immense crowd makes no difference at all in the appearance of the building; it merely 252 ROME forms a carpet, a thick pile carpet, over the marble desert of the pavement. Yes, human beings certainly look unusually small, and from this fact you gradually argue that everything else must be unusually large ; but there is no gratifying shock of wonder or amazement, as you had expected. The marble wainscoting of the marble walls looks no higher than that in an ordinary room, until you happen to notice that people's heads are only rarely on a level with it. The marble cherubs bearing the fonts of holy-water do not appear to be of any unusual size till you see a man standing by them, and observe that his head is far smaller than the cherub's fist ; it then dawns upon you that an infant of this size in flesh and blood would weigh about twenty stone. The canopy too, over the high altar dis- appoints you ; you had read that it was a hundred feet high, and you expected it to look gigantic ; whereas it is positively insignificant beneath a dome that rises four hundred feet from the pavement. As to the great pontifical chair, with its supporting figures, in which over one hundred tons of metal were used, so far is it from appearing large that it may easily be passed unnoticed altogether. Round the dome is an inscription in fine bold type such as you ST. PETEX'S 253 often see at home above the chancel arch at Christmas ; only the guide-books tell you that these letters are six feet high. Well, you can only say they do not look it ; but they certainly look almost the size of the quill pens held by the four Evangelists in mosaic in the lower part of the dome, quite ordinary-looking quills, about nine inches long, perhaps, judging by your eye, but between seven and eight feet long according to all authorities. No, you cannot give up the habit of trusting to the evidence of your eyes, and your eyes, in such novel circumstances, prove wholly untrust- worthy. The true size of things dawns upon you only gradually and indirectly, through the pain in your neck caused by the angle at which you are carrying your head, through observing the total insignificance of the masses of people moving hither and thither, and noticing that they vanish into specks before being lost to sight. We were there on Palm Sunday, and for an hour I sat watching the unceasing and copious stream of people entering and joining the thousands already crammed into and crowding round the large side-chapel where High Mass was being celebrated. It was a vast and varied stream of life, but roughly divisible into two classes those who on entering crossed them- 254 ROME selves with holy-water and those who did not ; the sheep and the goats divided themselves spontaneously, though who can say which were which ? Among the crowd were barefooted friars and barefooted gamins, violet-stockinged and violet-robed Church dignitaries, black priests, white monks, nuns in immaculate white - winged head-dresses, country women with the square-folded white Roman head-covering and brilliant skirts, small children clutching olive-branches that had been blessed, tourists laden with campstools, palm -branches and guide - books ; French, Germans, English, Americans — all hurrying to cluster round the centre of attraction, like bees swarming. Then I wandered away among the aisles to the transept, and again sat down, now in a vast solitude and silence, unbroken except by a monotonous, murmurous sound as of many waters in the distance. Yet Mass was being celebrated in two different chapels, and many thousands of persons were walking about and talking sans gene within the church. It made it easy to believe Mark Twain's story of ten thousand troops attending Mass at St. Peter's, and an officer, arriving late and seeing no sign of them, supposing they had not yet arrived ; ST. PETERS 255 but they were all there, in one of the transepts. The magnificence of the marble walls and floor and mosaics and monuments is almost incredible ; the predominant note of it all is one of praise and glory to the Pontifex Maximus, the Shadow of God upon earth. The walls are alive with fat white marble cherubs flying heavenwards with the tiaras and portraits of defunct Popes, while colossal and splendid monuments commemorate the lives of other Popes of the past — vain Popes, licentious Popes, pious Popes, proud Popes, gluttonous Popes, cruel Popes, but all alike armed with the keys of heaven and hell, and the awful shadowy power conferred by them. Many of the Popes will have needed no key to gain them admittance to hell ; it must have yawned wide for them, if, indeed, they found that the dead need not wait for the last trump to sound before receiving sentence. Of one Pope the modest epitaph says : 1 It is needless to repeat his praises upon earth, When heaven is shining with his immortal glory !' After the keys of St. Peter, the Christian emblems most conspicuous in the great Cathe- dral are the bees and the dove, the respective 256 ROME heraldic badges of the Barberini and Pamfili Popes. On the walls, too, are fine reliefs in further glorification of the Papal power, depict- ing the recantation of Henry IV. of France, and the humiliation of Henry IV. of Germany, before the haughty Hildebrand at Canossa, when the Pope kept him shivering in his shirt in bitterest cold for three days, humbly suing for an audience. Those were glorious days for the Popes, when Emperors were proud to lead the Holy Father's horse, and when Charle- magne himself, on being received by the Pontiff at St. Peter's, fell on his knees and kissed every step of the ascent till he reached the Holy Father's feet. On the afternoon of Holy Thursday we were at St. Peter's for the Miserere. A dense throng had gathered in the Tribune, having come with campstools and the firm intention of seeing everything that was to be seen ; for success in carrying out this intention there is no nationality to compare with the Americans. Whatever the occasion may be, they will be found, like the Scribes and the Pharisees, occupying the chief seats, and their talent for wedging them- ST. PETEJTS 257 selves to the front of a crowd is something abnormal. I wandered away into the transept, out of sight of the choir and the crowd, and sat there in solitude, watching the low, level rays of the setting sun throw paths of light athwart the clouds of incense that filled the mighty dome with a thick blue mist, and watching the dusk gradually sink over the great temple, filling its aisles with deep gloom, and giving it the solemnity and shadow that by daylight it so greatly wants. Down the long perspective of heavy shadows shone here and there a polished gleam, where a marble plinth or column re- flected the altar-lights, and beneath the vast vault of the immense nave the exquisite soprano voices of the unseen choir rose and fell like spirit voices, unmixed with any sound but that of the low, deep hum of the crowded hive, like the murmur of wind among pine-trees on a summer's day. Never before had the beauty and awe of the great Cathedral so impressed me as it did then. All detail was lost in the solemn gloom, and the immensity of the vast marble pile alone was felt. 17 258 ROME It is strange that in most countries it should be thought so essential to place the altar at the east end, when in Rome, the cradle of Christen- dom, the three chief churches set the example of placing it at the west end. St. John Lateran, which bears the proud title of ' omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput,' has its chief front — its ' west end,' as we instinctively call it — to the east, with the high altar consequently at the western extremity of the nave, as also have St. Peter's and the Patriarchal Church of St. Maria Maggiore. This arrangement so entirely upsets our Anglican ideas that we find our- selves speaking of the south aisle, meaning the north, and perfectly bewildered at seeing the rays of the setting sun shining from the east end. The celebrant priests, as they stand with their backs to the congregation, have their faces towards the New World, and not towards their Mecca. It seems almost incredible that it should ever have entered the heart of any man, still less that of a nominal son of the Church, to plunder and ruin the Cathedral of St. Peter's. But if 57: PETER'S 259 we may believe Mr. Eustace, who was at Rome in the year 1800, such a scheme was actually contemplated by Napoleon Bonaparte when he found himself unable otherwise to satisfy the greed of his army. He asserts that Napoleon positively employed a company of Jews to estimate and bid for the gold, silver, and bronze that so profusely adorn the building, as well as the copper roofing of the huge dome and vaults, and that this barbarous sacrilege was only prevented by the approach of the allied armies, which forced the French to retreat precipitately and evacuate Rome. The holy joy that would inflame the hearts of Jews entrusted with such a commission as that of Napoleon can only faintly be imagined by a Gentile. For centuries their race had suffered cruellest wrongs at the hands of the Christians at Rome ; they had been scorned, beaten, banished, burnt alive, compelled by brute force to bow themselves in the house of Rimmon — and now, glory to Jehovah! they were called in to appraise the treasures of the chief Christian church, and dedicate it to destruction ! Truly, they would in some sort be avenged on their persecutors. A lively picture of the cruel insults heaped upon them by the Christians has been left us 26o ROME by a certain Anthony Munday, an Englishman who visited Rome in 1590, and was there during the carnival. He says : 1 During Shrovetide there is in Rome kept a verie great coyle, which they call the Carne- vale, which endureth the space of three or foure days, all which time the Pope keepeth himself out of Rome, so great is the noyse and hurlie- burlie. The first day the J ewes in Rome appoint certain wagers at their owne costes, and then they run stark naked for them from Porta Popolo to the Capitoll, the which I judge above a myle in length ; and all the way they (the Christians) gallop their great horses after them, and carie goades with sharpe pointes of Steele in them, wherewith they will pricke the J ewes on the naked skin, if so bee they doo not run faster than their horses gallop, so that you shall see some of their backs all one gore blood. Then he that cometh first to the foot of the Capitoll is set on a horsebacke without any saddle, and you shall see a hundred boys whoe have provided a number of orenges ; they will so pelt the poore J ewe that before he can get uppe to the Capitoll he will be beaten beside his horse foure or five times.' Truly, the 'J ewes' were obstinate, not to see how much better the Christian religion was TREA TMENT OF JEWS 261 than the faith of their fathers! And nothing was left undone to bring them to a better mind ; they were forced to hear a sermon in church once a week, and a paternal Govern- ment sent officials into the Ghetto to drive them in — men, women, and children — with scourges, if reluctant, and to keep up their attention in church with a whip if they showed any signs of mental wandering. The means of grace were graciously offered them, and only their wicked hardness of heart prevented them from accepting it. The diary of a pious Churchman of that date thus alludes to this gentle Christian practice : i A moving sight it is, of so many of the besotted, blind, and restive Hebrews thus maternally brought — nay (for He saith, Compel them to come in), haled, as it were, by the head and hair — to partake of the heavenly grace.' Incredible as it may seem, this moving sight was only finally abolished by Pius IX. Those who are able should certainly ascend the dome of St. Peter's, for thereby a better idea is gained of the real size of the building 262 ROME than in any other way. It is a curious sight when you first emerge from the winding stair- case on to the main roof, and find yourself in a large and busy village, containing streets of shops and dwelling-houses, among which rise great domes and gigantic statues ; smiths and stonemasons and carpenters are busy in their shops, while cooking and washing operations are in full swing. The repairs of the fabric of St. Peter's cost annually seven thousand pounds, and this is the mountain home of an army of workmen. After strolling through the village, you begin the ascent of the dome, winding upwards between the inner and the outer dome, both of solid stone, and so close together that you can touch both at the same time. In course of time you again emerge, to find yourself now in an aerial gallery, from whence all Rome and the glory of it may be seen spread out below you, and the curving Tiber winding towards Ostia, and the blue line of sea in the distance. Then, up again, up a perpendicular ladder through a narrow hole, and at last you are inside the great copper ball, which is hot to the touch even on an April morning. It is a somewhat fearful joy to have achieved, for you feel it necessary to move gingerly, and ASCENT OF ST. PETER'S DOME 263 you experience horrid qualms if one of your companions leans over unduly, for fear the ball should topple from off its pinnacle. Ha, ha ! how madly and merrily it would bound down the smooth sides of the dome, and startle the big statues, and bound and bound again, till at last it found a resting-place in the muddy Tiber, with the seven-branched golden candlestick from the Temple. And as this vision crosses your mind you sit as straight as if you were in an outrigger, and show great alacrity in descending to the re- assuring solidity of the dome. Your steps are further hastened by the memory of a horrid story you have read of two Spanish monks who were in Rome in the year 1 730, and, like your- self, climbed up into the ball, and were actually sitting there when the first shock of the great earthquake took place — an experience of such appalling horror that one of them died on the spot. You feel no sort of wish to tempt Fate further by trying to reach the cross on the top of the ball, and it even makes you shudder to think of its having ever been done. Mr. Eustace tells us that some middies of the frigate Medusa successfully performed the frightful feat, and that M. de la Lande, secre- 264 ROME tary to the French Ambassador, records the same thing of a young French lady, who some years previously had scrambled up, and had, like a true Frenchwoman, leaned against the cross 1 avec une souplesse et une grace inconcevable f In the shadow of St. Peter's lies the oldest of all the Christian cemeteries in Rome. It is a very tiny, very secluded spot, but it is filled with earth brought from Calvary by the Empress Helena, and was set apart for Christian burial by her son Constantine, as is recorded in an ancient Latin inscription over the gate. It was given in the last century by the Pope to the Germans as a burying-ground, and is known as the Cimiterio dei Tedeschi. The air of the little quiet Gottesacker is filled with the aromatic scent of the eucalyptus-trees which grow there, a whiff from the newest world thus blending with the odour of sanctity which clings to this most ancient spot. The Protestant cemetery is far removed from this centre of piety ; it lies in the remotest corner of Rome, as befits the naughtiness of sheep who have strayed from the fold, and in PROTESTANT CEMETERY 265 the shadow of the great wall built by Aurelian. But it is as quiet and as peaceful as the more ancient cemetery, and its dead sleep as soundly as those who are laid in earth from Calvary. It is thickly planted with tall cypresses, whose straight columns form aisles in which the glad song of many birds is heard, and against the soft darkness of the cypress grove a Judas-tree showed its rosy radiance, the very embodiment of spring. Here is Shelley's tombstone, and next to it is laid his friend Trelawney. But the poet's tomb is empty ; his body was burnt on the shore where the blue waves of the Gulf of Spezia had cast it up, and his heart was taken to England. He loved Rome, and he tells us that ' its bright blue sky and the effect of the awakening spring in that divinest climate ' were the in- spiration of his l Prometheus Unbound.' He, too, must have watched the glory of the Judas- trees as he sat writing upon the ' mountainous ruins of Caracalla's Baths, among the thickets of blossoming trees, which extend in labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches ' ; and the voice of spring, as he says, drenched his spirits even to intoxication. At the distance of a stone's-throw is the grave of Keats, with its melancholy epitaph — ' Here 266 ROME lies one whose name was writ in water ' — and close to it rises the great pyramid that marks the grave of an old heathen — praetor, tribune and priest — who died before Christ was born. The Catacombs of Rome extend in galleries whose windings are many hundreds of miles in length, and contain some millions of burial niches ; but we had seen enough of catacombs at Naples, and had no wish to see any more. We were told a gruesome story of a lady, travelling by herself, who joined a party going to visit the Catacombs, and, getting separated from them, was lost in the horrible labyrinth ; as she belonged to none of the party, she was not missed, and for two days and two nights she was alone in the thick darkness of this awful tomb. Meanwhile the hotel people had been making inquiries about their missing guest, with the result that a search-party was organized and she was found. That such accidents have not been very un- common may be gathered from the fact that a passage leading from an ancient church to the Catacombs has been walled up on account of twenty persons having been lost in it. A more ROMAN COLUMBARIA 267 ghastly fate it would be impossible to wish for the greatest of criminals. No greater contrast in burial customs could be seen than is afforded by a visit to the Roman Columbaria after having burrowed about in the dismal tunnels of the Catacombs. These pagan burial-places are deep, square chambers, below ground now, though probably not so two thousand years ago, the walls of which are full of small niches to contain funeral urns. These niches, like those in modern Italian cemeteries, could be bought in perpetuity, and contained usually two or more urns. On one fine urn of alabaster were the words in Latin : ' Touch not, O Mortal ! Reverence the shades of the sacred Dead.' On many a small urn were touching words recording the loss of a child ; one of these was : Put up by P. Brsebius, father, and Baebia Zoxime, mother, to their most beloved son, who lived six years eleven months and sixteen days ; and to Baebia, their sweetest daughter.' ' To the departed shades ; to my daughter, who lived eleven years and nine months.' Another bore an inscription to a ' father and his sweetest daughter, who both died on the same day, and were both burnt on the same pile.' 268 ROME Their ashes were mingled together in one urn, beyond the reach of corruption for ever. It would be impossible that gloomy and morbid fancies, such as often haunt the minds of Christians, should be linked with a handful of white ashes ; the horrors of the tomb, as pictured by morbid imaginations, cannot exist where cremation is practised. Rome possesses one of the most singular and elaborate specimens of that charnel-house architecture that has such a strange fascination for some natures, but appears to be confined solely to Christians. In the monastery of the Capuchin monks are four low vaulted halls, where the members of the Order receive burial ; and the decoration of these vaults is carried out wholly in human bones. Against the walls are grottoes and niches constructed out of stacks of bones, and in each of these niches stands a long-dead Capuchin monk, clad in his brown robe, with the eyeless sockets of his skull peering from beneath the hood. The ceilings are decorated with tasteful arabesques of jawbones, ribs, and finger-joints ; friezes of vertebrae, pelvis-bones, and skulls, adorn the walls ; and the fanciful chandeliers themselves are entirely constructed of bones that once were covered with sinews and flesh, CAPUCHIN CEMETERY 269 and had leapt and danced. But, lo, they were now very dry. A large space in the floor of each hall is filled with earth from the Holy Land, and in this the monks are buried. When all are full, and another grave is required, the oldest in- habitant is exhumed, dressed in the robes of his Order, and placed in a niche, giving up his bed in holy earth to the new-comer. The old monk whose labour of love this decoration used to be is long dead, and his bones mingled with the rest, so we learnt from a stout and rosy monk, who grinned jovially as he told us. So now, when the monks die, and in due course are resurrected, there is no one to make little arabesques of their finger-joints, or pleasant decorations of their spinal columns. Their bones will all be piled up without any regard for artistic effect — in fact, quite wasted. They might almost as well be burnt. We spent an interesting morning, while in Rome, at the English College, which, originally founded as a hospice for English palmers, is now a college for Englishmen training for the priesthood. 27o ROME We who have been brought up on Foxes 4 Book of Martyrs,' and have as children shuddered over the fires of Smithfield and the cruelties of Bloody Mary, find ourselves looking at things here from a totally different, anti- podean standpoint, which makes us feel very much as Alice did after she had got through the looking-glass. In the corridor is a list of two hundred and sixty Roman Catholic martyrs who suffered for their faith in England, under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth ; and their martyrdoms are depicted in a series of vivid frescoes, copied, we were told, from ancient ones. We see them being racked and burnt and disembowelled, dragged on hurdles, quartered, clothed in the skins of beasts, and torn in pieces by dogs — just as if they were the poor Protestants over whose, dreadful fate our own Protestant hair has so often stood on end ; and now we are expected to sympathize with the unfortunate Romanists — the very monsters for whom we have felt, as we read of the horrors of the Inquisition, and the massacres of innocent victims all the world over, that no punishment, no retribution, could be adequate. Why, in Spain alone, were not more than thirty thousand men, women, and children put to cruel deaths by the Inquisition ? How is THE ENGLISH COLLEGE 271 it that no mention is made of them, no picture painted of an auto-da-fe, at this English College, if only out of common fairness, and to wipe out the small debt charged against the Protestants ? The beam in the eye of a Romanist assuredly needs casting out before he can see things clearly, or in their true proportions. Below each harrowing scene are the Latinized names of this small band of Roman Catholic victims : Plumptreeus, Sherwodus, Fisherus, and so on. We see a row of Carthusian monks in their white frocks and hoods, hanging dismally by the neck, and three venerable Abbots all strung in a row. We see how different two sides of a shield may be made to look, and how important it is only to look at one of them if we wish our convictions to be strong and clear-cut. Cardinal Vaughan's secretary showed us round the College, and he told us that the titular dignities of the suppressed abbeys in England have always been kept up, and that, although he has no abbey, there is at this day an Abbot of Glastonbury and an Abbot of Westminster. They are all in readiness to resume their posts on the day when England shall repent her of her schism, and throw herself at the feet of the Holy Father. The 272 ROME Roman Church is full of hope that the return of the prodigal is not far distant, and, when it comes, we may be sure she will not grudge the fattest of fatted calves. In the refectory we saw the long tables laid for dinner, and our English Cardinal's plate at the high table, beneath a painting of our national patron saint and his dragon. The church is dedicated to the haughty Becket, who, through the gate of a violent death, attained the glory of canonization, under the title of San Tommaso degli Inglesi. In it is a memorial tablet to a young English girl, Martha Swinburn, who died in 1767, at the age of nine years and eleven months. The epitaph relates that : ' Her years were few, but her life was long and full. . . . She spoke English, French, and Italian, knew the English and Roman histories, arithmetic, and geography, sang the most diffi- cult music at sight, was a great proficient on the harpsichord, wrote well, and danced with elegance. Her face was beautiful and majestic, her body a perfect model, and all her move- ments graceful. Her docility could only be equalled by her sense and aptitude. . . . With so many perfections, and the praises of all persons, from the Sovereign down to the EPITAPH ON A CHILD 273 beggar, her heart was incapable of vanity ; affectation and arrogance were unknown to her. Her beauty and accomplishments made her the admiration of all beholders, the beloved of all that enjoyed her company. . . . Let this plain character, penned by her disconsolate father, draw a tear of pity from every eye that peruses it/ The young priest who showed us the epitaph giggled boisterously as he read it aloud. He saw only the ludicrous element in it, and was deaf and blind to the pathos underlying the stilted phrases, and to the rare beauty of character described in the pompous language of a bygone style. For myself, I must own that the smile excited by the minute and pompous details was followed by a dimness that came before my eyes as I thought of the bright, sweet child, so loved by all who knew her, and so early called away. * There are said to be as many churches in Rome as there are days in the year. Many people will visit a dozen in one day, but my powers of mental digestion are not of this 18 274 ROME ostrich-like robustness, and personally I saw- very few. The Church of St. Maria Mater Dei possesses among its relics a few precious boards, said to have belonged to the manger at Bethlehem. Its Sistine and Borghese chapels are marvels of wealth, and of the magnificence of marble and mosaic, Popes, paintings, Cupids, garlands, and gilding. High Mass was being celebrated, and the sun, shining down through the thick, incense-laden atmosphere, made ladders of light so solid and substantial that it would have needed but little imagination to see the angels ascending and descending on them. The site of this church, one of the finest in Rome, was selected in a truly miraculous manner. The Madonna appeared in a vision simultaneously to the Pope and to a rich Roman patrician, on the night of August 4, a.d. 352, and desired them to build her a church on the spot where snow should be found lying on the morrow. And on the following morning snow lay on the Esquiline Hill. There is a curious likeness between the wishes of the pagan and the Christian divinities, and in their mode of conveying them to mortals ; one sometimes seems almost to hear the words of the Delphic oracle. CHURCH OF SAN PAOLO 275 The Church of St. Paolo beyond the Walls is one of the most ancient foundations of all at Rome, though the present building is quite modern, the old church having been destroyed by fire some seventy years ago. It has been rebuilt with a magnificence worthy of the Ages of Faith, by means of contributions from all parts of the world, and notably from England. Nor is it only the faithful among Catholics who have contributed to its splendour ; the beautiful columns of Oriental alabaster that support the canopy above the high altar were presented by the Viceroy of Egypt. Times have indeed changed since the days of the Crusades, when an infidel, a follower of Mahound, may present such a gift, and the head of the Christian Church may accept it. The cloisters of the old Monastery of St. Paolo were not injured by the fire that destroyed the church, and very beautiful they are, with their slender twin shafts, carved and twisted and fluted, with scraps still to be seen of the delicate mosaic work that once filled in the flutings. The quadrangle within the cloisters is planted with China roses, whose pink buds and tender sappy shoots were redolent of spring and eternal youth and hope. Not far from San Paolo is the Church of the 276 ROME Three Fountains, built on the spot where tradition says the Apostle was beheaded ; and these fountains are said to have gushed forth where his head first fell, and where it afterwards made two bounds. The Abbey delle Tre Fontane is situated in the desolate, dreary Campagna, and was at one time almost wholly deserted on account of the fatal malaria which is here prevalent ; but within the last thirty years groves of eucalyptus-trees have been extensively planted, with the result that the spot has become much healthier. I picked up some of their aromatic, parchment-like, scimitar- shaped leaves, in memory of the mode of St. Paul's martyrdom. We also visited the alleged scene of Peter's martyrdom, on the Janiculum Hill, where is built the Church of St. Pietro in Montorio. A priest shows you the very spot where the cross was erected on which the Apostle in his humility insisted on being crucified head downwards. Rome is full of such traditional sites and objects, and myth, miracle, and legend are so interwoven with things visible and tangible, that the boundaries of the real and the unreal become wholly confused. You are shown the column of the Temple against which Christ leant, the pillar to which St. Sebastian was SAN PIETRO IN MONTORIO 277 tied, the stone on which Mary rested, the chains that bound St. Peter, the cave where Romulus and Remus were reared, the bridge where Horatius won eternal fame, and countless other objects connected with both sacred and profane history. The guides have no un- certainty about any of them. The onus of doubt is thrown entirely upon you. It was here at St. Pietro, in front of the high altar, that Beatrice Cenci was buried, when her most sad young life had been ended by the headsman's axe. If she was in truth believed to be guilty of her far more guilty father's death, it seems strange that she should have been accorded the privilege of burial in so sacred a spot. From the terrace in front of the church a most superb panorama of the city and the Campagna is seen ; every building stood out clear and sharp in the thin, buoyant air of an April day, and the sky's deep blue vault was limitless in height and spaciousness. At the Church of St. Maria in Aracceli, on the Capitol Hill, is a very famous wonder- 278 ROME working image of the infant Christ, known as II Santo Bambino. It is a pleasant, chubby- faced wooden doll, about sixteen inches in height, adorned — encrusted, I might say — with magnificent jewels. It has its own carriage and horses and attendants, and drives out in great state occasionally to visit sick children, and it is believed to effect more cures than all the doctors in Rome. It is an ever-fresh surprise to me to see the readiness with which the priests show their most sacred images and relics to the most obviously heretical, and presumably sceptical, of sightseers. I should have thought that to most natures this would be as painful as it would be to divulge the inmost wish of your heart to an unsympathetic or scoffing hearer. But there is no sign that they find the task distasteful. In one of the side-chapels of this church there is a wonderful collection of votive pictures presented by persons who have — by the special intervention of the Madonna, as they think — escaped dangers. One cannot but recall the story of Diogenes, who was taken into a temple to see a collection of similar ex votos offered by those who had escaped shipwreck, and was asked : ' What do you say now ? you EX VOTO OFFERINGS 279 who think the gods have no care of human beings — when you see how many persons have been preserved from death by their special favour ? 1 Why, I say that the pictures are not here of those who were cast away and lost — which were by far the greater number.' The artistic excellence of these ex votos bears no relation to the gratitude of their donors, and many of them are in a comically primitive style of art. Accidents by falling into the water, or from ladders, or by fire, or by runaway horses, are largely represented ; but apparently the most frequent source of danger is being run over ; pictures of persons lying under the wheels of a carriage are innumerable. Nor will anyone who has walked in the streets of Rome or Naples wonder that this should be so ; the only wonder is that such accidents do not happen perpetually, for the drivers have no interest in avoiding them ; anyone who may be so unlucky as to get run over in Italy is liable to be haled before a magistrate and fined for having got in the way — a paternal practice which greatly encourages furious and reckless driving. The most wonderful collection of ex votos is, however, to be found in the Church of St. Agostino. There is a famous statue there of 2 8o ROME the Virgin and Child, and two hundred days' indulgence in the next world are promised to anyone who shall kiss the Virgin's toe and devoutly repeat an Ave Maria. Crowds are always before her, and they kiss her toe with profoundest devotion, and then dip a finger in the oil of one of the lamps burning before her shrine, and sign themselves with the sign of the cross. We saw small toddling children reverently lifted up to kiss her foot, and start a credit account for themselves in the ledgers of the unseen world. The Mother and Child are literally smothered with crowns, jewels, and ornaments, while the entire wall is hung with votive offerings, silver and wax legs, arms, feet, and hands, a little child's lace frock, countless pictures of dangers escaped, jewellery, pistols, and daggers. These latter, we were told, were offered by assassins ; but I do not understand why they should be ; would they vow their murderous weapon to the Madonna if their attempt should prove suc- cessful ? One of the most striking sights we saw while n Rome was on Good Friday at the Scala THE SCALA SANTA 281 Santa. The Scala Santa is a flight of twenty- eight marble steps from the palace of Pontius Pilate at Jerusalem, and it is believed that once they were trodden by the feet of Jesus. They were brought to Rome by the indefatigable Empress Helena, and may only be ascended on bended knees ; nine years' indulgence, applicable to Purgatory, are granted for each of the twenty-eight steps thus ascended, the ascent of the whole flight deducting, therefore, two hundred and fifty-two years from the sum of your future torments. Whether this reflection was uppermost in the minds of those who were painfully ascending the steps on the day we saw them, the Almighty only can know ; but it did not strike me as being the keynote of their thoughts. The stairs were entirely hidden from sight by a slowly moving stream of people, men and women, young and aged. Numbers of them bent to kiss each step before climbing on to it, and their earnest air of concentrated devotion, and the tears of many, seemed to show that their thoughts were dwelling more on the sufferings their Lord had once endured, than on the future alleviation of their own. If anyone will make a trial of ascending his own staircase on his knees, he will be better 282 ROME able to appreciate the physical effort implied by ascending twenty-eight steps of marble in such a way, and will wonder that feeble and aged persons should be found to have the necessary endurance to accomplish it. Nothing, 1 think, but a lively faith could have enabled some of those we saw to go through with it. It is faith also that sustains a Hindoo devotee when standing on his head between four fires, as I have seen them doing. Strange that faith, though fixed on things so different, should produce results so similar ! # One beautiful moonlight night we were filled with an irrepressible wish to go to the Colos- seum and have a quiet, peaceful stroll through its mighty haunted ruins, so tourist-trodden and belectured by daytime. The idea was delightful, but, to our sorrow, we found it had also occurred to the greater part of Rome. As we approached the building, we saw to our dismay some ten cab-stands drawn 'up outside in the moonlight, and from the solemn ruins proceeded a loud, cheerful hum, as in a theatre between the acts. Alas for our peaceful stroll ! It was worse a THE PANTHEON 283 thousandfold than by daylight ; every Roman 'Any was there with his young woman ; every tourist, and especially every Yankee, in Italy seemed to be there ; all that was wanted to complete everyone's happiness was a big band and some Bengal lights. And even these are not always wanting. And so the scenes in the arena, and the deaths of the seventy thousand martyrs who there have laid down their lives, are kept in mind to all time. We visited the Pantheon also that night, and, assuredly, it was quiet and ghostly enough there. The moon was not high enough to look down through the wide circle so mag- nificently open to the sky, where rain and sunshine and moonlight have poured in for nineteen hundred years, and the huge space was shrouded in gloom too deep for us to distinguish anything. We were quite, quite alone among the ghosts of the martyrs, whose bones — twenty-eight waggon-loads of them — were placed beneath the altar when the images of the false gods were overthrown, and the building was consecrated to the God of the Christians. Raffaelle's tomb is there, too — the first among artists ; and Victor Emmanuel's, first of Italian Kings. We were in illustrious company, 284 ROME but it was a little ghostly. We wished the moon were higher. It would not, perhaps, be easy to give a reason for the faith that is in us, but I fancy there are few of us who do not feel in their inmost heart that such things as have happened in the past cannot possibly happen again in the future. Macaulay's New Zealander is a much- quoted personage, but none the more for that is he considered to be within the range of practical possibilities, any more than is a recurrence of a glacial epoch. No doubt it is natural to men, this belief in the stability and permanence of their institu- tions, since, when compared with the duration of their individual lives, that of a nation or of a building is truly a type of stability and of long duration. It must of necessity have been as impossible for one of the inhabitants of busy, populous Cumae to believe in a day coming when no trace should remain of the colossal walls and buildings of his native town, as it is for one of us to believe that such a fate can ever overtake London. We simply cannot believe in such a possibility. THE EBB OF FORTUNE'S TIDE 285 And when we look at the Rome of to-day, at her greatness and magnificence, it is almost equally difficult to believe that twice she has been within measurable distance of sharing the fate of Cumae, of Paestum, and of the yet greater cities of Etruria — once her rivals — whose very site even is in dispute. Yet once, when the seat of government was removed to Ravenna, Rome sank in three hundred years to an incredibly low ebb, as it did again in the fourteenth century, when the Popes deserted it for Avignon. Ranke tells us that before the day of their return Rome had become a mere dwelling of herdsmen — : her inhabitants were in no way distinguished from the shepherds and peasants of the sur- rounding country ; cattle wandered about as in a village ; a great part of the city had become garden and marsh, the resort of flocks of wild- fowl. The higher parts of the city had been long abandoned, and the dwellings were gathered together in the levels along the river ; no pavements were found in the narrow streets, which were darkened by the buttresses that were used to prop up the houses. The very memory of antiquity was fast fading ; the Capitol had become " the hill of goats"; the Forum Romanum was now " the cows' field." 286 ROME To the few monuments yet remaining the people attached the most absurd legends. The Cathedral of St. Peter's was on the point of falling to pieces.' If the short space of seventy years had sufficed to bring about such a state of things as this, it is obvious that, had the prayers and persuasions of St. Catherine of Siena not been successful in inducing the Pope to return again to Rome, a few more centuries would have sealed her doom, and the marsh-fowl and the malaria would have reigned among the monu- ments of the Caesars as they do among the temples of the great gods at Paestum. Such a thing seems impossible in the past, even though we see how narrowly it escaped becoming a reality, and far more emphatically does it seem impossible in the future. # The Castle of St. Angelo, built as a mauso- leum, and early converted into a fortress, is still the most striking object in some of the best known views of Rome. Gone are all its colonnades and its rows of marble statues — which latter were found highly effective as CASTLE OF SANT ANGELO 287 missiles to hurl down upon the attacking barbarians — and gone are the precious marbles that faced and lined its monstrous walls. But the rock-like masses of brickwork that remain remind us of the builders of the Pyramids, and are imposing by force of mere mass. On the top of the building St. Michael spreads his huge bronze wings above the empty funeral vaults that once held the corpses of the pagan Caesars, and higher still waves the flag of Italy, so detested a sight in the eyes of the Head of the Church, and in those of the least wise among his flock. But St. Angelo has seen Popes in far more grievous straits than ever the present Pope has been in. His life has never been in danger, his personal liberty never threatened. But other Popes have been kept here as prisoners — prisoners in their own castle ; and have even died here — and not a natural death. A graphic account has been left us, in the diary of a German officer, of the capture of Pope Clement VII., when the city was taken by the Imperial troops in the year 1527. The Pope and twelve of his Cardinals had hidden themselves in the castle ; but, their hiding- places being discovered, they were dragged out in highest glee by the delighted soldiery ; 288 ROME the Landsknechte tore off the Cardinals' fine red robes and fine red hats, and, dressing up in this plundered finery, rode through the streets on asses, shouting in uproarious merriment that Luther should be Pope ; they would have no Pope but Luther—' Long live Pope Luther I' One of the fellows was an especial object of terror to the wretched Pope, who could never tell what new form of annoyance his mischief and malice might devise. He openly declared that he would like to tear a piece of flesh from the Pope, if only to tell Luther he had done so, as the Pope had greatly hindered the Word of God. The diarist adds — ' There was great lamentation among the Cardinals ; they wept sore, and we all obtained great riches.' After this the Pope was imprisoned for a year or more, and only released on payment of a heavy ransom. The Holy Fathers did not always lie on beds of roses. We saw the dismal dungeon where Giordano Bruno passed the last three days of his .life, previous to being led out and burnt alive for his obstinate heresy in opposing the philosophy of Aristotle and in advocating the Copernican system. The Church was firmly determined to crush this impious and most pernicious CASTLE OF SANT ANGELO 289 heresy ; the world never had moved, and it never should move, so long as fire and steel could be relied on. By the strange irony of fate, the power of persecution seems invariably to be placed in the hands of those who are the most con- servative and the most short-sighted of their time. Men of this type always stand well with their own generation, and it is only subsequent generations that recognize — too late to save the victims of their fanaticism — the short- sighted and futile nature of their policy. And thus it is that one generation builds sepulchres or raises monuments to the very prophets whom their fathers had killed. But they do not learn a lesson ; they, too, have prophets, and they persecute them, even as their fathers did. The infallibility of the Popes received a sounding slap in the face when a statue was erected to this very Bruno a few years ago on the site where he was put to a cruel death for the crime of being in advance of his age. We saw, too, the dungeon from which Benvenuto Cellini contrived to escape at the cost of a broken leg, and the worse dungeon where Beatrice Cenci was immured, alone with the memory of her burning wrongs, and — who knows ? — perhaps also the haunting memory of 19 2QO ROME how she had avenged them. She only quitted the dungeon once when she was taken to the Chamber of the Inquisition to be put to the torture, and again on the day when she, and her mother, and her brother, all laid their heads on the block. If only walls had tongues as well as ears, what tales to freeze our blood these walls could unfold ! The Chamber of the Inquisition has still its iron stanchions, to which victims were strung up when hot irons were to be applied to their feet ; and sockets in the floor for the tall posts against which men were garrotted, a process which the castle Guide illustrates for you with complacent and revolting facetiousness. Close at hand is the former bedroom of the Popes ; it is decorated by Giulio Romano with amorous scenes, breathing a spirit more appro- priate to the bedroom of a pagan Emperor than that of a Christian High-priest. The affinity of the Popes to the Roman Emperors was, indeed, far greater in all ways than was their affinity to the fishermen of Galilee. From this bedroom led a' covered passage to the Vatican Palace, useful for flight in sudden danger, and more than once so used. It may still be seen, cleaving its way high among the poor houses of this quarter ; but it can no MOSAIC WORKS 291 longer be used ; its continuity was destroyed in September, 1870, when Pius IX. caused it to be broken down at one spot on the day so memorable for Italy, so bitterly remembered by the Popes, when the temporal power of the Papacy ceased to exist, and the troops of United Italy gained possession of Rome and of the Castle of St. Angelo. A visit to the Papal Mosaic Works at the Vatican is full of interest. It is there that the magnificent copies in mosaic of Raffaelle's * Transfiguration ' and Domenichino's ' St. Jerome ' were executed that so gloriously adorn the walls of St. Peter's ; the first time we saw them we looked at them long and care- fully without perceiving that they were not oil- paintings, so marvellous is the perfection to which this art of ' painting for eternity ' has been brought. There, too, was made the series of great portrait medallions of all the Popes that adorns the Church of St. Paolo without the Walls. There are some two hundred and sixty links in the connecting chain between Peter of Galilee, whose temporal power was nil, and Leo XIII., 292 ROME whose temporal power has so grievously been reduced ; and we were told by the foreman at the works that forty men had been engaged for twenty-five years in executing the series of medallions. This does not surprise anyone who has watched the men at work ; one of them was preparing some minute strips of opaque glass to form an outline, and the time and patience required in their preparation were truly wonderful. There are no less than twenty- eight thousand shades of coloured glass used at the works, and it must need a remarkable gift by nature, added to most careful training, to enable the artist to select the precise shades that will produce the effect required ; it will take, perhaps, a hundred minute pieces to give the result produced by one sweep of a painter's brush. But when finished, the work is indis- tinguishable, at the distance of a few feet, from the painting of which it is a copy, and it has this inestimable superiority, that it is practically indestructible. Mosaic and tapestry seem to me essentially arts appropriate to the service of religion and to the adornment of kings' palaces ; they are the most noble decorative works of men's hands. 57 1 . PETERS FROM TIVOLI 293 It was nearing the end of April when we made an excursion to Tivoli, and the Campagna, so brown and barren when we passed through it in January on our way southward, was now one luxuriant prairie of rich grass, enamelled with great sweeps of colour in flowery patches. Near Tivoli the line takes a wide curve, and far off, on the level horizon, is seen a mountainous solitary dome — that of St. Peter's. Distance does for this Titan among buildings what time does for a Titan among mortals, and shows the place it really occupies in its generation. The contemporaries of a great man are too near him to be able to forecast with truth the position he will occupy relatively to his genera- tion when five centuries shall have passed ; many heads seem almost equally prominent. And to anyone standing on the Janiculum, the dome of St. Peter's does not look vastly greater than the domes of St. Agnese, St. Andrea delle Valle and one or two others ; indeed, there is no great apparent disparity in size between them. But at the distance of eighteen miles the true difference is clearly seen ; St. Peter's dome rises magnificently on the horizon without a rival. Nothing else breaks the level line that marks the meeting of earth and sky in one 294 ROME vast circular sweep to the south-west. From hence it astonishes you as much by its apparent size as when seen from near it does by its apparent want of size. Travelling in the same carriage with us were four English ladies gifted with that power of placid commonplace so amazing to listen to. You think it must dry up at last ; but you are mistaken ; it is inexhaustible in its dull copious- ness. One of these ladies was speaking of a ' very deep ' book she had been reading about Rome, and this led to the question when Rome was founded ; one thought it was at the beginning of our era, while another thought it was thousands of years earlier ; but they were happy in having an oracle of the party who settled all questions with an authority to which they gratefully bowed ; this oracle pro- nounced that Rome was founded B.C. 400, and a murmur of admiration arose at her infallible knowledge. Then one of the party ' was not clear ' about Romulus, whether he came before the Emperors or after them, and her wanf of clearness was shared by the rest ; but again the oracle spake, and informed them that first there had been a Republic, then Kings, and lastly Emperors ; this satisfied them all ; it was a natural process TOURISTS 295 of evolution, and they now felt quite clear. Encouraged by their admiration, the oracle proceeded to give a sketch of Romulus and his career, but it varied so remarkably from any I had before met with that I did not follow it well. The whole party were enthusiastic — if such a word is applicable to their tepid, artificial expressions of enthusiasm — as to the advantages derived from a visit to Rome, and from attend- ing the ' clever lectures ' they had been patronizing. And so their placid stream of conversation flowed on without break, entirely supplying the absence of thought. What degrees there are in ignorance ! To be ignorant of facts, even of such facts as Macaulay says are known to every schoolboy, is nothing, if you have a clear-cut knowledge that you are ignorant of them ; Glanvill, indeed, declares that — ' 'tis a good degree of science, to be sensible that we want it.' But shallow, hazy, complacent ignorance, such as that of these women, argues a hopeless state, and a mind such as George Eliot defined as being 'well glazed against the admission of knowledge.' The members of the travelling sisterhood are met with at Rome in larger battalions than perhaps anywhere else ; their ranks include old maids, young maids, matrons, and widows, and 296 ROME they are usually met with in parties varying from two to six in number. They are conscientious and hard-working sight-seers, and may be seen listening devotionally to a lecturer in the Forum or the Colosseum, and taking copious notes of his discourse, or standing before the Cnidian Venus or the Laocoon and writing with feverish fervour in their note-books. Poor souls ! I used to wonder if they ever found time to think. A vast proportion of them have gray hair, and all have Baedekers ; a great majority are also of exceeding plainness — not the plainness belonging to mere features, which is of little account, but that far deeper plainness which results from the want of that Divine spark, whether of soul or of intellect, that has the power of irradiating with beauty and interest the plainest or most aged face. No discernment on the part of an Italian is required to recognize a tourist ; it is in vain that tourists resort to many devices to conceal the self-revealing character of their guide- books : some cover them in green, some in black ; some even have black covers and gilt edges, which might at first deceive the in- experienced into really supposing them to be prayer-books. But it is a vain disguise : no TOURISTS 297 prayer-book was ever studied in season and out of season with the anxious and minute attention given to these protean books. It is quite a curious sight to watch a crowd of people moving slowly along, open book in hand, professed votaries of Baedeker. In Italy one meets with every species of what Mr. Leslie Stephen calls ' that offensive variety of the genus of primates, the common tourist ' ; and undoubtedly it is the most ignorant who are the most amusing. The depths of travelled ignorance are so profound that it would be hopeless to invent any specimens of it that could equal genuine instances. Sitting next to us at a table d'hote at Naples one night was a young lady with bejewelled fingers, who had just arrived from London by sea. We shortly discovered that neither she nor her party spoke any Italian, but believed it to be identical with French ; she had learnt French — after the ' schoole of Stratford atte Bowe, for frensh of Parys was to her unknowe ' — and evidently supposed that any ' foreigners ' would understand a foreign language. We asked her if she meant to ascend Vesuvius, to which she placidly replied — 'Vesuvius? I don't know. What is it 7 A friend of ours met a Cook's tourist at Pisa, 298 ROME and asked him where thev had come from that day : ' Ton my honour, I can't remember — Jones !' (to his fellow-tourist opposite) ' where is it we've come from to-day ? Genoa ? — oh, it was Genoa.' They had been there two days. Their pronunciation of foreign names is often extremely droll : anything belonging to the country is called * Eye-talian ' ; the Grotta del Cane is commonly known as the 'Cain Grotto,' the Laocoon as the ' Lay-o'-coon,' while Castellamare becomes, with perverse ingenuity, 1 CastelF-a-mareeV One of our fellow-guests was a German professor, very pompous and self-satisfied, who spoke really fluent English, but could never remember that bekommen is not ' to become ' ; and into this trap he fell perpetually, to our boundless delight ; he told us that on one occasion he had great difficulty in getting anything to eat at an out-of-the-way village — ! But in the end 1 became a fine fat fowl.' He was himself so fine and fat that this meta- morphosis was highly appropriate. Occasionally one hears the most astonishing bits of information given by tourists suffering from mental indigestion consequent on swallow- ing a perfect macedoine of facts ; one of the funniest related to the Bronze Boar in the TIVOLI 299 Market-place at Florence, which is a copy of the famous Greek antique in the Uffizi Gallery. Our opposite neighbour was enlightening a new- comer as to its history : 1 It is the original, you know, of the marble copy in the Uffizi, and is by Michael Angelo ; he was knocked down in the street one day by a pig, and he said : " It serves me quite right, for I have never modelled a pig in my life." ' This story of a pig is a distorted version of one told about Giotto, and the entire jumble reminds one of a school examination answer ; schoolboys and tourists have, indeed, this one thing in common, that they both are crammed with miscellaneous facts which occasionally get oddly mixed up. But we were on our way to Tivoli, and have taken a long time getting there. We spent delightful hours among its wooded hills, where the foaming cascades thunder down in snowy whiteness, the finest of all being due, not to Nature, but to modern engineers, who have tunnelled the rock to drain off the surplus water of the lake. The deep-blue sky was veiled by a rosy purple mist where the Judas- trees interlaced their flowery branches overhead, and the air was filled with the song of nightingales, and the sound of falling water, and the scent of 3oo ROME swelling buds and growing grasses, and of fresh earth and deep moss, so lovely to ears and nostrils that have been long in great cities, dusty and noisy. It was the last week of April when our stay at Rome came to an end. The day before leaving we took a last drive on the Pincian Hill, beneath arcades of horse- chestnuts in the pride of their young greenery, and decked with myriads of white bloom pyramids, where the wistaria flung its pale purple tassels round the tall pine-stems, and the white Banksia roses fell in cascades from the roofs of the summer-houses, and the laburnum and the Judas-tree vied with each other in beauty and luxuriance of blossom. A scent of rain was in the air, and vast numbers of swifts were weaving their rapid flight in tireless circles, uttering their high shrill cries as they darted hither and thither. The towers and domes of Rome stood out dark and clear against the cool evening sky, the tortoise-like dome of the Pantheon showing its bald top unobtrusively among the parvenu ON THE PINCIAN HILL 301 buildings surrounding it, and the splendid dome of St. Peter's focussing all eyes on it as the acknowledged queen of the world. As we gazed at the beautiful city, we could not but wonder if it was indeed fated to escape the doom that has overtaken the old-world civilizations of Syria and Egypt, Etruria and Greece, and in truth merit its name of the Eternal City. It is not for us creatures of an hour to prophesy. These things lie on the knees of the gods. From Rome we travelled to Orvieto, north- wards up the valley of the yellow Tiber, to the small city built upon a hill, whose streets re- sound only to the steps and voices of man and beast, except when an anomalous hotel carriage rattles along them to meet the foreigners who may arrive by the funicular railway. Orvieto is built on the flat top of an isolated volcanic rock that juts up perpendicularly from the steep slope that spreads away from its base ; it is a natural fortress of immense strength, and has been the site of a city from extremest antiquity. Here was situated Volsinii, one 302 ORVIETO of the cities of the Etruscan league, con- temporaneous, probably, with Troy. But Volsinii was too powerful to be a pleasant neighbour for Rome, and when the Romans got the chance they destroyed the city and its inhabitants as Saul destroyed the Amalekites ; they wiped it from the face of the earth. As an Etruscan city it was dead from that time, some 250 years B.C., but it gradually crept back to life under another name, and began a fresh page. Until twenty years ago its only interest dated from mediaeval times, and centred in one of the monkish legends in which the earlier Christian centuries were so prolific. The legend known as the Miracle of Bolsena forms the subject of one of RafTaelle's frescoes at the Vatican, and belongs to the class of what may be called transubstantiation miracles, of which there are numberless instances. A certain Bohemian priest who was sceptical on the subject of transubstantiation was celebrating Mass at Bolsena, a town twelve miles distant from Orvieto, when he saw drops of blood trickle from the wafer he had just consecrated, staining the chalice-cloth as they fell. This portentous miracle put an immediate end to his doubts, and, on being solemnly reported to the THE MIRACLE OF BOLSENA 303 Pope, the Holy Father instituted the Festival of Corpus Christi in commemoration of this mani- festation from Heaven, and set about building a cathedral at Orvieto to contain the sacred proofs of the miracle. This was at the end of the thirteenth century, when the dogma of transubstantiation had not very long been promulgated, and was felt to be in need of supernatural proof. The chalice- cloth, stained with the sacred and miraculous drops, was brought in solemn procession to Orvieto, and there deposited in a shrine of extraordinary splendour, which is again en- closed within an outer one, only to be opened by four keys, one of which is in the keeping of the Bishop, another of the Mayor, and two others. The side-chapel of the Cathedral in which this famous relic is enshrined is appropriately painted in fresco with scenes illustrating the miracle, as also others connected with the consecrated Host. One of them depicts an invasion by the Saracens, when the infidels were about to destroy the Christian relics, but consented, with sweet reasonableness, to spare them if a miracle should be performed to their satisfac- tion. Thereupon the Bishop took a conse- 304 OR VIE TO crated wafer, and carried it into the open air in presence of the Saracen King and his army ; and, behold ! on the elevation of the Host it was metamorphosed into a Child bearing a Cross ! The Saracens were dumbfounded, and the King and his whole army were converted to Christianity. We do not hear if their subse- quent lives bore out Saladin's dictum, recorded by the Sieur de Joinville — that a good Christian never makes a good Saracen, nor a good Saracen a good Christian. It certainly did not take much to make a good Christian in those days ; a plentiful supply of intolerance was held suffi- cient to atone for any little deficiencies in other Christian virtues. Another large chapel in the transept of the Cathedral contains a Madonna of great miracu- lous powers, and is famous for the magnificent frescoes by Fra Angelico da Fiesole and Luca Signorelli with which it is decorated. They are very different in character, but all are in splendid preservation, the colours of those on the ceiling especially being of extra- ordinary brilliancy, though never having been retouched since laid on by the hands which stiffened in death five hundred years ago. The dear old friar does not deal in horrors, and his Christ enthroned and his bevies of THE CATHEDRAL 305 saints in glory are very beautiful. But Signorelli was a master of anatomy, and his powerful brush revelled in the opportunity afforded him, by painting the Last Judgment, of drawing the nude in every attitude of suffer- ing and terror. In the punishment of the damned his genius runs riot ; horrible demons, with livid limbs and green posteriors, gloat over their helpless victims, while inflicting every insult and torture imaginable, and their hideous forms must have haunted many and many a deathbed since the day when Signorelli's brush evoked them. What bitter irony it would be if the words ' God is love ' could be emblazoned below this fresco, so human in its gratified revenge and brutal punishment ! The Cathedral differs wholly in style from any of the churches at Rome or Naples ; it is said to be the finest example of Italian Gothic, a style differing as much from Northern Gothic as it does from the Romanesque. It is built of black and white stone in alternate horizontal bands, and the zebra-like stripes do not suit the Gothic style, in which all the lines should guide the eye upwards. The west front, for it really is built east and west, consists of three gables, flanked by small pinnacles, and is of incredible splendour of 20 3 o6 ORVIETO decoration. The lower part is enriched by- ancient and magnificent sculpture, while the doorways and shafts are splendid with com- bined sculpture and mosaic work, and the whole of the upper facade glows in glorious colour with mosaic pictures of wonderful brilliancy, and looks like a page torn from an illuminated missal. Ghirlandajo well called mosaic work ' painting for eternity ' ; these mosaics vary in age from two hundred to five hundred years, but the brilliancy of the gold and the colours made me at first suppose them to be quite modern. When the western sun shines on the facade, it is of the most gorgeous splendour. As usual in all Roman Catholic churches, the Madonna is everywhere the chief figure, the Saviour only appearing in the character of her son, as an infant. To paraphrase a witty saying of Talleyrand's, one might describe the relative importance of the two in England and in Italy by saying that in England the Virgin Mary is known as the mother of Jesus, but that in Italy Jesus is known as the son of Mary. In the interior is an east window — a thing we had not seen since crossing the Alps — and in the aisles are traceried lancet-windows, partly ST. PATRICK'S WELL 307 filled with thin slabs of alabaster, whose rich brown tortoiseshell tints are much finer than the weak modern glass filling, the upper part. There are no side-chapels in the nave, only- alcoves, which externally form half-towers, and break the plane of the wall very effectively. Orvieto is well supplied with water by a syphon-aqueduct from some yet greater height at a distance ; and it is strange, on this high plateau, eleven hundred feet above the sea, tc see water gushing out from stand-pipes in the streets. In the Middle Ages the town depended for its supply on wells, one of which is a marvellous work : it was built in the sixteenth century, is two hundred feet deep and forty-five feet wide, and is provided with two spiral staircases, like a double screw, entered from opposite doors at the top, and lighted by arched openings in the shaft. Down one of these staircases, with its broad, shallow, sloping steps, went a train of asses laden with empty barrels, to be filled while standing on the bridge — a veritable Pons Asi- norum — which crosses the well close above the surface of the water, after which they pro- ceeded to ascend by the other twin staircase Thus the upward and downward trains never met, nor even saw each other. 308 ORVIETO We did not descend into the damp depths, but contented ourselves with leaning through one of the arched openings at the top and looking down the huge tube, lined to all appear- ance with green plush, so smooth and rich was the tapestry of moss and maidenhair fern that draped its entire surface. The tiers above tiers of arched windows down the well afforded a wonderful study in perspective, but one im- possible to draw or to photograph. It is called St. Patrick's Well, from some well of that name in Ireland ; but I do not know why it should be. From the top of a square brick tower of mediaeval time, called the Moor's Tower, a magnificent panorama is obtained : at one's feet lie, densely packed, the lichen-speckled brown roofs of the town, their level broken by the striped Cathedral and the campaniles of the many convents, and all comprised in a sharply- defined oval — the top of the plateau. The fortifications of Orvieto can never be thrown down to admit of its bursting its bonds and overflowing ; its limits are rigidly prescribed by Nature. Beyond this cluster of roofs, and far below, stretches the green, flat valley, through which a river winds in shining curves along its wide, ETRUSCAN CEMETERY 309 shingly bed ; and the railway cleaves its un- compromising way northwards towards the faint blue hills where lies Siena. Beyond the valley again rise spreading circles of hills, brown, and violet, and blue, in the soft, ex- quisite tints that seem the peculiar attribute of volcanic soils. No villages were to be seen, nor any habitations. Beyond the densely- packed plateau Nature reigned supreme. I have said that until twenty years ago the interest of Orvieto was confined to mediaeval times ; but since then its antiquarian horizon has been pushed back to an infinite distance. In the year 1875 the existence of a vast Etruscan necropolis was discovered on the slope just below the rampart of rocks ; and to many travellers the interest of the place now centres in these memorials of prehistoric times. It had long been known that Etrurian remains existed, but not till that year was any serious effort made to excavate them. As the work went on, it was found that they had come upon a veritable city of the dead ; thousands of tombs were brought to light, but after being opened and rifled of their contents, they were as a rule covered up again, perhaps to be re- discovered in some future age. It is certain that in many cases this was not the first time 3 io 0RV1ET0 their sanctity had been invaded, for many were empty when discovered. A few only of the tombs are now accessible ; but they are of the deepest interest by reason of the mystery that surrounds the people who built them, and of the evidences they contained of the high civilization that existed in those pre- historic ages. But for their burial customs, the Etruscans would truly have vanished like a vapour, and we might have supposed them to have been a rude race, like, perhaps, the ancient Britons ; but in the care they bestowed on their dead they resembled the Egyptians more nearly than any other people — and, indeed, in many points there appears to have been a resemblance between the two races. The tombs at Orvieto are built of large blocks of carefully-squared stone, fitted together without any mortar, and so perfectly that, after the lapse of between two and three thousand years, you might suppose them to have been built but a few years. The doorway is in- variably composed of three great blocks, the two side ones converging towards the top, like those in Egyptian monuments, and having an immense block to form the lintel ; and all were hermetically closed by means of a heavy slab carefully and beautifully fitted, which ETRUSCAN CEMETERY 311 was frequently broken by the impatient dis- coverers. All the tombs are built on the same pattern, like a small hut, having a steeply-pitched gable roof, in which each stone slab projects further than the last — a style which is said to be the earliest form of vaulting ; the roofs, like the walls, are in perfect order, the slabs fitting with such accuracy that the blade of a knife could not be put between them. We took no measurements, but I should guess the dimensions of each tomb to have been about nine feet by seven feet, and about eight feet high in the centre ; at the end, and along one side, are stone slabs, resting on stone trestles, and on these slabs the bodies were laid, wrapped in their robes and wearing their jewels, to await the resurrection ; beneath the slabs were placed statues, bronzes, and painted vases, while hung round the walls on bronze nails, which here and there still remain, were shields, bronze jugs, and weapons. There has been great discussion among the learned as to the origin of these painted vases, some authorities having maintained that the art of painting them was introduced from Greece, and that, consequently, they could not possess the antiquity claimed for them ; but the most 312 ORVIETO probable theory, in the opinion of other authori- ties — and one that seems to me entirely borne out by internal evidence — is that both Etruria and Greece derived the art from a common source, and that the Etruscan vases, far from being degenerate Greek, are the productions of a much more primitive era of art. They are far more Egyptian in character, and far less well drawn than the Italo-Greek vases found in the Greek colonies of Italy ; and it is said that in the Egyptian tombs of Beni Hassan, which are known to date from 2082 B.C., many of the same subjects are represented as are seen on the Etruscan vases, such as wrestling, foot- racing, and other games celebrated at funerals. A collection of vases taken from these Orvieto tombs was presented to the present Pope, and may be seen in the Vatican museum. There, too, we saw a beautiful embossed breast- plate of pure gold, found in the tomb of one who had been a Pontifex Maximus, a contem- porary, perhaps, of Aaron, and an exquisite golden wreath of oak-leaves, and the heavy gold jewellery that had been found on the slab where once the corpse of a great lady had been laid, but of which a mere film in mortal dust was traceable when the tomb was entered. In that tomb was also found a small inkstand ETRUSCAN CEMETERY 313 of highest importance, for on it was engraved a Greco- Pelasgic alphabet, with a few letters combined into syllables ; and by this precious discovery some of the Etruscan inscriptions have been interpreted. But not all. At Orvieto there is an inscrip- tion, deep and clear, on the lintel of nearly every tomb, but the custodian told us that as yet no man has deciphered them ; they have been copied, and photographed, and visited by every archaeologist of distinction ; but as yet they are a sealed book. They are believed to date from 500 to 2000 B.C., and those who built them were therefore contemporaries of Daniel and Isaiah, of Saul and David ; and the beautiful jewellery, which is unsurpassed in grace and delicacy of work by any modern jeweller, was, perhaps, made by men who lived before Joseph was sold into bondage. Certainly one's mental horizon is widened by a visit to these tombs. On leaving Orvieto we slipped easily down to the ordinary level of the world by means of funicular railway that tunnels steeply down- 314 SIENA wards through the rocky ramparts, and unites the little city on a hill with the main arteries of Europe. Before reaching Siena, the line passes through a stretch of country curious and hideous in its desolation. There must surely be some legend to the effect that all the mud left over after the creation of the world was piled up here and laid under the curse of barrenness ; at any rate, there it is, for miles and miles, as far as the eye can reach, chaotic hills and heaps of hardened mud, shapeless and invertebrate, scored with rain channels and seamed with hideous gashes and fissures — a treeless, barren waste of tumbled mud-heaps, rising to great heights, but without any of the dignity of hills. ' Aprill with his showres sweete' had breathed on the desolate scene and called forth a faint tinge of verdure that partly hid the nakedness of the bare mud ; but in winter or in the heat of summer it must be ghastly. Like Orvieto, Siena is a city on a hill ; strictly speaking, it is built upon three hills, a fact im- pressed upon my memory by seeing a symbolical representation of it as supported on three columns, painted on the cover of some of its municipal archives of the fourteenth century. But it is not a precipitous-sided, striking hill, STREETS AND PALACES 315 like that of Orvieto, and its brick wall is not at all of imposing appearance, nor are its gates noble. It is a fine old town, with tall houses and great mediaeval palaces, and lancet-windows of two and three lights divided by slender mullions and united beneath one embracing arch, and iron work of antique and curious devices on the walls of the houses, designed sometimes by famous artists. Some of the old palaces are studded all over with banner-holders of wrought iron or bronze, and sockets for torches, and massive rings for tying horses to ; and some- times these serve to blazon the badge of the noble family to which they belong. The crescent of the Piccolomini family, two of whom have sat in St. Peter's chair, is met with perpetually at Siena, and on the Piccolomini palace the huge iron rings are all in the form of crescents, upheld by rampant sheep. Next in frequency to the crescent of the Piccolominis, is the badge of another family which has given a Pope to Christendom, that of Chigi, whose star above a pyramid of heraldic hills is emblazoned and graven on walls and windows, altars and pavements. The people of Siena are fond of badges and armorial bearings and dates and all such things 316 SIENA as give personal interest to inanimate objects, and there are no less than seven columns placed about the city, some of great antiquity, supporting the she-wolf and the twins, the badge of the city from the time when Augustus made it into a Roman colony ; on the pavement of the Cathedral the device appears again, and in unexpected places it is perpetually meeting you. Siena has no wish to forget her early history or her early conquerors. But oftener even than any of these badges the stranger will observe on gateways and on houses the letters I.H.S., surrounded by a glory — the cognizance of St. Bernardino of Siena, who shares with St. Catherine the special reverence and honour of the people of Siena ; he is said to have been the originator of this well-known monogram and to have blazoned it wherever possible, as embodying both the name and mission of our blessed Lord — Jesus, Hominum Salvator. A story is told of him that he remonstrated with a man who earned a living by painting playing-cards, for that they were evil things, leading men to perdition. ' But/ said the man, ' if I give up painting them, I and my family will starve.' 'Not so,' replied Bernardino; 'paint cards 57: BERNARDINO 317 instead with this device upon them, and you will prosper.' And the man did as he bade him, and so great was the rage to possess one of Bernardino's cards that he prospered exceedingly. Ber- nardino was of a noble family, but his greatest privilege was to spend and be spent in the service of the poor and afflicted, and he was still young when he died, worn out by his labours in preaching and in nursing the sick. Siena's other native saint was a daughter of the people, and was born in the street of the Dyers and Tanners, which still keeps its old name, and its old occupations, and its old smells. From earliest youth Catherine saw visions and was filled with a passionate devo- tion to Christ ; she very early entered a Dominican convent, and she would spend hours in the chapel before a crucifix in a state of con- templation and ecstasy ; her swoon, during which she received the stigmata, the marks of Christ's five wounds, on her own body, is the subject of one of Sodoma's most beautiful paintings, as it is of one of Beccafumi's. The marriage of St. Catherine with Christ is another favourite subject with the painters of the fifteenth century, and in the inscription placed on her house at Siena she is styled the 318 STENA Spouse of Christ ; she is said to have given her own heart to Christ and to have received from Him another, as also a crown of thorns, which, with the white lily, is her especial emblem. We were at Siena on her festival, which is there celebrated on April 29, though by the rest of the world on the 30th ; but we were disappointed to find that there is little to cele- brate the day beyond perpetual services in the churches, and the exhibition of poor Catherine's head, enclosed in a silver shrine. The public processions which used to take place have been entirely forbidden, as they led to breaches of the peace owing to divisions of opinion among the people. One of the most interesting spots in Siena is its Piazza del Campo, a name consecrated by the custom of centuries as well as by its mention in Dante's Purgatory, and yet, with the amazing want of veneration shown by the Italians for historical landmarks, changed of late to that of the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. If the restless loyalty of the Sienese constrains them to use this new name, foreigners, at any PIAZZA DEL CAMPO 319 rate, should refuse to bow the knee to a decree so ridiculous, and should ignore any name but that of the Campo. Unlike the great majority of piazzas, it has a distinctive character all its own ; shaped like a horseshoe, it is also hollowed like the inside of a hoof, and forms an immense natural amphi- theatre. From time immemorial it has been the scene of jousts and games, processions, races, and all other public functions ; in the grand old town - hall that bounds its lower side is a painting by a contemporary artist of St. Bernardino preaching to the people in the Campo, and others depicting tournaments and other amusements. To this day it is the scene of the annual races in August, when numbers of pages and banner-bearers are dressed in costumes that have descended from ancient times, and look as if they had just stepped down from the frescoed walls of the town-hall. The tall and graceful tower of the Municipio throws its slender shadow across the Piazza to where the white marble fountain of Gaia supplies a stream of water brought from a great distance, but not gushing forth with the glorious generosity of the Roman fountains ; at the foot of the tower is a small chapel with 3 2o SIENA open sides like a portico, built to commemorate the cessation of the great plague called the Black Death, that swept over Europe in Froissart's time, and at Siena alone carried off thirty thousand persons ; Mass is celebrated there twice a year. Dante tells us that when passing through Purgatory one of the shades pointed out to him another who had been a proud and ambitious noble, and had ' in greatest splendour lived upon the Campo of Siena,' and for his violence and pride would now have been in hell but for one good and saving action : A friend of his had been taken prisoner by Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, and in order to raise money for his ransom, this proud noble seated himself daily at a little table in the Campo and begged of all who passed ; and his affection and humility were counted to him for grace such as saved his soul when he came to die. Wherever one gets a peep through the tall houses or over the brown roofs of Siena, one gets a view of tossing hills, far as the eye can see, painted in every shade of clear, tender SCENERY ROUND SIENA 321 blue, indigo, and dove colour, such as may be seen in the paintings of the Sienese school, but looks like the dream of an artist's fancy to those who have never seen it in Nature. Just as Vesuvius, on a sunny day, with no cloud in the sky, will clothe himself in mysterious purple shadows and twilight blues, so do these hills wear the most wonderful and beautiful of shadow colours when there is no shadow to account for them. From our windows we looked out, to our right, on the plain, enormous brick mass of St. Domenico, its facade unbroken in all its huge expanse save by its campanile and by one window ; and to our left, on the striped Cathe- dral, with its pinnacled tower ; and between these two, and over the tiled roofs of many houses, we had a glimpse of these blue and purple hills, strong and clear in colour as in an illuminated missal. Every evening the air was shrill with swifts, an aerial population greater in Italy than in any country I ever was in ; the Italian custom of never finishing the facades of their towers and churches, but always leaving the holes un- filled in which the scaffolding beams rested, suits the swifts and swallows to perfection ; they find ready-made homes from which they 21 322 SIENA can view with the indifference of complete security the human crowd a couple of hundred feet below them. The Cathedral at Siena has certain points of resemblance to that at Orvieto, in being built of black and white marble in alternate stripes, in having no side - chapels in the nave, and in having three gables on the chief facade ; I was going to say the west, but that, with the dis- regard elsewhere shown to such matters, the main entrance here faces south, and the high altar is consequently at the north end. But here the resemblance ends. The facade of Siena is much richer in architectural detail, in pinnacles and crockets and statues, and less rich in splendour of gilding and colour. There is great richness of effect in the interior, the black and white bands being here of equal width, instead of, as at Orvieto, the black only forming stripes wide apart on a white surface ; and the white being yellowed by age, the whole is mellowed into a harmony of colour, rich and curious. The pavement is a pictorial Bible, covered THE CATHEDRAL 323 with graven scenes from the Old Testament of the greatest interest. Here is Absalom hanging from a tree with three spears in him ; and Samson among the Philistines, laying about him with an ass's skull ; and Elisha and the prophets of Baal ; and David putting a stone into his sling, and Goliath with the stone planted in the middle of his forehead ; and Herod's massacre of the Innocents ; and many spirited and confused battle-scenes in which men and horses are struggling inextricably ; besides Sibyls and Kings and Prophets, and even Trismegistus, the great magician, who was — as the inscription below him tells us — a contemporary of Moses. What generations of Sienese have wandered with their eyes down over this pictured pave- ment, and what associations must have been interwoven in childish memories with its histories, since it was first laid down four hundred years ago ! One scene commemorated the conclusion of peace between those turbulent neighbours, Florence and Siena, and the wolf of Siena and the lion of Florence are solemnly shaking hands in token of eternal friendship ; no doubt they were fighting again tooth and nail before the stone had long been in place. To judge from 324 SIENA the mediaeval frescoes, fighting was almost their sole occupation, varied by beheadings and religious processions. The pulpit in the Cathedral is a masterpiece by the same hand that carved the tomb, or Arco, of St. Dominic at Bologna, which was so famous for its beauty that the sculptor was better known as Niccolo dell' Arco, than by his name of Pisano. The white marble of the pulpit has by the lapse of six hundred years become the colour of ivory, and has even gained in beauty by the change ; it is supported on slender columns, four of which rest on the backs of lions — a fashion very prevalent in the thirteenth century, but one that produces an unpleasant impression ; as a fashion of a certain period it has, however, an interest, but I always regret to see it imitated, as if in itself worthy of imitation, as in the ponderous sarcophagi of porphyry in the Vatican, which have been placed upon the backs of lions. Perhaps the worst instance is seen in the huge obelisk in front of St. Peter's, which is placed upon four lions who apparently have been crushed almost flat beneath its enormous weight, and resemble lizards rather than lions ; this effect is quite the natural one to be ex- pected, but scarcely intentional or artistic. THE CATHEDRAL 325 We happened to be at Siena when an annual custom of great antiquity was being celebrated in the Cathedral ; the high altar and the space round it was ablaze with candles, tall and short, grouped and single, as irregular, and seemingly as countless, as the stars of heaven, and their number was perpetually being added to by offerings from the crowd that surged against the temporary barrier placed in a semicircle before the altar. Within the space thus en- closed were the members of various Brother- hoods in Siena, singular-looking men, mostly wild and unkempt about the head, and clad in a loose white tunic belted at the waist, with a large rosary hanging at the side, and all wearing capes of different colours, denoting to what Brotherhood they belonged ; at the back hung the white hood with two holes in it to see through, which the members wear like a sack over the head when collecting alms or follow- ing a funeral. These curious Brothers were busy all day receiving babies and bundles brought to be blessed, and the throng was immense ; a burly Brother would reach over and take a baby from its mother's outstretched arms, carry it to the altar, and wave it to and fro before the crucifix, and then hand it back in the most business-like 326 SIENA manner, looking round for another. As we went up, we met a mother coming out with a baby that had just been blessed, which was yelling so violently as to raise a doubt if it might not be possessed of a devil that objected to the ceremony. Besides the crowds of babies brought to be blessed were bundles, neatly tied up in hand- kerchiefs, but of what nature it was impossible to tell ; nor did anyone ask : the bundle was taken by one of the indefatigable, perspiring Brothers, and waved in front of the altar in like manner as the babies were, after which it was promptly returned. I heard one tourist propose to tie up his Baedeker in a handkerchief and get it officially blessed. All day long the crowd ebbed and flowed, and the process of blessing went on. One of the features of a Sienese crowd is the wide- brimmed flapping Leghorn hat, worn by the women, country women and townsfolk alike ; it is a most inconvenient hat to wear in a high wind, but it is the custom to wear it, and who may resist custom ? In the library of the Cathedral are some of the most beautiful frescoes existing — a series by Pinturricchio, representing scenes from the life of y£neas Silvius Piccolomini, the Sienese, CATHEDRAL LIBRARY 327 who became Pope Pius II. They are in magnificent preservation, and the pink-skinned white horses, and the gay and gallant gentle- men, and the gorgeous ecclesiastics familiar in every-day life to the artist of the fifteenth century, stand before us as though we saw them from a window that overlooked the bygone centuries. One graceful figure with golden hair and noble face may be distinguished in every scene ; it was one that the painter, past middle life himself, loved to draw ; it was the portrait of his friend, still but a youth, Raffaelle of Urbino. A more beautiful face and form it would indeed be hard to find, and Pinturricchio took an artist's delight in immortalizing the calm, noble look that told of the great and beautiful soul within. This library is a lovely spot in which to linger long ; its peace and silence are as balm to the hurried traveller, and through its half- closed doors stole softly the glorious tones of the great organ, and a faint scent of incense that seemed to deepen the monastic calm. Round its walls, on huge desks, are some of the most splendid choir - books the world contains, their illuminations representing the labour of many a lifetime, and the fame of many a name ; of enormous size, they are 328 SIENA clamped and cornered and studded with brass and copper, and locked with curious locks ; their yard-high leaves are wholly of parchment, and each book must contain the skins of a large flock of sheep. The books illustrated by Liberale of Verona struck me as the most beautiful I had ever seen, his drawing and his colouring both being very beautiful ; and I was glad to have my opinion confirmed afterwards by the director of the library at Florence, who called him the Raffaelle of miniature-painters. The brown- reds and yellows of his draperies are most lovely, and I longed to get a photograph of his St. Martin and the Beggar, in which the saint's golden hair makes an exquisite harmony with the colour of his mantle ; but admirable as photography is for reproducing many things, it is unsatisfactory when the chief beauty of a subject consists in colour ; and the golden-reds and the red-browns of the Veronese come out indiscriminately black. Attached to the Cathedral is a museum, where are preserved the originals of many sculptures that it has been necessary to replace, as also paintings by early masters of the Sienese school ; among these is a series repre- senting the history of the finding of the true CATHEDRAL MUSEUM 329 cross by the Empress Helena, which sheds some light on the methods she employed in her searches, and on the extraordinary success that attended her ; each scene has an inscription below, explaining the subject, which aids the understanding wonderfully. It seems that a certain Jew named Judah knew where the cross was concealed, but declined to reveal it ; the chief citizens, how- ever, unwilling to offend the Romans, and terrified at the rigorous nature of Helena's inquiries, delivered him up to her, saying that he alone knew where to find it. The Empress is seen sitting on a throne, with a very large and fierce fire burning in front of her as an aid to her investigations. On this occasion, how- ever, the Jew was not made to sit upon it, but was instead lowered into a dry well and kept without food for six days ; at the end of this time he thought it as well to reveal the hiding- place of the cross ; this accordingly he did, and his good faith was tested by the laying of the cross over the body of a youth who had died, and who at once came back to life. The Empress then knew that she had dis- covered the true cross, and she brought it back to Europe in triumph, together with the firkins from Cana of Galilee, and the marble stairs of 33Q SIENA Pilate's house, and sundry shiploads of earth, and innumerable other relics. There are other things of much interest in the museum, and we spent a long time there, to the obvious annoyance of the old custode, who, unlike most of his class, appeared to take no interest in the objects under his care, and grudged the time he had to dance attendance on us. Of all his race, he is the only one we ever met who really merited the name conferred on him by the pronunciation of many American tourists — that of a ' cuss'd toad/ When we had visited the last room, we asked him if we had seen everything, to which he snarled out sarcastically — ' It would seem to me that you have P The Picture-gallery at Siena is chrono- logically arranged, and is of great interest, as illustrating the birth of art in the thirteenth century and its subsequent development. It was in truth a new birth — a beginning again from the beginning, and learning, like children, how to draw. The very memory of Greek art, once so naturalized in the country, had faded, and its traditions and influence were PICTURE GALLERY 331 lost as wholly as though they had never existed. Men began again with a clean slate, and very stiff and childish in execution were their beginnings. Art was wholly dedicated to the service of religion, and of course to the Christian religion, and this restriction hampered its development for a long period. At first the only subjects were saints, and angels, and Madonnas, and all these had to be fully draped, so that faces and hands were the only encouragement given to the study of the human form. It was not till long afterwards that artists allowed themselves even such latitude as to portray martyrs and the sufferings of the damned ; but once they had struck into that path, it became the favourite one, probably by reason of the opportunity it afforded of de- picting the nude form ; and we find certain subjects again and again chosen in Christian art, just as certain others were for ever being represented in heathen art. The Christian parallel to Marsyas is found in St. Sebastian ; the Madonna is the substitute for Venus ; and the Massacre of the Innocents takes the place of Meleager's boar-hunt. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, martyrdoms, and flagellations, and scenes in 332 SIENA purgatory, had largely supplanted the angels and saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ; and the cherubs' heads, modestly clothed with many pairs of wings, had de- veloped into large and chubby infants, with very inadequate wings, who sprawled in every possible and impossible situation, and were in- distinguishable from the heathen Cupids. Fra Angelico would have folded his dear old hands in pure amazement at such conceptions of the angelic host. The sameness of subjects seen everywhere is very striking, and would seem to show that the bounds of imagination are far from being as limitless as is sometimes supposed. The im- pression left is that of an unvarying succession of Nativities, Crucifixions, Ascensions, Crowned Madonnas, Judgment Days, and Martyrdoms. These subjects would, I think, account for ninety per cent, of the pictures in Italy. Very amusing incidents are occasionally to be seen in old pictures. There is a painting at Siena, by the Spanish artist Ribera, de- picting the trial of St. Anthony in a way that will appeal to many who see it, but one I never before saw reckoned among his trials. The saint is shown reading a book of devotion, or, rather, trying to read, but evidently under PICTURE GALLERY 333 difficulties, for a very substantial devil at his side has abstracted his spectacles, and is mali- ciously wearing them himself. It seemed to me a humorous refinement of annoyance on Beelzebub's part. The spectacles, I may observe, were, strictly speaking, pince- nez, which shows that such things were in use in the early part of the seventeenth century. Sitting in front of one of Fra Angelico's most beautiful paintings, radiant with fair-faced angels and glittering with burnished gold, was an American, his wife standing up nearer the painting, studiously poring over Baedeker's pages. There was profound silence for awhile, when, nodding with his head at another picture, he asked with a rasping twang : 1 And is the next one by the same party ?' There are many lovely drives in the country round Siena, and on May Day we drove to the little old castle of Belcaro, about an hour distant. We clattered down the steep paved streets of 334 SIENA Siena, past the fountain called Fontebranda, which Dante mentions, and which lies at the foot of the hill on which stands St. Domenico's huge pile, past the city gate, and at once found ourselves in complete country. Hawthorn and bushes of golden coronilla were on the banks and hedges, and we drove through deep lanes overarched by trees, with purple cyclamen nestling in tufts on the deep banks, where nightingales sang sweetly. The Castle of Belcaro has been kept in such excellent repair that it rather disappoints one by having no appearance of great age, though its extreme antiquity is unquestioned. Its walls, which have stood the brunt of at least one siege, rise from out of a belt of large ilex-trees, which entirely conceals their height and strength. Im- bedded in them are some cannon-balls, with a little tablet recording that they are mementoes of the siege of the castle by Cosmo de Medici nearly three hundred years ago. The old servant who showed us over the place told us that Catherine of Siena had once slept here. It is common enough to see castles in which Kings and Queens have slept, but I never before had seen one in which a real canonized saint had slept ; and that fact will distinguish this castle from all others for me. CASTLE OF BELCARO 335 The walk round the top of the walls is perfectly lovely, for the castle crowns the top of a hill, and commands an uninterrupted view in every direction, in which the city of Siena forms the one great feature of interest. In the little chapel, built in the year 1500 by the Sienese painter and architect Peruzzi, is a slab requesting you to pray for the soul of the departed, a former owner of the property — ' to whom this castle had been very dear.' To me it would also be very dear if it were mine. I should love that most peaceful home, with its glorious view over the wide blue hills, and its little sunny, sheltered garden within the walls, and the great breadth of calm that seems to dwell there. I took with me fragrant memories of the place in a handful of the brown pineapple- scented blossoms of the Chimonanthus fragrans, given me by the old servant, as with a sweet smile on her brown and withered face she said, ' A rivederla /' It is not likely that we shall meet again on this side of the veil. While at Siena we made an expedition to the little old-world town of San Gimignano, which 336 TO SAN GIMIGNANO is said to be the one in all Italy least changed from what it was in the days of Dante. We went partly by rail and partly by road, through a vine-covered country with poplar- bordered brooks, where battalions of stiff, black cypresses solemnly climbed the hills, to mingle their black spires with the silvery-gray olives and the spreading pines. The look of the country takes you back curiously to those troublous times when city warred against city, and village against village, and when every great family had a feud with its neighbour. Those were times when it was not safe to sleep except within a strong wall, nor in any spot which did not command a good look-out. Hence it came that every town, and village, and castle was built upon a hill, and duly surrounded by a fortified wall. And thus it is to this day, and very few are the dwellings built outside such a wall. Traditional customs have a surprising vitality ; and besides — who knows what may happen next? We passed through fields of tall rye already in ear, and wheat sprinkled with scarlet poppies and blue flax, and juniper hedges wreathed with honeysuckle in bloom ; and many were the pastoral scenes that delighted our eyes : here were ploughs at work between the vines, drawn WA YSIDE SCENES 337 by beautiful white oxen with scarlet bands over their broad foreheads and strings of gay tassels dangling over their eyes ; here, again, others drawn by immense gray oxen with wide- spreading horns of hugest size, tapering to sharpest points ; behind the plough followed a husbandman sowing Indian corn in the fresh furrow, and followed by another who sprinkled manure from a basket over the yellow grain. Then we passed a little knoll, thinly wooded, where a flock of sheep and goats was being herded by two young girls with distaffs in hand, who twirled the busy spindle as they laughed and chatted. Further on was a family group resting in the shade of a mulberry-tree and making their mid-day repast, while the gentle giant oxen stood by, munching some green fodder, and a dog sat expecting his share of the family fare. It was a pleasant pastoral life, and the healthy sunburnt faces of the country people wore an expression far happier than is ever seen on the faces of the smart people in their carriages at Naples. At nearly every cottage door was a group of women and girls engaged in plaiting straw, the great industry of this part of Tuscany. 22 338 SAN GIMIGNANO Long before reaching San Gimignano we came in sight of it, for a city built upon a hill cannot be hid, and this one is more especially- noticeable by reason of its numerous tall towers, silhouetted against the sky like the columns of an unroofed temple, from which it gets its name ' delle belle Torre' There 'are about a dozen of them, all that remain of the fifty or sixty which, once upon a time, crowded the little town, as may be seen in contemporary pictures, in which they bristle like big pins in a pincushion. Pictures of Rome, Siena, and other towns of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, all have this one feature in common, and it makes Goethe's theory respect- ing the leaning towers of Bologna at least very plausible. None of them, it must be remembered, are church towers ; they were all built by private families for purposes of offence and defence, combined with convenience of outlook and no small element of swagger ; they were originally very tall and slender, but by a law passed about the fifteenth century they were cut down to a more moderate height. To anyone who has seen those at San Gimignano, the significance is clear of Dante's question, which must have puzzled many readers, when he comes in sight FRESCOES 339 of the group of giants, who in the dim light look like tall towers — ' Master, what town is this r When standing on the level of the house- roofs one gets the most lovely panel-shaped views of the surrounding country between these tall framing towers. Small and sequestered from the world as San Gimignano is, it is full of memorials of great artists ; there is a series of frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli, depicting scenes in the lives of St. Augustine and his mother Monica ; we see the future sinner and future saint as a small boy at Carthage, being delivered over for instruction to the pedagogue, who is making his daily round to collect his pupils, as the custom was ; and one small boy is being horsed on the back of another and soundly swished, just as in the fresco from Pompeii that we saw. Solomon's dictum was duly respected both at Carthage and Pompeii. Then we see Augustine in the Professor's chair at Carthage, and afterwards at Rome ; and again when setting forth on a mission, mounted on a fat white horse, attended by a gallant suite, and accompanied by a white poodle, shaved according to the fashion of his time in a square patch like a saddle-cloth across 340 SAN GIMIGNANO his back ; from which we see that dogs have fashions as well as their betters. The Cathedral walls form, like the Cathedral pavement at Siena, an illustrated Bible, the frescoes on the left being scenes from the Old Testament, and on the right from the New; they date from the middle of the fourteenth century, and are of exceeding quaintness in many details. The trials of Job are shown in several scenes, the first of which represents Satan in conversa- tion with God, and obtaining leave to heap what trials he chose upon the patriarch. The painters of the Middle Ages were naively anthropomorphic in their ideas, and experienced no difficulty whatever in depicting either the Creator or the Devil ; an aged man with a white beard stood for the one, and a black one with wings and claws for the other. The same artists depicted Boreas as a furious face with inflated cheeks, and Eolus as a man running with all speed, his hair and garments flying wildly. Any symbolism, however rude, gratifies simple minds and " children, who in- finitely prefer it to the effort of grasping an abstract idea. But the one thing of chief interest in the Cathedral is the chapel dedicated to a dear SANTA FIN A 341 child who lived and suffered in the fourteenth century, and who bore her wearing agony with such saintly patience and saintly piety that, when she passed away at the age of fifteen, she was admitted into the number of the saints, with all the solemn pomp and honour that the Roman Church knows so well how to confer. Others have suffered as she did, and have borne it as nobly, and Santa Fina's canonization throws its reflection over them, too, in honoured recognition of the courage that is needed to suffer and be strong. That silent, solitary courage that Napoleon called ' midnight courage,' unsustained by any excitement or any applause, is a rare gift, demanding far more heroism than it does to ' seek the bubble reputation at the cannon's mouth.' Santa Fina had visions of angels to sustain her in the lonely night-watches, so long and weary to those who pass them on a bed of suffering ; and Ghirlandajo has chosen as the subjects of his two famous frescoes that adorn the walls of her chapel one of these heavenly visions and the last scene of her young life. In the first she is alone, gazing at the vision which others cannot see, and listening to angel voices which others cannot hear ; in the second we see her childish frame, emaciated with 342 SAN GIMIGNANO suffering, lying on a couch, the fair face with its golden hair encircled by an aureole ; and round her stand the Bishop and his clergy, holding the crucifix before her dying eyes, and offering prayers for the passing soul. They are beautiful and touching pictures, and if it had been for them alone I should be glad we had visited San Gimignano. My early impressions of Florence were decidedly confused, and formed a kaleidoscope jumble of fine streets, noisy with the clatter of horses' hoofs, handsome carriages, gorgeous toilettes on their way to the races, miles of galleries, acres of painted canvas, a huge russet dome and a slender marble tower shooting sky- wards near it ; steep white roads outside the city gates, enclosed between high white walls, at the top of which nodded a fringe of crimson poppies and China roses ; a great courtyard draped with cascades of white and yellow Banksia roses ; the cool, quiet rooms of the old Medici villa in which our friends lived ; and a sense of unaccountable weariness and heavi- ness permeating everything. FLORENCE 343 Nothing was clear-cut, and the confusion increased till the hoof-beats were sounding in my own head, and all power of thought fled. Then I knew that once again the influenza fiend had me in his grasp, and for some days I was prostrate in his power. And then came a day when pain was waning, and the sense of joy in life was waxing, and we drove out under mile-long avenues of blooming acacias and limes and horse-chestnuts, and saw banks of pink and crimson roses, and mounds of yellow roses, and long trails and drifts of white roses, all hurrying to enjoy the warm spring days, and bursting into a frenzy of bloom unknown in our more temperate North, making the warm air languid with their sweet- ness. And we lingered long at the feet of the bronze David, with his sling and pebble, who stands on Miniato's heights and looks with earnest eyes out over the glorious view before him. Below the immense terrace on which he stands lies the whole city of Florence, spread out along the banks of the shining Arno, which 344 FLORENCE comes from its valley below Vallombrosa's leafy hills, gliding between dense masses of foliage, till it reaches the city, and is spanned by many bridges on its seaward way. From hence the huge red-brown dome of the Cathedral is seen to be taller than Giotto's beautiful campanile near it, and they stand out from the level of the city roofs as a great ship and lighthouse do from the level of the waves. Across the valley of the Arno, immediately opposite the bronze David, are the heights of Fiesole, the ancient Etruscan town which has given its name to the monk of gentle memory, Fra Angelico. In the picture-gallery of memory this view lives side by side with those of Rome from the Janiculum, of Naples from its Certosa, of Bologna from San Luca ; and which of them was the most beautiful it would be hard to say. Florence, like most of the great Italian cities, is full of mediaeval palaces, grim and gray, built of immense stones, their outer sides un- hewn, resembling fortresses more than palaces. And fortresses, in truth, they often were, when PALACES 345 the feuds of rival families would break into open warfare and embroil half the citizens in the quarrel. The Florentines were an ex- citable race, and Charron said that there were more troubles and seditions among them in ten years than among the Swiss in five centuries ; it was very necessary that their houses should be built like fortresses. The windows are defended by iron gratings of enormous thickness, some of them bulging out at the bottom, a pattern invented by Michael Angelo, and known as 'kneeling windows ' ; heavy iron rings and torch-holders still further increase the dungeon-like appear- ance of the walls, and at the angles of the building are often iron cressets of quaint device. Running round the outer wall, and built into it, are massive stone seats, on which once lounged the retainers, or suitors, or proteges, of the great family, now occupied by flower-sellers, and piled up with heaps of roses and great sheafs of purple iris and white pinks, whose lovely colours and fragile forms contrast finely with the rough, grim walls. Inwardly these palaces are often marvels of magnificence, their tapestried walls and gilded ceilings, their armorial shields and galleries of sculpture and painting, all telling of the past or 346 FLORENCE present wealth and splendour of the family whose name they bear. Many of the finest are no longer in private hands, but are converted into public offices, as is the case throughout Italy ; and provincial councils and municipal councils meet in rooms hung with tapestries and portraits, and ceiled with carved ceilings worthy of imperial palaces ; on the huge outer gates of the post-office in some town I remember noticing the knocker, a bronze of beautiful workmanship depicting Neptune and some Tritons, while up and down broad marble staircases hurry busy clerks and men of business, too much intent on their affairs to look up at the lofty ceiling, painted often by some master hand. Truly men gather riches and build houses, knowing neither who shall inherit the one nor dwell in the other. Most of these old palaces are full of the memories of an eventful past, and have been the scene of many a tragedy in those strange days when the love of arts and letters and the cruelty of a barbarian were often found in one and the same man. The stones in the beautiful courtyard of the Bargello Palace, now green and slippery with damp, were often red and slippery in those days with hot blood, for round PONTE VECCHIO 347 the fountain in the centre prisoners were be- headed. One of the links with the past that Florence still possesses is her Ponte Vecchio, her old bridge, which is crowded from end to end with houses, excepting for a small space in the centre, where only three arches support the Medici gallery overhead, and through these arches is a lovely glimpse of the swirling river and the distant mountains. This gallery was built by the Dukes of Florence to connect the Old Palace on the right bank of the river with the Pitti Palace on the left, so that the Duke could pass from one to the other in privacy, and it served the same purpose as the Pope's private gallery between the Vatican and St. Angelo. It is a walk of seven hundred yards or more from one end to the other. All the houses on the bridge are occupied by jewellers and goldsmiths. At one time some butchers tried to gain a footing there, but this gave rise to such feuds and fighting that the authorities interfered, and decided that the bridge was to be sacred to the goldsmiths. The houses are partly supported on wooden props, and jut out perilously over the river. Rumours are in the air that they are con- sidered unsafe, and that the days of the old 348 FLORENCE bridge are numbered. It may have to go, but when it does, another landmark of the historic past will go with it. The Medicis occupy the same place at Florence as the Pontifex Maximus does at Rome. Go where you will, you see the coat of arms with the six boluses woven in tapestry, stamped on book-covers, painted on windows, carved upon bridges, arches, palaces, churches, houses, monuments, and picture-frames. The Medicis, dead, dominate the city almost as much as when alive. As you wander through the galleries, their portraits meet you at every turn — fair women and gallant men, Popes, Cardinals, Princes, Knights; in Gozzoli's glorious frescoes you see them in splendid state, riding through the country in long procession, their portraits drawn from life, as are their costumes, from their velvet caps to their nearly foot-long golden spurs ; arid on the walls and the ceiling of the great Council Chamber you again see them, painted by Vasari, leading their troops, besieging towns, always pros- perous, proud, magnificent. If ever a family THE MEDICI 349 had its good things in this life, it was the family of the Medici. In the busy piazzas you see them again, standing nobly in the sun and the rain, as they have stood for three centuries ; as you pore over the blazing pages of magnificent manu- scripts, you are reminded that it was a Medici who caused them to be collected from every country known to civilization, and who housed them magnificently as you see them ; as you visit the laboratory of an old convent to buy some of its famous Alkermes liqueur, you observe the Medici arms in fantastic blazon on the walls, and are told that it was they who developed and encouraged the monks' labours. The past history of Florence and the Medicis is as inseparable as that of Rome and its Popes. The Church of St. Lorenzo at Florence is one of the oldest in Italy, and was consecrated by St. Ambrose in the year 393, although the building we now see dates only from 1425. Outwardly it is of ragged, undecorated, unfinished brickwork, bearing much resem- 35o FLORENCE blance to an ancient Roman ruin after it has been stripped of all its facing marble ; but this is not thought much of in Italy, where the bourgeois virtue of neatness is not among the national vices. Inwardly it is fine, though very plain as to decoration. It has two pulpits of fine bronze, with reliefs by Donatello ; they are oblong in shape, and are raised on slender columns, looking more like sarcophagi than pulpits. They have an interest independent of their artistic merit, from the fact that it was from these pulpits that Savonarola used to preach those wonderful sermons that roused the luxurious Florentines to a fever of devotion and real self-sacrifice — while it lasted. In this church, too, is the marble child-Christ that used to be carried in procession by Savona- rola's band of boy-missionaries when they went their rounds, exhorting the people to give up such things as ministered to vanity or to the lust of the eyes or the pride of life ; and the people's emotional fervour burnt hotly for a time, though it was but a fire of thorns ; and they brought out their playing-cards, and their false hair, and their rouge-pots, and their light books, and gave them to these youthful re- formers ; and autos-da-fe were celebrated in the public piazzas, from which the smoke of SAVONAROLA 351 these vanities ascended to Heaven as a sacri- fice. But alas for any cause that has popular enthusiasm for its only support ! ' stormy people ! Ay indiscreet and chaunging as a vane ; A ful greate foole is he that on you 'leeveth.' A few short months, and the people were weary of well-doing, and weary of him who had reproved them for their pleasant vices. This monk had even dared to reprove the most Holy Father, Alexander VI., and to say that he acted ill the part of Christ's Vicar, and that Rome was like unto Babylon. This was not to be borne, and the Holy Father ex- communicated the presumptuous Prior of St. Mark's ; and when the tide of popular feeling turned, the Florentine mob stormed the Con- vent of St. Mark's and dragged out its Prior, and delivered him to the Pope's delegates to be tried on various charges of heresy. For some days Savonarola's single-minded eloquence and truth baffled his accusers, who could find nothing against him ; but the Holy Father had declared that this man must die, were he John the Baptist himself, and his words must be made good, so they put the Prior to the torture, and by this means con- 352 FLORENCE trived to wring out certain confessions which served their purpose, and he was condemned to death. The irony of fate, which can permit a man such as Savonarola to be put to death, on religious grounds, by a man such as Alexander Borgia! It must have been a severe strain to the faith of many. But the Almighty made no sign ; let men rage and blunder as they will, the heavens behold it and keep silence. And so the great reformer was put to death in the very piazza where formerly the fires had been lighted to burn the books and baubles he had denounced. In his cell at St. Marco is a contemporary painting of the scene at his execution, with his judges sitting in state close to the scaffold, and the populace looking on with much indifference. A brand from the fire was saved by some unorthodox admirer of the fearless monk's, and is still preserved in his cell, together with his hair-shirt, which is of incredible coarseness, resembling a fine fish-net of horse-hair. Attached to the Church of St. Lorenzo is the chapel of the Medici family. It is of extraordinary magnificence, lined throughout with the most beautiful and costly marbles, and inlaid with rarer stones — lapis lazuli, coral, MEDICI MA USOLEUM 353 turquoise, topaz, touchstone, jasper, cornelian, and others. It was originally intended to receive the Holy Sepulchre, which the Duke proposed to acquire in some manner ; but he was not as successful as the Empress Helena would have been, and his plan failed, so his chapel had to be turned to some other purpose, and he made it into a monumental chapel for his own family. The monuments are all sarcophagi of enormous size and splendour, but they are only cenotaphs. The bodies of the Medicis lie in the crypt below, each marked only by a slab bearing an inscription. There are other monuments to the Medicis, very famous ones, by the hand of Michael Angelo, more especially interesting both from the fact that they are unfinished, the marble in parts being only roughed out, and for the reason thereof. The times were troublous, and the struggle between the Republic of Florence and the Medici family had just ended in the downfall of the Republic, and the elevation of Alessandro de Medici to be reigning Duke. Now, Michael Angelo's sympathies were entirely with the Republic, and he had strenu- ously supported it both as a soldier and a military engineer, and in all ways possible ; so 23 354 FLORENCE when the struggle was decided in favour of the Medicis, he felt that Florence was no place for him, and he shook its dust from off his feet, and departed to seek his further fortunes at Rome. And so with the end of the Republic came the end of the Medici monuments ; as the great master left them, in his bitter indig- nation, so they have remained to this day. Another very interesting reminder of the master, and of his connection with the Medicis, is found in the library attached to the Church of St. Lorenzo ; it was built by the magnificent Medicis, and designed by Michael Angelo, even to such details as the position of the desks, the bindings of the books, and the chains by which each book is chained to its desk ; if the great artist could revisit the earth, he would here find everything as he left it ; he might go to a certain desk, and say, ' Here I placed the copies of Homer's works,' and there he would find them chained as he left them. The long desks, each with a seat before it, are ranged like pews on either side of a central gangway, and on each desk is a collection of the works of some author, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and almost from every country, many of them ornamented with exquisite illumina- tions ; and every book being chained to the LA URENTIAN LIBRA RY 355 desk, there is a perfect tangle of chains dang- ling below. The seats are broad and low, and the desks at precisely the right height for studying the precious manuscripts to best advantage, an important point which Michael was too much of an artist to overlook ; here one can compare the illuminations of many countries, and see how far in advance of all others Italy was in the matter of drawing. A copy of Petrarch's sonnets contains por- traits of himself and of Laura, a lady of sweet and gentle face ; the poet himself is painted with his head covered with a hood, and over the hood is a wreath of laurel, which has some- what the effect of a Welshwoman's hat over her cap ; a laurel wreath is at all times a trying headgear for a man, as one may see in the Roman coins and busts. A book of geographical charts, dated 1420, has a gorgeous picture of the world before the discovery of America, with the ocean painted in resplendent ultramarine, and the islands and all the names blazing in gold — a truly royal atlas. It differed greatly from the world as we know it in modern maps, but in one respect it was singularly, even prophetically, up to date ; the source of the Nile was traced up to two large lakes. They were not called the Victoria 356 FLORENCE and the Albert Nyanza — the prophetic spirit was not strong enough for that — but there they were, just about the right size and in about the right place. It seems to have been one of those things that once were known and then forgotten, to be re-discovered by a later generation. Michael Angelo's name had been in our ears for many months past, but I never felt that I knew him personally until we came to Florence. Here he was born, in the fine old family house of the Buonarotti, and here he lived until well past middle life. Like Guido and Raffaelle, he is known so entirely by his Christian name that his surname is quite neglected. And what a hall-mark of fame such a distinction is ! Among all the Raphaels or Reginalds or Roberts of his time, for a man to be called simply by his Christian name, and for no one to doubt who is meant ! The Buonarotti family continued to live in the same house down to within a few years ago, when the last of the race died, bequeath- ing the house to the nation, just as it stood, MICHAEL ANGELO 357 with all its treasured memorials of its most famous son. Among the busts and portraits here of the great master is one in bronze by his friend John of Bologna, which is so lifelike that as you look at it you seem to feel the kind but searching eyes of the master on you ; it is a striking face, and one that impresses itself deeply upon you — massive and leonine, plain in feature, very kindly, very sad. Was it only the sadness natural and inherent to genius ? or may it have been the shadow of his hopeless love for Vittoria Colonna ? It is the face of a man born to influence others, but it bears the traces of great sorrow. His love for the beautiful Marchioness, late in life though it came, was his sole romance ; one of his contemporaries says that he ' passion- ately loved her, whose divine mind charmed him ; and he was not less loved by her ' ; another describes her as being ' very beautiful, learned in Latinity and spirituelle, possessing all the qualities that are to be praised in a woman.' We are told that when she died Michael Angelo was mad with grief; as she lay dead he kissed her hand, and bitterly regretted later that he had not dared to kiss her forehead. One longs to know what a woman was like 358 FLORENCE who was capable of inspiring a man such as Michael Angelo with so strong and enduring an affection, and it was with great interest that we looked at a portrait that tradition says is Vittoria Colonna's, hanging next his writing- cabinet ; it is a fair, sweet face, with downcast eyes and fair hair ; a gentle, modest face, as is that of Petrarch's Laura. Such women could never be what is called 1 up to date ' in the present time ; it would be as impossible to dream of faces such as theirs in connection with cigarettes and bicycles, hunting and fishing, as it would be to think of the Madonna herself with such accessories. If women, or those women who are most admired, are now so different in type, it must be because the men, too, are different ; I cannot believe that one of our ' up-to-date ' young women would have had the power of enchaining the lifelong love of such a nature as Michael Angelo's. His writing-cabinet is the very smallest I ever saw : a panelled room, the size of a cabin on a steamer, it is entirely filled by a broad fixed table, and a broad, low seat before it, dark and polished with use. But there is a pleasant little window that throws the light well on the table, and the master could bolt his door MICHAEL ANGELO 359 behind him and be alone with his thoughts. On the wall hangs his sword. He was soldier, engineer, architect, painter and sculptor, and few men were more intensely alive than he was in body and brain ; so strong was his per- sonality that even now he seems almost to be living. His tomb is in the Church of Santa Croce, where Florence has gathered together all her greatest sons ; but his writing-cabinet has ten- fold more interest than his tomb. Much as I reverence and admire Michael Angelo, I find myself unable to admire his works, although I am keenly aware of the enormity of what I say, and do not attempt to justify myself; it can only be put down to some congenital deficiency in my nature. His figures do not gratify my sense of pro- portion and beauty ; one needs no rules and no reasoning to make one's self admire the Mercury or the Apollo of the Vatican, or the Mercury of Giambologna, or a hundred others ; at first sight their proportions delight you with a sense of perfect beauty. But with Michael Angelo's sculptures I do not experience this peace born of perfection ; when I look at his David, the first thing that strikes me is the great size of his head and his hands compared with that of 360 FLORENCE his torso, and the length of the torso compared with that of his legs ; and yet Vasari says of this statue that ' truly we may affirm that this statue surpasses all others, whether ancient or modern, Greek or Latin ; never has there been produced such beauty of head, feet, and hands ; lie that hath therefore seen this, need not care to see any production besides, whether of our own times or those preceding them.' I sin therefore against light, when I say that in my eyes the hands are quite disproportion- ately huge ; so also they seem to me to be in his famous statue of Giuliano de Medici. When I look at his Moses, upon which such rhapsodies have been written, I forget them all in observing how large his face is, and how small the rest of his head. In short, some disturbing element always checks my admira- tion ; in the famous Medici Mausoleum it is the meanness and the unpleasant curve of the pedestals on which the four allegorical figures are placed, and from which nothing but a continuous miracle can keep them from slipping. No one can be more fully aware than myself of my want of all technical qualifications in forming my opinions as to the merits of sculpture and painting ; but I think that when a statue has to be admired on the ground of MICHAEL ANGELO 361 technical rules or catalogued details it has a weak cause. No one dreams of pointing out such grounds — however cogently they might do so — as reasons for admiring the Dancing Faun, or the Wrestlers, or the Venus de Medici ; the first all-absorbing impulse on looking at them is one of gratified admiration, and only for purposes of study would one note any detail at all. Some minds are prone to see details so strongly as to obscure their impression of the whole, and with them it is almost an accident if the various details combine into a harmonious whole ; they will point out an obviously plain person or ugly statue and call your attention to the beauty of the nose or the hand. Except as a proof of the powerlessness of beauty in a few separate details to produce beauty as a whole, I do not see what end this serves ; it encourages a peering shortsightedness in looking for true beauty which is not desirable ; for true beauty — whether in architecture, or sculpture, or Nature — should surely depend first and chiefly on the harmonious and noble proportions of the whole, and only secondly on the beauty of the separate details. There are two of Michael Angelo's statues about which critics are usually silent, but which 362 FLORENCE I venture to admire more than his more famous ones, as pleasing my sense of natural beauty better than the others ; these are his Dying Adonis and his Bacchus and Faun, both in the style of the antique. Of this latter the enthusi- astic Vasari indeed says that ' herein Michael Angelo did prove himself capable of surpassing the statues of all other modern masters,' but it is not the fashion of the present day to lavish admiration on it. Vasari does not mention a story I have met with about this Bacchus, though he relates a very similar one of another statue by Michael Angelo, since lost. When the artist's fame was at its height, his detractors found nothing better to say than that his works were well enough for modern ones, but fell far short of the antique ; whereupon Michael set to work on a statue in the style of the antique, and when finished, he broke off the right hand and placed it under lock and key — very likely in the strong box we saw in his cabinet, having a door decorated by his own hand. This done; he had the statue secretly buried, and let it long lie underground. When sufficient time had elapsed, he caused workmen to begin digging certain foundations in such a way that they must needs come across his buried statue — by no means an uncommon MICHAEL ANGELO 363 thing to do in the classic soil of Italy ; on its being excavated, people flocked together to see the new find, and connoisseurs were enthusiastic as to its merits. Michael Angelo alone gave it but tepid praise, on which the rest taunted him, and said : ' I dare say you think you could do as well yourself!' 1 What if I said I had done it myself?' replied the master. ' Wait, and you shall judge.' He returned home, and brought out the broken hand ; giving it to the critics, he said, 1 Try if this hand fits the broken wrist ; it is my work.' It may be said of this story that ' Se non e vero, e ben trovato,' for the Bacchus has had the hand broken off at the wrist. Michael Angelo has left an extraordinary number of unfinished works, but excepting in the case of the Medici monuments, I have never heard any reason assigned for his so doing. Florence contains many suppressed monas- teries, whose quiet cloisters are now traversed by hurrying tourists instead of by leisured 364 FLORENCE monks ; all have features of interest — some from their association with historic names and events, others from their pictured walls, telling the story of their founders or their patron saints. In the Spanish chapel at St. Maria Novella is a very curious allegorical fresco, illustrative of the Church triumphant, and its conflict with heresy : in a fold, safe and happy, we see the good sheep, the sheep who know when they are well off, and have no desire to know more ; and outside the fold are other sheep, who are having a bad time of it, and are being harried and carried off by heretic wolves ; and the wolves in their turn are being harried and haunted by a pack of black and white dogs, or Domini canes — black and white being the robes of the Dominican Order, founded especially for the suppression of heresy. The moral of which was plain, that those who cared to lead a quiet and happy life must always stick to the orthodox side — that is to say, to the side in the possession of temporal power. In the same cloisters are two frescoes by Giotto, representing the birth of the Virgin Mary, and the meeting between Anna and Joachim. I looked at them with attention, as Mr. Ruskin elevates them into a kind of shibboleth, by which it may be known to what MINO DA F1ES0LE 365 order of mind a person belongs ; he says : " If you can be pleased with these, you can see Florence ; but if not, by all means amuse yourself there, if you find it amusing, as long as you like ; you can never see it.' Well, I looked attentively, but I cannot honestly say that these pictures gave me any pleasure ; they appeared to me like scores of others of the same date and the same subject, and in no way very interesting. So I was at liberty to give myself up to amusement. What, however, did please me exceedingly is a Madonna and Child in La Badia, sculp- tured by Mino da Fiesole, a sculptor who died the same year that our King Edward IV. died, 1483 ; it is a very girlish mother, with a broad, noble brow and gentle, wide-apart, candid eyes, and the young child is smiling joyously, and holding up his tiny hand in benediction. The Madonna's face is of a very uncommon type and very beautiful ; perhaps Mino had a young wife with such a face, for it is one he loved to repeat ; we see it again in the figure of Justice, over a tomb in the same old Abbey-church, and yet again in a lovely altar-piece in the Cathedral at Fiesole — it is a face to be loved and remembered. In the cloisters of this same Abbey, where 366 FLORENCE Dante must often have paced up and down, are frescoes — but these since his time — depicting the life of St. Benedict. Benedict had the reputation of possessing supernatural powers (not unnaturally, to judge from some of the episodes in his life), and a certain King who came to visit him, wishing to put his power to a test, caused his servant to be dressed in royal robes and presented to the saint. Benedict merely said with severity: 1 Fellow, where is thy master ? And the King's wavering faith in his miraculous power was confirmed for ever. The custodians tell one these stories with the most delightful and zealous belief, which enhances them hugely. Florence is distinguished by the possession of several famous fresco paintings of the Last Supper, hardly known at all to English people, among whom Leonardo da Vinci enjoys a practical monopoly of the subject. First in point of time by more than a hundred years is that of Giotto, which has laid down the traditional lines followed by nearly all FRESCOES 367 the later painters ; it occupies the end wall of the refectory of Santa Croce, an immense hall, in which four hundred monks and students used to assemble for meals. Our Lord and His disciples are represented of life size, and sitting on one side only of a long table, so that all the faces are turned towards the spectators, with the exception of Judas, who sits on the hither side, with his head partly turned towards them. The arrangement of the figures is very stiff and formal, the heads all being on an exact level, and each having for an aureole a solid golden disc ; the painting has suffered much from rubbing and natural decay, not to be wondered at when we remember that five centuries and a half have passed since it was painted. The evolution of the aureole can be studied to great advantage at Florence ; first in time is, of course, this painting of Giotto's ; then, after an interval of a hundred years, comes the Cenacolo, or ' Supper-room ' — as the Last Supper is called in Italian — by Fra Angelico, at St. Mark's Convent ; here, too, the aureoles are solid discs like circles cut out from a gold background, showing their descent from the early paintings, which all had such back- grounds ; this Cenacolo differs from others in 368 FLORENCE many points ; Fra Angelico's intense and all- pervading piety made him represent it as a sacramental rite, and not as the supper described in the Gospels ; the disciples are all either standing or kneeling, with hands devoutly clasped, and our Lord is passing from one to the other, administering a wafer to each in turn ; the Virgin Mary also is present. The next painting in order of time is also at St. Mark's, and is that of Ghirlandajo, fifty years later than the last. The fifteenth century saw a marvellous progress in painting, and the drawing and composition of this fresco show a prodigious improvement when compared with the two older ones : the disciples are still placed at equal distances, and are of an equal height, excepting St. John, the beloved disciple, whose head rests on Christ's arm ; but the accessories of the picture are carefully studied, and through the open arches at the back we see orange and cypress trees, and birds flying ; a peacock sits in a window-niche, and in the foreground is a cat ; on the white tablecloth are scattered cherries, and glass decanters and tumblers. Judas sits on the hither side, and is distinguished by having no aureole, a dis- tinction not made by Fra Angelico ; the other aureoles are still solid discs, but are drawn in CENACOLO BY RAFFAELLE 369 perspective, and not as mere circles behind the heads ; it is a most beautiful and pleasing picture. Next in time comes the beautiful Cenacolo by Raffaelle, a fresco occupying, as is usual, the entire end wall of the great refectory in the suppressed Convent of St. Onofrio. It is to my mind perhaps the most beautiful of all, and marks a further advance in art ; the drawing of the faces and of the hands is exquisite, and the pose of the figures — though no attempt is made at grouping them — is a more natural one than has been seen hitherto. Through an archway at the back we see the Garden of Gethsemane, and our Lord praying that the cup may pass from Him, which an angel is bringing Him to drink ; here, too, Judas is deprived of an aureole, and the rest have now become mere rings of light, seen in perspective. The latest in time is the Cenacolo by Andrea del Sarto, in the suppressed Monastery of San Salvi ; it is a very fine and striking picture, the colours as strong and fresh as though but a hundred years, instead of three hundred and fifty, had passed since it was painted. Fresco- painting is truly a glorious art, and I can under- stand Michael Angelo's saying that oil-painting 24 37o FLORENCE was well enough for women and boys, but that fresco was the only art worthy of men. This painting marks another great step in emancipating art from the trammels of tradi- tion. Now for the first time we see aureoles omitted entirely, and the disciples shown as exhibiting some natural excitement ; a few of them have risen from their seats, and all are listening eagerly to their Lord's words, although there is none of the violent action and excite- ment that we see in the well-known painting of Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing of the hands in this picture is quite remarkable for its strength and beauty, surpassing that of Raffaelle's. I believe there are one or two more paintings of the same subject in or near Florence, but the five I have mentioned were all we saw, and they are the ones most illustrative of the pro- gress of art during those centuries. There are two crucifixes at Florence, one in the Church of Santa Croce, the other in St. Maria Novella, about which a story is told that gives them a special interest. Both are of wood, and both are life size. The first was DONATELLO' S CRUCIFIX 371 made by Donatello — little Donato, as he was fondly called — and when his work was finished he showed it to his friend and brother artist, Brunelleschi, and asked him what he thought of it. With all a friend's candour, Brunelleschi replied : 1 Well, I think you have hung a peasant on the cross — not a Christ.' This mortified Donatello greatly, and he, or his friends for him, told the critic to try and do something better himself. Brunelleschi said nothing, being of a silent and reserved nature ; but in secret he set to work to carve a crucifix that should eclipse that of Donatello, and some months later invited the latter to come to his workshop and see a work he had just finished. Donatello looked in on his way back from market, and when, all unprepared, he saw the crucifix his friend had carved, his amazement was so great that he let go his apron full of eggs, and cheese, and apples, and exclaimed in generous admiration : i You can indeed carve a Christ, and I am only fit to do peasants !' It was generous and lovable of little Donato to say so, but there are many who will not agree with him in his self-condemnation. Both crucifixes are finely carved, but to my mind 372 FLORENCE Donatello's is the more powerful of the two ; it is not a refined or spiritual head, and on that point open to criticism, but it is a head full of power and character. Brunelleschi's Christ is greatly emaciated, and is of a wholly different type, belonging to the school which appears to have thought that our Lord's death was partly owing to starvation ; but it is impossible to see what the face is like, as the head hangs down in such a way as to cast it into deep shadow. Both Christs are crucified in what appears to be the strictly traditional manner of the Western or Latin Church — with one nail only to fasten the feet. The Eastern or Greek Church places the feet separately, and fastens each with a nail. The only exception to this I happened to notice, was in the case of an ivory crucifix carved by Giambologna, an artist naturally belonging to the Latin school, who has, how- ever, fastened the feet of the Christ separately, after the Greek fashion. We happened to be in Florence on a memorable day, May 18, 1895, when it was visited by the most severe shock of earthquake it has experienced for centuries. EARTHQUAKE OF MAY EIGHTEENTH 373 There were no portents or warnings what- ever, and no prophet had prophesied anything. People were in the theatre, or sitting quietly at home after dinner, when suddenly a terrific rumbling and roaring burst forth, and the city was shaken violently, the houses rocking as if they would collapse over our heads. It was an awful moment, and impossible to believe that it lasted in truth only six seconds, which was the recorded duration of the shock. Women fainted, children shrieked, men turned as white as wax, and in the theatre there was a positive panic. In those six seconds no less than three thousand houses were so shaken as to be officially reported to be damaged, while in the suburbs forty houses were thrown down, and some few lives lost. But the most as- tonishing thing is how little damage was done. No other shock of any consequence followed, otherwise there would have been a very different tale to tell. Many people had their nerves shaken too severely to allow of their sleeping within walls that night, and every cab and every tramcar was chartered as a sleeping place. Some travellers, arriving by a late train, could pro- cure no cab at all, every one being occupied in this singular manner. Other persons bivouacked 374 FLORENCE as best they could in the public gardens, which, as well as the streets, were kept lighted all night. A curious proof of the violence and capa- ciousness of the shock was seen in the Cathe- dral, where no damage was done beyond the wrenching apart of one of the massive iron bars that support the wide arches of the nave ; it was stated that a force equal to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds must have been exerted to break it. Crowds visited the Cathe- dral in the next few days, to see the great bar hanging down from the tall column in which one end was still embedded. Crowds, too, thronged the Church of San Michele all day, to prostrate themselves before the miracle-working Madonna of the people, and pour out their gratitude for having escaped this terrible danger. It was she who preserved anyone alive in the awful Black Death of 1347, in gratitude for which the survivors built for her the wonderful shrine which may be seen to this day — a miracle of costliness and beauty. And now, again — and how often besides ! — she has saved her beloved Florentines from the terrible danger that might have overwhelmed them ! Numerous fresh shrines were erected to her, and countless candles offered at them, within THE EARTHQUAKE yjS the few weeks immediately following the earth- quake. Many of the public buildings sustained more or less damage, and some of the beautiful Delia Robbia ware in the Bargello Museum was over- thrown and smashed. Cornices and ceilings suffered most ; but here and there walls were severely strained, and ominous cracks showed themselves. The Florentines truly have reason for thankfulness that the shock was of such brief duration, and was not followed by others. An earthquake brings home to one in an awfully personal manner the supreme insig- nificance of the human race in face of Nature's forces. What is Brunelleschi's huge dome or Giotto's Tower in such a moment ? A house built of cards, a child's castle built of sand, are of equal importance. A few more shocks, a somewhat more vigorous writhe of the im- prisoned Titan, and not a stone would be left on another, and Florence would be a desolate heap. And it is this momentary but vivid realization of our infinite littleness and help- lessness that turns men's hearts to water when the solid earth rocks and trembles. Some of the Florentine suburbs suffered more than the city itself did. At Galuzzo a large number of houses were so strained and 376 FLORENCE cracked as to be liable to crumble to pieces if shaken, in consequence of which the steam tramline that runs through the village was closed, and a colony of wooden and tarpaulin sheds built in the public squares for the use of the poor houseless people. At the Carthusian monastery on the hill beyond Galuzzo sixteen of the columns in the cloisters were thrown to the ground by the shock. Ascension Thursday fell on May 24, and on that day, for the first time, we observed men hawking about the streets a number of tiny cages, about five inches in height, fancifully shaped and decorated. Wondering what they were intended for, we stopped to inspect them, and found that each contained a field-cricket, called by the Italians a grillo, a creature which they, as well as the Spaniards, are fond of caging for the sake of hearing its cheerful chirrup, so asso- ciated with hot summer days in the scented hay-fields. In an idle moment I bought one, and on our subsequent travels Grillo was an object of A GRILLO 377 great interest to people in general. Not understanding anything myself of the nature of a grilt r o, I placed him under the protection of St. Anthony, the patron of all animals, and tied a little medal bearing the saint's effigy on to his cage ; still, I thought it well to try and learn something of his habits and wants, and therefore asked advice of many persons who professed to have experience. In this way I collected a great deal of varied information : from one I learnt that he liked being in the sun, while another told me he must be kept in the dark ; one told me he liked plenty of fresh air, and must be put out on the window-sill at night ; this sounded reasonable, and I resolve'd to do so ; but another man told me the creature liked excessive heat, such as the back of an oven, and must on no account be put out at night. This unsettled me again ; I had no oven to place him upon, and a course of hot- water bottles was impracticable. I resolved to try a middle course, and give him fresh air when it was warm, and place my trust in St. Anthony for the result. Even as to his food there was great difference of opinion : one person told me that he ate onlv lettuce ; another, that he preferred bread ; 378 FLORENCE a third, that he ate clover and every sort of herb. This latter was certainly untrue, for I gathered together an immense assortment of herbs, and he stolidly refused to touch any ; nor would he touch bread : lettuce alone sustained him. For three days after I bought him, like Tar Baby, he 'kept on savin' nuffin'/ and we thought him a fraud ; but after that he re- covered his spirits and chirped incessantly and loudly towards evening. His vocal powers are independent of throat and lungs ; no bronchitis would affect them ; the shrill, penetrating note is produced by raising his horny wing-covers and rubbing them together. The usual note is high and monotonous, but it can be modulated into one expressive of affection and pleasure. In Germany we caught a companion for him, which we named Shrillo, and from the moment of his arrival Grillo lapsed into silence except for an occasional low purr of satisfaction. We afterwards added a third, Trillo, and these three lived in the most perfect friendship, notwith- standing the libellous character given of them in a German encyclopaedia, of being ' pug- nacious, spiteful creatures.' From this same authority we learnt that their family name is Gryllo, and that, specifically, A GRILLO 379 they are vulgar. They cannot, certainly, be called graceful or beautiful, although the waiting-room attendant in London did call them ' lovely little creatures.' A waiting- woman's admiration is not wholly disinterested, it is to be feared ; but Grillo, being un- sophisticated, knew nothing of the influence of mercenary hopes, and his little black figure expanded with gratification ; he thought her the most discerning person he had met. At Cologne we had to leave him for some time in the cloak-room, and when we returned his little shrill voice was audible afar off, above all the noise of the station ; the man was very loath to give him up, saying he was such a 1 netter Kerl ' and such good company. Grillo found many friends and admirers. But their artificial life did not suit him and his brothers ; one after another they grew silent and died, and the last of them lived only till September, though he sang and seemed well and merry till nearly the end. When he too died, and the little voice was silent for ever, I felt a blank that I could not have believed possible. Poor Grillo ! he was a cheery little fellow. 380 FLORENCE TO RIMINI When we left Florence on our way to Rimini we took the direct line to Faenza, which saves the long detour by Bologna. It has only been opened within the last ten years, and must have been a very costly line to make ; I never remember such an almost uninterrupted succession of tunnels as we passed through for upwards of an hour while crossing the Apennine range ; there must have been twenty or thirty, some of them very long. Between the tunnels we obtained intermittent glimpses of the wild and desolate hills through which we were pass- ing, their strata looking like Titanic masonry, so regular and massive were its courses, but often tipped up at an acute angle and broken violently short. A few days after we had passed, the line was entirely blocked by a large landslip that occurred. When we had left the hills behind us, we entered upon a pleasant and fruitful country, still hilly, but in gentle undulations, as if calming down after the raging tempest that had created the higher ranges. After passing Faenza we came in sight of a blue peak of remarkable shape to the south, which proved to be the Republican rock of San Marino, the oldest and smallest Republic in the world ; its outline is most striking as seen from Cesena. MIR A CLE A T RIMINI 38 1 The railway banks were full of interest, now covered with dwarf acacia, tasselled with sweet white blossom, now gay with broom, or with poppies and cornflowers, ox-eye daisies, and masses of wild-thyme, and a small gladiolus that grew in abundance. Rimini is a quiet little quasi-seaside town, about a mile from the shores of the Adriatic, but connected with it by a canal which serves as a port for its fleet of fishing-boats. This harbour is famous as having been the scene of St. Anthony's sermon to the fishes. He had gone to Rimini to convert its godless and heretical inhabitants, but they would have none of his preaching, and stopped their ears that they should not hear ; they doubtless found his home-truths unpleasant. Grieved at the hardness of their hearts, the saint then betook himself to the shore, and with a loud voice called upon the fishes to come and hear the praises of God, as being more worthy than men who had refused to listen. Upon this, oh wonder ! the surface of the waters became alive with fish who raised their heads and listened earnestly to the saints discourse ; when he had ended his sermon, he gave them the benediction and dismissed them, 382 RIMINI on which they obediently plunged into the depths and were seen no more. This stu- pendous miracle, witnessed by a crowd of curious idlers who had followed St. Anthony to the shore, had the effect of converting the people of Rimini, who incontinently forsook their heresies and became devout sons of the Church. Rimini is a sufficiently commonplace little town, but it can nevertheless show proofs of an eminently respectable and ancient pedigree in a great arch and a bridge, both bearing an inscription of the time of Augustus. Travellers, however, care less for Roman remains here than for the connection of the name of Rimini with the mournful tragedy of Francesca and Paolo ; its chief pathos lies in the fact that when Francesca gave her love to Paolo, she thought that in all honour she might do so, and such deep root did it take that she could not tear it from her heart when all too late she dis- covered her mistake. There were two brothers of the house of Malatesta, the lords of Rimini, the elder of whom, Gianciotto, was ugly, wicked, and deformed, and the younger, Paolo, handsome and winning. And when Francesca's father decided to give his daughter in marriage to the FRANCE SCA AND PAOLO 383 elder son, a friend of his — wise in the world's ways, and cynical — said to him : * Remember that your daughter has a high spirit and a will of her own, and if once she should see Gianciotto you will never force her to marry him ; take my advice, and, if you wish to effect the marriage, let it be by proxy, and let him send his younger brother in his place.' And so it was determined, and so it was done, no one seeing any baseness in the pretty plot. And when Francesca and her women were looking down into the courtyard to see the cavalcade arrive from Rimini, one of them cried : 1 See ! there comes your future lord !' And looking at Paolo, Francesca gave him her heart ; and never after could she take it back, although she discovered the cruel treachery that had been practised when she was taken to Rimini and delivered over to the hateful hunchback. The end of the sad story is known to all, how that when she and Paolo were reading the story of Launcelot and Guinevere together they unwittingly betrayed to each other their own love, and how Gianciotto discovered their secret and put them both to death, and how 384 RIMINI Dante saw them still together in that circle of the Inferno where the wind rages without ceasing, and bears them for ever circling on its wings, their love and their sorrow alike un- dying. Francesca's house may still be seen, and the story of her unhappy love, and her betrayal, and murder, invest it with an interest not to be found in mere bricks and mortar. The history of the house of Malatesta is one long record of crime and passion. Wrongheads by name, the characteristics which originally gained the name for the family clung to it with hereditary tenacity, and Wrongheads they re- mained to the end of the chapter, a curse to all who had to do with them, and an illustration of the truth of Talleyrand's dictum : There are ways of curing madness, but none for setting wrongheadedness right. The Cathedral at Rimini — popularly known as the Temple of the Malatestas — is an extra- ordinary instance of their insolent indifference to decency. It was restored, or rebuilt, as the inscriptions on its facade and over its arches repeatedly tell us, by Sigismondo Malatesta in the year 1450 ; and of this particular Malatesta Mr. Symonds tells us, ' that to enumerate the crimes committed by him within the sphere of his own family would violate the decencies of THE MALA TESTA FAMILY 385 literature ; it is enough to mention that he murdered three wives in succession.' Having got rid of his wives in this charac- teristic fashion, he had living with him, at the time he rebuilt the Cathedral, a fair lady named Isotta, who was not his wife. Her he did not. murder ; on the contrary, he elevated her to the rank of a divinity, and placed all over the church, as if it were some Christian monogram, the initials of her name and his own — I. S. Not content with this, he placed her effigy, in the guise of St. Michael trampling down the devil, over the altar in her chapel, which is thus dedicated : Divce Isottcz Sacrum. And that his memory and hers shall ever flourish in the town which has so much cause to remember them, this threefold murderer has introduced into the sculptured ornament of the Cathedral, inside and outside, his badge of an elephant and hers of a rose, together with his coat of arms and his portrait and their joint monogram. Visitors will, however, look in vain for the curious epitaph said by Mr. Hare and others to be on the tomb of Sigismondo ; it is not there now, and the sacristan professes total ignorance of any such epitaph having ever existed. Presumably it has been erased as not being decorous, and another substituted. 25 386 RIMINI The whole of the Malatestas are said to be laid in this Cathedral, which is truly a temple to them rather than to the Almighty, and stands as a monument to a colossal aggregate of prosperous vice and crime, condoned by a politic Church. We happened to be at Rimini on the day of the General Election, which in Italy very wisely takes place simultaneously over the whole country.. This year it was expected to be a critical time for Signor Crispi, and it took place on Sunday, May 26. Long before dawn we had been awakened by loud voices and laughter in the street, as if workmen were busily engaged about something. When day- light came, it was plain what their occupation had been ; the whole town had blossomed out in gaudy posters — one telling you that humanity compelled you to vote for Barbato Niccola — another imploring you to vote for Luigi Ferrari, the workmen's friend. Pope Paul V., whose bronze statue is in the piazza, was turned into an electioneering agent for the occasion, and had a purple poster across his mitre, and a yellow one upon his cope, while both hands were full of election addresses. No party colours were worn, and we could see very little appearance of excitement or party A GENERAL ELECTION 387 feeling in the town ; but there must have been a strong and bitter undercurrent, for, within a fortnight of the election, Ferrari, the successful candidate, was assassinated in the streets of this quiet little town. The other candidate was in prison for some political offence at the time of his nomination. From Rimini we made an excursion to the little Republic of San Marino, a drive of about four hours. For the first eight miles the road passes through a fertile country, rich with vines, figs, cherries, mulberries, corn, clover, and cane — this latter in its young state re- sembles maize, and it is largely grown to make supports for the vines. After passing the fourteenth kilometre, we crossed a small bridge, and found ourselves in the ancient and flourish- ing Republic of San Marino — a Republic that has kept its independence unbroken for fifteen hundred years, since its foundation in the time of Diocletian. At that time a certain Dalmatian stonemason who had adopted the Christian faith fled from the religious persecutions in his own country, 388 SAN MARINO and crossed the Adriatic to Rimini, where he pursued his trade and made many converts. But his secret longing to retire from the world grew ever stronger and stronger, and at length too strong to be resisted, so he betook himself to the top of the precipitous rock then called The Titan, and there established himself in a hermitage. He was soon joined by numbers of Christians, who formed themselves into a community which became the nucleus of the future Republic. The mountain was the property of a lady of Rimini, and she, turning Christian, made a gift of it to Marinus, in gratitude for his having shown her the way of salvation. And this mountain is to the present day the entire territory possessed by this Lilliputian nation — for they regard themselves as a distinct nation, and speak of Italians as foi'eigners. It reminds one of the equally comprehensive use of the term strangers by the Bronte girls, who included in it all near neighbours and their father's curates. The frontier of this microscopic nation is barely twenty miles in circumference, but the mountain sustains a thriving population of above ten thousand souls. Addison visited it about the year 1 700, and said of it that ' nothing can be a greater instance of the natural love SAN MAX/NO 389 mankind has for liberty, and of their aversion to arbitrary government, than such a savage mountain covered with people, and the Cam- pagna of Rome almost destitute of inhabitants.' It illustrates forcibly the truth of what Arthur Young said : Give a man the secure possession of a black rock, and he will turn it into a garden. The independence of the State shows itself immediately on crossing the frontier, for the first milestone records that it is ten kilometres to San Marino ; that is now the hub of the world ; they have nothing to do with Italian milestones. There is no Custom - house at the frontier, the Government accepting an annual subsidy of sixty thousand francs from the Italian Government in lieu of levying Customs dues. Neither is there any vexatious octroi tax, and our carriage was not searched, as it would have been on entering any Italian town, to see if haply we were smuggling in some butter or eggs. At the cottage doors we saw many a spindle and distaff, and, spread out by the roadside, goodly lengths of coarse linen cloth, home-grown, home-spun, and home- woven. This Arcadian commonwealth consisting solely of one mountain, the ascent begins 39o SAN MAX/NO almost at once, and continues the whole- way, along a winding road only opened some fifteen years ago, which ascends at an easy gradient to the very summit of their stronghold. Previous to this, the ascent in a carriage could only be made by means of oxen, and then only as far as the Borgo, the lower town, at the foot of the precipitous rock on which stands the upper town, the Citta, some three hundred feet higher. Its Castle stands two thousand three hundred feet above the level of the sea, and the views over land and sea from the upper town are truly glorious. The eye roams over a vast panorama of heaving hills swept by purple cloud-shadows, among which the white roads curve and wind like ribbons far, far below you ; to the east stretches the blue Adriatic, flecked with sails, and on the horizon lies the dark line of the Dalmatian coast. The Republic has a very ancient Constitu- tion, framed so sagaciously at the outset that it has needed very little alteration since. There is a Council of sixty members, elected for life — 'from the most honest and instructed of every condition' — one-third nobles, one-third landowners, and one-third peasants ; and these elect annually from among their number a THE STATE BUDGET 391 working Council of Twelve, which forms an intermediate body between the Grand Council and the two Captains Regent, who are elected every six months, and are the chiefs of the Republic, enjoying the same powers as those of the old Roman Consuls. Many men have been elected to this dignity more than once, but there is a law against anyone holding the office within three years of his last holding it. The independence of the Republic is abso- lute. It has no conscription, and hardly any taxes ; it makes its own laws, coins its own money, prints its own stamps, and treats on terms of equality with the Government of Italy and other Powers — and this on a total revenue of about ,£12,000 ! It is sublime ! A perusal of the State Budget leaves you divided between admiration of the magnificent attitude of sovereign independence sustained by the Republic, and amusement at the diminutive scale of its financial affairs. The two principal sources of its income are the subsidy of £2,400 from the Italian Govern- ment in lieu of Customs duties, and the sale of tobacco and salt, which brings in £"3,400. The revenue from its Postal and Telegraph Department amounts to £520, and the re- mainder is made up of small sums obtained 392 SAN MARINO from the rent of lands, from a five per cent, succession duty, and other miscellaneous sources. But if the incomings are small, the outgoings are smaller, and consequently, as Mr. Micawber triumphantly demonstrates, the result is pros- perity. There is no standing army, but the Constitution provides that every man from the age of sixteen has to be trained in the use of arms. The Secretary for Home Affairs, as also the Foreign Secretary, has a salary of ^80. Justice is administered by three Judges, all of whom are obliged to be 'foreigners,' the lawgivers wisely foreseeing that it would be difficult for any native of so small a country, where the whole population is closely allied by intermarriage, to be impartial in his judgment. One of these presides over the Civil Court, another over the Criminal, while the third hears appeals from both Courts. The highest- paid of these judicial lights has a salary of ^125, but he has not much- to do for it; there were only two prisoners in the State prison at the time of our visit. The State maintains four doctors, who also are obliged to be foreigners ; their pay is small, and is not supplemented by payment THE STATE BUDGET 393 from any private patients ; the whole popula- tion has a right to their services, and the best- paid of the four gets but ^130. The expenses of education, elementary and higher combined, come to nearly ^900 ; the Professor of Literature has a salary of ^104 ; of Mathematics, £60 ; while the Professor of Philosophy gets but £16 — a salary that must require no little philosophy to be content with. In the elementary schools the highest grade of master has ^48 per annum, and the lowest £8. The Postmaster-General gets a salary of £32- When we consider the stormy character of the centuries through which the State has suc- cessfully steered its course, it is little short of miraculous that it should never have been swallowed up by the greater Powers surround- ing it. Its native historian truly remarks that 1 it has had need of much sagacity, and of all the energy of people passionately fond of their liberty,' to save it from this fate. Many attempts have been made to obtain possession of this Naboth's Vineyard. The Court of Rome laid claim to it on the ground that it was included in King Pepin's gift of lands ; but the Sammarinese succeeded in getting this claim adjudicated on by an inde- 394 SAN MARINO pendent Court of Justice, and it was decided that, as they had been living according to Lombard, and not according to Roman law, Pepin's gift did not extend to them. Twice again did the Papal power attempt to bring the sturdy little Republic under its jurisdiction, but each time in vain. In the sixteenth century it had a very narrow escape of losing its dearly-prized independence. A large force of cavalry and infantry was secretly despatched at dead of night from Rimini to surprise the town of San Marino, which was resting in the security of being at peace with all the world. But the stars in their courses fought against the invaders ; their plan of attack failed, and they were routed by the Republicans, who to this day celebrate June 4 annually in memory of their deliver- ance. The attack was generally believed to have been made at the instigation of Pope Paul III., who desired to bestow the State on a protege of his. The existence of the Republic was, however, never more seriously imperilled by its enemies than it was by its friends, when Napoleon Bonaparte, wishing to bestow on it a mark of favour, offered to increase its territories. But the shrewd little Republic had the sagacity to SAN MARINO 395 avoid this friendly pitfall, as it had avoided more obvious ones ; it modestly declined the offer, saying that San Marino had always been small, and wished to remain small. Had its answer been different, there is little doubt that it would have paid the penalty by the entire loss of its independence when the great political upheavals subsequently took place in Italy. It survived all the storms that have rent the sur- rounding territories, and now sails in smooth waters in the midst of a United Italy — in it, but not of it. Our native guide gave us much information, and spoke with genuine pride of his country ; he assured us that it was marvellously well governed, and that they had no taxes — no taxes at all. From the perusal of the State accounts, this does not seem to be strictly in accordance with facts, but happy is the country whose inhabi- tants believe it to be the case. The railway from Rimini to Ravenna runs along a dead flat, in singular contrast to the line between Rimini and Florence. For some time it lies within a very short distance of the 396 RA VENN A Adriatic, whose deep turquoise-blue waters were studded with the sails of countless fishing-boats of every shade of Venetian red, yellow, brown, and orange, harmonizing with the broad strip of yellow sand-dunes into a lovely scheme of colour. Presently we left the sea and passed through a bit of the great pine-forest that extends for many miles near Ravenna ; it grows on soil that has been gradually washed down from the flanks of the Apennines, and the Roman fleet used once to ride at anchor where now is firm land. It is strange to think that this dull and stagnant little town of Ravenna should for three hundred years have been the seat of empire, while Rome was sinking to the position of a provincial town. But time brings its revenges, and Ravenna has now only the shadow of her ancient glory, embalmed in her churches, to show in proof of the position she once held. But it is owing to the very fact that her days of glory were so brief and 'so sharply defined, so vignetted by the obscurity alike of her previous and her subsequent history, that Ravenna possesses the unique interest she does ; she is a living illustration of the truth of Dante's lines on fame : ARIAN CHURCHES 397 * O thou vain glory of the human powers ! How little green upon thy summit lingers If 't be not followed by an age of grossness !' Had Fortune continued to smile upon Ravenna longer, those three early centuries in her history would not stand out at this day with the brilliancy and strength they do by contrast with their setting. The city's prosperity was coincident with the decay of paganism and the triumph of the Christian faith ; and the newly-made Christians being fervent in zeal, lavished their energy and their wealth on the building of churches, on the sites, where possible, of temples to the super- seded heathen deities. No less than sixteen of the churches now existing were founded between the years 400 and 600 a.d., mostly by the Gothic Christians, who were Arians. This sect of heretics was bitterly denounced by the Roman Church, and at its head was Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths. His mausoleum is here, but empty of every- thing, and in winter many feet below water ; it is a fine monument, and the flat circular dome that roofs it is a marvel that cannot be explained ; thirty-six feet in diameter, it is formed of one solid block of stone, and is estimated to weigh nearly five hundred tons. How was it quarried? 398 RA VENN A how transported hither ? above all, how placed in position ? During the early centuries of our era, mosaic- painting was an art greatly cultivated, but usually by pagan artists ; at Ravenna, however, it was employed in the service of Christianity, and the most splendid mosaics of Christendom are only to be found in this mouldering little old-world spot. It is quite startling to enter a building that has no more external beauty than a brick-kiln or an agglomeration of brick-kilns — a comparison that gives a faithful idea of the outward appearance of some of the churches — and find yourself beneath a vault glowing in the splendour of gold and rich colour, the walls glorious with long processions of saints and martyrs or allegorical pictures of Christ as the Good Shepherd, surrounded by His sheep. In the Church of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo is a long series of scenes, in mosaic, from the life of Christ, beginning with His birth and ending with His resurrection ; but with the notable exception of His crucifixion. Christ is seen bearing His cross, and in the next scene the women are weeping at the empty tomb. The artists of those early centuries shrank from depicting the scene which a thousand years later was the one usually chosen. as a MOSAICS 399 subject. The very earliest example of it in pictorial art was, I believe, in a church at Narbonne, and dated from the sixth century, and, the figure of Christ being entirely nude, it was covered with a curtain. But not till the year 692 was permission formally given by a Council to depict the scene of the Crucifixion. Another very remarkable point of difference from the practice of the later Christians, and more especially striking to those who have recently come from Rome and Florence, is the entire absence of any representatien at Ravenna of the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven, or as ascending into heaven. She appears only as the humble mother, holding her Divine child to receive the offerings of the Magi ; these latter are generally represented as rushing hurriedly forward, their cloaks flying behind them. During the six centuries, barren of art, that followed the period of these mosaics at Ravenna, a vast change took place in Christian theology, and the Apostolic simplicity of the early Church was quite lost. The Church had begun to teach for doctrines the commandments of men, and foremost among them was the worship of the Virgin Mary. When the next epoch of art opens with Cimabue and Giotto in the thirteenth century, we find that a marvellous 400 RA VENN A change has taken place in the relative im- portance of Jesus and His mother ; we find Christ dethroned, and His mother reigning supreme. Except as an infant in His mother's arms or dying upon the cross, Christ is rarely seen in the Roman Catholic churches. The Madonna being crowned — the Madonna ascending into heaven — the Madonna in glory as Queen of heaven — these form the vast majority of church paintings. Christ and His life and His acts are subjects relegated to picture-galleries or to refectories. A slighter point of difference observable in these early Christian delineations of our Lord is that He is usually represented as very youth- ful, and with an entirely beardless face. An Italian historian says that this is owing to the fact that in those days it was not customary for great Seigneurs to wear any hair on their face, and so the artists could not bring themselves to depict Christ as wearing any. Besides saints and martyrs, there are a few personages of a wholly different type who appear in these gorgeous mosaics ; notably, the Emperor Justinian surrounded by his courtiers, and his far from virtuous or estimable wife Theodora, who is loaded with jewels, and SAN VITALE 401 attended by the ladies of her Court, and was apparently considered to be quite fit company for the apostles and prophets who occupy the rest of the splendid walls of San Vitale. A small graven stone is pointed out in the pavement as marking the spot where Vitalis, a Roman soldier and hero, was buried alive for no longer believing in the divinity of the heathen gods. A few years later, and both his sons joyfully met their cruel deaths for the same cause. The whole of the ancient buildings at Ravenna have a most ancient and earthy smell — the concentrated odour of fourteen centuries. The immediate cause is in the rising of the ground around them and the simultaneous rise, strangely enough, in the water-level. Many of these churches have a foot or more of water in them in the winter months, which cannot have been the case when first they were built. In the Baptistery the pavement is six feet above the level of the original one, so that the ancient columns are partly buried, and yet the water rises to within a few inches of the floor level. This is a phenomenon quite unintelligible to me, since the level of the ground, compara- tively to the sea, is higher now than it was 26 4Q2 RA VENN A two thousand years ago, when the sea-shore was five miles nearer the town than it is now. The land thus reclaimed from the sea is one immense, desolate marsh, totally devoid of human habitations ; the huge Church of St. Apollinare in Classe, two and a half miles outside the town, was, when built, in the midst of the busy Roman naval station of Classis ; now it stands solitary and desolate, the sole object that breaks the expanse of dreary marsh that stretches towards the sea. The town of Classis was utterly destroyed by the Lombards, and not one stone of it remains to be seen, though below the marshy ooze lies many a marble column and many a Roman relic. We drove out to see this deserted church, through watery wastes where rice is grown ; the pale green blades were just showing above the water, and shivering in a strong east wind ; broad ditches bordered the road, and were filled with yellow iris, and flowering rushes, and waxy white water-lilies full of golden stamens. The immense church reminds one of the hull of a great ship stranded on a desolate shore ; it is in the charge of a poor decrepit old monk, and very rarely indeed is a Mass celebrated within its mouldy walls ; this is hard on the 57: APOLLINARE 403 souls in purgatory, for below a picture graphi- cally representing them as writhing in unquench- able flames is an inscription stating that — * For every Mass said in this Chapel a soul is released from Purgatory.' We may wonder by what means this official announcement from the unseen world was conveyed to mankind, but there it is. The church is one of great interest ; it was built in the year 534, on the site of a Temple of Apollo, and was dedicated to St. Apollinare, a disciple of St. Peter, and the first Bishop of Ravenna, who was martyred on this spot in the year 79, no doubt for refusing to offer incense to Apollo. Its beautiful marble pillars still remain, and its splendid mosaics ; but it was shorn of much of its beauty by that scourge of God, Sigismondo Malatesta, who stripped its walls of their marble facing in order to adorn the temple to himself and his light o' love at Rimini — a method of robbing Peter to pay Paul not uncommon in those times. The stagnant marsh-water has filled the crypt, and in winter oozes through the pave- ment of the church ; even now, at the end of May, it was not far below its level. As we looked down the entrance to the crypt, a small frog jumped from off the green and slimy steps 4 o4 RA VENN A and plunged into the water. Green damp- stains creep up the walls and over the marble steps, and a mouldering sense of decay pervades the noble old building. One asks one's self how it is possible that on this swamp there should once have been a large and flourishing town? If the coast is sinking, how is it that the sea has retreated so many miles ? And if it is rising, how is it that the land is not higher and drier than it was formerly ? I have been able to meet with no explanation of this problem. A strange reminder of the relations which once existed between Popes and Emperors is afforded by an inscription on the wall of this church, recording that the Emperor Otho III., in expiation of his treacherous murder of Crescentius, had been compelled to walk bare- foot from Rome to Monte Gargano (above a hundred miles), and afterwards to spend forty days in this church in penance of sackcloth and scourging. Such glimpses of the past are full of the interest that attaches to things gone, never to return. For good or for evil, the times are past when such an episode was possible. After seeing the church, we drove on further through the poisonous flowery swamp, waving THE PINE FOREST 405 with sedges, and bright with purple loosestrife and yellow flags, till we turned off and followed the bank of a small canal to the edge of the famous pine-forest of Ravenna, ' Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er To where the last Cesarean fortress stood.' Here the ground is firm and sandy, carpeted beneath the tall pine-trees with . juniper and pyracanthus, thorn and bracken, while on the close sward were masses of fragile cistus, milkworts, and other flowers unknown to me. The great silence all around was boundless, and only intensified by the wild surging sound of the wind in the solemn pine-trees. It was here that Byron loved to spend hours on horseback — * In the solitude Of the pine-forest, and the silent shore Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood. ***** The shrill cicalas, people of the pine, Making their summer lives one ceaseless song, Were the sole echoes, save my steed's and mine, And vesper bells that rose the boughs along.' Here, too, Dante loved to wander, while calling up the visions of Paradise ; and, as he passed, women would gather their children to them, and look at him with the awe inspired by one who had been down to Hell and had returned to tell the tale. 406 RA VENN A Nor could there be anything more calculated to foster and heighten a poetic temperament than prolonged communion with wild Nature in the depths of the great forest, with no voice to listen to but the sad voice of the wind as it murmurs on a summer's day, or rises into fury when the storm-wind comes and ' smites his thunder-harp of pines.' But the forest is not now what it was in the days of Byron. Even twenty years ago it was far more extensive than it is now. Guide- books assert that it suffered severely from a great fire some fifteen years ago ; our driver, however, a native of Ravenna, denied all knowledge of any forest fire having ever taken place, but said that in the winter of 1879-80 the forest suffered most severely from frost, and was ' tutto brucciato ' — all burnt ; perhaps the use of this expression gave rise to the belief that it had suffered from fire instead of from frost. He stuck up all his fingers in a bunch, to express graphically how thick the trees had once stood — and then, throwing his arms wide apart, he made a gesture of grief and desolation, very expressive of the idea he wished to convey. The Italians are actors by nature, and need very few words to eke out their gestures. THE PINE FOREST 407 The trees on the fringe of the forest certainly stand very thinly, but they appeared to grow thickly enough farther in. Their height ranges from sixty to ninety feet, I should say, but I was disappointed in their girth. Their cones are an important source of revenue, the gathering of which is attended by no small risk ; men climb the trees and get out along the branches till they can knock the cones off with a stick. They are harvested in October. They are then put into an oven and dried until they split open, when the seeds — the pinocchi so beloved by Italians — are collected and sold to confectioners, who use them largely in cakes and sweets, and the cones are sold for fire-lighters. The stone-pine {Pinus pined) is quite dif- ferent from its French cousin {Pinus pinaster) of the vast forests in the Landes, and yields no turpentine, so that its trunk is not seamed with gashes, as those of the French pine-trees are. At Ravenna is a monument of singular beauty, which forms a fitting companion in the gallery of memory to the beautiful monument 4o8 RA VENN A in the Cathedral at Lucca. It is that of a young knight, clad in complete armour, lying dead on his bier ; the visor is raised, and you see his face, so weary, though so young, — so unspeakably weary and glad to be at rest. As you look, it is as if you were watching one who has but now passed away ; the expression of the face rivets you, it is so infinitely pathetic in its youth and sadness. We also visited the tomb of Dante ; but, except that it is consecrated by the fame of the exiled poet, there is nothing in it of in- terest. The stormy life, begun at Florence, ended at Ravenna, and the proud and bitter spirit found at last that peace in death which it had never found in life. It has been well said that Genius wears ever a crown of thorns — a crown often self-woven, and self-pressed on the bleeding brow. It is not given to many men to be great, and still more rarely is it given to one who is great to be happy. Happiness seems to be scarcely more heroic than comfort. .Comfort is to be sought in the valleys, and happiness on the hillsides ; but greatness follows paths, solitary and rugged, on the mountain-tops. FERRARA 409 At Ferrara the interest centres in its Castle, the stronghold of the Este family, who were to Ferrara what the Medici were to Florence — at once its glory and its tyrants. It is a grand old Castle, rising four-square from its broad deep moat in the centre of the town, with towers, and machicolated galleries, and drawbridges, and deep dungeons, and all the adjuncts necessary to a Prince's residence five hundred years ago. These elaborate pro- visions for defence have now a purely historic interest ; the drawbridges are down, and the huge gates wide open at all hours, and anyone may stroll in unchallenged. It is the residence of the Prefect, and the Municipal Council meets in an enormous room with a ceiling painted by Dosso Dossi, while other Govern- ment departments also have their offices here. We saw the room that was Leonora d'Este's — she who was beloved of Tasso, but who, as the Duke's sister, was hopelessly above him in rank, and was rigorously kept apart from him. It was easy enough to keep them apart, with the wide moat that cut off the castle from the town, and the smooth blank walls descending like cliffs into its waters. Leonora's is a beautiful room, the ceiling exquisitely painted, and the furniture covered with satin em- 4io FERRARA broidered by her own hands. What sorrowful and rebellious thoughts must be interwoven with the beautiful stitchery ! From her windows she could look across the moat and see her hand- some, despairing lover on the farther side, but neither could cross the gulf. It was a sad story. Poor Tasso went mad — or, at any rate, the Duke said he did — and he was shut up in one of the dreadful dens where lunatics were confined in the Hospital of St. Anna. Perhaps he really went mad after this. For seven long years he was kept a prisoner — though not all the time in the madman's cell— and while he was here Leonora died. We saw some lines that he wrote her in his frantic misery from the madhouse, though it is not likely that they ever came to her eyes ; and a letter of his is still extant in which he entreated a well-known priest to kiss her dying hand in his name, and tell her he was praying for her. Poor Tasso ! He was crowned with laurel, but found how true it is that ' the essence of all laurels is poison.' Among the many contemporary busts of him, there is one that has so terrible an air of vacancy and despair that it is impossible to doubt that at one time he must certainly THE CASTLE DUNGEONS 4" have been mad ; but in others there is no trace of it, and it is a face of great beauty. The heavy oaken door of his prison has had a large portion of it whittled away by relic-hunting tourists, who have long ago carried away his bedstead in the same idiotic manner. Two of the dungeons in the Castle have a more especial interest than the rest, from their associations. Armed with lanterns, you follow your guide through a trap-door and down a flight of steps, which brings you to a passage dark as night. Groping your way along this, you come to a second trap-door and a second flight of steps, which brings you to the level of the moat, and your guide stops before a low, heavy door, which groans dismally as it is dragged open. As you crouch to go in, you see before you a second door, still lower, and of massive iron, which opens into a den with an earthen floor that sounds hollow beneath your feet. The only light is a feeble ray which finds its way through a chink in a wall eight feet thick, the chink itself being barred across with four gratings as thick as your wrist. In this den the d'Estes' victims were kept like wild beasts ; and here, and in another like it, the wretched Parisina and her paramour 412 FERRARA were shut up by the Duke until they were brought out and put to death. Ferrara seems to be associated chiefly with sorrow and tragedy. Is it, I wonder, any heritage of those troubled times that makes the people of Ferrara so yearn for peace and rest as their epitaphs would seem to show ? As we went round the Campo Santo, we were struck by the longing for peace so frequently expressed. ' Sleep after toil — port after stormy seas,' seems to be the keynote of their desires. ' Agnese Ferrari . . . implora pace ' — 1 Giuseppe Montano . . . implora eterna quiete ' — are the humble prayers most frequently ex- pressed. On many tombs are the words : 1 Here sleeps in eternal sleep. . . .' It struck me as singular that anyone who believes in the pains of purgatory, and believes that the departed are even now enduring those pains, could use such an expression as ' sleeping in eternal sleep'; but, as George Eliot said, human nature may pack endless blessed in- consistencies into its windings. The Campo Santo is a disused Carthusian convent, and is more like a gaol than a cemetery. The gaoler, with a ponderous bunch of keys, accompanies you, and at every dozen steps A CUXIOUS ECHO 413 down the long corridors an iron gate is opened, and then clanged again behind you ; the effect is most depressing. Some of the modern monu- ments, which we were imperiously expected to admire, are in the most morbid and shocking taste, exhibiting a ghoulish delight in the evi- dences of disease and decay. We found nothing that interested us particu- larly in the Cathedral, except the sculptures on its facade of those subjects of never failing delight to painters and sculptors — Hell and the Last Judgment. The dead are seen pushing away the heavy stone slabs on their tombs, and stepping out at the sound of the last trumpet ; and the devils are having a thorough good time in torturing the lost souls — or, rather, bodies — committed to their charge : boiling them in caldrons, and pushing them down with three-pronged forks when they try to rise. In the Church of San Francesco there is a most curious echo. The nave is roofed with four flat domes, shaped like soup-plates, and if you stand under one of these and clap your hands once, a sharp, rapid clapping is instantly heard, as if something had been set rocking ; it is so rapid that we could not count the number of times the sound is repeated, but the old 414 FERRARA woman who showed us over the church said it was between twenty and thirty. Guide-books are fond of calling Ferrara the most melancholy of Italian towns ; but they must certainly have forgotten Ravenna when they say so. As a matter of fact, Ferrara struck us as a rather pleasant and cheerful town, with long shady avenues of acacia, and streets filled with the hum of people. Of wheeled traffic there is little, for which one must be thankful, as its streets are paved with the same cruel cobble-stones as are those of Bologna and Ravenna. But whereas at Ravenna there is not a cab in all the streets for hire, at Ferrara there are great numbers. We never saw anybody hire one, except our- selves, and it is as great a mystery how the cab-drivers earn their living as it is how those spiders earn a living which spread their nets in cellars and dark nooks, where no mortal fly is ever likely to come. Providence presumably provides for both, but its ways are mysterious. From Ferrara we went to Padua, a cheerful town, on a river of many branches, which flow between its houses and make pleasant water- PADUA 415 ways, their green, jade- coloured waters telling of their mountain birth in the high valleys of the Tyrol. Its streets are often arcaded, but intermittently, not with the long continuity of those at Bologna, nor with their beauty of columns and capitals. Like all Italian towns, it has many good open spaces, but it has one piazza in particular — the Prato — which strikes a visitor by its size and individuality. Several acres in extent, it has in the centre an island, one hundred and sixty yards across, planted with a grove of fine plane- trees, whose trunks shoot up like Doric columns to a great height before branching, thus allowing free air and view, while affording dense shade. This island is entirely surrounded by a swift- flowing branch of the river, crossed by two stone bridges, and bordered on both sides by a broad two-foot-high stone wall, delightful for sitting on, and having an inner and lower seat only a foot above the stream, where the gamins can sit and cool their feet in the tempting rushing water. The coping-stone of these walls is broken every few yards by pedestals, on which stand fine life-size statues of Padua's most distinguished sons and bene- factors ; there are nearly eighty of them, and two are the work of Canova. 416 PADUA Beyond the river's circle is a broad flagged walk and a belt of turf, and beyond these, again, is the spacious piazza, surrounded by cafes and private houses, one of which bears an inscrip- tion saying that from its balcony Victor Emmanuel first addressed the people of Padua as King of Italy. This is the focus of the townspeople's amusements, and it is pleasant to see how gaily, and soberly, and intelligently they enjoy their amusements ; neither horse-laughter nor horse-play is seen or heard in the largest crowd. How much is due to the natural good manners of the Italians, and how much to the substitution of lemonade stalls and wine- shops for our British spirits and beer, would be hard to say. Their ancestors were highly cultivated when ours were clothed in skins and paint, and no doubt this counts for a good deal. We were in Padua on Whit Sunday, and the houses were hung with gay draperies and flags, and on the tall Venetian masts round the Prato floated large banners ; bands and merry- go-rounds were in full swing under the trees on the island, and bicyclists and trotters were careering round the outer circle, which seems as if intended for a racecourse, so wide and ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA 417 smooth is it. And, indeed, once a year it is used as a racecourse, during the fetes held to commemorate the deliverance of the people from the cruelties of Ezzelino, an infamous tyrant of the thirteenth century, who left a deep impression on the sands of time by his pre-eminence in wickedness. Not far from the Prato is the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, who is here commonly spoken of briefly as The Saint. Padua is bound up with its saint ; his life, his medals, his rosaries, his portraits, are everywhere to be seen, whether on a penny box of sweets or on the fagade of a church. We saw at least four distinct series of reliefs and frescoes in various parts of the town repre- senting his life and miracles, and at last felt thoroughly acquainted with them. His miracles were many and notable ; one favourite subject with artists of the Middle Ages was* the case of a young man who, in a fit of rage, kicked his mother, and then, full of remorse, went to the saint and confessed his crime. St. Anthony told him that a foot that had so offended deserved to be cut off; and the penitent youth, going home, seized a hatchet and chopped it off. But his horrified mother, not taking his view of the matter, hied her to the saint, who 27 418 PADUA returned with her, and, taking the severed foot, applied it to the stump, when it instantly re- united, leaving not so much as a scar. It is really fortunate for the medical profession that saints with these powers are such rarcz aves. Another equally favourite miracle of his with artists, and which forms the subject of a beautiful bronze relief by Donatello, is one of the Transubstantiation class. A heretic was sceptical as to this latest Popish dogma, and impiously declared that when his mule believed it he would also ; whereupon St. Anthony, taking with him the consecrated Host, went in search of the mule, and, on the elevation of the Host, the animal dropped devoutly on his knees, and refused to rise until the saint had passed on his way. Padua assuredly is not proud of its patron saint without cause. The church is a very curious one, having a conglomeration of domes that reminds one of St. Mark's at Venice, which is said to be inferior in size to St. Anthony's. Here the saint is buried^ and Tom Cory at, visiting the church about the year 1608, says — ' It is reported that the tombe hath the power to expell Divels, which I do hardly beleeve ; for I saw an experiment of it which came to no effect. For a certaine Demoniacall person ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA 419 praied at the sepulchre on his knees, while a priest walked about to helpe expell the Divell with his exorcismes. But the effect thereof turned to nothing, for I left the fellow in as badde a case as I founde him.' In the chapter-house we saw a great copper brazier full of glowing wood-ashes to be used in the censers at the great festival on the following day. It was of fine workmanship, and bore the name of the artist who — ' me fecit, Anno Domini, 1695 ' — exactly two hundred years ago. The music at Sant Antonio on Whit Sunday was the finest we heard in Italy, and consisted of organ, a full orchestra of wind and string instruments, and a fine choir, with some very beautiful voices, unspoilt by the tremolo so abused by almost all Italian singers. In the piazza outside the church is a fine bronze equestrian statue by Donatello, the first- fruits of the Renaissance, being the first large bronze cast in Italy since the days of classic Rome. Donatello's work delights me wherever I see it. A curious wooden prototype of this horse, also the work of Donatello, is kept at Padua, and is said to have been used in some great pageant, such a one perhaps as the Earl of Leicester got up at Kenilworth to amuse 4 2o PADUA Queen Elizabeth. It is a huge creature, thirteen feet high, and we were told that on the occasion of the pageant it was filled with armed men in imitation of the wooden horse of Troy. The hall in which it is kept is an upper room, known as the Justice Hall, and dates from the year 1 200 ; it is said to be the largest hall in Europe unsupported by pillars. It is seventy- eight feet in height, and has a scagliuola floor, on which four tennis-courts could be marked out side by side, leaving plenty of room between them ; its length is ninety-one yards, and its breadth thirty yards. On either side of the entrance door stand, calm and watchful, two granite statues of Pasht, the lion -headed goddess, brought from Thebes by Belzoni, the great Italian traveller, who was a native of Padua. They would think scorn of us for calling this hall an old one, on the strength of its few poor centuries — they, who were perhaps in Egypt, and wearing the same passionless smile, when Joseph was ruling in the land. The walls of this hall are entirely covered with very ancient frescoes, and there are doors communicating on both sides, with beautiful vaulted galleries outside that run the entire length of the building, and overlook on the one PADUA 421 side the flower-market, and on the other the vegetable- market ; the market-places were thickly filled with the enormous flat umbrellas of the stall-holders, looking like lily leaves on a pond. In the Middle Ages Padua was famed for its University, and for its school of fencing ; and when Montaigne visited it, he lamented that so many young French gentlemen should flock thither, forming a little French colony, and quite neutralizing in his opinion the benefit of foreign travel, which he held should consist of intercourse with persons of different customs and different ways of thinking to your own. What would he say to the huge colonies of English and Americans now established in Italian cities, who surround themselves with their own atmosphere, and transplant Boston and Brighton, with their visiting, and their tea- parties, and their dress, and their gossip, to the shores of the Tiber and the Arno ! Far from wishing to learn Italian, they consider those Italians very stupid who do not speak English, and a town intolerable where American drugs and crackers and English books and bicycles are not to be procured. The case of Peter Bell is not as uncommon a one as might be thought : 422 PADUA 1 He travelled here, he travelled there, But not the value of a hair Was heart or head the better.' The University of Padua is even older than that of Bologna — a fact repeatedly impressed upon us by our guide, a quite poor man, who had volunteered to show us the way to a few places we wished to see, but who showed as much pride in the antiquity of the University as one of its Professors could have done. Like Bologna, Padua has always been above any feeling of sex-jealousy in the matter of education, and at the foot of the staircase is a fine statue of one of its female Professors, Lucrezia Piscopia, who, as the inscription relates, was so distinguished in philosophy as to have the unique honour of the Laurel conferred on her — ' con grande solennita' — on June 20, 1678. She is said to have been extremely graceful and attractive, but she lived in all the seclusion and austerity of a nun, and died at the age of thirty-eight, having persistently refused all offers of marriage. In the magnificent lecture-room are busts and memorial tablets to many distinguished men who studied here, among whom were Galileo and Copernicus. BOTANICAL GARDEN 423 The Botanical Garden at Padua enjoys the distinction of being the oldest in Europe, and we spent two interesting mornings there. Tom Coryat, the Somersetshire traveller already quoted, spoke of it as 'a goodly garden, famoused over most places in Christendome for the soveraigne virtue of its medicinable hearbes.' It is bordered by one of the many streams, on crossing which you come to a venerable stone gateway, bearing the date 1545 ; engraved on its pillars in Latin are the rules to be observed by visitors, some of which are very quaint : i Thou shalt not knock at this Gate before St. Mark's Day (April 25) nor before the twenty - second hour {i.e., two hours before sunset). 4 Thou shalt not break or gather any flower, nor take any seed or fruit, nor dig up any root. 1 Thou shalt not trample the little walks, nor jump over them, nor attempt anything the Prefect objects to. ' And whoso does otherwise, let him be punished with fine, imprisonment, and exile? Some of the specimens here of trees from America and other countries are the first ever 424 PADUA brought to Europe, and are of great age. The veteran of the gardens is a small and decrepit tree, though it was now bursting vigorously into fresh leaf, the Vitex Agnus-castus, which was planted in 1550. The next in age is a splendid specimen of the palm Chamcerops humilis, planted in 1585; it has many trunks, and is nearly sixty feet high ; the gardener told us that Goethe sometimes sat beneath its shade while at Padua. Both this and a beautiful Araucaria excelsa of about the same height are protected by slight shelters of wood and glass, and had suffered in no way from the extraordinary severity of the past winter. The great majority of the larger timber trees were planted in 1 760, and include a plane-tree (P. or ient ale) a hundred feet high and three feet in diameter ; a splendid American hickory (Carya olivceformis) one hundred and twenty feet high ; a beech (Fagus sylvatica) one hundred and ten feet ; and an ash - tree (Fraxinus juglandifolia) one hundred and eight feet ; also two magnolia-trees, fifty feet high and measuring four feet round the trunk. A tulip-tree planted that same year is one hundred feet high, and was covered with bloom when we saw it ; and there is a beautiful specimen of the Salisburia {Ginkgo biloba) BOTANICAL GARDEN 425 planted in 1750, which is over fifty feet in height. A deodar planted in 1828 is one of the earliest brought to Europe, though not a particularly fine specimen ; it measures sixty- five feet in height, and looks more like a cedar of Lebanon than any I have before seen in Europe, though in the Himalaya their growth, when old, exactly resembles that of the Lebanon cedars. Among the curious trees is a camphor-tree, whose glossy leaves smell strongly of camphor when rubbed in your hand. The gardens are extremely interesting — for anyone, that is to say, who cares about trees ; but there is not much else there, and the extent of the ground is small. It would add greatly to the interest of the gardens at Kew if the labels on all the rarer trees gave their height in a certain year as well as the date of their planting, as is done at Padua. * On leaving Padua for Innsbruck, we left the dead flat that we had travelled across since leaving Rimini, and skirted the lower spurs of the Tyrolean Alps. Immense quantities of 426 PADUA TO INNSBRUCK mulberry-trees are grown in this part of Italy for the purpose of feeding silkworms — an estimable worm, who here takes the place of the Irish ' gintleman that pays the rink' Thirty pounds of mulberry leaves are said to produce a pound of silk, and a pound of silk is worth its weight in silver ; the leaf-bearing capacity of a single tree is estimated to yield sixteen yards of gros-grain silk. It is not our black mulberry that is grown for this purpose ; it is the Morus alba, a much quicker growing tree, and one that runs more to leaf. It was curious to see thousands of trees stripped of every leaf, as if a swarm of locusts had lately passed over the country. Stripping the leaves appeared to be the most important agricultural operation of the present season ; whole families — men, women, and children — were up in the trees filling long sacks with them, and on the ground were immense mounds of fresh young leaves piled up on sheets to be carried home for the voracious worms. After passing Trent, the mulberry gave place to the cherry, and we passed hundreds of trees still laden with fruit, hanging in heavy tempting fringes from every bough. A couple of hours later, and the cherry- INNSBRUCK 427 trees too were left behind ; and as we toiled laboriously up the Brenner Pass, it was between forests of fir and larch, that when last we saw them were powdered with hoar-frost, now lovely in fresh green. The meadows were full of flowers — pink, white, yellow, purple, with lovely stretches of turquoise-blue forget-me-not and the deeper blue of the alpine gentian. When once we had reached the highest point, we sped swiftly downhill, past villages whose slender red or green spires rose far, far below us, to Innsbruck. On alighting there, we were again struck with the singularity of the custom prevalent all over Bavaria, of having poles to all the carts and carriages, though only driving one horse. It is the precise contrary of the custom prevalent at Naples, where every cart has shafts, though usually drawn by two horses, or even three, abreast. The streets in the old part of the town are quaint and picturesque, every house having an independent air of originality and character about it, but all many -gabled and many- windowed and many-shuttered, and often richly ornamented with stucco reliefs or stone carving. Its most interesting church is the Hof-kirche, built in the sixteenth century in memory of 428 INNSBRUCK Kaiser Max, as Maximilian I. is fondly called by the Tyrolese. His tomb is in the centre of the nave, and is covered with beautiful marble reliefs representing scenes in his life ; and on either side of the nave are ranged twenty-eight colossal bronze figures, Kings, Queens, and heroes, supposed to be kith and kin of the Royal House of Hapsburg, and in- cluding such varied personages as Theodoric the Ostrogoth, King Arthur of England, and Clovis of France. They form a very imposing array as they stand in solemn silence, their robes trailing on the marble pavement in heavy jewelled folds, their mailed hands resting on their ponderous swords, gazing blankly on the pigmy tourists who pass in ever-shifting pro- cession before them. The Silver Chapel of this church is so called from a large statue of Our Lady above th€ altar, which the sacristan assures you is made entirely of solid silver, with a crown of solid gold studded with real jewels — all which state- ments afford him the deepest satisfaction ; and he further points out that the reredos is sur- rounded by a border of real ivory — a fact that no doubt adds immensely to its cost, but not a whit to its beauty. As to the famous statue, and all the silver reliefs surrounding it, they THE SILVER CHAPEL 429 derive no beauty from their intrinsic value, and — sad to say — might as well be made of lead or pewter, as far as their appearance goes. A far more interesting object is a little old organ, possessing one row of keys only, pre- sented to Kaiser Max by Pope Julius II., the patron of Michael Angelo and Raffaelle. The sacristan told us it has never been played on since the death of the Archduke Ferdinand — he who presented the silver image of the Virgin. His story was a romantic one, but he lived in the days when it was no uncommon thing for both men and women to think the world well lost for love. It was a case of love at first sight. Ferdi- nand was but twenty when he accompanied his uncle, Charles V., to a Reichstag at Augsburg ; and as they made their state entry into the town, his eyes chanced to meet the eyes of a beautiful girl, the daughter of a distinguished merchant, Welser by name. These Welsers had at one time lent the Emperor the in- credible amount of twelve tons of gold, and were in great favour with the House of Haps- burg. They had been granted large posses- sions in the New World, and it was they who founded the town of Valparaiso. From the moment that the young Archduke 43Q INNSBRUCK and Philippine Welser met, they loved each other with a love that only death was able to quench, and that stood the test of all trouble and sorrow and opposition, and supported them through every trial. Nothing but a secret marriage being possible, the Archduke per- suaded Philippine into consenting to one, and his own chaplain performed the ceremony, flying with them afterwards to a castle in the Tyrol belonging to the Archduke. The Emperor's fury was unbounded, and never while he lived would he consent to recognize Philippine as his nephew's wife. Not till after his death, and thirteen years after their marriage, was a reconciliation brought about with his successor, the young Archduke's father. It was effected in a singu- larly dramatic manner. Taking advantage of the Emperor's custom of receiving personally, on certain days, the petitions of his subjects, Philippine presented herself with other peti- tioners, and, awaiting her turn, threw herself at his feet, entreating his help. Having no idea who she was, and touched by her extreme beauty, the Emperor raised her, and listened with much sympathy to the tale of all she had suffered from the unrelenting sternness of her father-in-law, who had ob- A LOVE STORY 431 jected to his son's marriage, and would never see her, or even acknowledge her as a daughter- in-law. The Emperor, greatly moved by her distress, promised to use his influence with the stern old man who could reject so lovely a daughter. 4 But,' he added, • you have not told me who your husband's father is.' And then, like David of old, he was told that he was the man. He could not any longer ignore Philippine, but his mercy was cruel. He consented to acknowledge her himself as his son's wife, and initiated a few other persons into the truth, but only under a solemn vow of secrecy ; and from this vow the Pope would not absolve them until some years after the Emperor's death. But Philippine bore all calumny and all slander patiently and nobly, and in the end saw her fair name acknowledged before the world. For thirty-two years she and her husband lived in perfect love, and then she died, on the anniversary of her wedding-day, idolized by all around her. Her tomb is in the Silver Chapel, near that of her husband, and once in every month a memorial Mass is to this day celebrated for these faithful lovers. Philippine was held to be the most beautiful 432 INNSBRUCK woman of her time, and her grave, beautiful face becomes very familiar to anyone who makes a stay at Innsbruck, for it is a very favourite one with artists of every kind. It was popularly said of her that her skin was so white and delicate that when she drank red wine it could be seen passing down her slender throat. She was a notable housewife, too, and five folios are preserved in the Vienna Library — two of them entirely in her own handwriting — filled with cookery receipts and useful homely remedies. From Innsbruck we went to the brine-baths of Reichenhall, and after duly drinking brine, and inhaling brine, and bathing in brine, we turned our faces homewards, and by the end of July our foreign travels were among the dreams of the Past — dreams that have left 1 Deposited upon the silent shore Of memory, images and precious thoughts That shall not die, and cannot be destroyed.' INDEX Amalfi, 215 Angelico, Fra, 218, 304, 332, 344, 367 Anthony, St., of Padua, 381, 417 Aquarium at Naples, 132 Aquinas, St. Thomas, II, 105 Art, for the masses, 49 and realism, 57 revival of, 330 Astroni, 181 Atlas, a royal, 355 Avernus, Lake, 176-188 Bacchus and Faun, 362 Baiae, 182 Bambino, the, 278 Baths of Caracalla, 232 of Diocletian, 233 Beatrice Cenci, 277, 289 Belcaro, Castle of, 333 Belvedere, Vatican, 242 Benedict, St., 366 Benvenuto Cellini, 245, 289 Bernardino, St., 316 Birds, slaughter of small, 38 Blue grotto, 211 Bologna, 47 Bozen, 30 Bruno, Giordano, 288 Budget, a State, 391 Burial customs, 126 Caligula, 182 Capri, 201 Capuchin burial vaults, 268 Catacombs, 114, 266 Catherine, St., 317-334 Cemetery, Jewish, 18 Neapolitan, 124 in Rome, 264 at Ferrara, 412 Capuchin, 268 Cenacoli, 367 Charles V., 54 Charron, 45 Church customs, 102 Clocks, Italian, 34 at Lucca, 72 Cologne, 4 Columbaria, 267 Cook's tourists, 203 Cremation, 44, 123 Cumae, 186 Curse, a terrible, 250 Dante, 39, 405, 408 David, bronze, 343 Diana, statue of, 156 of the Ephesians, 123 Diogenes, anecdote of, 278 Dog grotto, 172 Dogs in harness, 2 Domini Canes, 364 Donatello's crucifix, 371 wooden horse, 419 Earthquake at Florence, 372 Ecce Homo, 59 Echo, a curious, 413 Education of women, 61-63, 422 28 434 INDEX Election, a general, 386 English College at Rome, 269 Epitaph on a girl, 272 Etruscan remains, 64, 112, 309 Ex votos, 278 Female professors, 61-63, 422 Ferrara, 409 Fina, St., 341 Firkin from Cana, 10, 55 Florence, 342 Forks, Roman, 235 Francesca di Rimini, 382 Frankfurt, 12 Frescoes, by Pinturricchio, 326 by Gozzoli, 339, 348 Funeral at Verona, 42 Funeral customs, 77, 91, 164 Garden, Botanical, 423 Germania, 13 Ghent, 1 Ghirlandajo, 341, 368 Giles, St., 40 Gimignano, San, 335 Giordano Bruno, 288 Giotto, 364-366 Glastonbury, Abbot of, 271 Grillo, a, 376 Grotta del Cane, 172 Guide at Baise, 184 Hall, an enormous, 420 Helena, the Empress, 329 Hercules, Farnese, 167 Herculaneum, 147 Herodias, 41 Ice Temple, 170 Idria delle Nozze, 55 Illuminated books, 53, 328 Indulgences, 108, 247, 281, 403 Innsbruck, 427 Inquisition-room, 290 Inventory, a Roman, 229 Irish Saint, an, 73 Isis, statue of, 156 Janiculum, 277, 293 Januarius, St., 117 Jews, the, in Rome, 259 La Cava, 217 Leaning Towers, 65 Library, Laurentian, 354 Siena Cathedral, 327 Lion of St. Mark, 36 Lottery, 194 Lucca, 67 Madonna di San Luca, 51 worship of, 306, 399 Malatesta, House of, 382 Map of Africa, 355 Marino, San, 387 Mass at Vatican, 243 Mercury, Belvedere, 242 bronze, 165 Meridian Line, 52 Mezzofanti, 60 Michael Angelo, 353-356 Mino da Fiesole, 365 Miracle of Bolsena, 302 at Rimini, 381 by St. Anthony, 417 Miserere at St. Peter's, 256 Montaigne, 67 Monument at Lucca, 70 at Ravenna, 407 Monuments at Bologna, 56 at Ferrara, 413 Mosaic works, 291 Mosaics, Ravenna, 308 Moses of Michael Angelo, 360 Monte Nuovo, 175 Munich, 20 Museum, Capitol, 235 Lateran, 237 Vatican, 239 Naples, 80 Neapolitan churches, 100 cemeteries, 124 aquarium, 132 harness, 97 cab-drivers, 92 police, 94 letter-writers, 96 museum, 137 street life, 83, 87 water-supply, 191 Niccolo del Arco, 324 INDEX 435 Obelisk at St. Peter's, 249, 324 Octroi tax, 189 Opera, German, 25 Orvieto, 301 Padua, 415 its university, 422 Panathenaic vases, 141 Psestum, 220 Pantheon, 283 Patrick's Well, St., 307 Peter the Great, 184 Peter's, St., 251 Napoleon's scheme to plunder, 259 ascent of dome of, 261 seen from Tivoli, 293 Petrarch and Laura, 355 Philippine Welser, 429 Pine forest, 405 Pompeii, 152 Ponte Vecchio, 347 Posilipo tunnel, 171 Pozzuoli, 175-179 Pulcinello, 113 Queen Elizabeth, 108, 250 Railway time union, 3 Ravenna, 396 Religion in Southern countries, in Rimini, 381 Riva, 33 Roman Campagna, 79, 293 Roman Emperor, 14 Rome, 224 a battle-field, 246 in the fourteenth century, 285 churches, 273 Rome, St. Angelo, 286 Colosseum, 282 Pantheon, 283 Pincian Hill, 300 Saracens in Italy, 216 Sarcophagus of Charlemagne' sister, 10 Savonarola, 350 Scala Santa, 281 Sermons, 107 Sex jealousy, 61 Siena, 314 Silkworms, 426 Solfatara, 177 Spanish tragedy, 28 Spezia, 76 Stoves, German, 25 Tasso and Leonora, 409 Theodoric the Goth, 397, 428 Tiberius' Leap, 208 Tivoli, 293-299 Tourists, 203, 294-299 Towers, leaning, 65 Tristan and Isolde, 32 Vatican, 241 Venuses, 142 Verona, 35 Vesuvius, 80, 179, 297 Vittoria Colonna, 107, 357 Volto Santo, 70 Wine shops, 16 Wolf, bronze, 237 Zita, St., 75 THE END BILLING AND SONS. PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. /. D. & Co. t ERRATA. Pa g e 55» in headline, and line iJ,for ' Iddrio ' read ' Idria.' M94688 ^ r D^^6 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY