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SKETCHES

EUROPEAN CAPITALS.

WILLIAM WARE,

ZENOEIA, OR LETTERS FROM PALMYRA, AURELIAN, &C.

BOSTON:
PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.
MDCCCLI.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
Phillips, Sampson & Co.
ia the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

THURSTON, TORRY, AND EilERSON, PRISTERa.

PREFACE,

This small volume comes into existence, like so
many others now-a-days, as a convenient way of
disposing of matter previously used in the form of
Lectures. They are the sketches of a traveller,
and aim to give the first rapid impressions, with as
little error and e.xaggeration as possible, of places
visited in the course of a year's absence. I only
hope they may not prove more incorrect in fact,
or false in inference, than the majority of writings
of the class. It is a volume of light reading for
the summer road-side ; and though, like the flowers
of that season, perishing with them, one may be
permitted to hope that, like some of them, at least,
it may exhale a not unpleasing fragrance while it
lasts. CA3tBRroGE, June, 1851.

CONTENTS.

ANCIENT ROME  1
ST. PETER'S AND THE VATICAN . . 43
FLORENCE  91
NAPLES  149
THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY . . 195
LONDON  251

ANCIENT EOME.

ANCIENT ROME.

The approach to Rome on any side, and
in any direction, is signified to the stranger
by his entrance upon the Campagna, that vast
level tract which extends in all directions,
almost an equal distance from the walls of the
city to the Mediterranean on the south, and
to the roots of the Apennines on the other sides.
It is commonly spoken of and loosely described
as a plain, an absolute plain ; and, seen from a
distance, such it appears. Seen from any of the
neighboring heights, Tivoli for instance, with
its blue mist hanging over it, and it looks
more like an ocean, than any territory with its
hills and valleys, its forests and ruins. Still as
you cross it from any one point to any other,
it is found to present a very uneven surface.
It might be called more appropriately perhaps,

2 ANCIENT ROME.
in our American phraseology, a sort of rolling
prairie. It is, at any rate, only for a very short
distance, whichever road you take, that you
are on such a formation that you can see for
more than a few miles around. You find, as
your carriage proceeds, that you sink and rise
again like a vessel at sea, now below the hori
zon, so that for a time all neighboring objects
are cut off, then, mounting upon elevations
which command a view far and near of the
dreary and desolate region you are traversing,
and carry the eye so far as just to catch a
glimpse of the highest of the Alban hills, and
of the dome and ball of St. Peters. The
lower portions of the plain seem more like
ravines, old dried up water-courses, or hollows
which in the rainy season might fill with
water and from small lakes, than any thing
else. Very little vegetation any where shows
itself, except the grasses Avhich are heavy and
abundant, indicating a fertile soil. Indeed this
is one of the unexpected aspects of the Cam
pagna, that all over this uninhabited desert
there are the most unmistakable evidences of

THE CAMPAGNA. 6
a soil which, with good cultivation, would sup
port a dense population. Wherever the face of
the country shows a broken bank, the earth
is of that dark brown color, almost black, which
gives assurance of mines of wealth below.
Scarce a tree is to be seen over its whole
extent ; or, if some low groups of forest trees
are met with here and there, they are in the
deep hollows and hardly lift their heads above
the general level of the plain. Shrubs of
various kinds skirt the roads and climb up the
sides of the ravines, and in the summer season
wild flowers and roses of a thousand kinds
contend with a luxuriant growth of brambles
and weeds for the supremacy, and sometimes
one and sometimes the other obtains the
mastery, and gives its character to the scene.
Although the Campagna is rightly described
as a wild and desert region, it is not without the
occasional variety of a human face and form,
and even a group of low half ruined cottages,
appearing never, however, as if built or in
tended for the humble uses of domestic resi
dences to which they are now devoted, but

4 ANCIENT ROME.
the crumbled remains of palace or castle of
former days. About these melancholy ghost
like ruins are sometimes seen a few of the
inhabitants, men, women, children, — the men
clothed in sheep-skin, in the form just stripped
from the slaughtered animal— all pallid with the
fearful disease of the plain, fever and ague, the
true malaria of Rome. You see them crouch
ing down among their sheep and pigs in the
sheltered nooks of brick walls where the sun
beats down hottest, in the hope to supply in that
manner the heat which the northern breezes
from the distant mountains carry away, and
prolong for a few days a miserable existence,
which, for their own sakes, one would think,
could not terminate too soon.
This now long deserted and sterile region
was once thriving and populous, as we know
from history, and as must be inferred from the
masses of ruin which lie every where scattered
around ; ruin of no imposing character, but the
crumbled walls and foundations of crowds of
buildings, all the particular and intelligible forms
of which have long ago disappeared. It was

THE CAMPAGNA. 5
from these now idle and barren wastes that the
mighty Capital once drew its supplies for its
daily markets. Over these plains was once
spread, also, a large proportion of the five or
six millions that once, according to some,
constituted the population of ancient Rome,
not more than a quarter of which could ever
have been contained within Aurelian's walls.
Successive revolutions and the violences of
war, at first compelled the frightened inhabit
ants to take shelter within the walls of the
city, and then the lands being gradually de
serted by them and left without cultivation,
the exhalations became pestilential from damp
ness and the corruptions of neglected vegeta
tion, and in no long time these plains, once
fruitful as a garden, became poisonous to the
constitution and to the eye, a spectacle of
mourning and horror. Among the ruins of
villa, castle and farm thus abandoned, there
then lurked in safe retreat the robber and the
assassin ; and from that day to this the passage
of the Campagna has been unsafe.
But while td the south and west of the city

AJNCIENT ROME.

the Campagna seems all dreary and desolate,
and even to the eye of taste there is no relief, in
the contrary direction, between the Sabine and
Alban Hills and Soracte, the general aspect of
the surface is at least far more interesting, and
to the lover of the picturesque even beautiful.
No scene can be presented of more touching and
even magnificent beauty, than that which ofi'ers
itself as you leave the Latin Gate and cast
your eye toward the Alban Hills, where you
see the huge aqueducts of Ancient Rome,
and, chief among them, the gigantic Claudian,
striding across the plain on its innumerable
arches and vanishing in long perspective lines,
hidden, at length, by the thick warm mists of
the atmosphere, or else intercepted by the
lower roots of the mountains. Beside the
Claudian in Rome's prosperous days, eight
others brought their rivers of pure mountain
water into the heart of the Capital — then dis
tributed, as now, by pipes to domestic residen
ces and public fountains — any one of which
at the present day were enough to flood the
modern city of nearly two huridred thousand
inhabitants.

APPROACH TO THE CITY. t
When within a few miles of the Capital, as
you surmount some of the higher undulations
of soil, you catch your first distinct view of
a few of the more prominent objects of the city
— steeples and towers, and, high over all,
the dome and cross of St. Peter's. Almost
any one entering Rome from this direction
will find himself somewhat disappointed in
the general aspect of this remarkable place.
The dome and enormous mass of the Vatican
will alone correspond to the impressions you
had received from your reading. You will
catch not so much as a glimpse of Old Rome
— the Rome you care chiefly to see. As
you move toward the gates, you cannot but
remember her history, running back to so re
mote an antiquity, her ruins — the ruins of the
mightiest empire in the world's history ; you call
to mind the form and magnitude of the Temple
of all the Gods, the Pantheon, the Trium
phant Arches, the Pillars of Trajan and Anto
nine, and, above all, the world-renowned Fla
vian, and the walls of the city, hoary with the
rust and rime of so many ages — and you expect.

8 ANCIENT ROME.
and naturally enough, as you approach Rome,
to see something of all this. But you see noth
ing of it. Ancient Rome is engulfed and hidden
by Modern Rome, the Rome of the Middle
ages, and not a ruin, not an object distinctive
ly Roman, appears. You see, instead, rather a
bright, smart looking modern city, with its
usual assortment of domes of difierent sizes and
forms, and a variety of church towers and stee
ples, and the roofs and walls of a crowd of
nice yellowish houses, and your disappointment
amounts to vexation. Not a single sentiment
of childlike reverence for venerable antiquity
is gratified. And when through the lofty
gates of the city you enter into the beautiful
but highly artificial square of the Piazza del
Popolo, there is still no gain in your impres
sion — all is yellow, all is modern.
As the diligence rolls heavily onward, you
immediately enter the principal streets of the
city, and as you look up upon the street archi
tecture, up to buildings six or seven stories
high, dark and dingy, and manifestly bearing
the marks of centuries upon them, you begin

ENTRANCE. '.(
to understand, in part, your position, and are
satisfied that you have gone backward as far at
least as to the middle ages. In a few moments
more, turning on the right hand side into a
small square before the doors of the post-office,
you leave your carriage, and there, in the centre
of the square, you are gratified with your first
glimpse of Old Rome — you see before you
Antonine's Column, with its spiral histories in
marble relief, now black with age, running
from the base to the capital. As you examine
this venerable and beautiful monument of two
thousand years, you feel that you are in Rome,
that you can be nowhere else ; you see at once
by the damages inflicted by time, and the
ebony tint of the marble, and especially by the
rounding of lines that once were sharp as the
chisel could make them, that less than two
thousand years could hardly have served to
inflict that sort of injury. You cannot doubt
that you see at length a specimen of Old Rome.
Whoever shall visit Rome, entering it by
the Florence road, or via Flaminia, will ex
perience many of the sensations and disap-

10 ANCIENT ROME.
pointments I have endeavored to describe. He
will not find his expectations supported by the
efl^ect produced by any of the objects he will
at first see. Reaching Rome from Naples, on
the east, and all the impressions I have de
scribed would be reversed; and it would be
well worth while, even at some sacrifice of
convenience, so to arrange one's journey as
to enter the capital by the Jerusalem gate.
You then, after passing the church of St. John
Lateran, soon reach the Colosseum and find
yourself in the midst of the most interesting
relics of the old city. Your first impressions
are just such as you would prefer.
I have mentioned Rome in connection with
the middle ages. It bears the marks of those
ages every where, in the churches, palaces and
domestic buildings, which line all the streets.
But all is not so deeply stained with the marks
of those ages as Florence. Florence is a pure
specimen of them, and better worth exploring
on that account than Rome. Still it has a
deep interest in that respect also. No one can
remember the people who figured in Rome at

FIRST MOVEMENT ON ARRIVING. II
that time, the artists, the poets, the philoso
phers — the palaces and churches erected there
and so lavishly adorned, the Cathedral of St. Pe
ter's and the Palace of the Vatican — no one
can, in a word, recall the era of Leo the Tenth
and Julius the Second, without being ready to
bear witness that it was a period in the history
of human genius, quite worthy of any of the
grandest of those that had preceded it in the
Old Latin empire.
I have described to you the Campagna
and the entrance into Rome. I wish now
to disclose a panoramic view of all that
Rome once was — the great theatre of the
voluminous events that transpired within sight
of her walls — in order to correct by that single
bird's eye glance, the impression of disappoint
ment received from the first sight of the
city. As soon as he has passed the gates, let
not the traveller fail therefore, as the first
movement he makes after his arrival, to as
cend the tower upon the top of the Capitol
Hill, and with his map of Ancient and Modern
Rome spread out before him, identify every

12 ANCIENT ROME.
spot and object of historic interest and impor
tance. That is the first duty. From that
point you are undoubtedly presented with an
area more densely crowded with the footprints
of history, from the time Eneas landed to
that of Augustus, from that to the present
day, than from any other on the face of the
earth. And not only that, the scene beheld
from the point just mentioned, as a mere varied
surface of mountain and plain, is one of the
most remarkable for its grandeur and beauty
united that can any where be seen. The
whole of the scene together presents the great
est unity with the greatest variety. Here lay
the city, once, of one, two, three millions of
inhabitants, in the centre of this vast plain ; one
city, one plain, surrounded on the outskirts by
the Apennines, Soracte, and the Mediterranean.
From fifteen to twenty miles in every direction,
the early inhabitants could detect the approach
of an enemy — in the infant days of the re
public an advantage to which may have been
owing many a deliverance and many a triumph
— a natural position of strength, to which she

VIEW FROM THE CAPITOL. lo
must have been indebted for her prosperity, al
most as much as to her statesmen and her gene
rals. But first, as you look off from the tower
of the capitol, the eye falls upon the very ob
jects directly under you, for which you had
been waiting with a fever of impatience, — the
time-worn vestiges, the sublime yet melan
choly ruins of the ancient city. At your feet
you behold the Forum — that name that can
never be uttered without emotion — the re
maining columns of the Temple of Jupiter
Tonans — the Triumphal Arch of Septimius
almost perfect in its form, and bearing to-day
the inscription placed upon it two thousand
years ago — the temple of the virtuous Anto
nine, and his wife the dissolute Faustina — the
huge brick arches of the Temple of Peace —
farther on in the same direction of the Sacred
Way the smaller Arch of Titus, with the golden
candlestick of the Temple of Jerusalem sculp
tured in relief — and farther still, where your
eye of necessity rests, the Flavian Amphithe
atre or Colosseum. On the right of that, and a
little nearer, on the summit of the Palatine,

14 ANCIENT ROME.
a low swell of ground — you see the remains
of the Palace of the Ca3sars, then the Aven-
tine crowned with convents and churches, the
Tiber flowing below, and, east of that, the im
mense remains of the Baths of Caracalla. Then
turning west and south, your eye surveys the
graceful dome of the Pantheon, and the mag
nificent masses of the unrivalled Vatican. —
These, all within the walls of Rome. Then
without, you contemplate the wide-spreading
Campagna, — the site of Alba Longa, on the
Alban Hills, the Sabine Hills, the long ranges
of the Apennines, with Tusculum and Tibur,
and the ruins of Cicero's and Horace's villas
on their slopes, — till the scene is shut in by
Monte Mario, a few miles without the gates,
and the lofty walls of St. Peter's and the Ja-
niculum. This brief survey of the city from
this lofty tower of observation, with your re
collections in your head and your maps before
you, is itself worth a visit to Europe. Indeed,
to pass a morning there, simply studying
the relations in respect to position and dis
tance, of places so remarkable in Roman his-

THE SEVEN HILLS. 15
tory and poetry, is the best commentary pos
sible upon all you have read or remember, and
leaves impressions on the mind that can never
be effaced — sheds the light of day upon youth
ful studies of the Viri Romas, Virgil, Horace,
Livy ; converts obscurity and fable into proba
bility and substantial truth, in spite of all the
heresies and infidelities of Von Niebuhr.
A feature prominent in the scenery of Rome,
and no less so, certainly, in its history, is the
Seven Hills. The Capitol Hill — the highest
point in Rome, now crowned by some ex
tremely ugly edifices by Michael Angelo, (but
adorned by the finest equestrian statue in the
world, that of Marcus Aurelius,) as it was
once bjr the most magnificent citadel and
temple in the world, covering many acres —
this hill retains something of its ancient ele
vation, though, by the crumbling away of the
summit and the filling up at the base, one may
easily conjecture it to have lost a portion of
its original height. On the eastern side is the
Tarpeian Rock, still a rock, and still, notwith
standing all its losses and the filling up below.

16 ANCIENT ROME.
retaining height sufficient to serve its former
purpose of execution, by pitching a criminal
from its highest point. The far-famed Pala
tine, where the cottage of Romulus long stood,
and, in marvellous contrast with it, Nero's
golden house afterwards, and which the Em
peror Vespasian demolished as a dwelling too
sumptuous for any mortal, has lost nearly all
of its original elevation, save the ruins by
which it is covered. As the palace of the
Caesars at length extended over the whole of
the hill, covering, I dare not conjecture how
many acres, so its substructions now in like
manner overspread the whole. And upon
these extensive remains of crumbled brick and
marble, resolved in the process of' ages back
to its original earth, stands, as in mockery of
.departed grandeur, an Englishman's villa of
bright red brick, with wooden pinnacles in
numerable of a color to match, which, to
gether with quite an army of cypresses, and
another army of red wooden or earthen vases
surrounding it, make it one of the most
conspicuous, as at the same time one of the

THE SEVEN HILLS. 17
Ugliest objects in the city. Nowhere can the
stranger turn his eye for enjoyment or re
pose within the walls of Rome, but the
staring hues and flaunting fopperies of this
gingerbread mansion obtrude upon the sight,
and the vision that had begun to disclose
itself is rudely dissolved. All around this
wooden palace spread the gardens of the es
tablishment, and winding walks shaded by
various shrubbery encircle the hill. Even a
well has been sunk in the midst of these
ruins, and possibly seeks its waters from the
boudoir of the beautiful Poppea. In the
midst of the garden accidental cavities have
been occasioned by the falling in of buried
walls and arches, some of which have been
explored, and far below, in vaults where
the darkness is so deep that it may be felt,
there have been discovered richly decorated
apartments, decorated with mosaics and paint
ings, which have been denominated, probably
with no better reason than that of fancy, the
Baths of Li via. Dark cavernous holes still lead
away to other hidden regions of the huge ruin,
2*

18 ANCIENT ROME.
which have never yet been explored, but
where, it is certainly more than probable, that
the most precious relics of marble or bronze
might yet be brought to light.
At the foot of the Palatine, extending from
the Capitol toward the Colosseum north, lay the
Roman Forum — an oblong square, as the anti
quarians tell us of more than a thousand feet
in length, by about eight hundred in breadth.
On the four sides of this small square once
stood a crowd of the noblest public fabrics of
Rome. Temples, basilicas, comitiae, curias, all
adorned in the most sumptuous manner by
columns, flights of steps, statues of marble
and bronze, and by rostra, or pulpits, from
which the orators harangued the people on all
occasions of great political excitement. Of
this thrice celebrated place, scarce a vestige
now remains. A portico of six or eight col
umns of the Temple of Concord — the Arch
of Septimius Severus — three pillars of a
Temple of Jupiter — a portico of the Tem
ple of Antoninus and Faustina — these are all
that now serve to mark the spot, where, so

THE SEVEN HILLS. 19
long, once dwelt the seat of that vast power,
at the name of which the earth trembled.
Nowhere else in Rome does one experience
the sensations that crowd upon the mind, as
he paces to and fro along the site of the
Forum, with the hill of the Capitol tower
ing above him — the remains of the palace of
the Caesars clothing the Palatine on one side —
and, in front, the monarch of ruin, the Flavian
Amphitheatre — characteristic funeral monu
ments all, of the greatest of earthly empires.
The Aventine — the most considerable of
the Seven Hills which stands directly on the
banks of the river — the chosen residence
of Remus, as the Palatine was that of Romu
lus, is now covered with a couple of convents
and their enclosing walls and churches, beau
tifully embowered amongst a variety of trees
and shrubs. It constitutes one of the most
inviting objects in all Rome.
The duirinal is also a hill, strictly speaking,
or, rather, a long, elevated slope or ridge, on
the top of which now stands the very exten
sive but plain looking palace of the present

20 ANCIENT ROME.
Pope, where once stood the Temple of Rom
ulus Q,uirinus, erected by Numa. This hill is
now one of the most airy and best built quar
ters of the modern city. It is adorned in front
of the Pope's palace by an Egyptian obelisk,
and by two colossal Greek statues of marble,
called Castor and Pollux, each holding and re
straining a horse ; but so ill proportioned are
they — the gods to the horses — that they
could not be mounted (the horses, I mean,)
without, at the same time, being crushed.
As for the other hills, the Viminal and the
Esquiline, they may be named, and their sites
pointed out to the classical traveller, but they
cannot be seen. The Janiculum, on the other
side of the Tiber, has the honor to bear upon
its sides the massive fabric of St. Peter's, and
the immeasurable palace and museum of the
Vatican. The Coelian is made famous by the
imposing ruins of the Baths of Caracalla.
I have already named or referred to many of
the ruins of Rome, but, as yet, have described
none. And it must here be frankly confessed
that to not one of the remains of ancient

VARIOUS RUINS. 21
Rome does there attach any thing magnificent
in its character, or as a spectacle any thing par
ticularly interesting, save the Pantheon and
the Colosseum — and, I may add, perhaps, the
remaining arches of the Claudian Aqueduct
without the walls. The Baths of Caracalla
display enormous piles of brick masonry,
from which the marble coating is all gone,
but the objects lack interest, and the scattered
fragments, arches and columns of brick, want
unity and meaning. The Baths of Diocletian
are as large ; but the chief relic that has been
preserved is now converted into a church, very
Vcist and of beautiful form and proportion, but
retaining no likeness to its former self; and
seen with its brilliant white walls, and freshly
carved capitals and columns, appears like a
building of yesterday ; add to this the pres
ence of the monks and priests at their various
altars, and the people at their devotions, and
idle strangers loitering about, and there is no
single object to suggest any thing either an
cient or Roman. The few groups of columns
in the Forum, the broken arches of the Tem-

22 ANCIENT ROME.
pie of Peace, or of Vespasian, as others think,
the triumphal arches of Constantino, Titus,
Severus, the Mausoleum of Augustus, the
Theatre of Marcellus, are all nothing in the
description, and not much to the observer on
the spot — nothing as a mere spectacle — unless
he is of that enthusiastic temperament that the
first sight of a Roman brick, which was laid
by Roman brick-layers in the best days of the
republic or the grandest of the empire, can in
spire him with an ode or a monologue. They
who have much less of this temper, but still
something of it, can linger about the objects I
have just named and a hundred others, and
especially ramble about and among the ruins
of the Palatine, or those of Hadrian's Villa, at
Tivoli, and never weary of pleasure — such
a fascination is there in the presence of the
identical forms which were once gazed upon
by the eyes of so remarkable a people, have
endured throughout so many revolutions, sur
vived the desolation of fires that once and
again devastated vast portions of the city, and
withstood the rude assaults of so many centu-

THE COLOSSEUM. 23
The only monument, perhaps, which is at
once in its grandeur worthy of the Roman
name and power, and, in itself, an object of
unrivalled sublimity, is the Colosseum. Be
fore that, one may well pause wifh astonish
ment. Be he enthusiast or not, be he antiqua
rian or poet, or thoughtless traveller, it will
make no difference, his steps will be arrested,
and he will pause with astonishment. Ruined
and maimed as it is by the remorseless tooth of
Time, but a hundred times more so by the mean
and dastardly spirit of the popes and princes
of the middle ages, who, without reverence
for genius or consummate beauty, or the mem
ory of the mightiest people that ever ruled the
earth, with no sentiment or aim apparently
which sprung not from a coarse lust of mise
rable profit, — ruined and maimed as it is and
spoiled of its just proportions, it is, in spite of
all its injuries and losses, in spite of all that
Heaven has done by the storms of two thou
sand years that have beaten down upon it, and
in spite of all that man has done by his armies
of Vandal workmen, who have mined its walls,

24 ANCIENT ROME.
and constructed palace after palace out of the
stones that have thus been toppled down and
borne away — it is, in spite of all this hard
fortune, the most eloquent and instructive, the
most beautiful, the grandest monument which
the past has bequeathed to the present, which
the majesty of Rome has offered to her de
scendants, or to the curiosity,- admiration, and
wonder of mankind.
Nearly one half of the vast oval retains still
its original height, towering upwards to an
elevation of one hundred and sixty feet, higher
than the steeples of most churches. Within,
with the exception of the two outermost
ranges of arches, it is, though, in parts, much
crumbled away, and in many parts broken in
where the supporting arches have fallen, so
far complete in the general form and de
sign, that standing in the centre of the arena
one can obtain a pretty correct idea of its con
struction, and see at once what the effect must
have been when the seats were crowded with
a hundred thousand human beings, comprising
the beauty, rank, fashion, and power of Rome.

THE COLOSSEUM. 2.'>
At the time of its dedication, under Titus,
which lasted for one hundred days, ten thou
sand wild beasts from Africa Avere slain there,
and gladiators and captives without number.
But though the walls on which were planted
the seats still retain their places, and there is
still quite distinctly to be discerned the gradual
slope from the centre to the summit of the out
ermost range of arches, all is, as I have said,
in a miserably dilapidated state, and in truth
appears to the careless observer but one wild
ruin, heavily overgrown with grasses, wild
flowers, shrubs, and almost trees, springing up
every where from out the yawning crevices,
trailing down the outside walls, creeping up
the broken arches, and displaying as rich a
scene of varied vegetation as could be found
on any mountain-side in Italy. Naturalists
have enumerated nearly three hundred plants
of different orders, which contribute to deck
the ruins of this vast pile.* When one sur
veys this wide scene of destruction, once, in
* Prof. Sebastiani describes 260 species, according to Murray,
in the " Flora Colossea."

26 ANCIENT ROME.
the palmiest days of the empire, the great cen
tre of elegance and wealth, now a wonder by
day, and a horror by night, he is apt to lament
the desolation that has overtaken it, and regret
that a structure which in its design displayed
so much science, and in its decoration such
consummate taste, and on which had been
lavished a mine of wealth, should have fallen
step by step into so irretrievable a decay, so
that to restore and rebuild, even if now it
could be applied to any useful purpose, would
almost surpass the means of a modern empire,
certainly of any Italian empire. We condemn,
indeed, the sports of crime and blood in which
the multitudes of Rome indulged, and for which
this theatre was erected — especially does the
Christian look with horror upon the wanton
slaughter of the crowds of martyrs, who, from
the reign of Titus to that of Constantino,
poured out their blood to gratify thc cruel
nature of a proud and luxurious capital. But
while we condemn the savage deeds that were
enacted within those walls, we would not raze
the walls within which they were committed,
as if they were the guilty party ; we would

THE COLOSSEUM. 27
not impute moral guilt to brick and stone, and
punish them for crimes which could be expi
ated only by some grand revolution in the
character of the Roman people. Gold may be
abused to riotous excess, and may be held as
the root of all evil ; but still one would not
cast it into the sea. And art has sometimes
ministered to the worst passions, but we
would not turn iconoclasts for that, and doom
the treasures of the Vatican to the flames. It
was a virtuous and indignant zeal against the
vices and crimes of Paganism, of which the
Flavian was the grand scene for their display,
if extravagant and ill judged, which impelled
the early Christians first to neglect, and then,
in a spirit of revenge, to dismantle and demol
ish its walls. And it was the true view to be
taken of the subject, and which I have endeav
ored to express, which at length induced Pope
Benedict the Fourteenth, in order to save what
was left of this remarkable structure, to erect
on the centre of the blood-stained arena the
Christian cross, and consecrate as a church a
theatre, the soil of which had drank the blood

28 ANCIENT ROME.
of SO many witnesses of the truth. It was a
happy thought of the venerable Pontiff; and
no other power than that of religion, proba
bly, would have succeeded in arresting in their
selfish course, the princely and pious robbers
who were rapidly bringing it to the ground.
The traveller of the present day, who, for
the first time, bends his steps toward the Co
losseum at the hour of twilight, as soon as
he has approached near enough to catch the
grand outlines of the building, with its innu
merable arches vanishing in the perspective,
and pauses in silent contemplation, is often
arrested and surprised at that time and place,
by the voices of a choir chanting the usual
evening hymn of the Virgin, the soft har
mony of that always affecting music rever
berating and dying away among the ruins.
Penetrating the avenues which conduct to the
centre, he finds that he is in the presence of a
Christian church of worshippers, and that the
usual rites of the Catholic service are perform
ing. His first emotion is to kneel and join
them in their rites ; and though his Protestant-

THE COLOSSEUM. 29
ism, on a further thought, forbids a formal par
ticipation, yet it does not prevent his joining
in that inward worship, irresistibly prompted
by the hour and the scene. Yet as soon as
his first enthusiasm is satisfied, he is then pos
sibly offended at what may strike his aesthetic
proprieties as an impertinent interference in a
scene which should be sacred, as he may
think, to the recollections of the scholar. He
wishes a quiet hour to recall a vision of the
long past, undisturbed by the intervention of
sights and sounds that breathe only of to-day,
and of a religion, which, when this Theatre
was first opened, its existence, even, was
scarcely acknowledged. But then, once more,
he checks himself as he reflects, that it is to
this then new and unacknowledged religion,
to the very sounds he has just heard of
prayer and praise, elevating and humanizing
the general heart, that the curious traveller of
the nineteenth century is permitted to behold
it at all ; and he desires once more to feel and
to express all due gratitude to the memory of
Pope Benedict the Fourteenth.

30 ANCIENT ROME.
With the single exception of the Colosseum
and its immediate neighborhood, the traveller
does not find what his imagination had led
him to expect as the chief pleasure in visiting
Rome, — a profusion, namely, of the ruins of
the old city, every where scattered about
Avithin the walls and in the suburbs, and
every where easily accessible. The neigh
borhood of the Colosseum and the Forum
is the only spot in Rome where ruin makes
the predominant impression — where you
would believe yourself to be in Ancient Rome.
If at home you should turn over the massive
pages of Piranesi. or any other volume descrip
tive of the ruins of Rome, you would suppose
that if then you should visit the realities you
had before contemplated in engravings, you
would be able to see them in as free and un
obstructed a manner as you had before in turn
ing over the leaves of the illustrated volumes.
But great would be your mistake. What is
so visible in the book at home, is invisible
when abroad among the objects themselves.
It might have been a childish thought that

DIFFICULTIES OF ACCESS TO THE RUINS. 31
a wild and impressive scene of devastation
would every where meet the eye, and that to
wander at large among the outskirts of the
modern town, would be an obvious and easy
method of obtaining at once instruction and
delight in the classic and antiquarian field.
But, with the single exception of the Colosse
um and its immediate environs, there is no such
scene — no such objects are to be met with.
Nothing stands abroad and open to the sight.
From the centre all round to the walls, all is
either modern structure, or, where the houses
end, in their place lofty brick walls begin ;
and your search after ruins ends, whichever
way you turn, in a wearisome tour betAveen
everlasting brick Avails from six to ten feet
high, — those impenetrable walls for your
prospect on either side, and the sky, with
now and then a tree-top, overhead. If on your
road there are the remains of baths, temples,
palaces, or other curious remnants of the an
cient capital, they are not to be seen in that
manner. If seen at all, it can only be by ap
plication by stone or bell to some Avell secured

32 ANCIENT ROME.
gate of villa, farm, or convent ; and after rous
ing thereby some custode or some monk from
his labors or his slumbers. All such objects
are now private property within the grounds
of rich landholders, or public institutions, and
are to be seen — which certainly is fair
enough — only by the payment of a fee. My
first walk in Rome was a long one of three
or four miles, in a fruitless search after the
ruins of Rome, but found nothing, save the
modern streets, and the garden and convent
walls, Avith the sky above. This, the traveller
Avill say, is all Avrong. There should be no
private OAvning of the ruins of Rome, any
more than of mines of gold. They should
be left the common possession of mankind.
The Pantheon, built by Agrippa and pre
sented by him to Augustus, happily, like the
Colosseum, stands open and free to all. This
beautiful object, so Avell preserved as to make
one doubt Avhether it be a church of the middle
ages, or a building twelve or fifteen hundred
years older, is in the heart of the modern
town, covering one side of a small square, ac-

THE PANTHEON. 33
cessible as a modern church, which indeed it
is, if the solecism may be alloAved.' Upon a
careless inspection of it you Avill observe, that,
though time seems hardly to have made any
impression upon it, and its general form re
mains complete, yet as you examine it from a
southAvestern point of view, and turn your
eye to the summit of the huge circle from
Avhich the dome springs, you will at once per
ceive that fires as of a furnace have raged
around and over it, burning away all the pro
jecting members of the cornice of the main
building and of the portico, and eating their
Avay into the very substance of the Avails.
Walls less substantial than those of the Pan
theon — some twenty feet thick — could hardly
have stood under the fiery deluge of three
days' duration, in the time of Nero, and its
frequent repetition since, especially in the days
of the Gothic invasions, and from that day to
this. The building looks as if it had suffered ;
but, at the same time, as if it could not be de
stroyed, or by any power less than that of an
earthquake.

34 ANCIENT ROME.
This famous Temple deserves attention, and
possesses an interest beyond any thing con
nected with its mere architectural perfection.
It is interesting beyond any other building in
Rome for this especially, that though older
than the Colosseum, and than almost any other
building whose fragments are scattered around,
it is itself not a ruin, but a structure almost
untouched by time, which looks in the nine
teenth century very much as it did in the first,
both Avithout and within. Emperors, consuls,
and scholars, and the crowds of Rome who
entered it then, or passed it by in admiring
delight — our eyes of to-day rest upon the
same forms and with the same delight. Much,
indeed, of what made it attractive then is now
gone. The polished marbles that sheathed all
the exterior have been stripped bare to the
brick. The plates of brass and of silver that
once sheeted the dome and the portico have
been Avrenched from their fastenings, and re
moved to adorn other fabrics ; the thousand
statues of brass Avhich decorated the vast cir
cumference ofthe cornice, the roof and beams of

THE PANTHEON. 35
brass from the portico, the brazen gates of
entrance, these also, stolen by a Christian Pope
from this pagan temple, now decorate St. Peter's
in that absurd mountain of brass, the Balda-
chiuo, and defend the Castle of St. Angelo in
their batteries of brazen cannon. These, mere
ornaments to the general form of the edifice,
are by the robberies of emperors, Goths, and
popes, all gone ; and the morning and even
ing sun of Rome no longer strikes upon a
scene of architectural pomp, which must, we
might think, have not only dazzled but awed
into reverence the barbarians Avho, for the first
time, approached in order to dismantle it.
But, as I have said, all is not gone in this, the
two thousandth year from its building. Stand
ing on the opposite side of the little square,
and the graceful sweep of all the principal
lines pleases the eye of to-day as it did that of
antiquity. The double colonnade of the unri
valled portico still stands, and still looks as it did
the day when the Emperor of all the world came
to inspect and accept the gift of his illustrious
subject. Height, breadth, form, proportion,

36 ANCIENT ROME.
mass, — time, more merciful than man, has
spared, and from the point just named, Agrippa
himself, entering the square and turning his eye
upon it, might only start Avith surprise at miss
ing the statues, and the glitter of the brazen
roofs. Still more is the satisfaction on passing be
neath the portico and entering the Temple,
where every essential feature of the interior
remains unchanged. The noble swell of the
dome, Avith its circular opening at the top (its
only light) with its bold and beautiful gradu
ated panelling, stripped indeed of its bronze —
the running entablature below — the niches
for the statues of the twelve greater gods, filled
now, instead, with the forms of venerable
saints, and even the original mosaic pavement
of the floor — all this still remains to show us
almost the only existing Roman interior —
certainly the only one of that magnificence to
have fastened upon it the admiration of those
early centuries, as it does our admiration and
interest now.
One cannot enter such a structure Avith such

THE PANTHEON. 37
a history attached to it without emotion. He
may think as he may of the bloody and savage
Roman people, of their lust of conquest, of
their cruelty which delighted in the slaughter
of animals, and yet more of men, of their vices
which shock the imagination — yet he cannot
forget that with much that was detestable in
the Roman character and life, there was much
that was refined, and more that was magnifi
cent ; that, Christianity notwithstanding, the
reader of history can hardly point to a period
of more grateful, undisturbed repose, than that
which occurred between the accession of Trajan
and the death of the second Antonine ; that
if Rome conquered the earth, one state after
another, it then united them, otherwise at
ceaseless war with each other, beneath one
strong and stable government ; and that such
union is a source of security and peace, on
the whole, however it may be brought about,
as the disunion of the Italian states throughout
the middle ages abundantly testifies, and our
disunion would, were the golden band once
broken that now holds the states together ; we

38 ANCIENT ROME.
cannot forget that with all the evil Rome
originated and transmitted, it has left among
other goods the rich legacy of her literature
and her arts — some expiation at least for her
aggressions, cruelties, vices and crimes ; he can
not, he ought not to forget these things, as he
crosses the threshold of the Pantheon, and he
will then enter beneath the grand dome of the
temple of that old religion, and feel the genius
of the place ; and it will not be, it ought not
to be one in hostility with the wide charity
of the Christian heart ; for if Rome was not
Christian, it certainly rose, flourished, as it per
ished beneath the universal providence of God.
And even vice itself, if it be not Christian, is
providential, and to be treated with forbear
ance and commiseration, never with intole
rance and revenge.
Nowhere does melancholy, yet a pleasing
melancholy, so oppress the mind as in Rome.
You feel there always as if wandering aniong
funeral monuments — the monuments of afallen
empire — and the greatest of empires — of an

THE PANTHEON. 39
empire, however, whose most durable monu
ments are not the few vestiges of structures,
magnificent as they are and imperishable as
they seem, of Avhich I have aimed to give
some account, but much more in the literature
which her genius has bequeathed ; and, more
still in her language, wrought in the process
of ages, into the substance of every living
tongue in Europe. Those are monuments of
her former greatness, evidences of her universal
sovereignty greater than any other. Marble
and brass may perish with time ; but a flavor
of the ancient Roman speech, we may reason
ably believe, will hang about human language
while any remnant of mankind shall survive
to use it.

ST. PETER'S AND THE VATICAN.

ST. PETER'S AND THE VATICAN.

We turn from ancient Rome to modern ;
from the most magnificent relics of the old
world to the sublimest structure of the pres
ent time ; — from crumbling ruins to a temple
glittering with marbles and gold, and fresh as
if just from the hands of the builder ; from
the Colosseum to St. Peter's. One may al
most say that these two words — the Colos
seum and St. Peter's — describe Rome, ancient
and modern ; at all events, they are the most
comprehensive and significant ones, whatever
may be embraced by others. And first, of St.
Peter's. There are some general criticisms on this
famous cathedral, in which almost all writers
and travellers agree. They are disappointed

44 ST. PETEb's and the VATICAN.
in the grand front as it is approached ; they
are disappointed in the apparent height of the
dome Avithin ; they are disappointed altogether
in an apparent want of size on entering and
surveying it, Avhich is attributed, and per
haps justly, to the harmony of its forms and
the perfection of its proportions.
As to the exterior in front, there are none, I
suppose, who would defend it as a satisfactory
or beautiful object. It looks well only at a
distance — the farther the better, so that you
can see it at all. The dome, indeed, is, taken
by itself, beautiful, when you have retreated
to such a point that you can embrace the
Avhole in a single view, and your eye can
reach from the ball to the roots of the circle
of coupled columns which surround it ; for
which purpose you must see it from some ele
vated station without the walls, as the Bor-
ghese Villa, or from some such position within,
as the top of the Pincian Hill. Seen thus, it
is an eminently beautiful object ; the curves
of the lines that form it could hardly be of
a more graceful inclination. But the build-

ST. PETER S.

ing on which it rests is then confounded Avith
the quadrangles of the Vatican and other lofty
buildings of the city, and cannot be easily dis
tinguished from them. Seen nearer, for in
stance at the opening of the piazza or square
before the church, and the dome almost wholly
disappears, concealed by the longer arm of the
cross ; and the loss of the dome from the pros
pect is the loss of almost the whole. With
out it, St. Peter's no longer seems St. Peter's.
Then for the rest, the facade, the colonnades,
the porticos, or galleries, as they are named,
there is undoubtedly the grand effect of vast
ness, seen all together in front, but the eye is
not, nevertheless, very much pleased or satis
fied. There is too much that is objectionable
in the parts, to make the whole a very agree
able object.
The semicircular colonnades, taken by
themselves, so extensive, of so many massive
columns, produce an effect of grandeur ; they
constitute, I suspect, on the whole, the most
impressive section of the building. But in
their purpose and design, especially in their

46 ST. PETEr's AND THE VATICAN.
connection with, and in their relation to, the
church itself, they are but an absurd and ugly
excrescence. They are a childish conception,
like almost all else of Bernini's. His statues
are all foolish ; particularly those which dis
figure the Bridge of St. Angelo, and which
almost belong to St. Peter's ; and these colon
nades are so. Bring it to the test of an imagi
nary experiment. If a gentleman were to
build such a front court or yard to his dwell
ing-house, every one would exclaim against it
as a folly, and a very ugly one. It would not
be endured. But, you ask, why are not these
colonnades beautiful ? It is sometimes hard to
give a satisfactory reason for a judgment, while
of the soundness of the judgment itself you
still cannot have the slightest misgiving or
doubt. And especially in the arts does the
reason of a thing often resolve itself into a
mere matter of feeling and taste, about which
there can be only dispute. And in the pres
ent instance, I can only say, that there is a
dignity and grandeur in straight parallel lines
in architecture, which are lost in winding,

ST. Peter's — the exterior. 47
twisted, circular forms. Suppose these colon
nades, instead of being semicircular, were
spiral ! It would be a laughable absurdity at
once. But the spiral would only be doubling
the present absurdity.
Then in addition to this, the galleries spread
ing out on either side from the main building
at an obtuse angle, contradicting all the es
tablished principles — usages, at any rate cf
architecture — for, it may well be doubted if
another example could be found in all Europe,
of such a departure from customary rules
in a building of any importance, — this of
fends every eye, and in a way not to be
appeased, whenever any part of the front
comes into sight. Nothing could be a greater
deformity. Altogether, — colonnades, galleries
and facade, — it can remind one only of the
fancy structures which children erect out of
their wooden blocks. First, the main build
ing, standing as it should on a straight line —
then the galleries starting off from it at an
obtuse angle — then, lastly, the semicircular
colonnades joined on at the end of that. You

48 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
have only, I think, to look at . any engraving
of this great temple, where all the forms are
gathered together into a small and manageable
compass for the eye, to arrive at a similar judg
ment. The colonnades are, I believe, gene
rally styled beautiful, and one of the. great
works of Bernini; and judged by themselves,
and standing insulated from all other objects,
they are undoubtedly beautiful. It is only in
their connection with the church, that they
lose their propriety, dignity and grace.
The grand facade of the church is also des
titute of beauty. It is heavy and clumsy in
the extreme ; and besides its general want of
architectural beauty, another objection which is
felt at once is, its not appearing to be what it is,
the front, namely, of a church. Every building
should define itself in its form. A church
should have that about it in its form which
should suggest the idea of a church ; a palace
the idea of a palace ; a prison that of a prison,
and so on. Such fitness, at any rate, if not
necessarily a grace, is certainly a convenience.
St. Peter's has in front the architecture of one of

49
Palladio's larger palaces, rather than that of a
church; and, but for its vast dimensions, one
might drive up to the great door of the cathe
dral, and ask to see the prince, or duke, so
and so.
If a stranger should, for the first time, come
in sight only of a portion of the front of St.
Peter's — if he thought it to be St. Peter's —
he certainly would not suppose it to be the
front, but certainly some section of the side
or rear. That Avas precisely my OAvn experi
ence. I happened to see a large part of the
front of the church, over the houses in the
streets in that neighborhood, without any part
of the colonnades or galleries coming into vieAv
at the same time, and I supposed, in all truth
and sincerity, that I was looking upon the
back of the building ; and my surprise was
never greater, than when a few steps farther
on placed me in full view of the colonnades,
galleries, fountains, and the entire front.
But as soon as one approaches nearer, near
enough to catch a fuller view, to see not only
a portion of the front, but the whole of the

50 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
piazza or square of the church, Avith the vast
sweep of the semicircular colonnades on either
side, embracing the obelisk in the centre, and
the graceful fountains betAveen the obelisk and
the colonnades, he will confess that, whether
he is looking upon the front itself or not, he
is enjoying one of the most remarkable dis
plays of architecture in the Avorld. He may
enjoy the scene intensely, as one, on the whole,
of great grandeur, without renouncing his judg
ment, which compels him to condemn particular
parts, in their relation to each other and to the
whole, and denies their fitness and their beauty.
One observation here may be of some impor
tance — that the vastness of the scale on which
this temple is built has a tendency to mislead
the judgment, and deprive it of a wisdom and
courage it otherwise might possess. This
vastness compels many a one to admire and
praise against his better mind. But let us here
leave the critical, and surrender ourselves to
the beautiful.
The first entirely satisfactory impression,
then of magnificence, on visiting St. Peter's,

ST. Peter's — the exterior. 51
is derived, mainly, not from the contemplation
of the church itself, but of its accessories —
the mere carriage-way, or colonnades, of which
complaint has just been made, which Avinds
along from the opening of the square to the
galleries — which then connect it with the
church — consisting of nearly three hundred
stone columns of travertine of immense size,
in four parallel ranges, and, together with the
entablature and pediment reaching a height of
seventy feet, each pillar which fronts the
square being surmounted by a colossal statue
of stone, of eleven feet. All this is very
striking, — very noble. Yet when you have
paced the length of this lofty portico, through
this forest of massive columns, and reached
the church itself, this great height of seventy
feet absolutely vanishes under the towering
elevation of the four hundred feet above. This
gives one an idea of the style and scale of this
enormous structure. To observe that as a
mere carriage entrance-way, a mere vulgar pro
vision of convenlency, a mere shelter from the
rain and defence from the sun, that popes and

52 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
cardinals, gentlemen and ladies, may be duly
protected from harm to their clothes or their
complexions — at most and best, as a mere
architectural decoration — porticos have been
erected which surpass in grandeur most of the
famous buildings of the ancient and the mod
ern Avorld — excites some astonishment, and
leads one to wonder what the interior of a build
ing must be, of which this costly fabric is only
one of its mere outside ornaments.
And after all this magnificent architectural
preparation, and the expectation naturally ex
cited of Avhat is next to be unfolded, I do not
believe the visitor will be disappointed. You
then ascend by many flights of marble steps
to the grand vestibule or porch of entrance,
extending two hundred and fifty feet across
the whole front by fifty in breadth, and large
enough, therefore, to pack away snugly within,
several churches of the ordinary size. At
each end is seen an equestrian statue, one of
Charlemagne, the other of Constantine. I wish
I could say that the immense central door of
bronze then unfolds, and the interior at once

the INTERIOR. 53
bursts upon the excited vision of the spectator.
But that door opens only once in twenty-five
years. Instead of that, the impatient visitor
squeezes his Avay, almost at the risk of dis
memberment or suffocation, through an im
mense leathern curtain of many hundred
pounds Aveight. But this obstruction at length
safely overcome, the danger to life and limb
escaped, you at a single glance behold the
church within ; and with what emotions of
delighted gratification, it were vain to tell.
Gray describes that moment by saying, " I saw
St. Peter's, and was struck dumb with aston
ishment.". Any one may well so exclaim on
the first burst of sight. Tt could not be other
wise. He may afterwards complain, and regret,
and criticise — may find, or think, this too
small, that too low, arches too flat, ornaments
too profuse and tawdry, windows too many,
light too glaring — but seen all at once, in its
totality, from any one chosen point of sight,
either at the entrance, or, especially, near the
transept, and just under the edge of the great
dome, and there can be no disappointment, any
5*

54 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
more than with the pyramids, or the sun, or
moon, unless one has chosen to feed upon the
dangerous food of the imagination till he has
become diseased, and the mind is no longer
capable of judging of objects of real existence.
Obviously there is a class of Arabian night
imaginations that nothing can satisfy, in com
parison with Avhose fancy structures St. Peter's
is a mere martin-box. But to the healthy,
reasonable mind, there can be no disappoint
ment on the whole, — the eye is fairly dazzled
by the brilliancy and consummate elegance of
the Avhole scene, and, at first, hardly knows,
or dares to say, Avhat it is he sees. All appears
a confusion of the most exquisite forms, pro
portions and colors — arch beyond arch, dome
beyond dome, all glowing with marble and
gold, diversified and enriched with mosaics,
that rival the hues of Titian and the forms of
Raphael, Avith statues and monuments Avrought
by hands like those of Michael Angelo and
Canova — from the mosaic pavement of the
floor to the golden panelling of the roofs
above — all offers a truly gorgeous display of

THE INTERIOF. 55
the most elaborate and costly art. Costliness,
in a Avord, richness, brilliancy, profusion of
glittering ornament, are the characteristics of
St. Peter's, as solemnity, stern simplicity,
religious sobriety are those of the Florence
cathedral. When I first cast my eyes to the
fretted ceiling shining with gold, and upon all
the glory above and around, though I knew I
was in St. Peter's, I could not think of a Chris
tian church. The idea refused an entrance —
I could only think of a pagan temple — a tem
ple of Jupiter, greatest and best, of Apollo, or
Diana of Ephesus. As a heathen temple, no
thing could appear more harmonious through
out — nothing more fit and appropriate ; as a
Christian church, it was discordant ; there was
too much of the glory and glitter of this world
— too little to suggest thoughts of religion ;
too much to distract the mind from it, and bind
it to the transient, and the material.
I have mentioned the breadth of the church
in front as two hundred and fifty feet — that
of the transept is four hundred and fifty feet.
Its length, Avithin the walls, and within the

56 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
vestibule also, is six hundred. The extreme
length seven hundred. Sixty thousand sol
diers can parade upon its floor. The height
within, from the floor to the ceiling of the
great dome, is three hundred and eighty feet.
But this great height is not felt, nor commonly
believed. Nor can it well be ; as the apparent
height of architectural objects is necessarily so
much diminished through the effects of fore
shortening. The dome rests upon arches
springing from four piers, or pillars, the ground
which each covers being, it is well known, of
the exact dimensions of one of the Roman
churches. The ceilings of the great dome
and of all the lesser ones, are ornamented in
the richest manner conceivable, by the brilliant,
unfading dies of mosaics, copying at those
great heights, and under those difficult circum
stances, many of the choicest works of the first
artists of Italy. Before all the various altars
are represented, by the same imperishable, art,
not only pictures which might be thought
the most worthy, as mere works of art, to be
made immortal in stone, but which Avould be

the interior. 57
considered the most affecting to the religious
mind. All the vast arches of the great temple
are most richly and profusely decorated with
medallions wrought also in mosaic, and by
marble statues of cherubs and child-angels.
Columns, almost without number, of the most
costly variegated marbles, polished to the bril
liancy of metals, are found every where
throughout the interior, in connection with
the various arches and domes. Every where
in the numerous chapels, and along the Myalls
of the church, monumental marbles of colossal
proportions arrest the eye of the spectator,
and gratify it by exquisite forms of art, at
least, if they do not chance to move or ele
vate the soul by the memory of the dead who
lie mouldering below. Directly beneath the
grand dome, at the point of the intersection of
the two arms of the cross, in a vault beneath
the pavement ofthe church, is the tomb of St.
Peter, around Avhich a hundred lamps perpetu
ally burn, the whole covered and adorned by
that enormous tent of bronze called the Balda-
chino, which rises to a height of ninety feet,

58 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
and spreads over a surface of perhaps fifty feet
square ; and yet this huge brazen structure,
with its immense twisted columns and broad
canopy, scarcely is felt to interrupt the eye as,
from a distance, it surveys the whole interior.
But this famous building, without equal,
in elegant art, has not the effect to produce
a religious impression upon the heart. It
produces the effects of material beauty — daz
zling beauty — of grandeur in architectural
forms, of unapproached magnificence, but not
of religion — almost the very contrary. Such
was the impression'^ at least, which . one
received, and which Avas not afterward re
moved by any subsequent familiarity. Almost
any one Avould form the same judgment ;
but especially one Avho had been accustomed,
either in their real forms or as represented
in engravings, to contemplate the Gothic forms
and proportions in the finest examples of that
order, which seems as naturally the truest ex
pression of religious sentiment, as the Greek
and Roman forms do of the classical. Who,
if he were a person of any cultivation, would

the interior. 59
think of erecting a Gothic Hall like West
minster Hall, or the nave of Notre Dame, to
be applied to the purposes of a banking house,
or place of amusement 1 Those forms abso
lutely refuse and reject such alliance. The
Greek and Roman styles are more accom
modating, and sufficiently well suited to all the
various uses of society, religious and secular.
It is not possible here to enter into the reasons
of the difference, and show why the Gothic
has this deep root in religious feeling, and will
not take root elscAvhere. It is enough, further
to say, that if he, Avho on leaving Rome shall
pass immediately over to France and England,
and there survey the wonderful examples of the
middle-age Gothic at Bourges, Orleans, Paris,
London, York, will feel as he never did be
fore, how the Gothic architecture is a strict
ly religious order, and how a temple like St.
Peter's fails, and necessarily fails, only the more,
the more gorgeous it is made, to convey religious
sentiment, and make religious impression. York
Minster, if we may make such comparisons, is
a Bible, St. Peter's a Poem, the Iliad, if you

60 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
Avill, or Paradise Lost. York Minster raises the
mind, compels it to religious contemplation.
St. Peter's overwhelms you with astonishment,
at the achievements of man ; you can hardly
believe what you see, that man has done it all.
In St. Peter's you think more of man ; in York,
of God.
I mean not in this to withhold praise from
St. Peter's ; I at once, and Avillingly, confess
the inadequacy of any language I can use to
describe in a manner worthy of it, its magnifi
cence and beauty, for, like our Niagara, beauty
and grandeur both contribute, and about equal
ly, to the total effect. Genius and art seem
fairly to have exhausted their resources in the
production of this great result. It may be easy,
as you examine, to suggest changes, and blame
this part and another ; but few, I apprehend,
would dare, had they the power, to actually
attempt an alteration, in either the general de
sign or the execution of any of the details. All
is on a' scale of greatness, and of perfect adap
tation of part to part, to Avhich, elsewhere, there
is no approach. Like color in Titian or Allston,

the interior. 61
all is perfect adjustment, faultless harmony.
It is the most beautiful apparition in the
world. But as I have presumed to liken St. Peter's
to a Pagan Temple, and have refused to feel
there as if in a Christian Church, I Avill add
that Avhen I beheld the Catholic service per
forming there, in all its gorgeous display of
procession, costume, and music, the likeness to
any thing Christian became still less ; especially
when I saw that revolting solecism, the Pope,
a king of this world, receiving more than the
homage of any other earthly potentate ; it
seemed then as if I were indeed in the pres
ence of some old pagan priesthood and ceremo
nial, and I had been carried backwards in time
to the days of the Republic. I could detect
no likeness, between this man covered with
embroidered robes stiff with gold, the triple
crown upon his head, borne along upon men's
shoulders, and Jesus Christ, or even with St.
Peter, the poor fisherman apostle. The pageant,
I felt sure, was a magnificent parade in honor
of Jupiter or Apollo, and nothing else ; a dedi-
6

62 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
catory service, perhaps, of the very temple I
was in.
Popery and St. Peter's are in natural alliance,
like parts of one stupendous fiction. But
neither seems, by any possibility, to bear rela
tion to the cradle at Bethlehem, or the char
acter of him who was laid there. To con
ceive of Jesus himself — and why should this
not be allowable if Popery is the great Chris
tian fact — to conceive of Jesus arrayed in the
robes of the Bishop of Rome, officiating at the
grand altar, performing the grand mass, beneath
the grand Dome of St. Peter's, presents a series
of contrasts, that would seem to settle many a
great question, in a way without the need of,
and beyond the reach of, other argument.
Adjoining St. Peter's stands the Vatican, the
Palace of the pope, and once his residence,
now a Museum of Antiquities and a Library,
— the Vatican, with its numerous quadrangles
and its sumptuous halls, to be measured not
by the foot or the furlong, but literally by the
mile. The antiquities of precious marbles

MUSEUM OF THE VATICAN. 63
exhumed from the soil of the city fill I know
not how many endless apartments, and enough
doubtless still remain in the soil, to fill as
many more, and in the bed of the river as
many more. But already there are more than
can be examined, or tolerably understood, by
months of severe toil, and most travellers sur
vey them all, with all else in the Museum, in
a few days or hours.
As this professes to be a Museum of antiq
uities, for the careful preservation of the Avorks
of the old Romans and Greeks, one cannot
but lament that it should not be truly what
it professes to be. But a principle has
been adopted and carried out to its extreme,
which makes it any thing but that ; a principle
under which, it has been more an object to
make a grand and beautiful display of art,
than to represent truly the works of the
ancients. I refer to the extensive restorations
of the statues, which were almost all when first
dug up found more or less injured, limbs lost, or
shattered, heads or trunks gone, and oftentimes
nothing more than a mere remnant of a form, to

64 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
Avhich to be attached the body, Avhich a mod
ern sculptor was employed to design according
to the best of his conjectures. That is the way
this Museum was made up. But this is to
be false to antiquity, as Avell as false to true
taste. Truth, we say, before all else. If sud
denly, by the stroke of some Avand, all the
limbs and heads and bodies supplied by the
moderns could drop off, Avhat a singular scene
would be presented, and Avhat a thunder upon
the floor from the falling and rolling fragments,
what a display of headless and legless mon
sters, and how would the grand falsehood of
the whole stand revealed ! And though but
comparatively few statues might then remain
upon their pedestals, how much Avoiild one
prize the few that did remain, or what parts
of them might remain. The great value
of such objects must lie in their truth,
in their representing a particular age ; more
over, that they are as you behold them, the
identical objects, more or less injured, the
very same they once were, as they stood in
the public temples of Rome, or in the private

CHARACTER OF THE MUSEUM. 65
apartments of some Cassar, Cicero, Augustus,
Antonine of those days. But after examining a
given figure, and perhaps admiring it as an an
tique, as Greek or Roman, to learn that all, or
most part that makes it beautiful or admira
ble, is the restorer's art, is to feel as if a
trick had been played upon you — or at best,
that you have been bestowing your interest
upon a work of the fourteenth century, instead
of upon one of the first or second. And then,
in other cases, though you may pore over many
a catalogue, you may never be able to learn,
what parts of a statue you admire are ancient,
or Avhat modern. And what is more, and per
haps worse to the lover of truth, the junctions of
old and new portions are made with such per
fection, that the lines of junction are not to
be discovered without the most careful search.
To the eye the Avhole Museum is one of mod
ern work. A remarkable case to this point, is
the two-horse Roman chariot, beautiful and
complete as it now stands, but wholly the work
of the antiquarians and the Italian sculptor ;
that is to say, there was hardly an original frag-
6*

66 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
ment to which to attach the modern structure,
which now surprises you with delight. But
standing where it does, it is but a bold and im
pudent imposture.* This is a great drawback
upon the interest and value of the collection of
the Vatican.
One most valuable relic of ancient art in
those halls, called the Torso, the back, that
is merely, of a colossal figure, has been left as
found, a mere trunk. How much more pre
cious than if Bandinelli, or Montorsoli, or even
Michael Angelo himself, had been employed to
complete the form according to his own fancy,
or the Pope's orders.
It is a happy circumstance, that in respect to
one of the most perfect pieces of statuary in
the world, the famous Apollo Belvidere, it was,
when first disinterred from the superincumbent
ruins, found almost perfect — the right fore
arm, the left hand, and a portion of the right
foot, were alone necessary to be added. This
* Museo Vaticano, p. 168. The nucleus to the whole — horses
and carriage — was, the back of one of the horses and the seat
of the chariot.

the APOLLO. 67
Avas done by a disciple of Michael Angelo.
This statue Avas discovered in the sixteenth
century at Antium, not far from the mouth of
the Tiber, a seaport of some consequence, and
a favorite occasional residence of several of
the emperors. As it now stands in a beauti
ful cabinet called the Belvidere, it is cer
tainly Avorthy of all the homage it has ever
receiA'ed, and still receives from every lover of
art, from whatever quarter of the Avorld he
may come, and in Avhatever previous state of
mind or even prejudice. Still it rouses little
feeling, it stirs little enthusiasm. You look at
it, admire, praise, and depart. And it could
scarcely be otherwise. There is no sentiment
in the, form to call forth sentiment in the be
holder, beyond the admiration of mere animal
beauty, and that can hardly move or fire the
mind. When, in the Museum of the Capitol,
you look at the form of the dying gladiator,
though the one is a god and the other a
slave, you can hardly withdraw your eyes
from what so deeply interests you. As works
of art, one perhaps is not less perfect than

68 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.-
the other. The diflference in the attractive
ness and power of the one over the other
must be explained, I suppose, by the exist
ence in the one of the tragic element,
which reigns paramount over every other.
But in the Apollo there is not only nothing
that yields a tragic interest, there is too little to
yield any at all. The expression is the dignified
one of a person looking upward as if expecting
something, or Avatching something ; the expla
nation is, watching the flight of an arrow that
has just left the bow. It well expresses that, but
nothing more. So inferior also to the Venus,
either of Florence or of the Capitol, but partic
ularly the Florence. You may say that in both
these cases, there is only animal beauty to ex
cite an interest ; and it is true. And the only
difference, that in the one it is the beauty of
a man. in the other of a Avoman. But just as in
real life in ancient and in modern times, as fe
male beauty is that for which the world has a
thousand times gone mad, while it has never
done so for the beauty of a man, so in these
statues, the Apollo receives few Avorshippers, is

THE LAOCOON. 69
comparatively neglected, while for the Venus,
crowds gather around her, and few leave her for
the last time without a sensible pang. And the
universal judgment of mankind, which thus
places her at the summit of art, one submits to
readily, as probably just, as he does in literature
to the universally allowed claims of Homer,
Virgil, Dante, Shakspeare.
Not far from the Apollo stands the Laocoon,
discovered on the Esquiline, among the ruins
of the Palace of Titus, and placed in the cham
bers of the Vatican by Leo X. Notwithstand
ing the size and complicated character of this
wonderful group, each of the three figures in
the most violent action, and the folds of the
serpent winding around all the limbs of both
father and sons, in the most intricate manner,
it has sustained but the most trifling injury
from time — an escape almost miraculous,
when it is considered the masses of building
which must have fallen upon it, but beneath
which it then lay securely buried. It is a sub
ject for sculpture, Avhich can possess no attrac
tion except for the difficulties, almost impos-

70 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
sibilities, by Avhich its execution was attended,
and by which they have been overcome with
a genius second certainly to that of no other
whose fame has descended to our time. Such
truth pervades it in conception and expression,
that one is almost as much pained and horror-
struck at a mere view of it in marble, as if
living persons were dying before your eyes,
within the crushing folds of the hideous mon
ster. The tragedy is too real, too loathsome,
for enjoyment. You leave it in deepest ad
miration of the powers of the human mind,
but you never wish to see it again, and do
not believe that it can ever cease to visit and
torment your dreams.
But it is impossible to describe or even
name more of the works of sculpture which
crowd the magnificent halls of the Vati
can. It must suffice to say, that in these
halls there are seventeen hundred and sixty
separate works of the ancient Greeks and
Romans, described in the catalogues, and
standing on the floors, all of which are pos
sessed of merit enough to make them worthy

GALLERY OF PICTURES. 71
of the attentive examination of the student of
art. Particularly curious is the large hall filled
with the forms, sculptured in marble, of vari
ous kinds of animals, Avild and tame, and also
of reptiles, birds and insects, all Avrought with
true and exquisite art. Even the lobster and the
crab, tortoise and turtle, are there of the natu
ral size, and which need only the color to be
added to be facsimiles of those interesting
creatures. We must now abandon the halls of sculp
ture, however, and turn for a few moments to
those of painting.
And what attracts strangers from all parts of
the civilized world to the Vatican, is probably
even much more the paintings of the middle
ages — of the days of Lorenzo, Leo X., and
the succeeding century, than the remains of
Greek and Roman sculpture of which I have
just spoken. It is the works of Raffaelle and
Michael Angelo, their famous frescoes, or such
oil pictures as the Transfiguration of Raffaelle,
and the works of Dominichino, Correggio, and

72 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
Guercino — it is these that, even more than the
antiquities, attract and reward the attention of
the traveller. Nor can any one doubt, I think,
for a moment, that in the works of these
Italian artists of the fifteenth century, there is
more genius displayed than in all the marble
that in this Museum has descended to us from
the ancients.
The collection of easel pictures in the Vati
can is quite small — not more than thirty or
forty in all. But in proportion to its size, it is
probably the most valuable collection in the
world. It contains the Transfiguration, es
teemed the first picture in the world ; and,
hanging opposite, the Communion of St.
Jerome, by Dominichino, esteemed the second.
Were such pictures to be sold, kings only
would be the bidders, with treasuries of na
tions to draw from.
One picture in this collection, of but a little
more than the usual portrait size, by Guercino,
the "Incredulity of St. Thomas," deserves to be
singled out above almost all others in the room,
for its intellectual and moral force, and for the

GUERCINO. 73
perfection with which the states of mind, on the
part both of Christ and the Apostle, are ex
pressed. It is a picture of the most touching in
terest. The tender, compassionate rebuke of
Christ — for still it is a rebuke — for his perse-
severing incredulity, is uttered with marvellous
truth ; and, Avith no less perfection, the intense
earnestness, and, as yet, unsatisfied faith, with
Avhich the disciple peers into the open side,
and with hesitating, shrinking wonder, is just
about to thrust his fingers into the cavity.
The expression of the most delicate shades of
moral sentiment could hardly be carried farther.
By this admirable artist, I afterwards saw iu
the gallery in Turin, a picture of the Prodigal
Son, of no less poAver and moral beauty — no
extravagance, no pretence, no undue aiming at
effect, and yet, that full and complete effect
produced, that would have attended the scene
itself. The arms of the father are stretched
out as he throws himself forward to meet his
son, in an agony of tender emotion, — with a
love as if he would encircle in his embrace a
Avorld of sinners — and the countenance not
7

74 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
•
less significant in its language than the arms.
The son faces the father, and has his back
toward the spectator, and the countenance is
not seen ; yet so consummate is the dramatic
action, that if ever a picture could be char
acterized as overwhelming in its pathos —
and that even in the case of the son — it is
this. A really great master, we know, Avill often
convey the most delicate shade of moral senti
ment as powerfully sometimes by form and
attitude, as by the countenance. It is cer
tainly so in this instance; And among modern
artists you may observe the same effects pro
duced, and by similar means — by Shaeffer, in
his Francesca di Rimini.
For power of expression, this artist, Guer
cino, is in no way inferior to Raffaelle, and often
surpasses him. But for his too dark tone of
color, (his pictures are, many of them, almost
black,) he would have stood side by side with
the prince of painters. In the Corsini Palace,
not far from the Vatican, there is a head of
Christ by this artist, the head alone ; repre-

guercino. 75
senting our Lord just after the scourging and
crowning Avith thorns, Avhich for this same un
equalled power of moral expression, the reli
gious expression of resignation, together Avith
the human expression of the most intense suf
fering, made all only too true by a color which
Avas never surpassed by any artist of any pe
riod, transcends all one could have conceived
of the poAver of painting. Let no one be in
Rome Avithout seeing that head. It is a mira
cle of art. It is very painful to look upon for
its aAvful truth, but it is a miracle of art. But
not only is it eminent for the representation,
Avith such truth, of this particular moment of
time, it is, independently of other merit just
mentioned, in the general form and character of
the head — a very noble one — more beautiful,
more grand in all its parts than any other,
whether by Guide, Raffaelle, or Michael An
gelo, I could find elsewhere.
The Communion of St. Jerome, by Domeni-
chino, Avas all you Avould expect to find from
his high reputation. But it often happens
that pictures of less general repute, produce

76 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
deeper impressions upon the mind and heart.
For perfection in every department of art,
the highest and every other, this work of
Domenichino deserves the place assigned to it;
yet — I suppose it is in the subject of the
picture in which the difficulty lies, — but it
produces little effect beyond admiration.
It is useless to speak here of such a work as
the Transfiguration of Raffaelle, either to
praise or to criticise ; it needs a discourse by
itself to point out and display its Avonderful
merits, or to name and present reasons for sup
posed defects. I would only name one general
fault — if fault it be — which struck my eye
as soon as I saw it, Avhich was the general tone
of color in the celestial part of the picture. It
is almost of a deep cloud-blue, fading away
into a bluish white as it reaches the figures of
Christ and the two prophets, Avhich gives to it
all a cold and heavy look, when one certainly
would expect from the scene something like
the radiance, brightness, and glory of Heaven,
as nearly as color could express it.
I experienced a disappointment of the same

AURORA OF GUIDO. I I
kind on seeing the Aurora of Guido, in the
Rospigliosi Palace. The Heavens are of a
similar dark blue, lighter only about the
person of Apollo, Avhere a little yellow breaks
in. But in this instance, not only was
there somcAvhat hard and cold in the gen
eral tone of color, but faults of a more seri
ous kind appear in the countenances, forms
and attitudes of the Hours, those beautiful
goddesses, as they encircle the Chariot of
Day. Our associations with the approach of
day are of the most joyous character. In the
personifications attempted by the artist to rep
resent it, we should look for a joyous circle of
animated creatures radiant with glory, bright
Avith joy, as they are employed in shedding
down upon the earth — dull, dark, unfruitful,
till the spreading light and heat shall descend to
bless it — the cheering influences of the rising
sun. But there is no such sentiment expressed
in any part, nor by any person, of the pic
ture. The celestial beings representing the
Hours are all of them beautifully drawn, and
draped with elegance ; but, if they were at-

78 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
tending the funeral of the sun, instead of
rejoicing in his morning resurrection, they
could not be more devoid of all appearance of
hilarity in countenance and movement, or ap
pear less engaged in the service they are per
forming. And for Apollo, he looks the true
file-leader of the lugubrious company. All
this, too, so different from what one would
have looked for from the color and manner of
Guido ; his color being characteristically light
and aerial in the tints, and the countenances of
his angels bright and blissful, as becomes the
nature of those heavenly messengers.
Raffaelle's Chambers, as they are termed —
four or five cold, dark, gloomy looking rooms,
thirty or forty feet square, laid with brick
floors, Avithout furniture, even a chair, pos
sessing not a single architectural charm or
merit — have their walls on each of their four
sides completely covered in fresco with the
works of that great genius. Here are to be
seen on one side-Avall of one of the rooms,
" The School of Athens ; " on another, " The
Dispute of the Sacrament," then, on others,

79
" The Parnassus," " The Incendio del Borgo,"
" Heliodorus," " The Delivery of St. Peter from
Prison," " The Battle of Constantine," &c. —
all seen Avith great difficulty, on account of
injuries inflicted by time and damp — never
with comfort, or much success, on account of
cross-lights, and which, of the pictures on the
same side as the window, are hardly to be seen
at all. The lover of art, or the traveller, who at
the present day attempts to study them in spite
of many needless discomforts and difficulties,
is led to think and speak very disrespectfully
of the powers which manage such things in
Rome — both of those who compelled this
great man to lavish nis genius on so unpromis
ing a field, where, when his work was ended,
it could not be seen, and now driA'^e away the
student, through sheer fatigue, from the im
possibility of obtaining a moment's rest on
chair or bench. It is impossible to speak,
under these circumstances, as becomes them,
of these wonderful works — the theme is too
large. I can only say, I believe that any one
who has some knowledge already of the art.

80 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
some love of it, and is able to spare the time
and encounter the fatigue of examining them,
Avill find them all that could be expected from
even the fame that has been growing brighter
Avith every year and century that has passed
over them. But it requires some or all of
these conditions to understand and value them.
In one particular I found them surpassing
expectation. I found a grace and charm
of color in the pictures least injured, which
surprised me. That Raff'aelle could color with
a splendor scarce inferior to Titian, I knew
from the portraits of Leo X., Julius II., and the
Madonna del Seggiola. But critics had given
me to understand, that in these frescoes he had
either purposely sobered his pencil so as to
reduce his color to hardly more than light
and shade, or time had so defaced them that
their early beauties had faded out. But on
some of those Avails, particularly those repre
senting the Dispute of the Sacrament, the Par
nassus, and the Delivery of St. Peter, I could
hardly believe that I was not gazing upon the
Avorks of those who had made color their spe-

raffelle's chambers. 81
cial object. With respect to others, hoAvever,
the colors had not only vanished — if they had
ever been there — but even the forms them
selves had nearly perished, and can now be
perfectly seen only in engravings. Especially
was that the case in the greatest of all those
masterpieces, " The School of Athens." The
largest of all these works, the Battle of Con
stantine, is also, perhaps, the best preserved.
Raffaelle died before he could complete it ; but
the design had been finished, and every form
had been drawn by his OAvn hand before his
death ; the coloring put in afterwards by the
skilful hand ofhis favorite pupil, Julio Romano.
Little as one may relish battles, he cannot but
pause before this immense picture Avith admi
ration ; with astonishment at the amount of
labor involved, with wonder at the perfection
with which every attitude, limb, muscle, ex
pression and action of man and horse is render
ed. There is seen a battle with all the fire,
spirit, rage, truth of the actual fight. One
would hardly have expected that he who was
almost par excellence the painter of poetry.

82 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
philosophy and religion, should have repre
sented with such perfection the horrors of war.
But, like Shakspeare, every phase of human
life could be presented by this great man with
equal ease and equal truth. He was every
thing, and he could, therefore, do every thing.
From the Chambers of Raflfaelle the travel
ler passes to the Sistine Chapel, the ceiling of
which, and the great western end ofthe church,
are the work of Michael Angelo. On the end-
Avall is the picture of the Last Judgment — on
the ceiling, the Prophets and Sybils.
Let no one go to Rome in the hope of either
seeing or enjoying the once world-renowned
picture of the Last Judgment. It is now
scarcely visible — what Avith damp, neglect,
the smoke of wax candles, and time. But
time would have given it an existence longer
by a thousand years, but for the operation
of those other unnecessary causes. These are
reasons why it cannot now be seen at all.
Other reasons will not noAv alloAV it to be en
joyed, could it be seeii ever so well. The
awful subject of the picture is treated in a

PICTURE OF THE LAST JUDGMENT. Hd
manner too gross and material, and, we must
add, with too much levity, for the mind of
the present generation. One is ready to think
that Michael Angelo intended it as a satire on
the vulgar doctrines of the church. Certainly,
the human heart under the influences of Chris
tian truth so long, has become too much
softened to endure a treatment of a subject,
which, in the flfteenth century, one must
suppose, occasioned to the Christians of those
days the fiercest delight, if we judge from
the frequency with Avhich it was treated in
all parts of Italy. Nothing, apparently, gave
them more heartfelt pleasure, than witnessing
on the Avails of churches or the domes of
cathedrals, the torments of the damned —
God the Father sitting and with compla
cency surveying the scene; Christ, the active
agent, by whom the millions of mankind are
plunged into the fiery billows of endless
woe. That is precisely the subject, and the
manner of treating it in the Sistine Chapel.
Michael Angelo made no advance in the man
ner of handling it over the age in which he

84 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
lived. Great as he Avas, he was not great
enough for that. Or if, for himself, he might
have preferred another manner of dealing with
it, he would doubtless have been withheld from
any attempts to do so, by the prevalent super
stitions of his age. Any attempt on his part
to show that the sufferings of futurity were of
a moral, not physical character, might have
proved him a better theologian and a Aviser
man, but might, at the same time, have con
fined him, for the rest of his days, to the
dungeons of the Inquisition.
But if one is to be warned against expecta
tions of pleasure from seeing the picture of the
Last Judgment, he may be assured that he
would be Avell repaid if he journeyed hence to
Rome, Avith the single purpose of seeing the
ceiling of the Sistine — saAv that, studied it
thoroughly, and returned, having seen nothing
else. If one understands enough of the art of
painting to appreciate its difficulties, the genius
it requires, and the obstacles to be encountered
and overcome — especially painting in fresco —
and especially, still again, painting upon a ceil-

ceiling or the sistine. 85
ing — then casts his eye to the ceiling of that
chapel, and is told that one mind conceived
and one hand executed it, with all the miracles
of art that astonish you. in the short space of
two years, he would stoutly deny its possi
bility ; or, else. Divine Creatures descended,
and stood at his side, inspired his mind and
guided his pencil. This ceiling, you may re
member, is covered Avith figures of the Prophets
and the Sybils, of the grandest form ; designed
and painted with a freedom of hand, and a
sublimity of conception, to which there is
nothing corresponding in the whole history
of art. Any one of those forms, done by an
artist in the maturity of his powers and with
years at his command, would have raised him
at once to celebrity. Our Allston was a man of
great genius ; in one department of art almost
without rival. Yet he left half finished a
single picture on which he had been employed
many years — conquered by multiplied difficul
ties of the task. But the mind that painted the
Ceiling of the Sistine was the same that raised
the Dome of St. Peter's ; and the same that

86 ST. Peter's and the Vatican.
struck out of the marble the marvellous statues
of Night and Day, Morning and Evening, Julius
the Second, Moses, David — an accumulation
of power in a single mind, to which a parallel
can scarcely be found in any age. None
have doubted whether he was the greatest
man of his age, or, as one who had exer
cised the three just named arts, the greatest,
probably, that ever lived. But it has been
doubted and disputed in which of the three
he was greatest. After contemplating at leis
ure the ceiling of the Sistine, and calling to
mind the other works of Michael Angelo, for
myself, I could not doubt. I would rather
have designed and painted that ceiling, as an
intellectual achievement, than have done any
other work in the same department of art, the
fame of Avhich has descended to our time.
There is more genius involved in some of those
figures than in the building of St. Peter's.
Bramante might have completed St. Peter's,
as he began it, could his life have been pro
longed ; and others of the eight or ten who
were employed upon the building might have

ceiling of the sistine. 87
designed and finished it ; they Avould have
proved themselves competent to the task ;
Avhile they successively might have failed in
power to conceive the forms, attitudes, expres
sions, of the Prophets and the Sybils. Here,
in the Sistine, Avas he superior to himself in
the art in which he excelled all others. No
where else did he produce forms like these,
which seem as if they had been projected
upon the wall by a sort of inspiration, and by
a power of a different mould from man's.
There are to be seen the truest footsteps of
his genius.
Such are some of the characteristic features
of Rome — the Campagna, the Colosseum, St.
Peter's, the Chambers of Raffaelle, and, above
all, the Ceiling of the Sistine.

FLOEENCE.

ELORENCE.

Beautiful Florence ! That is the charac
teristic epithet by which this capital is always
to be described. Seen from a neighboring
height, such, for instance, as that of the
Convent of San Miniato, or Fiesole, and it
must be hard to believe that any vision more
lovely could meet the eye, though one should
ascend in succession every hill-top in Europe.
Directly beneath the convent, encircled by her
lofty Avails, stands the beautiful capital, adorn
ed as a bride ; her jewelry, the Cathedral with
its clustering domes, the central one almost
as large as that of St. Peter's — Giotto's lofty
Campanile, with its slender proportions and
queenly elegance of form — the grotesque
forms of the tower of the Old Palace, with its

92 FLORENCE.
embattled walls — the Baptistery, whose gates
of sculptured bronze have obtained such ce
lebrity — the Medicean Chapel, whose interior
dazzles the eye with its polished marbles,
precious stones and painted ceilings — these,
together with the lofty roofs with their massive
cornices of the Ricardi and Strozzi Palaces,
constrain one to cry out as he gazes. Beautiful
Florence ! Then, the eye leaving the towers
and domes of the city falls upon the Arno,
which, dividing unequally the capital, and
crossing the loveliest plains in the world, winds
away among the hills, and enters the Mediter
ranean under the walls of Pisa. When the
river by a sudden turn among the mountains
has hidden itself from sight, the spectator rests
his eye, and rests it indeed, on the broad fields
of the richest husbandry imaginable, which
stretch from the Avails of the city tAventy
miles towards the Avest, an absolute plain, to
where it meets the roots of the Apennines, and
plain, mountain, and cloud, in the purple haze
of an Italian sky, are lost in one indistinguish
able confusion of colors and forms. No one

SCENERY OF THE ENVIRONS. 93
can even faintly guess what the beauty of a
plain is, till he sees this of Florence under the
gloAving light of a summer's sunset, the sur
face of the plain here and there broken by the
outline of castle or church, village or villa, by
the tapering cypress with its black foliage, or
by the Italian pine Avith its spreading um
brella top, the most picturesque of trees, and
which lends its grace to so many of the land
scapes of Claude Lorraine.
As soon as the observer can bear to with
draw his eyes from scenes like these, he raises
them to the surrounding hills, which, as if for
a wall of shelter and defence, surround the
city on every side, save the single point where
the Arno penetrates the vast mountain em
bankment to join the sea. These hills are
not marked by any of the very picturesque
forms, which are to be noticed among so many
of the mountains of Italy, but, rather, by those
graceful curves and sweeps, those indescribable
beauties of long undulating lines, which, like
so many other objects in that remarkable re
gion, cause the traveller again and again to

94 FLORENCE.
exclaim as he surveys them, " Hoav Beauti
ful ! " They are the delectable mountains of
Bunyan ; and ought to be residences of blessed
spirits. Gentlemen's country-seats, the villas
and palaces of princes, ruins of past ages, old
convents and old castles, farm-houses with their
long lines of out-buildings, villages — these,
all interspersed Avith groves of the pine and
the olive, creep up the sides of the hills, or
crown the lower summits, and guide the imag
ination to spots of loveliness such as Dante's
Beatrice might have dAvelt in, or that circle of
beauty where Boccacio's tales were rehearsed ;
spots of loveliness that perfectly enchant the
traveller, and half persuade him that his senses
have been imposed upon by some theatrical
trick. When I say that the whole outward aspect
of Florence is so beautiful, the city and all its
environs, almost especially its environs, the
only epithet is applied to it by which it can
be truly characterized — and in this I believe
all Avould agree. There are other cities, the
effect of which strikes deeper, and whose

WITHIN THE WALLS. 95
monuments are far more interesting, such
as Rome ; and, for magnificence and vari
ety of scenery, Naples is unrivalled. All other
places must strike one as flat and prosaic by
the side of that imperial capital — but, for
beauty, there is nothing like Florence. And
not only beauty, but extreme beauty — the
beauty of a belle, of a belle in high dress, —
whose beauty is universally acknowledged, and
universally worshipped.
But upon entering the city, (having pene
trated the suburbs and passed the gates,)
the scene Avhich you had been contemplating,
like the shifting of a scene at a theatre, sud
denly changes, and the beauty by which you
had been enraptured appears no more. The
streets, the domestic buildings, the churches,
the palaces, are anything but beautiful — pe
culiar, grand, striking — many, magniflcent,
but it would be quite an unallowable use of
language to style them beautiful; and pretty is
a word that cannot be used within the walls
of Florence. You find yourself walled in as
your carriage proceeds and penetrates to the

96 FLORENCE.
more important parts of the city, between
rows of buildings, which, from their great
height, and the darkness of the stone of
which all is built, and the massy iron grat
ings which guard all the windows of the
lower stories, make one think he must be
plunging into the recesses of some boundless
prison. All wears a dark, funereal look. The
palaces you Avould take to be inquisitions —
the convents and monasteries, to be prisons of
state. You feel that you have travelled back
to a city of the middle ages, the greater part of
which retains all the marks of those ages.
The age of centuries is inscribed all over the
city as legibly as the wrinkles of eighty or a
hundred years upon the countenance of a hu
man being. Of course, as an American who,
at home, has seen nothing more venerable than
perhaps some moss-covered shingle fabric of
fifty or a hundred years' standing, you look
upon all with an intense interest. Now and
then, a building or a street may present in the
comparison a modern aspect. But the pre
vailing characteristics Avill be height, massive-

WITHIN THE WALLS. 97
ness, blackness, age. If you remember Mrs.
Radcliflfe's novels, as perhaps you should, you
Avill see every Avhere the very streets, buildings,
palaces, she has so often described. All looks as
as if designed for attack and defence — as if
every house had stood, or might now stand a
siege. And the greater part have many a time
done so. Guelf and Ghibelin blood, the blood
of democrat and aristocrat, of noble and com
moner, the blood of civil broil, of domestic
feud, of midnight assassination, has flowed in
the streets, in the prisons, in the palace cham
bers. Every street, every building, every
apartment, every stone has its history of cruel
ty and blood, of liberty or tyranny, of heroism
or oppression.
This is all of the nature of corroborative
evidence to those who remember the fierce
collisions that occurred in Florence, Avithin
the walls of the city, so many times, among
the political and personal parties of the middle
ages, and their wars with neighboring states.
It is highly instructive to see the histories
of those times thus written over again in the

98 FLORENCE.
aspects and forms of the buildings. You can
not look up to those frowning Avails, those
iron-barred windows, those windows so small,
those gratings so close and so heavy — the
long, dark, arched passage-ways Avinding along
from palace to palace, and house to house,
Avithout seeing every where abundant verifica
tion of all you have read — without a sense of
having been carried backward in the order of
time to the days of Cosmo the First.
There are no palaces for a dark and sombre
magnificence like these of Florence. If one
looked no higher than the ground-floor, he
would think much more of a prison than of a
palace ; but if of a prison, it would be of one
for the incarceration of nothing less than princes
and kings. But lifting the eye upward, and no
one can longer doubt that he is examining
the residences of some of the long descended
inheritors of the power and Avealth of Tuscany.
They have about them, in a remarkable de
gree, an air of nobility. The forms are ex
tremely simple, even to severity ; no ornament
which seems to be ornament for its own sake.
The architecture, you will observe too, will

THE RICARDI PALACE. 99
have all the paits which properly belong to it,
but beyond that not a line, not a curve, not a
moulding — nothing, beyond the strictest de
mands of the crder ; and the order chosen you
will find for the most part to be the simplest
and severest of all the five, that to which the
country has given its name, the Tuscan. I do
not believe there is a more impressive building
in Europe than the Ricardi Palace in Florence,
the ancient residence of the Medici in the days
of the first Cosmo, and Lorenzo. It preaches
like a sermon ; it harangues like an oration ; it
inspires like a poem. I came upon it unex
pectedly the first day I was in Florence, and
as I stood beneath its black walls of chiselled
rock, with its massive overhanging cornice, I
felt for the first time the power of architecture.
And yet palace though it be, it presents but
two, sheer, unbroken fronts on the corner of
two streets — no projections, no recesses, no
towers, pediments, columns, piazzas, — two sim
ple fronts with their magnificent cornice, that
is all; but so grand are the proportions of all,
as if Michael Angelo had written his name all
over it, that, for true sublimity, it far surpasses

100 FLORENCE.
all Other structures there, even the huge Cathe
dral itself.
This famous Cathedral — the Duomo, begun
in the thirteenth century by Arnolfo, and fin
ished by Bruneleschi in the fourteenth, is very
vast, having a length of four hundred and fifty,
and a height of three hundred and eighty-seven
feet. And had it been built of one kind of
marble, would not have been Avithout a very
grand effect. It is impressive as it is, espe
cially its interior, with its rich painted win
dows, rich as if Titian had been the artist —
but much is lost to the exterior, owing to its
parti-colored material, being made of marble
in alternate layers of white and black — a
childish taste of the age in whicli it was built
— which disfigures many otherwise fine build
ings both there and in Pisa, and notwith
standing its great size, gives to the church
in question the look of being only an un
commonly large toy. Its dome is considered
its great glory and boast — and with reason —
there had been nothing like it before. It
was in point of time before St. Peter's, and
served as its model to Michael Angelo, who

THE DUOMO  CAMPANILE. 101
was never satisfied with gazing upon it, both
with admiration and a feeling of despair of ever
being able to equal, or surpass it ; and was
accustomed to say as he looked up to it,
" Like thee I will not build, and better I can
not," — yet he ended in building both like
him, and better. The dome of St. Peter's is
both larger, and far more graceful in its de
sign. The style of this Cathedral is especially
interesting, as it marks the point of departiu'e
from the Greek and Roman forms, and the
introduction of the modern order of the Gothic.
It is of a mixed character, like the great Ca
thedral at Pisa, (neither Avholly the one nor
wholly the other — the new, however, pre
dominating very decidedly) — and which, in its
more completed forms, has erected the noblest
religious buildings in the world.
Standing near the west front of the Cathe
dral, there rises the Campanile or Bell Tower
of the famous Giotto, one of the most graceful
structures in existence ; a square tower of four
lofty stories rising, Avithout diminution, to
perhaps tAvo hundred and fifty-eight French

102 FLORENCE.
feet,* every part most profusely enriched with
ornamental sculpture like a lady's necklace.
It is, like the Church, of black and white mar
ble, and of the same mixed style.
The distinguishing feature of the Baptistery,
by which it is commended to the world, is, its
Bronze Doors on three of its sides. These
doors, cast by Ghiberti as long ago as the early
part of the fourteenth century, have been ob
jects of wonder to all, and of delighted study
to the artist, from that day to this. They are
thickly overspread with Scripture designs from
the Old and New Testaments, in small oblong
compartments ; all the frame-work of the doors
most profusely crowded with devices of flow
ers, fruits, arabesques, all in the same bold re
lief — so bold, (the forms often standing out
nearly detached from the surface,) as to trans
gress the line of legitimate relief and pass over
into that of sculpture ; which seems rather
a defect than otherwise, when the limits of
any art are not duly preserved, but one feloni
ously trenches upon another, when relief runs,
* The French foot is a very litlle longer than the EngUsh.

BAPTISTERY. 103
in this way, into sculpture, as fresco paint
ing oftentimes into relief. These are the doors
which, when he first saw them, Michael An
gelo pronounced " Worthy to be Gates of Para
dise." And for exceeding richness and variety
of decoration, he and all might well think so.
But the doors themselves want size — ¦ and do
not hold a good proportion to the building.
There are crowds of religious buildings in
the city, churches, convents, and monasteries,
then prisons, hospitals, and so on — the church
es and convents commonly connected ; every
principal church on its side, or rear, opening
into the interior squares or courts, surrounded
by their cloisters, which lead away into the ir
regular piles of often uncouth, but always most
picturesque masonry, inhabited by the various
brotherhoods, where are often shown to the
traveller the apartments formerly inhabited by
sons of Liberty or sons of God. In the Con
vent of St. Mark's, for instance, is shown the
small cell of that martyr to liberty, the pious,
learned, and lion-hearted Savonarola. And
in the same, the narrow closet where dwelt,
and wrought, the saint-like artist, Beato An-

104 FLORENCE.
gelico — the walls of the room and many of the
corridors adorned by drawings of his devout
pencil — an artist of the earliest date on the
revival of painting in Italy, but whose merits
are confined entirely to his power of religious
expression. His Avas the power in fact, not of art but of
feeling. Angelico and the painters of that
earliest time could hardly be termed artists in
any proper sense. They painted, not because
they Avere artists, not for fame, not for the
sake of art, not because they felt the love of
beauty struggling for utterance, or because, as
artists, they knew anything, but, simply, be
cause they were religious men, and felt that
there was still one way more left, in Avhich
they might glorify God, and do honor to Christ,
and the church. That was their inspiration.
And so much was there of this deep religious
feeling, so did it reveal itself in the counte
nances of their Christs and Apostles, notwith
standing their ludicrous deficiences as artists,
that one cannot even now look upon the rude
work of Beato Angelico or Perugino (half a
century later) without tears. There is a cru-

BEATO ANGELICO. 105
cifixion by Perugino in the Duke's Gallery
which overwhelms one Avith emotion more
than one would believe the art capable of do
ing, from any modern exeimples we see of it ;
yet, as mere art, unworthy the least attention —
all ignorant and crude. But they had higher
claims. They knew how to feel, and to paint
with the soul, rather than paint at the end of
the brush. Their heads of their Christs, Apos
tles, Angels, are sermons and prayers.
Fashion, and a sudden access of enthusiasm
in Germany, have placed Angelico at the head
of Catholic art in Europe ; and quite a school
names itself after him, at the head of which
stands Overbeck, at Rome, a man of precisely
the same type as Angelico ; and also a monk,
converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism
through the moral power of Angelico's art.
And great good may come of it. For if, upon
the higher knowledge and more correct design
of their modern imitators, there should be su
perinduced the feeling of the old monks, a form
of art might arise that should eclipse in real
merit any other of to day ; from which relig-

106 FLORENCE.
ious feeling seems utterly to have died out.
There are many other religious buildings in
Florence of the kinds just described, to which
attaches the deepest interest for their treasures
of ancient art upon their Avails, and their associ
ations Avith political and Christian history.
Structures of another kind in Florence, made
famous by the residence of remarkable men,
such as the Medici, Dante, Michael Angelo,
Galileo, possess an interest of the highest
kind ; and not a building of that sort would one
omit to visit and explore, if time — that sore
trouble to the poor traveller — did not inter
pose its ban. One only Avill I notice — the
family mansion of Michael Angelo, built by
himself, which has been religiously preserved
unaltered, and is at this day inhabited by one
of his lineal descendants, a Buonorroti, an act
ing counsellor of law in Florence. It is an
awkward building in its interior, and shows
that though he could build St. Peter's, he
could not build his OAvn house. The principal
story consists of a long suite of apartments, six
or eight of them in a line, of various dimen-

THE IMPERIAL GALLERY. 107
sians, opening into each other by small doors,
the walls and ceilings of every one of them, in
every square inch, adorned by paintings illustra
tive of his long and glorious career ; and contri
buted by his admirers, or followers, as memen
toes of affection and reverence. Of all these
apartments, richly decorated as they are, the
most lifelike was the mere closet, six or eight
feet by three, furnished only with a fixed chair
and a fixed table, with a single pane of glass for
light, where the great man withdrew for study ;
where he wrote, and where he threw off those
first pencil sketches, the original conceptions
of his mind, which Avere then elaborated into
those famous works which have compelled the
admiration of successive centuries, and made
his name immortal.
Art almost constitutes Florence. There are
three grand depositories of it. The principal
is that of the Imperial Gallery. Rightly styled
imperial. It is contained in a very extensive
building, worthy of its builder, Vasari, the
artist and the author. It may be said, that

108 FLORENCE.
there is no end to the works of value and in
terest which crowd the rooms of this noble
establishment. In sculpture there is scarce a
Roman emperor, philosopher, poet, Avhose bust
or statue is not there, raked from the ruins of
Ancient Rome, or other overturned city of
Italy. And beside these, statues of imaginary
beings, god or goddess, dryad or hamadryad,
satyr or faun, with which the imagination of
antiquity teemed, and which genius expressed
in such perfection in marble or bronze. Such
objects adorn the sides of these extensive gal
leries. Opening out of the galleries, in their
whole length, are halls and saloons, larger and
smaller, where are deposited the chefs-d'oBuvre
of sculpture, and the masterpieces in painting,
from the first appearance of art in the thir
teenth century to the close of the sixteenth,
with specimens of all the principal schools.
One of these apartments, of especial celeb
rity, named the Tribune, most lavishly adorned
Avith marbles, gilding, and mother of pearl, has
been consecrated to a very few of the most
celebrated works in marble and painting, Avhich

THE TRIBUNE. 109
the traveller who had heard or read of it almost
from his youth, enters with the most excited
expectations. But they are expectations, which,
however excited, can never be disappointed.
There, gracefully disposed about the floor,
stands the world-renowned Venus de' Medici,
the Arrotino, or grinder, a perfect piece of na
ture in both form and action, and might stand
as well for Shakspeare's Shylock sharpening
the knife for Antonio's side — near these
the Young Apollo — then the Wrestlers, an
antique group of Greek statuary — lastly, the
Dancing Fawn, the head and arms restored by
Michael Angelo — a marvellous instance of
restoration, going, one may believe, beyond
the original conception of the artist. The
parts supplied by Michael Angelo are in such
perfect unity of expression with every other
part of the statue, that even though one should
discern the fractures where the new members
were added, he would suppose them at once
to be the ancient members themselves, fortu
nately discovered, and skilfully re-annexed.
In truth, the peculiar merit of the figure
10

110 FLORENCE.
will be seen to lie in the action of the head
and the arms.
To the first of the statues just named, as
lending its chief celebrity to the Tribune, and
that Avhich perhaps would be termed the most
perfect piece of sculpture in the world — the
Venus — I revert for a few moments. This
famous statue, ascribed on its plinth to Cleo
menes, but subject to doubt, was discovered
amongst the ruins of Hadrian's Villa, at Ti
voli, in the fifteenth century — though this is
also disputed ; but, what is certain, is, that
Avhenever and wherever found, it was found
broken into thirteen or fourteen pieces ; but
every fragment there, with the exception of
the lower portions of the two arms. The join
ing together of so many pieces has been done
with such extreme skill, that no imperfection
is perceptible on the surface. As thus restored
and completed, whatever may have been lost
of the original perfection, enough remains to
substantiate its claims to the reputation of the
most perfect representation existing of woman
ly beauty. That, I suppose, with very few

Ill
exceptions, to be the common judgment.
Every eye would agree in pronouncing the
form, the proportions, the contour of the trunk
and lower limbs, not only faultless, but radiant
with a loveliness and a grace certainly nowhere
else to be seen, nor easily to be imagined.
The figure might be termed perfect, but for
the head and the arms. The head is thought
too small to be in good proportion to the body.
But this is not very observable. The position
and turn of the head are graceful in the ex
treme. The countenance is characterized by
a sort of doll-like inanimate beauty, which
detracts greatly from the pleasure with which
it would otherwise be viewed. It may not be
said to be devoid of expression, but the ex
pression, such as it is, is far from agreeable,
taken in connection with the posture of the
hands and arms. These are modern, and every
way defective. But their attitude, their chief
offence, I imagine to have been very nearly the
original one, for this reason — it is but a con
jecture — that the representation of Venus in
marble seems anciently to have been governed

112 FLORENCE.
by a set of conventional ideas, which really
prescribed the manner in which they should be
placed. But the conjecture is made somewhat
more plausible by the fact that the Venus of
the Capitol at Rome has precisely the same,
more than one also in the Imperial Gallery at
Florence, and in the Vatican. But, whatever
may be the account of this posture, whether ori
ginally belonging to the discovered statue or
not, what I would say is, that the meaning con
veyed by the attitude, and by the expression
of the countenance, is not the same, but contra
dictory. They do not correspond. If the atti
tude, as is affirmed, be one of modesty, the
idea is refuted by the expression of the coun
tenance, which is smirking and even meritri-
cious ; which shows the posture to be one — and
there can be no greater fault in a work of art —
of mere affectation. Were the posture one of
genuine modesty, the language of the counte
nance Avould necessarily correspond; as in the
Venus of the Capitol, where the attitude is the
same, but the expression one of purity and dig
nity. This is a criticism to which this beautiful

THE VENUS de' MEDICI. 113
Avork is fairly open. But this fault, serious as
it is, cannot deprive it of its divine symmetry,
its matchless grace. It is still to the eye
delighting in mere form, the most beautiful
statue in the world.
While, unfortunately, it was necessary to re
store the arms, the lower limbs, and the feet es
pecially, have remained wholly uninjured, and
are moulded with exquisite art ; the only defect
that even seemed to exist there being the too
great roundness of the arch of the single foot
on which the whole weight of the body rests.
It may be more beautiful as it is ; but it is
not so true. The weight of the whole body
being upon one foot, must inevitably spread it,
as any one may see. But, as it is, it has all the
beautiful roundness of a foot which is at rest.
But whatever defect or faint blemish may be
found or fancied in this great work of genius,
it is lost in the general blaze of excellence ;
and we look upon it, and hang over, it as lovers,
with untiring admiration, the last as the first,
and every day that the traveller visits the gal
lery. Of other objects of art he may tire ;
10*

114

FLORENCE.

but he returns to this ever with fresh interest,
and fresh delight. The Venus bf the Capitol
possesses many charms, but it wants that name
less grace Avhich is shed over her Florence
rival — a grace indescribable and incommuni
cable, but none the less certain and undeni
able — like that which pervades so many. of the
forms of Raffaelle ; like that, which in another
department of art — lends enchantment to a
style such as that of Addison or Goldsmith —
a style, the deliciousness of which can be ac
knowledged and felt by all, while it can be
copied by none.
In a large saloon opposite the Tribune is
found the famous group of Niobe and her
children, among the most admirable remains of
antiquity — a group comprising, in all, sixteen
statues. These statues were dug up in some
vineyards in Rome about the middle of the
sixteenth century, the soil, for once, yield
ing a richer frui* than even their grapes.
They are range i around the large hall without
order, excep'. that the mother is at the head of
the room, and the children diverge from her on

NIOBE. 115
either side. And this order is perhaps as good
as any — as good as that Avhich has been con
jectured to be the original one by the antiqua
ries as arranged on the tympanum of a temple.
There could be no natural order, unless it
should be one of a wild, confused, croAvded
group — the only natural order of sudden and
violent death. The form ofthe mother — one of
the children clasping her around the waist — is
full of dignity and grace, and the grief depicted
in the countenance and action of the figure
natural and affecting, without the least ap
proach to extravagance. This is the grand,
presiding form of the group, and cannot be too
much admired. But when you have duly
admired and sympathized with the mother of
the fourteen, you look but coldly on the dying
children — although in nature the death of the
young is so much more moving than that of the
old — first, because they die so ostentatiously,
and because the call for so much sympathy, in
the distress of each, is apt to repress and extin
guish the whole, just as, in another relation,
caricature is so apt to extinguish humor. But

116 FLORENCE.
Stfll the genius of the artist is hardly the less
indisputable, who, in the countenances and
forms of so many persons, all dying from the
same cause, could invent and express so great
a variety in the manner.
Returning for a few moments to the Tri
bune, the most famous pictures there are the
two Venuses by Titian. These remarkable
works possess all the attributes of the truest,
richest, most natural color — the very hues of
nature, and the very force and depth of nature
— - attributes which invariably distinguish the
work of the great Venitian, while these par
ticular examples of his art do no sort of justice
to his powers of expression, which oftentimes,
equally with color, mark him as one of the fcAV
first artists of the Avorld. But obviously, in
the present instance, the aim of the artist was
of a secondary character, that is, to express by
the pencil the most exquisite form and color
which it was in the power of art to effect —
the most perfect imitation possible of female
beauty. And his success, though not com
plete, was such as could have been achieved

titian's venuses. 117
by no other human hand. The countenance
in each, though regular, is insipid, but pure, in
Avhat meanhig it has. Setting this aside, and
one would not believe the united resources of
color, skill, and human genius, to be capable
of producing the results Avhich dazzle the eye
with almost more than the splendors of nature.
And just what he succeeded in, is, I conceive,
not the greatest, but the most difficult achieve
ment in art — not Herculeses, Centaurs, Lao-
coons, but the conception and expression in
line and hue of beauty. Multitudes may con
ceive and represent the one, for one who shall
be able to arrest the vanishing hues and lines
where beauty, the highest beauty, dwells. In
deed, one might as reasonably hope for art to
chisel a sunset, or paint a fragrance, as to
depict beauty — a thing too ethereal and fleet
ing for our workmanship. The portrait paint
er, though he be Titian himself, Reynolds, or
Allston, here fails, and necessarily fails. I sup
pose no one ever saw the reigning beauty of
the hour fitly expressed by the painter — the
whole resemblance caught, while a Lady Mac-

118 FLORENCE.
beth — the stormy and tempestuous — is easily
rendered. In the same apartment there are several
pictures of Raffaelle, but all of a secondary
rank, except, perhaps, the Fornarina, Avith
her wooden, unimpassioned, but handsome
face. Two of the Virgin are there with the
children, Christ and the Baptist, but possessing
little interest beside the fact that they are
indubitably by his hand. They are more like
portraits of some very uninteresting ladies,
than like the woman whom we should wish
to name the mother of our Lord. In all of
Raffaelle's Virgins there is the same obvious
failure in the head. His mind never seems to
have risen to the lofty height of imagining the
countenance which became the mother of that
Avonderful being Avho Avas to be the Saviour of
the world. He paints not even young moth
ers, which Murillo always does ; — they are, at
most and best, beautiful young women, as in
the Seggiola of the Duke's Palace ; but noth
ing more ; no religious elevation, no peculiar
sanctity, no holy and divine abstraction —

MICHAEL angelo's MADONNA. 119
no prophetic glancing of the soul into the
future. This was reserved as the task of a
loftier genius than even the divine Raffaelle.
There hangs a picture on the right hand of
the Venus de' Medici, in the Tribune, in a
large circular fremie, which at first attracts
no attention from the spectator, but, on the
contrary, from the reddish, monotonous color,
and strange arrangement of objects, is re
pulsive rather than otherAvise. But on a
more careful scrutiny you find that a great
work is before you. A single figure is felt to
stand out at length, from the unattractive can
vass, clear and distinct, and to claim, and
compel an admiration and a reverence beyond
all others on the same subject. It is a picture
of the Holy Family, by Michael Angelo, one
of the very few he has been known to have
painted in oil, and, like so many of his works,
left unfinished. The figures constituting the
piece are, St. Joseph, the Virgin, the young
Christ, and several other children and per
sons in the middle distance, which seem to be
there for no conceivable reason, except to con-

120 FLORENCE.
fuse the subject. But all this is of no moment
— the whole picture is in the Virgin Mother.
She sits as in solitude, though in the midst of
many ; the young child, with one arm thrown
around her in an endearing manner, soliciting
attention ; — but she heeds him not — still she
sits alone — raised, apparently, above all earth
ly objects and thoughts — her face turned to
heaven, her eye looking intently upward as if
it reached into heaven; — yet a melancholy
overspreads the face, as if while rapt out of
herself by the moral glory of the unfolding
ages, there was not concealed from her heart
— a prospect in the distance of Calvary and
the cross. The language of the face, while
exalted, is also truly feminine and deeply sad.
It was to me incomparably the noblest female
head, for that subject, I ever saw in art, and
the only one worthy of the theme. If to this
most remarkable figure, to this most expressive
face, there had been added the other divin
ity of beauty — for beauty would not have
been inconsistent with the theme — and that
nameless charm of color which gave even to

HALL OF ORIGINAL DRAWINGS. 121
Rafiaelle such additional poAver, but which
Michael Angelo almost despised, one work of
art Avould have been the result to which the
word perfection might safely have been ap
plied. There are many other rooms in this royal
collection where one Avould gladly linger, and
in each one dwell at length on many a Avork
to which has been affixed the stamp of ages.
One of the most interesting and valuable of
these apartments is that Avhere have been col
lected the portraits of artists of all ages, coun
tries, and schools ; and which have usually
been contributed each one by himself and by
his own hand. Four or five hundreds hang'
upon its walls. The portrait of Rembrandt
by himself, you will see at once to be the
work of a perfect Titan in art.
'Another hall, possesses a yet deeper interest
in a collection of original drawings, or first
sketches, from all the great masters of Italy,
gathered from all parts of the country, pre
served in a spirit of sacred, almost supersti
tious veneration, and now exhibited, though,
11

122 FLORENCE.
on only very special application through con
suls or ministers, to all lovers of art. They
are mounted in such a way, with such scru
pulous regard to the security of these treasures,
and with such nice mechanical contrivance,
that it would seem as if time, and hardly
accident, could have from this time forward
any power over them ; as if they might be
freely exhibited for ages, without the slightest
injury to lightest lead pencil touch. There
one may see the first thoughts — sometimes
the last — of Leonardo — the friar Bartolomeo,
Raffaelle, Andrea, Michael Angelo — uttered,
in sometimes the rudest, most hasty manner,
• in pencil, pen and ink, India ink, sepia, in any
manner and by any instrument nearest at
hand, by which the idea that crowded into
the mind could be quickest expressed.
The collection of the Academy of Fine Arts
is not extensive, nor is it interesting or valua
ble, but in a strictly historical point of view.
In that light it is interesting and instructive ;
invaluable to any historian of art. The pur-

ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS. 123
pose of the institution Avas to present on its
Avails an unbroken series of works, from the
earliest glimmerings of art in the twelfth cen
tury, down to the close of the sixteenth. The
design has been successfully carried out, and
there are few artists of Tuscany in all that time
who are not represented there in their works.
When I looked at the earliest pictures of those
earliest times, appearing like the drawing and
coloring of the old Egyptians and Mexicans,
or the unskilful daubings of children, I received
new impressions of the reality of the darkness
of the dark ages. I saw how all that had
been done in art in the previous ages by the
Greeks, &c., had all as much perished out of
the knowledge and memory of mankind as if
it had never existed — and how it was no fig
ure of speech that the people of those days
had just awakened from the sound sleep of
centuries. When Cimabue and Giotto first
dreAV and painted, they were as ignorant as
our North American savages that art had ever
existed before. It was not till the accidental
discovery of the treasures buried in the soil of

124 FLORENCE.
Rome had furnished them with models, and it
had also occurred to Giotto to make copies of
his own sheep and goats, that art, from those
two sources, received for the second time its
birth. The collection of the Grand Duke, with the
exception of that at the Louvre, is probably
the finest known. It is contained in eighteen
or twenty large, magnificent halls, each sump
tuously decorated with painted ceilings, costly
furniture, mosaic floors. To give an idea
of the regal elegance of these rooms, and
their regal cost, I wfll state a familiar item*
of a circular table three or four feet only in
diameter, the cost of which Avas eighty thou
sand dollars, Avhich twenty-five artists, for
twenty-three years, were employed in making.
But another fact, far more interesting and beau
tiful than this, or any number of the same sort,
is the princely liberality Avith which all these
magnificent apartments with their works of art
* Murray.

GALLERY OF THE PITTI PALACE. 125
are thrown open to the whole public, without
discrimination, and, what is unintelligible in
England or America, without charge. Though
the expense of keeping so many large halls al
ways open, what Avith cleanings and repairings,
and the number of servants to keep every thing
safe, must be very great, and the trouble
greater than the expense, still all is open and
free as the open floor of a Catholic church.
The same liberality is shown in respect to
admission to the gardens in the jear of
the palace — all is open, all free. So different
this from, especially, all English usage, and
which goes far to explain the ignorance of, and
indifference to art throughout that country.
The people there cannot see any of the art
that exists in England ; they never have been
able to see it ; and Avhat they cannot see
they can know little or nothing about. One
could not see the art in England — and there
is a vast deal there — shut up as it is, in the
exclusive rooms of palaces and country seats,
without an expenditure both of money and time
that could be afforded only by persons of leisure

126 FLORENCE.
and wealth. A single gallery has, of late years,
been opened to the public for free admission ;
and the crowds constantly there, show how
right it is they should be there. I hope that
our cities will, for their imitation in all such
usages, for which we are naturally inclined to
go to England, resort not there, but to the
more genial continent, where there is so much
more of that open-hearted liberality which a
young country like ours may better adopt as
its model. What a pleasure Avould be imparted,
and to how many, if our Boston Athenasum,
and the other corresponding institutions in our
sister cities, Avould commence a new era by
opening to all citizens indiscriminately their
annual exhibitions. If one great object of
such institutions is to correct and elevate the
public taste, the fee which is exacted upon ad
mission totally defeats it — it effectually ex
cludes the very persons and classes who ought
most to be considered — who most need the
softening influences of the place.
But numerous and precious as are the Avorks
of art in the Pitti Gallery, they cannot be even

MADONNA DEL SEGGIOLA. 127
named here. There are more than five hun
dred upon its walls and catalogues, each a work
of value, for either its name, or its intrinsic
Avorth. Of all these works I can mention
but one — the small round picture, not eigh
teen inches in diameter, by Raffaelle, called
the Madonna del Seggiola — representing the
mother and the two children, Christ and the
Baptist. This is a picture which all have seen
in engravings; but it is a great gratification to
see the original work of Raffaelle by his own
hand. Of copies in oil, Avhich abound all over
the world, I never saw a more valuable one,
on every account, than that Avhich has just
been seen in the Athenaeum Gallery.* Many
are so wretchedly done as hardly to bring to
mind the original. Between this and the
original it might be difficult to discriminate,
but for the indubitable marks of age on the
one. As a composition, this work may Avell
be regarded as faultless ; truth and nature in
the action, beauty of form, grace of outline,
rich and harmonious arrangement of color, con-

* In the possession of Mr. Patterson.

128 FLORENCE.
spire to throAv over this famous picture a charm
hardly surpassed by any other in existence.
The two chfldren are more than beautiful.
There is in the young Christ especially, in the
mysterious eye, a power, which, though most
truly belonging to the countenance of a child,
affects and subdues the observer, as if it Avere
the Christ not of the infancy, but of the Mount
of Olives, or the Transfiguration. The virgin
mother possesses a most delicate beauty, which
Raffaelle's virgins often do not, but the face
has no other merit ; the eyes are cast down,
and the features mean no more than maternal
sweetness. But within that small circle of a
few inches, how is there not, for the artist, an
illustration, in their perfection, of every prin
ciple of the art of painting ! It is the art
itself in its totality.
In nearly the last room of this extensive
range stands Canova's Venus, in Carrara marble
— a work of grace and elegance, the whole
well conceived, and the forms of the limbs and
drapery naturally modelled. It has been ac
cused of having a French air about it — par-

canova's VENUS. 129
ticularly in the too careful dressing of the
hair — and the time chosen being just about
entering or leaving the bath, the condition of
the hair in either case strikes one as at least
inappropriate. Otherwise I observed no ex
travagance or excess ; though in many of his
works there Avas a want of simplicity, an ap
pearance of affectation, in short, which dis
pleased. Mr. Powers made a general remark
upon Canova, which agreed with my previous
ideas of him, and seemed borne out in this
particular case — which Avas, that he Avas
particularly inclined to carry to exaggeration
any lines of beauty or grace that gave him
especial pleasure. Which he exemplified in this
statue. The Venus de' Medici turns her head
towards her left shoulder just enough to avoid
stiffness, to give life and grace to the form,
and not a line farther than would consist with
perfect truth. Canova, he said, struck with this
beauty, gives to his Venus the same turn of the
head ; but in the endeavor to make it yet more
beautiful than in the original, turns it farther
in the same way, so far as to bring the head at

130 FLORENCE.
right angles with the body — an impossible
position in nature.
Having introduced the name of Mr. Powers
here, I will close with a notice of one of his
works — his Greek Slave. In his studio I
saAv that most lovely conception, the Proser
pine, A^-itli which you are all acquainted ; the
Fisher Boy, pretty, but hardly more ; the lion
head of old Jackson, true as truth ; the demo
niac head of Calhoun, equally true, I believe ;
the clay model of Eve, which many prefer to
the Slave, and a marble copy of the Greek
Slave, nearly finislied, and Avhich has since
been exhibited throughout the country. On
seeing this last work, I was in no way disap
pointed. I had then seen the Venus, and all
the Greek sculpture in the Imperial Gallery,
and the Venus of Canova — still I was satis
fied. I even searched for defects, failures,
but could find none — for obvious beauties,
they were there without the searching. In con
tour, proportion, exquisite symmetry and grace,
nothing of modern Avorkmanship can be more
admirable. It must demand the eye of a most

THE GREEK SLAVE. 131
exact anatomist, and of a most skilful mechanic,
to see where the form fails of its just shape in
muscle or limb, or Avhere the chisel fails in any
point of the most careful workmanship. I
have seen the female form of a more noble
and majestic bearing, of a more queenly ele
gance, of a more goddess-like dignity ; but for
moving beauty, the sort of beauty that makes
a Venus, one must doubt whether in modern
statuary it has been surpassed. The head, as
in the Venus, bends toward the left, as if, we
may suppose in the present case, turning aAvay
from the common gaze. And the only change
it has ever occurred to me to wish for, has been,
that at the same time the head turned aside, it
should, for the same reason that it turned aside,
have been slightly bent downwards, with the
eyes a little more depressed. That, I believe,
would have added, at least, to an expression
which it is very commonly accused of wanting.
For myself, it strikes me, as it is, to be full of
expression — of sensibility to all the painfulness
of her position and destiny — still, as it should
be, a restrained sensibility. Who has not seen.

132 FLORENCE.
at least Avho cannot imagine, a countenance,
ready to burst forth with suppressed tears and
sighs, yet which do not burst forth, and there
is hardly an outward sign, save to a very sympa
thizing heart, of the tumult and agony within.
There is but slight visible sign of pain on the
Slave's placid face, but it always seems as if
tears would flow if marble could. It appears to
me there is perhaps as much manifestation of
expression on the countenance as could be put
into marble, Avithout doing more damage to
the beauty of the creature than it could add of
interest or force to its expressiveness. I think
we are here to remember the difference be
tween painting and sculpture. Those delicate,
refined shades of meaning which you find in
such heads as those of Guercino or Raffaelle,
are not possible, I imagine, in marble. It is
most essential that emotions of grief and pain
should not be stamped too strongly upon the
unchangeable stone. It could only serve more
to repel than attract. Niobe and her chfldren
suffer and weep, but they express too much ;
all is too visible ; they suflfer with too much

THE GREEK SLAVE. 133
exhibition of what is suffered. With more
repression, there Avould have been a more true
and moving expression — more, not less, sym
pathy, Avould be excited in others. I saw
in Florence the group of a mother and
child. The child had been just rescued from
the water, and lay dead on the mother's lap.
But the language of the countenance of the
mother, true as it Avas to the minutest line, was
all too true to be witnessed without too much
pain. Just as it is in real life. Grief in excess
should not be seen ; and if seen, never moves,
like the deep, settled sadness, Avhich has left its
lines not in any change or distortion of feature,
but in those ineffaceable, deep-sunk footsteps of
pain, which show that the soul — not so much
the body — is convulsed with agony to its
centre. The most refined and delicate invention is
displayed in the falling of the left hand with
the double chain. The hair, after the Greek
manner, divides over the forehead, and gathers
into a tuft or club behind, which seems too
12

134 FLORENCE.
large for beauty. The limbs, the hands and
feet, seem to be without fault.
The genius of Powers, it is said, and his
peculiar eminence, are shown in the extreme
delicacy and fineness of his finish. They are
shown there, certainly, but elscAvhere as well.
Whether he will continue to advance in his
art — whether he will go on to manifest fer
tility, rapidity, variety in his invention, and
execution, it must remain for time to deter
mine. At present, all that can be said is,
there is the promise of it.
Our distinguished countryman, Greenough,
I found* engaged upon a colossal work for the
Capitol at Washington. It was to consist of a
group of figures, four in number, to corres
pond in size and position with one by Persico,
already in place. Only two of the four statues
were as yet commenced in the marble ; those,
as I should judge, nearly completed. As far
as the Avork had proceeded, it promised all that
his friends or the coiintry could desire. Its
* Summer of 1S4S.

MR. GREENOUGH. 135
design, truly national, seemed to express alle-
gorically the triumph of American civilization,
in the forms of an American Anglo-Saxon sub
duing an Indian ; and the forms, nearly fin
ished, of the savage and the backwoodsman,
the Avhite man violently restraining the Indian,
appeared to be done Avith the greatest truth
of conception, and the finest dramatic effect.
Another of our artists I found at Florence,
Mr. Ives, who was engaged both upon statues
and busts. He Avas just finishing a Cupid of
great beauty and variety in the accessories,
and must, when completed, make him most
favorably known to the country.
I cannot leave this subject Avithout express
ing a regret that so many of our artists, paint
ers and sculptors, but particularly our sculptors,
separate themselves as they do from their own
country, and in fact become foreigners by long
residence abroad. There seems to be no suffi
cient reason — at least, so far as their art is con
cerned — for this entire expatriation. It may
be a pleasure and a luxury to reside in such
cities as Rome and Florence ; but it can scarce

136 FLORENCE.
be otherAvise than injurious to the interests
of art at home. In some respects, and for a
brief period, a residence abroad may be useful ;
nay, essential to the artist himself He needs
education and a teacher ; and models in marble
can be had only in the capitals of Europe ; in
the living Tnan, hoAvever, it should be remem
bered — the true model — every where. Five
years may be needed for such objects. But let
the residence of the young artist be prolonged
much beyond that period, and though it may be
true that the taste, and poAver of critical discrim
ination, might be improved by longer absence,
it must be more than doubtful whether more
would not be lost than gained on the score of
original conception, and execution. It cannot be
wholesome to the mind to be forever in the pres
ence of artificial models of perfection. Such a
one will become a slavish copyist ; that will be
the reasonable apprehension. At least his sub
jects will be exclusively selected from the class
of objects always before him. A visit to the
modern studios of Rome and Florence Avill
convince any one of this. They are crowded

AMERICAN SCULPTORS. 137
Avith copies of Greek and Roman works. The
American student, though he arrives there from
a fresh, new country, Avill not be able to with
stand the tendency of all about him ; he will
do as the rest do ; and devote his time and
genius to ApoUos, Dianas, Venuses, to the ex
clusion of those living themes from actual life,
and incidents of our own history, which might
kindle a neAv enthusiasm and inspire to more
original works. Not by any means that the
beautiful fables of the Greek and Roman
mythology should be utterly forborne ; not
that Orpheus, even at this late day, should not
again descend in search of the long-lost Eury-
dice — for even the oldest theme may become
new in the treatment of a man of genius —
but that the constant presence of the Antique,
and daily Avorship at her shrine, must, as the
rule, tend to generate a dull and slavish turn
of mind — all Avithin the limits of the most
refined taste, but emasculated by the absence
of every thing like a vigorous originality.
It is pleaded that marble cannot be found in
America. But it is imported at no ruinous
12*

138 FLORENCE.
enhancement of fhe original cost ; and in no
long time, Avhen it is knoAvn that a purer article
is wanted, it will be found. The fine grain of
the Carrarat marble is by no means the most
desirable, especially for some works. The
coarser grain of the Parian is preferable ; and
its delicate, creamy tint, more agreeable than
the chalk white of the Italian. There is quite
a wide range of qualities, both in color and
grain, suited to the sculptor, and it would be
wonderful indeed, if, throughout our vast inte
rior, a native stone were not soon discovered,
that would prove perfectly adapted to any
kind of work required.*
Workmen competent to complete a statue at
present, there are not ; but were our sculptors
here on the spot to create the demand, enough
would be found, with the briefest instruction,
equal to all the detail of the most delicate
finish. There are hundreds of mechanics in
marble work in Boston, New York and Phila-

* Vermont is almost composed of marble. And one may hope
that the Rutland Road, just completed, which finds Boston brick,
may leave it, in not many years, marble.

AMERICAN SCULPTORS. 139
delphia, familiar already with the use of the
most delicate chisel in executing, if not often
the human form, yet flowers, fruits, arabesques,
architectural devices, capitals and mouldings,
with a skill that at once, under the instruction
of an accomplished statuary, could be trans
ferred to statues, groups, heads, drapery, and
every other more difficult part of the art. An
American stone-cutter to-day may rise up a
statuary to-morrow. A power of rapid adap
tation is a national trait. But if I should be
wrong here, and native workmen could not be
procured, the low prices of labor in Rome and
Florence would enable them to be imported in
any number, and of any character desired, to
whom American wages would prove wealth.
The American sculptor, resolving to return
to his country and plant himself on her sofl,
and entrust his fortunes to her, might make
some immediate sacrifice in the loss of the
society of those of his own profession in the
great European capitals. He might feel here
out of the atmosphere of art, and as if he
could not breathe. But my belief is, that as far

140 FLORENCE.
as that should not prove to be an imaginary
loss, an art atmosphere would soon be created
at home, by the removal, and residence in
America, of all our artists, in which as vigorous
an existence might be passed as in Italy.
Let these gentlemen establish themselves in
some one of our cities, not driven asunder
by trivial and ignoble jealousies, but united
by one spirit of devotion to the great inter
ests of high art, and contending with each
other only in the race of a perfectly hon
orable competition for the noble prizes of
his profession, let them mingle freely, as
they would, with the best literary and gen
eral society of our capitals, becoming known
personally as well as through their works
— and an interest Avould be awakened, I am
sure, in the Avhole subject of art, but par
ticularly in sculpture, that would lead to the
happiest resultr ; an enthusiasm Avould arise
that would crowd conversation with a wholly
new set of topics, and give a new and higher
direction to that passion for elegant indulgence
and costly expenditure, which will find its

AMERICAN SCULPTORS. 141
gratification somewhere, if not in art or lite
rature, then in dinners, suppers, upholstery,
dress, equipage. As long as these gentle
men are hidden from the country by the thick
veil which hides all from Europe, and not a
sculptor is to be met in society, nor a studio to
be visited, where thoughts and feelings can be
exchanged on the subject of his art, there can
be neither knowledge nor enthusiasm on the
subject. This foreign absenteeism kflls know
ledge and enthusiasm. He who really has at
heart the progress of a particular branch of sci
ence or art in a certain country or district, goes
there, and advocates the cause by his presence,
his speech, and his works. Not only would
their mere presence and conversation, in the
case of artists of cultivated minds, and the
frequent resort to their studios, tend rapidly
to generate a taste for this particular art, but
a desire to possess what began to be so much
honored and prized, would advance with equal
pace, and, before the workmen could be pro
cured, a demand for finished works Avould
arise, more than could be answered. Remain-

142 FLORENCE.
ing buried in Europe, nothing of the kind
could take place.
Only let it be understood that such men as
I refer to had returned to their country, ready
and desirous to execute the orders that might be
entrusted to them, and not only private individ
uals of wealth and taste would contend for the
privilege of precedency in obtaining Avorks
^rom their hand, but sovereign states, as in the
best days of the Greek Republics would appear
by their ambassadors, or, in humbler phrase,
business agents, as solicitors for their talent.
It needs nothing but their personal presence to
give an impulse to our legislatures through
out the Union to decorate our thirty halls
of Government Avith specimens of American
sculpture. Every commoiiAvealth would soon
demand its great historical men in marble. A
rivalry throughout the country would spring
up, that Avould contend for the best artist and
Avork of the highest mark.
Sculpture should help to dignify, and soon
it will do so, all our public buildings. As
once in Athens and throughout Greece, it wfll

AMERICAN SCULPTORS. 143
not be private wealth so much as that of the
State that Avill honor itself by leaving every
where proofs of an exalted and elegant taste,
as Avell as of intelligence in the administra
tion of public affairs. No piece of architecture
is complete, and so it will be thought, Avithout
its sculpture in statue, and bust, or relief in
marble, or brass. The pfllar requires its capital
of acanthus leaves ; the building, its ornamen
tal frieze, its statues and reliefs without, its
histories and allegories Avithin. The nation
has lately here, in our capital of Massachu
setts, erected a Custom House of more than
Egyptian solidity, and of almost classic beau
ty ; at any rate, of perfect and permanent
material and workmanship ; but it is still unfin
ished ; naked and bare — and will remain so
till adorned Avith its significant illustrations in
marble or bronze. Massachusetts and Virginia
have, each, her Washington, but both by the
hands of foreign artists. Louisiana has just
called for her Washington from the chisel of
Powers. Virginia is about to erect a sepul
chral monument to the same great name at

144 FLORENCE.
Richmond, and in Crawford has found a design
and an artist. South Carolina has just obtained
a statue of Calhoun from the hand of Powers.
These are but the beginnings of an interest in
an art which is destined to extend, and that not
slowly, over the whole country. But wheth
er this shall take place earlier or later, or almost
at all, will depend upon the presence or the
absence of our native artists. In England, I
believe, there would be sculpture as well as
painting, had her sculptors resided there.
Let ours reside and work in Europe, and they
will be Europeans — nor can a school of Amer-
cian art arise.
But as my subject has brought me round
again to my OAvn country, I will close here,
adding only that the fine arts, though holding
but an humble rank in the scale of merit of
the mere utilitarian, holds a much higher one,
and, I will add, juster one, in the scale of the
man of good common sense, as well as in that
of the mere lover of the beautiful. I cannot
but think, that the love and study of these arts

AMERICAN SCULPTORS. 145
must be folloAved by useful influences on hu
man character generally, and especially are its
elevating and refining influences needed on
our American character, and for this reason, if
for no other, ought to be cherished.
And in respect to the intrinsic dignity of the
pursuit of these elegant arts, there can be no
doubt ; they never can be disparaged or neg
lected, whfle it shall be remembered that it
is God himself who has first created the
objects, which man, honorably to himself,
employs himself in imitating. That must be
both a worthy, and even religious, avocation,
which is only working and walking in the
footsteps of Almighty God.

13

NAPLES.

NAPLES.

Our associations with Naples are with all
that is beautiful and magnificent in scenery,
soft and delicious in climate, luxurious and
corrupt in society, despotic in government,
ignorant and superstitious in letters and reli
gion. You look for few gratifications there,
except such as shall be derived from the eye
alone. You visit Naples as you go to a show
— not for its moral interest. You care little
for its history. You cannot remember its
great men, its famous kings, its great deeds,
its philosophers, poets, and artists. You go
to seek the enchantments of its scenery, the
uproar of its carnival, its ballet dancers of San
Carlo, its theatres, balls and ices. Florence
and Rome, far inferior in the number of their
13*

150 * NAPLES.
inhabitants, and in commercial importance,
outweigh it a thousandfold in their hold upon
the mind. In either of those places you can
not avoid becoming more or less of a student.
They not only put you severely upon your
recollections, they drive you to your histories,
your languages and your dictionaries ; and with
all your labor, you are often cornered and at
fault. These, to be well seen and understood,
require months or years. A week of good
weather wfll serve for Naples ; except, perhaps,
on the part of some, for its operas and ballets.
Though you have many faults to find with the
character of the people in the other cities of
Italy, even those I have just named — but
much more to love, pity and regret, for all
you disapprove — in Naples there is nothing
to praise. Of the dignity of Rome not a word
need be said. You are ready to bow down
before it in remembrance of its long and
crowded history of its early patriotism, and
its later genius. And Florence, you can think
of no more slightly than of another Greece
and a second Athens. But the most and the

GENERAL CHARACTER. 151
best you have for Naples, is to style it, with a
shudder, a modern Sybaris. One can hardly
be a day in that place, but he wfll be com
pelled to draw inferences to the moral corrup
tion reigning there, of which that old Lucanian
capital might have felt proud. But while it
richly deserves all the bad repute which it has
for its badness, it cannot pretend, I suppose, in
respect to Avealth, elegance, and refinement, to
vie with its ancient rival.
This being so, how can one excite in him
self enough of interest to make it the theme
of an hour's discourse ? Much as I have de
prived it of, enough, perhaps, will be found
to be left. If it is remarkable for its moral
deformity, for what man has needlessly made
of it, God's handiwork is nowhere so beau
tiful, so manifest, so 'divine as there. It is
beautiful enough to have been trodden only
by footsteps of angels. In Rome and Flor
ence, it is its venerable relics of former genera
tions — their ruins, their arts, their literature,
that make them famous. Here in Naples there
is no art, no literature, old or new, no archi-

152 NAPLES.
tecture, columns or temples, no ancient ruins,
not a street, palace or church that is any way
remarkable — yet there is an architecture of
Heaven which surpasses all to be seen else
where. The Colosseum and St. Peter's both
dwindle to insignificance before the dark mag
nificence of Vesuvius.
This then is the first grand characteristic of
Naples, its scenery ; Vesuvius, Herculaneum,
Pompeii, the Bay and the classic environs —
these are Naples — not its houses, streets, pala
ces, churches or ruins.
There is no scenery in the world like Naples
and its environs. You are thrown into a tumult
of delightful sensations as you alight from your
carriage on your arrival and look up and around
you. You turn first and instinctively to Vesu
vius. If you were not aTale on any part of your
journey, as you drew near the city, to obtain dis
tant glimpses of it — Avhich Avas the case with
myself, it was Avinter, excessively cold and
stormy, with a thick atmosphere — your first
sight of it will be obtained from the street as
you enter your hotel, or from any other the first

VESUVIUS.

153

open space you can soonest reach. My first
sight of it was from the upper end of the street
Toledo, where it is carried over lower streets
upon a bridge of seven or eight lofty arches.
From that point the prospect is uninterrupted.
Your eye passes directly to the mountain, over
the tops of streets, houses, churches, palaces,
of the intervening villages, Resina, Portici and
others to the summit of the crater. No sight
can be more surprising, and — after all you had
heard about it — more unexpected, than the
prospect, as you suddenly pass from the close
embankment of six and eight-story houses to
the clear space, and the mountain suddenly
bursts upon your eye. Seen from this point,
and in this way, you are reminded of no draw
ing or picture you had ever seen before. It is
most commonly represented in prints, either as
making a beautiful feature in the middle ground,
or in the full blaze of an eruption — or in the
extreme distance, softened by the mellow tints
of the southern air, as if a splendid ornament of
some garden. But seen from so near a point,
the eye leaping across at a single bound — it is

154 NAPLES.
any thing but a soft and polished ornament.
The clear, transparent air of the winter season,
together with the fortunate position — just
pointed out — with no obstruction in the way,
and the inky blackness of the Avhole hill — its
only tint — brings it so near to you, that you
almost start as it is first revealed. It seems
to hang over and threaten the city. It is eight
miles distant, yet you Avould think it scarce
three. Every roughness, the deep ravines and
fissures with Avhich the face of the mountain
is every where seamed, the rude piles of ex
tinct lavas, the ragged angular masses of fallen
and shattered rocks, are all visible at that dis
tance, and the effect is, as of some vast natural
ruin — a wide scene of fearful desolation. It
has about it the same melancholy grandeur as
the Colosseum ; only, as if it were the ruin of
some fabric, upon a vaster scale, and of a more
superlative original beauty. The soft, green
turf, the richly variegated shrubbery, the al
most tropical vegetation, the gentle elevations
and depressions of the soil, which must once
have clothed the hill Avith an unequalled love-

VESUVIUS. 155
liness — and such is the testimony of antiquity
to its appearance before the eruption of 79 —
of all this, now, not a leaf, not a tint remains.
All is gone, through the scorching fires of the
volcano and the ravages of earthquakes that
have rent and upturned all the surface ; and in
their place one midnight blackness, even at
mid-day, and the wild fragments of universal
ruin. Neither man, nor beast, nor insect, can
inhabit there — and the solitary bird could
not light in hope of a single berry or worm.
The ascent of the hill, as far as to the foot
of the cone, is not difficult, and with the
help of horses or donkeys occupies but little
time — but from the foot of the cone to the
crater, it is quite another thing, and to the
invalid the ascent is not only difficult, but
impossible. But to each and all almost a
despairing labor. The whole cone is com
posed, not of ashes, in our sense of the word,
at least, which mats more or less beneath the
feet when trodden upon, but of a slippery,
polished sand or gravel, on which the foot can
get no hold, and takes you inevitably back-

156 , NAPLES.
wards, the half of each step of advance
you may make ; unless, which every few
steps will happen, you can plant yourself
securely upon a stone which chances to be
firm set in the soil, from which, as a surer
foundation, you can then throw yourself up
ward, and be able to keep what you get.
Dante's advice in scaling some of the heights
in hell holds good. " Let each lower foot still
plant itself the firmer." Half way up the
cone I was obliged to confess myself beaten,
and with some shame, to slip my easy way
down. The crater, which was the object of
the excursion, and which I failed to see, is
described as a vast gulf, three mfles in circum
ference, and from a few hundred to two thou
sand feet in depth, up which, among the cran
nies of the hardened lava of many successive
eruptions, sulphurous fumes, dense smoke, or
steamy columns, are perpetually ascending,
and dispersing themselves into the atmosphere.
The wildest and most dismal of all the
scenes in the neighborhood of the mountain,
begins at the foot of the cone and spreads in

VESUVIUS. 157
all directions many miles, encircling the whole
mountain. This is a comparatively level tract ;
only in a very moderate degree conducting the
traveller downwards. It is totally composed
of the various lavas of many eruptions, in
rough and fantastic forms — scarce ever a
loose rock ; but each projecting part glued to
ail the rest by the once raging fires of the
volcano. On crossing a mile or more of this
dreary region, on your way to and from the
Hermitage, you walk wholly from rock to
rock of the once bofling fluid, but now con
gealed to the hardness and sharpness of flint,
and of the color of darkness itself, so that one
needs to have good eyes and plenty of day
light to tread the path safely ; and take much
care, if he would save, not only boots and shoes,
but feet also, from fearful laceration ; and a
fall would be as among edges and points of
steel. As far as the eye could reach, on leav
ing the cone, above and around, especially
toward Somma, which, and the valley that
lies between, seemed to reflect a double black
ness, nothing was to be seen except this
14

158 NAPLES.
seamed and broken surface, this uniform rocki-
ness, this funereal gloom, increased still further
at that moment, by the sinking sun and ap
proaching night. But there Avas a strange
fascination about it all — it was a scene to be
enjoyed — about as unaccountable, perhaps, as
the pleasure we take in reading the sixth book
of the .^neid, or the Inferno of Dante, or
Milton's Pandemonium — but still a scene to
be intensely enjoyed. I do not remember once
having my mind Avithdrawn from it, down
wards, or abroad, to see the neighboring city
and bay, and the remoter scenery — you are
transfixed and ravished by the nearer pros
pects ; by the absolute novelty and strange
ness of every object on which the eye falls ;
by the black sea of ruin at your feet, and the
smoking crater above.
But there is another view of Vesuvius, as
well as of the city, which must not be omitted.
To enjoy this it is necessary to retreat from
the shore into the Bay ten or fifteen mfles, till
you are but a little within the island of Capri,

VESUVIUS. 159
then pause and look back upon the glory you
have left behind. This is, seen from such a
point, that Bay of Naples which all behold
Avho arrive by sea ; of Avhich all sea-captains,
travellers, and sailors from all parts of the
earth, Avhen they go home, have so much to
tell ; which stamps upon the minds of all who
have ever once seen it, an image of beauty
never afterwards eclipsed by any other scene.
There can be nothing like it elsewhere. Other
cities and bays are beautiful, comprise many
necessary elements of beauty ; Naples alone
seems to comprise all — all actual, all possible
elements. Other bays, in all parts of the
earth, by the denizens of each place respec
tively, and by those who have seen none but
their own, are lauded as equal to, or, in fact, a
little superior to, this scene. They are all
wonderfully beautiful, doubtless ; yet may not
exactly resemble this. There may be many
beautiful female statues ; and yet fail in those
few particulars Avhich make the Venus de' Me
dici more beautiful than any other. Naples
has some prominent features, which nowhere

160 NAPLES.
else are to be seen. At least, there can be but
one Vesuvius.
When at the point just indicated, you have
looked back upon what you left behind, you
behold at a glance what is meant by this
world renowned bay — the beautiful sheet of
Avater embraced by the city, and its extensive
suburbs, stretching along in every form of
architecture towards Sorento on the east, and
toward Pausilippo, Ischia, and Procida, on the
south and Avest — the city itself, in the
centre, rising amphitheatre-wise from the tide
waters upwards and upAvards, adorned with
lofty buildings, palaces, churches surmounted
with steeples, towers, or domes, tfll terminated
in the Castle of St. Elmo, and the royal
Palace of Capo Monte a little behind — all
this various beauty, when the day is calm
and warm, doubled below in the clear trans
parent mirror of an unruffled sea. On the left
you see Ischia with its craggy mountainous
heights, and its sharp points and ridges, and
the small but populous island of Procida. On
the north side of the city rises Vesuvius with

ENVIRONS -

161

its other two summits, Somma and Ottaiano,
and on their slopes toward the sea the buried
towns Herculaneum, Stabise, and Pompeii, Avith
Resina, and Portici, the towns now standing
upon and over the two first. Sitting there in
your boat you enjoy at your leisure, under the
shadows of Capri, a prospect of which I have
sketched the faint outlines, and which it may
easfly be believed is noAvhere else to be seen.
Though in general terms I have not spoken
very respectfully of the city, yet it is not with
out some redeeming features and agreeable
associations. Not to mention again Hercula
neum and Pompeii, there is on the main land
and near Procida, Baiae, the famous resort for
country-houses of the luxurious Romans, es
pecially in the time of the Empire. It was
the Nahant of Rome. There Cicero had one
of his many vfllas, Horace also, and several
of the emperors. Caesar, likewise, Julius Cae
sar, and Pompey had their palaces at that
fashionable watering-place. It Avas only in
respect to its site and its fashionableness I
intended to suggest a resemblance between

162 NAPLES.
Nahant and Baias. From accounts that have
reached us of the luxury and cost of some of
those Roman establishments, the whole of our
wooden Avatering-place, island and all, pretty
as it is, could hardly purchase one of them.
They were upon a scale of costliness and
grandeur which could be accounted for, one is
apt to think, in no honest way ; it could only
have been by the wholesale robberies of gen
erals, and proconsuls of provinces, not, Ave
trust, by the extortionate charges of lawyers
against their clients — that villas like those
of Cffisar, Hortensius, Pollio, Lucullus, could
be built upon such a scale — and in such
numbers also, for they had thein not only at
Baiae but elsewhere, wherever in Italy a
choice spot occurred. Cicero, Pliny, Horten
sius, had many of such country-seats — Ti
berius, twelve upon the single island of
Capri — that island, made so infamous by his
loathsome presence. In the same neighbor
hood it must not be forgotten, was the lake
Avernus, which, with its noisome Avaters, its
volcanic rocks, its dense and lofty woods.

PAUSILIPPO  TOMB OF VIRGIL. 163
Cimmerian shades, and pestflential atmosphere,
afforded to Homer and the poets their scenery
for hell. There also, hard by, was the grotto of
the Cumaean Sybil. Nearer the city, in fact
now making almost a part of, is the lofty
ridge of Pausflippo, with its famous grotto
beneath, or rather, in modern phrase, tunnel
— a perforation through the hill, lofty, and in
length, nearly half a mile, arched with stone,
and built, doubtless, with our modern object
of affording a nearer passage to the fertile
plains behind the city, and to the waters and
shores of Ischia, saving, by this contrivance, a
long distance. Just above the entrance of the
grotto on the same side of the city, stands
what remains — a ruined, dismantled arch — of
the tomb of Virgfl, now often a rendezvous for
thieves and assassins. Some uncertainty at
tends the site of this tomb, but not so much as
converts so many of the remains of antiquity
into fable. Cramer inclines to believe the site
to be the true one. Eustace, after much in
quiry, comes to the same opinion. Its best
evidence in the present case, perhaps, is an

164

NAPLES.

ancient and pretty uniform tradition in its
favor. Tradition has at least selected a place
in itself highly probable ; and a fit resting
place of one whose soul was in love with
every form of beauty — in full view of the
unrivalled bay, and of the objects on its
shores, and of the busy life upon its waters.
As the poet died at Brundusium, and expressed
the wish to be buried at Naples, because he
had passed many of his happiest years there,
and there had written the Georgics, it would
be strange if his Avishes had not been complied
with. There could, therefore, only be diffi
culty or doubt about the precise spot where
the body Avas laid ; and one may readfly leave
that matter to be settled by this ancient and
very uniform tradition.
Of the promontory of Sorentum, forming
the eastern arm of the bay, there is only to be
said, that on the other side, on the gulph of
Salerno, lie the Islands of the Sirens, as some
maintain — by others they are placed near
Mount J]]tna ; and that the most distinguished
inhabitant of the city of Sarentum — then,

NAPLES FROM CAPRI. 165
what Naples is now — was the famous or infa
mous Vedius Pollio, he who in his fish-ponds
fatted lampreys upon the bodies of slaves,
thrown in there by way of punishment or
amusement. He seems to have possessed
another villa at Baias. The world may safely
be challenged to present a more attractive
scene than is offered by these various objects,
with their associations. And it must be re
membered, that although other scenes may
perhaps be not inferior to this, on some remote
American or Asian shore, on some Pacific or
Indian sea, yet here you have what here
only can be had in equal perfection, the soft
purplish haze of the Italian atmosphere, which
doubles the charm of every thing seen through
it ; and that here, also, the charm of antiquity
throws another halo around it all, a charm,
more than that even of the atmosphere, and
which no Indian or other southern shores can
supply with all their tropical vegetation.
But it is not only as seen from the bay
under the shadows of Capri, that Naples and
its environs are beautiful. The city and the

166 NAPLES.
mountain together, seen from whatever point,
separately or in conjunction, enter into a
thousand landscapes, of which they make the
central point of attraction. This must be
the very heaven of the artist. Here, he can
never be compelled to search long for forms,
either of mountain, foliage, water or land,
ruin, or architecture of any kind, out of which
to compose his picture. He has but to open
his eyes and look, and without the pains of
selection, invention, or embellishment, the
picture is before him. If he passes through a
half-ruined vfllage, which almost all villages
are, by an old bridge with its little brook
beneath, a mill, a fallen arch, a section of an
aqueduct, a group of farm buildings Avith their
grotesque chimneys, each one of them graced
by some low shrubbery, by olive trees, the
cypress, the poplar, or the towering Italian
pine ; and, having found his front ground, he
wishes for a middle or remoter distance, which
shall not only be that, but a new grace added
to the whole, he has always before him the
intervening plain, rich with a multitude of

SCENERY OF THE ENVIRONS.

167

beautiful forms, and, in the horizon, the well-
shaped Vesuvius, with its sluggish vapors, or
its dense curling smoke issuing from the top
and spreading around. If he should be in the
neighborhood of Sarento, he has the bay be
tween him and the city and mountain, or some
little cape or promontory, with its small im
prisoned lake, more beautiful than the larger
gulf The walks any where about Naples,
either on the high grounds or along the valleys
and the streams, on the sea-shore or among
the rocks, can never be other than burdened
with beauty, as the overhanging orange and
lemon groves with their golden fruit. Here,
and so every where throughout Italy, you have
that happy intermingling of art and nature so
essential to form an attractive landscape. In
ovr country we have natural scenery beautiful
enough, and enough of it, but it becomes
monotonous for the want of forms of art. We
have forms of art also, to be sure, and enough
of them, but what can the artist do with
clapboards and shingles, or bright new bricks ?
And not only the artist, the poet, though he

168 NAPLES.
should not wish to describe any one of the
objects before him, could not but catch a
new inspiration from the boundless wealth of
beauty spread every where around — of itself
enough to create a poet, though born to prose.
Who can tell how much the soul of Tasso
may not have owed its gentle enthusiasm for
all that is beautiful to the scenes that first met
his infant eye, as it looked forth from his birth
place under the heights of Sorento, and fell
upon that bay and mountain in all their glory.
And Virgil, during his long residence there,
must have had breathed into him some new
life from objects which he could not but have
felt so much to surpass in charms of every kind
his native Mantua, the Roman campagna, and
even the loved heights of Tibur and Tusculum.
I have tried to set before you at least a dim
conception of the outward beauty of Naples
and its environs. The other principal objects to
the traveller are the old Roman cities which the
volcano buried beneath lava and ashes — and
which later times, like the modern resurrection-

ERUPTION OF 79. 169
ists, have unburied, and exposed, in their bones
and other remains, to the gaze of the Avorld.
Vesuvius as it now appears, I have attempted
to describe, with its environment for many
miles of old extinct lavas of pitchy black
ness, and rough as if the tumultuous waves
of a black sea had suddenly been converted to
stone. I have described it also as seen at a dis
tance, in its graceful, sloping form, and painted
by the gorgeous dies of the atmosphere.
But it must be — not described — but by
your own imaginations represented in one
other aspect, as it appeared, after a long repose
of centuries, Avhen, in the year 79 of our
era, in the reign of Titus, it suddenly was
converted to a mountain of fire ; burying the
surrounding territories, in first the thickest
darkness for several days, then from beneath
the canopy of cloud, pouring out from its
sides rivers of lava and other melted sub
stances, Avliich Avith more than the light of
the sun illuminated the earth and the over
hanging clouds, and making their way down
the mountain overwhelmed the city of Her-
15

170 NAPLES.
culaneum, burying it to a depth of from sixty
to a hundred feet below the molten mass ;
and at the same time destroying Pompeii and
Stabiae by successive showers of stifling ashes.
The younger Pliny, living at that time,
describes the terrific scene in a letter to the
historian Tacitus. His uncle, Pliny the nat
uralist, stationed at Misenum, twenty miles
from the mountain, as commander of the
Roman fleet at that place, drawn first by a
scientific curiosity to witness nearer the dread
ful scene, then by a sentiment of compassion
for the multitudes whom he saw perishing in
the most miserable manner, and venturing too
near the scene of danger was himself over
taken by blasts of the suffocating smokes and
gases that raged every where around the hfll,
and perished among those whom he went to
save. Pliny addresses two letters to Tacitus ;
in the first confining himself chiefly to the
circumstances attending the death of his uncle,
in the second relating his own experiences and
observations during the eruption of the moun
tain. From this I read an extract. " There

171
had been," he says, " many days before,
shocks of an earthquake, which the less sur
prised us as they are extremely frequent in
Campania ; but they were so particularly
violent this night, that they not only shook
every thing about us, but seemed indeed to
threaten universal destruction. My mother
flew to my chamber, where she found me
rising, in order to awaken me. We went out
into a small court belonging to the house,
which separated the sea from the bufldings."
" Though it was now morning, the light Avas
extremely faint and languid ; the buildings all
around tottered, and though we stood upon
open ground, yet as the place was narrow and
confined, there was no remaining there with
out certain and great danger ; we therefore
resolved to quit the town. The people fol
lowed us in the utmost consternation, and
pressed in great croAvds about in our way.
Being got to a convenient distance from the
houses, we stood still in the midst of a most dan
gerous and dreadful scene. The chariots which
we had ordered to be drawn out, were agitated

172 NAPLES.
backwards and forwards, though upon the most
level ground, that we could not keep them
steady even by supporting them by large
stones. The sea seemed to roll back upon
itself, and to be driven from its banks by the
convulsive motions of the earth. It is certain,
at least, that the shore was considerably en
larged, and several sea animals were left upon
it. On the other side, a black and dreadful
cloud, bursting with an igneous serpentine
vapor, darted out a long train of fire resem
bling flashes of lightning. Soon afterward
the cloud seemed to descend and cover the
whole ocean, as indeed it entirely hid the
island of Capriae and the promontory of Mise
num." " The ashes now began to fall upon
us, though in no great quantity. I turned my
head, and observed behind us a thick smoke
which came rolling after us like a torrent. I
proposed, whfle we had yet any light, to turn
out of the high road, lest we should be pressed
to death in the dark by the crowd that fol
lowed. We had scarce stepped out of the
path, when darkness overspread us, not like

PLINy's LETTER TO TACITUS. 173
that of a cloudy night, or, when there is no
moon, but of a room when it is shut up, and
all lights are extinct. Nothing then was to be
heard but the shrieks of women, the screams
of children, and the cries of men — some call
ing for their children, others for their parents,
others for their husbands, and distinguishing
each other by their voices ; one lamenting his
own fate, another that of his family, some
wishing to die, some lifting their hands to the
gods ; but the greater part imagining that the
last and eternal night Avas come, which was to
destroy both the world and the gods together."
"At length a glimmering light appeared, Avhich
we imagined to be rather the forerunner of an
approaching burst of flames, (as in truth it was)
than the return of day : hoAvever, the fire fell
at a distance from us. Then again we Avere
immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy
shower of ashes rained upon us, which we
Avere obliged every now and then to shake off",
otherwise we should have been crushed and
buried in the heap. I might boast that during
all this scene of horror, not a sigh or expres-
15*

174 NAPLES.
sion of fear escaped me, had not my support
been founded on that miserable though strong
consolation, that all mankind were involved in
the same calamity, and that I imagined that I
was perishing with the world itself At last
this dreadful darkness was dissipated (after a
duration of three days,) by degrees, like a
cloud or smoke ; the real day returned, and
even the sun appeared, though very faintly,
and as when an eclipse is coming on. Every
object that presented itself to our eyes seemed
changed, being covered over with white ashes,
as with a deep snow. We returned to Mise
num, where we refreshed ourselves as well as
we could, and passed an anxious night be
tween hope and fear, for the earthquake still
continued. However, my mother and I, not
withstanding the danger we had passed and
that still threatened us, had no thought of
leaving the place till Ave should receive some
account of my uncle."
He had already perished on the beach at Sta
biae, ten miles from Vesuvius, the second day of
the eruption — this was now the fourth. There
appear to have been three days of total darkness.

EFFECTS OF THE ERUPTION OF 79. 175
except occasionally relieved by the breaking out
of flames or lava. It may be imagined what the
scene must have been which presented itself
in the neighborhood of Herculaneum and Pom
peii, or at Naples, when that which Pliny
describes occurred at Misenum, twenty miles,
nearly, from the mountain, with Naples itself,
and the high lands intervening between it and
the volcano ; and what multitudes must have
perished, if at ten miles distance, Pliny was
suff'ocated by the poisonous gases that pre
vailed. I believe no account has come to us
how great the destruction of life was on this
occasion, nor even of what befel the Neapoli
tans. The only fact in this relation is the
immediate relief which the Emperor Titus,
with characteristic humanity, dispatched to
the scene, as soon as the news of the disaster
had reached Rome. We may readily conjec
ture, that all the inhabitants in the immediate
neighborhood of the hill must have had suffi
cient warning by the earthquake, and the first
bursting out of smoke from the crater, to ena
ble them to escape. And that the most did

176 NAPLES.
escape, at least from Pompeii, is proved by the
comparatively few skeletons that have been
discovered there. By some it has been af
firmed that at Herculaneum the approach of
danger was so sudden and unexpected, that
the theatres Avere crowded at the time when
the torrents of bofling mud and ashes over-
Avhelmed and buried it, and the entire popula
tion, at the same time. But this seems incon
sistent with the account of Pliny, who states
that the first signal of danger was the lofty
column of smoke, cinders, and stones, Avhich
ascended many thousand feet, and at the
top " branched out in the shape of a pine
tree." Unless, indeed, that may be conjectured
to have happened, which was possible and
not unlikely, and the side of the mountain
toward Herculaneum suddenly opened, at the
same time with the ascent of the column of
smoke, and poured down those floods of liquid
matter which laid waste and buried all between
the hill and the ocean shore. And had that
been the kind of torrent which overwhelmed
the city, no human remains could have resisted

EFFECTS OF THE ERUPTION. 177
the heat — they would have been converted
to ashes.
It is commonly supposed that it was by a
single eruption — the one just described by
Pliny — that Herculaneum was overwhelmed.
But examinations of careful naturalists have
determined that there are distinct evidences of
six which succeeded the one in the reign of
Titus — each contributing a new layer of mud
or lava, to that which first destroyed the city.
" The matter v/ith which it is covered is not
every where the same. In some places it is a
sort of burnt earth, like ashes ; in others, a
sort of lime and hard cement ; and elsewhere
it is covered with vitrified matter, which the
Neapolitans call lava, composed of sulphur,
stones, and metallic substances, which Vesu
vius throws out at its eruptions. This lava.
whilst it preserved its fluidity, ran like a river
to the sea, but as soon as it cooled, it subsided
and became a solid substance, like a dark blue
marble, and of which I have seen tables, snuff
boxes, and many trinkets made."*
* Lamisdem, p. 270.

178 NAPLES.^
It was not tfll the last of these eruptions had
made its deposits, and by long lapse of time, that
a new soil came to be well compounded and set
tled so as to afford a site for habitation, that the
modern town of Portici arose directly over the
roofs of the ancient Herculaneum. It must
be understood, also, that in the eruption of 79,
whatever may have been the amount and
extent of the lava which flowed, it Avas not
that by Avhich either of those cities, Hercu
laneum, Pompeii, or Stabiae was destroyed.
Had Herculaneum, or any other city, been in-
gulphed beneath lava, flowing from the crater,
nothing could have resisted the fierce heat —
and even stones and bricks, if they had not
been melted by it, and converted in a manner
to its own substance, would at least have been
so far fused as to have made of the whole
town one solid mass of molten or half molten
matter, from Avhich no relic of antiquity could
ever afterward have been extricated. But,
happily, for us, the flood which overwhelmed
Herculaneum, Avas one not of lava, but of a
sort of bofling mud — a mixture of ashes,

EFFECTS OF THE ERUPTION. 179
water, pumice, and various other burnt sub
stances, which burst from the mountain and
buried, without destroying it. That it must
have been in a red-hot state, is sufficiently
proved by all Avooden matter, and all objects
of a combustible nature being converted to
charcoal. And that it must have been quite
liquid — more so than lava — is shown by the
circumstance that it rose and filled all parts of
all dwellings, packing the whole city solid
with its own matter — becoming when cooled
a soft, spongy, porous stone, which the Italians
call tufa, very distinct from lava, which has
the hardness of granite or flint. But Avhile
all objects, in any way combustible, were, not
absolutely destroyed, but turned to charcoal,
retaining each its specific form, as in the case
of parchment rolls, loaves of bread, fruits, and
grains of various kinds, — objects of a more
enduring character, all objects made of metal,
of marble, statues, culinary apparatus, sur
geon's instruments, &c., these all resisted the
fury of the heat, and with scarce any injury
are now to be seen in the museums of Portici

180 NAPLES.
and Naples, to throw abundant light upon the
domestic usages and arts of the ancients, and
— if the manuscript rolls could be more easily
unrolled and deciphered — upon the literature
of the Romans.
There is but little gratification in visiting
Herculaneum. As Portici stands directly over
it, the excavations cannot be carried on so
freely as might otherAvise have been the case.
Always it has been necessary to leave immense
piers of tufa and buildings to support the su
perincumbent town, Avhich has seriously inter
rupted the labor, and at length all further
operations, for the same reason, have been
suspended. To descend into the old city, is
to descend into a vast well — into a darkness
so profound that ordinary means of illumination
utterly fail to produce any effect. The guide,
with a wax torch at the top of a long pole,
when he has reached a point where any thing
interesting is to be seen, as in the Theatre,
which has been partly excavated, moves it
slowly over the object, and you can just dis
cern some of the paintings on the walls, some

HERCULANEAN. 181
of the stuccoes and mosaics. But there was
nothing to be seen entirely satisfactory, as
in the Baths of Livia in the Palace of the
Caesars, but the darkness itself
Not far from the descent into the subterra
nean excavation, quite a number of buildings
are shown entirely open to the light and air,
Avholly cleansed from whatever matter it was
by which they were once overwhelmed —
probably the same light ashes by which Pom
peii was buried. These were in very perfect
preservation. The plastering upon the walls
had not fallen from many of the houses; it
still retained its brilliant red polish — which
seems to have been the fashionable color at
that time — with their rich arabesque border-
ings, and their central figures upon the panels
— some god or goddess, or else bird or animal.
Stone stairs still conducted to the upper stories,
in one instance to the third. The bufldings
here I found in a state of more complete pre
servation than any I afterwards saw in Pom
peii. To Pompeii I made a solitary visit on a
16

182 NAPLES.
Sunday — a better way, perhaps, of passing
Sunday than any other, in Italy. By being
on the road or among the melancholy ruins of
the destroyed city, I at least secured silence
and repose which are impossible in Naples,
Avhere, to an American, there must always seem
on that day especially the uproar of a carnival.
The silence at Pompeii was absolute ; only once
or tAvice did I see a human being in all those
lonely streets — a lady, Avith two little boys,
and three or four English sailors, those were
all — otherwise every thing solitary and still.
The weather being later than autumnal, there
was not to be heard so much as the chirping
of a cricket or insect's hum. It all looked as
one Avould suppose ; and the only thing I was
surprised by was the number and extent of the
houses and the streets. I was three or four
hours walking about and among those deserted
ways, yet I could have entered but a small pro
portion of the dwellings or streets on either
side ; and those I did enter, I was compelled to
examine more hastfly than was either agreeable
or profitable. The great subject of regret in

POMPEII. 183
visiting these relics of a former world, is, that
the objects of more especial interest, in house
hold furniture, kitchen apparatus, and art, have
been all removed from the spots where they
Avere found, except in a single instance, and
now are to be seen only in Museums. It
adds extremely to the instruction and pleasure
of visiting an ancient sepulchre or disinterred
dwelling, to knoAV that all remains just where
it was found ; and just where it had been
placed by the old Roman dweller in the house,
by the owner or buflder of the tomb. That
was the case in descending into an old Etruscan
tomb near Perugia — the funeral ornaments of
marble had never been disturbed — they stood
where the hands of aflection had first placed
them, perhaps three thousand years ago. The
bronze lamp, a mere time-eaten fragment of a
lamp, still hung Avhere it had been placed at
the last interment. That also was the case in
parts of the Catacombs, and in the Columbaria
in Rome. Perhaps in the case of Pompeii, it
would have been impossible to preserve the
objects found there, without a wall being built

184 NAPLES.
around the whole city, with guards in addition
to protect them from thefts, and without roofs
being constructed to shelter them from the
weather. Still, had it been considered an
object, many very interesting remains might
have been as safe in the dwellings of Pompeii
as in the halls of Museums ; and Avith what
an addition to the instruction and gratification
of every visitor. One house, however — the
last one excavated — had been left with all its
marbles, mosaic pavements and pictures, just
as they were found. Bronzes alone had been
removed, on account of injury from the atmos
phere. This house Avas laid open about three
years ago. It is completely floored with mo
saic pavements of pretty patterns, and all the
walls adorned with pictures, arabesques, &c.,
such as may be seen in Cell's Pompeii. One
room had evidently been buflt and prepared in
order to please some little child — a sort of
great baby-house. At the upper part of it is
a diminutive fountain, ornamented with mo
saics and shell-work. Then just beneath the
aperture for the water, there are four or five

POMPEII. 185
diminutive steps of marble, the water being
designed to make a succession of falls, down
from step to step, whence it was to collect into
a large basin in the centre. Then all around
this central basin, are various animals, ducks,
dogs, rabbits, &c., all of marble also, and, be
sides, several small statues, all as if intended to
afl"ord pleasure to little children. What Avould
this room have been had all these and like
objects been removed ? These seemed to re
main wholly undisturbed. Had every thing
been permitted to remain, one cannot but think
their own sanctity would have protected them.
Who could steal in Pompeii? The English
sailors, even, were as solemn as the scene.
Here were to be seen the lead pipes for con
ducting aqueduct water about the houses, with
their brass cocks still in place — the stairs
leading down to the kitchen, and the kitchen
fire-place ; the vaults for oil and wine ; and
the earthen vessels as they had been found
and left, filled full of the ashes which so mys
teriously penetrated to every part of every
house, and by cracks and crannies into every
16*

186 NAPLES.
closet, room, cellar, vase and jar, and packed
all solid with itself The Avay, however, in
Avhich that happened, must have been either
by the ashes having been accompanied by
Avater, as it first fell, or afterAvards forced in
by the pressure of successive rains.
The streets of Pompeii were, as you may
remember, all narrow — not more than fifteen
feet wide, and few less than that — the widest
thirty ; with raised sidewalks about two or
three feet wide, raised as much as a foot, or a
foot and a half, above the central carriage-way
— higherthan Avith us. In these usages, the
descendants of the Pompeians in the modern
Italian cities have faded unwisely to imitate
them — which are all without sidewaljis. The
pavements are of the same large, every-way-
shaped flat stones, which are found in the an
cient streets of Rome. The shops are small,
Avhich is stfll characteristic of Italian towns
and cities. Many of the dwelling-houses of
the better sort are very extensive, as those
called houses of Diom.ed, Sallust, Pansa, «fcc.
That of Diomed is of three stories, or flats ;

POMPEII.

187

the lowest, consisting of subterranean arches,
fifty feet, perhaps, each Avay, and, overhead, a
square or court, which served as a garden,
Avith a large basin for Avater in the middle, and,
around, chambers and rooms for common use,
then the usual vestibule, the atrium, implu-
vium, triclinium in the universal way in Pom
peii. It was interesting to see- the baker's
establishment, the stone mill for grinding his
grain, and the oVen, which might be used to
day as well as ever. So the shop for selling
wine, with its five or six earthen amphorae set
in the brick counter, with a marble facing, on
Avhich are visible still the circular marks of
drinking vessels. In the corner of one of the
rooms is shown the remnant of a broken
square of glass still sticking in its place. Glass
Avindows to dwelling-houses seem not to
have been common. The rooms and cham
bers Avere lighted from the inner court of the
house, either by their doors, or by openings
defended by Avooden shutters — that is the
common statement ; though it is not easy to
see why, in all such cases, there should not

188 NAPLES.
have been glass ; and also in the fronts of the
shops, where there is always a wide opening
in the wall, just where a window of glass
ought to be, and would be so convenient. So
with the houses of the first class, it is not easy
to see how they could have been inhabited
with comfort, or in any elegance, without
an extensive- use of this substance. And the
occurrence of it in a single instance, in a small
obscure corner of a small and obscure tene
ment, would seem to prove Avith sufficient
strength that it was a material as common as
Avith us, and would be used in the same way,
and for all like purposes. The fragment which
I saw was thick and smooth, and looked more
like our heaviest plate glass than our common
kinds. Its transparency had been obscured by
time, or by having been ground, or, like so
much modern plate glass, from having been
badly compounded. But beside this, I find on
inquiry that in one of the baths a window
was discovered, nearly three feet square, of a
single pane, the glass two-fifths of an inch
thick, and ground on one side, to prevent per-

POMPEII.

189

sons on a neighboring roof from looking in.
Another window of large size was found, the
single pane set in a bronze frame secured by
screws of the same metal, so that it niight be
removed at pleasure — or it might have been
only the usual Avay of setting.
In regard to the common use of glass for
Avindows, hoAvever, it is to be remembered,
that in the climate of Naples it could be con
sidered hardly at any time as necessary for the
exclusion of cold ; and accordingly, if it Avere
a substance more costly than with us, or if the
manufacture of only the heavier and more ex
pensive kinds was understood, it would have
been employed with comparative infrequency,
which may explain why more was not found.
Shutters of Avood for warmth, or fixed windows
of linen cloth would have been used instead.
Glass, except for a couple of months in the
year, is hardly needed more in Naples than in
our West India Islands.
In a word, there is scarce any thing in com
mon use, in the way of a common convenience
now, and here, which was not in use among

190 NAPLES.
the Romans of Pompeii in the 79th year of
our era. Doors were found to have been made
of wood, as with us; the Avood more com
monly used, the fir ; they were hung not upon
our butt hinges — though I do not know that
even they have not been found among other
things — but more usually, at any rate, they
revolved upon pivots, like our barn doors : they
Avere fastened with bolts hung by chains, and
at night closed with shutters. Bedsteads were
found, sometimes of Avood, at other times of
iron; implements of a thousand kinds, of brass,
iron, stone and earthen Avare, for both common
and religious uses, trumpets, bells, gridirons,
colanders, sauce-pans of bronze, some lined
with sflver, kettles, ladles, moulds for jelly and
pastry ; urns, for keeping water hot, on the
principle of the modern tea urn ; lanterns, with
horn lights ; spits, and every various article for
kitchen use, with almost the single and singu
lar exceptions of forks — chains, bolts, locks,
and scourges ; portable fire-places, with a con
trivance for keeping Avater hot, dice, some
found loaded, a complete toilet, with combs.

POMPEII.

191

thimbles, rings, &c. ; paint for the cheeks, with
the proper brushes for laying it on ; cosmetics,
ear-rings, but no diamonds ; almonds, dates,
nuts, grapes, figs, chestnuts, loaves of bread,
with the name of the baker stamped upon
them, iron stoves, apothecaries' drugs, of all
sorts — among other things, a box of pills,
gilded ; surgeons' instruments of all kinds,
much such as are used at the present day ;
play-bills, quack advertisements, notices of
sights and shows posted up at the corners of
the streets — according to Johnson, in " mon
strous bad Latin ; " opera tickets, on ivory,
bits for horses, cruppers and stirrups, candela
bra, and lamps of the most graceful, delicate,
and ingenious designs, and which to-day serve
as models for articles of the kind in present
use. These, and other objects of a similar kind,
more than could easily be enumerated, crowd
the halls and the shelves of the two Museums
at Portici and Naples.
For these interesting relics of a former

192 NAPLES.
world, Naples and its Museums are famous ;
such objects are noAvhere else to be seen —
and equally famous is it, as I endeavored first
to show, for the magnificence and variety of
its natural scenery ; very little remarkable is it
for any thing man has made or done there —
but infinitely so for the creative and destructive
agencies of nature — for the unequalled beau
ties lavished every where over the surface of
the sofl, and for the tremendous and fatal forces
it has ever held, and still holds, concealed but
just beneath it.

THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.

TIIE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.

I AM led to speak of this people, because 1
have lately passed some time among them and
became quite attached to them — because I
sympathized with them in their brief hour of
political prosperity, and now pity them in their
reverses and disappointment. It does us all
good, to be told how any of our neighbors of
the great human family are living from day to
day. We are apt to be greedy listeners to any
who have visited foreign lands, whether the
nearest and most familiar, as England, or the
strangest and most remote, as the neighborhood
of Lake Chad, in Africa, and who will relate
any of their experiences. Not so much do we
care for their reflections and their philosophy, as

1 96 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
for their facts and experiences. An excellent
influence flows outwards from the reports of
the traveller, whether he be an ordinary or ex
traordinary man. They constitute one of the
strongest links that help to bind together the
members of widely separated communities.
I came to like, and even love, what I was
able to see and know of the Italians and the
Italian character. I saw no people abroad
with Avhom I would rather dwell, if I must
leave my own country. Not by any means
that they are without faults. But if they had
some faults, as I shall proceed to specify, they
had so many of the virtues and graces of so
cial intercourse, that no people could be more
agreeable in their demeanor, either toward one
another, or toward the stranger and foreigner.
The grace of beauty in manner is something.
It will not make up for the Avant of solid
worth — but how much is gained if worth is
made attractive and lovely by courtesy. Smiles
cost nothing ; they are a cheap, and may be an
abundant, currency. And when they are not
the mechanical smfle of hypocrisy, they are

THE MODERN ITALIAN. 197
worth almost as much as the virtues they
adorn. ) They seemed a more agreeable peo
ple than our cousins, the English — it may
be, or it may not be, Avith more absolute merit,
at the same time — but, at any rate, more
agreeable, from the winning manner of Avhich
I speak. The English are not on a sudden
acquaintance a very pleasing people. They
hardly strike one as amiable. They have
many great traits, but they are not remarkable
for those which make a people generally liked
or loved. Their genius in literature, their
power in arms, are not to be disputed or de
nied. But stfll, after all, it is not any number
of Mfltons or Shakspeares, nor any amount of
bayonets or ships of war, that will have much
effect to attract one nation to another. There
must be a natural amiableness and warmth of
heart — or, otherwise, a religion Avithout cant
to do that.
The modern Italian is a descendant in a
direct line of the ancient Roman. But shoots
from many other stocks have been grafted in,
17*

198 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
and the character of the old Roman has come
in time to be supplanted by a very different
one. He was distinctively the lover of war.
He loved nothing but war. Rome had not,
tfll it had stood nearly seven hundred years,
any thing that could be called a literature ;
and it never had much art ; and what it
had was Greek, or imitation of Greek. Their
occupation and their amusement was to assail
the world and subdue it ; and having but that
one object before them, they succeeded to
their heart's content. A fierce, war-loving
people, proud and unlovely, always magnifi
cent, often magnanimous, they were a people
too selfish, cruel, arrogant, to be loved. If
their aim was to rule the world, the effect was
to be cordially hated by the world in return.
And the day came at length Avhen the hatred
of centuries bore its natural fruit, and Rome
fell, her conquerors spreading themselves all
over her soil, and a thousand various races
mingling in to change the character and blood
of the ancient inhabitant. The Italian has
more of Roman blood in his veins than any

THE MODERN ROMAN. 199
Other people ; and of Italians, the .modern
Roman, Ave may suppose, more than any other
part of Italy. Yet but little resemblance re
mains, even in him, in character, to the old
Roman. It is comparatively a mfld and gentle
race — the Tuscans particularly so. The
modern Roman has more gravity, almost se
verity, in his aspect, and therein approaches
nearer than any other, his remote ancestor.
But he is hardly more a lover of war than the
Tuscan. The old Roman, in truth, survives
not in any of the Italian family ; and if any
where on the face of the earth now, in the
modern Englishman.
He has shown the same love of unscrupu
lous war ; the same ambition, the same lust of
dominion, with the same general object in
view — money — national wealth. And he
has succeeded in his marauding excursions into
distant parts of the world, a hemisphere apart,
till he has reduced a very considerable part of
it, of barbarous but comparatively feeble pow
ers, yet in a. pecuniary point of view enor
mously profitable regions, to his sway. He

200 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
shows the same moral traits as the old Roman
— the same that too much power, it is to be
feared, wiU always generate. He is unjust,
arrogant, selfish, insolent. Such a people, as
such individuals, may be feared, but never
loved. There was no great amount of love,
we know, on the part of the Sicilians or Co
rinthians towards Verres or Mummius, or to
ward the tyrant republic who sent them forth
to prey on her defenceless provinces. And the
one hundred millions of Hindoos and others,
ground down beneath the military sway of
England, have as little probably toward her —
no more than it is natural or possible for slaves
to have toward masters. The English people
have been nursed into a deeper selfishness and
disregard of the rights and siiff'erings of those
whom they have subjected and rule, than in
the case of the Roman. The Roman was by
his position in the very midst of the kingdoms
he ruled, held in wholesome check, both by
apprehension of retaliations and rebellions,
and by actual experience of such revenges.
The Englishman, unfortunately for his char-

THE MODERN ROMAN. 201
acter, dwelling remote and secure in his island
home, the groans of the enslaved and captive
Hindoo never reacli the ear of the haughty
noble, the lordly banker, the luxurious India
merchant, rioting all in the wealth wrung from
oppressed kings, princes, peasantry of the far
East.* The people of England, effecting their

* And to this day they have not reached the ear of the EngUsh
people. And if the honorable Company could not hear the cry of
oppression as it arose under Olive, and the Proprietors and Di
rectors in London could not hear it, and Parliament itself could
not, the ears of all being stuifed with gold, it was not reason that
the people should, who ali indirectly shared in the profit and
the plunder. A more loathsome history of stupendous injustice,
fraud, oppression, extortion, of the extent to which the lust of
money can blind and kill the moral sense, has never been writteuj
than that of the establishment and management of the British
East India Company. The cupidity and cruelty of American
slaveholders has never approached that of English merchants, in
the miseries they have inflicted upon Hindostan. Not less than
half a million sterling did that remorseless robber, Clive, in a
course of nine years, transmit to England, received in the form of
" presents," as they were termed, in plain English, in various
forms of extortion ; and, in the same period of lime, hy other
favored swindlers, five millions more. "This practice of [pres
ents] " says Mill, " in the first place laid nabolis, rulers, and other
leading men of the country, under endless and unliTnited oppres
sion; because so long as they on whom their whole power and
influence depended were pleased to desire presents, nothing could
be withheld which they either possessed, or had it in their power
to ravage and extort." He says, beside the presents which were
acknowledged, there were others, the knowledge of which was
concealed, ^'¦the amount of which it would not be easy to form a

202 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
triumphs by armies and navies on the other
side of the world, have, themselves, notwith
standing all the wars waged there, the oceans
of blood shed there, never heard the sound of
a gun or a drum, nor been shocked by the
sight of a single drop of human blood. The
people have felt no evil, experienced no suffer
ing, «or witnessed it on the part of those who
have. A school fatal to the character of any
nation — educating it to a selfishness, which,
unchecked, must in time enlist against it the
antipathies of mankind.
I have observed that the modern Italians are
not a warlike people, but the contrary — yet it
is important and only just to add, that they are
lovers of liberty, like their remote ancestors of

conjecture.^' Even the Directors, in one instance at least, confess
the enormities against which they felt it necessary to remonstrate,
and say : " To this [presents] we must add, that we think the
vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by
a scene ofthe most tyrannic and oppressive conduct that ever was
known in any age or country." Though Mill is evidently a very
honest, fair-minded writer, it is quite plain he never tells the
whole truth where it would be too much to the disadvantage of
his country. This chapter in the history of human wrongs re
mains yet to be written — but not by an Englishman.

THE MODEEN ITALIAN.

203

the old Republic — but at the same time too
amiable a people, and too averse to war, to be
ever able to secure or retain their just rights.
When Rome fell, first the Western Empire,
then the Eastern, and Constantinople, was seiz
ed by the Turks, Italy was resolved gradually
into a variety of independent states — larger
and smaller. But larger or smaller, they were
all republics ; though often in name, rather
than marked by the character which we mean
by that name. They were easfly tyrannized
over, and by some of the most bloody and ex
ecrable tyrants of which history has preserved
any account, and too easily, even to slavish-
ness, submitted to the tyranny. Stfll their
theory, and their preference, was for the
republican form. They felt that liberty was
the grand primal blessing ; secure that, and all
else would follow. Accordingly throughout
the middle ages, the Italian republics, though
with unceasing warfare, and endless rivalries
and jealousies, retained their freedom — the
form at least — whatever else they lost they
adhered to that, and have continued at heart

204 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
and in their free spirit, republicans, to this
day, and writhe in their chains whenever
compelled, as they often have been, by cir
cumstances, to wear them. Within the last
few years they have made the most desperate
struggles for freedom against the Austrian
power, and have carried with them the sym
pathies of the world, but like Laocoon in the
coils of the serpent they have struggled in
vain, and are once more politically crushed
and dead. And they have fafled mainly
through faults in their own character. They
have still the character they displayed through
out the middle ages. They have no spirit
of union among their many states — full of
mutual jealousies. Each wishing to be first ;
none willing to surrender a portion of right
and power for the sake of the good of
the whole. They are all of them what our
South Carolina is, alone fortunately, in its
character — all for self — ready to throw the
world into universal confusion and war, rather
than not be able to have her own way — like
a petted baby. A few Carolinas would reduce

THE MODERN ITALIAN. 205
our country to the miserable condition of the
Italian republics. The want of a spirit of
union and amity has destroyed them. That
has been and is the radical fault of their char
acter. Added to that, there is an indisposition
to make the various sacrifices and efi'orts essen
tial to crown any efi'orts for freedom with
success. They are too little like English and
Americans in this regard. Had they shown
the spirit of self-renunciation, and desire of
union, so essential under their circumstances,
when the war in Lombardy first broke out three
years ago — if Tuscany, when she sent six
thousand men to the plain of Milan, had sent
ten or twenty thousand as she might have
done, and other states in like proportion —
Austria never could have entered Italy, and a
grand Italian nation might have been formed.
Lombardy was the gate of Italy, the gate once
off' the hinges, and it was all over. But
mutual jealousies and a common sluggishness
blasted all the hopes of hopeful and aspiring
spirits. They all loved their present comforts
too well to make the requisite sacrifices and
18

206 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
exertions, even though permanent pea^ee and
liberty were the certain prize. They loved too
well their homes, their cafes, their cigars, their
walks in the street, their loiterings in galleries,
their drives on the Cascina and the Corso, and
the mimic war which can be so safely enjoyed
in glorious uniforms with opera bands of music
up and down the streets of their capitals. So
different from our people and the whole Eng
lish race. We Anglo-Americans are just at
the other extreme of character. We are utter
ly destitute of all softness. In the American
there is nothing of the woman, we are
ready to say too little. We love war, for its
own sake. Almost without any question as
to the justice of a cause, fifty out of any
hundred of our citizens are ready for a fight.
If the cause seem a little better than bad,
seventy-five per cent, will burn for a trial
of strength — and, if for either, a party, or
the country, every partisan, or every citizeq.as
the case may be, without a moment's hesi
tancy will shoulder his musket. I was assured
that the Tuscans fought bravely when once

RELIGION OF TIIE ITALIAN. 207
on the field. No doubt. Every man is brave,
and about equally so when driven into a cor
ner. But a people are never truly brave till
they are so equally every where ; — brave
through the power of a principle, not mere
animal fury — as was the case in the opening
of our revolution — when there was no beat
ing up of recruits, but the people, of their own
movement, covered Lexington and Bunker Hill
with their blue frocks — anticipating all formal
declaration of war. Even in such a war as
this with Mexico, volunteers swarmed up as
if to a fight for freedom and justice.
The Italian, as he loves liberty, at least
theoretically, so does he love religion, at least
as a form and a dogma. They are a religious
people — religious in their sense, superstitious
in ours. One needs no more than to be present
in a Catholic church, to be convinced of the
depth and reality of the religious sentiment,
in a word, of their piety on the part of the
people at large — you will see the evidences
of it in any church you may enter, — and no

208 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
more than to mingle with them in the inter
course of life, to see how distinct a thing
religion is, as they understand it, from religion
as we understand it, i, e,, righteousness. It is
this grand misapprehension as to what religion
means and ought to be, which conducts di
rectly to the formation of those parts of the
Italian character which are obnoxious to
common censure.
How could it be otherwise ? — when it is
their code that men may be religious, though
destitute of virtue, and still be saved ; may be
virtuous, yet if without religion in their sense,
stfll be damned. Piety, and morals, suffer
grievous divorce. They will commit the
worst deed and consider it no incompatibility
or inconsistency to be at the same time very
pious, and through their prayers and love of
God and the Virgin, very safe. Of course
such notions justify and defend the grossest
moral misdemeanors. That a man, upon going
through forms and paying certain fees, can ob
tain divine absolution for whatever wrongs and
crimes he may commit, is a dogma that places

THE CATHOLIC FAITH. 209
Christianity below paganism. The only won
der is, not that there should be a low morality
in Catholic countries, but that there should be
any at all — nor would there be any, were not
the force of nature stronger than that of super
stition, or the force of human error. It shows
how deeply Heaven has planted a natural
conscience, which no device or mischievous
doctrine of man has been able wholly to
pluck up. The faults of the Irish character,
of which we justly complain every day, are
traceable directly to their religion as we can
all their good traits, which vastly abound over
the other, never to their religion but to their
nature. The Irish nature unperverted by their
religion is one of generosity, warm-heartedness,
love ; their religion often perverts that nature
into vindictiveness, falsehood and blood. It is
not national character that makes the Irish and
Italian so much alike, but the Catholic faith,
which, to a great extent, breaks down and sub
verts great natural lines of difference, and runs
all alike in one mould.
The great extent to which the love of the
18*

210 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY,
Virgin is carried, and to which it supplants the
worship of Christ and God, one could not be
lieve without witnessing. The love of the
Virgin amounts to a passion.* They pour out
their sorrows and love into her sympathizing
human heart, and as surely expect relief and
pardon by her intercession as if they poured
them out at the throne of God. And in pro
portion as they show love and adoration of her,
do they look for her interference for salvation.
Accordingly there are no signs of love and de
votion, which in their churches they do not
lavish upon the image of the mother of God,
bedizened with all the fine clothing and tinsel
they can possibly load her with. And there
mingles with this worship too much of a purely
human feeling. On one occasion of special
service, they who came up one after ano
ther to do her homage — dressed rather more
splendidly than common, holding her child on

* A book well worth reading on this subject is one entitled
"Mornings with the Jesuits" — in which you will find the
baldest idolatry abundantly justified and defended by the Catho
lic priest.

WORSHIP OF THE VIRGIN. 211
her knee — seemed incapable of parting with
her, they would approach her, kneel, and, after
a sflent prayer, rise, and kiss her sflver foot,
then lay their cheek upon it, first on one
side, then on the other, as if hardly able to
tear themselves away from embracing it, so as
to give place to another of the crowd, who
would then advance and go through the same
demonstrations. On the mother's knee sat all
the while the young Christ — but wholly un
noticed, quite neglected ; all was forgotten for
the love and worship of the beautiful mother.
If any one remembers the novel of " The
Monk," by Monk Lewis, he will see in such
ceremonies the entering wedge ofthe thoughts,
by which he was led astray.
Italian life cannot be described without some
notice of the Pope, the principal figure in any
representation of it. To see him, leads a Pro
testant to some new conclusions on the subject
of Popery, and would go far to dissipate any
lurking desire he might before have cherished
for that form of Christianity. For myself, I

212 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
cannot deny that there are some attractive
charms about this form of religion, which
need strong counteracting correctives to over
come them. There are charms other and better
than can be answered by charging them as
romantic. There is miich in its forms one
would like to see transferred to Protestantism.
There is, for example, a beauty, and even a
power, in the always open door of the Cath
olic church or cathedral, where one may enter
at any moment of devotional feeling, seclude
himself in some obscure part of the interior,
and give himself to social devotion or private
prayer, according to his feeling — which, to
gether with the other influences of the place,
might originate or confirm principles or emo
tions of lasting value to the character and
life. Such opportunity of retirement is not
essential to either the existence or growth of
a genuine religion, but it is an aid at least to
many Christians of a particular temperament.
Christ says that worship should be in spirit
and truth ; and that is the truest worship ; but
forms may help us to attain to the spirit.

CATHOLICISM. 213
Under Protestantism for those of the middle
and lower classes — there is no religious home ;
there is a domestic home — but no corner for
privacy. The Catholic Church with its vast
extent generally, and its numerous chapels,
has in it the absolute seclusion of a desert.
Any one and every one there, can find the
solitude, rest, retirement, and so the peace, he
craves. The architectural beauty of their
churches serves as an additional attraction —
the dimly lighted aisles, the lofty and richly
decorated ceilings and walls, the painted win
dows, have doubtless an effect to invite and
detain the mind, to make it more willing to
come, and more willing remain. The de
vout attitude which the worshipper imme
diately assumes as he reaches the pavement
of the church, or the vicinity of the altar,
crossing himself and throwing himself upon
his knees, is of directly religious effect. Then
the music, always at the morning and evening
services, and often breaking in at other times
— organ, or choir and chant, or both — all this
one would like and prefer, whether Protestant
or Catholic.

214 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
Witnessing these beautiful forms of relig
ion, under some particular states of mind
and feeling, and it cannot be thought strange
that many persons of natural sensibflity,
should, forgetting all else of the Catholic
faith, be won over to it by the beauty of the
exterior service ; and, really, never heartily
adopt much of the interior doctrine, or without
much sophistication. But to witness the cere
monies of the Mass, and much else of the
worship, would, with most minds, however
they might reasonably enough fancy such
other forms as I have just spoken of, effectu
ally scatter to the winds all else, and restore
the pure ascendancy of reason. These other
parts of the worship would strike you as so far
removed from any thing you could possibly
deem to be Christianity, as so at variance with
the precepts of Christ, so discordant with the
simplicity of his religion, that you could only
regard it as some wonderful theatrical show,
but without place in the system of Christ.
By this you would be more forcibly struck
stfll, if you should have the opportunity to

THE POPE AT WORSHIP. 215
witness the Pope at worship in his private
chapel on the duirinal, or in the side chapel
of St. Peter's. I saw him once in the chapel
on the Qiiirinal. I think it would have cured
any one of a leaning toward Catholicism, who
should have been present, He was dressed in
brocades heavy with embroidery and gold ;
the triple crown upon his head, and beneath
the outermost layer of rich brocades, other
garments of various dyes equally rich. He
was seated on his throne. On each side stood
a Roman Prince, of highest rank and oldest
blood. Then several cardinals and bishops.
As the worship opened and proceeded, it would
be observed that the Pope was permitted to
do nothing for himself. If it was necessary
for him to read his paut from the liturgy, an
aged cardinal of seventy or eighty years of
age approached, with a huge volume, which he
opened, kneeled, and held, in a manner con
venient for his holiness to read his lessons
from — pages kneeling at the same time and
holding wax torches, though it was bright
noon-day. When it was necessary for him to

216 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
descend and approach the altar, first one of the
cardinals rose, and after kneeling, removed his
crown from his head ; then the two Roman
princes, one on each side, drew near and
turned back the outer folds of his outer bro
cade, then other cardinals the inner folds of his
other clothes so that he could move, when he
rose, and preceded by the pages bearing can
dles, and by the cardinals, stood, or kneeled at
the altar ; and when his part of the service was
done, resumed his seat on his throne, when
every part of his dress was restored as it was
before ; and again and again the same form
was repeated. All the while he never moving
his finger, but treated throughout as if he were
an Eastern despot, or helpless baby. There
is nothing exaggerated in this, nothing unu
sual; it may be seen by any who will take the
pains to be present. But one asks if all this is
after the manner of Christ ?
For the present Pope, Pio Nono, in his per
sonal character, he is believed to be a pure and
amiable person. His countenance would indi
cate amiability, but weakness as well. He be-

THE PRESENT POPE.

217

gau his career with a policy unexpectedly libe
ral. He was, at the outset of his course, a
reformer, and, it has commonly been believed,
sincere in his measures. But steps like his
could not be taken without giving umbrage
to the neighboring despotisms. He became
alarmed by private interference and remon
strances, we may suppose, of both Austria
and Naples — and by advice and threat-
enings was compelled to commence those
retrograde movements, so contradictory to his
first acts and repeated promises ; so that he
was at once regarded as a false-hearted and
treacherous man. The whole Roman people
felt themselves to have been deceived; after a
variety of changes on one side and the other,
they led to that violent formation of the
liberal ministry, which the Pope was com
pelled to appoint at the cannon's mouth — to
the assassination of his prime minister — to
his flight to Naples — then to the French
interference — the siege of Rome, and ulti
mately to the complete return of the rule of
despotism and darkness.
19

218 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
The Italians are a people of humane senti
ments, and kindly disposed as well as formally
and methodically charitable. But governed,
in this case, as in respect to religion, by im
pulse and feeling rather than guided by prin
ciple. Their charity is a child of their natural
kind-heartedness. They do not stop to reason
about the matter ; they give without reflection
to all who ask. In this sense, Florence is but
one great house of charity. Hundreds and
thousands of maimed, halt, blind, poor, are
supported by the alms solicited from door to
door, and in the streets. A priest whom I
knew well and long, with whom I walked
almost every day, never passed a beggar with
out giving him something, and exhorting me
to do the same, — not much, he said, lest it
should be an encouragement to any to con
tinue in the vocation, but something, that no one
need suffer, by any possibility, for the want of
a piece of bread. His charity was commonly
limited to a quattrino, i. e., the fourth part of a
cent. But besides this great poor-house of the
whole city, there are no less than forty hos-

CHARITIES  EDUCATION. 219
pitals iu a population of seventy thousand ;
thirty-five convents, sixty nunneries, one hun
dred and seventy-two churches, all of which
are institutions of charity to a considerable
extent. AVith such encouragements and temp
tations to poverty, no one can wonder at the
crowds of beggars, that infest not only Flor
ence, but all the cities — the highways, and by
ways of all Italy.
Of education in Italy, there is not much ;
and what there is, with few exceptions, is not
for the people, but the higher circles. Of
learning, there is a good deal, from that of
Cardinal Mezzofanti, who reads, speaks, and
writes fifty languages, down through all the
convents, monasteries, and propagandas, by
which the whole priesthood and nobflity of
the country are educated. For the classes of
the rich and noble, there are also colleges and
high schools. But of common school educa
tion, as with us, sown broadcast over the
land, there is nothing. And such is the gen
uine effect of absolutism, where luxury and

220 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
learning are restricted to nobles and princes,
beggary and ignorance vouchsafed to the peo
ple. But though with but little general educa
tion, the Italians are a people of great refine
ment of manners. As one among both the
causes and evidences of such refinement, I
would name their general love and appreciation
of art ; they love it and honor it, and it reflects
an additional beauty upon their character.
Their governments, also, honor and cherish it.
They regard it as a means of education, and a
source of innocent pleasure contributing large
ly to the happiness of their people, to whom
they throw open all their treasures, both of
sculpture and painting.
In both Florence and Rome the public
galleries are always open, free of charge, and
inviting all classes equally to enter. No one
is there, who has the least love of art, who
cannot gratify himself with not only seeing,
but studying to any extent he may desire, the
noblest galleries in the world. Under certain

INFLUENCES OF ART. 221
regulations artists are permitted to set up their
easels and improve themselves by copying any
of the famous works that hang upon the walls.
It was pleasant to see the country people from
the neighborhood of the cities, wandering
through the galleries and saloons, and exam
ining at their leisure the great masterpieces
of art. It is easy to see what the effect must
be, in imparting not only additional refinement
to the character, but useful information on the
character and history of art, and in connecting
history with its fllustrations. It is a gratifica
tion, at least, having one day read a portion of
Livy, or Tacitus, the next day to see the
statues or busts of the great names, of which
you had been reading. As there is compara
tively little common education, were it not for
the art which is every where exposed to view,
not only in galleries, but much more upon the
walls of churches, and upon open squares, the
common people would hardly manifest those
signs of general cultivation which are so ob
servable in the Italian. We, happfly, have
every where the education of the common
19"

222 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
school and the high school and coflege — but
we need the other also. And if there could
now be added a knowledge of, and a taste
for art, by throwing open such galleries as we
have free of charge, and collecting others, and
by covering the walls of churches with Chris
tianity as represented by the painter's art, then
would every means have been resorted to, to
raise and instruct the character, and no one
can doubt whether such means would exert a
favorable influence upon the mind and taste of
a country. If any one should be led to question the
advantage of such displays of art in a moral
point of view, especially of the antique, I can
only say, that in all the multitude of specimens
of Greek and Roman remains, I can call to
mind but a single instance of a want of the
most entire purity in conception and execu
tion. In seeing so much of the art of the old
Pagan world, all calculated to add to, rather
than obstruct, moral elevation, I was led to
doubt whether we were in the habit of doing
full justice to the morality of those ages. It

INFLUENCES OF ART. 223
seems to me that if the world had ever been
as corrupt as it has commonly been represent
ed, more frequent evidences of the fact would
appear iu their sculpture, which, in its mere
chance preservation, certainly redounds only to
the credit of antiquity. Singular indeed that
sculpture which could neither perish nor lie,
should have presented no more examples to
shock our moral sentiments, if the habits and
manners of those times had been as is most
commonly represented. Surely we ought to
consider, in this relation, that it would be no
more sensible or just to infer the general
character of the Roman World from such
monsters as Nero and Tiberius, than it would
to infer the common English character, and the
general power of Christianity at that period,
from such dissolute drunkards as Charles II.,
and George IV. When I surveyed so much
statuary, all displaying the lines and forms of
the most chaste and elevated beauty, and almost
nothing of an opposite character, it was a sur
prise and a gratification I had not expected,
and taught a new lesson of the worth of that

224 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
human nature, which, under all dispensations.
Pagan as well as Christian, acknowledges and
reveres purity and virtue.
I know nothing to contradict what I have
said, but some of the remains in Pompeii and
Herculaneum, and those certainly are bad
enough, according to statements of travellers
— for I did not see them. But there are
works of art, which hang now on walls in
every Christian city of Europe, which, could
they be preserved in any way and handed
down to after generations, might lead to the
same conclusion about us, that so many now
draw respecting the general moral condition of
the Pompeians and Romans — and neither
would be just. These Pompeian remains de
scribe the common and better character of the
people, then and there, not much more truly,
probably, than those works of our own, I have
just spoken of, would our general character.
In both cases they would express the moral
condition of comparatively very few.
The out-door life of this people, both in re-

OUT-DOOR LIFE. 225
spect to labor and amusements, is agreeable and
graceful. In the country, the labor done by
women is in some particulars coarse, hard, and
to our ideas revolting, being that, we think,
which should be performed exclusively by
men. They are sometimes seen laboring in
the fields wflh the implements used by men.
And very often you pass them on fhe roads
with burdens borne upon the head which we
should think heavy enough for a horse or a
mule. Descending one day from the Convent
of Vallombrosa, about twenty mfles from Flor
ence, I was overtaken by a troop of country
girls, all in the highest spirits, each of whom
bore upon her head a large bundle of wood, as
large as could be bound upon a jackass.
They were girls of not more than from four
teen to eighteen years of age, and were carry
ing these heavy loads from the forests, where
they had collected the wood, to some neigh
boring village for sale. It was on a day in
August, as hot as our hottest summer weather.
It seemed too severe a service for their age
and sex, and as if it could scarcely fail to bring

226 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
on premature old age. Under such circum
stances, the bearing of such burdens was alto
gether painful to witness. Under others
slightly different, and the painful would disap
pear and lose itself in the picturesqueness of
the scene. Let the same troop of girls be seen
at the time of the vintage, each bearing a
loaded basket of white and purple grapes to
market, the full bunches of the ripe fruit
with the leaves hanging down over the basket
so as to reach the shoulders — with their
pretty head-dress, bodice and gown of some
strong color, scarlet, white, or blue, or green,
with their upright form and elastic step, re
minding one so of the ancient Greek Cane-
phorae in the old Greek sculpture — and the
beauty of the sight might make one forget the
hardship to which the life often exposes them.
Other labors seem lighter, but I do not know
that they would be more healthful or agree
able than this out-door and apparently more
severe occupation. Throughout Tuscany the
girls and women devote themselves exclu
sively, almost, to the platting of the beautiful

OUT-DOOR LIFE.

227

Tuscan straw, of which are made the elegant
and costly bonnets, which are every where
sought at such prices. No cottage door can
be passed where the inmates will not be seen
weaving this delicate braid. They in Italy
who weave this Tuscan braid are the same
who in America would achieve their indepen
dence at the cotton mills of Lowell, Manches
ter, and Waltham. There, as here, industry is
a national trait, notwithstanding the softness
and luxury of the climate ; and there, as here,
claims and receives with unvarying certainty
its large reward — with this difference, that
the young Italian girl cannot so soon boast
the independence which she has secured by
the labor of her own hands. The wages at
straw braiding are about forty cents a day.
Among the poor, the traveller is often pleas
ed to see the mother of the family, or some oi
the elder females, as they watch the sheep,
their poultry, or young kids, — for fences
there are none for the protection of domestic
property of this sort, — at the same time, spin
ning, distaff in hand, as in the days of Homer,

228 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
the thread which afterwards is wov«n into
necessary household garments. Attending and
feeding the silk-worm, and the spinning and
weaving of the sflk, are other occupations
which fitly fall to the lot of women. For
weaving silk, there are in many places large
manufactories; but looms are often found
both in the cities and in the country, in the
houses and cottages of the laborer.
Amusements in Italy are well provided for.
The Catholic Church arranges that, and libe
rally. Not that the church makes provision for
amusement on its own account, but that in
instituting religious days, or festa days as they
are called, holy-days or rest-days are also
secured. I cannot give the number of these
week-day Sabbaths, but it is very great. On
those days work is suspended, shops are shut,
as much, at least, as on Sunday, and after a
brief service at church, the rest of the day is
passed in any amusements which the fancy
dictates. Sunday, it will be recollected, is a
festa day, or day of amusement, as well as of

AMUSEMENTS. 229
worship. It corresponds more nearly, prob
ably, to the old Jewish idea of a Sabbath, than
ours or the Puritan. The primary idea of that
day was evidently rest. It was securing by
religious sanction, one day at least out of
seven, when the poor laborer, the weary and
exhausted by toil, should not be compelled to
work — when religion itself interfered and
said. Let no man, rich man or prince, require
thee to work on this day, it is the Sabbath of
the Lord — thou shalt do no work. Beyond
that, it was left to the conscience and judg
ment of the individual — what worship, and
how much should be paid. The Pharisees
had one opinion on that point, Jesus Christ
quite a different one. It was evidently, I
think, from the New Testament, and from
History, a day of rest, of worship and of
amusement — much as it now is in Catholic
Europe. There, amusements predominate,
perhaps a little too much, and work also ; as
here among us, ceremonial worship too much.
The great proportion of shops in Italy are
shut. But the markets, many groceries, and
20

230 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
all places for fhe sale of eatables of any kind,
and all places of amusement are open, and do
a full business. The churches are open, and
during the first half of the day crowded. Af
terwards the people entertain themselves in
a thousand ways, according to inclination.
Comparing carefully together, to learn which
is worse, our old-fashioned New England Sun
day, or what is meant by a Scotch Sunday,
with the more loosely observed Sabbath of the
Catholic Church — and it might be difficult to
decide. Both are bad, neither is good for
religion or man. Neither answers the true
end of the day. Better than either is the lib
erally observed Sabbath of the present day in
some small sections of the country among
ourselves, where worship, rest from labor,
and quiet enjoyment are so beautifully inter
woven one with another ; where God is
worshipped, no man is compelled to work ;
and both religion and rest made attractive,
by some quiet relaxation, some innocent
amusement. Yet one cannot but think this
repetition of the morning worship on Sunday

FESTA DAYS.

231

in the afternoon to incur the censure of the
proverb, *' Ne quid nimis."
The secular festa days are passed, if away
from home, in public gardens, or walks, or,
strolling among the byways and lanes of
the neighborhood of cities and towns, or, in
the country, by rambling among the woods,
or dancing beneath the shade of trees ;
and partaking, meanwhile, of the simple fare
served underneath tents or on small tables,
with benches set around. Nothing could
strike one more agreeably than fhe tempe
rance and joviality with which these classes ot
people enjoy themselves at such times, their
temperance in eating as well as in drinking,
and the keen relish with which they engage
in games and dances. The food on such oc
casions was rarely any thing more than bread,
a little cold meat perhaps, and the common
cheap wines of the country, but generally only
bread and wine, unless it were in the season
of fruits when they were lavishly dispensed.
In a country where wine flows like water,
there could not but be some abuse of it. But,

232 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
though I was present on many such occasions,
I never saw an instance of intoxication, or
witnessed any of the noise, fights, or broils,
which are here the necessary attendants upon
drink. I had, what I considered the good for
tune, to pass three days at a small vfllage
named Pelago, on the road to Vallombrosa,
where a fair was held, and where I enjoyed an
opportunity to observe the manners and habits
of the country people — twenty miles from
Florence. There were three or four thousand
people congregated there, buying, selling, eat
ing, and drinking. I mingled with them
freely every where, in their pleasures, their
business, and their worship — for morning
and evening the various chapels were crowd
ed, and with all the appearances of the same
earnest devotion so observable in the Catholic
Church on fhe Sabbath. No where did I
meet intoxication, violence, rudeness, or any
conduct that could give offence to the most
fastidious. Adjoining my room at the inn
was a hall, where there were seated at dinner
a great number of the country people, fathers,

TEMPERANCE. 233
mothers, brothers and sisters, friends and
acquaintance. From no sound which I heard
from that company could I have supposed that
there was present any other than a company
of refinement and cultivation. There was
the same murmur of uninterrupted conversa
tion, but in that quiet, subdued tone, which
marks the intercourse of the best bred people.
No noise — no boisterous mirth — no riot —
yet was the table covered with wines, and all
drank to their heart's content. I mention
this as showing two things, first, a great na
tive refinement and propriety in fhe character
of the rustic population, and secondly, a great
power of self-control. For, though wine was
as water, yet there was no excess. We could
not easily believe that as many of the same
classes of our race, under the same circum
stances, could sit down to such a table, in any
part of England, or any part of our country,
and the same virtues of temperance and self-
government be exhibited with equal grace.
They always seem to me to be a race of much
more natural delicacy and refinement of char-
20*

234 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
acter, than can be seen any where among the
Anglo-Saxon tribes. What a pity it is —
how much to be lamented, that this same
Anglo-Saxon character, with all its undoubted
strength, has not a little more of this native
gentleness — a less tendency to excesses and
violences of all sorts.
A word on the personal appearance of the
Italian. I do not think that beauty in Italy
is so common as in our own country, but it is
sometimes of a higher order. I have never
seen so fine looking men as I chanced to see
in Rome. There is an air of command, a lofty
port and bearing in the Roman, to which there
is nothing like in any other people. And the
expression and form of countenance corres
ponds. The features are finely cast, and the
complexion just dark enough to consist best
with manly beauty. The Roman nose cannot
but add dignity to a countenance, even when
the other features are lacking in beauty and
expression ; and the form described by that
name is almost universal in Italy, any where

BEAUTY. 235
within a hundred mfles of the capital. I was
never struck with if till I had reached Sienna,
forty miles from Rome, where it was so pre
dominant as to be almost ludicrous. I saw it
every where. I looked for it among the
country men and country women, as they
came to market, and it was there. Even the
boys in fhe street, playing about, rejoiced in a
nose worthy of Cincinnatus or Pompey. It
was so large and decided, as almost fo make
one think it m,ust be in the way. Its propor
tions did not enlarge as I came to fhe capital,
but they did not abate ; and on the full grown
man it is certainly a grand appendage to the
countenance, and would save any one from
contempt, whatever other defect he might
have. I never saw there a small nose, or
what could be described as one that fell short
of ifs just length ; or, as is so common in
England and Scotland, one inclining upward
at the termination. So that, on the whole,
the Roman head must be admitted fo be a
finer one than is to be seen out of Italy. The
eye is a very striking feature, — very dark in

236 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
the iris, and its setting equally so ; the eye
brow heavy and black, the eyelids, by the
length of the lashes and their color, lending
additional power to that feature.
Of the female form and countenance I had
less opportunity to judge. Whether there is
less beauty or more in Italy than here, will
depend much upon the definition one adopts
of what we mean by beauty ; whether it is a
beauty residing more in pure form and in
intellectual expression, or in full physical de
velopment. Of the first, there is more here
than in Italy ; of the last, there is more in
Italy than here. A painter, who should desire
a model of the female form, would succeed
fen times in his search for a fine model there
for once here. But the sculptor would succeed
oftener here than there. There is a thinness
here, an absence of all roundness in the lines,
fatal to the beauty for which he seeks.
The Italian woman has a beauty of a more
material kind — the beauty of complexion, of
full muscular development, and of passion.
The American woman depends upon grace of

FEMALE BEAUTY. 237
classical outline in fhe form, and intellectual
expression. The American female head and
form is the head and form of a Greek statue.
Take the form of a celebrated antique, called
Pudicitia, in the Gallery of the Vatican at
Rome, and one would be struck af once wifh
ifs resemblance in stature, grace, and its pure
classic profile, to the beautiful women of our
own country. It is fhe beauty of Greek statu
ary. For the painter there is almost always
too much angle and line. But it would not
be correct to say, that all these various ele
ments never meet in our country women.
They certainly do ; and, in that case, the
result is, a perfection of form, expression,
complexion, grace, not found so often per
haps elsewhere. And this is fhe judgment,
not only of a partial countryman, but of more
dispassionate critics.
In respect fo the costume of the people, one
is struck in the cities with very little that is
peculiar. Among the better classes, the French
fashions, that is to say, our own, generally pre-

238 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
vail. A lady's mfllinery in Florence, Rome,
Paris, New York, Boston, will scarcely differ
in cost, fashion, material. Now and then a
gentleman will be seen with the pointed
Roman hat upon his head, and in some of the
smaller cities, with a peacock's feather stuck
into the broad polished band, and waving
backwards. But the most striking dissimi
larity between the Italian race and ours, is
undoubtedly to be seen in the usages of the
people in respect to the hair, there being
scarce an individual in Florence, or any other
city in the peninsula, where beard and mous
tache, one or the other, or both, are not seen
to flourish with extraordinary luxuriance. In
this, the American traveller is observed to
follow the custom of fhe country of which
he becomes a temporary resident. Though
an inhabitant there but for a few months, he
undergoes so total a transformation by for
bearing the use of the scissors and razor, that
in a short time he is hardly to be known by
his most famfliar acquaintance. We show
ourselves a far more cosmopolitan tribe in

COSTUME. 239
these, and a thousand other respects, than the
English. An Englishman wfll rarely adopt
any where a usage which is not one of some
part of his own country. That another people
have a particular custom, is with him a suffi
cient reason why he should not have if. He is
an Englishman ; and is not to be confounded
needlessly with another people. National pe
culiarities of all sorts are a convenience. It is
an advantage to know a people by their dress
and other habits, as well as by their physiog
nomy ; and he is positively angry when, in an
Italian city, he meets a gentleman who, out of
a forest of beard and a shrubbery of mous
tache, accosts him in the familiar dialect of
London and Birmingham. In this a certain
dignity of character is displayed, that cannot
be too highly commended.
Among the females in the rural districts,
and among those who occupy the middle
ranks and those who stand next below them,
there is observed a profuse display of com
monplace jewelry ; and, a few other slight
differences, as in the strong colors and strongly

240 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
contrasted colors which are worn, and which
produce the prettiest effect imaginable at a
distance. By the time you reach Rome, and
still more Naples, a great variety of singular
costume makes its appearance, in fhe villages,
by fhe road-side, and in the fields ; which you
will have observed in any of the pictures of
the scene/y of the South of Italy. A Roman
woman of the country with her brflliant colors
and her peculiar head-dress, which is simply a
fold or two of thick cloth covering the top of
the head, and falling down square behind as
low as the shoulders, is a most attractive
object ; especially if she is af the same time
leading along a jackass, the most picturesque
of animals, all loaded down, the woman and
ass, with grapes for market. That pretty head
dress is not to be seen in Tuscany ; but in
stead, the coarse Tuscan straw, in immense
flats, which quite envelope the face, and
almost fhe form, and is any thing but becom
ing. They serve for concealment, like the
hood of a monk ; but produce not the same
effect of mystery as that.

MORAL CHARACTER. 241
The Italians are not reputed a strictly
honest people. We are told, that in business
transactions they will deceive ; that the dealer
may, as a rule, be believed to have first asked
double the price which he is willing to fake
if offered. That all sorts of owners and
drivers of all sorts of carriages for the accom
modation of travellers, are untrustworthy.
That there is a measure of truth in all such
statements, cannot be denied, but then if is
to be remembered, first, that these statements
are not applicable to the character of the body
of the people, in town, much less in the
country, but only to the classes immediately
concerned, whose whole lives are passed at
the doors of stables, or in driving bargains
with foreigners, who as often make it a point
to get things for too little, as the others to ask
too much ; and secondly, that the charge comes
from the English travefler, who has faith in
no character but his own. The strongly
colored statements adverse to the Italian
character, are to be found in all, I believe,
of the English guide books, but, indorsed by
21

242 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
few American travellers whom I have met with,
but on the other hand opinions of an entirely
opposite character freely expressed. My own
experience, with one or two trivial exceptions,
was altogether in favor, not only of the ex
treme amiableness of the people, but of their
justice, fairness, honesty. If there are oc
casional instances of over-charging, and all
that, among drivers and traders, where in the
world will they not be found, certainly in
London, Paris, New York, Boston. The great
complainers, the English, are, commonly,
themselves, an honest people ; but as if there
were no rogues in England ! and as if an
Italian traveller in England, ignorant of the
English language, could pass through London
and England without having a taste of Eng
lish sleight of hand !
We have received another impression of
the Italian character, that it is one of passion
and vindictiveness — that life is less secure
there, both to the native and to foreigners,
than elsewhere. They are a people of passion

MORAL CHARACTER.

243

undoubtedly ; and when excited by a great
cause, are dangerous. But they are not mo
rose, or fll tempered, nor disposed to violence,
but fhe contrary. And the greater crimes, as
murder, manslaughter, homicide, are the effects
of extreme provocation, — rarely for money,
as with the English and with us. Such
crimes, with money in some way or other at
the root of the evfl, are more common in
England and here, than in Italy, with passion
and revenge as the moving cause. And it
would naturally be the case, as fhe love of
money is the most universal passion of our
nature, and reigns more predominant in Eng
lish character than elsewhere.* We are bound
to receive with the greatest caution all repre
sentations of national character originating in
English literature, whence we, as much as the
English themselves, have received all our im
pressions of the continental character. The
self-love of the English is so extraordinary.

* In Eustace, who to be sure was a Catholic, but then an Eng
lishman also, there is a very fair defence of the Italian character
against the usual extreme statements of the English press.

244 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
that they can scarce present the case, of the
character and manners of a foreign people,
with justice. They not only love themselves
inordinately, but, which is worse, they cannot
like any others. Their books of travels, and
their reviews, on such subjects, may be read
for amusement, but not for reliable informa
tion, when they touch or even graze upon
the character of another people. Who can, or
ought, to trust fhe Englishman's sketches of
the French character ? Who would dare to
trust an English history of France ? Suppose
the continent of Europe were to take their
impressions of American character, and facts
of history, from England, either from the
common run of her travellers, her magazines,
or even from the first authorities in the Island,
the Edinburgh and (Quarterly Review, could
we consider ourselves as fairly represented ?
From such quarters alone, could the continent
ever learn the truth about us ? Take the
whole of English literature in its representa
tions of America — the literature of fhe news
papers, reviews, travels, and the like, till

MANNER OF PASSING THE DAY. 245
within these few years past, and it is a lit
erature destitute of candor and truth — it is a
literature of studied misrepresentations and
perverted facts — of heartless and gross cari
cature. The magazine literature of England,
more than acts of Parliament or policies of
ministries, has alienated and embittered Amer
ica — trivial as the cause may seem — just as
an impertinent fellow treading on one's foe
excites more indignation than if you were
knocked down by an Athlete.
The Italians, like all who dwell in warmer
climates, pass the day a little differently from
ourselves. They rise earlier, those who work
at all, rest longer at noon, and work to about
the same hour at night. Dinner is every
where, even in cities, with few exceptions,
af the same rational hour, twelve o'clock, —
or, from that to one. At fashionable hotels,
where foreigners most do congregate, the
hour was from four to six. Fashion breaks
down all national distinctions — runs all in
one mould. All differences in manners and
21*

246

THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.

costume will eventually disappear, through
fashion and railroads together. Breakfasts are
brief and simple ; a cup of coffee, with bread
dipped into it, is the standing breakfast of all
the classes who frequent the cafes. Not one
in an hundred uses buffer. The common
people, laborers, &-c. breakfast, dine and sup on
bread and wine, with a little cold meat, or
fish, as the extreme indulgence. Their habits
are extremely simple and wholesome in what
they eat. Luxuries, such as cakes, pies, and
sweet things, are for us Americans, who on
all extra occasions, at home and abroad, will
do any thing rather than partake of a whole
some article of food. If they can contrive to
poison themselves on some half-baked pie, or
cake, of which potash forms the principal part,
they account themselves supremely happy —
and perhaps wash it all down with coffee, of
which a decoction of charcoal would possess
the same value and flavor. These kinds of
refreshment are particularly to be noticed at
raflroad stations.*
* Bread and butter, cold meats, or tolerable coffee, are nowhere
to be met with within the States at such places.

DINNER. 247
I was fortunate in Florence for several
months, in dining at the table of a young
physician, where I could observe and experi
ence the manners of the respectable classes.
More trouble was incurred at any one such
dinner, than at any three of ours. Four, five,
six courses, constituted the daily fare. First
a soup, universal throughout Europe — then
the meat of which the soup had been made,
as a separate dish, with radishes or salad —
then a course of vegetables, potatoes prepared
in diverse ways, beans or asparagus, and to-
matos, accompanied always by bread and
wine — then a dish of broiled meat -^ then a
roast chicken or pigeon, with fried squash
blossoms, perhaps — then sweet preparations,
then nuts, fresh figs and grapes. For each of
these courses, plates, &c. were scrupulously
changed, and other forms observed. Such a
dinner, though but three persons, could not
but consume a good deal of time, if not much
food — for though there were many things,
they were all small — yet still enough — but
the whole together, vegetables and all, would

248 THE ITALIANS OF MIDDLE ITALY.
not weigh more than a small joint of mut
ton. In all that I have now said of some of the
national characteristics of the Italians — or
rather of fhe Tuscans and Romans, and of
other national differences in respect to their
habits, manners and morals, I speak under
correction. It is not very easy to describe the
moral and other traits of a people, without
long and great intimacy, — especially, study
ing them through the dark glass of a foreign
language, — without an exposure to the com
mission of many errors. To speak of things,
only — as of scenery, arts, and antiquities —
the task is lighter and safer. But to under
take fo draw the character of a living people,
is a work of much more difficulty and deli
cacy, involving much higher qualifications ;
for which, without any affectation, almost any
one may consider himself as only very im
perfectly fitted ; and, for his unintentional,
unavoidable misstatements, may ask to be
pardoned, without shame.

LONDON.

LONDON.

The American traveller who visits Europe,
looks forward to no spot with deeper interest,
Avith expectations more highly raised, than to
London. If to any other with superior inter
est, on the part of some, it would only be to
Rome. Those are the two great capitals of
the earth, — Rome, London. Whether the
traveller be a man of books or business, those
are the two centres about which his thoughts
wfll chiefly revolve. The man of ancient
literature and recollections, as he draws near
to Rome, forgets even his existence, and re
members only the past. The traveller of
business or pleasure tires of Rome in about a

252 LONDON.
week ; but in London, and in a still greater
degree in Paris, all his luxurious tastes are so
highly fed, that he finds himself in Elysium.
It is the land of money and trade, if it is the
land of good dinners, turtle soup, champagne,
and old wines ; and his soul is satisfied and
filled. But, setting aside extreme cases, every
American greets with affectionate salutations
the white cliffs of Albion, and anticipates a
world of enjoyment from visiting the places
made sacred to his mind by the great names
of her history and her literature ; and London,
as the grand central point of all such interest,
he bids all hail ! with peculiar satisfaction.
But when, from this state of exaltation, he
passes from his ship and finds himself within
the walls of the boundless capital, he experi
ences a sort of material pressure upon him,
bearing down with mountain weight, for which
at first he finds it difficult to account. On a
little reflection, he concludes it to be nothing
else than the presence of this immeasurable
city, this huge magnitude, which drives every
other feeling out of the mind but the sense of

MAGNITUDE ITS CHARACTERISTIC. 253
this vastness itself. There is no room for any
thing else.
Magnitude is the distinguishing characteris
tic of London, as grandeur of natural position
and scenery is that of Naples — beauty, that
of Florence — moral interest thaf of Rome —
shops, plate glass, splendor, that of Paris. But
in no other city does the peculiar character
istic of a place so force itself upon one's notice
as in London. There you are reminded of
magnitude whichever way you turn. You
become presently insensible to the beauty of
Florence, to the shops of Paris, fo the moral
glory of Rome, but you never forget for one
single moment how big London is, how mul
titudinous its population. When you find,
after spending your first week, or more than
that, in doing nothing else than scouring the
capital from end to end, in order to catch some
general notion of the place, that you are as
much a stranger as when you began your
travels, — that though you have gone so far,
you have made no progress, — though you
have seen so much, you know and can remem-
22

254 LONDON.
ber nothing, — that the city is still as new and
unsofled as ever, — you receive a very lively
and even painful impression of its enormous
size. Every fhing else is subordinate fo size.
Churches are nothing. You pass St. Paul's,
and give it only a careless look. Columns
and statues. Nelson's and the Duke of York's
pillar, even Punch's Duke you overlook.
Magnitude alone interests. This not only
interests, it astonishes, absorbs, appals you ;
annihilates every other feeling. Queen, Lords
and Commons, are nothing by the side of this
immeasurable vastness. As a stranger this is
the first topic of conversation, and its interest
never flags. Yet it is not you, after all, who
are so much interested by this size, as the
Londoner himself, who is proud of it, and
forces the subject upon you. His topics are
not of art, pictures and statues, books, litera
ture, they are not so much to his taste ; but
of London, its streets, squares, and parks ; its
extent, the masses always abroad, the crowds
in the streets — the number of mfles across it,

WEALTH IN THE GREAT MIDDLE CLASS. 255
the number of miles around if, its growth,
even at present, like that of New Orleans or
San Francisco ; the countless omnibuses, the
packing and tangling of carriages and other
vehicles, fifty times a day, where Great Far-
rington Street crosses over to Blackfriar's
Bridge, and the admirable police for keeping
all these masses in order. In fhe presence of
London, it is just as it would be if ypu should
meet a man fifty feet high, and of a weight
proportionable. You would be in a state of per
petual astonishment. You feel, moreover, as
if your individuality were swallowed up, lost,
in the enormous mass ; as, in the system of
the Pantheist, souls are in fhe divine sub
stance. I think that the impression made by magni
tude, which is first and deepest, is next suc
ceeded by a part of the same general feeling,
the impression made by wealth — by the signs
of wealth of the great middle classes. This
impression is not less distinct, nor hardly less
overwhelming, than that made by size. In
other capitals, your admiration is directed to

256 LONDON.
the palaces of some of the nobflity, one here,
and another there ; sometimes to the houses
of a few of the great commoners ; sometimes
to a street of palaces, as in Genoa. But in
London you note these signs of wealth, not
only here and there, but really every where —
not only in this street and another, but in
street after street beyond counting, and then
in square ^fter square beyond counting. And
in certain parts of the city, the population
seems wholly composed of those who dv/ell
in palaces. The rest of mankind have no
place provided for them. And one begins to
feel as if that were, there at least, the natural
state of man, and as if he himself, when he
returns home, will find himself lodged in the
same way ; that you feel particularly in the
purlieus of Eaton and Belgrade Squares, and
any where, in short, at fhe West End.
This has the finest feature of grandeur
about it imaginable — this indefinite multi
plication of splendid residences. There is
nothing like if, nothing that approaches it,
elsewhere. It makes a deeper impression than

WEALTH IN THE GREAT MIDDLE CLA.SS. 257
either the shops of Regent Street and Picca
dilly, the Warehouses on the Docks, the Beer
Breweries, or the Shipping on the Thames ;
and comparisons with other cities in these
respects are not fo be thought of In this
aspect of the comfort and wealth among the
great middle classes, it carries with if, too, a
grand interpretation. Where nobflity, an idle,
selfish, luxurious, vicious nobility once alone
dwelt in that magnificence, now inhabit the
self-raised, self-enriched, merchant nobflity of
England. Commerce and industry have ele
vated them to a position of both wealth and
power, equal to that other inherited from an
cestors who had inherited theirs, who had
inherited theirs, and so on backwards indefi
nitely. Such are the dwellings of these
innumerable Squares. And among them, but
not particularly distinguished in any way as
more magnificent than the rest, are the winter
residences of the great lords and barons of
the empire. In this part of London wfll be
found the residences of the Foreign Ministers,
from the Ambassador of all the Russias, down,
22*

258 LONDON.
or up, to the American Minister of all the
States. Another simflar feature of London, simflarfor
magnificence, for vastness, for an indescriba
ble nobleness, is its Parks. They are in no
proper sense of the word however parks, unless
you mean deer parks. They certainly are
rather vast landed estates, farms, sites for towns
and cities. It is a misnomer to speak of a city
park which you can neither see across, nor
travel round, in the midst of which, in an
English atmosphere, you may easfly lose your
way, and may be as easily robbed and mur
dered — so far as society could know any
thing about it — as in the midst of Hounslow
Heath, or the Arabian Sahara. They are the
country rather than parks ; a portion of the
country fenced in, wifh houses just visible in
fhe distance. There, where the whole island
is hardly bigger than some of our States,
these parks are several of them four hundred
acres each. Here, where in our American
cities, territory is a mere drug, cheap and
fllimitable, the largest of our parks or squares

PARKS. 259
hardly reaches forty acres. I suppose, on the
principle that what is common, cheap, plenty,
is to be despised. But these English grounds,
though too large for comfort, use, beauty, or
safety, have the single merit of consistency ;
they are in due proportion to all the rest of
London and the character of the people.
St. James's Park is the true size for every
object for which a park should exist at all,
large enough for beauty, air, health, exercise.
Nothing can be imagined more elegant in ifs
design, more complete in ifs plan and orna
ment. It may be considered a model for all
the world of landscape gardening, and for
all city parks ; any deviation from which
must be so far into error. It is a gem of
beauty and elegance, and is, one cannot but
think, the most beautiful piece of cultivated
ground in the world.
So different in its graceful curves from all
our rectilinear plantings, and in its charming
variegated shrubberies from our unending
monotonous elms. I would not decry the
elm. I saw no oak or elm in England, that

260

LONDON.

could compare for grandeur with our elms,
especially of the valley of the Connecticut.
But we must beware of the proverb, " Too
much of a good thing, &c." The elm is a good
tree ; but the elm is not every thing. St. James's
Park combines the beauty of the conservatory
with the grandeur of forest planting. Here
trees in groups, or, if large, insulated ; there, a
dense parterre of shrubs and flowers ; then,
in addition, sheets of wafer with their ap
propriate inhabitants. Our Boston Common,
which, with a moderate outlay of taste and
sense, might, with ifs naturally varied surface,
have been rnade as beautiful as the Park of St.
James, is now, one must suppose, — though
still not too late for some change for the
better, — condemned for all time to these geo
metrical lines of elms and maples, as if there
were in nature neither such things as shrubs,
flowers, or curved lines. Our American idea
of a city park or square seems to be — it
is the same fhing in all our cities — rows
of forest trees, with straight paths between,
which wifl conduct the business man by the

OLD STREETS AND SQUARES. 261
shortest cut possible to his shop or his count
ing room, allowing never the sacrifice of a
foot or inch fo taste, the love of beauty, or fhe
enjoyment of a walk. With fhe single ex
ception of the Common in Boston, no other
park or square in the country exceeds in extent
some ten or fifteen acres. And, though so
small, yet well laid out, it were in most cases
enough — better at least, and less of a nui
sance — for that they are with their vast
extent — than Hyde, Regent's, or Victoria.
There is a great charm to the American
who has been reared in a love of English let
ters, about the very names of the squares of
which I have spoken, at least Hyde Park and
St. James's ; and not less in the names of cer
tain streets, as they for fhe first time catch the
eye on the corners. Names of squares that
once figured so largely in the world of fashion
and politics, in the writings of Richardson,
Miss Burney and Miss Edgeworth, and a thou
sand others, such as Porfman Square, Fins-
bury and Russell Squares, Bloomsbury and

262 LONDON,
Grosvenor, Soho, Portland Place ; then streets,
which for familiarity, are, even to an Ameri
can, as household words, the Strand, Fleet
Street, Cheapside, Cornhill, Pall Mall, Picca
dilly, St. Paul's Church Yard, Pater Noster
Row, Grub Street, even the Old Bafley and
Newgate, and others without end — such
names thrill you with pleasure as you encoun
ter them. With what greater interest still
does on« hunt for, and then read the name on
a corner in the Strand, of Bolt Court, where
Johnson long resided with his hospital of quar
relsome and incurable old women up stairs,
Mrs -Williams, Mrs. Desmoulins, together with
his man Francis and the foolish Boswell. And
what a greater pleasure was it, in this the
middle of the nineteenth century, to dine and
take tea beneath the very roof of fhe kind-
hearted old man — now covering a common
eating-house — if perchance my information
was correct. Then what a greater pleasure
still, fo puzzle out in the obscurest part of
London, East-Cheap, and take one's dinner
with a pint, not of sherris-sack — for that

OLD STREETS AND SQUARES 263
would not do in these temperance days — but
of the very thinnest ale, in order to keep some
likeness to the classical heroes of a stage
greater than Greek or Roman ever dreamed
of. Then fo make the discovery of Charles
Lamb's quarters in the old East India House,
and follow him to Christ Hospital, where, as
a boy, rigged out in what resembled very
much our old continental uniform, he learned
the languages and laid up the germs of those
quaint images and turns of expression, which
have imparted such a charm to the most agree
able essays in the language. Then, once
more, to visit the Inns of Court, the Temple,
the Inner Temple, fhe Middle Temple, Lin
coln's Inn, Gray's Inn, of which we have
read and heard so many times, and for the
first time to see the learned Judges in their
gowns and bag-wigs, and the Counsellors in
their gowns and wigs. All this could not but
impart more than a mere childish delight to
any one who had become at all familiar with
the names of these places and dignitaries, in
the histories, fictions, poetry and prose of fhe

264 LONDON.
richest literature of either ancient or modern
times. But it would never do to attempt to describe
London in any detafl. There is but little in
it, moreover, that would bear hearing de
scribed, after one has obtained a general idea
of the city as a whole. It is surprising what
a feeling of indifference about individual ob
jects of curiosity you experience there. With
most other cities it is the parts, the particular
objects, which excife the chief interest ; ruins,
churches, palaces, museums, galleries, and the
like. In London all such things become sub
ordinate. In London you are satisfied with
London. You care little about St. Paul's,
Westminster Abbey, fhe Parliament Houses,
or any other fragment of the great whole.
You would rather walk up and down Picca-
difly or Regent Street and see the life there,
than get by heart the whole of the British
Museum. You prefer the crowds in Fleet
Street and the Strand, to seeing the Tower,
the Crown jewels, the Knights on horseback,
and the Stairs down which Lady Jane Gray

THE STREETS. 205
went to execution. The very thing is the
crowd, the jam, the melee — to miss that
would be the great loss. The multitudes
abroad are a better comedy or tragedy, accord
ing to the frame of mind of the observer,
or the street he may happen to be in, whether
Regent Street, or Wapping, or Rag Fair, than
any he will be likely to witness at the Adelphi,
or the Haymarket, Drury Lane, or Covent
Garden. And the heavy rumble of innumer
able vehicles along innumerable streets, gives
out a grander sound than fhe music of Exeter
Hall or the Opera House. These are the ob
jects, the sights and sounds, which excite,
engross, astonish you in London. You are
witnessing a flow of human life which there
is nothing resembling any where else, and
which is a greater thing to witness than all
objects of stfll life whatsoever. It is not a
stream or flow of life as we use these figures,
but a torrent roaring along with all the tumult
and rage of Niagara.
I, of course, was like every body else there.
I was caught up by the spirit and genius of the
23

266 LONDON.
place, and left it very ignorant of every thing
else save this rush and turmoil of life. I once
entered St. Paul's and examined it, but it
creates little sensation in any one who has
seen St. Peter's. I worshipped once, or rather
was present, at the service of fhe Temple
Church, the nicest church, as the English say,
in all England, where the English liturgy is
carried on throughout by chanting. I peram
bulated and studied Westminster Abbey. With
the monuments I had always felt interested. I
wanted to see the very marble where was writ
ten " O Rare Ben Jonson," and a few others,
and I saw them. But the vast proportion of
the names and monuments were so few out of
the whole to confer any special gratification,
that one could only feel, on fhe whole, a deep
disappointment. Perhaps it was the republi
can taint thaf spoiled the visit. At any rate,
I could feel no pride or pleasure in reading the
names of lords and ladies, without number,
who had been remarkable only for having
once been lords and ladies. It was hard work
to find monuments to the man of mere science

WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 267
or genius, discoverers, inventors, chemists,
physicians, or lawyers, unless they had risen
to be Lord Chancellors ; they were superseded
and excluded by generals and admirals, post-
captains in the army and navy, and by hosts
of Lady Betties and Dame Maries, of every
rank and degree of nobility, from the oldest
duke in blood down to the youngest son of
the youngest baronet. Some of the more
famous poets were there, but not many. And
in the far-famed Poets' Corner the names are
counted in a breath, while you would easily
lose your breath in counting over the titled
unknown. In truth, one could only be of
fended by the pertinacity with which the
honors of rank are observed down fo the bor
ders of the grave. More so, I apprehend, than
even at Almack's. It was a De Brett's peerage
of the dead. It is, every one knows, the
grand idolatry in England. Rank riots there,
even among shoe-blacks and draymen. There
is no other worship there like that. De Brett's
is the only book, which, if books should re
appear on the other side of the grave, there

268 LONDON.
would be a common feeling about having
republished. For the monuments themselves,
there was little worthy of notice. Mrs. Night
ingale's is stfll the most famous, and, really,
perhaps, fhe best there. They are not for one
moment to be compared, in this respect, with
those of Santa Croce, at Florence. Indeed,
every where monumental sculpture seems to
be conspicuous chiefly for failures. The Ro
mans only had genius that way. The monu
ment of Adrian must have been among tombs,
what St. Peter's has been, and is, among
churches. Indeed, none of the fine arts can be said to
have their home in London or England. Many
reputable artists have arisen there since fhe mid
dle of the last century. But stfll, remembering
the length of her history and her advances in
literature and wealth, and other signs of high
civilization, these arts cannot be thought
to have made proportional progress, nor even
at present to stand on very high ground, ex
cept in respect, perhaps, to the number of their
votaries. Their general condition in London

FINE ARTS. 269
is to be known best by attendance upon the
annual exhibitions in the spring. But some of
the best artists are permanently represented in
some of their best works in the Vernon Gal
lery, a department of the National Gaflery.
Judging from the works exhibited there, how
ever, a foreigner would not draw very favor
able conclusions, in regard, at least, to the art
of painting. Paintings, in fact, are alone ex
hibited in that establishment.
The distinguishing characteristics of the
English school are detected at a glance on
entering the rooms — namely, color, as fhe
first requisite, and then a broad, loose style of
handling, calculated for effect, originated by
Reynolds and Gainsboro', as opposed to fhe
German, Dutch, French schools, where cor
rect drawing, hard and laborious finish, and a
polished surface, are the prominent character
istics. The main object of fhe great English
artists seems to have been fo see with how
little work, by how few and broad touches, a
striking effect could be produced — not, how
near to nature a work of art might be brought
23*

270 LONDON.
by the combined power of genius, skill, and
industry. This has led to a great deal of poor
art. To such an extreme have these princi
ples been carried in the extreme examples of
them, as seen in Gainsboro' himself, and in
such later artists as Turner and Constable, that
it degenerates into something that scarce de
serves the name of painting ; it is rather trick,
than careful, intelligent, and conscientious art.
There can be no doubt that Turner is a man
of genius — at any rate, a man of great knowl
edge of the theoretical principles of art — but
in the few specimens to be seen of him in the
Vernon Gallery there was not a glimmer of it,
and from them alone one could only draw the
conclusion, that his reputation, to use fhe
mildest term, was an immense exaggeration.
One work in that gallery, styled Avernus, a
pure landscape, is a fair example, I was told,
of his last and ultra manner, which quite
leaves truth behind and surrenders the whole
field to theory — a manner which mixes up
diverse masses of color and other substances,
such as varnishes, megilps, &c. on diff'erent

THE ENGLISH SCHOOL. 271
parts of a large canvass, and stirs them about
with brushes of various sizes and kinds, for an
hour or so, with some general design in the
head, till a lively imagination will at length
see faint outlines — no, not outlines, outlines
there are none — vague appearances of certain
objects having some distant relation to certain
other objects, but what fhe precise objects,
and what the precise relations, not so easy to
be determined. The picture seen from one
point has one appearance and certain probable
objects — from another, other appearances and
other probable objects ; and a long and dfligent
examination wfll never satisfy a spectator with
any certainty what the artist had in his mind,
nor the ideas he meant to convey. Just in art
as it sometimes is in literature, when you are
obliged to struggle through wordy thickets
like those of Coleridge's metaphysics, with
nothing for your pains but bruises and
scratches, or to wade through sloughs of
language — or rather phraseology — like those
of Carlyle, with no better success. One can
hardly doubt, from what we hear, that Turner

272 LONDON.
has made some good pictures, though I was not
so fortunate as to see one, (in oil) as Carlyle at
first wrote good English. But as Carlyle can
now be considered only as the Grand Corrupter
of the English speech of fhe present day, so
it is to be feared that Turner will exercise a
similar mischievous influence upon art, and
gain a like reputation. If Ruskins's book in
praise of him should have fhe intended effect
upon the young artists of England, art would
not only be injured there, but destroyed. It
is true both of the artist and of this writer,
that they can neither of them, by any possi
bility, be satisfied with the simple statement
of a truth : it must always be more ; neither
considering that more than truth — exaggera
tion — is a falsehood, as well as less.
The view of Venice, in the same collection,
when helped out by an engraver better than
fhe painter, makes a good picture ; but as a
picture done in oils, it is but a series of crude
masses of thick paint. The predominant im
pression made upon the eye is paint, paint,
what piles of paint ! No transparency, no

ENGLISH ART. 273
hiding of art, no grace, no delicacy, nothing
like atmosphere — but mists or fogs instead —
nothing but piles of gaudy paint, which the
ripening of centuries can never mellow down
into an agreeable harmony. There can be no
rashness in the prophecy, that before half a
century shall have passed, his now most fa
mous works will have lost their charm ; wfll
never be remembered for those indescribable
delicacies and truth of hues, those aerial tints
which constitute the lasting elements of all
landscape painting, never by his color or fhe
nice mechanics of his art, but solely by his
designs transmitted fo posterity by the greater
genius of some engraver.
After having read the accounts of Gains
boro', any one, I think, would experience great
disappointment on seeing his work. It is art
fit only to be seen in engravings where the
burin can make up for the defects or lapses of
the brush. I speak only of his landscape. It
is a series of coarse daubings — no beauty or
skill in the handling, nothing fine in the color.
The hues do not harmonize till you have

274 LONDON.
retreated so far from fhe canvass that most of
the forms can no longer be made out. The
same difficulty occurs, though in a much
greater degree, in looking at Turner's Avernus.
Standing at what to most eyes would be
deemed a proper distance, and all was a wild
confusion of misty paint — with the appear
ance of having been all done in a couple of
hours' time — which, if some anecdotes may
be relied on, may have been the case. Then
retreating gradually till you should find a point
where the colors should melt into each other,
you find you have got to such a distance,
thaf then, by reason of the distance, you can
not tell what the objects are. So that from
no one position, for different reasons, can the
picture become intelligible or beautiful. As
soon as fhe colors coalesce, the forms are lost.
The two great luminaries of English art are
Reynolds and Wilson.* Their elevation has
never been reached by any of their followers.
They were contemporaries, and were men of

* Hogarth was rather satirist, dramatist, and humorist, than
artist.

ENGLISH ART. 275
whom any era might be proud, but especially
the last. Since that time, wifh all the rich
patronage of England, with all their associa
tions and all their schools, and the sums lav
ished, the character of art has dwindled —
artists have multiplied indefinitely, but art has
not advanced. No individual of pre-eminent
ability has risen since in either portrait, his
tory, or landscape ; no artist of equal power
has succeeded Reynolds in portrait, defec
tive as he was in some departments of his
art. The only one with whom he has been
generally compared has been Sir Thomas
Lawrence, and he follows only after a very,
very long interval. Any one who will look
at the Waterloo Room at Windsor, will at once
see where Sir Thomas Lawrence stands. In
those portraits it is the style of scene painting
— in other words the style of Turner, applied
to heads and drapery. With Wilson in land
scape, no one since his time is to be named.
He was long enough in Italy to learn from the
artists there, and particularly from Claude, the
just middle ground where breadth and truth

276 LONDON.
meet, where every object of the picture is at
once seen and understood at the usual distance
from the canvass, and yet no where a hard,
Dutch minuteness. The aim of the English
school has been to produce the same results as
the Italian artists by some shorter cut, leaving
out half the labor, and saving half the time ;
trusting to original genius to supply all defi
ciencies. But the failure has been conspicuous.
Art in England, at fhe present, is wonder
fully prolific in painters and pictures, but not
equally so in power. It has become a great
business in the manufacture of calinet work
in subjects (not the style) of the Dutch school.
It is a modern way of ornamenting rooms,
rather than offering to the world works of
genius, or works the result of high aspirations,
and learned industry. And this perhaps may
prove to be the only certain effect of this
modern institution of Art Unions — a vast
multiplication of works of a respectable me
diocrity, wrought on the same principles as
any other ornamental mechanic art, which
aims to confer pleasure, but, much more to

MODERN ART. 277
make money. But with the rage which now
exists in England for art, and the great num
bers devoted to it, and the great prices which
are readily obtained for works of even tolera
ble merit, and it would be strange indeed if
works of considerable excellence did not make
their appearance. Stfll one prominent cause
of the comparative inferiority of the art of
painting exists, not only in England, but on
the Continent also, which must for a long
time to come, no one can guess how long,
continue to produce the most disastrous effects,
and that is, the loss of Religion as the inspir
ing theme, and the consequent loss of the
scale on which the immortal works of the 14th,
15th, 16th centuries were wrought. Religion,
in its subjects, tended to enlarge and elevate
and strengthen the mind of the artist ; and,
hardly less, the life or even colossal size on
which the frescoes on the walls and ceflings
of churches were done. The existence of
this cause alone, during those centuries, were
enough fo explain the rise of that crowd of
brilliant men that made those times illus-
24

278 LONDON.
trious ; and the absence of it now, to explain
the dwarfed and dwindled art of to-day. Cor
rectness of drawing and general truth were
absolutely essential when all was on the scale
of life. Errors were then instantly detected
by the general eye : whfle now, the modern
cabinet size, or less, serves as a safe veil to
conceal all sorts of blunders, but especially
errors in form.
London is, as a city, in its municipal ar
rangements, government and laws, perhaps the
most complete in the world. All seems in the
most perfect order ; every thing in its place,
like the brooms, brushes, and dusting cloths
of a perfect housekeeper, and for that prime
virtue, cleanliness, it is perhaps more remarka
ble than any other, notwithstanding its aston
ishing crowds, and the greater difficulty there
must consequently be in making or keeping it
so. How such streets as the Strand and Fleet
Street are or can ever be swept, I never could
tell ; it was only necessary to suppose that as
they were as clean as any others, the work

MUNICIPAL ARRANGEMENTS. 279
must be done by night and gas light. The
city is not quite so clean probably as some of
the Dutch towns, where the scrubbing brush
is applied to the sidewalks. Even fhe air
of London seems swept and sweetened, save
in a few neighborhoods. The atmosphere is
often indeed thick wifh mingled smoke and
fog, but the sense of smell is rarely offended
there, which is the best evidence conceivable
of an all-pervading cleanliness, a cleanliness
reaching into all lanes, alleys, and back-yards.
On the continent, though ifs cities are often so
much more imposing to the eye, through the
greater loftiness of the houses, than those of
London, to another sense, quite as important
to one's comfort and much more so to one's
health, the annoyance and disgust are unceas
ing and universal. All this, the cleanliness,
the order, the safety of this great metropolis,
is of course owing very much to fhe perfection
of the new police, but much more, I appre
hend, to the general character of the people.
This police is a universal presence in London.
You can hardly pass fifty persons any where

280 LONDON.
in any street, lane or alley, but you meet a
police-man with his short baton, his white
cotton gloves, his tight-buttoned coat ; and
wherever and whenever you meet one, it is
with a sense of safety and protection. He is
the guardian, especially, of the stranger. An
inquiry of any sort is sure to be answered
promptly and civilly. If one is doubtful of
his way, by day or night, but especially by
night, should he obtain his direction from a
police-man, and he will be sure against de
ception — never quite sure otherwise.
All that side of life in London that has
relation fo locomotion, either on the narrowest
or the broadest scale, from the employment
of a porter, a barrow, a handcart, to a cab, a
hackney coach, an omnibus, a railroad car or
train — all such arrangements are like those of
the English household, remarkable for their
punctuality, trustworthiness, skill, celerity,
honesty, neatness. Nothing can be conceived
more complete in all its parts than the man
agement of the post-office department in Lon
don. Ten times dafly all throughout London

POLICE  POST-OFFICE  CLEANLINESS. 28 1
is there a penny-post delivery of letters. No
private means of conveyance are to be com
pared for promptness, certainty, cheapness,
with the public provision made for the trans
mission of letters, papers, notes no bigger than
the wax thaf seals them, fo and from every
street, lane, alley, of the vast metropolis. The
remarkable feature is not that there should be
such au office, in its theory, but that it should
be practically managed with such perfection —
that nothing should ever be lost, or scarcely
missing : the system reaching down with equal
fidelity to the convenience and wants of the
humblest citizen in the obscurest corner of
fhe remotest by-way of the city.
I have spoken of the cleanliness of the
streets. This virtue is I believe a universal
characteristic, not of London alone, but of all
England. The indoor and outdoor habits of
the people are almost irreproachable in this
respect. Yet save in respect to the neatness
and thorough finish in regard to gardens,
grounds, and all the immediate surroundings
of a dwelling-house or farm, which are more
24*

282 LONDON.
than irreproachable, I do not know that there
is much difference to be noted between Eng
lish and American habits — one habit alone
excepted, presently to be noticed. House
keeping can hardly be more neatly conducted
in any part of England than in Massachusetts
or New York. But all the environments of
a country house or farm, all such outside
buildings as out-houses, sheds for cattle and
pigs, cattle yards, barns, and so on, are, in
America, as the rule, dirty, neglected, slov
enly, ruinous, in the comparison. The old
rubbish that is suffered to accumulate about
one half the New England country dw*ellings,
specially about the barns, the old tumble-down
sheds, and roofiess corn-barns, the old carts,
wagons, chaises, and other carriages of all sorts
and names, the fragments of old sleighs, old
wheels with tires off or on, piles of rotten
boards, barrels, boxes and wheelbarrows, kept
in such places, one must suppose on some
principle of reverence of farnfly antiquities,
from year to year, and even from century to
century, is a curious feature in our country

CLEANLINESS. 283
society, and worth examining into for its
cause, where all else seems so well ordered
and neat. In families of a modern date, a
change for the better is quite observable ; as,
also, in a more abundant use of whitewash,
which, not many years ago, in Massachusetts,
would be applied to ceilings and walls once in
ten, twenty, fifty years, and perhaps never.
Any one may remember to have seen ceilings
black with age and dirt, while at the same
time the stairs, floors and dressers would be
white as soap and sand could make them.
Among the descendants of the Dutch emi
grants the same sort of anomalies are to be
noticed, where, while all interiors of dwellings
are without spot or stain, all yards and streets
in any neighborhood are absolutely impassable
for every kind of disgusting filth. The city
of New York is equally remarkable with the
smaller villages for this sort of strange pecu
liarity — indeed, more remarkable probably
than any other place, large or small, in Europe
or America.
I have said a few words of the nice and

284 LONDON.
cleanly habits of the English, in their houses
and cities. In their persons they are equally
remarkable for fhe virtue. The Englishman,
if not always handsomely, is at least always
appropriately and neatly dressed. Dress is
almost a part of his religion. The fashions
of England are not of so much elegance as
those of France, or America, which in this
particular is French rather than English. An
English coat is a clumsy structure compared
with either a French or an American one.
But the English is always better brushed ;
and, for his hat, it looks as if it were every
day newly varnished. His linen is perhaps
oftener changed than with others. But wheth
er that be so or not, one thing is clear, that
although a London atmosphere will in the
case of a stranger mark it throughout in
black streaks in a few hours, for some un
fathomable reason the Englishman's bosoms
and wrists maintain their stainless Avhite.
There are those, I am persuaded, from what
may be observed at home, persons on whom a
fly never lights, and a grain of dust never falls.

AN AMERICAN HABIT. 285
It is the only way of accounting for their shirt
collars. Insects and dust, as a general thing,
abhor and shun the Englishman.
One trait more, though with the risk of
disgusting some and offending more — though
I will hope not.* An Englishman, I believe,
rarely chews, and, compared with the Ameri
can, rarely smokes ; but whether he does not
secretly practise both these abominations I am
not prepared to say. But with both these pro
vocatives, if it be so, one thing he never does,
is, to spit. That fact draws a line of de
marcation between the Englishman and the
American, broader and deeper a thousand-fold
than any other, in politics, government, laws,
language, religion. The Englishman never
* I am perfectly willing to be ostracised on the score of taste
for introducing this topic, if, by calling attention to it, it may he
the means of redeeming a few even from a habit which makes
our whole country a bye-word and an offence all over the civilized
world. I am sorry to say, that in regard to this practice hardly
a gentleman in his manners is any where to be found. One
meets persons constantly at public places, in public conveyances,
with the dress and outward aspect of well bred men, many whom
you kamD to come under the category of what is called the best
society, with whose personal habits, as you are unfortunately
obliged to sit beside them in some rail-car, you can be filled only
with an unconquerable disgust.

286 LONDON.
spits. Or if he does, he first goes home, shuts
himself up in his room, locks his door, argues
the necessity of the case ; if necessary, per
forms fhe disagreeable duty, and returns to
society with a clear conscience.* The Ameri-
ican spits always, and every where ; sometimes
when it is necessary ; always, when it is not.
It is his occupation, his pastime, his business.
Many do nothing else all their lives ; and
always indulge in that singular recreation
when they have nothing else fo do. Some
times in a state of momentary forgetfulness
he intermits, but then, as if he had neglected
* Every American is born perhaps to the habit ; though my
earliest recollections are of its having been ever sternly inter
dicted. Still, universal bad example had its unavoidable bad
effect to a certain extent. In England I happened one day to be
in a country post-ofBce in company with another person. I felt a
disagreeable necessity upon me. X knew I was in England, and
could not, for such a purpose as I had in view, escape from the
country. I did what I could ; but, I am willing to confess, fell
shorl of my duty. I had passed through two rooms and a hall to
reach the letter-box. I suddenly retreated through the two rooms,
leaving my companion as I supposed with the postmaster. I
reached a large mat at the outside door. I ought to have sought
the street. It was a great error. But before I could commence my
return, my companion — my good genius — was at my ear, and
hoarsely whispered — " You must never do that beneath an Eng
lish roof." An illustration at once of the two most distinctive
traits of the Englishman — cleanliness and manliness.

AN AMERICAN HABIT. 287
a sworn duty, returns to it again wifh con
science-smitten vigor. He spits at home and
abroad, by night and by day, awake and
asleep, in company and in solitude, for his
own amusement and the edification of a spit
ting community. On the freshly painted or
scoured floor, on the clean deck of a ship, or
steamboat, on parlor floors, covered whether
with ingrained, Brussels, Wilton, or Turkey,
even there he voids his rheum ; upon the
unabsorbent canvass, so that one may see,
where numbers congregate, the raflroad cars
to run in more ways than one. The pulpits
and pews of churches are not safe. The
foot pavement of the streets, the floors of all
public places, of exchanges, hotels, of Con
gress halls, are foul with it ; and in railroad
cars it must always be necessary for a lady to
shorten her garments, as if about fo walk in
the deep mud of the street, or the snow and
water of spring, if she would escape defile
ment to either her dress or her slippers. As
the power of direction of these human missfles
is by no means unerring, notwithstanding so

288 LONDON.
much practice, one's own person, and all parts
of his person, are exposed to the random shots
of this universal foe of American civilized life ;
and often he finds on different parts of his
dress proofs abundant of the company he has
kept. The only single spot absolutely secure
is a man's face ; and that would not be, were
it not for fhe fear of a duel.
That there is not fhe shadow of exaggera
tion in this description, coarse as it is, and
coarse as it has been my intention to make it,
all Americans, and all travellers who have ever
been within an American hotel, steamboat, or
rail-car — all will testify. And the result of
it all is, I suppose, that we are the freest and
most enlightened people on the face of the
earth ! But for one, republican as I am in
principle, I think, on the whole, I would
prefer the despotism of Austria, Russia, or
Rome, to the freedom, if I must take with
it the spit, of America. It is vice enough to
tempt one to forswear home, country, kindred,
friends, religion. It is ample cause for break
ing acquaintance, friendship, for a divorce. In

AN AMERICAN HABIT. 28'.)
a word, it is our grand national distinction, if
we did but know if. There are certainly
parts of the country comparatively, but only
comparatively, free from this vice. Here at
the north there is much less than at the west
and the south, though here enough of it to
disgust one with his race. In proportion as
general refinement prevails, fhe custom abates.
At the south, no carpets, no rooms, no presence
affords protection.* Here, in the best rooms,
the best society, there is partial exemption ;
though not often enough from the presence
of that ingenious, fearful patent, the brazen,
china, or earthen box.
Would thaf my country could be induced
fo pause in this its wonderful career ! Pity
some public effort could not be made by way
of general convention, or otherwise, for the
abatement of this national mischief — cer-

* Let six such Americans meet round a stove, in a bar-room,
or parlor, or hotel drawing-room, of a morning — ofthe six, four
will spit before speaking a word ; one will bid good morning
first, and spit afterwards ; the sixth will make a remark some
what at length upon the weather, and, by way of compensation
for extraordinary retention, spit twice ot thrice.
25

290 LONDON.
tainly as worthy of attention, as very many
of our political and moral reforms. The
advice of the London surgeon, Abernethy,
to an American sea-captain, was at any
rate useful to us all, and pregnant with good
medical phflosophy. " Keep your saliva in
your mouth to help digest your food with,"
said he, ""and not spit it all over my carpet."
Very wholesome counsel. And, seriously, who
can say, how much the pallid face, the pro
verbial indigestion of our country, even con
sumption itself, may not be owing fo this
constant drain which deprives the stomach of
a secretion which nature provided for the most
important purposes in the manufacture of the
blood, and which she certainly did not pro
vide to be wasted and thrown about in fhe
manner of fhe Anglo-American.*

* It seems to be quite within the power of railroad directors,
captains of steamboats, keepers of taverns, hotels, boarding and
eating houses, &c., to do something to check, at least, the vile
practice. The difficulty, however, one must suppose, would he,
that they themselves are too often in the same condemnation.
But it must be worth considering on economical grounds, whether
it were not deserving of a serious effort to break up a habit that
costs the labor and wages of many servants daily, in any consid-

ENGLISH LOVE OF ItONEY. 291
To any American traveller through Eng
land, it must be quite observable how com
merce and the love of money, stocks and
trade, all throughout England, override letters,
art, nobility — every thing, in a word, but law.
England is still comparatively free and law-
abiding. But once England was known
abroad rather by her great names in literature
and science — Bacon, Locke, Shakspeare,
Milton, Newton, Davy, were the names first
suggested. Now they are of quite another
character; Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield,
are to-day words of a more powerful spell.
Cottons and cutlery, carpets and coats, wool
lens and worsted, now reign paramount. The
chimneys of innumerable engines belching
smoke like volcanoes, now spread darkness

erable establishment, to make apartments decent or habitable after
the passage of a single day, owing to this single filthy praclice.
They may well consider, too, whether their guests have any more
right to spit about apartments and on floors, than they have to
throw upon them a shovel full or barrow load of any other kind
of ordure. It is certainly an advantage to three of our cities that
the Cochiluate, the Crolon, and the Schuylkill run through them.
If branches of them could in any way be turned through our rail
road cars daily, it would be an indescribable benefit to the compa
nies concerned, and the community generally.

292 LONDON.
over the land. Foreign fleets from both
worlds crowd the docks of London and Liv
erpool, bearing along with them countless
throngs of partners, traders, agents, clerks,
from all the known regions of the earth, fo
drive their bargains with fhe modern lords of
the soil no longer the secluded occupants of
distant country-seats, long descended from
illustrious ancestors, inaccessible save to a
sacred few, but installed behind London
counters, or within remoter counting-rooms ;
attended, not by foot-pages and liveried ser
vants innumerable as once, but, instead, be
sieged by armies of clerks, agents, runners and
drummers, all equally intent upon the service of
the modern chivalry, money making. The Lon
don man of business is now the true earl, baron,
duke of the empire. The lust of wealth has
seized all hearts, and enslaved them and bound
them in chains stronger even — though so dif
ferent — than those which bound the old lords
of the soil in fhe days of Charles the Second.
This modern chivalry is an improvement upon
fhe old in point of morals, but would not, I

ENGLISH LOVE OF MONEY. 293
fear, be thought so genteel. The Lovelaces
would probably be considered a more gentle
manly breed in fhe calendar where such things
are graduated, than fhe brewer, the grocer, the
cotton-spinner, the ironmonger, who now reign
in the ascendant. But the world wfll gene
rally agree to bestow honor and reverence
where the* power is, and in 1850 money is
power.* Money is, in England, King, Lords,
and Commons. Money is the real nobflity.
Bankers are the true ministry, and determine
questions of peace and war, and make the
treaties. The Rothschilds, though they can
not get into Parliament, rule with equal des
potism on the outside. The England of the

* The pride of money is the universal pride of the English ;
and the love of displaying it in the most ostentatious expendi
tures, is another trait quite observable. To throw about money
with an expression of sovereign contempt for those to whom it is
thrown, is altogether English. The Americans love money and
love more to spend it — but almost never in that spirit. Fraser
says: " Perhaps never since the lime of the Roman Empire was
money so omnipotent as in England at this moment (1S50). Not
only it commands all enjns'ment, it cnmmands all respect." So
think and speak miny English, lo their credit. A most highly
cultivated English gentleman resident abroad, expressed no dis
like so deep as of his own travelling countrymen. Tliey were a
tribe whom he always shunned.
25*

294 LONDON.
nineteenth century is but one vast counting-
house. The slur of Napoleon is truer now
than when first uttered, that England is a
nation of shopkeepers.
This is, of course, what we are, also, fo a
very considerable extent. Agriculture, how
ever, as yet, bears away the palm, and ¦\vfll
for some time to come. We are still farmers,
much more than traders. But though we, as
well as they, were all shopkeepers, it must
surely be considered as following a more
Christian, as a more reputable business, than
pleasure and idleness, though England is yet
so far in darkness as not to think so, and to
feel a little ashamed of her modern destiny;
and fond as her children are of money, and of
all it brings, they would almost be ready to
abandon it, with all its power, for a very little
rank. They glory in their wealth, but have
no sooner made it than they, without a mo
ment's hesitation, would surrender it all for a
prefix of Lord or Sir to the name.
But though all this be so true, — this devo
tion of England fo commerce and the accumu-

CANT. '/iyi3
lation of wealth, and their success in heaping
up riches beyond any other people on earth —
they are very much grieved that the American
should be touched with the same infirmity,
and, as we well know, never cease from ten
derly upbraiding us for our devotion to fhe
" almighty dollar." This is all most kindly
meant, no doubt, but it reveals a trait in the
English character which deserves a little at
tention — their love and their practice of cant.
I suppose if there be one trait by which it is
more deeply marked than by another, except
two, possibly, already named, it is by this par
ticular form of hypocrisy. Colossal magni
tude is not more truly the characteristic of
London, than cant is of the English mind.
To read their journals, reviews, papers, and
books, you would fancy them, from what they
say of themselves, to represent the most moral
and religious, the most loving and peaceable,
the most generous and magnanimous, the most
self-sacrificing, pious and Christian people in
the wide world. But Avhelher they in truth
are what they seem to many to be, because

296 LONDON.
they arrogate these virtues to themselves so
freely, is more than doubted by the world
at large, and quite denied by such learned
domestic authorities as Carlyle and Punch.
Even the Edinburgh hints at "a form of re
ligious insincerity called cant," as fhe " special
infirmity of the people." These, but espe
cially the two first named, are the doctors
who particularly apply themselves fo fhe cure
of this easy-besetting sin of the English char
acter. Yet honestly, fearlessly, powerfully as
they have plied their trade, they have found
the disease too deep seated to be easily erad
icated. Native, moreover, to the constitution
of the entire people, and long hereditary,
unfortunately, it has been caught by the Anglo-
American, and, though weakened by transmis
sion, finds itself in a hopeful way, and wifh
encouraging prospects before it — but by no
means, as yet, in fhe condition of the parent
people. In England the very occupation of
the people seems to be straining at gnats and
swallowing camels. They are filled with a
very virtuous indignation at the continued

CANT. 297
existence of American slavery, although if was
they who planted it here, and that, too, against
our wfll and most earnest remonstrances, while
at fhe same time they swallow without diffi
culty the slavery of one hundred and fifty
millions of Hindoos. In what proportion out
of the whole there is personal slavery, where
there is buying and selling, and labor without
remuneration, that basest, meanest form of ty
ranny, I know not, though the proportion is very
great,* but that there is political slavery there

* Thus much, however, may be said : In the dominions of Brit
ish India there are estimated to be not far from a million of slaves,
domestic and field slaves, subject to all the usual conditions of
that miserable life, such as scant nutriment, the torlure of the
lash — going even somnimes to murder — buying and selling,
separation of families, &c. Adam, quoting McNaghten, Raber,
Colelirook, Hamilton, Richardson and other authorities on Indian
affairs, comes to such results. " The legalily of Hindoo slave
ry," says Mr. -Adam, " has been revived, and that of Mahomme-
dan slavery has been continued by thc British government, which
should have equally refused to sanction both." How far a pru
dent regard for revenue has withheld this sanction, Mr. Adam
does not say, but may be easily inferred. The love of money is
the rivet in the chain of both Indian and American slavery. In
one as much as the other. " There are many circumstances which
cannot but be regarded with shame hy every British subject pos
sessed of the common feelings of humanity; but the sale of s/aues
aicay from their birth-place, for arrears of revenue to the govern
ment, furnishes the last touch to the dark picture." Thirtytwo

298 LONDON.
throughout thaf whole immense population all
the world knows ; a slavery, beneath which
the East Indian is ground to powder by the
irresistible power of English arms, and by
which the proceeds of his industry, or his
hereditary wealth, are wrung from him by^
compulsory process, and, by their impoverish
ment, the most gigantic fortunes accumulated
all over the British islands, and, as well, sine-

years have passed away, according to Mr. Adam, since the
first efforts were made for the abolition or amelioration of the
evil, "but it is still unchecked, unreformed, unremedied; and
yet an evil, while equally malignant, so much more easy and
simple of remedy than among our American Stales." " In other
slaveholding countries," says Mr. Adiim, "the difficulties to
emancipation consist not only in the supposed interests of slave
holders, but in the alleged unfitness of the slaves for the rights
and duties of freedom. No such difficulty, no such unfitness,
can be alleged in India. The slaves of India are not of foreign
birth and strange aspect. They do not speak a different language,
profess a different religion, practise different customs from the
rest of the country. They are children of the soil. Their eman
cipation would be only one step out of many necessary to this
improvement of their condition." As the English propose — to
which there would he no possible objection — that our South
should furnish samples of their slave population, for the great
exhibition, we would propose, as only fair, that East India
England should also furnish ttmir varieties of slaves from
Assam, Mysore, the Carnatic, Tanjore, Travancore, and the
immediaie neighborhoods of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay : it
would supply a much prettier and larger variety than American
Africa.

CANT. 299
curist idlers, without number, throughout the
Indian peninsulas, enriched by enormous sala
ries, — natives doing all the work for what
rice and rupees will keep them from starving.
Notwithstanding the frequent display on the
part of travelling Englishmen and the review-
writing Englishmen, of the most generous
sentiments and sympathies on behalf of the
blacks, and their expression of wonder and
regret that the American white should refuse
to consort on equal terms with the free African,
it is still true that color, even the light olive
tint of the Hindoo, bears the same mark of
degradation in Calcutta, and to many even in
London as here, and the white Englishman
will not sit at meat with the East Indian,
though he be a prince or a philosopher. There
were gentlemen, who, though invited, would
not dine in company with Ram Mohun Roy,
though a full-blooded Rajah, and a most
learned and accomplished man — "indignant
ly refusing to sit at fable with that black
fellow." — They lecture the world on the
virtues and duties of peace, but without

300 LONDON.
scruple will let loose the dogs of war whenever
their flannels, their cottons, their woollens, iron,
or opium, are interfered with. — They give
suppers and breakfasts, and have all their
equipages in full liveried action on Sundays,
whereby armies of servants of higher and
lower degrees are detained in personal at
tendance on their masters throughout the day,
and, for a pretence, stop the Sunday mail, that
all the various operatives connected therewith
may be at leisure fo go fo church as they
ought to do, and say their prayers. — They are
sadly pained that the American should love
the dollar so well, the only difference being
that their love of the pound is the same, only
five times as much. — They have made a great
ado, and with justice and sense, about the
virtue of temperance in England, — there is
need of it, for the English, and still more the
Scotch and Irish, are a nation of hard drink
ers ; but, at the same time, made cruel
and cowardly war, but a few years since,
upon the Chinese, to compel them to get
drunk on the opium which they first forced

CANT. 301
them to buy at the point of fhe bayonet.* —
They are really mortified that we, who they
cannot, to their manifest chagrin, deny, sprung
from English blood, are stfll so low in civfli-
zation that we produce little literature, and no
art, as yet, (West, Copley, Stuart, Aflston,
Inman, being Englishmen,! just as Wflson,
Reynolds, Lawrence, Wilkie, Wyatt and Gib
son are or were, of course, Italians, — the first
having been at school a while in London, the .
last in Rome,) not remembering that England,
a thousand years older than we at that time,
produced no artists before the middle of the
eighteenth century, and to this day has pro
duced not one of the highest class ; the taste
of England never having risen above the ad
miration of Carlo Dolce, among the old
painters, and now delighting itself chiefly in
the horses' heads, pet poodles, and woolly

* It was probably the outrageous insolence of Napier, in his
intercourse .vith the Chinese government, even more than com
mercial difficulties, that led to the war. A more amusing speci
men of the true English spirit could not be easily found, than
in the blustering of his lordship.
I London Art Union Journal for 1848, p. 204.
26

302 LONDON.
lap-dogs of Landseer.* — England riots in lux
uries obtained at the expense of the comfort
and subsistence of the lower classes, from
which she wrings by taxes, direct and indi
rect, the last penny that wifl just leave the
life in the body, over whom she at the same
time utters the most touching lamentations for
their hardships and miseries. The female sex
is, in this case, the grand sacrifice, who, in
this respect at least, are slaves — though liv
ing on the boasted soil of England, that they
are compelled to work without remuneration ;
for that cannot be called remuneration which
fafls not only to support life in tolerable com
fort, but to support it at all ; and to save from
starvation by cold and hunger, resort must be
had to vices which, were God no more merci
ful than man, would destroy soul as well as

* The winter of 1849 showed nothing of a more exalted char
acter in the way of art, at the print-shops of Picadilly, than
engravings from the works of Landseer. Brute life seemed to
have obtained quite the ascendancy over human : as much so as
saints, Christs, madonnas once had in Italy. Nothing was to he
seen but horses' heads, sometimes three or four in the same piece,
and almost the size of life, — or very large dogs, aristocratic or
plebeian.

CANT. 303
body.* — They make long prayers and many
of them, according to some travellers, espe
cially among the higher classes; yet seam
stresses, the Spitalfield weavers, the weavers
and spinners in Manchester and Glasgow, and
especially the innumerable slaves of the slop
shop, live in misery and die in want, without
any adequate efi'ort being made to fix by law
a tariff — as easy to be agreed upon, at least,
as any other tariff — of prices for labor, by
which it should no longer be in the power of
the richer to defraud fhe poorer of their toil or
their time.f
I have spoken of the English as remarkable
for their devotion to the love of money. They
used to love arms better, and they still love
them enough. But times are changed, and

* See a late number ofthe Westminster Review, Art. Prostitu
tion. t The uncalculated and incalculable wealth of England, side by
side with ils poverty beyond description or imagination, presents
a monstrous picture of Christian life — certainly no less so than
the slavery of America, side by side with the boasted freedom of
our Republic, in the light of Christianity and of the nineteenth
century. Both seem to prove a too willing obstinacy in wrong
doing — as both evils are so easy of remedy, with a good con
science.

304 LONDON.
commerce with its golden stores now chiefly
occupies and infatuates the English mind.
The American, an equal perhaps in his knowl
edge of, and his devotion to, the science of
accumulation, is certainly, at present, and has
been for a long time past, his superior in both
his passion for arms, and for the skill and suc
cess with which he uses them. And the
reason of this superiority seems plain enough.
It is but a necessary effect of our democracy
that the American should be a better soldier
than fhe Englishman, both on land and on
water. Experience has demonstrated this
superiority whenever we have come into col
lision, and prior to experience the event ought
to have been expected. The republican, when
ever there has been any approach to equality
of position and forces, has ever shown himself
the better man of fhe two. Thermopylae set
tled that question for the ancients ; Bunker
Hill and the war of the revolution for the
moderns. It could not be otherwise, except
accidentally. Who wfll of necessity be the
stronger, braver, more powerful man — and so

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SOLDIER. 305
with an army — he who fights for monthly
pay — a low, base-minded hireling — in the
service of a government of which he forms
no part, about which he cares little, and knows
less, except that it is an absolute, imperious,
irresistible power set up over him, which may
crush him in a moment, but is very little likely
unexpectedly to bless him ; or he who goes out
to the field, himself one of the lords and owners
of the soil, who carries his government on his
back, who, yesterday, a private, to-morrow
may be king, is, in a word, himself king and
country ? Who can doubt what the result
must be, if an hundred, a thousand, or an hun
dred thousand of men, of spirit and character
so opposite, should be pitted against each other ?
A republican spirit rising up against oppression
can never be suppressed, but in the case of the
most overwhelming disproportion of forces ;
which was the case lately in Hungary, and
the principal, if not the sole cause of her fail
ure. She was conquered not by the spirit and
power of legitimacy, but by the innumerable
hordes of barbarians of the north. Her free-
26 »

306 LONDON.
dom, under her circumstances, was simply a
physical impossibility. Nothing could have
been more an act of insanity than her revolu
tion, attempted by so diminutive a power
against the supremacy of Austria, and Russia.
At first Hungary was every where successful,
— the reason was, it was then the spirit of
freedom encountering equal, sometimes even
superior forces. But this was accidental. After
a battle or two it was all over with her. Hun
gary was already exhausted. Her first forces
were all her forces, while her adversary was
drawing upon a bank of inexhaustible resources,
whose drafts never could be dishonored. Her
overthrow was as inevitable as that a hundred
men can always beat off five men. Her
attempt was but a sublime folly, a glorious
madness. Freedom was unfortunate, not de
feated. Free as England is in comparison with con
tinental powers, yet in all our encounters with
her she has been defeated by America, and sig
nally so — and would be again and again, for
the same reason, were other quarrels to arise.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SOLDIER. 307
The Englishman is indeed free in a sense,
even a .sort of a republican, yet the American
is freer and much more of a republican, and
for that reason fhe better fighter of the two.
It is utterly false that the more ignorant, the
more man is imbruted, the more of a machine
he is, therefore, the better soldier. More false
in philosophy, even, than in fact. An Ameri
can army composed of militia-men of New
England, with a good cause, is an army abso
lutely invincible. In no other conceivable
army could there be the same moral power ;
and in every part of the Union the same fact
would be approximately true. The well mar
shalled, well disciplined automaton brutes,
called standing armies, of the old world,
could not stand long enough to be beaten.
There is a gain, moreover, on the part of the
American, in the nature of the sentiment of
loyalty. The English soldier has an imagi
nary love of his queen or king, whom he
never saw, nor ever will see or love — an
abstract feeling of loyalty which does some
thing for him ; he has the feeling of a subject

308 LONDON.
toward governors and masters, whom he feels
extremely honored in defending and dying for.
And could there be on the part of the sol
dier a personal knowledge and love of his
king or queen, as there was among so many
of the French toward Napoleon, and knew
him or her to be worthy for whom he was to
fight and die, there would be sense and chiv
alry in the service, and it would do much fo
raise the character of an army. But who can
not deplore the miserable fate of the multi
tudes who poured out lives for such monarchs
as the Stuarts — the two Charleses and James ?
The American is the country and the govern
ment in his own person, and he wields his
blows as the lordly knight of old dealt his in
defence of his own august person or his
princely domain. The feeling of loyalty here
is independent of all personal relations ; it is for
the country and the government as it is at the
time — and the.se do not change; if they
were ever worth fighting for and dying for,
they are now, to-day, and will be to-morrow,
and the next year, and the next century.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SOLDIER. 309
There is no succession of Henrys, Charleses,
Jameses, to degrade the noble sentiment to a
mere personality, wavering and changing as
human character and dynasties change. Loy
alty in a republic means something.
Is there a more striking fact in modern his
tory than the defeat of England in our revolu
tionary wai- ? — we, a feeble people, hardly a
people at all — poor — of little more than two
millions, sprinkled thinly over our immense
territories, — they, the first power in the world,
solid, compact, rich, skilled in the art of war,
with the world at their beck ? Their defeat,
after a protracted struggle of eight years, was
as disgraceful — looked at in a mere mflitary
point of view — as the fratricidal war was
needless and atrocious in its conception and
conduct, looked at in a moral point of view.
So it was in the brief war of 1812 ; whenever
there was a fair measuring of weapons, the
republican arm was ever the stronger and
heavier of the two, and the defeat was no less
signal in the second case than in the first.
These astounding differences in results can

310 LONDON.
be accounted for, not by any trivial or par
tial causes, but only by the operation of
grand principles of republican liberty on the
one side, and the want of them on the
other. Nothing can be plainer than this, that if
friendly relations and feelings have not here
tofore existed, or do not now exist between
the two countries, the fault must lie with the
elder and parent state. The first, and natural,
feeling toward England was, throughout the
colonies, and even after the war of the revo
lution, nothing but reverence and regard. The
injustice and wickedness of that war hardly
caused a diminution of it; certainly not even
in the democratic party an absolute cessa
tion of it, or a general hatred. The injury
and injustice were soon forgotten and for
given. An American of the present day ex
periences, almost without exception, and
expresses those natural sentiments of regard
toward England with which youth regards
age, exalted reputation, literary pre-eminence.

RELATIONS OF THE TWO PEOPLE. 311
political supremacy. And the first time he
goes there, especially if in youth or middle
life, there is scarce any bounds to the warm
hearted emotions he feels and generously in
dulges and expresses. Could I have visited
England thirty years ago, and had Victoria
then been Q.ueen, I could have kneeled and
kissed the very hem of her garment, or the
earth she had trodden on, from a strong feeling
of natural loyalty toward her as a woman and
a Queen, and sovereign of the great people
over whom she ruled. Never was one nation
more bound to another by instinctive ties of
reverence and admiration, than America to
England ; and but for the want of all sort of
return of any like sentiment, on the part of
England, that feeling would have remained.
But, while young America was all fervor and
love. Old England was all frigidity and ice.
Her language and her acts expressed only envy,
jealousy, and hatred. When I speak of Eng
land, I mean her newspapers, her reviews, her
literature, her political acts. I speak not of
large portions of her people, of chiefly the whig

312 LONDON.
or reform side in politics, who are of quite a
different character, and who, in kindly regard
toward our country, seem almost like ourselves.
I speak of her as she is fairly enough repre
sented by her soubriquet, John Bull, standing
for that portion of Tory English, by whom the
rest of the English and the country are ruled
— that sort of English, whig or tory, some
times one, sometimes fhe other, but always
one and the same in its spirit of encroachment
and aggrandizement by which the Eastern
Hemisphere has been seized and held captive,
by which America was tyrannized over till it
broke her chains and escaped, and by which
encroachments are made, or sought to be made,
and her standard planted on all shores, islands,
and continents, civflized or uncivilized, of the
earth. With the surly nature of thaf animal,
she has been at great pains ever since we have
been a nation, to do all in her power, by insult
and injury in many forms, to embitter and ex
asperate the feelings of America. And she has
succeeded only too well. To that virtuous
work the Edinburgh Review devoted its great

RELATIONS OF THE TWO PEOPLE. 313
abilities with zeal and constancy, the Quar
terly lagging not far behind. To these efforts,
and similar ones all over the islands, must be
traced fhe feelings so opposite to those I
have just described, and which of late years
have prevailed throughout fhe country. It is
with a totally different feeling from that with
which the American forty years ago would
have visited England, with which he would
visit the same scenes now — or rather, perhaps,
a few years since, as it is quite obvious within
these few years how much more humane the
spirit of her literary press has become, espe
cially the language of her travellers, how
much more just the tone of her reviews.
Compare, for instance, the review in the Edin
burgh, of Ashe or TroUope, Hall or Fearon,
with the recent one of Lyell, and note the
change. It is not after all, perhaps, that Eng
land is absolutely singular in her language
toward us. I apprehend it is very much fhe
same toward other nations with whom she is
apt to come into collision. She is actuated in
her treatment of others by no spirit of justice
27

314 LONDON.
or generosity.* And her estimates of foreign
character and manners are the last that are to
be adopted as trustworthy and reliable. Yet
we have received all our notions of European
life and character from the English press, and
are to this day imbued with English prejudices
almost to the extent with the English them
selves. Till within a very few years, we
have had no other idea of a Frenchman, than
that he was one half dancing-master, and one
half monkey, a people of light, frivolous char
acter, whose manners were as fantastic as their
principles were treacherous and false. If we
wished for information of the Italian, the
Dutchman, the German, we received it all
through the same discolored medium, the Eng
lish press. But that we derived little but what
was distorted or false from that quarter, we

* It is very far from a flattering likeness which continentals —
Italians and French — certainly, draw in return of their English
neighbors. The poor Italians need their money, and they take
it ; but afterward relieve themselves by a variety of expletives,
not exactly complimentary to the national character. The truth
is, the English are ' no where liked ; on the continent, often
hated.

ENGLISH UNFAIRNESS. 315
now know, from the light that has broken in
from other sources, and can infer especially
from the misrepresentations which were circu
lated throughout the world respecting our
selves. Feeling the falseness of these, that
we were greatly wronged in the eyes of the
world, we began fo suspect the justice of those
we were in the habit of receiving of the char
acters of all other nations. We began to
doubt, and then deny, English fairness and
truth. So that, from a state of almost unhesi
tating trust in the word of the English, we
have passed to the opposite one of a universal
distrust. We have found the necessity of
grounding our opinions of foreign character
and manners on our own inquiries. And since
our impressions of this sort have now for a
considerable period been derived from the
reports of our own travellers and scholars,
from our own reviews and papers, I need not
say with what a different feeling we now
greet the Frenchman, the Italian, the German;
how our kindly and charitable judgments have
grown and expanded ; how the scales of Eng-

316 LONDON.
lish prejudice have fallen from our eyes, and
we now see and know the men of other na
tions as they are, no longer as painted by the
English caricaturist, i. e., reviewer. Through
out the whole country a grand act of eman
cipation from the most ignorant and slavish
prejudices has been consummated, and we now
stand "disenthralled and free." And it cannot
be thought very astonishing, that, with the
weight of the English narrowness bearing
down upon us as it did during all our politi
cal youth, we failed for so long a period to
shake off the foreign burden. But it is off at
last. And the old American-Englishman, of
whom we had so many once, is now scarcely
to be found in the land — only a few, perhaps,
in some of the fastnesses of New England, or
fhe remote districts of the South ; who still
wear ruffled shirts and white cravats, still
believe in the perfection of fhe English con
stitution, and the immaculate stainlessness of
the English character.
But as I began with words of praise, let us

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE. 317
end with the same. We wfll not leave the
theme in ill humor with either ourselves or the
people about whom we have been thinking.
To be sure, they are not a faultless people.
They are a people of more glaring faults than
probably any other — hiore obvious and more
disagreeable — a people, even where fhe good
predominates in substantial qualities, rarely to
one's faste. Dr. Johnson may stand well
enough for an impersonation of the race ;
rough, harsh, rude, unmannerly, overbearing,
proud, surly, insolent and shy ; but then pla'ca-
ble," sternly upright, nicely honorable, virtuous
and religious, (with a dash of cant,) bold,
fearless, above all, manly ; with a heart soft
as a woman's when reached, but not easfly
reached ; taking apparent pleasure in offering
affronts, slights, almost insults, yet ending
capriciously in kind words, and often kinder
deeds ; like all great men and nations, I be
lieve, taking a sort of pride in inconsistency,
contradictions, caprice, — and if this sketch
of the English character is itself marked by
inconsistencies, it is only the more sure to
27

318 LONDON.
be in keeping with the subject.* Sffll, if we
might be permitted to do so, we would gladly
chime in wifh the poet's burden,
" England, with all thy faults, we love thee still."
At least, if we do not, ^nd may not, love, we
cannot but honor. Ah honor, on the whole,
to such a people. Honor to the stubborn
stuff of which the rough-coated Englishman is
made. No flaccid muscle there ; all bone, iron
muscle, tough sinew. All honor to the un
flinching spirit of a people that have preserved
and handed down to afterfimes the liberties,
civil and religious, which they first secured,
but have been sorely tempted through so many
ages, by wealth, by power, by flattery, by

* National character is impressed upon a people not by a few,
but by the great majority of a people. The English character
I believe to be very much as I have described it. The common
statement would not, I imagine, on the part of the English them
selves or others, be very different. But there is another side
belonging to a respectable minority, so opposite that it hardly
seems as if it could be characteristic of any part of the same
race, in which generosity, kindliness, civility, hospitality abound,
and especially toward the stranger and the foreigner, in which
the American, even, is permitted to share. Nowhere in my own
country, in a very limited experience, indeed, could I bave been
treated with a more cordial, whole-hearted hospitality.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PEOPLE. 319
bribery to abandon and betray. Honor to the
heroes of Magna Charta; and to the people,
their true descendants, whose pertinacity for
the right afterward withstood the wheedling,
falsehoods, sophistries, ofthe polite but danger
ous Charles — and to fhe sturdy champions,
who, at a later hour, drove from the throne and
from the shores of England the second James,
tyrant, liar. Catholic and fool ; and then, by
one and the same act, secured forever the
Protestant succession and the constitutional
liberties of the kingdom. All honor to such
a people. And although they do not like, or
love, nor care for much, any way, America,
and we, for many reasons, like her as little ;
yet, I am sure, there is a strong disposition
here, — in spite of such language, — which
there is not there, to be friends, to do all
in our power toward establishing and per
petuating friendship with a nation whom in
our hearts we so highly venerate. And as for
England, we will only hope, that, as jn the
case of an individual when he reaches old age
he is apt to grow more mfld and gentle, more

320 LONDON.
loving and so more lovable, so it may be with
her, as her age increases upon her; and that
we, af present far removed from fhe regard we
once entertained, shall be able to return ere
long to a sincere and hearty re-adoption of the
kindly sentiment that universally prevailed in
the days of our political youth.

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